Parachute babies
E193: Preparing #NextGen for I'm possible futures with Heirloom skills and Mars-ready parenting. Near-future fiction (<1500 words)
A flash of sun-splashed orange was playing havoc with my attention, like a butterfly flitting in and out of view.
I’d missed my bus stop again, a hazard of being a chronic daydreamer. Plugging my coordinates into my Apple Watch, I set off on “the fastest route home.” My spidey sense was on high alert, because sometimes Google Maps is not street smart and can take you through some dodgy neighbourhoods in the name of efficiency. Clutching my bag of groceries, I rounded the corner into what should have been just another suburban street - neat little homes, neat little lawns. There. There it was again. I stopped, spinning to do a safety-360-check of my surroundings.
A child … floating.
A child was floating. Not metaphorically. Actually floating! Suspended in a brilliant neon orange jumpsuit, looking like an inflated high-tech balloon. I followed the sound of the giggles down to street level. There, dressed in matching electric blue, was his sister on her tricycle. Clearly, she’d pranked her brother, toppling his cycle, and as he got loose from the pedals, his jumpsuit inflated and he floated into the air.
"Martin, remember to practice your controlled descent!" called his mother as she calmly adjusted something on a sleek wrist device, her voice carrying the same tone my mother would use for "Don't forget to wash your hands!"
I now noticed them everywhere - a whole array of parachute babies, all coddled and cuddled and wrapped in “bubble wrap” being taken for their evening “walk.” The parents were directing air traffic on their wrists via Bluetooth transmitters attached to each jumpsuit. I felt I’d walked onto a Black Mirror set.
The scene before me felt surreal but strangely … orderly. While the children bounced happily into each other in an aerial version of dodge, their parents dotted the street, focused on each floating balloon with the kind of attention often seen by your neighbourhood Nona watching toddlers on playground equipment. Yet, eerily, the level of scrutiny reminded me of a technician hovering over a microscope, iPad in hand, tracking results.
I walked over to the nearest parent. “What’s going on?” I asked. (I’m nosy that way.)
It turns out I had unwittingly stumbled into a neighbourhood of trainee Mars-a-nauts. (Sometimes the most extraordinary discoveries happen when you're lost!)
“We’re an experimental neighbourhood,” she shared. “Some of our children will likely be on Mars within the next three decades. We hope to go with them, but there are no guarantees.”
“As we populate Mars, we’ll have to get used to seeing our children float around the universe in giant suspension systems due to the different levels of gravity.”
“OK, that’s a stretch,” I heard my inner voice mutter, “Most parents today fear their kids failing and falling. How are they going to make that leap?”
She continued, “A few of us astrophysicists and spacenauts got together and designed a community to get ourselves and our little ‘uns comfortable living on Mars.”
She gestured to a floating child, the reflector strips glinting as she said, “As scientists, we started with strict controls - biospheres, tethers, constant supervision and traffic control. But that quickly became physically and emotionally depleting. The air got stale. We had anxious adults and equally frustrated children.”
every framework we take for granted will need to be reimagined
“One thing we know for sure,” she continued, “every framework we take for granted will need to be reimagined. Gravity, time, and even the simple act of breathing and playing change on Mars1. Given our handling of the climate, and as we move into the Future of Work, the same could be true here on Earth, too. As parents, we realize the first few generations on Mars won’t need a community of careful followers. These pioneers need to be adaptable explorers.”
I watched a gleeful child execute a perfect somersault above me, her smile reminding me of my daughter’s joy when she’d finally mastered a gymnastics roundoff with backflip combo.
“They seem to be having fun,” I observed, as much to myself as to her. “The kids love these parachutes,” a smile touched her face. “They are tools for independence, offering our children more control and agency. They’re getting comfortable wearing these ‘spacesuits’. The children develop spatial awareness, risk assessment, and quick decision-making, all while having fun. They don’t realize they’re discovering how to navigate different gravitational fields - we adjust those using these devices,” she said, pointing at the monitor on her wrist. “Think of it as the modern-day equivalent of learning to shimmy up a tree, and counting a skinned knee as a badge of honour. We are exploring ways to protect, prepare and position our children.”
protect, prepare and position
“Huh. ‘Protect, prepare and position’. I like that. Have you found a solution yet?” Curiosity had the better of me.
“It has taken a significant amount of rewiring our internal brain structures,” she laughed, continuing, “But seriously – what do we give our children? What do we teach them when what we know is rapidly outdated and insufficient? How do we add value? How do we parent and continue to support them?”
I could see they had been giving this conundrum a great deal of thought. It was intriguing as it kept me awake most nights, too. “But surely, all the new technology has to be helping? Right?” I asked - almost with a note of desperation in my voice. Someone – surely someone! – has been focusing on these issues in a world of 8.88 billion people?
We studied each other for a long minute, recognizing a kindred curious soul. “Our industrial age knowledge is a series of historic data points, constantly quizzed by AI models. It spins its magic, presenting different scenarios and a variety of options.”
heirloom skills
She continued, “We thought long and hard. As parents, what we realized we could offer are the nuggets of wisdom that are timeless - the heirloom skills. These have held true no matter which new technology arrived to disrupt our lives (on earth, or elsewhere!). These heirloom skills are the human skills our ancestors relied on when they left the comfort of their homes to migrate to new lands.“
“Once upon a time, sailors set off into the unknown across an expanse of uncharted waters (what we now know as the Atlantic Ocean)2. This was the 15th-century equivalent of sending our children on a spaceship to Mars. That’s why we nicknamed Mars-1 the Pinta and Mars-2 the Mayflower.”
