“I concur. To do otherwise would be unfair to our mothers and fathers on Earth who so desperately need our help in finding water.”
“Good, Brother. Then we are in agreement,” said Romulus. “Begin scan in three, two, one—”
With small flashes of light from their rocket engines, the brothers leaped into orbit. As they moved, their cameras whirred feverishly, bombarding the planet below with microwave radiation and infrared beams. The data that bounced back were recorded, compressed and rendered before being relayed across the void of space towards the waiting eyes of the mission controllers on Earth. The scan would take Remus and Romulus nearly two weeks to complete, during which time they would make thousands of passes above the red planet, buzzing it like tiny flies. Never again would they stray from Mars. Never again would they bathe in the blue light of Earth. They were permanent exiles in the cold seclusion of the vacuum, but they had each other. To Remus and Romulus, the strains of the physical and the psychological had no real hold. Theirs was an existence of great intellect, a vision of calm calculation. To them, time and space appeared more fluid and transcendent than anything man could understand.
CHAPTER TWO
A mysterious ruin
Three days later, deep in the diminishing remains of the Amazon Rainforest, Harrison leaned against the hood of his Jeep and gazed at the decrepit stones of an ancient ruin. Dragging a shirt sleeve across his glistening brown forehead, he blinked sweat out of his eyes and uncapped his water flask. The heat had never been something to bother him, but humidity was a beast of a different breed. The long drive out to the site had been made in a utility-style electric SUV that, due to its rugged design and intended work use, was stripped of such luxuries as air conditioning. After three hours of traversing crude jungle roads, the back of Harrison’s shirt was drenched with sweat, and his tongue felt swollen and dry.
“You alright, little buddy?” joked the man standing next to him, a tall blond Texan named Brad Bailey.
One of only two first-year grad students to come along on the Peru trip, Bailey had decided to join Harrison today mostly out of boredom. His father was a major player in Texas’s booming wind farm industry, so Bailey's decision to study archaeology was more of an excuse to visit interesting places and meet exotic women than any true passion.
Taking a long swig from his water flask, Harrison grimaced at the recycled taste, then turned to Bailey and gave him a wink.
“Don’t worry about me, Tex. You’re the one who's going to burn in this sun! Come on. Let’s get to it.”
Screwing the lid back on his flask, Harrison slung a work pack over his shoulder, then walked towards the moss-covered rocks of the ruin. Sighing, Bailey followed languidly while fishing in his pockets for a pack of cigarettes. Though discovered nearly twenty-five years ago via infrared satellite scanning, the mountainous jungles of the Peruvian rainforest had made any physical exploration of the site almost impossible. It was not until the government had decided to construct the nearby cities of Amazonia and Mamas that the jungle was strategically thinned, and humans could realistically make the trip to the ruins.
During the past three days, Harrison himself had visited the site several times while, above, an orbiting satellite equipped with high resolution IMCs scanned the area and compiled a model. He had received the rendered images the previous evening and spent much of the night viewing the ruins from multiple angles and scales. His professor, Dr. Tobin, had used nearly all of his connections inside the Peruvian Ministry of Archaeology to secure the site for his class, promising the Director that whatever discoveries his students made would be shared for joint credit. Shortly after arriving in Peru, Tobin had taken Harrison aside and verbally given him free rein to study the site as he saw fit. Well aware of Harrison’s talents and family name, Tobin thought it better to let the young man work at his own pace. By this time in his studies, Harrison was used to this kind of special treatment and had stopped resenting it. If his father’s good name could gain him access to interesting ruins and high-profile resources, then why not exploit it? After all, it was his name too.
Placing one foot atop a dislodged stone slab, Bailey panned his head from right to left, surveying the cryptic design of the ruin.
“Alright, genius,” he said obligatorily. “What do you think they used to do here? Sacrifice? Maybe some kind of sun worship?”
