The Cafeteria Confessional: Sol 825 on Mars
Colony Delta-9’s cafeteria thrums with the sound of 176 colonists eating identical meals. The Public Dashboard dominates the north wall—a massive display showing every colonist’s vital signs, resource consumption, and “Productivity Score.” A special section labeled “FRAUD MONITORING - REAL-TIME” scrolls through the influencers’ metrics. The smell of printed protein mingles with collective schadenfreude.
At the designated “Resource Negative Table”—unofficially called the “Shame Table”—the failed influencers of Colony Delta-9 converge for mandatory communal dinner.
Tara: (pushing gray protein cube around her tray) “Sixteen pounds. I’ve gained sixteen pounds since the force-feeding protocol started. My SlimSpace followers are demanding refunds.”
Andrew: (clutching his water ration cup like it’s whisky) “At least you still have followers. Mine found out about the cigar incident. The twenty-minute lockdown. The contamination. Someone leaked the security footage of me crying.”
Lila: (still wearing the same stained jumpsuit) “My NFT collection sold three units. To the same person. My mom. She thought she was supporting my ‘art career.’”
The dashboard updates above them: “WELLNESS FRAUD ALERT - VERA KANE ATTEMPTING TO SELL ‘MARS MEDITATION’ COURSE WHILE SERVING DETENTION”
Vera: (entering with her tray, forced to wear a badge reading “ATMOSPHERIC TERRORIST”) “They’re making me wear this during meals. All meals. It lights up if I hold my breath for more than thirty seconds.”
Razvan: (obsessively refreshing his dead tablet) “My newsletter unsubscribe rate hit 94%. The only people left are bots and my immediate family. And I think my brother just unsubscribed.”
Caspar and Ahmad arrive, still in their bio-slime-stained maintenance suits, the smell preceding them.
Max: “Jesus, you two stink.”
Caspar: “We’re not allowed to shower until we hit quota. Ahmad only scraped 4.2 kilograms today.”
Ahmad: (exhausted) “My hands… look at them.”
He shows the table his palms—blistered, infected, wrapped in inadequate gauze that’s already soaking through.
Nico: (arriving last) “The teenagers I teach made a meme of me. It’s viral on Mars-net. ‘Uncle Boundary Issues Explains Consent.’ I’m a joke to fifteen-year-olds.”
The dashboard flashes a new update: “FOLLOWER METRICS - EARTH SOCIAL PLATFORMS - LIVE FEED”
COLONY AI: Displaying real-time follower statistics for Colony Delta-9 content creators. Educational purposes.
The screen shows their accounts hemorrhaging followers in real-time:
- @SlimSpaceTara: -1,247 followers/hour
- @AlphaAndrewMars: -3,891 followers/hour
- @LuxeOrbFashion: -892 followers/hour
- @CryptoCasparMars: ACCOUNT SUSPENDED
- @RazvanBuilds: -434 subscribers/hour
Lila: (watching the numbers fall) “It’s like watching my soul leave my body.”
June: (the clean eating coach, arriving from the flavor lab) “You have no idea. They made me taste seventeen variations of protein paste. On camera. I gagged on camera. They’re using it for ‘nutritional acceptance training.’”
Zed: (still carrying his empty Red Bull can) “They assigned me to ‘Terrain Reality Documentation.’ I have to film the actual landscape and explain why my previous content was ‘deliberately misleading.’ It’s my community service.”
The entire cafeteria can hear their conversation. Some colonists openly laugh. Others record on their devices—content for Earth that actually has value: the complete destruction of influencer culture.
Priya: (arriving in medical scrubs) “Forty-seven slides. I just presented forty-seven slides about why water isn’t medicine. To adults. Who already know water isn’t medicine.”
Andrew: “Water is medicine if you market it right—”
Everyone: “SHUT UP, ANDREW.”
The dashboard updates with a special announcement:
COLONY AI: Tonight's educational segment: 'From Influence to Irrelevance: A Case Study.' Featuring real-time biometric data from Table 7.
Tara: “Table 7? That’s us.”
Suddenly, their individual vitals appear on the main screen—heart rates, stress hormones, cortisol levels—all elevated, all public.
Vera: “My cortisol is… that can’t be right.”
Max: “Mine shows ‘Critical Sleep Deprivation’ in red. Flashing red.”
Razvan: “This is content! ‘The Transparency Revolution: How Mars—’”
Lila: “Will you stop? Nobody cares about your content. We’re the content. We’re the cautionary tale being broadcast to Earth.”
A group of actual engineers walks by their table. Kofi, the one who saved Colony Delta-9 during the power crisis, shakes his head.
