The First Poet Laureate of Mars

by T E Olivant

Hester’s shoulders untensed. “Right. There was this boy. He was born on Sat Three, just like me. We grew up together. He used to spend a lot of time at my place because his apartment was even more shitty than mine. Which, if you saw where I grew up, you would find kind of hard to believe.”

  “Anyway, like most kids on Sat Three we hustled to survive. Bit of stealing, bit of smuggling, nothing too major. I got into hacking, I had kind of a knack for it. We were doing fine but then we got out of our depth. There was a deal that went really bad and we got caught. I was under sixteen, so they couldn’t do much to me. But my friend… he was tried as an adult. And the Merchants took him.”

  “A labor sentence?”

  “Right. He was meant to work his five years on a mining colony. But he never got there. Instead the Merchants sold him to the Augments. I know, you’re going to tell me that can’t happen, but it did.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because after they stole him away and turned him into an Augment, he came back to see me.”

  Tolly’s mouth formed the words not possible, but he managed to bite them back. For a start, there had been no new Augments created in the last fifty years. And if one had been made out of the girl’s friend, he would never have been allowed home. That was part of the deal. Become an Augment and you give up your old life. No exceptions.

  And yet he didn’t think Hester would lie to him. Not now that he was dying.

  “It was three years later when he turned up. He just knocked at the door. Turning up unannounced? On Sat Three? You can bet I reached for a weapon! And he just stood there, waiting for me to open it. But at first I didn’t recognize him. It was his face…”

  Tolly’s hand touched his own jaw. That deadening of features that occurred with the Augmentation process. Even now they hadn’t quite perfected it. Human but not human at the same time. That was why the h-men hated them. He took his hand away from his face. His skin had felt like that of a corpse.

  “So I was just staring at him through the videoscreen on the door. He was looking right into the camera, not saying anything, not moving. Just waiting for me to click who it was.”

  “And once you recognized him, what did you do then?”

  “What do you think I did? I slammed the open button and gave him just the biggest kiss ever. I was crying and I wrapped my arms around him. We went inside and…”

  She suddenly remembered who she was talking to. “Let’s just say that I know what I mean when I say that not all Augments are sexless. It wasn’t until the next morning that he started talking.”

  “He told you about the process?”

  “He couldn’t remember much of it. Not the physical part anyway, where they hacked into his brain. That was all gone. But he remembered the training, the two years he spent in one of their centers being brainwashed into the perfect Augment.”

  “Not so perfect if he turned up at your door.”

  “Right. Turned out that kids from Sat Three are tougher than the Augments ever imagined. He fought them every step of the way. Every time they asked for his loyalty, he lied to them. He kept a part of himself separate. Even when he became an Augment, he’d somehow managed to keep a little of the boy from Sat Three still alive.”

  Hester stopped. She seemed to have run out of words.

  “But it wasn’t enough?” Tolly said softly.

  “No. The Augment technology was slowly poisoning his brain. He’d come to see me before he lost everything. But he knew it was only a matter of time. He called me once a month for almost a year, but each time he got stranger… More distant. And finally he disappeared.”

  “He died?”

  Hester smiled. “This isn’t a movie, remember? No, there was no tragic ending. One day he just stopped calling. But I know what happened.”

  “What?”

  “The Augments stole his soul.”

  “That’s a little… dramatic.”

  “Is it? Hard to be soul mates when you don’t have a soul. They killed off the best part of him and I wasn’t able to save the rest.”

  “No wonder you hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you. Not now. And probably not ever. It’s the system that’s corrupt, Tolly. That’s what they need to change.”

  “That’s the problem,” Tolly muttered. “I made the system. And I’ve run out of time to stop it. I truly am sorry.”

  “This is no time for regrets. It’s time to use your augmented brain to work out how we can save the miners. Damn it Tolly you are not going to fail them!”

  “My brain is just plain h-man, I’m afraid. I turned the augmentation off.”

  “Then turn it the hell back on again. What have you got left to lose?”

  Chapter 42

  Tolly looked deep into the fragmented synapses of his broken brain. Could he do it? Turn back on the augmented parts that he had shut down earlier. It would speed up the damage, of course. He had calculated that he had seven hours remaining. If he turned back on his augmented hormones and brain function he might get an hour if he was lucky. But at least he would be useful for that last hour.

  “I can try,” he said.

  “What can I do?”

  “Just sit next to me in case I pass out again.”

  Just as he shut his eyes, he felt her grasp his hand.

  The brain. A landscape, like another other. First the geological features, the different cortical regions, their undulating mounds. He couldn’t see them with his eyes, of course, but he could almost feel them as he activated his synapses.

  He avoided areas like the neocortex and the other memory sites. These were already damaged and he knew that if he probed them too deeply there was a good chance his brain would shut down and never recover.

  Instead he focused on the more primitive parts of the brain. He turned on the augmented sections of amygdala, where he could ramp up his anger response. He tweaks the flow of brain fluids to the hypothalamus, responsible for aggression.