Removing his sunglasses, Harrison allowed his eyes to drink up the architecture of the site. About the length of a soccer pitch, the ruin was rectangular in shape and stood roughly a meter off the forest floor. It was comprised of long flat slabs of rock with small relieved stone rings organized in rows along the ground. Some of the flagstone had started to jut up at strange angles, like the one Bailey rested his boot on, but to Harrison it was clear that in its prime the site had been almost perfectly flat. The most curious features of the structure, outside the relieved stone rings were recessed circles that dotted the ruin. There were twelve such pits in two staggered rows of six, spanning the length of the site. Using his imagination, Harrison viewed the ruin as he thought it might have looked: raised slightly above the forest floor with no stone breaking the flat plane of the square. Walking a short distance, he mused at the purpose of the recessed circular pits, each one shallow and around two meters in diameter. Dropping down into the nearest, he noted that the lip of the edge came up just above his knee.
“Hmmm,” he sighed as he rubbed the stubble on his chin.
“What?” asked Bailey. “Do you think there’s bodies buried there? My money is on gold.”
Scoffing, Harrison laughed, “Not every archaeological site is going to have freakin’ dead bodies everywhere, Brad. And even less have gold.”
“Yeah,” murmured Bailey, lighting up a cigarette. “But every site has at least one pompous grad student, right?”
Ignoring him, Harrison poked with his foot at the ferns, which grew among other foliage in the shallow pit. Turning, he looked to the closest row of relieved stone rings and studied them with focused concentration. Starting less than half a meter from the edge of the pit, the relieved carvings stood like a line of coins or machine washers balanced on edge. Though too small to be used for any type of game, they did resemble the stone rings used as goals in the ancient form of Mayan soccer. Squinting, he noted how the various rows of rings fanned out from the center of the pit, looking from above like the rays of an iconic sun.
Late the night before, in an attempt to find an astrological significance to the pattern, Harrison had consulted Alexandria, a vast and knowledgeable AI. Yet, even in her wealth of information, Alexandria had been unable to find any link between the arrangement of the rings and the stars above. Finally, he had given up and decided to come back to the site in person.
Now, as Harrison stood with his hands on his hips, the fire of the sun drew beads of hot sweat, which ran down the back of his neck. More interested with the curling smoke that trailed from the end of his lit cigarette than the ancient stones around him, Bailey hunched distractingly and sighed heavily from time to time. Clearing his head, Harrison forced the frustration of the last three days from his mind and attempted to view the ruins with virgin eyes.
“Okay,” he breathed. “What am I looking at here? Show me what you were.”
“What?” said Bailey loudly, squatting on his haunches and leaning in closer.
Shaking his head, Harrison sat down on the edge of the shallow pit and uncapped his flask, taking another swig of water. Tilting his face up into the sunlight, he listened to the cicadas buzzing loudly in the jungle, which grew at the edge of the ruin. The swells of their rattling chorus gently lulled him into a calming trance and he closed his eyes to listen. Soon, Bailey became impatient and walked off, puffing on his cigarette and kicking at loose stones. A hummingbird buzzed around Harrison’s head and broke his fixation on the chattering cicadas. Training his eyes on the blur of its emerald wings, he watched the little bird dart about the air until it landed on the branch of a
large tree with bark that peeled like paper. Studying the tree, he marveled at how the dense tangle of the jungle had affected the shape of its growth. Thick vine-like roots of a strangler fig twisted up the base of the tree: snaking their way around two branches, binding them together. Suddenly, as if the world stopped turning, the scattered pieces of the puzzle lurched into place, and Harrison had an idea. Reaching inside the cargo pocket of his shorts, he took out a small, flat rectangular screen. Tapping its reflective surface twice, the words, “LightHouse Tablet,” filled the frame.
“Alexandria,” he said to the little device.
“Yes, Harrison?” answered a lyrical voice.
Named after the famed Library of Alexandria, believed to have been destroyed in 48 BC by Julius Caesar, Alexandria the AI was the most commonly known member of her race on Earth. Based out of a server network in Sacramento, California, she was connected via a web of satellites to every LightHouse Tablet and computer on Earth. She was one of only a handful of AIs that could exist in multiple places at once, which meant she could speak with millions of humans at the same time and not confuse or overlap conversations and data. Of the AIs capable of multi-locational abilities, Alexandria was the only one available for use by the general public.
