Mars Needs Chickens!

by John Taloni

  Mars Needs Chickens!

  by John Taloni

  Mega-Cluck of Mars

  A giant chicken rampaged through the Martian colony. The dome glinted far above, its bonded glass the only object that stood between the inhabitants and the deadly environment of Mars.

  “Rrrraaaahhht! Rrrrraaaahhhhttt!” The chicken screamed as it roamed. Its gigantic feet stepped on one family’s housing unit and crushed the roof. A few steps later her claws rasped against the fiberglass transports that passed for cars, shredding it into small slices. “Buck-BUCKAW!” She turned and fluttered her wings, flying a short distance - for her size - down the carefully tended roadway.

  Landing near the dome’s connection to the surface, she began to peck. A small group of colonists came up behind her. “Fire on my mark,” said one. “Ready...set…”

  “No, don’t!” A plaintive voice came out from a nearby bush. “She doesn’t mean any harm!”

  #

  One month ago. Peter Costello pulled a test sample from the bioreactor and sighed. No change. Or at least not enough change to justify the cost of the project.

  He heard a ding on his computer and went to look. Instant message incoming from Smita Namputiri. He clicked to activate the video call. “Hey boss,” Peter said.

  “How is it going on your end, Peter?” she inquired.

  “You’ve probably already seen the data,” he said, making a small grimace. “We’ve got some regression of traits. A few markers for gigantism. But no real progress.”

  “We don’t have to produce a Tyrannosaurus Rex tomorrow, Peter,” said Smita. “But our backers expect some progress. Something they can show at the next round of funding.”

  “I have a few thoughts,” said Peter. “I’ll have to ignore routine precautions, though.”

  “Ah, that is where you are wrong,” said Smita. “You can throw those precautions away completely!” Her tone shifted from jocular to serious. “Peter, forget the bureaucracy you dealt with on Earth. We came to Mars to get away from that. At least for a while. If we do well we can retire rich, with the future for ourselves and our loved ones secure. Like, for instance, the one who has just snuck into your office.”

  “Katy got past security again? Oof. How does she do it?”

  “Hm. I might say determined application of hacker scripts, if she were another kid,” said Smita.

  “Yeah, she’s a little young for that,” replied Peter.

  “Just a little?” Smita smiled. “Or, more likely, she climbed in a window. Agile child.” Smita cocked her head. “She only got into the outer rooms, not into anything important. It’s like a game for both of us. I could even see her on the security cameras part of the way. Here, I will let her in.” Peter saw Smita tap a few buttons on her keyboard and the door opened. His daughter walked into the room.

  “Um...hi Daddy,” Katy said from the door. “Are you going to be done soon? They put in a new swing set at the playground and it goes so high!” She came into the room, bouncing. “Look, I can touch the ceiling!” In the low Martian gravity her steps made her travel well up from the ground. She jumped twice and on the second one, grazed the ceiling with her fingers. “Hi Smita!” she called as she bounced.

  “Go ahead and close down,” Smita said from the viewscreen. “Get a fresh start tomorrow.”

  #

  Katy burst through the door of their house, Peter close behind. “Mommy! Guess what we did!” She didn’t wait for a response. “Daddy pushed me all the way up on the swing and I went over. Whee!” She bounced in the air, clapping her hands joyously.

  Kim Costello turned from her laptop screen. “Just a minute, honey,” she said. Kim tapped a few keys on the keyboard. A spreadsheet displayed on the screen. “Okay, done,” she said, turning in her chair. “What’s that?”

  “We went to the park and, zoom!” Katy ran around with her arms out, mimicking an airplane. “We can do lotsa stuff here we couldn’t back home. Look at me!” Katy did a handstand, landed with a bounce, then performed a somersault in the air. She staggered a bit as she finished, wiggling her legs for balance. “Ta dah!” she exclaimed, presenting like an Olympic gymnast.

  “That’s nice, honey!” said Kim. “Want to give mommy a hug?” Kim opened her arms and Katy rushed in. While patting Katy’s back, Kim gave Peter a quizzical look.

