by Nolan Oreno
She was standing beneath a half-painted tree, one of many plastered along the walls of a maintenance tunnel. Her now fully-rounded belly was covered in paint and brushstrokes, and her hands were caked with color as she held to the brush. Hollis jumped back behind the hallways bend before she noticed him and let only the peak of his head remain exposed so he could watch. As he studied her, he felt the red-faced monster leave and the light return.
With grace Autumn continued to paint on the empty wall. She moved her hands in delicate strokes, building a calming landscape that stretched far down the blank passageway. Stroke after stroke brought more reality into the imagery until a great countryside was formed. Amongst the sprawling hills were fields of flowers and trees sprinkled without organization, and it gave an illusion of a vastness to the narrow confines of the cold complex that was not there before. For Autumn, her child could only exist in a place like the one she was painting, and she pictured them walking hand in hand over the hills, taking shade beneath the trees when they were tired, resting until they were ready to continue again.
Hollis was careful not to disturb the moment. He lowered his breath and watched in awe as the landscape came alive. A wind rustled through the leaves of the trees, and the grass swayed back and forth as it sparkled in the sunlight. He could smell the sweet spring flowers puncture the stale artificial air and feel the wetness that hung heavy up in the clouds. It was just as he had pictured it would look, in every little detail. From each blade of grass to the color of the sky, it was his world in its exactness. Hollis basked in the sudden relief that somewhere, beyond all the walls that trapped them in, there existed a place with no boundaries or limitations: an endless arboretum.
“What in the Hell are you doing?" an angry voice cut in from behind.
Hollis was nearly taken with gravity but caught himself. He turned to face the man who intruded upon his moment with his world.
Franco stepped closer, shouting again. “What are you doing? Are you spying on her?"
Hollis could hear the rhythmic brushstrokes come to a stop around the corner where Autumn and his world were waiting. A pure hatred emerged in Hollis for Franco, a man he had never liked, for he ended the heavenly feeling that had surged inside him. He had been forced awake from the most perfect of dreams, and with each passing second away from it, the dream dissolved away until it slipped through his fingers like falling sand. Franco took that from him. He took everything.
“Tell me, Hollis. We’re you spying on her?" Franco shot again, nostrils flaring.
“You fucking creep, look at yourself, you’re high."
Hollis felt his face redden. While they glared at each other intensely, quick and delicate steps echoed down the corridor towards them. Autumn hesitantly entered the scene and moved herself into the confrontation, still clutching to the brush that dripped with green.
“What’s going on?" she asked in a shaky voice.
“I caught Hollis spying on you. He had a look in his eyes that worries me for your safety," Franco turned to Hollis. "You need to stay away from her, do you hear me? You need to stay far away from her."
Autumn slowly fell into Hollis’ eyes, fearing what was living behind them. “Hollis, why are you looking at me like that?" she said. “What’s wrong?"
Hollis said nothing and maintained a piercing stare at Franco.
“Are you- are you high again?" Autumn cried. “My God, you are, aren’t you."
Franco stepped between Autumn and Hollis. "He’s unstable, Autumn. We need to bring this up to the others, to Saul, and stop this lunatic from doing any more harm to the colony. First, he attacks me a few months back and we brush it off by giving him therapy, but now I catch him stalking you, planning to do God knows what to you or your baby. He’s not safe to have around. He’ll be the end of the good we’re trying to do here if we continue letting him run loose like this, high on his drugs."
Hollis could not longer hold his anger together. “I’ll fucking kill you," he whispered to Franco.
“Hollis! Stop this!" Autumn cried, and that was all she could get out before he ran from them, just as he did from the hill many months ago. He ran from reality. He ran as fast as he could, away from his world that was still wet on the wall and into the shadows where the demons dwelled. He found himself stumbling into the residence hall and to the cabin door of Asnee. He banged on the door until his old friend answered, and he spoke to him without a quiver in his voice.