  But he didn’t just want to be a raving beast. He mentally flicked all the switches to his higher processing power. If he wanted to be able to out-think Rowhan, he’d need every ounce of brain juice he could get.

  Then he released the hormones.

  His body shuddered as all his augmented functions came back online. He could feel Hester’s nails digging into his palm as his body bucked and heaved, but he couldn’t do anything about it. After a few seconds the spasm ceased.

  “You still with me?”

  Tolly took a deep, rattling breath. He felt good. Really good.

  “Yes. Let’s kick some butt.”

  “I don’t think anyone says that in this century.”

  Tolly stood up and strode towards the door. It felt amazing to have working limbs again.

  “Wait! They said they’d shoot us if we went outside!”

  Maybe a little adrenaline adjustment, Tolly thought as he paused, his hand on the door. His mind was flying. He stared around the room and locked his eyes on the garbage chute that had taken the unfortunate Derek’s shoes.

  “Our exit,” he said, pointing.

  “Umn, it’s a little small.” The opening was indeed less than a foot wide.

  “The opening is small, but the pipe itself will be larger. I know. I designed these things.”

  First, he jammed the chair he had been sitting on at an angle calculated to block the door to the room. He walked over to the wall, made some calculations in his head. Then he punched forward with both fists. He did the same at the bottom, making the corner points of a square. Then he pulled the wall towards him. It crumpled and he threw the debris to one side.

  “Ok, that was… ridiculous,” Hester said. Someone yelled from outside the door.

  “Quick, down the chute,” Tolly said, pushing the girl in front of him. She took a deep breath and climbed into the wall. A second later she disappeared. He jumped in after her.

  Ten seconds later they were sitting on a mound of stinking rubbish.

  “So glad I
met you, Tolly,” Hester said as she picked stinking pieces of food out of her hair and scrambled out of the recycling center.

  “Likewise,” he replied.

  Tolly led them through the maintenance tunnels of Utopia towards the shuttle bay. His pumped-up brain led him through the new colony like he had already been there before. This was interesting, and he wanted to think about it when he had a little more time. But that would probably never happen, so it was better to focus on what was important.

  They needed to get to Alcedine Tower and stop the Council doing whatever stupid thing they were planning. Despite it all, he still cared for his fellow Augments and he did not want them to go past the point of no return. But if they wouldn’t listen and if they were willing to hurt the h-men… Then they would have to reckon with their worst nightmare.

  “Are you all right?” Hester said as they ran through the tunnels. “Your face has gone so red its almost purple.”

  “I’m a little… overstimulated right now. But that’s good. We’re going to tear down the planet!”

  “Just keep it together, Tolly.”

  They arrived in the shuttle bay and Tolly commandeered one of the little two-person ships by the simple expediency of roaring in the pilot’s face until he ran away.

  Hester buckled in next to him. “Could you maybe turn down the testosterone a little tiny bit,” she said as he fired up the engine.

  He made a slight adjustment and felt the ringing in his ears stop.

  “Did I just scream in that h-man’s face?” he asked.

  “Yes. I thought I was going to have to insta-tranq you before you ripped him to pieces.”

  “I may have overdone the hormones.”

  “You think?” Hester sat back in her seat. “What is your plan for when we get to Alcedine? I hope it’s better than just screaming in Rowhan’s face.”

  “We need to get access to my memories. I need to find the connection with Venus. Oh good, it still hurts when I say that. I think the only thing we can do is find Cybill and get her to access the results from my brain wipe.”

  “Do you really think they wouldn’t just delete it?”

  “It’s the only chance I’ve got.”

  “I have another idea. What if we could access all the Augment files on Venus.”

  He shook his head. “They would be in the protected system.”

  “Yes, and I couldn’t get into it before because I was not in Alcedine. But if you can get me to the mainframe, I can get in. I made a note of all the access codes when Fisher had me searching for Cybill. I sent them to my private network, just in case.”

  Tolly stared at her for a moment. “I thought you just wrote bad poetry.”

  Hester grinned. “Oh, I can do a little more than that.”

  Chapter 43

  Tolly took the shuttle into a maintenance hatch on Alcedine. Hester had used the brief journey to hack into the supply system and add their flight into the log of deliveries. They might just make it in without anyone shooting them.

  Hester had spent most of the flight monitoring Tolly’s status. On the surface he looked much better than before: he could walk and talk and act like a functioning person. But there were tell tale signs that his brain was only just holding together. His emotions were all over the place and his impulse control was pretty much non-existent.

  “What do you need to access the private Augment network?” Tolly asked.

  “I need a console that’s already connected.”

  “All right. We’ll go for one of the lower levels and try to find an empty office. I don’t want to come into contact with any of the Council members until I have some definite proof of whatever Rowhan is planning.”

  “And you think the council will listen to you if you have proof?”

  “I don’t think all Augments are bad. Even a hundred years won’t change my mind on that one. We know that Cybill wants to stand up to him, and I’m sure they can’t be the only one. If we can expose Rowhan then there’s a chance I can get the Council back on side.”

