“It sounds like it,” she said.
My Link bleeped suddenly. I looked down at it, turning the wide, colorful screen to my face. “He did it. I can’t believe he did it,” I said, glancing quickly at Mei then back at my Link. Mr. Tanaka had come through—broadcasting the message on the emergency channel.
The program was on auto-play. I stopped to view it, looking around momentarily to see if others were receiving the message. Mei had stopped and was staring at her own Link, as were many of the other wayfarers in the station. They paused in their tracks, staring down at their Links, transfixed. Emergency broadcasts weren’t very common. When one came, you listened. It might be a warning about an abnormally huge dust storm, or a cascade of meteorites that broke through the artificial shields protecting Mars. Your life might depend on paying attention to the messages.
“One of the great and most secretive discoveries on Mars was the casket,” said Hemingway’s voice, coming from the speaker on my Link. “In it was the first perfectly engineered artificial intelligence, or as they are now known, Android.”
A thrill jolted through me. This was the holo-documentary Hemingway made. It was playing for every Martian citizen that had a Link or Gate, if they were logged into their profiles.
I watched as the creation of an android began onscreen. The footage came from Sonja’s personal database. “Prior to this,” Hemingway went on, “we had developed robots that were much more rudimentary. There were elements we had not perfected. Muscles. Skin. The heart. An energy mechanism and waste system. Things on a cellular level. The truly complicated aspects of artificial life.”
The android bones were put together—an intricate, hollow, lightweight-metal skeletal system. “We don’t know where the casket came from. Its inhabitant woke and lived for twenty-seven hours. He assimilated our language quickly and began to speak to us. He told us how to organize intelligence. The following is a transcription of what he said: ‘There is a kind of light that does not burn. The sun in our sky is a poor substitute for this light. All life begins as an intelligence. Another word for this is soul.’”
Hemingway narrated, speaking in an otherworldly type of voice. The voice of the first android.
“‘Light gathers to light. The darkness flees before the light. The opposite of knowledge is ignorance. Darkness is ignorance. Knowledge is light. Intelligence is pure light. In another sphere, beings of light illuminate all things. Knowledge is laid out before these beings—transparent and perfectly understood by the mind of light. Nothing can hide from a mind of light.’”
I didn’t know what it meant. It sounded like gibberish. Crazy gibberish. The rantings of a madman. For some reason, though, it was making me cry. Hemingway’s voice coming through my Link made the ache in my chest sharper.
I stared at the images, transfixed. This was the first time I was seeing them. I’d never gotten the chance before he was taken. Before everything else had happened.
Mei glanced at me, “The document, Retta?” she asked. I nodded. She went on, her questions assertive as though she wasn’t sure what to believe, “The one from Synlife, that you said was just a lot of crap? So what, you think it’s true, then?”
“I think so. Hemingway’s mother didn’t refute it. I mean, it might be—” I hesitated, taking a deep breath, “I think it might be true. That they were here, before us, totally different from the robots humans had created.”
“Wow.” She looked back at her own Link, staring, entranced just like everyone else in the station appeared to be. I heard a mother hushing a young child, saying, “Just a minute, mommy’s watching an important message.” The document came from Synlife. The document I dismissed as pure nonsense in favor of the more concrete facts, like that they were going to send the blue hearts away. It was true, then, and it was only because of Mei’s random decision to send it to me that I even had it. Sonja confirmed that she believed it was true when I came up with the idea for the holo-film—when I really pinned her down, she spelled it out—Synlife hid the casket, eager to keep the secrets to themselves, to develop the technology that made the androids so alive, so real, so capable.
Sinuous, red muscle grew along the limbs of the android in the holo-film. Organs filled the torso cavity—a liver of sorts, something that was maybe a gallbladder or the like, and a red heart. A red, red heart. I hoped everyone paid special attention to that. The process looked painstaking. It was portrayed in time-lapse. Sometimes I caught glimpses of Sonja as she built this android—her hair was shorter, her face brighter and hopeful, more youthful.