“I’m going to take a picture of a tree, and I want you to tell me as much as you can about that species. Okay?” said Harrison to the little flat screen.
“Proceed when ready.”
Holding up the Tablet, he aimed it at one of the tall trees with the peeled paper bark. Tapping his finger on the screen, the Tablet emitted a faint click, then displayed the picture.
“That’s it, Alexandria. Will you please tell me what you know about this type of tree?”
The image of his photo was replaced with an animated lighthouse whose beacon turned in quick circles.
“Are you interested in their use as a building material?” prompted the AI.
“No,” he replied with a shake of his head. “Tell me about the tree itself. How does it grow? How soft is the wood?”
“One moment please, Harrison. Due to your remote location, it will take me several seconds to refine and articulate my information on that subject.”
“That’s okay, Alexandria. Take your time.”
Some ways off, Bailey busied himself by trying to snap photos of a large spider as it skittered across the rim of a pit. Standing up, he removed the pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and shook a fresh one free. Flicking open his lighter, he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to see Harrison waving him over.
“What is it?” he asked as he jogged the distance between the two of them.
“Bonsai, Brad,” said Harrison, dropping the Tablet back into his cargo pocket.
“Bonsai?” repeated Bailey with some disappointment in his voice. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Well,” started Harrison. “I’ll tell you what I think. I agree that this place was used for some kind of worship, but not of the sun and definitely not human sacrifice. I think that the Nazca used this place to worship trees.”
Pointing to the paper-barked trees at the edge of the clearing, he said, “Those trees.”
“Those trees?” laughed Bailey. “They’re not old enough.”
Sighing, Harrison put his sunglasses back on and looked up at Bailey.
“No, Brad. Not those trees specifically, but Ironwood trees. That kind of tree.”
“What’s so special about Ironwood?” shrugged Bailey.
“Alexandria just gave me a crash course on them. They’re pretty hard when they mature, but if you start young enough—say, when they are saplings—you can train them and shape their growth with ropes or wires. In fact, according to Alexandria, some Bonsai artists even prefer Ironwood when creating larger works because of its durability when matured.”
As if a light turned on behind his eyes, Bailey spun around and pointed to the nearest row of relieved stone rings.
“Ropes to train a tree!” he exclaimed. “Rope that you would run through those rings and tie around branches! Right?”
“Yep,” said Harrison, a smile spreading across his face. “That’s what I was thinking. That would also explain why the rows extend out as far as they do. As the tree grows, you just move the rope out to the next ring to continue the shape you’re trying to achieve.”
Bailey let out a low whistle.
“Well shit, Harrison. Now I have to steal your theory for myself. Guess I’ll have to kill you.”
“Shut up,” laughed Harrison. “Let’s get a few soil samples from these pits.”
“Why?” Bailey scoffed. “I think you pretty much nailed this one.”
“Because if I’m right, then where did all these great sculpted trees go?”
“Oh, yeah,” sighed Bailey flatly. Then, “Do you think they chopped them down?”
Kneeling, Harrison swung his backpack off and unzipped it. He rummaged around inside for a second, then pulled out a long silver stake with a black rubber grip.
“My guess is fire,” he said as he stuck the pointed tool into the soft ground and pushed down on the grip.
A slight metallic whir emitted from the cylindrical device, and a long-gauged drill bit descended into the ground, packing a neat soil sample into the hollow of its core. Nodding, Bailey removed his own backpack and produced an identical silver tool.
“Right,” he agreed. “And a deep-soil sample would tell you if there had been a fire here.”
Leaning on the soil sampler, Harrison puffed, “My bet is there was a fire here and that it’s probably the reason why the Nazca stopped using this site. A fire in the rainforest is a bad omen.”
Smiling, Bailey set off in the direction of the next pit.
“You know,” he smirked. “If I find any dead bodies in my pit, you owe me a drink.”
