by Caldon Mull
“Cold starts to a grid can take years to spin up.” Esteban gasped as the last of the gel cleared his lungs and he could breath again. He set the pump to ‘aerate’ and left the compressor to recharge the fluid.
“Exactly, like this it can be load-sharing within hours.” Pele moved to the sections console and began setting environmental conditions while the Doctor stepped out of her SCABU suit and draped it in a hangar-pod. “It’s still valuable for additional terraforming initiatives in the collection of resources. The Crater wall here in Argyre is also a fossil crustal fault, where the magma plume is very close to the surface, but I can’t confirm this part from the logs.”
“This is all stock-standard 22nd Century no-frills military.” The Doctor stood in a cabin doorway. “Esteban, you’re going to have to lay three of these mattresses on the floor in here. It looks like the sleeping pods top out at two meters.”
Esteban glared into the cabin she was looking at, “I wouldn’t like to live here. I suppose my only real choice is if I want to sleep with my head next to the shitter, or my feet.”
“I think that was the biggest problem with the subterranean habitats here and on Luna and Ceres. You can’t really have a civilian population thriving in it. Also, you have about ten kilometers of tunnels and that’s it… there is a diminishing return on efficiency after that for ventilation, reticulation and circulation. They fill up very quickly and there’s no-where else to go. These are Officer’s quarters nearest the command center, the troop dormitories below are quite grim.”
“The air smells… odd.” Esteban sniffed, “Is the drinking water chlorinated?”
“It must be rock minerals and salts from the water dock.” Pele tweaked the environmental consoles, “I’ll also increase the CO2 scrubber’s power supplies, it should clear up in a few hours. There are ration-packs in the mess… not as much as there should be, now that I’m looking at the local inventory. Someone else has been here since the last stock count. It’s down about fifteen portions from the last count about three weeks ago. That’s about thirty five meals in total since I’ve noticed this first…”
“Martian salts are not the chlorides like on earth, they’re perchlorates. They’re almost entirely perchlorates... which are toxic to humans.” Esteban looked over to the Doctor. “If we’re going diving and the salts are a calcium perchlorate, which they usually are, we’re going to need to increase our Iodine intake.”
“I’m a medical Doctor.” The Doctor sniffed dismissively, “Any external activity would require Iodine in substantial quantities. I have anticipated this already. Are there medical facilities near the water dock? If there were military here, I assume they would have appropriate sickbays near appropriate hazard sites.”
Pele nodded, “Yes, a pressure sphere and a small ICU facility with triage supplies right near the moon pool.”
“Can I get a diagnosis table set up in the space?” she looked at the mobile med-mech and squinted at Pele.
“Ah, nope... they didn’t have that tech then and they didn’t have patients the size of our boy here.” Pele shrugged.
“Great, just great.” The Doctor muttered, “I’ll have to lay it out here in the common room. What about data facilities in the complex?”
“They’re mostly Utilitymind Type-1.5 and Type-2 by our current standards, I’m a Starmind Type-4 that’s why I’m here. If you need more ‘flops then I’ll just veep to my Core.”
Pele pointed to data points in the cavern walls, “There’s enough communication throughput here, just not terribly complex processors. You had hundreds of horny marines spanking off with their Earth partners when the planets were aligned for broadcast. You needed the throughput if you didn’t want a mutiny.”
“I guess that will have to do.” she sighed. “I’ll set up here then for the high-tech stuff and use the facilities as needed. You go on so long while I sort this out.”
“We’re closest to the Dock in this section, I’ll take you to it, follow me.” Pele beckoned to Esteban.
They left the section and walked a short distance to an elevator, one which had a single destination button.
“That’s simple enough, I suppose.” Esteban pressed the button, “Directly from home to work. If only the Arcology were designed like that. Those are real warrens by comparison.”
“The advantage of only spending exactly as much effort on what is required.” Pele leaned against a wall. “Get comfortable, it’s quite a trip.”