“‘A child is born,’” Hemingway went on, still reading the words of the first android. “‘The child is pure and undefiled. Its mind is blank. It begins to assimilate information. It moves out of pure innocence into various states of enlightenment.’”
“‘This is how to organize intelligence. Place a piece of darkness—a particle of dark matter—in a chamber of artificial light. The light rushes to the darkness and adheres to it until it becomes a sphere of light. Place the sphere between the lips of the synthetic life form. Place your own mouth upon the mouth of the synthetic life form and breathe into it. The sphere of light sinks in. The breath and life animate the android.”
Tears streamed down my cheeks. Layers of skin stretched over the android body. I watched as Sonja began to focus on the face. She pulled away, her expression a pleased smile. The face of the android belonged to Hemingway. I gasped.
The narrating voice of Hemingway went on. “‘Soon it will begin breathing. Soon its eyes will close. It will sleep as each bodily system awakens and begins to work together.’”
The android Hemingway blinked, his eyes focusing on Sonja before drifting shut as he fell asleep.
“‘Thus, every intelligence has a piece of darkness within it.’”
The narrative finished. The scene faded. Words flashed across the screen. “Androids, the blue hearts of Mars, lived on Mars before humans. They are the true children of Mars.”
29: Star Maps
A collective gasp rose in the open area of the train station. I looked up as heads swiveled toward neighbors and a cacophony of voices rose at once in animated conversation.
“What was that?” A woman nearby wearing a Bermuda shirt and white capris demanded of her male companion. “Some kind of joke?” She sounded angry.
Mei and I stared at each other, listening to reactions, waiting—for what we didn’t know.
“I’m not sure,” her companion said calmly. He was slightly shorter than her with a distinctive potbelly while the rest of his body was thin and gaunt. He rubbed his jaw, staring at his Link still. The couple looked like they were set for vacation. He shook his head. “It came through on the emergency band. Someone with authority sent it out.”
“This is impossible!” another man’s voice rose above the couple’s conversation. “There’s no way blue hearts have red hearts. They’re blue hearts!” I strained to see the owner of the voice, rising up on my tiptoes. I could see a head of black, curly hair, bobbing above the bodies between us as he strode toward Mei and me in a heated rage. People parted to let him through. He wore a pair of decorative eyeglasses and a backpack was slung over his shoulder. He came to a halt as he gestured wildly. “Blue hearts, people! Blue! They have blue hearts. No one’s buying this red heart crap. It’s just propaganda!” His cheeks glittered with metallic enhancements. The glasses perched on his nose were gold-framed with tints over the lenses, the kind that changed hues for whatever you were seeing.
“Maybe it’s true,” a younger boy said. He looked to be about Marta’s age. He gripped a jacket tightly in both hands, standing near a couple that I assumed were his parents.
The curly-haired man whirled around to face them. “There’s no way it’s true. You really think all this time that Synlife, and whoever else, has been able to conceal the color of the androids’ hearts? Don’t you think we would have found out?”
The boy’s mother came to his defense, “By doing our ow
n biopsies? Or maybe with our X-ray vision? Or maybe all of us should have just asked Synlife. There’s no reason they’d lie to us. Anyway, they were the first people—er, life?—on Mars. That means Mars is theirs. Doesn’t it?”
My feet felt rooted to the floor. Was it working? The holo-documentary had caused conversation, at least. People were talking. Strangers interacting, trying to work out the implications of the film’s revelations. Some were enraged, some seemed to believe it and looked thoughtfully at each other, discussing the possibility that we’d been wrong all along.
But what now? They knew. Yet that didn’t change that Hemingway was about to be lifted into space aboard an elevator, stuffed into a colonizer, and sent away. Far, far away.
Mei was still staring at me, her dark eyes studying my face, waiting for me to tell her our plan.
I had no plan.
