“Were the riots bad in Amazonia?”
“I wouldn’t know. As soon as I saw that morning's news, I made a dash for the airport. I wanted to get back to the States as soon as possible.”
“Why is that?” James said, with furrowed brows.
Crossing his legs and leaning back in his chair, Assad waved around the room.
“So I could try and get in here!”
Reaching for his cup of coffee, James picked it up, then realized it was empty and quickly set it back down.
“So you want to go then? To Mars I mean.”
Laughing, Assad looked surprised.
“Yes of course! Who wouldn’t?”
“Well,” said James, with a chuckle. “Three of the five people I’ve interviewed so far haven’t been interested.”
“Why?”
Tipping his chair back, James looked at the ceiling.
“Space is a pretty dangerous place, Mr. Assad—”
“Please,” interrupted the young man. “Call me Harrison.”
“Okay, Harrison. Space is dangerous, and there are a lot of things that can go wrong. We here at NASA plan our missions out to the last decimal, but no matter how much we plan, no matter how careful we are, there are always unknowns.”
Pausing for effect, James fixed Harrison with lingering stare, then went on,
“Meteoroids traveling at speeds in excess of 70,000 miles per hour could cut through the ship like it was warm butter. Solar flares bigger than the entire planet Earth could bathe the ship in enough radiation to pop the crew like kernels of corn. That same radiation in smaller doses could cause numerous cellular mutations, which might result in deadly cancers. These are just a few of a hundred potential unknowns, and they only pertain to the trip out. Once you get to Mars, there will be more obstacles to overcome than I care to list right now. You see where I’m coming from here, don’t you?”
Unfazed, Harrison smiled wider.
“I see, but I don’t think you’re painting the whole picture.”
Arching his eyebrows, James cocked his head to the side.
“Yes,” said the young man. “You’re trying to see if I’ll tuck my tail between my legs, like those others, and run back to the safety of my academic life. Or maybe worse, puff my chest up like some soldier and tell you I’m not afraid to die. I think you’re looking for someone in between all of that. Now, I know it’s not public information yet, but do you already have the rest of your team chosen?”
James nodded, and Harrison went on confidently.
“Okay, well I’d bet my right arm your crew wasn’t constructed based off of how fearless they were. This mission is as much about technical expertise as it is about bravery. It’s going to take dedicated, knowledgeable people to establish this colony. Not soldiers. Not mercenaries. But scientists and engineers. You need smart, tough people who you can rely on. People like me. I can help, Dr. Floyd. I am that person. I have numerous technical accreditations in applicable fields, and, if you give me ten more weeks, I’ll have my Ph.D. You’ve seen my body of work. You know I’m serious. Tell me, what must I do to win that seat on your crew? Do I have to be fearless? Or do I have to be smart? I think it’s both.”
James was silent for a moment. He enjoyed this young man’s spirit and the way he had seen right to the core of the issue.
“Copernicus,” he spoke evenly. “Do you have anything you want to ask Mr. Assad?”
Almost immediately, the AI responded.
“He prefers that we call him Harrison, James, and yes I do have a question for him.”
Only slightly surprised by the voice of Copernicus, Harrison grinned.
“Ask away.”
“Harrison,” started Copernicus. “In your opinion, what is the optimal outcome of studying these ruins? What do you hope to discover?”
Nodding slowly, the young Egyptian seemed to mull the question over.
“Well, Copernicus,” he said. “The investigation into any ruin, whether it is here on Earth or on Mars, is always driven by the desire to understand that which is forgotten or lost. There is no such thing as discovering the meaning of a ruin, or the motives of its creators. There is only the hope of recovering those meanings.”
Becoming excited, Harrison leaned forwards in his chair and began to talk faster.
“To me, the ruins on Mars prove a point my father has been subtly drilling into my head ever since I can remember. Time and history are not exclusive to Earth. We, as humans, must recognize that before us, there was life elsewhere, and with that life there was history. All history is important because all history is part of the same story. My optimal outcome would be to recover a lost chapter in the history of our solar system. A chapter that very likely predates the existence of human beings.”