“Now there’s a thought!” my headvoice nodded along, watching a joyous ‘Martin the future Martian’ expertly work the strings on his parachute, pulling on the left, adjusting the right until he glided to a perfect landing on the sidewalk.
Watching these children float freely made me reflect on my own upbringing. I grew up with helicopter parents, always hovering, always protecting. Everything had to be in its place - the right place - all the time. No room for failure. But here was a community deliberately teaching their children to float, to fall, to find their way back to earth. They were preparing their children not just for Mars, but for a future where the old rules and the industrial-era roadmap to success no longer applied.
technology is just a tool
She watched my eyes grow wide as I caught up to her thought process. Then she concluded, “Technology is just a tool. To be effective, we have to fill our children with adventure, hope and possibility, and all the heirloom skills those explorer generations placed in the hands of early discoverers: “ (listing them off her fingers)
The ability to form, communicate, and keep community
To teach them the value of play so they can live creatively within rules
To dream, create, and improvise where little or nothing familiar exists
To navigate by compass until there is enough to create a map
To do whatever it takes to solve the problem at hand. And survive. And thrive.
As I continued on my way home that evening, I had a long think.
I liked the warm visual concept of heirloom skills - skills burnished through frequent use, lovingly handed down from one generation to the next, accompanied by family lore and stories of courage, resilience and enoughness.
I’ll be visiting this neighbourhood more often, watching how these children develop into Explorers. I admire this little community, aiming to help them prepare for an uncertain future. Maybe this mindset would help us solve our Earth’s air, soil, and water issues, making these kids’ departure less urgent — and more about curiosity, joy, and adventure.
Oh, how wonderful it must be to be surrounded by hope and possibility. To live without tethers but anchored in humanity.
«THE END»
"}…{`
What heirloom skills would you pass along to the first generation of Mars dwellers?
What would you call the first generation of humans on Mars?
HomoMartian, SpaceExplorers, Mars-a-nauts, Marsfolk, Red Settlers, ExtraTerrestre
I found my inner child having fun creating this essay, and felt very JKR with the word- & world-creation. Did you enjoy it?
Q&A on this story:
Inspiration? E107: Essay on 1000-day futures + reading the utopian essays on
. Draft v1, written on April 20, 2024 started with a WoP12 prompt: What is something missing from this world? Why does it matter?Why am I writing this? 3
I want the topic of world-building (and climate) to stay top of mind, in an entertaining way
What is my point of view?
Change happens. It cannot be arrested. Can’t put things back in a box.
Humans adapt
We are enough
We have options - for changing, for re-invention
How do I want my reader to respond?
What can we, as parents, offer our children as stable fundamentals while they are in their formative phase that they can continue to use going forward, while all the daily life changes around them? What is the bedrock?
What stays the same? What changes?
Realize that as parents, we are enough
I’ve coined Pragmatopian a new genre for those who want to write optimistic but realistic near-future fiction. Antonym of dystopian (My work is too pragmatic to be utopian.) V1 of this essay started as cli-fi. By v27 I’d dropped the climate themes, so it no longer qualified as solar punk.
Near future? 1000 days - 10 years.
Finally published! Editing thanks due to over 15 people who brainstormed this essay in its many iterations since April 2024 including from WoP
, , , + from : @adam siegal Biggest recommendation was to focus on one theme - Heirloom skills.Use of AI: Images generated by Substack Image Generator. Grammarly. Lex.page -developmental and flow sparring, genre sparring. audiopen.ai for walk&talk transcription.
There are almost 200 editions of this newsletter! Play my Substack Bingo Card to deep dive into one topic, rather than read sequentially
I’m headed back across the Atlantic this weekend! IRL Tribe Tilt meetups are already planned in Ireland and Portugal. London, too. DM me and let’s arrange to meet and trade ideas! We, in Tribe Tilt, believe we can make a difference to the people and places precious to us - with fun, hope and agency. You have self-selected into this powerful, wonderful group. The best ideas can come from anyone, anywhere, at any time - so add your voice and join our conversations.
Stay healthy. From there, all else becomes possible.
Until next week …
Karena
Your practical Futurist.
Some Mars challenges:
A different kind of gravity
A Mars year is twice as long as an Earth year
Money no longer defines your success
The soil cannot sustain us, and nutrition comes from different sources
You cannot breathe the air
Love the imaginary future here and the concept of heirloom skills. I'd give the heirloom skill of learning. The ability to learn will allow those Red Settlers to pull from all they've known (or their parents have known) so they'll survive (yes), but also thrive with faster innovation, more measured conflict, more fulfilling relationships, and more time for unbridled joy. Oh, and I'd also add the heirloom skill of grandma's "just add more flour until it feels right" - a lost art unless practiced often and felt with the heart.
The Mars Desert Research Station hosted 2 all-teenager crews in 2022 and 2023. These kids, including my youngest son, taught the Mars Society and NASA a great deal about how teenagers adapt to abnormal living conditions and crisis situations.