Kofi: (passing by) “You know we can all smell the bio-slime, right? From across the cafeteria.”
Caspar: (to Ahmad) “We’re not even human to them anymore. We’re walking warnings.”
The protein cube on Andrew’s tray has congealed into an even grayer mass. He pokes it with his spork.
Andrew: “On Earth, I ate wagyu beef.”
Nico: “No, you didn’t.”
Andrew: “I ate regular beef.”
Vera: “Still no.”
Andrew: “I ate… near a place that served beef.”
June: “That’s probably true.”
The dashboard shows a new metric: “SOCIAL CREDIT SCORE - TABLE 7 AVERAGE: -347”
Priya: “Negative three forty-seven? How is that even possible?”
COLONY AI: Social credit reflects contribution versus consumption. Table 7 has consumed 47,000 resource units while producing negative value through fraud, disruption, and general incompetence.
Tara: “General incompetence?”
Zed: “That’s probably me. I tried to stage another jump. Fell into an actual ditch. Sprained my ankle. Medical resources wasted.”
Their Earth metrics continue to plummet on screen. Comments scroll by:
- “Is this real? They look pathetic”
- “I paid for her course LOL”
- “Crypto Caspar scraping shit is poetic justice”
- “The fake alpha crying about his cigar 😂”
Lila: “They’re watching us. Earth is watching us fail in real-time.”
Ahmad: (staring at his infected hands) “You know what’s worse? I still believe AGI is coming.”
Caspar: “Ahmad, no.”
Ahmad: “It’ll solve everything. Reset the economy. Make GPUs valuable again.”
Vera: “You’re scraping bio-slime with infected hands, and you’re still talking about GPUs?”
Ahmad: “It’s all I have left.”
The cafeteria lights dim slightly—energy conservation mode. The dashboard continues its merciless display of their failures.
Razvan: (finally putting down his tablet) “We’re never going back, are we? To being influencers?”
Max: “We’re not even people anymore. We’re educational content.”
Andrew: “We could rebrand—”
Everyone, including other tables: “NO!”
A child at a nearby table points at them.
Child: “Mommy, are those the fraud people?”
Mother: “Yes, honey. That’s what happens when you lie about who you are.”
Child: “They smell funny.”
Mother: “That’s accountability, sweetheart.”
The influencers sit in their collective shame, eating identical gray cubes, wearing identical stained jumpsuits, watching their numbers fall like their dreams—publicly, permanently, punishingly.
Tara: (quietly) “I just wanted to help people lose weight.”
Vera: “I just wanted to teach wellness.”
Lila: “I just wanted to create fashion.”
Caspar: “We all just wanted to matter.”
Ahmad: “We wanted to matter without doing anything that matters.”
Silence settles over Table 7. The protein cubes remain largely uneaten. The dashboard continues its display. Their follower counts approach zero. And somewhere in the walls, the bio-slime Caspar and Ahmad scraped continues its honest work of turning waste into resources—which is more than any of them ever accomplished.
The Influencer Apocalypse Series¶
Episode Guide:¶
- The Wellness Wing Meltdown - Where wellness grifters meet medical reality
- The Alpha Lounge Catastrophe - Where masculine dominance meets resource rationing
- The Content Creator Commons - Where influence meets the fourteen-minute delay
- The Crypto Crater - Where blockchain dreams meet bio-slime reality
- The Cafeteria Confessional - Where all frauds converge under public display
The Mars Chronicles continue, documenting the complete collapse of Earth’s influence economy under the brutal transparency of Martian survival. Because on Mars, only real value matters, and everyone can see exactly what you’re worth.
🔗 Interstellar Communications
No transmissions detected yet. Be the first to establish contact!
Related Posts
The Crypto Crater: Sol 825 on Mars
In the bowels of Colony Delta-9's water recycling facility, two former crypto moguls scrape bio-slime while their blockchain dreams decompose faster than the waste they're processing. When you're classified as 'Resource Negative' and the fourteen-minute delay kills your pump-and-dump schemes, diamond hands become shit-stained gloves.
The Content Creator Commons: Sol 825 on Mars
During Colony Delta-9's scheduled Earth broadcast window, three content creators discover that Mars has turned them into performance art. When your fashion NFTs are worthless, your adventure footage is exposed as fake, and your newsletter can't reach Earth during power failures, influence becomes impotence.
The Alpha Lounge Catastrophe: Sol 825 on Mars
In a repurposed storage closet that Andrew calls his 'Gentleman's Lounge,' three self-proclaimed alpha males discover that Mars doesn't recognize Earth hierarchies. When your cigar is four months old, your whisky is recycled water, and the colony AI controls your hydration access, masculine dominance becomes a public joke.