Then it was just right.
“You’re too loud!” I complained.
“It’s not me,” he said. “I’m whispering. You must be trying to hear too hard. Those speakers can pick up the sound of a feather landing on a floor. I’m turning them down.”
I thought of listening less hard. The volume of his voice dropped.
This was very, very fun.
“Rawling,” I said, focusing on speaking properly. My voice become more normal. “How are you?”
“This is unbelievable,” he said excitedly. “It’s you in there!”
I blocked out my front view and switched to a side lens. It showed my body on the bed again.
I zoomed in close. My chest rose and fell as the body
breathed.
“Yes,” I said, “it’s me in here.”
I kept watching the bed.
It was very strange. That was my body on the bed, but it wasn’t my body. My brain was working, controlling a robot’s body. Very, very strange.
I switched to the rear video lens, then the other side, and then the front again. In a fast blur, it showed the back wall, the side wall, and then Rawling’s face.
Big mistake.
Going in a circle that fast made me dizzy. I wouldn’t do that again.
“Can you move?” Rawling asked.
In my mind, I pictured shoving back in my wheelchair.
Both robot wheels responded instantly.
In a flash, I was going backward.
Too fast!
Without thinking, I switched to the rear video lens.
The back wall was approaching too quickly.
Stop, I commanded the wheels. Stop!
In that instant, I fell into blackness again. Off that high, invisible cliff into that deep, invisible hole.
Just like that, I was back in my body. I felt the straps against my stomach and chest. I felt my itchy chin.
And I heard a loud crash.
“Tyce!” Rawling shouted. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” I said from the bed. I’d forgotten the stop command would disengage me from the computer drive. “But how’s our robot?”
&+$37(5
Hello again, diary. I feel like a person in a
cave who has just found enough gold to make him
rich for the rest of his life, then watches as
the cave entrance gets covered by a landslide.
What good is the gold going to do then?
For me, the experiment with the robot was the
best thing that happened to me. I had freedom for
the first time in my life.
Rawling spent the rest of the afternoon with
me. The robot wasn’t damaged from smashing into
the back wall, so we put it through dozens of
trial runs. And each time I got a little better
at using it. All the years in virtual-reality
training have paid off for us.
I rested my fingers, thinking about what I’d write next in the diary.
The robot is amazing. It has heat sensors that
detect infrared, so I can see in total darkness.
The video lenses’ telescoping is so powerful that
I can recognize a person’s face from five miles
away. But I can also zoom in close on something
nearby, and look at it as if using a microscope.
I can amplify hearing and pick up sounds at
higher and lower levels than human hearing. The
titanium has fibers wired into it that let me
feel dust falling on it, if I want to concentrate
on that miniscule of a level. It also lets me
speak easily, just as if I were using a
microphone.
It can’t smell or taste, however. But one of the
fingers is wired to perform material testing. All I
need are a couple specks of the material, and this
finger will heat up, burn the material, and analyze the contents.
It’s strong, too. The titanium hands can grip
a steel bar and bend it.
Did I mention it’s fast? Those wheels will
move three times faster than any human can
sprint.
I described all of this in my diary and continued. . . .
I love this robot. I can hardly wait to get back
into it tomorrow.
All of this is the good news, just like finding
gold.
The bad news, of course, is that we are one
day closer to the dome running short of oxygen.
I finally have my freedom. And now I might lose
it.
But worse, way worse, is the scary thought
that Mom has volunteered to leave the dome so
that others can survive. I can’t handle it. Life
seems so unfair. I keep telling myself that
somehow the solar panels will be fixed before
tomorrow at noon.
Because that’s when twenty people must get
sent onto the surface of the planet to die.
&+$37(5
The next day, two hours before the deadline to have the solar panels fixed, Director Steven called another general meeting. It took me and Rawling away from our experiments with the robot.
All two hundred of us—director, dome tekkies, scientists, and me—met at the assembly area. I sat near the front, still in my wired jumpsuit, since I wouldn’t be able to see over anyone in my wheelchair.
This assembly was different than the others.
Normally, Director Steven stood alone at the front, on a small platform, when he spoke.
This time, the dome’s five security guards, armed with stun guns, stood beside him. The guards were big men, their muscles like slabs of rock beneath their jumpsuits. In all the years of the Project, they’d never been required to do actual police work.
Today they looked very stern and serious.
Parked at the side were both of the dome’s platform buggies. I fought tears since they were here for only one reason: To take my mom away.
She stood beside me. For once, I didn’t care what other people thought. I reached out and held her hand.
“Please don’t go,” I said. “Please.”
“I love you, Tyce.” She spoke quietly, but there was a tear in her eye. “Never forget that. And remember that God loves you, too. You can trust him to be with you every minute, more than I can ever be. So you’ll never be alone.”