Pausing to take a breath, Harrison smiled sheepishly.
“Does that answer your question, Copernicus?”
“Yes, you wish to write this chapter, as you call it, in the hopes of proving that recorded history is older than mankind.”
As if looking for the source of the AI’s voice, Harrison glanced about the room.
“The Martians already wrote the chapter,” he said gravely. “I just want to translate it into terms we humans can understand.”
“That is what I want as well,” replied Copernicus warmly.
As James and Harrison continued the interview, Copernicus watched with growing admiration and respect for the young man. He could tell that even though James was acting the part of a stern project commander, he was just as pleased with Harrison as Copernicus was.
Now, thought the AI, all we must do is prepare him for a task so difficult that even I find it intimidating. It is the reckless curiosity of mankind that will be its saving grace, he told himself. I only wish I could be there to watch it happen.
Viviana’s garden—October 2047
On the Moon, Viviana Calise awoke in her bedroom in the crew quarters of Bessel Base. Yawning, she checked the time strip on the wall, which read 4:00 AM. With the grace of a ballerina, she leaped down from her hammock and sank to the floor in the low lunar gravity. Taking up her long brown hair, she neatly wound it into a bun, then secured it with two ornately-decorated chopsticks. As she washed her face at the little sink in the corner of the room, she touched the delicate crow’s feet that had started to form at the corners of her green eyes. Pursing her lips in frustration, she blinked widely and opened her eyes as much as she could. The crow’s feet faded a little, but still they remained. Cursing in Italian, Viviana stripped out of her warm gray pajamas and padded barefoot and naked across the cold metal floor to the nearby storage closet. Inside she found a fresh blue jumpsuit and a pair of soft soled boots. Standing in the long mirror, which hung from the door of her closet, she zipped the jumpsuit up to just above her breasts.
At least time hasn't tried to rob you of me yet, she smiled to herself as she admired her voluptuous figure in the mirror. This lunar gravity is a Godsend.
Stepping out of her room and into the crew-quarters hallway, Viviana was struck again by the sheer size of the dome in which she and the rest of the crew now resided. Far above, the ceiling was lost to darkness as the last few rows of lights remained dimmed in the early morning environment. She was reminded of the same sense of awe she had felt when standing in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican: an experience she, as a Roman, was ashamed to admit she had only had twice. The dome of Bessel Base had the same powerful ambition that many of Rome’s ancient churches were founded on: an ambition to defy simplicity and modesty. Even now, after the dome’s completion, there were talks of adding walkways above to utilize more space and create more workstations.
Walking quietly down the hallway of the crew quarters, Viviana soon reached the door to her lab. As she pressed a finger to the touchpad mounted on the wall, the door slid open with a subtle hiss. Instantly, she was greeted with the damp and familiarly comforting smell of thriving, growing life. Her lab was filled with trays of vegetables and fruits maturing happ
ily under UV lights mere feet from the sub-freezing surface of the Moon outside. As she walked past a bank of tomatoes growing in a jellylike maroon substance, she bent her head and smelled one of the ripe red fruit.
Smells like a tomato, she thought. I’ll wait and see how it tastes before I check that one off my list though.
In these months leading up to their historic departure for Mars, it was Viviana’s responsibility to work out as many of the bugs as she could for the farming of genetically modified plant life in space. So far, she had been successful in growing every variety of seed given to her. It was the taste of some of the vegetables and fruits that bothered her. Genetic modification had enabled these plants to grow in this extreme situation, but it had robbed them of much of their natural flavor in the process.
Turning from the tomatoes, Viviana headed towards the back of the lab. There, under the yellow glow of warm lights, grew a tray of bamboo shoots less than ten centimeters long. Smiling, Viviana crouched down to peer at the little stalks.
“Buona mattina, mi amore,” she said with love.
