Losing Mars

by Peter Cawdron

  Choose wisely.

  I look down at the screwdriver in my gloved hand.

  “So this is what you really wanted to say, huh?”

  I laugh at the position I’m in—at the decision I have to make. As soon as I realized what was actually happening during Thanksgiving, standing there in front of my mother on the porch of our old home, I knew there was a fundamental problem. A big problem. If that first interview with Hedy and the taikonauts was real, then something had gone horribly wrong up here—not from their perspective, from mine. Why no mention of the abandoned subterranean alien base? Fifty years on, the message is the same. The host I watched alluded to conspiracy theories. The implication is clear. I lied, or I will lie. I’m not going to tell anyone about any of this. But why? Why would I sit on the discovery of the millennia? Somehow, we escape from here, all of us, but I never tell a soul what really happened.

  Why?

  “You wily old bastard.”

  I’m talking to myself, knowing I’ll recall these words in fifty years time, knowing full well I have half a century ahead of me to think about what happened here on Phobos. I trace the words on the wall, running the screwdriver over them, imagining myself carving them into this ancient surface, desecrating what’s effectively an archeological site.

  “You’ve waited all this time to tell me these two words? Fifty years, and this is all I get, huh?

  “You could have told me if it was the right decision. You could’ve warned me. Why not tell me about the future? You knew I was watching. Why not tell me something useful? Is there another world war? Are we at peace? Are we still screwing around with the same dumb shit that always trips us up? The color of someone’s skin? Their sex? Or the shitty patch of ground on which they were born?”

  I put my hand out, leading on the wall, resting next to the words, grounding myself in the moment.

  “You could have at least told me who won the World Series the year I get back.”

  My gloved fist taps gently against the wall.

  “You know I’m still free to decide, right? Forget the past and the future, now is mine. I choose. But you knew that, didn’t you. You’ve always known. Mr. Fix It needs to let go. Some things in life can’t be fixed.”

  My chest tightens. The muscles within my rib cage constrict. My body is playing out the emotional weight I feel pressing down on me. I’m on the verge of being physically sick.

  “It’s not Mars we stand to lose, is it?”

  I pound the wall, not out of anguish, not with any real sense of conviction or anger, more out of frustration.

  “It’s Earth.”

  Before I can follow that train of thought to its conclusion, I’m out on the surface of the moon, bathed in sunlight, carrying Hedy in my arms. Her suit’s bulky, but in the light gravity, it’s manageable. She’s alive, barely. Her head rolls to one side.

  “It’s okay,” I say. “We make it out of here. We make it home. I’ve seen it. Don’t you worry about a thing.”

  Hedy can’t hear me, but it helps to speak, to talk through what I’m feeling. I work my way around the Redstone, clambering on the tilted hull, splaying my legs wide in order to keep my balance before falling slowly to my knees by the hatch.

  “No one can know.”

  I rest her flimsy body on the hull as I position myself beside the open hatchway, ready to shuffle her inside.

  “This is our little secret, Hedy.”

  I feed her legs within the craft, gently maneuvering her suit and sliding her inside the Redstone.

  “We’re not alone in this big, wide universe.”

  I grab hold of a rail, shifting her within the Orion, positioning her next to one of the taikonauts.

  “But we’re not ready. Don’t you see? We’d fuck it up.”

  I use a Bungie cord to loosely secure her body, gently positioning her so she won’t drift as the craft takes off and changes direction. I’m delirious, talking to myself. Am I going mad? Jumping back and forth in time has left me emotionally drained. My battery power is starting to wane, leaving a chill in the air within my helmet. As I exhale, vapor forms on the inside of my glass visor. I need to recharge.

  “We’ve invented plastics, harnessed fossil fuels, nuclear power—wonderful advances, but what do we do with all this? We fuck up the ocean, pollute the air and build bombs to incinerate each other.”

  Moving around within a confined space in low gravity is akin to floating in a swimming pool. Each step takes an eternity. With a big, bulky pack, it’s easy to bump into chairs, consoles.

