Before Mars

by Emma Newman

  “Could you show me which cam drone recorded the data for each area, please?”

  “I can.” He waves his arm and a larger version of the topographical map appears between us, like a war map in some historical mersive. Suspended above it are little static models of each cam drone, and in a pale green color, transparent cones depicting the range of their cams shine down onto the map. They overlap, as expected, and all appear to have been functional. I look at the areas where the identical rocks are located and they seem to be covered by two different cam drones.

  “Can you check for errors in the rendering, please?”

  “There are no errors.”

  I frown at him and he looks back with a patient expression. It. It looks back at me. Either it doesn’t know or it is deliberately hiding something from me. JeeMuh, Travis’s message has gotten to me.

  “Is it possible to review data just from one cam at a time?”

  “It is. However, the rendering will be impoverished and less immersive, as portions of the skyline would be missing. Would you like to manipulate the data differently? My understanding was that you desired a fully accurate representation of the area mapped.”

  “I did.”

  “Has this not met your expectations?”

  I push down the instinctive need to placate its hurt feelings. It doesn’t have any; it’s just a question, without the loading that it would normally have if spoken by a person. I want to ask it why there are two copies of that rock formation, but fearing that it has deliberately tampered with the data to hide something from me, I keep quiet. “It’s not that. I’m just looking into different ways to play with the data, that’s all. It’s . . . an art thing.”

  “If you wish to view this data again, simply request ‘cam drone map.’ To view the data per cam, simply tap the relevant cam in this representation. Can I help you with anything else, Dr. Kubrin?”

  “Would I be able to render more than one cam drone’s data individually? Like . . . separating them out? I’m thinking about doing something like a triptych and that might be useful.”

  If it has worked out that I’m lying, Principia gives no indication. “Yes. Simply tap more than one cam drone in the representation and ask for a separated render.”

  “That’s great. Thanks. You can go now.” I feel like I’m ordering a servant about and it makes me uncomfortable. Principia nods and walks away, fading out as he—it!—did before. I would really like to ask that coder what they were aiming for there.

  I look at the cam drones, the little cones of coverage shining down from each one, and tap four, including the two that I think are copies, and say, “Separated render, please.”

  The landscape around me vanishes and I regret not taking a picture of the replicated rocks. Then the landscape appears around me again, but there are clearly visible edges, like I’m standing inside an old-fashioned projection. Using the map, I work out which area matches each cam drone’s coverage and walk between them, resisting the temptation to simply “fly” from one to the other. It rapidly becomes clear that the render has used the data from one of the cams twice. Looking at the areas of overlap, I work out which one is false. It’s cleverly done, with the overlaps merged beautifully in the full render. But the little details, the ones that could be overlooked so easily, reveal the duplication.

  If I’d been playing a game, I’d understand the replication as a cost-cutting measure, but the only explanation here is that Principia is trying to hide something by replacing the real data from that area with the data from another, causing the duplication of details that might easily have been missed by someone paying less attention.

  Thinking it is trying to hide something related to the footprint—which has been missed by the drones thanks to its being obscured between two rocks—I look up the missing area’s location on the map. It’s the other side of the crater though, and I discard my theory that Principia is trying to cover up other footprints.

  It said there were no errors. If Travis hadn’t left me that message, I would be on my way to the crew now, asking them to look into a potential problem with the AI. Now I don’t trust any of them. Shit. I need to physically go out there and see what Principia is trying to hide.

  11

  BACK IN THE undersuit onesie, I’m just about to leave when I realize I haven’t sent that message to Mia. I edit out the mistakes, and once it’s ready, I start recording a message for Charlie to go with it.

  “Hi. I’ve recorded a story for Mia. It’s not very good, but I thought she might like it at bedtime. Does she have any favorite stories at the moment? If you send one to me, I could maybe read it out to her or something.

  “I went outside today for the first time. It was . . .” I stop, catching the lie before I speak it. I was about to claim it was magical, that it gave me the moment I’d been waiting for. I try to recapture that sense of newness that I felt briefly while in the rover, but it’s marred by everything that’s happened since. I don’t want to lie to Charlie, not about this anyway, but I can’t tell him about Travis.

  Principia already knows about the footprint though. And Charlie is a GaborCorp employee and he signed an NDA about all of our communications before I left. The lawyer who’d enjoyed the taste of the sauce suggested it as a way to keep things simple. Everyone knows that comms are routinely monitored for any breaches of corporate policy, but when it comes to Mars, there are so many topics that could be sensitive, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to say anything about my time here. “It’s a fairly standard contract, and you both being at the same pay grade helps,” he’d said. “Once you’ve both signed this, you’ll be able to talk about anything that hasn’t been explicitly labeled as ‘need to know.’ It might help.”

  “It was weird,” I say, resuming the message. “It felt like I was in a mersive for most of it; then we went to a part I was less familiar with and we found a footprint there. Not aliens, before you ask, but someone from the base. It’s just that we were told that no one has been that way before. I don’t know. It makes me feel uneasy. I’m not sure that everyone here is being totally open about what they do here. Normally it wouldn’t matter, but living here is all about trust. It’s a closed environment and if anyone messes up, we could all be screwed, you know?”

