Day 3 - A New Home

     "You know why living out here is the best a man could ask for?" Mik took a moment to savour the flavor of his cigar for a moment, a slow lazy twist of smoke rising up into sky.  "Because every man is his own king."
     "That might be true, but, every king out here has to work like a dog to get by." Edgar surveyed the reddish hard scrabble land that his homestead sat on.  It had taken him five years to get the land to this state, and things were just starting to look up.
     "Ah but that's just the way it aught to be innit?"
     "Working like a dog everyday?"
     "Nah, a man being responsible for his own prosperity." Mik waved his hand towards the horizon, cigar pinched between two fingers.  "You don't get nothing if you don't work for it out here."
     "That's cause there is precious little out here."
     "You always gotta be down on everything don't ya Edgar?  What's wrong with having to do a little work every now and again?  Makes you appreciate the simple things in life a little more."
     "Everything out here is simple, we've hardly got anything on this rock." Edgar kicked a small stone from the edge of the concrete porch to punctuate his point.
     "And back home where they have all the fancy things you are missin' do you think they appreciate them?  Do you think someone comes home from a long day at work, sits down to a meal and thinks about how nice it will be to have a nice hot piece of meat?  Or sits down in a nice leather covered chair and thinks about comfortable it is?  It's common place for them, they don't even think about it."
     Edgar knew he would not change Mik's mind about this, it was an old topic of conversation between the two of them, "Still would be nice to have every once in a while."
     "Yes, every once in a while it would.  Too often and you don't even recognize it for what it is anymore."
     Edgar looked up at the shimmering blue star hanging low in the sky, "You think we'll ever go back?"
     Mik's cigar rested in the ash tray, the last tendrils of the smoke drifting away on a weak wind, "I doubt it.  If they were interested in bringin people back, we wouldn't be running these terraforming plants would we?"


Writing Time: 1 hour