  “What about time travel? Can you picture it? If we could manipulate all four dimensions of spacetime? Can you imagine the carnage? We’d slaughter each other—just like they did—I guess that’s what I was trying to tell myself—choose wisely.”

  I close the hatch, winding the handle and sealing us within the capsule.

  “Whether through greed or selfishness or just plain stupidity, we’d fuck up the entire timeline.”

  It’s time to leave, but not for me. I know. This is temporary, just one more flicker in time. I still need to traverse the depths of the alien base. There are steps down there I haven’t taken yet. In this fragment of time, I’m preparing to depart, but there are still corridors to walk down below, there are two taikonauts and an astronaut to rescue even though they’re in here with me. I may have dragged them inside the Redstone but I know I’m still yet to rescue them from deep within the alien structure. Time will shift again. I pause. Even though this is the final chapter, the pages in this book have been torn out and tossed in the air. They all need to be read. I’m living them in chaos, not in order.

  Darkness surrounds me on all sides but it’s welcome. I was waiting for it, wanting it, calling for it, embracing it. Hedy’s frozen form drifts in front of my spotlights again. I reach out, taking her gloved hand, saying, “Let’s get you home.”

  Fate

  It takes several hours before time becomes linear again, which is no surprise given the elapsed surface time when I dragged Hedy into the Redstone was nine hours and eleven minutes, right on the edge of my suit’s capability. Of course it took hours. Every step had to be taken even though I knew how each one would unfold. This is a power no one should wield. The danger is too great. Even now, I’m only just beginning to understand it. The alien technology interacts with human intelligence at a subconscious level, transacting below the region of deliberate thought, tapping into my fears, my desires, my anxieties and worries. This ancient alien race might as well hand us a can of gasoline and a box of matches. We could no more control this than we can control the tides. Our brute impulses would destroy us.

  With the hatch shut, I reach below the control panel, switching off the communications subsystem.

  “Sorry, Shepard. I’ve got to figure this shit out.”

  As for Hedy and the taikonauts, I’m unsure what to do next. I pressurize the capsule and prep for lift off. Apparently, I’m going to make it back into orbit.

  I’ve seen the future. Does fate dictate that whatever happens next is unavoidable? Could I step in front of a bus back on Earth and still live for another fifty years? Is the future I saw set in stone?

  Choose wisely.

  As time goes on, I understand more and more why I wrote those words. After fifty years of deliberation, those two words carry considerable weight. Choices need to be made. I could risk it. I could go for full disclosure. If I did, within eighteen months we’d have a team of researchers up here exploring the site. Where would we be in fifty years? Among the stars? Or would we have incinerated ourselves?

  I wonder. Have I made different decisions in different iterations of time? My natural inclination is to shout this from the rooftops. As much as I hate to admit it, blabbing about what I’ve found down here appeals to my ego. Mr. Fix It, right? I feel as though I could control how the future unfolds, but I’m kidding myself. As soon as anyone else realizes what really happened down here, it’s Pandora’s Box opening once again. T
he future would be out of my hands.

  Did that ever happen? Could it have happened but somehow become reset with the link I have between past, present and future? If it did, forget about an arms race. This tech would spark a hot war for alien scientific knowledge. Whoever built this place was running on a level of science that’s tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of years more advanced than us. The nation that reverse engineers this would rule the planet. Wars have been fought over far smaller riches.

  How did I avoid that outcome?

  Choose wisely.

  Does time nest like Russian dolls? I imagine the physics of four-dimensional spacetime is a bit like orbital mechanics. Resonance would dominate. Unstable futures would be eliminated, settling on those that can be sustained. For me, the future seems settled, but it’s not. There’s always a choice. As long as there’s a link between past, present and future down there on the surface, I’m able to get a message back to myself.

  Message?

  Damn, the whole thing was recorded. I back up the video and replay the section where future me etched those words into the wall, wanting to see if I said anything during that time.