  I sigh, wondering if I should just delete it all. But it’s actually helping. I want to know what he thinks of it all too. And maybe there’s a bit of me that wants this on record.

  “I can’t help but think I didn’t need to come here. Things just . . . don’t feel right. It’s not that I feel unsafe . . . It’s like, I don’t know, a creepy feeling. And it doesn’t help that Mum wants me to send a message to Dad and now I feel like an arsehole because I don’t want to send one. What do you think? Am I being unreasonable? Oh, I’m moaning too much. I’m sorry; I think I must just be tired. A bit stressed. I’m fine, really. I hope everything is okay at home. Say hi to your mum for me. And message me back when you can, okay? Bye.”

  I should tell him I love him. I send it before I give in to the temptation to delete it. I’m not telling him anything dangerous and I want to know what he thinks about the footprint. Am I overreacting? Is Petranek right and there’s some harmless reason behind it? Someone taking a stroll and wanting to keep it private? I shake my head. Why? It must have something to do with what Travis wants me to find. Damn it! My curiosity is going to be the end of me.

  As I dither about whether to go back to the footprint or to the rocky area that wasn’t included in the render, I find myself worrying about Mum. Why does she want me to send a message to Dad? Has Travis done something already? No matter how hard I try, I can’t stop worrying about it. No doubt she’ll be waiting for a message. I can’t stand the thought of her at home, talking to the cats, wondering why she has such difficult daughters. I want to shake her and say, “Because of Dad! That’s why!” but she wouldn’t listen anyway. She’d just blame me for being
judgmental and Geena for being a coward.

  I sit back down on the bed and start recording a new message. “Hi, Mum. I haven’t recorded a message for Dad. I don’t understand why you want me to, to be honest. Has something happened? I’ve been thinking about this and I need you to tell me why you believed him and not the diagnosis. I don’t think I can say anything to him until I know. I hope you are okay with me asking this. I should have asked you in person, bloody years ago. I love you. And I miss you. And I just want to understand, okay? Bye.”

  I send it, feeling better. I can’t just crank open that box I’ve nailed shut without knowing more. I can’t talk to him without understanding why she forgave him. Now the message is sent, I can focus better on the trip outside.

  Seeing as Principia has already approved the route to the footprint once before, it makes sense to set out in that direction. I head to the dust lock and hear its door close before I round the last corner. I stop. Someone else is going outside. I don’t want to have to explain what I’m up to, so I wait.

  Then I call up a dialog box and ask Principia to show me where everyone is in the base. The transparent map floats over my vision, revealing Elvan in the medical bay, Arnolfi in her office and Petranek in the labs. It’s Banks who is going outside.

  I hurry back to my room. What if he’s seen the route that Petranek and I took and is going back to cover something else up? I can’t risk going out there at the same time and looking at the very thing he probably wants to hide. He mustn’t know I’m onto him.

  The conversation we had earlier about the show comes back to me and I can’t help but think of the way he sneered at my room and how he talked over me. The comment he made about the way I look. Even if I hadn’t been a fan of his, it still would have hurt.

  Given his animosity, he would have been an obvious suspect for tampering with my stuff and leaving that note, but it isn’t possible. Then it hits me. I’ve been assuming all along that Banks couldn’t have tampered with my belongings because he and Petranek were outside when I disembarked. Somehow I had assumed that they had just gotten back when Arnolfi called me after Elvan had finished his tests, inviting me to meet Petranek and Banks for the first time.

  With a few taps in my visual field I find a record of who has left the base and when since my arrival. I don’t trust it with regard to the footprint, but I have no reason to believe that everything here has been falsified. I match up the times and realize Banks and Petranek actually got back to the base while I was still with Elvan. It was only when they went into the communal area that Arnolfi invited me.

  Banks would have had more than half an hour to come into my room, go through my stuff, plant the note and then leave again. It’s obvious he doesn’t like me being here and even though he’s tried to hide it, the hostility he bears toward me is undeniable.

  Shaking, I sit on the bed, trying to recast my favorite media star as the sort of person who would try to drive a newly arrived colleague mad. I simply can’t understand why he hates me so much. Not even Petranek could understand it, and ze said he’d been acting strangely when we discovered the footprint.

  Why is he leaving the base now? To set a trap? To plant something else that isn’t supposed to be there so I start sounding like a lunatic if I tell anyone else?

  I call up my v-keyboard and ask Principia if anyone else is scheduled to go outside today.

  It replies with “Dr. Banks is scheduled to leave the base in twenty minutes. Would you like to continue this conversation via voice interface?”

  I stare at the “yes/no” options floating in front of me. “Yes,” I say.

  “Thank you, Dr. Kubrin. Would you like me to adjust your communication preferences?”

  “As long as you ping me with text first . . . all right. Yes.”

  “Thank you. I have updated your preferences. Would you like to accompany Dr. Banks on his expedition?”

  Even if I didn’t suspect he is the one trying to screw me up, I’m the last person on Mars whom Banks would want as company. “Where is he going?”