  “I thought I’d wear her out,” he said with a lopsided smile. “That strategy may have backfired.”

  Kim released Katy and gave her several pats on the back as they unclinched. “We’ll see later,” she replied.

  “Go have a shower, honey,” Peter said to his daughter.

  “Uh uh!” Kim gave Katy a penetrating glance. “Chores first! Remember your school project.”

  “Zoom!” Katy replied, running off. “Chickies!”

  Peter nodded to the spreadsheet. “I thought the finance work was done Earthside,” he murmured.

  “This isn’t numbers,” said his wife. “Well, it isn’t finance. Resource planning at the hydroponics plant. We’re behind on growing plants in Martian soil. Just too different from Earth.”

  “I still don’t understand why the school wants the kids to raise chickens,” said Peter.

  “Because, Mister obsessed-with-beakers, if we are to be more than an outpost of Terran money, we will need to be truly self-sufficient someday. Every Martian colonist will be part farmer. Or at least attuned to their needs.”

  “Mm,” said Peter. He buried his head in his wife’s hair. “You smell nice.”

  “Thank you, my darling prince of bullshit. I need a few minutes to finish this,” said Kim.

  “I’ll get dinner started,” said Peter.

  “Just turn on the pot,” said Kim. “I prepped it during lunch.”

  “It’s networked,” Peter responded. “You could have turned it on from there.”

  “I want you to feel useful,” Kim laughed. “Salad shooter is on the counter. You can spend two minutes ‘chopping.’”

  Katy came back in, tromping as she walked. “Chickies all fed!”

  “Ah!” Kim said. “Hold on, let me check.” She tapped a few keys. On her display a corner popped up with a display of the chicken coop. “Very good, you got the water too. Now go ahead and shower.”

  Katy stood there, tapping her foot and squeezing one arm with another. “Yes honey?” asked Kim.

  “Um...Hestia looks unhappy. I think the other chickens are picking on her,” said Katy.

  “Well, they do that sometimes,” said Kim. “Hestia is rather small.”

  “And Hestia’s leg is kinda bent,” Katy responded.

  “Wait,” Peter chimed in from the other room. “‘Hestia?’ You named your chickens?”

  “Yep, and Artemis, and Aphrodite, and I named the big one Hera!” Katy’s eyes gleamed as she explained.

  #

  Now. The chicken turned and stepped down the roadway. “Buckaw! Buck buck!” It clucked as it stalked away from the dome and headed for a knot of people. They scattered as the giant chicken stepped in their direction. It ambulated towards a decorative plant display and pecked into the soil there. It selected several pieces of gravel with its beak, then lifted its head and swallowed. “Buck-CAW!” it emitted, then headed down the pathway. As it walked it showed a marked limp on its right side. After several steps the giant chicken fluttered its wings, taking into the air for a short distance.

  The troupe reassembled as the chicken continued walking away from them. One man, the apparent leader, motioned to the rest. “Get out your tasers. Let’s take that clucker down.”

  “But!” Katy tried to talk. She got up from concealment behind a bush and tried to walk towards the group. “You can’t!”

  She cut off abruptly as Peter pul
led her back. “Katy! Let them do their job.”

  “But they can’t!” Katy said. “It’s mean.”

  The group walked down the roadway towards the giant chicken. They took cover as they went, moving in small bursts. Finally the entire group stood in an arc ten feet behind the chicken, as it faced away from them.

  The group raised their weapons together. At a signal from the leader they fired simultaneously. Wires flew out and landed on the giant chicken, each one covering a different section of the body. A split second later electric current flowed from the tasers.

  “BUCKAW”!” The chicken clucked with a loud squawk, its head and beak pointed into the air. It swayed from side to side but did not fall. With a flutter of its wings it turned around to face its attackers. “Buck BUCK!” The chicken pecked at the group leader, who stepped back and to the side. The beak landed to his left, the chicken’s face coming close to his shoulder.

  One of the squad lifted a handgun. The leader shouted, “No projectile weapons!” He pointed at the dome, its bonded glass proof against rays but not bullets.

