by Devin Hanson
THE
DECEMBER
PROTOCOL
By Devin Hanson
The December Protocol is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 by Devin Hanson
All Rights Reserved.
Thanks go to my wife, without whom this book would never have been possible.
Books by Devin Hanson
The Dragon Speaker Series:
Rune Scale
Rune Song
Rune Master
Table of Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
NOTE
CHAPTER
ONE
United Nations General Assembly
23 December 2120
The December Protocol (excerpt)
Henceforth, the use of the Womack Process or the Helix Rebuild shall be banned from Earth, as shall any research into alternate forms of regeneration or rejuvenation through biological extraction. Active support of, or knowledge of, any clinic providing services for either of the two proscribed procedures will be grounds for censure. Complete shutdown of all clinics and extraction facilities is the only way to preserve what is left of humanity.
Marcus Truman’s first steps on Mars lacked the promised romanticism from the travel brochures. Far from the epic, sweeping panoramas of Olympus Mons, once he disembarked from the interplanetary shuttle, Terminal H had more in common with a subway station. High ceilings dimly lit with stale biolumen strips, grimy antibac tiles on the walls and stained concrete under his feet. If it weren’t for the lower gravity, Marcus could almost believe he was still on Earth.
The sheer mediocrity of the terminal did more to get Marcus’ feet moving than the spiritless glare from the arrivals officer. Still, he hung back until his fellow passengers had passed through before approaching the gate.
“Welcome to Cydonia and Vastitas Cluster,” the officer said with a robotic lack of interest. “Purpose for your visit?”
“Business,” Marcus replied. He fumbled his passport folder from his jacket pocket and slid it under the grill. Up close, Marcus saw the officer was a lot taller than he had originally thought. Even sitting, she was taller than he was, her limbs thin and drawn out.
“Do you have anything to declare?” If the woman was aware of Marcus’ scrutiny, she paid it no mind.
“No. All my baggage was shipped ahead of me.”
The officer flipped through Marcus’ passport, pausing on the rear page with its lurid medical summary. Interest stirred in her eyes and Marcus fought the urge to sigh.
“You have cancer?”
“Yes,” Marcus replied shortly. He really didn’t want to get into it with this lady.
“They haven’t cured that yet on Earth?”
“The December Protocol blocked all rejuvenation research and procedures. Are we done?” Every school child knew that.
“You poor thing.” She clucked her tongue and stamped the passport. “You’ve come to the right place, dear.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“Mars is much better than Venus,” she sniffed. “They might think they’re better than everyone else, but you won’t see the Matriarchs helping cancer patients.”
Marcus gritted his teeth, but forced his voice to come out as soothing. “It’s tragic. If you don’t mind, though, I’m in something of a hurry.”
The lady’s eyes narrowed and she glared at him suspiciously. “What’s the rush?”
Was this lady serious? “I have a business meeting,” he said. When her face didn’t change, he added, “and I have a deadline.” He glanced meaningfully at the passport she still held open.
Understanding washed over her and suspicion swayed into saccharine sympathy. “Oh no! And here I am, keeping you. How much longer do you have?”
Marcus resisted the urge to reach through the bars and snatch his passport out of her elongated fingers. “I have enough time to get myself set up financially on Mars,” he explained, “but I don’t have any time to waste.”
“Well, don’t let me keep you any longer.” The lady handed the passport back to Marcus and he tucked it away.
“Thank you. Have a good day.” Marcus shifted the bag slung over his shoulder to a more comfortable position and walked away from the arrivals desk, relieved to have escaped from the awkward conversation.
He had a moment of confusion as he looked for an up escalator then remembered on Mars, there was nowhere up to go but the frigid, inhospitable surface. Feeling sheepish, he got onto the down escalator and leaned against the railing, reviewing in his mind what his plans were for the rest of the day. Then the escalator brought him down to the first open level and his orderly planning fell away.
In the early twenty-first century, human explorers on Mars had put an enormous effort into constructing atmosphere domes on the surface of the planet. They’d tried a dozen different methods of construction, but the domes had always failed. The failures hadn’t all been catastrophic decompression, but ultimately, one fact became patently obvious. A pressurized dome could be made to last for months, years even, but eventually it would give out.
A better solution was required. The obvious next step was to go underground. It had taken decades for the first beachhead bunker to be completed, but then the tunnel system had taken on a life of its own. Private enterprise had expanded the tunnels, searching out ores. The initial, tentative borings had expanded until there were miles upon miles of tunnels crawling throughout the bedrock.
The city of Cydonia had been founded, named after the famous “face” mountain that had so captured the imagination of the early twenty-first century. The Mars population had moved into those tunnels and swelled over time with new arrivals and the first children born on a planet other than Earth. The city had been built in layers, carved from the bedrock piece by piece.
