Parting Gifts

by gerald hall

  Chapter Twelve:

  Peter and Deborah Sorenson’s Quarters

  Mars Colony Habitat Dome #1, Hebes Chasma

  May 12, 2044

  “I really hate being a politician.” Deborah Marcum-Sorenson said to her husband as she walked into the quarters after a very long day.

  “I think that a lot of people here are very glad that you decided to accept the position of Speaker of the Martian Council after the elections though. You’ve done a lot of good work there.”

  “I think that a lot of it is because of all of the polymaths believe that I was the one responsible for the Third Event.”

  “I’m not surprised that they figured that out about you. I believe that the polymaths had long ago realized how truly special you were. But even if they do know your gift, the polymaths are keeping that knowledge to themselves. Everyone that I have talked to outside of that particular circle still wonders who or what was responsible for saving the lives of every human being on Mars and truly making it possible for this world to be terraformed. But obviously, your gifts extend far beyond your intelligence and that certain very special gift that you inherited from your father. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be nearly as successful here as you have already proven to be.”

  “Well, it has helped a lot to have so many good, hard-working and very selfless people here at Hebes Chasma. I just don’t know if even I could handle being the leader of a government back on Earth. Everyone down there seems to have their own special interest in mind, regardless of the impact on anyone else. As far as my gift is concerned, I think that it wasn’t just from my father. Somehow, my mother also contributed to my abilities as well. From what I have learned from the video recordings that my parents made after I was born, it wasn’t until he joined with my mother that he was able to utilize his gift to the fullest extent. It seems that my mother was the missing link to that gift. I guess that I received gifts from both my father and my mother in that regards.”

  “Still, you are doing a fantastic job, Hun.” Peter answered sweetly as he got up and gave Deborah a kiss right after she put down her personal data tablet full of information on everything going on at the Mars Colony.

  A few moments later, a pair of four year olds came gleefully racing to Deborah.

  “Hi, Mom!” James and Mary Sorenson said with virtually a single voice as they ran up and hugged their mother. To the casual observer, the twins were normal children. But Deborah and Peter already knew that their children were far from the norm, especially James. He had already shown that he had inherited his mother’s powerful gift. But both twins were also extraordinarily intelligent like their mother.

  Even though both James and Mary behaved like normal children, they still had that sense of morality and compassion that Deborah had when she was a child. Deborah and Peter worked very hard to instill the need to be responsible and selfless about their gifts and talents just as Cynthia and Joshua Marcum had done with Deborah when she was a child. Deborah and Peter also made it a point to share and live out their Christian faith with their children as essential elements of their lives.

  So far, the lessons appear to have taken root with both children.

  After spending some time with the twins before the latter went to bed, Deborah talked with Peter about her recent meeting with the Martian Marine Detachment leadership.

  “So how are things working out with that new Marine detachment commander?” Peter asked with a smile.

  “Well, he is a Marine.” Deborah briefly alluded to the traditional rivalry between the Navy and the Marines with a chuckle before continuing.

  “All joking aside, Colonel Walker has been very easy to work with. He and all of his people are extremely talented and willing to do whatever is necessary to keep this colony running in addition to his official mission of defending it. They all believe that the Caliphate will eventually come after us on Mars after they finish conquering the rest of Earth.”

  “Is it really all that bad down there?”

  “Yes, Sweetheart. I’m afraid that it is. The Islamist forces are currently consolidating the lands that they have conquered in spite of several insurgencies that they are dealing with very ruthlessly. The only places left unconquered on Earth are North America and Japan. It is simply a matter of time before they are overwhelmed as well. Our home on Earth simply doesn’t have enough people to hold out for very long once the Pacific Caliphate and the Arab Brotherhood make their final push against them. But I’m sure that all of our people back there, especially in the Eastern Alliance, will make the invaders pay a very heavy price.” Deborah grimly answered.

  “That has to weigh in hard on our security detachment here. They had to leave behind not only most of their families but also a lot of their fellow brothers in arms.”

  “We did manage to get the detachment’s immediate family members all moved to Mars fortunately. We are also doing our best to keep Matt’s people gainfully employed. This includes doing their share of maintaining our various aquaponic and traditional food production gardens into addition to their more martial pursuits.”

  “Do our Marines enjoy playing farmer like the rest of us?”

  “Actually, I think that they do. It’s not like on Earth where they have to deal with insect bites, sunburns and weeding. Besides, I believe that several of them actually grew up on farms anyway. So this was second nature to them. The Colonel has them busy cross-training the different job specialties and learning about all of the new ‘toys’ that we are designing for them during their regular duty hours. So working in the garden domes is probably a form of relaxation for most of them."

  “They also don’t have any bars, strip clubs or tattoo parlors around here to go to after duty hours.” Peter commented with a laugh.

