The First Poet Laureate of Mars

by T E Olivant

  Ai took them down another set of stairs filled with scraps of belongings. This part of the mining base felt more industrial and it was easy to imagine the miners carving a home out of the Martian dirt. Had it been everything they had hoped for? Hester wasn’t too sure.

  The next level was incredibly noisy. It had to be near some sort of big mechanical system, maybe the aircon hub, if it was anything like Sat Three. Only on the satellites the human habitats were kept away from the vital machinery. In this part of the base they were interwoven. Children dodged in and out of cables that snaked across the floor, their skinny figures disappearing into doorways with faded ‘Danger Electricity’ signs hanging on them.

  “In here,” Ai said, leading them to a metal grill that he pulled to one side. A narrow corridor led to a room with an empty bunk bed and an ancient looking computer console.

  There was no one else in the room.

  “Is Persus coming?” Hester asked. Derek was also looking a little bewildered.

  “She’s right here.” Ai pointed at the computer.

  “But… You’re kidding.” Hester’s felt her hope fade into nothing. “She’s an upload?”

  “Your friend didn’t mention that?”

  “No. And he would have definitely told me… But wait, maybe he didn’t know.” Hadn’t Tolly said he hadn’t been back to Mars in a long time? That would explain why he had failed to mention that his contact had died and had her consciousness uploaded to a computer.

  “Oh crap,” Hester said.

  “You were hoping she was still alive?” Derek asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “She is in a way,” Ai explained. “You ever had a conversation with an upload before?”

  “No. Where I come from the idea of uploading to the system just before you die never really took on. We find it kind of…”

  “Creepy.” Ai nodded. “Lots of people do. But there was a trend for it among the old miners. The Augments promised that if they lost their lives down in the dark of the mines a part of them would always live in the stars.”

  “The poor bastards.”

  “Who’s to say the Augments were wrong? That’s not for us to decide. Anyway, Persus’s ancestors were the first families to arrive on Mars. She wanted to be uploaded like her parents and grandparents. Do you get to decide she was wrong?”

  “No. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.”

  Ai winked. “Don’t worry, I think it’s creepy too. But I respect the wishes of my ancestors. And besides, without the old miners to talk to we might have lost much more of our history.”

  “You can actually talk to them?”

  “Why don’t you give it a go?”

  Chapter 26

  The creepiest thing wasn’t having a conversation with a dead woman. The creepiest thing was that she had a face. Apparently when the brain was scanned for the final time they also made a rudimentary 3D image of the face and attempted to mimic the person’s expressions.

  Only the console was ancient and had obviously been a cheap model when it was new. The processor couldn’t quite keep up so the mouth was always moving later than the audio relayed the words. Persus’s face looked like a death mask, which in a way it was.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Hester.”

  “Did I know you?”

  “No. I have come to talk to you about someone.”

  “Who?”

  Hester glanced over at Ai, who gave her an encouraging smile. Keep the questions simple, he had recommended. The upload had the memories of Persus but not necessarily the processing power to access them.

  “Tolly. An Augment. You knew him before you… well, died.”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you tell me about him?”

  “Yes.”

  Hester bit her lip. It was like speaking to a child. She glanced over at Derek, but he seemed to be playing a game on his datapad. Time to put her cards on the table.

  “The Augments wiped his memory. The erased the last hundred years. I need to know why.”

  “Tolly is an Augment. The oldest Augment of all.”

  “Yes, I know that. Can you tell me anything else about him?”

  “I arranged travel between Mars and the rest of the solar system. Travel for people who didn’t want to go through the Augments. Tolly didn’t want the Augments to know where he was going.”

  “Why?”

  “He never said. He only told me that not everyone was suited to be an Augment, but sometimes it took a hundred years before that became clear. He said that Augment’s wanted to become gods, but they could end up being devils. He said…”

  The voice trailed off into nothingness.

  “The uploads struggle with complex thought,” Ai said, “keep it simpler.”

  Hester frowned. “Where did you send Tolly?”

  “To Sat Venus.”

  Hester felt a prickling sensation as the hairs on the back of her neck stood up.

  “Before the disaster?”

  “Just before. Tolly caused the disaster.”

  Hester heard Derek’s sharp intake of breath. He had been listening after all.

  “Tolly? Are you sure?”

  “Tolly caused the disaster,” the face repeated.

  Could it be true? Hundreds of people had died in the Venus disaster. Tolly hadn’t mentioned it, but then why would he? It wouldn’t have made her want to help him.

  “Can the upload lie?” Hester asked Ai.

  “No.”

  Hester stared at the dead woman’s face. Now what? She felt sick. It looked like she had been trying to help the wrong person after all.

  “I think I’ve heard everything I need to. Thank you, Ai. Derek, could you show me how to get back to the colony?”

  “Sure.”

  Hester barely spoke on the shuttle back to the colony. Derek didn’t try and speak to her, and she was grateful for that. She said a quick goodbye and retreated to her room. She was starting to see a pattern of behavior in herself that she didn’t particularly like. Follow some crazy scheme, get in trouble, move on to another crazy scheme. It didn’t seem to be working out so well.

