Colony Mars Ultimate Edition

by Gerald M. Kilby

  The construction robots had also been busy elsewhere. The new Industrial Sector, site of the old Colony Two, had also grown significantly under their ceaseless mechanical hand. It now expanded out from the cave at the base of the crater rim to accommodate the workshops and processing plants of the burgeoning asteroid mining industry that was the main source of Jezero’s wealth. Even the vast, formerly empty, space of the central crater basin had not escaped the hand of humanity. Here a two kilometer diameter pad of concrete had been laid down to facilitate a spaceport, with a myriad of ancillary buildings for administration, immigration and technical support hugging its western edge.

  Over time, natural roads had been etched out across the crater connecting all these different sectors. They had been created more by constant use than by design. But other natural roads existed, ones created long ago by the geological nature of the planet, back when Jezero was a vast lake. To the west and north, two great channels had been carved into the rock by rivers feeding the lake from the surrounding highlands. To the northeast another natural channel would have drained this primordial lake into the Isidis Planitia, a vast circular lowland plain over fifteen hundred kilometers across. Further out, the northern rim of Isidis merged into the immense, and poetically named, Plains of Utopia. North of this were the research stations of the UN Mars Alliance Scientific Survey (MASS). To the west were the platinum mines in the lee of Elysium Mons, a long extinct volcano some fourteen kilometers high. It was out there that the furthest reaches of humanity’s footprint on Mars extended.

  Jay Eriksen was one of many couriers, as they were called, moving goods and supplies around the expanding human infrastructure on Mars. He was in essence a truck driver, and the irony was not lost on him, that since more truck driving jobs were being lost to autonomous vehicles on Earth, there were far better prospects for the profession up here on Mars. Yet he would shortly be giving up this life, and finally realizing his dream of returning to Earth. He counted down the sols to his departure.

  He had been so immersed in his reverie that he hadn’t noticed the temperature alert flashing on his console. It was Banjo, his G2 unit, that brought it to his attention. Banjo was a semi-autonomous droid, designed by the fabled engineer Nills Langthorp, from an original prototype that still existed. That original unit was highly intelligent and virtually sentient. But whatever level of brilliance the original of the G2 species possessed it certainly didn’t pass it on. Banjo, like all other mass produced G2 units was as dumb as a bucket of plankton. Its purpose was to lift, move, stack and sort, which it was pretty good at, and it would do it all day long without complaint. It responded to simple voice commands and basic interrogation, but beyond that, one could hardly call it sentient. Jay considered this was probably a good thing. Firstly, the processing power required to maintain a high level of intelligence in all current droids would probably be enormous. But mainly, it would just be a pain in the ass to communicate with. What’s more, what would happen if they all got pissed off lifting and stacking and banded together to sue for more rights? The colony would grind to a halt.

  “Temperature anomaly in left-hand rear drive transmission,” the unit announced.

  Jay snapped back to the here and now and looked at the readouts. “Damn.” He slowed the rover down.

  “How far to the way station, Banjo?”

  The G2 unit took a second to respond. “One point six kilometers”.

  Jay considered his options. If the drive was heating up it could mean a bust bearing. And considering the outside temperature was ridiculously cold, for the drive to be that hot meant it must be pretty bad. If he kept driving it could shatter and he would be stuck here. However, if a fragment from the damaged bearing punctured the skin of the rover, then he would then be losing atmosphere.

  He could take a risk and push ahead for the way station, or he could play it safe, stop the rover and do the one point six kilometers on foot. But before he could come to a conclusion, the decision was made for him. A horrendous noise emanated from the rear of the rover as the bearing housing disintegrated.

  Smoke filled the cockpit and warnings blared out from the console as a fire started sucking in oxygen at an alarming rate.

  “What the…” he looked over at Banjo. “Put out that fire, Banjo.”

  The G2 unit spun around to size up the situation. But Jay was beginning to get the feeling that this might be more serious than a bust bearing. He considered that getting the hell out of the rover might be a good thing, at least until the fire was out. That wouldn’t take too long as there was only so much oxygen available to feed the flames.

  He grabbed his helmet and clipped it on. The visor closed and his EVA suit booted up, checking various stats in sequence. Once he got the green light he hit the button on the rover dash to open the emergency exit on the driver’s side. The hatch blew, sucking out all the air and extinguishing the fire. Jay clambered out the opening and down the side of the rover. He had just put both feet on the ground when the machine blew up—completely.

  The force sent him sailing through the thin Martian air for quite a distance. He hit the ground, spinning and tumbling around twenty meters from the blast. He was lying on his back looking directly up at the sky. Across his field of vision he could see a hairline crack begin to snake its way across his visor. He instinctively raised a hand to cover it, he could hear a faint hiss of escaping air. He raised himself up and looked back at the blackened husk of the rover. He could just make out the dismembered remains of Banjo scattered about. This is not good, he thought. But he still had a chance, he could try to get to the way station before his oxygen ran out.