  “Come on. Come on. Say something you old bastard!”

  To anyone reviewing the footage, there’s no indication of the time shift at all. It simply appears as though I walk to one side and carve two words on a slick metal surface. Why didn’t I say something? Anything? Hell, I’ve been waiting for this moment for fifty years! Damn, I turn out to be a stubborn, surly old goat.

  I laugh at myself.

  I’m sure there’s a lot I could have said, but the key is the last word—wisely. Future me spends a considerable amount of time going back over those letters, making sure they’re clearly visible, emphasizing them.

  Seems future me did everything possible not to influence my decisions, only to guide them.

  Choose wisely.

  “Well, fuck.” Present me would prefer a few spoilers. I’d like to think that when it’s my turn to come back, I’ll give myself some pointers, but in the depths of my soul I know I won’t. “Time to light the candle.”

  I conduct a pressure test on the engines, clearing the lines and preparing to depart. Unlike taking off from a planet, I only need the faintest thrust. Anything sustained at more than 0.05m/s or roughly half an inch per second is going to see me rise. That’s my saving grace. If this was Mars, I’d be screwed.

  I strap into the commander’s seat. With the cabin pressurized, I open the visor on my helmet.

  To absolutely no one, I say, “In five, four, three.”

  I engage the reaction controls and the Redstone skews sideways, slipping down the crater wall before gaining height. Now that I’m clear of the ground, I fire the orbital engine—accelerating never felt so smooth. I can see the crashed Chinese lander, the red flag along with scattered surface equipment receding slowly as I gain altitude. I take one last glimpse before heading to orbit. A slight increase in power has me reach escape velocity. I’m traveling at roughly the same speed as a damn good football pass sent down field toward the in-goal, but no faster as the engine splutters with the damage it endured. I dare not open the throttle.

  Once I clear the crater wall and pass through an altitude of 2000 meters, I bring up the navigation computer, not trusting my judgment, and set a course to L1 between the Huŏxīng Wu and the Schiaparelli. Short bursts from the reaction controls guide the craft on its way.

  Choose wisely.

  Seems those words aren’t simply etched into a metal wall beneath the surface of Phobos. They’re seared in my memory.

  There’s someone else out there among the stars. Someone close by, or at least they were millions of years ago. What happened to them? Did their empire rise and fall like so many on Earth? From what I can tell, this was an outpost, a research station observing biology on two primitive worlds—one teeming with life, the other slowly dying.

  Mars was in the midst of the Amazonian period. It was a time when the planet was struggling for equilibrium. Lava flows poured out across the surface as the planet slowly cooled and its geothermal activity fought for one last gasp, sending millions of tons of toxic fumes into the frigid air. With the Martian atmosphere being constantly stripped away by solar winds, surface water wouldn’t last, but from the geological evidence we know there were subsurface lakes hidden beneath vast glaciers, much like those that still exist in Antarctica. These must have harbored the last vestiges of Martian life hidden deep under the ice.

  And Phobos? Seems they used this small moon as a staging area, collecting specimens from both Earth and Mars, examining them and storing them before transporting them elsewhere. They were curious, but not intrusive. I wonder if there was some kind of base on our moon, or given the close proximity of Phobos to Mars, perhaps they preferred some kind of asteroid/space station at a similar distance around Earth, using that as a storage area. It seems some kind of celestial war broke out and they were casualties.

  Phobos is a logical choice for an orbital base, sheltered from cosmic radiation, with low gravity providing easy access to interplanetary, perhaps even interstellar travel.

  The base was abandoned after it fell. No one made any effort to return and collect the samples, which tells me something important—their priorities changed. Perhaps it was a case of the extravagant distances involved, or that similar tragedies befell other outposts and Phobos was lost to them on some grander scale.

  Are they still out there? The designers of this base are long dead, but are their remote descendants still a space-faring species? What conflict consumed their empire? Was it an attack from without or within?

