“I spent the night in a cell downtown and sobered up. The cops all knew who I was, of course, so they went easy on me. Next morning I got out and made my way home. When I got there someone had left a copy of the local rag nailed to my front door. The headline read, Kid Killer Cop Arrested for Drug Store Hold Up.” Mia sat back in her chair.
“It wasn’t true, of course, at least not the hold up bit. But it was the last straw. Something in me cracked, I couldn’t take any more. So I decided to end it all with a drug overdose. The only problem was it would take me a few days to score enough to do the job.”
Mia picked up the letter and showed it to Jann. “Then two days later, before I had time to off myself, this came sliding in under my door.”
Jann took the note and started reading it. She looked up at Mia when she finished.
“Yeah. And this was inside it.” Mia held up the pendant.
“It was from the woman whose kid I’d killed. She had watched me being dragged through the courts and vilified in the news. She had witnessed my steady descent into an alcoholic drug addict. She had every reason to hate my guts and want me dead. But instead she sends me this note and a pendant that belonged to her little girl. You see, she forgave me. She didn’t want me to be another victim in that awful tragedy. She had seen the headline in the paper a few days earlier and she reached out to help me. Can you imagine what it must take for someone to do that, Jann?”
Jann shook her head gently.
“I had taken away her little girl and yet she had it within her to try and help me. I could totally understand if she despised me. In my mind she had a right. Not like the others who simply hate for ratings, or worse, for entertainment. No, she had the right, and she chose not to.” Mia stopped and brushed a tear from her eye. Then she held up the pendant again.
“She sent me this as a gesture, something to remind me of her girl, a token to let me know that she held no malice for me.” Mia went quiet for a while, just holding the pendant in her hand.
“Anyway, it’s what saved me,” she said after rubbing away a last tear. “I decided from that moment on I would clean up my act, get sober, put my life back together. I’m not saying it was easy, no. It was hard, but when times got tough I would take this out and hold it, and it would give me the strength to carry on.”
Mia smiled at Jann. “So you see, there was no way I was going to let some two bit loser like Christian get away with stealing it. It just wasn’t going to happen. I would have hunted him down until the end of time. That’s why I took you up on the job offer. It was a way for me to go after him and get it back. Even if that meant I would have to blow up the MASS space station and prevent the genocide of the colony in the process, then so be it.”
The two women sat in silence for a while before Jann reached over and picked up the pendant again. She studied it for a moment, this time in a new light, before she finally spoke. “Tell me, have you ever worn it?”
Mia shook her head. “No… I couldn’t.”
“Why not.”
“I never felt worthy, I suppose.”
Jann handed it back. “I see no reason that a symbol of all that is good about humanity should not be on display.”
Mia looked at the pendant for a few moments, contemplating it. Then she undid the clasp on the chain and hung it around her neck. She sighed as she pressed her fingers to the star now hanging around her neck. “Okay, Jann. I’m ready now.”
THE END
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Extract from the First Book of Martian Poetry, by Xenon Hybrid, President of Mars. As recited at the decennial celebrations.
The Plains of Utopia
Dust devils dance
Twisting and entwining
Like an alien ballet
Dusty vortices track the surface
As I reach out to touch
And move as they do
To be as one
With the spirits of Mars
Far out, on the Plains of Utopia
Reproduced by kind permission of the Government of Mars and The Greater Martian Territories.
Colony Five Mars: Surface Tension
1
Dust Storm
Things started to break down.
Small things at first, mostly inconsequential glitches—minor problems that always occur in highly technical environments, such as the one that had developed over the preceding decades on Mars. But as the dust storm grew in both intensity and duration, the number of these minor occurrences started to rise exponentially.
Yet dust storms were a fact of life on Mars. So, the citizens did what they always did: batten down the hatches and ride it out. It helped that the technology, which had been developed to provide life support in this harsh, deadly environment, had also evolved to cope with all that the weather on the planet could throw at it.
Well, almost all.
Every system was affected. Air intakes clogged, causing vital machinery to overheat and eventually fail. Fine dust clung to every surface, rendering solar panels effectively useless. The dust penetrated deep into every gap and crack, abrading seals and bearings to the point of destruction. The fine grains even entered into the habitats, and no amount of filtration and decontamination could keep it out. And with it came the fear of exposure to increased levels of perchlorate, which was highly toxic to humans. Soon, the infirmaries noticed an uptick in admissions.
Increased ionization in the outside atmosphere played havoc with communications systems, rendering data transmission problematic. The fledgling Martian GPS system struggled to cope with drop-outs and maintaining accuracy. Voice communications fared better, but only because of the human brain’s ability to make sense of even the most garbled message. That, and the fall back to using analog transmission when digital systems finally failed.