At one week old, the bamboo was already growing quickly. Checking her watch unnecessarily, she knew that there were still two more months until they would have to board Braun and start their incredible journey. With an uncomfortable shudder, she put the thought out of her mind and returned her attention to the bamboo.
“Grow up big and strong,” she whispered to the short stalks, touching their leaves with the tips of her fingers.
Turning to a desk on her right, she picked up a thin black rod with a shiny metal needle protruding from one end. Poking the needle into the firm brown jelly from which the bamboo grew, she hummed softly to herself and waited for the tool to finish its reading. A green light on the butt of the instrument lit up, and Viviana pulled it free of the jelly. Taking her Tablet from a cargo pocket on her jumpsuit, she set the two devices next to one another on the table. When the information from her reader tool had transferred to her Tablet, she looked over the nutritional levels of the jelly with satisfaction.
“Not too much, not too little,” she cooed to the bamboo. “You’re going to be very popular on our long trip.”
The jelly in which all of her plants grew was a combination of genetically modified agar, or seaweed gelatin, and processed human feces. Any method devised for growing plants so far from an available soil source required rethinking how one must grow a plant at all, so Viviana, along with other colleagues on Earth, had invented a two-part system for utilizing human waste as a fertilizer. The first part to her plan involved feeding the crew supplements and foods infused with vitamins and minerals non-essential to human function. These additives would pass through the digestive system intact and fuse with waste, making it higher in plant-friendly nutrients. The second step in her process was the simple task of breaking down and filtering out the useless or harmful byproducts of waste. This was achieved easily enough because all members of the crew were on strictly-regimented, vitamin-rich diets.
Once the waste was processed, it was combined with the genetically modified agar gelatin, then allowed to solidify into a consistency similar to that of a hard-boiled egg. By checking the jelly regularly with the needled reader tool, one could tell if more water or fertilizer was needed. To add one or the other, an injection directly into the jelly with a standard hypodermic needle did the trick nicely. Once the injection was made, the modified agar gelatin absorbed and distributed the new material via rapid osmosis. Though completely safe, people usually needed to be walked through the entire process so that the idea of eating something grown in their own waste became a little less terrifying.
Now standing at her lab, Viviana smiled.
Once we get there, she thought to herself, eating tomatoes grown in shit will be the least of our worries.
Feeling the icy presence of fear worm its way into her mind, she tried not to visualize the many photos she had seen of the surface of Mars. The eerie likeness of those red deserts to the landscapes of Earth bothered her. Like looking into the future. Like looking at a vision of your own face, shriveled and rotten, long after you were dead. Mars, to her, looked like a wrecked and decayed Earth, its people burned to dust—their spirits hungry and forgotten. The discovery of the ruins only served to strengthen the comparison, and even though she was excited to go, there was a voice in her head that would not allow her the full joy of adventure.
There is too much that could go wrong, it warned. Too much left in the hands of technology.
“Copernicus?” Viviana said to the air, trying to silence the insidious voice.
“Yes, Dr. Calise?” answered the AI.
Facing her wall screen, she instructed, “Please display the live feed from the HEO Shipyard.”
“As you wish.”
The wall screen lit up and quickly produced an awe-inspiring sight. Hurtling through high Earth orbit at over 27,000 kilometers an hour, Braun hung in the scaffolding of the Shipyard like a great white whale inside a cage made of toothpicks. Only fully completed a week before, the ship was a testament to mankind's feverish ambition. As she watched the image, Viviana saw small figures encased in bulky pressure suits crawling over the brilliant, white ceramic surface of the vessel. These courageous men and women worked around the clock to test and troubleshoot the many systems and functions of the mighty Braun. Thankful for the peace of mind that their tireless efforts brought her, Viviana muttered a prayer for them under her breath.
“Voi tutti santi Angeli e Arcangeli aiutare e difendere noi. All ye holy Angels and Archangels help and defend us. Amen.”