Groaning, Harrison tossed a rock after Bailey, then reversed the direction of his soil sampler. When the hollow bit had fully retracted out of the ground, he slid a hard plastic tube over the end of the sampler and released the layered soil into the container. Labeling the sample, he tucked it into his backpack and moved on to the next pit. Within two hours they had collected enough deep-soil samples to run tests and make their case to Professor Tobin. As they started back towards the Jeep, the afternoon sun baked the hot stones of the ancient ruin, and the cicadas hummed feverishly from the twisted jungle around them. Despite the oppressive heat, there was a bounce in Harrison’s step. He was in his element, and part of him wished he could stay out at the site all night. Working in places as ancient and mysterious as this gave him a feeling of being grounded—a sense of belonging in the rapidly evolving history of humanity.
CHAPTER THREE
NASA
One-and-a-half weeks had passed since Remus and Romulus first began their scan of the planet Mars. Project Mars Map Mission Commander James Floyd leaned back in his office chair and placed his bare feet upon his desk. His job was one wrought with stress and constant worry, so whenever he could afford himself the time he liked to remove his uncomfortable loafers and socks and let the plush carpet of his office poke up between his toes. James was a bony man with graying hair, which had started to thin at the top. His lined and dogged face gave him a much older look than a man on the cusp of his fiftieth birthday, yet he still carried out his work with youthful exuberance.
Scanning mindlessly through emails on his LightHouse Tablet, James cleared his throat and said, “Copernicus?”
“Yes, James?” came a smooth reply from the air around him.
“Do you have a minute?”
Copernicus was NASA’s AI, and, like Alexandria, he was capable of being in multiple places at once. However, unlike his sister, Copernicus was also tasked with the primary operations of NASA’s systems as well as with tracking all of the agency’s satellites in Earth orbit and beyond.
“Proceed,” replied the AI amicably.
“Are you sure?” asked James. “I know you’re
probably busy at Bessel right now.”
In the last two years, NASA and a joint assembly of other international space programs had undertaken a mission to build a permanent base on the Moon. Much of the design and function of the base acted as a precursor to what was eventually envisioned for Mars. Due to his nearly infinite knowledge of space and its lethal environment, Copernicus had been drafted to help design the various systems and functions of the base. In fact, it was at his suggestion that the location for the structure had been chosen. Tucked away in the shadows of a small impact crater, Bessel Base was a grand geodesic dome built from a transparent aluminum, called Alon, and titanium tubing. Completed for less than six months, the base was already a major hit with the public, and applications within NASA for tours of duty were quickly piling up.
“No trouble at all, James,” assured Copernicus. “I am presently running a systems-diagnostic for Dr. Conig, so assisting you is, as I said, no trouble at all.”
Chuckling, James scrunched his toes in the long fibers of the sky blue carpet.
“In that case, will you please pull up the progress report on Remus and Romulus?”
“Yes, I have it here.”
“Project it for me, will you?”
The lights in the room dimmed, and James scooted his chair back as the surface of his desk faded to a bright white with a low humming noise. First, the holographic images of Remus’s and Romulus’s bodies, the satellites, appeared.
Clearing his throat, James commanded, “Okay, I’ll take control of the visuals.”
“It’s all yours, James,” Copernicus conceded softly. Then, “Do you still need my assistance?”
Yawning, James wove his fingers together, then stretched his hands out, popping several knuckles audibly.
“Stick around for a bit in case I do, alright.”
As if batting at a small insect, James flicked his right hand to the side and the images of the satellites slid away. The next set of projections was a series of numbers and charts indicating the power and fuel levels of the satellites as well as other internal diagnostic reports. In the upper left- and right-hand corners were the two ever-shifting fractal patterns that represented the visual depictions of the twin AIs. Sliding the projection away, James brought up an image that looked like a wrinkly orange cut in half. Spreading his hands as if parting invisible curtains, he enlarged the unfinished model.
The Ruins of Mars (The Ruins of Mars Trilogy Book 1) Page 2