I was tired. I’d run and fought, and struggled, and I was completely drained. I looked up, out the skylights of the train station. We were a half-hour closer to twilight. The cords of the space elevator stretched up into the atmosphere outside the dome. Way up in the distance, I could see the container dropping down to the surface, sunlight glaring off the metal. Had they begun moving the androids yet? Was Hemingway even in the warehouse or was he gone? A shock of pain went through my heart. I nearly sobbed. The tears I’d cried from seeing the holo-documentary were dry. My cheeks felt crusted with salt. In the background I heard a voice over a loudspeaker announce the impending departure of a train bound for the city.
I looked back at Mei. She’d been watching the container on the space elevator as well. Her eyes drifted down to me. A gust from the departing train blew her dark hair in waves about her face. A frown touched her lips.
She knew what I was thinking: what should we do? What could we do?
I had to do something!
Suddenly, without even thinking of it, I found myself running to a bench in the middle of the train platform and jumping onto it. I balanced there with one foot on the seat and one on the back. “People of Mars!” I shouted. “People of Mars!”
I yelled it several more times as the conversations in the station began to die, people hushing each other to watch the crazy chick on the bench in the middle of the station.
“Shut up,” I heard someone yell. Were they talking to me or their neighbors who continued to converse? I didn’t know or care.
“You’ve just witnessed a truth that’s been kept from you for decades. The blue hearts are the true children of Mars. Their kind were here before us. Synlife learned to perfect androids through the one they found in the casket.”
From my peripheral vision, I caught a guy rolling his eyes. He was about my age and wearing a revolutionary-era European outfit. I hurried on before he could say anything or leave, “What you don’t know, now,” I said, addressing him specifically, to engage him, “is that the Unified Martian Government has just ripped thousands of androids from their homes to send them to a new colony. When you weren’t looking, IRS agents found every last android and abducted them. Are you going to let that happen now that you know the truth? Androids are alive! They have souls! Some of them have families. Our lives here on Mars wouldn’t be possible without the androids. We owe them our very existence! If the IRS agents will abduct androids, who will be next? What if the colony ship doesn’t make it to the new colony? Who will they steal next to send away? I only ask: shouldn’t we offer them the same freedoms we ourselves enjoy? Nothing more, nothing less.”
People were beginning to whisper among themselves. Muttering about what I was saying. I pressed on. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t colonize new worlds. But shouldn’t the colonists have a choice? Don’t you want a choice? Or should we enslave people and force them to do what we want?”
I heard a smattering of shouts as the people in the station began to gather closer to me.
“How do you know this?” The rude man with the glasses and curly hair demanded.
“I saw the requisition from the Unified Martian Government. It was for new androids and all existing androids on behalf of the colonizing effort.”
“Sounds like a bunch of crap to me!” he shouted, glowering at me. “I’ve seen you before, on the news. Aren’t you wanted or something? Look, just leave us alone! Some of us were on their way to their first vacation in ten years and you—all this,” he gestured to indicate his Link and the surrounding group, “is spoiling it.”
I clenched my jaw. Was he serious? “You don’t want your vacation ruined?” I asked, leaning forward, my body a spring of coiled up energy. I was on fire. “Think about this on your vacation: the androids are being held against their will in that warehouse over there.” I pointed toward the large holding warehouse beyond the glass front of the train station.
“Right. I’m supposed to believe this along with the lies that the androids have red hearts,” he said. He shook his head. “You’re full of crap.”
“It’s true!” Mei shouted, jumping up beside me. We exchanged a look. I couldn’t help but flash her a thankful smile. “My father is in Parliament. He’s the one who told us.”
“What’s your father’s name?” asked a very tall blonde woman. She had her arms over the shoulders of two adolescent kids standing on either side of her; she clutched them to her protectively.
“Michio Tanaka,” Mei said.
“I know that name! He is in Parliament, and the girl even looks like him,” a man from the back of the group offered. Mei bowed in acknowledgment.
“Please,” I interrupted. “We need to stop them before they send the androids away.”