  “Dr. Banks is checking on a sensor bank and then the comms array.”

  “Can you show me those locations on a map, please?”

  Neither of those are close to the footprint. I could wait a little longer and then head out once he’s clear of the base. But there’s something going on with Banks and I don’t want to miss whatever he is planning to do out there. I can’t follow him physically—it’s not like there are many places for me to hide—but I can still spy on him.

  “No, he’s not heading in the direction I’m interested in. Thinking about it, I could just use a cam drone. Would I be able to control it remotely, like on Earth?”

  “Yes, after I give you a brief training session.”

  Soon Principia and I are together again in a mersive back on the surface of Mars. The drones are easy to control and it’s just a matter of adapting to the different propulsion, gravity and atmosphere. Satisfied that I’ve got the hang of it, Principia gives me a nod and says, “Would you like me to prepare a cam drone to leave the base now?”

  “Yes, please. And I’d like a live feed from its primary camera sent to the wall in my room.”

  Before long I’m back in my room and there’s a shot of the slope outside the base with fresh rover tracks in it filling the wall. An area map in the top right-hand corner marks where the cam drone is and where Banks is too. His rover is heading pretty much in the opposite direction from the footprint, which disappoints me. I’m still curious though, so I send the drone up high, where he’ll be less likely to spot it from his rover, and go on the hunt.

  A shaded circle appears on the map, showing where the main image is being taken from. I can move the cam with my hands, just like in most gaming mersives, so I can keep my eye on the screen. Banks hasn’t gone far and the drone can move faster than the rover is currently. I’ll catch him up easily.

  It rapidly becomes clear that there are no tire tracks going in his direction. I speed the cam drone up until the coverage circle on the map overlaps the supposed location of the rover. There is nothing but rocks and dust. No sign of Banks.

  “What the fuck?” I mutter beneath my breath.

  Principia pings a text question to me. “Do you require assistance?”

  I tap “no” and swing the cam drone around to head back to the base in the hope of picking up Banks’s tracks and finding his real location. Why is Principia showing the wrong location for him? Is it being tricked by Banks, or does it know where he really is and is trying to trick me into thinking he is somewhere else?

  I don’t see Banks’s tracks until I am right by the exit ramp and they are going in the opposite direction from the dot on the map that is supposed to mark his location. “You dodgy bastard,” I whisper, and follow the fresh tracks to his true location, staying high and zoomed in until I spot the rover. It’s parked by the edge of the Wafra crater, several kilometers away from where Principia is telling me he is, and Banks is climbing out of it.

  Did Banks trick Principia into thinking he was elsewhere, or is Principia trying to mislead me? If it’s behaving like the AIs I’ve worked with, it won’t be drawing the connections between Banks’s fake dot and what I’m doing. If Principia had human cunning, it would know that the ruse has failed.

  Raising the drone a little bit more, just to keep it out of the usual vertical range where people look, I zoom in on Banks. The helmet that makes it less likely he’ll see the cam drone is also making it harder for me to see his face, but if I lower the drone, he might spot it. I could move it a long way away from him—the zoom is so good on this cam that the curvature of the planet would be a problem before blurring would be—but he’d still be able to see it. And if he sees a moving speck on the horizon, all he has to do is zoom in with his retinal lens and he’ll see that someone is spying on him.

  Is it worth the risk? I don’t
have the skills to hack Principia, or Banks’s chip. I do, however, have a good excuse for nosing about the planet with a cam drone. Sod it. I’ll keep it a long way back and just move it slowly across the horizon. If he asks, I can pretend that I was focused on the data from the cam directly beneath the drone, not the ones on the side of it. I’m not sure how plausible it would be to claim not to have seen him, but I’d rather risk his thinking I’m onto him than never know what the hell he is doing out there.

  I reposition the drone, switch the view to look out of one of the side cams and find Banks. He’s now sitting on one of the huge boulders thrown up by the original impact, looking like he’s just enjoying the view. I zoom in, adjust for glare from the plasglass of his helmet and get a closer look at his face, expecting him to be talking to someone or at least interacting with Principia in some way. But no, he’s not speaking or moving his hands at all. He is crying.

  It’s not gentle weeping either. His eyes are scrunched tight, tears are rolling down his face and his whole body is shaking with each sob. I feel suddenly guilty and the sordid sense of voyeurism is distinctly unpalatable. He doesn’t look like a man about to do anything dodgy. He looks like a man having a nervous breakdown.

  “Shit,” I whisper. The certainty that Banks is responsible for the note and the footprint, part of some elaborate conspiracy to drive me crazy, collapses. All of the reasons it didn’t make sense before still stand. Besides, half an hour isn’t nearly enough time to go through my stuff, hack my private space, find an example of my art style, perfectly reproduce it and then hide it.

  Watching him sob transmutes my suspicion into pity. He hasn’t exactly made me warm to him, but I can’t stand the sight of anyone suffering, even a belligerent arsehole like him. It doesn’t feel right to watch, but it also feels wrong to ignore it. Should I head out there in the other rover and “stumble across him” so I can offer comfort? No, I’m not the ideal choice there.