Yet by sol seventy-five, as the dust storm grew to encompass the entire planet, radiation levels on the surface had reached a new high watermark. They had been steadily increasing since the beginning of the storm. However, radiation posed no real threat to human health; shielding technology was such that they were well protected from its ill effects. But delicate electronics did not fare so well, particularly those more exposed to the surface environment. The most susceptible components to malfunction and failure were microprocessors, those ubiquitous little black squares that populate almost every technological unit in existence. No control system had been designed that did not have circuitry running code through a microprocessor of some kind. They were the small army of silicon workers that kept civilization functioning.
Yet those designed for space applications in general, and Martian operation in particular, were hardened against high radiation levels. They had redundancy built in, with a doubling and sometimes tripling of circuitry, allowing operations to run in parallel and be cross-checked for errors. But all this additional processing required more power, more power created more heat, more heat required more cooling, and with the majority of cooling systems on Mars utilizing the ambient temperature of the atmosphere—a sufficiently chilly 60 degrees Celsius—this method was severely compromised by the incessant dust bunging up the works. As the increased radiation bombarded these silicon substrates, the error rate increased, consuming more power and increasing the heat generation until the unit ultimately failed. The strange thing was, no one saw it coming.
By sol one hundred and twenty-two, they had finally run out of spare parts for pretty much everything. All surplus energy was now diverted into the manufacture of components just to keep up with the failure rate. But where most mechanical components and some electrical components could be manufactured on Mars in the primary industrial city of Syrtis, no such facility existed for the fabrication of microprocessors. The citizens of Mars relied solely on importing them from Earth.
But when the dust storm entered its two hundred and fourteenth sol, the rate of systems failure finally outpaced the rate at which they could be repaired. From that point on, entropy ga
ined the upper hand, and they were now fighting a losing battle.
And so, by sol two hundred and forty of the planet-wide dust storm, it was clear to the government on Mars that the situation was becoming critical, and that emergency powers were needed to take control of the resources. It was a move they had been reluctant to invoke for fear of spooking the already nervous citizens. But the rate of accident and death due to systems failure had already reached unprecedented levels, and people were understandably rattled. Something radical needed to be done. Yet the decision wasn’t made until a CO2 scrubber failed in an isolated waystation just north of Elysium, killing fourteen people in their sleep.
All nonessential operations were to cease with immediate effect. All mining and processing that did not contribute directly to the manufacture of spare parts was shut down. All scientific research ceased, and all research stations closed. All citizens were ordered to evacuate outlying outposts and waystations and return immediately to one of the two main population centers in either Jezero or Syrtis. All traffic on the surface was forbidden unless absolutely essential, and all visitors and tourists were to leave immediately.
And so began a great exodus of people off the planet, back to Earth or to one of the many hotels orbiting the planet, where they could wait out the dust storm in relative comfort.
Soon, most activity on Mars began to literally grind to a halt. Jezero, the seat of government but primarily a tourist destination, was hollowed out. Those that worked to service this industry were left idle. Bars and cafes were shuttered, parks and nonessential sectors were shut down, and large swaths of the population were relocated to conserve energy and resources. Similar reorganization of the civil and industrial society was also happening in Syrtis.
Of course, the pervading assumption was that the dust storm had to end eventually, and that everything would then get back to normal. Yet the devil makes work for idle minds, and soon the main population centers were awash with rumor and counter-rumor, and a sense of foreboding started to take root. Some said that the situation was far worse than officials were claiming, and that they were all doomed—it was only a matter of time. Others suggested that human activity on Mars, coupled with a number of terraforming experiments, had caused a major increase in the surface temperature—the source of energy that was driving the dust storm—and by consequence it could potentially last for years, maybe even decades.
There were even some in Jezero who suggested that there was no real shortage of spare parts. That it was in fact Syrtis that was stockpiling and preventing Jezero from accessing vital supplies, just so they could undermine the seat of government. Meanwhile, some in Syrtis postulated that Jezero only invoked martial law so they could take control of the fledgling administration running their city. Some even suggested that the government had already evacuated with the tourists, relocating up to the orbitals and effectively leaving the citizens of Mars to fend for themselves.
And so it was that, by sol two hundred and seventy, society on Mars finally started to break down.
2
Breakdown
In the center of the situation room of the Martian Law and Order Department (MLOD), Major Mia Sorelli stood and studied a large, imposing screen that took up most of one wall. Its function was to give a graphical synopsis of the current incidents and their status all across Jezero City. It was a sea of blinking red and orange, like some festive display of all that was wrong in the metropolis. She shook her head and sighed.
Even with the current population in Jezero down to just ninety-five thousand after the tourists had abandoned the place, Mia and her team were still stretched to the very limits of their abilities. Never before had she witnessed such an escalation of social mayhem, not even back in New York during the blackout, and that was saying something. But these were not crimes of profit or opportunity, or some gangland feud. No, these were the crimes of the desperate, the traumatized, and the angry.