“Please don’t—“
Director Steven began to speak, cutting me off. All the people behind me stopped their murmuring and shifting.
“I would say good morning,” Director Steven said grimly,
“but this is not a good morning. The final deadline approaches, and we’ve found no solution for the loss of oxygen. All seals to the dome have been checked. We’re not leaking oxygen. We’ve taken apart the solar panels again and again, and we cannot
determine why they fail to produce enough electricity to maintain oxygen levels. I now face the most difficult moment I’ve ever faced as Director of the Mars Project.”
He stopped to draw a breath. “These platform buggies will take some of us away from the dome. All radio contact between the platform buggies and the dome will cease. Those on the platform buggies will not be coming back. They will be heroes, making possible not only the lives of those who remain, but moving the Mars Project forward. As you know, it’s critical to keep the Mars Project on schedule, because each extra year it takes to get the planet ready is an extra year that millions will starve on an overpopulated Earth. Because of that, the few who leave today will not only save the 180 who remain behind, but the lives of millions of others. Those who leave on these platform buggies will be remembered for their sacrifice for as long as mankind exists.”
He looked at Mom and smiled sadly, then addressed the rest of the crowd.
&nb
sp; “As you know,” he continued, “we’ve had a few volunteers agree to leave the dome. However, we’ll need to remove at least twenty people for there to be enough oxygen for the others to survive until the ship arrives. For that reason, I’ve drawn names.”
Immediate angry shouting rose like thunder around me.
Director Steven put up his arms in a request for quiet. It took several minutes.
He spoke again. His face appeared weary, unlike the cocky director who such a short time ago had insisted I leave his office.
“Do any of you see another way? We cannot permit everyone to die. Better a few should die than all of us.”
More shouting. Again he raised his arms. This time it took even longer for him to be able to speak.
“Understand two things. First, the security guards have been instructed to enforce this order. Their guns are set on stun. If your name is drawn, and you refuse to go, you’ll be placed on the platform buggy by force. Please don’t make this more difficult on all of us.”
The shouting grew even louder and longer. Now it didn’t make a difference that Director Steven held his hands high and pleaded for silence.
Finally he stepped down from the platform and headed toward one of the platform buggies. In the roar of the shouting, he climbed the buggy’s ladder. When he reached the deck and turned around to face all of us below, the shouting stopped as people tried to figure out why he was there.
“Second,” he said, “my own name is on top of the list. I will not ask anyone to do anything I cannot do myself.”
These words were greeted with shock. Director Steven had volunteered. How could anyone else refuse if his or her name was drawn?
Mom stepped forward.
“No!” I cried. “Don’t go!”
She turned around. Tears ran down her face, but she smiled.
“Tyce, more than anything I want you to choose to believe in God—to realize that life beyond the body is more important than anything else, and that, with God waiting in heaven for you, you don’t have to fear death. I’ve told you before that Jesus, who died for you, loves you intensely. I love you too.”
Mom left me and slowly moved to the ladder that led up to the platform buggy deck.
She began to climb. Away from me. And toward her own
death.
To think of Mom giving up her life to save me and the others of the dome was to understand a love that felt like a sword piercing my heart. To think of her gone made me so empty that I almost couldn’t breathe.
In that moment, I understood a bit of what she’d been trying to tell me all along. There was something inside me that no scientific instrument could measure or explain. Had I really been created by a God who cared—for me?
Without realizing that my arms had moved, I felt the rims of my wheels in the palms of my hands.
Without saying a word, I pushed forward in my wheelchair and forward to the platform buggy. If Mom trusted in God, then I too would trust that my soul had a place to go.
She heard the sounds of my wheels squeaking.
She turned. Shock filled her face.
“No!”
“Yes,” I said. “I don’t care if I’m needed for the robot experiments. If you go, I go.”
We were whispering because it was deathly still. With all two hundred people watching us, not a single voice spoke.
Mom pivoted and looked upward at Director Steven on the platform buggy deck.
“Make him stay behind,” she begged. “Have the guards stun him so he cannot follow. I am trading my life for his.”
More heartbeats of silence.
Director Steven checked the sheet of paper in his hand.
“I cannot let him stay behind,” he said. “When I drew names, I did not set anyone apart. Because of that, his name is on this list too.”
&+$37(5
We slowly traveled across the Martian landscape, ten of us in one platform buggy and ten in the other, following closely behind.
Except for me and Director Steven, two security guards, and the two tekkies who first volunteered to leave the dome, the rest were scientists.
After the entire list had been read, Rawling had tried to volunteer. Rawling had said there were too many important scientists, too many of the best brains in the solar system about to die. Rawling had said it wasn’t right, and he should at least be allowed to take the place of one of those scientists. Director Steven had said that the decisions had been made and the names drawn in all fairness. We were to proceed accordingly.