As the pioneers had dug deeper into the planet’s crust, it had grown too hot for comfort. New clusters had been founded and linked together, keeping the overall name of Cydonia.
One of those clusters, Vastitas, Marcus now entered. It was a city of somewhere between five and six hundred thousand people. Marcus had heard the word “city” and imagined what he was familiar with, only somehow in a cave. Intellectually, he knew he wasn’t going to find rows of houses with manicured fungi lawns. But the reality was vastly different.
Marcus stepped off the escalator into a cavern. It was spacious, with ceilings twenty feet over his head, but it still felt cramped. The rock ceilings were supported by thick columns spaced with geometric precision every forty feet. Between the columns, people had set up booths from which they were selling everything from glassware to fried dumplings, from bottled oxygen to entertainment chips.
His first overwhelming impression was of filth. The Lunar colony where Marcus had awaited the transfer shuttle had been a study in pristine cleanliness and the shuttle had been much the s
ame. But here in Vastitas, the antibac tiling was old and crumbling, dirt and sand drifted in corners, and a grunge of grime seemed to coat every surface.
The paths through the open market were choked with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people. Marcus stopped at the base of the escalator and stood there for several minutes, just taking it all in. The noise was tremendous. Music blared from every other booth, contrasting and mixing with repeated product announcements, and with the din of people shouting to be heard.
Then there was the smell. Water on Mars was a valuable commodity. Bathing was a luxury only for the super-rich. The average citizen made do with chemwipes, or, judging by the smell, did without entirely.
Marcus felt light-headed for a moment and pain stabbed in his chest. He fumbled in his jacket pocket for the small container of pills and tapped one out into his palm. He swallowed it dry and gingerly massaged his side until the pain faded.
The pain never completely went away. Lately, even the pills didn’t do much to help. At best, they gave a temporary relief. The pain was a reminder, as if he needed one, that he didn’t have much time left.
He raised his head and looked out into the bustling market with new eyes. He wasn’t a tourist. These people were his future customers. His market. His lifeline.
The city wasn’t what he had expected. The travel brochures that catered to the fabulously wealthy had promoted an off-planet getaway with all the luxuries of Earth. Unprepared for this slum, he felt let down that after all the scientific wonders of space travel and colonization, these people couldn’t be bothered to sweep up the dust piling in corners.
Marcus walked into the market, moving awkwardly in the low gravity. He drew stares as he made his way through the stalls. He ignored it as best he could, but he knew he stood out among the natives, a blip of off-world wealth.
And the natives were tall! Not all of them, of course, but there seemed to have been a gradual increase in height over generations. Most of the people Marcus saw were rail-thin and nearly eight feet tall, visible head and shoulders over others in the crowd. Their features were elongated and drooping, and they moved with a swift, swinging grace.
It didn’t take long before he was helplessly lost. The stalls between the columns formed a virtual maze. Eventually, unable to find his way out of a district that specialized in salvaged electrical components, he asked for directions.
After another hour and two wrong turns, Marcus finally made it to the food district. Here, the scent of unwashed bodies was mixed with the warm odors of curry and hot peppers. His stomach rumbled and he ducked under the curtains of a noodle bar and climbed up on one of the stools.
Marcus wasn’t a short man. At five foot ten, he was above average on Earth, and if his height had ever been an issue in his daily life, it usually was because he was too tall. The counter of the noodle bar, though, was uncomfortably high, as if he were a child who needed a booster seat. A glance to the side showed all the other stools were the same height, but the other patrons sat comfortably at the tall counter.
“What’ll it be, gov?”
Marcus glanced up at the menu and saw the lettering was all in Chinese script. The images next to the numbered items were clear enough, though. “I’ll have a number two. What kind of meat is on it?”
That got him a smile and a raised eyebrow. “Why, the best meat, gov.”
One of the other patrons shook his head and laughed, rattling off a string of Chinese that sparked a chorus of laughter.
Marcus flushed. “Did I say something funny?” he demanded.
The patron turned to him. “You like-a meat, hey?” He slowed down his speech and punctuated each word with chopping gestures with his hands. “This Mars, Earthman. No meat here.”
“At least,” the server clarified with a grin and a calming gesture, “no meat that would get served in a classy joint like this.”
“Oh,” Marcus said, his flush of anger sinking down into chagrin. “This is my first day on Mars. If you don’t mind my asking, what is it made of?”
“Yeast, for the most part.” The server put together the dish and slid it across the counter to Marcus. “You really from Earth?”
Marcus nodded and lifted out a few strands of noodle from the bowl with his chopsticks. They swam in a light green liquid putting off a pepper aroma that made his eyes water. They looked like noodles, even if they were made of yeast. He put the bite in his mouth and chewed it thoughtfully.
