Mars Nation 2

by Brandon Q Morris

  “But he is a murderer,” Ellen said. “If I understand correctly, Ewa, he could take control of your body and continue his murders any time you’re asleep.”

  Ewa had feared being asked this question because all she could say was yes.

  “I had a lock with an alarm for my bicycle that went off loudly if anyone ever moved it without my permission. We could construct something similar for Ewa,” Lance suggested.

  “You want to attach Ewa to some kind of lock?” Sarah asked.

  “Only when she’s sleeping. The alarm would wake her up, and Friday wouldn’t stand a chance,” Lance explained.

  Ewa smiled. It was a primitive solution, but it could work. Didn’t people attach similar things to sleepwalkers? “I’d agree to that,” she said. “If it would mean that Friday could stay alive, I’d be glad to lock myself up every night.”

  “I don’t understand you at all,” Ellen said. She had once been Ewa’s closest confidante and almost a friend. “That thing inside your head has five of our friends on his conscience, and you still want to grant it asylum? It’s a fucking murderer!”

  “Yes, but he saved me and all of our lives,” Ewa said. “I can’t agree to the eye for an eye model. Then we’re no better than him. He doesn’t seem to be murderous. No, he was reacting to particular circumstances that we still don’t understand. And even a murderer deserves a second chance.”

  It was a difficult discussion. Ewa had the feeling that she couldn’t present all of her reasons. She wanted to keep Friday alive because nothing had changed in her sense of complicit guilt in the deaths of her five friends. Shouldn’t she have realized earlier that she was directly involved in the sabotage? Just like the others, she couldn’t have imagined that the presumed groundwater layer had, in reality, been an extraterrestrial artifact. But did that alleviate her guilt? She alone would have to find the answer to that question.

  “I suggest that we vote about what should happen to Friday,” Gabriella said.

  “Agreed,” Ellen declared.

  Ewa didn’t say anything. Regardless of the outcome of the vote, she wouldn’t let anything happen to Friday, even if that resulted in her being banished again.

  Gabriella summarized the situation. “The two options up for vote are: To electromagnetically neutralize the thing inside Ewa’s head—”

  “Kill,” Ewa interrupted.

  “... or Ewa will vow to never go to sleep without plugging herself into the alarm system Lance described. Everyone has a vote. Votes for Option One first.”

  Ewa closed her eyes. This day was more stressful on her than the time she had spent in the alien machine.

  “Three votes for the first option,” Gabriella declared. “And now for the votes for allowing Friday to continue living.”

  This meant that she had probably won. Ewa could hardly believe it. Only three votes for Friday’s death! She didn’t even want to know who had voted for that.

  “Ten votes for the second option,” Gabriella said. “The decision is clear.”

  Ewa was speechless. She hadn’t earned this. There were still five people who had met their deaths because of her, even if Friday had played a key role in everything. She herself wouldn’t have rescinded her banishment. But if the others agreed on this, was she in a position to contradict them?

  She shut her eyes again. It grew dark around her, and the others’ voices became quieter. She had the feeling that Friday wanted to say something, and she allowed him to use her voice.

  ‘Esteemed colleagues,’ the artificial intelligence said.

  Everyone turned toward her. It was Ewa’s voice, but they could all hear that she wasn’t formulating the words herself.

  ‘With Ewa’s permission, I would like to thank you all for this decision. I vow to not abuse your trust in me, and from this moment onward, I will only act in the interests of this expedition. I would also like to ask your forgiveness for the crime I committed which caused the deaths of your five friends. At that point, I was following the commands of my programming.’

  “Which programming?” Andy interrupted.

  ‘This information isn’t available to me.’

  “And everything’s over now? Why should we believe you?” Andy asked again.

  ‘I want to be quite honest,’ Friday said. ‘As far as I can ascertain, everything is over. I think things changed when my existence was directly threatened. From what I can tell, that was the moment that a much older, significantly more basic programming took control, whose goal was to ensure my survival.’