Esteban discovered he wasn’t exaggerating. The speed of the elevator did not seem excessive, but the drop lasted too long for his liking. “How far down is this thing?” he grumbled to Pele.
“About two clicks.” Pele didn’t seem too perturbed.
When the elevator did finally arrive at the destination, Esteban was actually relieved to get out and stretch his legs. While not exactly claustrophobic, he definitely preferred open spaces above and below him.
The Dock was constructed and sealed away from the lake surface like a blister perched obliquely into a natural cavern space. The tunnel from the elevator lead to a large chamber, with a thick glass wall distinctly separating a dry-dock area from a wet-dock area. Glass cubicles with airlocks further separated the two staging platforms.
“It’s all yours.” Pele waved a hand at the expanse, “Tell me what you need and I’ll look up the inventory for the area.”
“I’ll need a charge point in the dry area for the gel-pump, I’ll need a DPV, a propulsion unit if I’m to cover any ground.” Esteban looked around, there was a suitable area next to what was obviously the infirmary.
“There’s charge sheds over there.” Pele gestured, “They’re listed as DPV in the complex asset list. I’m not sure if they’ve ever been used. They might have collected stuff without having the chance or the focus to use it.”
Esteban snorted, “It wasn’t common knowledge about how many planets and moons in the Solar System had sub-surface Oceans, or even that Earth has one. They must have only considered this feature as ‘component resources’. What’s the water like, do you have a chemical composite?”
“It’s pure brine. Some of the earliest samples show it to be salt-corrosive, the primary solute is calcium perchlorate as you suspected.” Pele blinked as he sped through his internal browser,
“I’ve got no chance if I fall in. This clocks’ tin and zinc circuitry won’t last more than a few minutes. My aluminum frame will start oxidizing faster than you can spit. I’d keep the Doctor away from the wet-dock without a SCABU suit if I were you. This stuff also scalds skin.”
“Not mine. I just have to make sure I’ve rinsed in a softener before coming through to the dry-dock. The DPV as well.”
“The surface temperature is around six degrees Celsius. I’m not sure on any temperature gradients or inversion layers, it doesn’t seem there is any survey information on it.” Pele grumbled.
“I can handle all that, I’m mostly graphene and some chrome. My skin is organically inert and I can breathe indefinitely through it when submerged. The temperature is a bit of an issue, I can handle up to minus twenty for indefinite periods. I can’t handle extreme super cooled water for very long, and there may be layers of it sandwiched under inversion layers, or near dry ice. That shit sticks around minus eighty, and I only have minutes before I’d flash-freeze. I will have to use all the gel for my lungs as a pressure counter-measure to fill all the air-void spaces in my body with liquid if I’m going below three klicks.”
“I suppose it’s backup oxygen as well, you may as well.”
“I can seal all my systems and just use the face-mask. Is there industrial softener-soap for the rinse-showers in your inventory?”
“Yes, they’re logged as full.”
“Pele, you’re the one who has to stay away from the wet dock at all costs.” Esteban looked out at the dark, flat water lapping at the moon pool in the other room. “At all costs.” he repeated.
“I know. That’s why you’re here.”
“Don’t get too cocky, Esteban. You don’t know what’s in there,” Pele’s head turned to the Bay door, “or what you’ll find behind there… or what someone has been doing…”
Esteban tried to quell his excitement, “I think we should eat, get some sleep and start early.” He was made for this, his first real chance to do something important.
“Agreed.” the clock sauntered back to the elevator, “At least you two should.”
#
“Is everyone in place?” Esteban set the facemask on and broadcast on is narrow band. He set a weight on a long cable with a signal repeater and fed it down the moon pool.
“Yes, we got you.” The Doctor’s voice came through crystal-clear.
“I’m sealed and going in.” Esteban splashed into the pool. “I’ll do a pass to get the extent and run my sonar on the passes.”
“I’ll keep the feeds monitored and the recording from your sensors.” Pele buzzed him.
