by Maggie Allen
“Okay, then where is my grandfather?” asked Martin.
Dr. Player sighed and shook his head. “I know exactly where the lander is, but I don’t know where your grandfather is.”
A picture materialized in Dr. Player’s hand. He released it, and it floated over to Martin like an oversized butterfly. He held his hands out and caught it. He saw a white boot smeared with pink dust. The name ‘Thorne’ was printed by hand on the tip of the boot. Martin looked at the picture, not comprehending its importance.
“Martin, look at what he his standing on,” said Dr. Player.
Martin looked closer. His grandfather’s boot was standing on glassy hexagonal cobblestones. The picture changed, showing a space-suited figure standing in the center of a road that stretched perhaps two or three miles before vanishing under the sand.
“Find the crash site, find the road, and find out where your grandfather went. Later, we can persuade the world to follow,” said Dr. Player.
Martin felt a spark of hope. “I have more questions.”
“I have more answers. But, not now, I’ve sent your computer the coordinates of the crash site.”
Dr. Player vanished and Martin was alone in space with only the silent, distant stars and the bloated red ball of Mars for company. A soft solar wind ruffled his hair. He accelerated and fell towards the planet. His skin glowed with the heat of reentry, but it did not burn.
The ground rushed up impossibly fast, and a white hot burst of adrenalin rushed through his body. He landed inside the explorer and saw Mars as he originally intended before his strange encounter with Dr. Player. He checked his system status and saw that he was alone and on his virtual Mars. He found the coordinates of the crash site in his computer and walked across pastel Martian sand towards them.
In 2019, the humaniform explorer and five of its siblings left earth orbit and journeyed across the void. One was destroyed on re-entry, and the remaining hatched from thermoplastic eggs and stood on Mars. For six years, NASA scientists used the machines to explore Mars until dwindling political interest and budgetary pressures forced NASA to privatize the operation. Over time, the Martian environment eliminated the machines until only one remained. It was sold and operated by the University of New Haven until even they lost interest in it. Later, it was purchased by a series of wealthy individuals until it found its way to his hands.
Martin marched the machine towards Dr. Player’s coordinates. Its myo-plastic muscles expanded and contracted in response to electrical stimulus much like a real person’s. He could feel the frigid sand with his hands and the bite of gravel and rock on his feet. Martin climbed what he hoped would be his last hill and, as he crested it, saw the upright form of the Ares lander less than a mile away. He checked his simulation time and real time index. He had less than two hours into the machine this session, so he decided to press forward with as much speed as the explorer could manage.
The ship sat on splayed skids with its crushed engine bells half-buried in the sand drifts. Impact ripples ran up the side of the lithium-aluminum fuselage, and the lower level was festooned with epoxy patches. Martin walked around the Ares, inspecting the ship and the surrounding area. The tattered remains of an inflatable greenhouse fluttered in the light breeze. Behind the ship, he found three stone cairns crowned with helmets. He brushed loose sand from the helmets and found the names Onizuka, Resnick, and McNair.
Martin turned away from the dead, found the lander’s hatch and even with the strength of the robot, it opened reluctantly. Martin stepped in, closed the door, and opened the inner hatch to the dark interior. He felt like a grave robber, thrilled at being inside the ship yet worried that he would be caught.
He turned on his hand light and slowly traversed it, half expecting something to leap out at him in the dark like some fantasy reality. He opened a fabric partition at the periphery of the living space and found Smith’s mummy in its bed. He thought for a moment about what to do and decided to leave Smith as he found him. He closed the partition. On a table in the main living space, he found written notes from the crew, but not his grandfather. He saved the letters to his home workstation with the intent of delivering them. He backed out of the reality feeling very sad and very tired.
In 2035, the Internet’s replacement, the Consensus, went operational and people turned inward. The artificial worlds built in the intelligence engines were so much more interesting than the real world. They were also more dangerous.
Martin’s father worked at the frontier of artificial reality law, and he fretted over the impact on human behavior once the hyper-networked computers that formed the Consensus achieved the power to create worlds as authentic as the real one. Worlds without consequences terrified his father.
Martin watched the glorious scarlet macaw watching him and thought that he was perhaps inside his father’s worst nightmare, a reality in which there was no distinction between the real and the artificial. His icons indicated he was the only one here.
Martin reached to pet the Macaw and the bird bit his finger.
“Ouch,” said Martin. “Stupid bird.”
“Stupid Human,” said the bird.
“Making friends?” Dr. Player asked.
Martin sucked his knuckle. “Not really.” He turned away from the bird. “The lander was exactly where you said it would be. Tell me what happened.”
“The ship was too badly damaged to lift, and we couldn’t get anyone there before the consumables ran out. The astronauts had enough supplies to live for a year, so we let them do their job in secrecy. We concocted a story that they died in the crash and kept a small but trustworthy ground team to assist in the mission. It was a bold plan, and it worked. We learned more about Mars in those few months than had been discovered in decades of robot probes. Then your grandfather discovered the road.”