Two months. She thought with shuddering apprehension. Two months and we’ll all be at the mercy of the heavens. Then, stopping herself, she frowned. No, not the heavens. We’ll be at the mercy of Braun, a machine.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The hamster wheel—January 2048
Beads of hot sweat dripped from the brow of Mission Commander and Ship’s Captain Tatyana Vodevski. Per her daily ritual, she had awakened before the rest of the crew and was now taking her morning jog in the hamster wheel. The centrifugal force generated by the revolutions of the belted floor allowed Tatyana to jog in place while the rest of the ship was at the chaotic whim of zero gravity.
Bringing the back of her forearm across her brow, she puffed with exertion and called out,
“Braun!”
“Yes, Captain?”
“What are you spinning at now?”
“I am spinning at one-half of Earth’s gravity.”
“Give me a full G!”
There was a brief pause, then Tatyana felt the floor beneath her feet begin to accelerate against her. Noticing that she was moving backwards slightly, she pumped her legs harder and focused on the rhythmic sound of her feet striking the surface of the floor.
The gravity simulation exercise facility, or the hamster wheel as the crew called it, was as its nickname might suggest: a large wheel-shaped room, which spun fast enough to simulate gravity through centrifugal force. Three meters tall by one-and-a-half across, with an access hatch at the axis of the wheel, the room was stark white and as well-lighted as an operating room. By directing Braun, the centrifugal force could be increased or decreased to simulate nearly any level of gravity, yet there was a prescribed program that the crew was expected to follow. Mandated by Dr. Kubba, the program instructed that they start the force of the wheel at Earth’s one G, then slowly decrease the force to Mars’s one-third G as they drew nearer to the red planet.
Even though they had been in transit to Mars for nearly two months, Tatyana disregarded the instructions to decrease the centrifugal force of the hamster wheel. To her, the need to grow accustomed to Mars’s lower gravity was diminished, for she was not slated to stay on the planet for any real length of time. Her duties as Mission Commander were to be carried out primarily from orbit aboard Braun. Granted, there would be cases where she would need to make the trip to the surface, but, to her, the real work was in maintaining the strict sch
edule put forth by the mission designers.
As per her duties, she was the only person on the crew who fully understood the requirements and separate tasks of every other member of her staff. Much of her training had been spent not preparing for the hardships of space travel, for she was already a professional cosmonaut, but rather deep in study. To her, the mission was like a traditional Swiss watch: all of the individual moving parts interlocking, driving one another and working together in order to achieve singular perfection. It was for this reason that she did not lament being ship-bound for the majority of the mission. She was a woman of duty. For her, making personal sacrifices came as easily as breathing.
Born in Russia in 2007, Tatyana Vodevski was used to swallowing her feelings. In the year of her birth, instances of electoral fraud within Russia’s Kremlin started the country on a brief, but costly, backwards slide into isolationism and corruption. By the time she was twelve, Russia was in the grip of the worst famine the country had experienced since the reign of Joseph Stalin. Her father, a high-ranking military official, had been able to secure his family with enough to eat, but young Tatyana had watched as the rest of her countrymen suffered the freezing Moscow winters with little or no food. The cause of the famine was linked mostly to a decade of poor geopolitical maneuvers made by Russia’s corrupted Kremlin. These unpopular and often hostile interactions had served to ostracize Russia from the global community for nearly eight years. Many of Russia’s own crops were destroyed annually by drought, which fueled the frequent occurrence of summer wildfires, a phenomenon attributed to global warming.
Even the notoriously harsh Russian winters became more aggressive under the rapid acceleration of climate change. Where once there were four seasons—spring, summer, fall and winter—now the people of Russia knew only two: extreme drought or extreme cold. By the end of the Eight Year Exile, as it was known in Russia, regular citizens had suffered huge losses to disease and starvation. Watching this as a child, Tatyana had vowed to keep her own feelings of desire and longing hidden away. She had been lucky and would spend the rest of her life ensuring that the people around her benefited from her presence. In that way, she could justify her own survival through the Eight Year Exile. If she was useful to the world, then she deserved the life her father’s political power had purchased.
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