People were coming to Mars. I was the first person on Mars braving the bitter cold and dust storms with nothing other than my suit. This was the day when I was going to have company because humans were going to land on Mars. I stared up through the clouds of dust awaiting signs of its descent. The ship was simply designed, a sphere with four spindly legs ending in needles. First sight of their approach were the yellow window lights burning through the dust. Eventually the ship's silhouette became evident and I began walking in the general direction of their landing site.

I came upon a crater about twenty feet across and perfectly round. High above I could see the ship firing its engines slowing the descent as it began the final stages. Just because I wanted to be helpful I reached out and grabbed one of the pointy landing struts hoping to guide the ship to its parking space. The engine unexpectedly fired again sending the ship aloft a couple feet after which it had a hard landing. Part of the hard landing involved the pointy needle tip of the strut puncturing my suit. The metal grazed my arm but I was unhurt despite the cacophany of klaxons and sirens declaring the loss of pressure and exposure to a hostile alien environment.

My left hand closed over the puncture and seemed to delay the inevitable. By now I was on my knees from loss of oxygen and assuming the position of a supplicant hoping one of the astronauts would come to my aid with a roll of duct tape. There weren't any national markings on the ship which made me wonder who had instigated the mission. Someone bounded down the stairs with duct tape and fixed the breach. She tipped her helmet back and smiled at me. Suddenly the dust storm began to abate and it was the clearest day I had experienced on Mars. Further up the ramp I saw confused astronauts removing their helmets and looking around at the landscape.

Mars had transformed before my eyes adjusting to the formerly scare sunlight which shone upon black waters and a rusty shore. A boardwalk had been erected teeming with small humanoids covered in yellow fur. Their hands had six long fingers and no thumbs. Some stopped and stared at the arrival of aliens upon their soil. Now it was soil because there were microorganisms teeming between the grains and busily burying themselves in the dirt rather than the sterile regolith which had been the norm. The Martians had four eyes that appeared to be two eyes because they were set so close together on their head. Most of the sensory organs appeared to be set in the same area as humans but I take it this was due to a dream being a dream rather than some anthropic principle or how all life is the same because of some "divine" being and being its alleged creation. The upper two eyes had blue irises while the lower two had purple irises. It was hard to see if they had a nose but after some rude staring I discerned two flaps which discretely opened and revealed breathing slits above their mouths. Unlike humans their mouths were solely for the act of eating rather than speech or breathing.

Despite the fact I was standing on a shoreline there weren't any tides. The water sparkled and danced with sunlight under a dark blue sky that became progressively lighter closer to the horizon. Twelve feet offshore there was an island with strange trees with twisted trunks that grew from a single root structure like a banyan tree. Its branches and canopy grew back together into a single wooden lattice covered with broad, deep green-blue leaves. In the shade I could see strange figures walking in the dark yellow grass. One came out into the sun revealing itself to be a bird about eight feet tall, like a diatryma (gastornis), with colorful feathers. Its face and neck were completely feathered instead of bare like a vulture. A mask of vivid blue went across its eyes and over the top of its skull. Along the neck and breast of the creature were bright red feathers which were frequently ruffled as they foraged the grass with their ostrich-like talons and spooking martian vermin from their hiding places with well-timed beats of their small yellow wings.

Night fell quickly which led me to believe I was somewhere near the Martian equator. The Martians congregated on the beach for group sex. Fortunately their escapades weren't attractive, just an oddity and I didn't look too closely at the heaving mass of furry meat to learn the particulars of arean procreation. As each one climaxed in their own way fireworks would go off in the sky. Each burst would be in the pattern of a five pointed star which looked like something that'd be featured in a Super Mario Brothers game. Soon the beach and bodies were tinted by the primary colors of these starry fireworks.

By the time I actually made it to the boardwalk I discovered that humans started having an effect on Martian culture and society. Little things were adopted by both sides and there wasn't any real animosity between the species. One of the things that I started to know is that I had to register in order to remain on Mars. I was the first human on Mars but because of some red tape, heh, the agency ended up registering me as #207 rather than #1.