Lab Rat

The years passed by numbingly slow. Tara's life was a daily routine of repetitive tasks designed to produce a calculated result. She had never before breathed unadulterated air because she spent all of her life in a controlled environment.

She had learned to accept the confined enclosure she had grown up in. She lived in a claustrophobic and antiseptic environment of recycled air, drab gray walls, and artificial light.

It was an exhilarating feeling to finally step out onto natural soil and take a deep breath of fresh air without wearing an environmental suit now that Mars was fully terraformed.