“It was Franco. He did it," Hollis said in hate, and then he left Asnee standing there with nothing more than the name ringing in his ears.
In the early morning, Hollis awoke as he would on any other day. He went about his daily routine with no difference in his pace and was haunted by no ill-effects of the hallucinogen. Still, in shame, he forced himself to forget the events of the night before. He ate lunch by himself as he normally would, read over the progress reports on his research from the day before, and prepared to leave for the garden by mid-afternoon as he always did. The only deviance from his careful orchestration came from Saul who stopped him from entering the loading dock to obtain one of the Crawlers to make for the garden. Hollis feared it was confrontation.
“Hollis, I was hoping I would find you before you left. I want you to see something that is very special to me," Saul said.
“I have a lot to do at the garden. I should be going," Hollis returned worriedly, hopeful to be left alone in peace and quiet to recover from his mental breakdown from the night before.
“I know, but if you could just entertain me for a few hours I promise it will be fruitful for the both of us."
Hollis was suspicious. "Where?"
“The city."
Before he knew it, Hollis had found himself strapped to the dusty seat of a Crawler, somehow convinced by Saul to join him in the rusted machine in a journey out to the Refugee Settlement. Ahead of them eleven great towers lifted high on the horizon like mighty monoliths. They trembled like a mirage soon to disappear. Hollis tried to turn himself free from the seat, and from the city, but the harness kept him still.
“Relax, Hollis. We’re nearly there. It shouldn’t be much longer now."
“I need to go to the garden. We need to turn back, right now. This was a bad idea," Hollis responded frantically, grappling and pulling at the harness. “I don’t the have time to tour your city."
Saul kept his sights straight ahead towards the towers. “Compose yourself, Hollis. Getting out of that isolated garden of yours for a moment will do you some good and clear your head. That's what you need right now more than anything else."
“No, my head's clear, and I’m telling you I need to go back," Hollis continued, looking about the vehicle's cabin for something to return control into his own hands.
“That we both know is a lie," Saul said, giving him a quick glance of knowing. “I hope that after today, incidents like last night will never happen again, and I don’t need to worry about you any longer. We have moved far beyond the stage of madness, and we need to look forward to hope."
With his free hand, Saul grabbed the front of Hollis’ helmet and turned him to face the city. “Look forward, Hollis," he said. “What do you see?"
“Concrete," Hollis said overwhelmed with irritation and discomfort.
“Concrete, yes, but what else? Perhaps you don’t see what I see, and perhaps you never will, but what I see is much more than what's on the surface. Beneath that concrete is untapped life and a second chance for the new face of humankind. We have been given the opportunity to fill the guts of those towers with whatever kinds of people we want to become, good or bad, and each step we take from here on out will decide whether we will remain the mortal men that we are today, with all our flaws and limitations, or perhaps become something more."
“Something more?" Hollis whispered into his helmet, fighting back the image of the spirit that lured him into the valley.
“Tell me," asked Saul. "have you ever heard of the Tower of Babel?" and before Hollis
had an opportunity to answer the Crawler faded into the shadow of the city and was lost for a moment beneath the towers.
All around them the concrete pillars rose, tearing into the blood-red Martian sky and looking down at the small bug of a vehicle that crawled at their basins. There were no streets that filled the gaps between towers but only dunes of sand, uneven and untamed. The Crawler traversed these dunes to the best of its ability, trembling as it climbed the steeper inclines, and it twisted around the construction that piled in the alleys. Higher up, gliding between the buildings, Hollis could make out dozens of tiny round entities with movements of their own.
“What are those?" Hollis asked, following one as it disappeared into a gaping hole in a towers side.
“The Builders. They almost look alive don’t they? They look very different from down here. It’s the way they move, like birds without wings. They’re beautiful machines, really."
They continued further into the desert city, passing nearly finished towers that were being worked on by the Builders until they reached one tower in particular that was unlike any other. The tower was reduced to large boulders, rocks, and debris that were all stacked unsteadily upon each other. What was created was a concrete mountain of wreckage and rubble. Saul parked the Crawler before it and waited in silence as the wind whistled through the channels between towers.