  “There is that. But seriously, these people are real professionals. They are all proud to be here and are working hard to fulfill their mission. A couple of them have already started working with our people on the new prototype powered exoskeleton suits that we are using for construction work. That technology will be easily adapted for military use with the addition of armor, upgraded sensors and modular weapons to the basic design.

  Colonel Walker and Captain Marx have also been training on flying our gravity drive shuttles as well. I can tell that they are having a lot of fun doing so. Captain Marx seems to be particularly exuberant about the training.”

  “I’m not surprised. They are both experienced combat pilots. I bet that they were quite excited to interface with SALI.” Peter replied. He had met both Marine pilots shortly after their arrival on Mars.

  Oh yes, they certainly were. Although, it seems that they already had some experience with SALI. Colonel Walker and Captain Marx were among the first pilots to fly aircraft equipped with the SALI AI program. Of course, they were surprised to find that here, SALI was much more capable here on Mars than was allowed to be the case in their aircraft.”

  “Every time, the people on Earth see one of those Martian gravity shuttles land, they know that we are taking away many of their smartest people remaining.”

  “I don’t that in the long run that they begrudge what we are doing though. The people in the free zones have to know what the jihadists will do to the best and brightest of them once the Caliphate and its allies conquer an area. Plus, we need those same people here if we are going to have a chance of beating these jihadists and reclaiming Earth someday.”

  “That’s the rub. I’m afraid that even if we didn’t have any people leaving to join us on Mars, they don’t have a chance in hell of actually defeating those bastards. Even if they do outnumber the jihadists, the vast majority of people left here in the States or any of the other countries still resisting either can’t fight or are sheep who won’t fight. I’m sure that the people in the free zones know this too.”

  “So they see our flights as rescue missions, you think?”

  “Yes. That is why so many people down there want to come. But we have to be very selective to bring only
the people that we think might be worthwhile on Mars. You can bet that every damned one of the people that we are giving rides to are thoroughly vetted first before they can step one foot onboard a Martian ship though. Our people have already made it crystal clear that they won’t accept any ‘vipers in the nest’ into our little colony here. We can’t afford the consequences of such infiltration into our ranks.”

  Chapter Thirteen:

  Mars Colony Habitat Dome #3

  Hebes Chasma

  August 19, 2044

  Several of the newer arrivals to the colony were watching one of the gravity shuttles on arrival to a landing pit through a large viewing port when Timothy Clarborne and his wife Sandy were walking past.

  “Hello, Sir. You are one of the members of the Mars Council, aren’t you?” A compactly built man in his early thirties with olive skin asked with an accent that made it clear that he was originally from the Republic of Persia.

  “Yes, I am. It certainly keeps me busy enough in addition to my other work.” Tim answered good naturedly.

  “I have a question that I hope that you can answer. I saw that we had several more modules delivered from Earth yesterday. What did we receive in this latest shipment?” Bahram Gilani asked. Bahram had been one of the latest arrivals to Hebes Chasma from the Persian Republic. He was a mechanical engineer by training, but had also some experience in electronics and agriculture.

  “The transport brought us four additional modules for the colony. While they are currently carrying cargo, they are designed to be easily converted to habitats. But what they also brought is of great importance to us all. The modules also contained the main components for three new liquid fluoride thorium reactors. These one hundred megawatt units will greatly improve the power supply for the colony and other projects that we are working on. One or two of the LFTR reactors will actually be installed within the captured asteroids in orbit around Mars to provide them with power.” Tim explained.

  “These expensive pieces of technology all came from America? It seems that the colony here is mainly populated by Americans and is mostly supported by America. There are a few of my people who see this place here as merely being an American colony.”

  “Yes, we have had nuclear power reactors operating in the United States employing liquid fuel cores ever since the First Event. After the Second Event, we began series production of these reactors to generate electricity. So it was not a difficult task to allocate some of these reactors for transport to Mars.”

  “Actually, Tim here had quite a bit to do with the genesis of series production of these LFTR reactors.” Sandy proudly remarked.

  “Is that so? How did you accomplish that, Sir?”

  “It really wasn’t all that hard, Mister Gilani. You see immediately after the end of the nuclear autumn, I sought out a man who had won a tremendous amount of money in one of the national lotteries just before the beginning of the Indo-Pakistani conflict. He had managed to survive the calamity, largely due to my efforts in creating islands of energy and food self-sufficiency. Needless to say, he was very grateful.

  This man still had a very significant amount of his winnings, which totaled over several hundred million dollars. I persuaded him to create an investment partnership with North Carolina State University for the construction of a new liquid fluoride thorium reactor on the university campus. North Carolina State had a long-standing nuclear engineering program based around a test reactor at their Burlington Laboratory building on their old campus.