“Near the end, the other astronauts gave your grandfather all the supplies and power they had left and sent him on a walk to find the origins of the road,” said Dr. Player. People are watching. They can tap into the NASA feed and follow you. Give them something to see so they will want to go. Find the road, find out where it goes, and you’ll find your grandfather.”
Martin felt lighter and looked at his feet. He was floating above the sand. “Hey, what are you doing?”
“Find the road, Martin,” said Dr. Player.
Martin exploded into the sky, tumbling through clouds and the rarified ozone into space. He accelerated a good percentage of the speed of light in a gentle curve around the sun and never slowed down. He hit the atmosphere of Mars, and frictional heat burned him white hot. The ruddy surface bloomed beneath his feet. He closed his eyes just before impact and opened them to see the crash site. His heart raced, and it took him a moment to calm down.
“Woah,” he said out loud to himself. “That’s the second time.”
Martin accessed the explorer’s suite of instruments and selected the ground-penetrating radar as his queuing sensor. From the base of the Ares lander, he walked an expanding spiral pattern that extended nearly a mile from the ship before he found an area of increased density.
He stopped and took some readings, then restarted the expanding spiral pattern. He crossed over three areas of increased density that were of uniform width. He knelt in the sand and began to dig. About two feet down, he found the cobblestone pattern that he saw in the photograph. With three points established, he had a line to follow. With sensors set to keep him centered, he followed the submerged road as it wound a southwesterly course.
After three days of marching, the sensors indicated that the sand was getting shallower. The hexagonal cobblestones broached the surface of the sand like the back of an immense stone whale rising from the sand sea. Martin got down on his hands and knees and peered at them. They were flat surfaced, fit tightly together, and were made from a glass-like material. He imagined a machine swallowing huge amounts of sand into its maw and laying the cobblestones behind.
Martin saw movement and increa
sed the magnification on the explorer’s eyes. He peered closely at the miniscule gaps between the cobblestones. Crystal fern leaves unfolded from the gaps and reached for his face. Fractal leaf tips budded into blood red beads that blossomed into pale crystal flowers. The crystal growths climbed the column of warm air venting from waste heat ports from the explorer’s chassis. He leaned back, and they collapsed into glittering dust.
Martin stood and walked along the exposed portion of the road until it vanished under the dust and sand. He checked the system icons. More than twelve thousand people walked with him.
“A fascinating discovery, but it isn’t quite good enough to convince people to spend billions to go to Mars. We need more.”
Dr. Player leaned back in his teak beach chair and sipped a drink. A tiny perfect storm cloud hung over the glass. Lightning crashed into the drink. A foundering clipper ship crested a wave, its tattered sails fluttered violently in the wind. The ship slid down the face of the wave into the trough.
“What do you think they are?” asked Martin.
“I don’t know, and that is the problem with robots. Their sensors are too limited. They can’t improvise or react to new developments. Perhaps it is a simple geophysical process, maybe even a silicon based life form, but really, so what.”
“It’s good enough,” insisted Martin.
“Ha,” laughed Dr. Player. “It is not half as interesting as the fantasy creatures in your play worlds and certainly not interesting enough to spend billions of dollars to send people to Mars.”
Martin felt light again and saw that he was floating an inch or two above the sand. “Oh no,” he said and rocketed off to Mars.
While Martin slept and went to school, he set the machine to follow the road. When he entered it, he discovered it had not made any significant progress. For one panicked moment, he thought it had broken down. He accessed the machine’s logs to find an explanation and discovered that the explorer had stopped as it was programmed to do when it encountered predetermined criteria. Martin looked down and saw the square block of stone. Squares were rare enough in nature to be considered anomalous.
An upright form, that could have been a statue if one was exceedingly generous with the term, stood on the square block. The upright shape was so heavily weathered that all traces of an ancient Martian artisan were scoured away by windblown sand, indeed it could have been carved by the wind. Martin walked around the object, considering all aspects, trying to see if a pattern could be found.
The sun was setting and, in the dying light and growing shadow, he saw slim elegant legs with perhaps one knee too many. Four arms, two folded tightly across the wasp-waisted abdomen and the other two flat against the creature’s flanks, ended in four opposing claws. A raptor-beaked head looked down on him.
“That was a statue a long time ago,” said Martin.
“Maybe. Doubtful,” said Dr. Player.
“It was.”
“It is not compelling.”
“How can it not be?”
“None of it is, Martin. Cobblestones that might be a freak lava flow, tiny growing crystals, and a weatherworn rock that suggests an alien if you squint your eyes the right way are not good enough reasons to spend billions of dollars.” Dr. Player stood from his teak chair shading under a tropical palm tree. “Maybe all we will find is your grandfather and while that would make it all worthwhile to you personally, I am hoping your grandfather discovered something wonderful enough to make us visit. Roads lead somewhere, Martin.” Dr. Player melted into the sand.
The trees dissolved and great sheets of sky swirled and turned rose colored. The ocean boiled and churned and evaporated with frightening realism. The hot steam cleared and the air grew cold as the planet died. The sun shrank. Martin stood on an empty Mars.
The wind carried silence deafened.