Hollis did not embrace the silence as Saul did. “Is this what you wanted to show me?" he asked, feeling the streets narrowing in on their position. “A collapsed building?"
“Come on, let's take a closer look," Saul said as he removed his harness from across his armored chest and jumped from the vehicle's cabin.
Hollis expelled a warm breath and lifted the door to exit the Crawler and follow Saul. His boots met the ground and carried him to where Saul was standing near the fallen structure. A Builder darted past Hollis and joined a group of others that were organizing around the wreckage.
“These are the remains of Tower Twelve. Because it was left unchecked for such a long period of time under Richard's leadership, it couldn’t stand against the Martian storms. It was here that we found him, hiding like a rat, buried beneath it all."
“Who?"
“Doctor Novak."
“I wasn’t told-"
“I’ve been trying to keep it a secret from the others for the sake of morale building. Right now, only a select group of people know. He was hiding here with the majority of the colony’s alcohol supply that he stole from us. The tower fell so quickly he didn’t even have time to put on his helmet, and his head was crushed by one of the falling supporting beams almost instantly. He should be thankful for such a quick death because the alternative would have been horrifying, especially all the way out here."
“We’ve seen too many slow deaths," Hollis said quietly.
Saul nodded his heavy helmet in anguish. "Too many. Far too many. Although, Novak wasn’t a noble man and didn’t deserve a noble death. He abandoned our colony and hid away in a drunken shame. He wasn’t there when we could have saved Richard. He was a coward, and cowards are not deserving of the world I have envisioned for us here."
Hollis found his mind drifting to the revelation of Asnee and the purpose of each of the colonists’ genetic codes. If it were true that Novak did not deserve his seat at the table of the last of humankind then why was he chosen from hundreds of thousands of other candidates in the first place? What made him so special, or any of them for that matter? Was this all apart of their plan?
“I don’t think any of us are deserving of this world," Hollis muttered and found himself startled in saying it out loud.
“No, I have to disagree with you," Saul said sharply. “I think each one of us remaining are here for a reason. Just like these towers, those of us that are still standing are the strongest and can brace against any storm that attempts to tear us down. We just need to continue holding steady for the remainder of the storms, and once they pass, the grass will begin grow around us."
“You’ve always had faith in me, Saul. Even though I’ve let you down plenty of times, you still continue to support my research. I don’t understand."
Saul bent down and lifted up a small rock from the debris, turning it about in his hands. “As many mistakes as you’ve made, and there are many, including last night, one fact remains: you’re still standing, and that means something," he said, and tossed the rock high into the air, over the fallen tower, listening to it clatter as it tumbled into the murky depths of the concrete carcass.
“What is it exactly you wanted to talk to me about? What’s the real reason I’m here?" Hollis asked, feeling the pressure of a greater conversation.
“I brought you here because standing isn’t enough. As I said earlier, we have the opportunity to fill this city with life that we deem fit to live, and if we want to achieve this future we need to start acting now."
“Have we not been acting? By the looks of it, your city is almost finished. What more do you want?"
“I’m not talking about the city, Hollis. We can finish the city a thousand times over, but what we need are people to inhabit it. All my work, and your work too, would be for nothing if we don’t bring more people to Mars."
Hollis forced himself to say it. “You’ve got a child coming within a month, Saul. You can’t rush these things."
“Oh but I can, and I will. We don’t have the time to waste. You and I both know it, and most of the colony knows it, but we’re just too scared to come to terms with it. We’re an endangered species now, and we’ve been losing people at far too fast a rate. One child won’t be enough to counter these deaths. We need more, and quickly."
“Babies aren’t delivered by a stork."
“Yes, unfortunately, it’s not that easy. Few things of great value are. The announcement of my child has provoked the idea, but it’s nowhere near enough to convince the others to do the same. They’re still too frightened to devote themselves to a beginning because they’re already devoted to an end. We can’t rely on them to fill these towers and turn this ghost town into a thriving metropolis. We need to act on our own."