  Choose wisely.

  I feel conflicted. I want to talk about this with someone, but I can’t. I’d like to validate my thinking, get some advice, make sure I’m thinking straight. The problem is, the more people who know, the harder it would be to conceal. I could tell Jen, but she might not understand. Hell, I’m not sure I fully understand myself. One slip, one loose comment, and the whole facade would crumble. Changing the past and peering into the future makes nuclear weapons look like child’s play. It’s just too dangerous.

  I’m tempted to second guess my future self, though. I wonder if there’s some other option. If the scientific community knew, we could learn to exercise caution as a technological species. Perhaps we could avoid the fate that befell these aliens. It’s not wise to yell in the jungle. In some ways, it would be smart to skill up, to learn from what happened here and keep quiet—conceal our electromagnetic footprint lest the aggressors return. Harnessing this technology would allow us to close the gap. Who am I kidding? If they’re still out there, they’re literally millions of years more advanced than they were when they colonized Phobos!

  Choose wisely.

  Knowing how close humanity has come to direct contact with an advanced extraterrestrial civilization spanning star systems would allow us to choose wisely—to make deliberate decisions as a species, to protect our future. But the fallen aliens I saw seemed peaceful. They were content to observe. They left life on Earth to thrive long before any hominid intelligence arose. They didn’t feel threatened by life. From what I’ve seen, they were in awe of how life could arise elsewhere and sought to catalog it, to sample it, to examine how our planet harnessed the same laws of physics, chemistry and biology that allowed them to arise. They weren’t the aggressors. No, I suspect some other warring party attacked them.

  Choose wisely.

  We’re simply not ready, not on any level.

  There are no shortcuts.

  I unclip, but what seems casual is calculated. My helmet camera is still recording. Standard operating procedure is to upload an EVA video on returning to the craft but I conveniently forget that step, leaving the recording running. I need the video evidence wiped, but it has to be done in a way that leaves room for doubt. This has to appear accidental, unintentional. Once I hit the twelve hour mark, the current recording will begin to write over the ima
gery from my EVA. The onboard cameras recorded the crash and would have captured at least some of my motion outside on the surface, but there’s no way they would have seen me over by the Chinese lander. Besides, they weren’t directed at anything specific. Given they’re forward facing by default, I suspect they captured an amazing view of the upper slopes and crater wall. As soon as the suit recording has wiped my surface EVA, I’ll make contact with Shepard. For now, it’s a case of playing to the cameras.

  “Shepard, Redstone. Shepard, Redstone. Are you reading me?”

  Of course you’re not. Comms are switched off.

  “I am on approach to the Huŏxīng Wu. Have retrieved the taikonauts. Repeat, I have the two surviving taikonauts on board. I was able to rescue them from their crashed lander. Over.”

  It’s no surprise there’s no reply. It’s hard for anyone to hear when the radio is switched off. I’m determined to put in an Oscar award-winning performance for the onboard flight recorder, though.

  “Shepard? Okay. I’m going to make another pass. Looking for Hedy. Cameras on.”

  With that, I switch off all the cameras, including my helmet cam. I need a total blackout. I have to fake the rescue of Hedy as there’s no way to explain her presence on Phobos. I’ll blame my clumsiness on nerves, turning things off instead of on. I’ll say I felt overwhelmed, under stress, whatever. The flight recorder will still capture audio.

  “I am en route to the Huŏxīng Wu. The Chinese craft is drifting out of position... It’s losing its orbital spot... I have visibility of an astronaut in the hatch way... appears unconscious... she’s salvaged a bunch of oxygen cylinders... I’m moving in to attempt the rescue of Commander Hedy Washington.”

  Lies.

  “Depressurizing.”

  That’s no a lie. I close my visor. I have to depressurize as the flight recorder will capture critical life-support events like this. I line the Redstone up behind the Huŏxīng Wu, drifting slowly toward the stern of the Chinese vessel.