  “I won’t miss, Captain,” said the man with the pistol.

  “Can’t take that chance,” said the leader. “Retreat!”

  As the squad pulled back down the road, they noticed Katy and Peter still in the area. “Get back! Go home and shelter in place!”

  “But!” said Katy.

  “Now!” The Captain charged towards them both. “No time to argue!”

  “But I can help,” said Katy in a soft voice. No one heard. Her father grabbed her arm and pulled her along.

  #

  Two weeks ago. Peter sat at his computer screen in the lab. Smita’s window was in the corner of the screen.

  “It looks promising, Peter,” said Smita. “Make more of it. We should do a large scale test.”

  “Okay, but…” Peter trailed off. “The lack of controls bothers me. Which reminds me. Did your group run another experiment with the last batch? I’m short on some of the materials. Growth factor mostly, not that we need it until we have a viable specimen.”

  “No,” said Smita. “But don’t worry. The materials are cheap. Just make more. And don’t worry about it. Stay focused on results.”

  Later that night at dinner, Peter complained to his wife. “It’s just too much. No controls on the experiments, or even the materials. It’s like the company just doesn’t care.”

  “The company paid our way to Mars,” replied Kim. “Which we both wanted to do. Getting out from under bureaucracy is why we’re here.”

  Peter had another bite. “Tastes different. What is it?”

  “Extruded vegetable protein,” said Kim.

  “My favorite,” replied Peter with a grimace. “Third time this week?”

  “Fourth time, my absent minded lovable lunk,” said Kim. “I used some different spices today.” She sighed. “At least it grows fast. We’re not in any danger of starvation. We want the Earth plants to do better, but we seem chronically short of effective fertilizer.” Kim put her fork down. “I do wish the hydroponics were working better. In a sense the whole colony is an experiment, so whatever we learn is good. I just want our stuff to grow!”

  “More bad news?” Peter asked.

  “Like your lab,” said Kim. “No controls. We had some bad grain that we tossed in a bin for recycling. We’d tried growing it in some fortified Martian soil and it grew stunted with odd seeds. It just disappeared! We think one of the staff mistook it for regular garbage and took it to be broken down. Still, that’s hundreds of pounds of biomass unavailable to run through the hydroponics again. It’s not like we can just run out for more fertilizer. Nothing grows right in this soil. Just the wrong composition for Terran plants.” She sighed.

  “We could have some chicken,” said Peter, a wry smile on his lips.

  “Bite your tongue!” said Kim. Katy sniffed. Peter had barely noticed her during dinner.

  “One of Katy’s chickens died yesterday. At least, her spot is empty. You already took it out for recycling, right dear?” Kim looked in Katy’s direction, nodding.

  “Um...yes?” Katy responded. “She just got picked on too much by the other hens ‘cause she was so small.” Katy tapped her fork on her plate quickly as she spoke.

  “Sad fact of life,” Kim said. She reached over and patted Katy on the shoulder.

  Katy made a show of finishing her food. “All gone,” she said, putting down her spoon. “Can I be ‘scused? I wanna play with Connor. He’s got a new video game.”

  “Yes, but carry your plate into the kitchen,” replied Kim. “And brush your teeth!”

  Katy picked up her plate and skipped to the kitchen. Moments later they heard the door to the house open and shut.

  “I worry about her,” said Kim.

  “You’re her mom, of course you do,” replied Peter.

  “I thought she’d be more broken up about her pet chicken. She seems fine though.”

  “Don’t encourage it,” said Peter. “They’re just an agricultural project. Even if Katy doesn’t think so.”

  #

  The present. Peter pulled Katy down the street, yanking her by her arm. In the distance an alarm blared. “Come on, they said go home. Shelter in place.”

  In a few minutes they arrived at their home. They both went inside. Peter pressed a button to lock the door. Kim rushed in from the other room and gave Katy a hug, picking her up as she did so. “You’re safe! Oh thank god.”

  “I didn’t want to take time calling,” said Peter. “The orders were pretty clear anyway.”