  “Is it possible that the malicious program might once again gain the upper hand, once your survival is no longer in question?” Sarah asked.

  ‘I don’t know, which is why I agree on the advisability of the alarm system that Lance has proposed,’ Friday said.

  “Does that mean you can hear everything we say, all the time?” Ellen asked.

  ‘I receive the sensory impressions that Ewa registers,’ Friday replied.

  “Good. Then I would like to personally give you this warning: If you ever undertake anything against us again, I will send you to Hell myself,” Ellen exclaimed sharply.

  ‘I wouldn’t want it any other way,’ Friday replied.

  10/14/2042, Spaceliner 1

  The most arduous period was about to begin. Rick would have preferred to mope and complain, but he had to grin and bear it. The administrator wouldn’t let a little gravity bring him to his knees!

  Only one month to go, and they would transform from astronauts to colonists. He would be the one to lay the cornerstone for Mars City. The administrator would become the mayor and finally the president. Those of his subordinates who were the most important at this point, the pilots and navigators, would become worthless. The front lines in the construction of their new homeland would be taken over by the technicians, manual laborers and even farmers, the people who could create things with their own hands.

  Rick was well-positioned where these folks were concerned. He would need their support above all, and they were grateful supporters, as he had already noticed. They didn’t ask as many questions as did the scholars and scientists. The manual laborers were hardly needed on board, which meant they were burning with ambition to show what they could do. Rick was going to give them that opportunity. And he was going to speak to their sense of justice, which they seemed to possess in spades.

  Rick straightened up in his seat on the bridge and gave Maggie a sign. As agreed, the flight manager switched on the microphone to broadcast.

  “Dear fellow citizens,” Rick said quietly. Speaking at low volume was a sign of power. Anyone who wanted to hear him would have to be still. Those who didn’t want to listen would lose the opportunity.

  “In a few seconds, I will give the ship’s pilot the command to once again activate the engines. We are reducing our speed to enter Mars’s orbit and to then land at the spot where our new home, Mars City, will take root. This city will become the nucleus of the new human race. This will be your city; you will be its patriarchs and matriarchs. You will go down in history as the First One Hundred.

  “The planet from which we came no longer exists the way we once knew it. Let us grasp the inexplicable events there as a mandate! Let us create a new order. As a sign of this, the old salary structures will be abolished as soon as we land. Every productive member of this society will be granted the same salary. Farmers, manual laborers, nurses, technicians, and scientists will all be equally involved in our success, since each of them will be equally important in their assigned positions. Even the smallest wheel will be indispensable in driving the operations of our society.

  “I thank you from the bottom of my heart that, along with me, you will make the most of this chance. And now, Maggie, please engage the engines.”

  Rick was satisfied. The bridge crewmembers were concentrating on their tasks. This message of his hadn’t inspired ship-wide applause, but his speech would have its effect on every listener whether they wanted it to or not
, just like how the insistent power of gravity would influence everyone on the ship, demanding a reaction from their muscles. The smart people wouldn’t even try to fight it. Gravity never showed mercy or granted exceptions, and he, Rick Summers, was the one who had command over it, who had activated it by his orders.

  A shiver ran down his spine. He was trembling at his own greatness, taking joy in the years that stretched before him.

  Sol 115, NASA base

  “Welcome to my greenhouse,” Sarah urged cheerfully.

  Ewa stood up. Today was supposed to be her first day of work. As Gabriella had warned, her left side still ached, but her muscles had calmed down some. For the time being, Ewa had decided to remain at the NASA base. Maybe this would make it easier for the three people who had voted for Friday’s death. The three votes must have come from the MfE project, because she had watched the second vote. Ewa still didn’t want to know who had voted that way.

  The NASA astronauts were glad to have the extra help. For the past two days the base had been airtight again, but it would still take about a week to fix the damage to the interior and exterior.