It took another gulp from his oxygen tank for Hollis to catch the direction of Saul’s conversation, and once he did, he could feel the sands start to shift beneath his feet, pulling him into the shadows.
“What are you getting at, Saul?" Hollis asserted.
“These women- we need them just as much as they need us. Neither man or woman can survive on their own. There’s a reason why this isn’t an all male colony or an all female colony. We have an obligation, each one of us, to fulfill our roles and preserve our species. Adrian Minor knew this. He knew what we would have to do, eventually, even if we didn’t. And if these women don’t want children and want to break their oaths to humanity by not sustaining our survival, then why should we have to break ours? We shouldn’t, Hollis. We can build as many of the greatest cities or as many thousands of the most beautiful acres of forest, but for what purpose if there is no one around to see it? This colony needs children, and whether they want it or not, this colony is going to have children," Saul cleared his dry throat. "We need to make sure of it."
Hollis slowly stepped back from Saul, tripping on the scattered rubble of the fallen future. The outlines of Saul’s face pulsated a deep and dark red, mirroring a face he had seen in the black the night before and in the story of Janya’s last night alive.
“You-" Hollis gasped.
“Hollis, this isn’t easy to-"
Behind them, the Crawler’s radio sparked with static. “Emergency at the Hub! All outbound teams respond! The security of the colony is threatened!" a trembling voice shrieked. “I repeat, the security of the colony is threatened!"
Saul lowered his sweat-soaked brow. “Our talks have a tendency of being interrupted," he boomed.
“That sounded like Autumn," Hollis hastily announced, dreading another minute alone with Saul and his fallen tower.
Without another comment, the two rushed b
ack to the Crawler and departed from the ruins of the broken city to answer the cry of help of the woman they both loved.
Part Sixteen: Watershed
After all his meticulously formulated movements and strategies, Saul knew he had made a fatal mistake by telling Hollis his plan. The botanist was not prepared to hear the truth, and it was quite obvious that he never would be. His reaction, back at the ruins, was proof enough. The awkward air of a man condemning the other was settling in-between them now, filling the cracks that were once left open for an alliance or perhaps even a brotherhood. It was decided that they would become enemies, and there was no going back. Saul could feel the tension of the arrow as it pulled back against the bow, left in the hands of Hollis, aimed at his Achilles heel, ready to be released if desired. If Hollis was not taken care of immediately, he would become capable of destroying his dream of a perfect world.
As Saul watched Hollis out of the corner of his eye, he began considering solutions to the problem. If he were so bold, he could turn the Crawler around and drive deep into the desert, far from any and all life, and leave Hollis on some barren dune with nothing more than the exosuit he was wearing to protect him. The others would believe one of his drug hallucinations took him there. His suit’s O2 tank would last him about eighteen hours at most. It would be a slow death, but in Saul’s rationalizations, Hollis was more than deserving of it, just as Novak was. The botanist’s failed research in his garden was a waste of the colony’s resources and energy and brought no results apart from drug-induced hysterics back at the Hub. The tree would never come, and knowing this, Saul was more than comfortable containing the future of society in his city and not a forest. They had an unlimited amount of electricity through solar power, and they were more than capable of repairing the solar panel field when necessary. They could use the water reclaimers to cycle decades of water in their own water-table and produce more through deep-reaching wells if it came to it in the future. The backup oxygen suppliers would last decades as well. They could build subterranean farms beneath the sand to grow their own food with the hundreds of farmable seeds they brought with them, all without the need of life-friendly soils on the planet's surface. In Saul’s calculations, the colony had about nine years before they had to worry about death and starvation with their supplies, and that was more than enough time to complete his city of the future. They could even use the Hollis’ garden as a placeholder farm until they finish building their own beneath the city. Saul did not need Hollis or his research to keep humanity alive, and soon the others would begin to realize this.