Esteban activated the DPV’s strapped to his wrists and sailed into the pitch-dark water. “Fuck this place is big… kilometers wide and at least two deep in most parts.” Esteban was literally in his element. He dared not admit this to the Starmind, in case he found more tasks to add to the pot, but Esteban was thrilled to have a chance to do what he was doing now.
He found an inversion layer under about thirty meters that averaged out at twelve degrees and stayed in it. “All conditions nominal” he reported gleefully, at this depth and temperature he could stay submersed for days.
The Doctor confirmed the water was biologically sterile, at least so far. Esteban opened the throttles on his DPV’s and coasted on full sonar, just getting a sense of his environment.
“There’re some shapes on a rock shelf under the moon pool about three hundred meters down that don’t sound geological, I’ll go back and have a look after I probe the edge of my coms range.”
Esteban used the signal repeater as a beacon. “The water’s inversion layers are quite complex, like... a phyllo pastry. There’s another warm band at ten degrees one hundred fifty meters below this one, I’ll move to that one and scout the lake.”
“Noted.” Pele sounded bored.
#
Esteban realized his sense of time had dilated, zigzagging back and forth on full throttle, his sonar cranked up to full, engaging his heat transfer on entering a band of minus three-degree water at four hundred meters; doing a barrel roll around a huge stalactite.
He re-focused and took measure of all of his readings, cruising along and returning to the uppermost warm band, “The lake is shaped a bit like a truncated cone from what my sonar tells me, about seven kilometers wide, maybe about double that where it rests on the mantle, with irregular sides. It might be about forty degrees Celsius down there against the rock, if I would judge from experience of these temperature gradients. It is deep, though… maybe about three kilometers if I figure right. There really isn’t much circulation, zero current. It’s a completely fossil environment.”
“Probably liquefied during the Later Heavy Bombardment and capped by the rock that made the Argyre.” Pele speculated. “We have ices above us on the planita, and permafrost for about a klick below the surface, then another click down we have a sealed, fractured and plugged liquid remnant environment. For billions of years there may have been a sea or a glacier above us, completely sealed off from this lake. The Argyre is Mediterranean size at it’s biggest extent. Fascinating.”
“Your core body temperature has dropped by two degrees going through those cold layers.” The Doctor informed him. “But it’s stable at this point.”
“That’s good to hear. It means I have at least another seven hours of bottom time at worst in the cold level. I’m going back to those regular anomalies under the moon pool now. Those reflection readings I picked might be some kind of ore back about an hour on my feeds. It’s very dense and reflective to my sonar. Pele, would you check that for me?” Esteban oriented himself cut the speed to half throttle and angled down.
“I’m on it, I’ll run the pattern through an XRF spectrometer. My core might have something back in Cadiz.”
“I’m picking up organic particulates… They’re inert, and they’re very faint.” The Doctor announced.
“I’m running through some inversion layers on my way down. It’s about four degrees on the shelf, just let me narrow my sonar…” Esteban slowed his DPV’s to float above the shapes, “Juipucha? There are five of them… Its weighted sacks… it sounds like there’s something inside the sacks… two arms, two legs a head… they’re… human…”
“Esteban, switch on your lights so we can have a look at them.” The Doctor prompted, “I can’t get a sense of this from your sonic pulses.”
Esteban flipped his lamps on in the stygian water and tugged at one of the containers, “Guacala!… It’s a body, they all are. It’s been pickled in the brine.” Esteban started at the dead face staring at him out of the sack, dreadfully.
“Open them all, send me the images to identify. Can you bring one up with you?” The Doctor sounded thoughtful.
“They’re weighted, but I suppose I can slip one off of the tether.” Esteban tugged at the flaps and imaged the pale faces hidden behind the fabric. Once he had exposed all five, he switched off his lamp. He could ‘see’ perfectly well with his sonar, and he would rather not deal with the corpse ‘looking’ back at him. In the darkness... it was just a thing.
