Lawn

The garage had bays for three rovers. Tsumugi had a hard time imagining a private citizen needing one rover, let alone three. She gently tossed her bot into the pressurized, purified, triple-filtered triple-scrubbed and triple-treated air. It floated gently through the space, its thrusters puffing lightly as its spherical eyes mapped the garage from every vantage in three-dimensional space it could position itself. It took 3.4 million measurements per second. Tsumugi would stitch them together that afternoon.

“A little excessive, don’t you think?” she asked. “Three rovers, I mean.”

“Not at all,” said the property manager. “Three is the minimum number you must own in order to crash two of your rovers into each other while you watch from another rover.”

Tsumugi couldn’t hold her composure and she felt her face twist. “Talk about out-of-touch.”

The property manager wiggled his thin mustache and bowed slightly. “Only a joke, and a poor one at that. Apologies. Triple-redundancy is considered a minimum safety requirement by the homebuilder. If you were out in a rover and encountered an issue, a second rover could be sent to retrieve you, even accounting for one rover always being out of service for its preventative maintenance cycle.”

Tsumugi only sighed and turned to watch her bot complete its mapping.

They stood in silence for a few moments and the manager added, “Never can be too careful. Dangerous world out there.”

“Can’t disagree with that,” she said. “So is that it then? We’ve seen the whole property?”

The manager grinned. “Not quite. There’s still one remaining feature—one we haven’t publicized yet—and I’m sure we’ve saved the best for last. This way, please.”

He led her back through the sprawling mega-mansion. She thought it would be tough to sell. Worse that it was even built to begin with. Such a waste.

At last they reached a lock. He motioned for her to pull on her rebreather, and he did the same. The lock hissed, and the outer door opened to a small, interior, open-air courtyard. Tsumugi caught her breath. “Is it real?”

The manager smiled, pleased. “But of course. A proprietary strain, as I’m sure you guessed.” He gestured broadly with his arms. “Grass. The first and only lawn on Mars.”

Tsumugi was wrong. This property would sell after all. Fucking trillionaires.