  This wealthy man had so much more money than he knew what to do because he had very few possessions before he won the lottery. Now, he wanted to make a difference. After I began to talk with him, he quickly agreed with me that we needed to have a safe, reliable and sustainable energy source for America. So we created this partnership with the university, Oak Ridge National Laboratories and a group of other investors to create a prototype reactor to test the concept and to provide energy for the campus at the same time. They convinced the university to build the prototype LFTR reactor where the university’s old coal-fired steam heat plant had been located.

  The reactors that had appeared in Ohio after the First Event were a massive help in establishing the concept. But there still needed to be more work to make a commercial design that could be mass-produced to safely generate power. My new friend invested over two hundred and fifty million dollars into the project. This not only allowed us to build the prototype reactor, but also provided enough seed money to establish the production facilities for series production. This allowed for the rapid beginning of production after the prototype proved the overall concept was not only technically valid but also economically feasible.

  My friend ended up recouping every penny that he invested and much more. The university reactor that was eventually built was able to produce so much power that the university was able to lower the cost of tuition and on-campus living expenses for the students through the sale of excess power to the city of Raleigh. The waste heat from the reactor after the generation of electricity was used for a variety of tasks including heating all of the old campus buildings through the existing steam pipe system and also to provide heat for various experiments being done by the Chemical Engineering Department. Of course, the production LFTR reactors provided for a far more stable electric grid for the Alliance as well as lowering overall energy costs for the average consumer.”

  “That is an amazing story, Sir. It is little wonder that so many people here are from America after such successful partnerships were created.” Bahram remarked.

  “Yes, Americans have often been very successful when they have chosen to selflessly take risks and invest intelligently in the future. My friend who made this wise investment in the future sponsored several of the people who now live here on Mars. He saw the wisdom in investing in this world as well. He was an older gentleman though and chose to stay on Earth to free up a seat for a younger person to come to Mars. It was a wonderful statement of that man’s selflessness when he could have easily asked for and received a place to come here to Hebes Chasma.

  Regarding your earlier comments though, while it is also true that most of the people here are from America, this is not simply an American colony by any means, Bahram. We have been receiving new arrivals from other places as well. This is a colony of people from many nations trying to save the best of humanity from a growing barbarism. We all speak the same language, eat the same food and breathe the same air here. It just happens that most of the people here have come from America. Americans are the people who have also provided the vast majority of the resources needed to create this colony here.”

  “I am still very curious on how you were able to afford to do all of this. Traveling to Mars and bringing all of this technology here, especially after all of the calamities that have occurred on Earth, has to have been tremendously expensive. It would seem that only the wealthiest and most powerful nations could even consider paying for such a venture. Mind you, I and my family are still very grateful to have been given this opportunity.”

  “It is about the choices that we have made. I am one of several thousand people who were born with certain gifts and talents. Even at a young age, we used those gifts to create things that earned most of us tremendous wealth. With all of our wealth, we could have lived in mansions and relied upon servants to handle all of the mundane aspects of life. We could have chosen to wield tremendous power over others also as a result of those gifts and talents. But, we were driven to do something much more important than that.

  So we all came out here to build a new home for humanity to be free of the strife that we saw on Earth. All of us have jobs here to continue to build not only more places for people to live and thrive, but also for humanity to explore far beyond even Mars. Humanity needs homes, beyond even here in this star system, where they can be free from those who would oppress their fellow man. Limiting ourselves to just one world also makes it all too easy for humanity to be snuffed out of existence b
y a single cosmic event or an act of madness.”

  “Do you still believe in a God, even with all of your gifts?” a curious Bahram asked. Many of the people who had fled Persia to join the colonists on Mars had seen their own worldview destroyed with the supernatural events that had happened in the United States and most recently on Mars. Most of the Persians had been raised under Islam, but had turned away from that belief system when they had learned of the horrors that had been inflicted in the name of that religion. But while many had turned to Christianity, some still had questions.

  “Of course, we do. Without an all-powerful, all-loving God, we would have never received these gifts, much less the opportunity to use them to give humanity the potential of a fresh start on this world. We see ourselves as building something positive.”

  “But you have some armed Marines from the Alliance here too.”

  “Of course, we have to prepare for the future in the event that this colony is threatened. But even now, the Marines work at the colony doing many things other than training for war. If we wanted to wage war against the forces that are fighting on Earth, we certainly could with great effect. But that is not why we are here. We are not dropping bombs or firing missiles even when our shuttles are being fired upon while we pick up refugees from Earth.”

  “What are we doing then?”

  “Saving lives and preserving some semblance of Western civilization for the future of mankind, I pray.”

  “I just wish that we had never been put into this situation. It would have been so much better if America was still whole and vibrant so that it could support us fully. We could have been a beacon of a better future for all of humanity, sharing the wonders of a new world with them. But instead, we have to shield ourselves from threats to our existence. That limits the number of people that we can allow to come here, even for a short visit.”