The road ended abruptly at the entrance to a river-carved canyon. The satellite overlay picture indicated that he was at the origin of a vast fan-like flow of rock and sand spread across the plain in some ancient flood. Martin set the explorer to walk an expanding spiral search pattern, but the explorer found nothing except for broken fragments of the road. The majority of its remains were probably buried deeper than his sensor could penetrate. Martin saw a jumble of stones balanced on top of each other. The initials “M” and “T” and an arrow were carved into the soft stone.
Martin touched the marks, thrilled at the first tangible evidence of his grandfather’s trek. He entered the canyon. Golds and mauves and thin bands of silver and ruby striated the canyon walls, painting an abstract picture of Martian geologic history on a rock canvas. Smooth, sand-filled channels and lusciously shaped organic formations in the form of sculpted piers and delicate stone arches rose from the ground.
After a few miles, he stopped at the base of a dry cascade. He contemplated turning back, but then saw a discarded water bottle wedged into a crevice between two smooth boulders and another carved arrow pointing up. With renewed resolve he climbed the treacherous dry falls.
He reverted back to the original explorer image and watched his piton-like toes and fingertips grasp and drive into cracks and holds up the cascade. At the top, he found discarded consumable packages wedged into rock crevices.
Martin checked his icon time index and saw that he had been on Mars for nearly twelve hours. The canyon took a gentle turn to the north and, as fatigued as he was, he decided to see what was just around the bend before he backed out to sleep. As he walked, he held out his hand and dragged it along the wall, letting the touch sensors feel the whorls and bumps of the tiny fossil shells.
As he turned the corner, the canyon flared abruptly into a wide hard packed basin nearly two miles across. The explorer’s eyes scanned automatically and, even from the distance, Martin could tell that the entire cliff face had been carved into doorways, ramps and arches. An entire Martian city hid under the wind smoothed rock. Reluctantly, he backed out of the reality to sleep.
One point eight million were disappointed he didn’t go on.
Martin expected to be short-stopped by Dr. Player as he entered the reality, but instead he arrived directly on Mars. He explored the Martian cliff city. The rooms were square with domed ceilings connected by arched hallways. Some machines were inscrutable and weirdly complex, suggesting scientific or fabricating devices, but artifacts in the living spaces looked suspiciously like common things found in the average human household. How many ways could one make a fork or a knife?
The center of the complex was a broad multileveled common space. Daylight streamed in through collapsed crystal domes. Slanting rays illuminated connecting bridges, wide balconies, and multitiered avenues that ran around the perimeter of the huge space. He found staircases with uncomfortably tall risers and he climbed to the top and worked his way back to the rooms on the face of the cliff.
He climbed to the highest level overlooking the canyon and found his grandfather in a room overlooking the dry sea bed. In his last moments, he had sat down to enjoy the view. The dark polarized visor was down so he couldn’t see his face and he was thankful. He didn’t really know what to feel. His grandfather, his namesake, had died before he was even born so he didn’t feel a strong connection, but he knew someone who would.
Martin backed out of the reality and found his father in his study.
“Dad.”
“Yea, Martin. What’s up?”
“Here.” He handed over the AR set.
“You found him, didn’t you?” said his father.
“Yes,” whispered Martin. His reply barely penetrated the oppressive quiet. Martin nodded.
His father took the AR set and put it on, carefully pulling it in place.
After a while, his father dragged the set from his head. He wiped tears from his eyes.
“You okay, Dad?”
He swallowed and nodded. “Thanks, Martin.”
They were the only words that were needed.
“You found him, Martin,” said Dr. Player.<
br />
“I did,” he said, feeling a smile grow on his face.
“I’m glad for you,” said Dr. Player. “The moment you spied the city, individuals, organizations, and governments hitchhiking on the reality feed went into a frenzy. Two hundred and forty-five million people shared the experience. You won’t have access to the humaniform explorer for very long. NASA is exercising the eminent domain clause. They want it back, and they are assembling a scientific team to explore the ruins for as long as the machine holds out.”
“That’s good news isn’t it?” asked Martin.
“It is a race back to space.”
Martin checked his icons and, like every time before he stood on this exquisite beach, they indicated he was alone. “Dr. Player,” said Martin.
“Yes, Martin.”
“Who are you?”
“What do you mean?”
“My father collected everything concerning the Ares mission. I found a newspaper clipping of Dr. Damian Player’s obituary in my father’s search files. The real Dr. Player died one year after the Ares mission was lost.”
“Newspapers,” Dr. Player scoffed. “I couldn’t get to them.” He stood and looked out to the sea.
“I like it here, on the beach,” he continued. “It’s quiet and peaceful, and I can think clearly. It’s a beautiful beach, but it’s time to step off and see what is on the other side of the ocean. Don’t you think?”
“I guess.”
Dr. Player turned his face skyward. The sky darkened and monstrous thunderheads obscured the blue sky. Lightning crashed and colossal rollers built on the horizon. “This beach is too small for you and me.” A jagged bolt of lightning struck the water off shore and the sky roared.
“This beach,” Martin yelled over the howl of the wind. “It’s too perfect. No one can make an artificial reality this good, and I am always alone. You don’t register because you are not a person. What are you?”