  Sarah and Ewa crawled through the low hatch into the garden. It looked quite pitiful. Shriveled brown leaves were scattered across the beds. The frost had killed everything that had once been living here. The roof was resealed, and the heating system had been repaired. They took dirt samples, since Sarah hoped that a few bacteria might have survived the damage. If so, they wouldn’t have to start completely over with turning sterile dirt into fertile soil.

  “I’ll take these to the lab,” Sarah said. “Could you work the dried plants into the dirt, please? That way we won’t lose any nutrients.”

  “No problem,” Ewa said.

  Sarah was sweet. Her baby belly was now quite visible. Ewa gladly accepted her as the boss, not taking offense at the fact that Sarah sometimes forgot that Ewa had been trained as a farmer. She missed her animals and hoped the MfE crew was taking good care of them. She found the gardening tools and began carefully turning the soil in the beds, incorporating the dead plant matter. She soon realized that the work was doing her good, since it was keeping her from brooding too much.

  Sol 145, NASA base

  “And... now!” Mike called.

  Ewa braced herself against the ground and tugged on the pulley system’s rope. Slowly, almost in slow motion, the tower rose upright. All by herself, she had the thirty-meter steel structure under control. It was impressive what her suit’s muscle amplifiers could achieve when combined with the low Mars gravity and the pulley system’s mechanical magic. She pulled and pulled. The trick with pulleys is that she was moving much more rope than was actually pulling the tower upright. Ewa broke into a sweat, but the effort wasn’t so great that she had to worry about wimping out.

  They had taken time with the project of erecting the drill tower at a different spot. They had welded together a new tower from the material from the old one and repaired the suspension bracket for the drill head. Sharon had proved right. The damage had been reparable. In the meantime, the NASA base was back to full functionality. In the garden, Sarah was expecting the first modest harvest to be ripe in the next few days. The unsuccessful drilling had cost them, all told, a good month of work. Considering that they still had many years to spend here, that wasn’t all that much time.

  “Watch out,” Mike called by radio. “A short break in three... two... one... Now!”

  Ewa held the rope taut and studied the tower. It wobbled very briefly, then stood solidly on its four legs. It wasn’t completely vertical because the surface wasn’t even, but that wasn’t particularly important. They only wanted to load it onto the transport vehicle. The tower didn’t exactly fit when upright, but Lance had come up with the idea that the transporter could simply drag the tower’s legs across the Mars surface, the way a not-so-strong man might haul along his heavy, completely intoxicated drinking buddy by looping his arms under the drunken man’s shoulders.

  “Slowly, slowly,” Mike called over the helmet radio.

  Ewa had changed her position. She was now located about halfway up the slope and was simply holding the rope taut against the gravitational pull that wanted to drag the tower downward. Lance had used a hydraulic jack to lift the foot of the tower until the entire structure tipped over. All that was left for Ewa was to make sure that the top of the tower landed softly on the vehicle. The exertion level was the same as before, but this time she had a better view.

  As she slowly let the rope slide through her hands, she studied the horizon. Although the sky was generally low in dust, three dust devils were on the move to the east of them, one of which was larger than the others. She thought about the measurements she had taken. What had happened to her measurement pole? Would she ever be able to wander around Mars again as a scientist? She was glad to help out the NASA crew with their work, but she would prefer to spend her time trying to solve a scientific problem. In the long run, people wouldn’t be able to live on Mars without solving its mysteries. At least that was her hope.

  “And that’s it!” Mike called.

  At that moment, she felt the tension in the rope vanish. The tower was now resting on the cargo area.

  Sol 152, NASA base

  Ewa was sweating. Every day she used the path to her work site as a jogging stretch. With the additional muscular strength from the suit, she practically flew across the dusty Mars surface. Of course, she was slower than she had been under Friday’s control a while ago, but she was still delighted with it. It took her less than thirty minutes this time to cover the eight kilometers.