“It’s not bad,” he said. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the heat of the spice hit him and his face flushed. Sweat beaded his forehead and his tongue burned in his mouth.
The server leaned on the counter and watched Marcus struggle with the spice with a wide smile. “See, no meat is needed.”
Marcus lifted a bean sprout from the bowl and held it up in his chopsticks. “Mars does have agriculture, though? It’s not all culture vats?”
The server shrugged. “Plants are easy to grow.”
Marcus took another bite. His mouth was already on fire, eating more of the noodles wouldn’t make that any worse.
Getting actual, hard facts about Mars had been difficult on Earth. Some things were nearly impossible to determine. How many people lived on Mars? Numbers varied from over ten million, to an official census that set the population at three million, to conspiracy theorists who claimed the population wasn’t more than a few hundred thousand.
The problem, the theorists posited, wasn’t that there wasn’t enough space on Mars to host a city of several million, it was that there wasn’t enough water. Humans needed to drink around half a gallon of water a day. That amount of water was impressive enough on its own, but didn’t take into account all the water needed to produce food for those millions of citizens.
Even with the most conservative hydroponic agriculture, growing sufficient crops to feed that many people required more water than could possibly be available to the colony.
Reading between the lines, Marcus came to the conclusion that there were sources of water available that weren’t common knowledge. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. Whether the water came from enormous, secret, subterranean aquifers, was shipped in from Earth, or had been harvested from passing comets was irrelevant. The water was there. What was important, to Marcus at least, was how much agriculture existed on Mars.
There had to be some. Separating the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere was a trivial task on Mars, but there had to be a renewable method of reclaiming the oxygen. Plant growth was the solution Marcus had assumed. The use of yeast as a food base hinted at a different approach. Sufficient agriculture to provide the oxygen needs for the population of Mars would, as a necessity, provide an overabundance of vegetable matter.
Without the vegetable byproducts of agriculture, the oxygen had to come from algae vats. Somewhere within the tunnel system of the city, there must be enormous vats of aerated green soup that converted the carbon dioxide into oxygen.
That was disheartening. So much of Marcus’ plans revolved around a supposed system of agriculture being in place. The bean sprouts, though, gave him a renewed hope. There was agriculture, even if on a micro scale. There wasn’t room in this noodle hut for a private sprout-growing operation, so somewhere a farmer had to be making a living growing bean sprouts.
Lost in his thoughts, Marcus took another bite of the noodles and almost choked on the sudden rush of heat. Now that he knew what he was eating, he could taste the subtle, almost cheesy flavor of the yeast base in the noodles buried beneath the overwhelming spice. The heat of the spices told another story as well: someone somewhere had to be growing pepper plants.
It made sense, he reflected as he gingerly took another bite. With everything tasting of yeast, people would be desperate for some way to mask the flavor. Making food spicy was the easy way out, which explained the prevalent scents of curry, ginger, and hot peppers, along with more that he couldn’t identify.
Marcus finished off the rest of the noodles with growing cheer.
Mars cuisine relied on the masking flavors of heavy spices. Those spices all had to be grown somewhere, and in tremendous quantities. There was no way nickel-and-dime farmers could produce the volume of spices consumed daily by the population. There had to be significant infrastructure in place, growing tons of material a year.
He paid for his noodles and continued his exploration of the market. He knew what he was looking for now. He had to track down the suppliers of the spices and thence the growers. As curious as he was to see the grow beds, he didn’t actually need to trace the chain of supply all the way back to them.
Eventually he found a store that sold spices in bulk. Brilliantly colored powders were on display behind glass, labeled in Chinese script, English and Spanish. Customers purchased their spices by weight, carefully measured out on gleaming stainless steel scales.
Marcus struck up a conversation with the clerk and learned the man purchased his spices wholesale from a warehouse. After asking directions, Marcus headed in that direction. He was feeling cheerful. He hadn’t been on the planet more than five hours and he was already well on the way to figuring out how to get his business started.
He still had to purchase or rent a manufacturing location, but he had a few days left of paid-for storage at the warehouse holding his cargo from Earth, so there wasn’t a huge rush. His other few errands could wait, too: a stop by the local law enforcement office, and a visit to whatever Mars had as a planning and zoning department. And, of course, he had to find a place to sleep.
That could wait, though. First, Marcus wanted to make sure his hypotheses were correct. If he was going to set up a distillery on Mars, he’d have to make sure there was a way to produce the materials he needed. It had taken every last penny he could scrape together on Earth to have his equipment shipped to Mars. The copper distillery had been heavy, but most of the weight, and freight cost, had been in the water.