  He forced himself to move. Up, get up, get moving. He stood up, and staggered. He was very unsteady, his legs were like jelly. You’re just in shock, it will pass, now go. He moved with a faltering gait at first but as his mind began to focus more he found a rhythm, one foot in front of the other.

  He picked his way up out of the gully he had been thrown into by the blast. It was difficult as every now and again he would remove his hand from the visor to get his balance and would hear the faint hiss again. By the time he scrambled back up onto the road his EVA suit was flashing a low oxygen warning. Something was wrong. Even with the cracked visor it shouldn’t be losing air at this rate. It was at that moment that Jay began to panic, as the full implications of his predicament began to sink in.

  He wasn’t going to make it to the way station. Maybe he’d get halfway there, but that wasn’t good enough—he might as well be a million miles away. There were no half measures on Mars. He couldn’t radio for help as his EVA suit didn’t have the range. He sank down to his knees. There was no two ways about this. He was going to die, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

  2

  Colonist Number 897

  Mia Sorelli, colonist number 897, hefted a full box of tomatoes onto a robotic transport pallet and tapped the screen on her slate to instruct it to move the load to storage. It reversed out from its position at her side and glided off to a predetermined location in the food processing sector. This was her first load of the sol. She scanned her slate again to check where she should go to next. A long list of tasks scrolled up her screen, color coded for resource requirements, and indexed for credit value and knowledge points earned. The list had already been filtered for her particular skill level by central processing, and since she had only been here a few months, her level was pretty low—she still had a lot to learn.

  It had initially taken Mia quite a while to get her head around the basics of how people worked in the colony. Rather than being assigned a specific job, each colonist could choose from a wide range of tasks which were within their skill level. So she could stay here and pack more tomatoes or she could opt for a change of scenery, and head off to one of the other sectors that needed an extra pair of hands. As each task was completed it was tagged, cataloged and fed back into central. The colonist would then gain some skill points and central would recalibrat
e the list of task options presented.

  To a newly arrived colonist such as Mia this seemed a chaotic system, considering a great many of these tasks could be better served by a robot, and they had no shortage of industrial servants. But after a few weeks of this work she began to see the method in the madness. The two most important things up here, apart from having air to breathe, were food and social cohesion. Of those, food production was number one on the list. Without food there would be no colony, it was sacrosanct. It was the only thing that really mattered, with the entire colony one-hundred percent focused on this singular task—growing as much food as possible, never stopping and constantly expanding production. Already seventy percent of the physical infrastructure here was designated for growing, processing or storing food.

  After a while Mia began to understand that if all this planting, tending, picking, and packing were to be performed solely by automation then the social fabric of the colony would start to collapse. So, by having everybody involved, nobody felt like they were not needed. If you didn’t like a particular task or didn’t like the people you were working with, you could hop off somewhere else. You didn’t need to ask, it was your choice, you were empowered. It was also a great way to meet new people, listen to their stories, and make new friends.

  Not only did this work physically sustain the population, it was the glue that bound them together socially. Everybody had to take part, no exceptions, even the original colonists, the pioneers as some called them. It kept everybody grounded. It was like one big high-tech socialist commune, at least on the surface. But dive underneath and it became clear to Mia that some very clever algorithms based on market economics were working feverishly in the background to prioritize tasks and motivate colonists.

  Tasks would go up or down the list in terms of urgency. As they did, they became more valuable to the colonist, with greater credits and skill points being attached to them. This meant that simpler or more pleasant tasks were not worth as much as the more complex or unpleasant tasks. But even if all colonists chose to opt for the more arduous tasks their value would drop as the labour supply rose. In tandem with this, other tasks would rise in value as labour became scarce. It was a form of gamification, and after a while Mia began to see how everybody trusted the system to alert them to what needed to be done and when, so that the colony could grow and prosper—and ultimately nobody would starve to death. Once Mia got a handle on the weird working system, she took to it like a bird on the wing and began to soar. Already she had leveled up several times, which also meant a whole new range of training options were now opening up to her.

  It had been a bold decision to come here, one where she had many sleepless nights wondering if she were really making the right choice in opting to become a colonist. But now all that doubt had faded away and Mia had begun to feel good about life again; she even had a relationship on the brew. But most of all, she had finally put the horror of her past behind her. It was something that, in the darkest moments of her previous life, she never thought possible.

  She checked her slate again. Hmmm… strawberries. Always nice for a change. She tapped on the task list, put her slate back in her pocket, and headed off to a different sector. She still had some time to kill, so rather than going directly to her next task, she made a detour along the main avenue of Jezero City. This was a rather grandiose name for what was essentially a domed area that connected several sectors together. It was a junction, with a wide main walkway that bisected the space. On either side were small, semi-circular gardens with seating and fountains. Around the inner perimeter was another walkway with a cafe, a bar of sorts, and a kind of proto-market, where the fledgling consumer economy of the colony had started to take root. There were small stalls with food and handcrafted artifacts. Central were actively encouraging this retail commerce, and it seemed to be working as there was always something new popping up on the Avenue. Ironically, it was the artifacts from Earth that had the highest value. Odd items, like the humble pen or a pad of paper were wildly expensive—if counted in colony credits.