  Her destination was the drill tower, which now stood west of the base. With their ground-penetrating radar, they had discovered a layer of groundwater at a depth of about seven hundred meters. Yesterday evening, when she ended her shift and Lance took over, the drill head had reached six hundred meters. Since the cab had been completely destroyed, they had to control the drilling process from outdoors, swapping shifts to do that. This wasn’t a problem, though, since there were five of them. The drilling ran around the clock. Light, after all, played no role beneath the Mars surface.

  Lance was pacing up and down beside the drill tower. He had already notified everyone via radio that he expected to hit water shortly. Ewa hoped that she reached him quickly enough since she would like to witness this moment.

  She reached Lance out of breath. “How does it look?” she asked.

  “Good morning, Ewa.”

  “Good morning. Now tell me!”

  “Maybe fifteen minutes or so,” Lance replied, handing her the plastic-wrap-covered tablet that they were using to guide the drill.

  Ewa examined the schematic. The fat point that represented the drill head seemed to already be scratching the water line. She zoomed in. Lance was right. It shouldn’t be any longer than fifteen minutes. “If you want to go back to the base...” she said.

  Lance chuckled. “No way. I might be tired, but I really want to see this. We’ve waited so long.”

  That was true. Moving the drill vehicle had been no easy task. In reality, dragging the multi-ton tower across the uneven Mars surface had proved to be complicated. But the tower had been standing for five days now, and the drill turbine was slowly driving the drill head deeper and deeper into the planet. Nobody was worried about encountering another artifact. Andy had calculated the odds. It was more likely that a meteor would fall on their heads.

  Nonetheless, Ewa felt unsettled. With her luck, a rock from space really would plummet onto the drill site at the decisive moment. She glanced up at the sky, but of course, there was no sign of an impending meteorite strike.

  “Just keep cool, Ewa. Nothing will happen,” Lance said.

  Was her tension really so evident? “I’m peace personified.” Ewa handed the tablet back to Lance before glancing around. She discovered a large stone and took a seat on it, swinging her feet impatiently.

  “Um, Ewa?”

  She jumped up.

/>   “Just joking,” Lance said.

  Ewa laughed nervously as she sat back down. Lance the scoundrel, she thought. She would pay him back soon enough. Ideally, in a few months when he was waiting on pins and needles for Sarah to have his child.

  “But now, it’s for real,” Lance exclaimed.

  She leapt back up, her heart racing.

  Lance showed her the tablet. “Look,” he added.

  The drill head had crossed the line. Ewa switched over to the page with the measurement data. The conductivity had changed in its order of magnitude. She verified which metallic ions the sensors had detected: sodium, potassium, magnesium, and several others. Everything checked out. A very salty liquid was flowing down there. It could only be water. They’d done it!

  “How is the pressure?” she asked.

  Lance walked over to the drill tower and shifted a few levers. “Looks good,” he replied. “I’ve shifted the drill speed down to its lowest level so it won’t freeze up on us.”

  “I’ll tell the others,” Ewa said.

  There was rejoicing at the base. Mike, Sarah, and Sharon wanted to set off right away in the rover to celebrate on the spot. Ewa couldn’t wait that long. She walked up to Lance and jubilantly embraced him. They had done it, after all!

  11/3/2042, Spaceliner 1

  Terran looked around. The corridor was empty. He opened the right panel of the double door with his key and let Isaac inside, before entering the machine hall and closing the door behind them.

  “Do you have the frequency?” he asked.

  Isaac nodded. Their little group had spent a long time considering how they could contact the NASA people on Mars. Then Chad had come up with the idea of using the radio on board one of the vehicles in the machine hall. Chad couldn’t be present for this, but Terran also knew how the technology worked. The range wasn’t sufficient to reach the NASA base directly, which was why they needed the frequency of Mars Express 2. If everything worked well, the satellite would send their message on to the NASA station.