  At least she could just forget about Tolly. After all, he had already forgotten about her.

  Time to ignore the Augment and get on with sorting out the rest of the mess she had made, Hester thought as she pushed her door open.

  To see that Tolly was sitting on her bed.

  Chapter 27

  “Out!” Hester yelled, pointing to the door.

  Tolly flinched. “I did not mean to surprise you but I needed to talk to you.”

  “Get the hell out of my room! How did you get in here anyway?”

  “I helped design all the systems on the Mars colony. They are pretty easy to hack.”

  “Ok, you can let yourself back out then!”

  The h-man girl seemed more upset than he had expected. Maybe social cues had changed more than he imagined in the last hundred years.

  “You wanted to speak to me,” he said.

  “I did. Now I don’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She took a deep breath and, realizing he was not about to leave, sat down on the thin metal chair opposite him.

  “I spoke to an old friend of yours.”

  Tolly leaned forward. “Who?”

  “Persus.”

  The stab of pain did not surprise him this time, but he still had to rub at his temple until it stopped.

  “I don’t remember him.”

  “It’s a her. Well, actually it was. She’s dead. But I still spoke to her, which was very creepy by the way.”

  “An upload?”

  “Exactly.”

  Tolly shivered. Humans hated Augments because of what they did to their brain. Augments despised uploads for much the same reason. Biology was everything to an Augment and the idea of removing the biological to upload into a computer server was… disturbing.

  “She told me that you were a murderer.”
r />   His heart raced, but he didn’t feel like bringing it back down.

  “Why would she say that?”

  “You tell me? She said the Venus disaster was your fault!”

  Tolly clamped his jaw together against the bolt of electricity that shot through his cerebral cortex.

  “What’s the matter with you?” Hester asked.

  “I’m trying not to pass out. That thing you just mentioned. I can’t remember it. But I think it has something to do with why I wanted to erase a hundred years from my memory. I did something terrible, but if I find out what it is, I will probably die.”

  “Is that because of the memory erase?”

  “A side effect, they told me.”

  Suddenly Hester reached out and touched his arm. “Tolly, I’m not sure what’s going on. If you did these terrible things or not. But I know one thing. You never asked to have a hundred years erased. Less than a day ago you told me you were going to have a week erased from your memory. One week, that was all it was meant to be. The Augments lied to you.”

  This time he knew she was telling the truth. Only it was too hard to bear. His mind shut down and he fell back onto the bed, fast asleep.

  Chapter 28

  Hester dozed in the most uncomfortable chair in the habitable zone. Tolly snored happily from his position on her bed. She had tried to wake him, but it was like his body had totally given up. She just had to hope he would wake eventually.

  After speaking to Persus she had been all but ready to kill him herself, but now she wasn’t so sure. Could Tolly really have been responsible for the Venus disaster? It was more than ten years ago now, but Hester could still remember her mother weeping when they had heard the news. It wasn’t just the sadness they all felt about the people that died. It was the loss of hope.

  Venus. The last great hope for the human race. It was meant to be the new Mars. Untapped resources, and close enough to Earth that it could be a solution for the failing Earth Sats.

  The surface had long been ruled out as uninhabitable. Human beings didn’t tend to thrive in temperatures that could melt lead, but the Augments had decided that a floating colony far above the toxic landscape was a real possibility.

  For a century or more it was just a dream. Then when Sat Two had failed and the population on Mars was getting critical, they started looking at it again. They had built a test station, a floating masterpiece held up by a gas filled canopy. They had all watched on their viewscreens as the first men and women arrived to live there.

  And they had all witnessed the horror when it had plummeted down to the planet’s surface. No one escaped. The Venus disaster claimed the lives of every single person on board.

  Was the sleeping Augment responsible for the deaths of all those people? Did it matter? It certainly mattered to Hester. But Tolly couldn’t even remember it, and they were meant to be focusing on the present, not a disaster from the past. The events on Venus had nothing to do with the problems on Mars. And they were quite enough to be going on with.

  Hester wrestled with her thoughts all night until her alarm woke her. She slapped at her datapad to turn off the beeping but it didn’t stop. She rubbed her eyes and stood up, wincing at the pain in her back. It wasn’t her pad that was making the noise. What could it be?

  The panel next to the door lit up. She could make out the grinning face of Cortez.

  “Shit. Tolly, wake up.”

  The Augment grunted and turned over. Hester looked around, looking for something, then grabbed the water next to her bed.

  “What the hell?” Tolly gasped as the water splashed all over his face.

  “I’ve got company. A guy who works for the Merchants is here. He probably wants money.”

  “Why?”

  “Because they think I owe them. Listen, I don’t have time to explain, but I think it would be better if he doesn’t see an Augment in my bed, don’t you?”

  “Right.” Tolly looked around the room and hid in the only space available, the tiny closet. At least Hester’s clothes didn’t take up much room.