  The Avenue was busy at this time. The first tasks of the morning were over and colonists were now in transit between sectors. It looked to Mia like they all decided to do exactly as she had planned and head for the Avenue. At the far end a large stage and a big screen were being erected for the upcoming decennial celebrations. It would be ten years since the colony on Mars gained its independence from Earth and there was going to be a party. Mia could already feel the excitement building in the population as the time drew closer.

  “The Avenue seems very alive this sol.”

  Mia turned to identify the source of the comment. Standing beside her was a tall thin man in his thirties. He smiled at her and nodded towards the giant screen that was being hauled up into position. “Won’t be long now before the celebrations start.”

  Mia smiled back at him. “Yeah.”

  She pegged him as one of the original colonists, a Pioneer. He had that thin stretched look that seemed to be a common trait amongst them. Mia wondered if living for so long in one third gravity made them like that. Or was it the weird genetics that they possessed? She often thought about this. The history she had heard seemed to be a confusing mix of myth and fact. Some said they were immortal, a quirk of the genetic experiments that these early colonists had been subjected to. Mia thought that this was probably bullshit. Nonetheless, there was no denying the horrors they must all have endured to make the colony what it was now. A place where hardship was defined by lack of access to some decent lipstick.

  “Are you Mia Sorelli?”

  Mia looked around and considered this question for moment. “Yes. And you?”

  “You can call me Werren.” He extended a thin skeletal hand. Mia shook it, surprised that its fragile appearance belied its strong grip.

  “I’m here to inform you that someone… important would like to have a talk with you. I’m to escort you there now.”

  Mia stepped back, gave the enigmatic colonist a long considered look and raised a hand. “Sorry pal, this is all a bit too cloak and dagger for me. You’ll need to give me a better story than that. Anyway, I hate to break it to you but I’ve got to go back to work shortly.”

  He was unfazed by her reaction. “My apologies if it all seems a bit clandestine, but this is important. If you check your slate you’ll find you’re clear for the rest of the sol.”

  Mia fished her slate out of her pocket and checked her list. Sure enough, she was free until tomorrow. Whoever this someone was, they had to have some clout. She stuffed it back in her pocket. “So tell me who it is then.”

  “I’d rather not say,” he glanced around, “…not here. But suffice to say she is very anxious to meet you.”

  “She?” Mia cocked an eyebrow.

  “Yes.”

  “Well that narrows it down a bit.”

  “To fifty percent of the population, I would guess.”

  “Less than that, Werren. If they can clear my slate for the sol, then I would say it narrows it down to around a half-dozen people.”

  He gave a subtle smile along with a slight tilt of his head. “Very astute.”

  “Not really. I just get the impression you’re trying to tell me enough to get me interested, that’s all.

  He smiled again. “Like I said, very astute.”

  Mia stood for a moment and considered this encounter. What signals was she getting? The pioneer had his hood up and kept glancing around at the crowd of colonists passing up and down the Avenue. Was he afraid of being recognized by someone? Mia couldn’t put her finger on it. He wasn’t hiding, but then again, he wasn’t advertising himself either. With his hood up he could pass for any number of other colonists. And he had even given her a few good clues as to who wanted to meet her, but stopped short of coming straight out with it. However, she didn’t get any sense of danger. But her internal warning antennae were still not fully up to speed in this new environment, so she could be missing something. What
the hell was going on? In the end, there was only one way to find out.

  “Okay, what the heck. Come on, let’s go find out who wants to talk to me so badly.”

  Werren nodded. “Okay, do you know where the grain silos are located?”

  “Yeah, over in Ag Sector Three.”

  “If you follow the corridor past the silos to the very end, I’ll meet you there in say… twenty minutes?”

  Mia shrugged. “Sure.”

  He smiled again, then turned and walked off into the crowd.

  Mia just stood watching him as he disappeared. Well that was weird.

  3

  Old Town

  Mia had done very little exploration of Jezero City since she arrived on the planet. She also thought that it was a bit of a stretch to call it a city, since only around nine hundred people lived here, around two-thirds of the total population of Mars. In some respects it was like a small village on Earth, with the rump of the population clustered around a small commercial center, and agricultural radiating outward. But unlike Earth, Jezero City had to enclose all this in one gigantic maze of domed structures, this being the simplest and most efficient shape for the 3D printers to manufacture. But even with this basic shape there was still a bewildering variety of styles, from the small units built for utilities to the giant structures for food production.