One of the security guards whose name had been drawn tried to make a run for it, but was stun-blasted by two others and hauled up into the platform buggy.
Just like me. Only I wasn’t hauled up because I had been trying to get away. Without the use of my legs, I couldn’t climb.
So a big security guard had thrown me over his shoulder like a sack and carried me up the ladder. Another security guard had brought up my wheelchair. Not that it made a difference. There wasn’t much room to move around in the platform buggy
observation deck. The doors weren’t locked, but with no space suits and an atmosphere of carbon dioxide waiting outside, there was no place to go.
All of that had taken place a half-hour earlier.
Now we were at least twenty miles clear of the dome. The inside of our platform buggy was very quiet, except for the humming of the electric motor that powered the monstrous wheels beneath us.
Mom sat, hugging her knees, at one end of the dome. A
security guard was at the steering wheel. The other seven scientists were scattered in different groups, whispering among
themselves. Director Steven was driving the other platform buggy, with the nine other people for passengers.
As for me, I was beside Mom, in my wheelchair by the clear glass window at the edge of the platform buggy dome. I let my hands mindlessly juggle the red balls as I stared out at the landscape.
The sun began to drop behind the distant mountains. Our dome was on a valley plain. Towering above the nearby hills, those mountains stood fifty thousand feet high, black and jagged and awesome against the sun.
I’ve been told that sunsets on Earth can be incredible. A mixture of reds, oranges, and pinks all streak across the sky.
Not so on Mars.
Since there’s so little atmosphere, there are few particles of dust or smoke to work as prisms to change the sun’s light into different colors as the sun nears the horizon. Here on Mars, the sun always looks like a blue ball of fire.
What’s incredible, however, are the pinks and reds and roses of the land itself. With its red soil and the salmon color of the sky, the beauty of the desolate landscape is haunting and sad.
Of course, part of the reason I felt that way as I looked through the clear bubble of the platform buggy was a result of seeing where all of us were headed. Director Steven said he didn’t want the others back at the dome to be reminded of what would happen to us. So we’d have to travel out of sight of the dome and then park, waiting for our oxygen to run out.
&+$37(5
The strangest thing happened the next morning.
I woke up. Alive.
Mom had prayed for us the night before, because we both expected that, during the night, the oxygen in the platform buggy would run out. Usually only two or three people went out in it at a time, so it did not carry enough oxygen for the ten of us for a long period. We expected to go to sleep and never wake up.
As I blinked and rubbed my eyes, I saw surprise on the other faces as well.
We didn’t have a chance to wonder about it for long.
“Good morning, everyone.” Director Steven’s voice came
over the communication speaker, talking to us from the other platform buggy. “Please make sure you all have breakfast. I want all of you to remain as healthy as possible.”
I gave Mom a strange look. She gave me a strange look.
Wearing the jumpsuit I’d fallen asleep in, I rolled over on th
e floor and pulled myself into my wheelchair.
“To those of you who are surprised to be breathing this morning,” his cheerful voice continued, “please let me apologize for yesterday’s drama. Let me assure you that neither platform buggy will run short of oxygen until the supply ship arrives from Earth.”
I pushed over to the window, fighting to move the wheels as I’d been doing over the last few weeks.
I stared across the space between the platform buggies. I could see into the other platform buggy where Director Steven was facing the microphone.
“Let me explain,” Director Steven said calmly. “The oxygen level in the dome is far lower than anyone knew. Had I been truthful about it, there would have been panic and civil war as people fought for the remaining oxygen tanks. After I did all the calculations, I discovered there was only enough oxygen for twenty people to survive.”
He cleared his throat. “That left a simple problem. How could I get those twenty out of the dome without the other 180 fighting to go? You have probably guessed by now how I came to a simple solution. I made it appear as if these twenty were the ones who would die. That way, no one would stop them from leaving.
And you, of course, are the twenty. Mercifully, the others left in the dome will not face the fear that comes with knowing the oxygen will run short. They will just become sleepy and die peacefully.”
What? I thought wildly.
“The few of you who volunteered to give up your lives are here because you deserve to live. The rest of you are among the greatest scientific minds in the solar system. I made a decision that you must be spared to continue the Mars Project.”
What?
Director Steven glanced across the short space between the platform buggies. He caught me staring at him in surprise.
“You, too, Tyce,” Director Steven said. Surprisingly, he smiled at me. “We cannot afford to lose you. Not after you proved yesterday that the experimental robots can be controlled by human brains.”
A hundred and eighty people had been condemned to die, just to save the few of us?
“Rest assured, people,” Director Steven finished in his smooth voice, “we do have enough oxygen. The tanks that were taken a few nights ago were hidden on these platform buggies.
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