“Why do you even care?” a nearby voice asked. It was familiar. I turned, holding my breath as though I knew everything was about to fall apart.
It was Hans.
He stood there, a smirk on his face, dressed in black with spikes sticking out the shoulders of his shirt and there were strange tattoos curling around his eyes. What was this new look? Couldn’t the guy keep even one face for a day?
“You really want to know?” I asked, recovering, refusing to lose my steam. I couldn’t let him derail my efforts.
Hans nodded, “Yeah, I think we all deserve to know why some ridiculous human cares so much about machines.”
A few people gasped and someone shouted that language like that wasn’t called for.
I held back my own outrage. I could use this to my advantage. I needed to be honest. The world, the people of Mars, had been fed enough lies. It was time for truth. “I care,” I began, staring out at the warehouse for a moment before looking back at Hans, “because I love a blue heart. I married one. And he’s in that warehouse, about to be sent off like cargo, like a witless object that is loved by no one.”
The crowd around me erupted into a thousand conversations. I waited, letting them settle. Hans merely stood there amidst the commotion, staring at me with an evil grin on his changeable face. What was he doing? Where was he going?
When everyone calmed down, I began again, “I’m not the only one who loves a blue heart. His mother loves him. She created him. And every android in that warehouse is connected to someone. Do we draw a line in the sand and say that only humans can love other humans? Or do we show the Martian Government that we won’t tolerate a complete refusal to acknowledge the rights and humanity of this segment of our society?”
I waited. No one said anything. Maybe they were thinking. My eyes flicked over Hans who continued to stand amidst the crowd, that smug look on his face growing more self-satisfied by the minute, his arms crossed over his black shirt and his eyes glittering darkly at me.
Finally, I spoke in a soft voice, in tones barely loud enough to hear in the still, sepulchral silence of the vast train station. “I need your help. I can’t stop them by myself.”
“I’ll help you,” the man with the potbelly said, stepping closer. A hundred eyes swiveled in his direction. A woman tugged on his arm, hissing at him that they needed to board the next container. He rubbed a hand acros
s his face, and blinked at her. “This is important Mathilda. For freedom. For choice.”
“They’re androids, Fredrik, it doesn’t matter. The container,” she said, peering worriedly over his shoulder, in the direction of the space elevator cords outside the dome. The container was almost to the surface.
I glanced at Hans, who now looked worried. He blinked a few times, surprised, his mouth hanging open, staring at Fredrik and Mathilda.
Fredrik took Mathilda’s hand off his arm, squeezed her fingers and gazed at her sympathetically, patiently. “You know I’ve always felt the blue hearts were treated unjustly. We can do something now. We must.”
Everyone watched as though the two would decide the fate of the entire android race.
Something about Mathilda screamed cold-hearted reptile to me. The angle of her too green eyes; the planes of her jaw and cheekbones; the tilt of her flat nose. I watched, half-expecting her to hiss some more and demand that he either leave with her now, or forfeit their relationship.
“Come on, Mathilda,” Mei interjected, suddenly. Someone laughed. A door slammed shut somewhere, the echo sounding final.
To my surprise, Mathilda relented. “Fine, we’ll get the next container.” She bit her lip as her green eyes flashed over me quickly, a glint of defensiveness in them, as though to protest that I didn’t understand. Even though I did.
As Fredrik and Mathilda offered their support, more people rushed forward, pledging their assistance, asking what they needed to do to help, raising their arms to volunteer and shout their rallying cries against the IRS agents and the slavery of the androids.
I caught a glimpse of Hans looking stunned, shaking his head. He turned and fought his way through the seething crowd, moving in the direction of the space elevator platform. I swallowed hard. Good riddance, I thought. Mars would be better off without him.
I couldn’t believe the response of the people. I exchanged a relieved look with Mei and then scanned the crowd. Distantly, I heard a deep feminine voice announce a train departure over the loudspeaker. Then another voice, announcing the touchdown of the space elevator container, calling the impending departure of the next one from surface to space-side platform.
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