  By now Cortez was slamming his palm against the door. Hester took a deep breath then pulled it open.

  “Thought I was going to have to break it down,” the man said, giving her a wide, predatory grin.

  Hester’s patience was wearing thin. “Can we skip the tough guy act? How about you just tell me what it is you want.”

  Cortez’s lip wobbled. “Hey, I’m in charge here.”

  “Right. You’re in charge. But you’ve been sent to ask for something, so just do it.”

  He sniffed. “My friends want you to do them a favor.”

  “I’m kind of busy right now,” Hester said. It was true: being an imposter, sheltering an Augment and saving mankind did fill up her schedule.

  “Shut up. They want you to move a package from Alcedine to the main colony. You will collect the package in one hour.”

  “An hour? You can’t expect me to…”

  “You will make sure that any record of the package is removed from the net. My friends know you have the necessary expertise.”

  Hester shook her head. “I need more time.”

  “Here is the package number. Ask for it at reception. It is small enough to carry.”

  “Let me guess: you’re not going to tell me what’s inside.”

  Cortez tilted his head to one side. “What do you think?”

  “And if I don’t do it?”

  “What was the phrase they used? Oh yeah, the Merchants will burn your life away. They will take everything you have and tear it into pieces and leave what’s left for the Augments. I think that was the gist of it.”

  “I have no choice then. Tell them it’ll be done. Oh, and Cortez?”

  “Yes?”

  “The Merchants need me. They don’t need you. First chance I get I am going to make your life hell.”

  She slammed the door shut and leaned against it.

  After a few minutes Tolly opened the door.

  “Looks like we’re going to Alcedine,” he said.

  “I am. You’re not. If they see you there you will be in deep shit.”

  Tolly shivered. “I still need to find out what’s going on. I mean, if you’re right that I was only meant to lose a week.”

  “Trust me, I’m right.”

  “Then you need to tell me everything. Right now.”

  Hester flicked on her datapad. “I will. Just give me five minutes to disable the communications tracking between the colony and Alcedine. And maybe set up a decoy program so they don’t start investigating what’s gone wrong.”

  “You can do that in five minutes?”

  Hester smiled. She would never get tired of surprising an Augment. “Did I not tell you? The reason I got into trouble with the Merchants in the first place is that I am a totally brilliant hacker. Terrible poet, awesome hacker.”

  “Poet?”

  “Ah, you don’t remember. Well, let me remind you.”

  Chapter 29

  Unbelievable. After Hester left to pick up the Merchant’s package, Tolly sat and stared at the mottled wall of the apartment. One week, that was all he was meant to have lost. And they stole a hundred years from him.

  He checked his hormone levels. They were terrible. When Hester had started talking about the past week the pain had been so bad that Tolly had simply jacked all his happy hormones up to the max. He had had to disable the fail safes and he knew there would be consequences. He had deliberately kept his hands by his sides when Hester was talking so as not to worry her. Now he lifted them upwards.

  His right arm moved quickly into position, but his left was sluggish and when he held out his hand it trembled. Permanent nerve damage, most likely. Possibly it could be fixed if the technology in this century was good enough. But only if he stopped the damage from continuing, and he wasn’t prepared to do that.

  He had to hope that he would be able to find out what the hell was going on with the Augments and the Merchants on
Mars before he either died or was left the brain equivalent of algae soup.

  He reached over for Hester’s console. Just before she left, she had told him that someone had sent her a datastick with a map of Mars. And this had been before they had even met. Tolly couldn’t quite puzzle that one out, but he knew he had to take a look. Hester had already plugged the datastick in so he just had to load it up.

  When the map appeared he almost laughed at the simplicity of it. As an Augmented Cartographer he was used to streams of data that enveloped every one of his senses. This was like something from before the space age. The only features were physical geography: contours to indicate height, symbols that showed relevant rock formations and human habitations. And yet there was something beautifully simple about it.

  There was no question that the map was of Mars, and the Mars of the present day judging by the size of the area taken up by the colony. He panned across to the place that Hester had mentioned. The dark spot of Mars. Sure enough there was the footprint of a large complex, one made up of several geometric shapes. The central building was a rectangle that slightly curved at one end. There was something familiar about it, but Tolly wasn’t sure what. Probably just another remnant of his lost life.

  A wave of anger swept over him, so strong that he had to clamp his jaw shut to keep from screaming. How dare they! The Council had stolen a hundred years of his life! It was a form of murder, an erasing of a person. They had maimed him and they would not get away with it. His whole body trembled with a white-hot fury. What was it that thug had said to Hester? Burn her life away. That was what he would do. He would burn through their lives and leave behind nothing but ash.

  “I’m back! Oh no, what happened?” Hester had walked in just as he had let out a roar of pure anger. He fought to get back under control.

  “Nothing. I mean… It is unimportant. Did you get your package?”

  Hester looked like she was going to keep questioning him but then she simply shrugged. “I got it.” She waved a metal case that was about the size of a console. “Now I just have to wait for the delivery details.”