Mia despaired for the human race. Here they all were, being slowly etched out of existence one grain of sand at a time, heading for collapse, and all the people wanted to do was protest, occupy, riot, and cause as much mayhem as possible—as if this would somehow save them. It was madness, and it wasn't much better over in Syrtis. Now was the time for society to pull together and work for the greater good, for their very survival. Instead, fear and paranoia had taken over, as if some unseen malaise had infected the population. It was every man, woman, and child for themselves. At least, that was how Mia Sorelli saw it.
"Things seem to be calming down a bit today."
Mia turned her head to see Lieutenant Bret Stanton standing beside her, also studying the screen. "I admire your optimism, Bret. Ever consider you might just be delusional?"
"No, seriously. Today is the first time in two weeks that we've had a decrease in new incidents. And guess what else I heard?"
Mia looked back at the screen. "Don't tell me, we’re all going to die?"
Bret gave an exasperated sigh. "The density of dust particles has dropped again this sol. That's two sols in a row. That's good news. It could mean the dust storm is finally running out of energy."
"They say that all the time, Bret. But only when it goes down, which happens less than going up. Don't get your hopes up—it still means we're all going to die."
"Why are you so pessimistic all the time, Mia? Don't you want this to end?"
"I'm not pessimistic, I'm just not delusional like you."
"Suit yourself. But I for one have some faith in our ability to get through this." Bret's eyes locked onto the screen again, and he went rigid. "Oh crap."
"What now?" Mia scanned the display. A bright red marker flashed over a food production facility in the northwestern sector of Jezero City, about a kilometer away.
"It's a Code 43." Bret pointed at a sidebar on the screen that had begun to display data on the incident. It was a technical failure, the worst kind: loss of atmosphere. "We'd better send some people over there."
"We don't have any spare resources," said Mia. "Just leave it. It's a systems failure—let the techs deal with it for now. We do nothing unless they ask." Mia could see that Bret was just itching to help, but he stayed silent. He might have been a little naive, but not so much that he didn't know the score. There was only so much the MLOD could do with the limited resources they had available.
They both stood in silence for a while and watched the display. The incident began to escalate. First, a call flashed up for medical assistance. That meant people were injured, or worse, dead. Then it came, the call neither of them wanted to see: crowd control.
"Shit," said Mia. "It must be bad."
"I'll go," said Bret.
Mia sighed and looked around at the three other people in the room—all techs, all needed to manage and coordinate the ongoing operations of the MLOD. Mia shouted out to them, "I need two armed guards. Find them for me, take them from anywhere you can, I don't care. Send them to the Code 43, and we'll meet them on the way." She turned to Bret. "Come on, we'll do it together. I have a feeling this one could get ugly."
They hurried out of the operations room and headed for the incident at Agri-dome B428.
They were about halfway there when a small, autonomous ground car rolled up beside them with two guards that had got the call from central to divert to the incident. Mia and Bret hopped in, and the car sped off.
"So, what are we dealing with here, Major?" one of the guards asked Mia as he checked his plasma pistol.
"We've got a blowout in a small agri-dome in sector B428. It's undergoing critical decompression. The good news, if you could call it that, is the safety systems kicked in and sealed the doors, so the rupture is contained. The bad news is there are people still inside, slowly running out of breathable air."
The guard shook his head. "How long have they got?"
"Techs are saying ten to fifteen minutes," said Bret.
"Poor bastards. What a way to go."
They brought the car to a halt a
few meters from the back of a large crowd of around fifty people that had gathered at the main entrance to the agri-dome. The group parted as a tech with a bloodied forehead pushed his way through and out to where Mia and her crew had just disembarked from the ground car. "You gotta stop them... They're trying to open the door... You gotta stop them... If they cut open that door, then we're all dead."
"What happened?" said Mia.
"They jumped us... Couldn't stop them... Took our plasma cutter. You gotta stop it."
Already, the two guards were beating a path through the assembled onlookers. Mia, Bret, and the injured tech followed in their wake.
"Stand aside. Out of the way." They pushed back the crowd, weapons ready just in case anybody had a mind to argue with them. As they came closer to the main door of the small agri-dome, Mia could see the reflected light of the plasma cutter strobing off the wall and ceiling, illuminating the drama that was unfolding. One man worked the cutter as five others stood guard around him, facing the crowd, all holding crude weapons. They were trying to prevent anyone from stopping them getting the door to the decompressing agri-dome open.
"They're going to kill us all. This is crazy." Shouts emanated from the crowd as Mia and her team converged on the area in front of the door.
"Okay, that's enough. I want you to put down the weapons and step away from the door."
"No goddamn way, there's people still inside... My brother is in there... We're not leaving them to die." He stood his ground, gripping a stout metal bar tighter in his hands.
"I'm not asking again." Mia unholstered her plasma pistol and dialed it up a notch from stun. He was a big guy, so she wanted to make sure she could take him down with just one shot. She aimed it at him. "Do it now."
Colony Mars Ultimate Edition Page 68
