A Martian Afternoon is a short story by Jack Rusher, published here Friday, March 05, 2004. It is part of Stories.
This story was written based on a reader request for a piece “about a person called Arun Sarin, a maelstrom, a cheese wheel, parking tickets, and death.”
15:23
Arun Sarin, chief astronomer of the Mars colonies, stands on the observation platform of the scientific research center at Mars Colony Nova Anglia, peering through the colony’s only functional telescope. The telescope is focused on the maelstrom of Jupiter, a swirling surface feature resembling a wheel of port wine cheese, the study of which is his life’s work.
The massive irony meteor M/2057 T7 is spinning lazily towards Mars, but no one has noticed it.
15:24
Arun holds the fingers of his right hand beneath his nose. The musky scent of indiscretion transports him back to a morning spent in his orbital hovercraft with a young, ethnically Czech graduate student called Anezka. She is a rare find: a green-eyed, fair skinned atheist to whom Arun is inexorably drawn; she is, to Arun, as forbidden as pork and twice as delicious.
15:39
Pashta, Arun’s wife, while programming the household cleaning robots, receives an automatic notification of the parking fine levied by the colony’s traffic wardens that morning. Setting aside her initial impulse to scold her husband for his absent-minded carelessness, she decides, holding to her resolution to work harder on their marriage, to surprise him with a bouquet of synthetic flowers at his office.
Arun drops his left hand to his crotch, cradling the stiffening that his olfactory memory has triggered.
15:40
Magnetic interference from M/2057 T7 begins to disrupt the Martian communications system.
15:43
Anezka is on her way to the research center with a picnic basket. She is, despite the significant difference in their ages, deeply in love with Arun. She has spent the late morning and early afternoon collecting the necessary items with which to surprise him with an old fashioned high tea, something she knows he deeply enjoys.
Arun begins stroking his member while his mind’s eye drifts lovingly over memories of Anezka’s skin.
15:49
Anezka and Pashta arrive at the research center from opposite sides of the complex and begin walking towards the observation platform, Anezka slightly in the lead.
Arun, cock in hand and pace quickening, approaches orgasm while peering through the telescope.
15:52
Anezka, the object of Arun’s fantasy on her way to seduce him, enters the observation platform as Arun ejaculates. Their eyes meet. Her disappointment spreads to him as they both realize they’ve missed the opportunity for an afternoon assignation.
Pashta walks in moments after Anezka, sees the two of them looking at each other in awkward silence, Arun’s semi-flaccid penis still protruding from the front of his trousers, a small puddle of semen at his feet. She drops the bouquet.
15:53
M/2057 T7 misses Mars by a narrow margin, but Arun’s life is nonetheless destroyed.