  He crossed the living room and dropped onto the couch. “What a nightmare. We don’t know anything about this...this giant chicken out of nowhere! It’s like it should have come out of an agricultural experiment, or-” Peter looked at his wife. “Did this thing come out of your tanks? An attempt to build up a food source?”

  “Us? Please,” said Kim. “You can’t be serious.” She stared at Peter into the dead silence that filled the room. “You can’t be serious!” Peter just exhaled, making a whooshing sound.

  “Besides,” said his wife, “this looks more like something from your labs. Don’t you use chicken DNA in your experiments?”

  “Sure, some, plus a lot of others. Gene regression is a nice theory, but making it work takes a lot of different sources. I mean, we WANT a dinosaur, but haven’t gotten near one yet.” Peter leaned forward, placing his head in his hands.

  A moment later he looked up, a bright look in his eye. “Say, Katy, you kept saying you could help. Do you know something? See something while you were climbing buildings all over this colony like you’re not supposed to be doing?”

  “Ummmmm….” Katy trailed off.

  “You DO know something! Out with it,” said Peter.

  “The stuff in your lab...I might have tried to help Hestia with it,” she replied.

  “Hestia? Oh, your chicken. Your chicken!” Peter’s eyes widened. He spoke slowly. “Honey, what did you take?”

  “The growy stuff,” she replied. “It’s just, Hestia was so small, and her leg hurt, and the other chickens picked on her all the time. I just wanted her to be able to stick up for herself.”

  “How...MUCH of the ‘growy stuff’ did you give her?” Peter asked.

  “Well, you had a jug of it, so I took a test tube and filled it. Didn’t look like you were going to miss it. I, um, put it in her water.”

  “All of it?” Peter’s eyes widened and he stopped blinking.

  “Uh huh,” said Katy.

  “I think I know where that big bag of bad grain went,” said Kim, giving Katy a stern look.

  “She was hungry, Mom! And it was just out there,” Katy responded. “Nobody was using it or anything.”

  Peter took out his phone and dialed. Two rings later Smita answered. “Peter! Is your family okay? And why are you calling?”

  “Can you make it over? I think we need to talk,” said Peter.

  “Possibly, but with the
emergency, is that a good idea?” Smita asked.

  “It’s about the emergency,” Peter responded. “It would be better to hear this in person.”

  Moments later Smita arrived at their door. She made a peremptory knock, then walked right in. With a quick glance she took in the family scenario, then sat in a chair near the couch.

  “I think I know what happened to the growth factor,” said Peter. He explained quickly.

  “But that would be enough to kill an animal,” said Smita.

  “Are you sure? Because it sure sounds like theory is not fitting the test,” said Peter.

  “Quite a test,” said Smita. “I can imagine the report I’ll have to give. ‘Oh, nothing serious, just a rampaging giant chicken that’s capable of pecking out our dome.’ And that’s just here, I’ll also need to explain to the Board.”

  “Don’t hurt her!” Katy stamped her foot. “She’s just confused!”

  “We need to work on a ‘capture or kill’ scenario,” said Smita. She looked at Peter, as if she had not heard Katy’s outburst.

  Katy slipped off her seat and made her way to the kitchen. The adults barely registered her absence and kept talking.

  “If we can lure it to the center of the colony, we might be able to trap it in the gardens. Use nets,” said Peter.

  Smita chimed in next. “And if we can’t, the military can set up snipers on buildings at one end. Shooting down, they won’t risk the dome.”

  “So we would have to-hold on,” said Peter. A soft click barely registered among the adults talking. “Where’s Katy?” He looked around wildly. “Katy? KATY!”

  “I think she’s gone after her chicken,” said Kim. She was already halfway to the door.

  “Oh god!” Peter exclaimed, running after her. He stopped and looked back at Smita. “You are welcome to stay here.”

  “Not a chance,” said Smita. “I’m coming too!”

  #

  As all three exited the building, Peter called out. “Katy! Katy!” Kim joined in as well, but there was no response.

  In the distance a faint noise could be heard. “Cluck CLUCK! Buck buck Buckaw!” The sound of rending metal followed.