  “And what then?”

  Tolly shrugged. “Let’s just see those files first. Then we know what we’re up against.”

  The shuttle landed and Tolly made sure he walked out first. Hester hurried along behind him. They were lucky: there was no one in the delivery area and they ran into a dimly lit corridor without anyone stopping them.

  “We should be ok now,” Tolly whispered as they walked. “Augments don’t come into this section. They have their h-man employees to take care of all the dirty tasks.”

  “Why am I not surprised,” Hester hissed back.

  “Nearly there.”

  A man in overalls walked towards them, but he averted his eyes as soon as he realized what Tolly was. He hurried past and disappeared down another corridor. Hester hoped he was so in awe of Augments that he didn’t question what they were doing in this sector.

  “All right, there should be some sort of tech offices here.”

  Sure enough there were doors off the corridor with titles like ‘server room’.

  “Thank the frozen earth Augments don’t like change,” Hester said as they hurried over to a room marked ‘network center’. They listened for a moment but couldn’t hear anyone inside.

  The door was locked. Tolly grabbed the palm reader like he was about to rip it off the wall.

  “Wait!” Hester grabbed his shoulder. “Let me do it!” She looked at the console, flicked open the access hatch on the side with her thumbnail and hit a couple of keys.

  “Done.”

  Tolly gave her a slightly sheepish look as he opened the door. “Too much testosterone again?”

  “I’d say so. Let’s just get inside.”

  The room buzzed with the hum of electronics. Hester grinned. This was her kind of place. She went over to a console next to a wall of electronics.

  “This was a nice machine, twenty years ago. Your people really need to learn to upgrade.”

  “We need to know what they know about we me. We need to find out what I know about me. We need to check the archive mainframe.”

  “Just give me a second.” She pulled up the access codes she had stored earlier. “All right, I’m in. Will we start with the basics? Let’s search for your name in the archives.”

  “Best limit it to the last twenty years. We don’t want to be here all day.”

  Hester typed in Tolly. “What’s your surname.”

  “Augments have no surnames. We don’t need them. There are always less than a hundred of us at any one time. Otherwise we tend to start wars with each other.”

  “Good to know.” The Augment system was deliberately archaic. Just searching for a name didn’t work, it just produced a lot of nonsense results. She found an index of files instead and checked under the ‘T’s. “I can’t find you. Do you think you could have been erased from the system somehow?”

  “Unlikely.” He came and stood by her shoulder. “That’s why you can’t find me. You’re looking under ‘T’. You need to check the ‘P’s.”

  Hester glared at him. “P for Tolly?”

  “P for Ptolly, short for Ptolemy. The man who mapped the stars.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No, I’m not,” Ptolly said.

  Hester simply shook her head. “Augments,” she muttered. She checked under ‘P’ and there he was.

  “There’s a lot of files here. Do you want to see if you can find what we need?” She let Tolly take the position in front of the console.

  “All right.” His eyes flickered as he read the file names quicker than any human would have been able to. “Let’s start with the most recent and work backwards.”

  He scanned through pages of files. Hester caught the odd word here and there, but nothing stood out.

  “Here’s the order for my brain wipe. Authorized by Rowhan. Ha! He’s put down that I requested the one-hundred-year erasure. I’m going to eat his spleen!”

  “Let’s stay focused, all rig
ht. Look,” Hester said, “there’s a cross-referencing system. See down at the bottom, it links to other files with related contents.”

  Tolly selected the folder marked ‘reports’.

  “Look, a report from Vennnuuussssss!” He slapped the side of his face.

  “Tolly!”

  “I’m ok. Let’s just watch the damn thing.”

  A man stands in front of the camera. It is Tolly, but not as he’s ever seen himself before. His face is streaked with soot and half of his hair has been burned off. In the background is the interior of an old single-man cruiser.

  The Venus station is burning, he says. His eyes are wild. I was coming back from a supply run when their stabilizers failed. None of the h-men on board had the expertise to fix them. By the time I got there they were already burning.

  I want the full Council to listen to this message. We killed those people. The Merchants told us that if we could build a working colony they would cut us in to the Entertainment sector. But we kept going further than our orders.

  The engineers kept pushing the safety limits. They said it was to get ready for the real colony. That Venus was only ever a test station to see if the engineering worked. They are going to use everything they have learned here to build Utopia somewhere else.

  They used the h-men as test subjects. They were willing to watch them die, just to see how long it took. I cannot be a part of this anymore. Do not send a rescue ship. I intend to make my own way back. I need time to think…

  The room lapsed into silence.

  “The Council didn’t pay attention,” Hester said.

  “No.”

  “That must have been difficult to witness.”

  “It must have. I still do not remember it.” Tolly wondered if it was possible to come out the other side of rage. For it to burn so hot that it turned into a ball of coal deep in your chest.

  “Where are we going now?” Hester asked, although she knew he would only say one place.

  “The Council Chamber. It is time my people learned how to listen.”

  Chapter 44