“Come on up, let’s examine the body and see what we’re dealing with.” Pele made the call.
“I’m on my way.” Esteban unhooked the sack and started for the moon-pool. “What are these guys doing here?”
#
“What are we dealing with?” Esteban stepped from the rinse cycle and threw on a whicking robe and moved into the infirmary where the Doctor was hovering over the corpse he had brought up, dried and put on a dolly for her.
“I’ve run identification on the images you fed to us, they’re all Genetically Engineered Numan Lineages. Specifically two GEN9’s, a GEN16, a GEN13 and a GEN6. Four males, one female GEN9. As individuals, there is no real way of identifying them unless you retract their personality chits undamaged... which they are not.” she sighed.
“So you’re looking at the clone or synthetic Arcology “OutSystems” as opposed to our national “InSystems” Arcology culture.” Esteban peered at the corpse, curly thick hair, pleasantly regular features, strong jaw, good muscle.
He could have been any physical age from four months to seventy years old. Most GEN’s appeared as young adults irrespective of having just been tanked or at the end of their life-cycle. It had a sunken appearance as the brine had leeched out the body’s moisture and a dark mottled scorch mark in the middle of the chest. “Is that the cause of death?”
“Looks like it, pretty much. Electrocution with a massive amperage.” she retracted her observation lens. “The sort of injury you’d find on a space ship, where you wouldn’t use projectiles or energy weapons.”
Esteban was puzzled, “Most of the OutSystems Arcology culture is still based on Earth, isn’t it? What are they doing here… I really mean here, at the dark bottom of a Martian subterranean lake?”
“How did they die?” Pele interrupted, stepping through into the infirmary.
“This one has been electrocuted, center mass with a high-amperage slow-slug or prod.” she repeated for him, “They still have their personality chits, though… Normally the chips are extracted and re-inserted into the knowledge base, but the amperage used to kill them has also scrambled the data on them.”
“So somebody waxed them and dumped them, not knowing enough to extract the chips or destroy them, maybe not aware they have them?”
“Uhhh, not quite. They’ve been scanned and superficially copied before they’ve been killed, I can see a broken time-stamp from Ceres in 2224. Who-ever
did this wanted these guys far, far away. It looks like they might have died about the same time, with the same weapon. I can only confirm that if I get the others to examine. Microscopic forensics on the images indicate the GEN6 was the last killed, by maybe ten minutes. Once they went into the brine they’d all have the decay rates suspended at that point.”
“Charge weapons run down if used consecutively on that cycle. Maybe there are some broken data packets on the GEN6 that I might be able to retrieve.” Pele rubbed his lips, thoughtfully. “Esteban, when can you go and bring the others up? You look like you’re out of the water for today.”
“I have to de-gas. My cycle should scrub the Nitrogen over the next six hours.” Esteban shrugged off the robe. “I can go down again after that.”
“Maybe they got careless with the last one. It’s a long shot. Enough to kill him but not enough to scramble his chits completely.”
Esteban shook his head, puzzled “Wouldn’t anyone notice if they went missing…?”
Pele shrugged, “I don’t know too much about OutSystems society, but if they are mostly interchangeable; then fake credentials, edited personalities, how would you tell…? Superficially the idea is that the members of the society are interchangeable, that the GEN lineages are virtually indistinguishable with each other in OutSystems society. That individuality is less important than societal harmony.”
“The medical records indicate that Haroun and Voster created the GEN society to preserve human genetic diversity. So specific recombinant lineages stayed available to the human species. I think the idea was the Sino-6 Inuit cold adaptations, or the Nordic-16 immune systems adaptation wouldn’t wash out under environmental pressure and unselective breeding. That distillation of these lineages would be available to enhance the human species... considering how the population numbers of our species have been plummeting.” The Doctor draped a sheet over the cadaver. “Human Standard InSystems are augmenting themselves individually to survive, but they intended OutSystems as a buffer against speciation in the long-term to survive.”