Martian Dictator

by Øyvind Harding

  She had tears in her eyes, her head hung down, and she was trembling visibly by now.

  “This is your life now. A stranger, paying you money for company. For sex. For fucking. You are not an educated woman, you are a whore. You can’t be both, not in this world. Eventually you will be one or the other. And now the turning point has come, now is the time to choose.”

  I pulled two plane tickets from the left pocket of my jacket and placed one of them by the glass of champagne.

  “That is a ticket for Washington, departure tomorrow at 10 a.m.”

  I placed the other ticket on top of the first one.

  “That is a transfer ticket to Cape Canaveral and your new job. You will spend eight months in a cramped space shuttle, then you will spend five years on Mars. There is a high probability that this will be a one-way trip. You might die during the voyage, on the descent to Mars, or down on the surface. You might also be so weakened after such an extended period in low gravity that you can never return to Earth.”

  She was staring at me with wide eyes, uncertainty written across her features. I pulled a condom from my other pocket and placed it by the glass of cheap vodka.

  “That is your future if you decline my offer.”

  I stood up, zipped down my pants, took both her hands in mine and placed one gently on the pile of plane tickets and the other roughly on my crotch.

  “Make your choice: be a whore, or be a hero.”

  She pushed past me and ran for the bathroom.

  ◆◆◆

  She finished heaving and flushed the toilet while wiping her eyes. Her trembling had stopped and she was breathing easier. In fact, she was breathing easier than she had been in a long while. The uncertainty and the ambiguity were gone. The only question that lingered on her mind was whether to love or to hate the man that had forced this upon her. She quickly washed up, wiping off all of her makeup in the process, and strode out of the bathroom.

  ◆◆◆

  She came out of the restroom like a hurricane, her hair wild, and all of her carefully applied makeup gone, eyes blazing with purpose. I never saw her more beautiful than in that moment. She came right up to the table, grabbed the glass of champagne and drank it down in a single gulp.

  “I’m in.”

  She slammed the glass down, took the tickets and left without another word.

  5. The Ship

  Imagine a series of marbles, each larger than the previous one, lined up in a row, starting with one as small as a bowling ball and the largest, the middle one, the size of a football field. Spear them through with a metal rod no wider than your wrist. Dress the rod in a suit of layers of polymer carbon, burn out two doors in every marble and pull a ladder through the entire chain. Top it off with a sphere half again as large as the biggest marble at each end, spin those two cylinders up to an insane speed and watch the magic of modern technology do its dirty work. Now you’ve got the Wayfinder.

  The Wayfinder was both to be our home and our lifeline. The sections were built back on Earth, launched on rockets into orbit and assembled there, using a lot of inventive pushing, pulling, and fitting. A reflector array was built first to harness the power of the Icarus, and when the construction teams were ready to go I set in motion a small diversion of power. The sun shone relentlessly upon the deep, and our, or rather my, array caught only a fraction of a fraction of the power available in close proximity to the Earth. And yet it was enough to power the entire human race. The construction of the Wayfinder was mostly kept a secret, and the power needed to construct such a vessel in orbit had been preventing NASA and other agencies from constructing their own for a number of years.

  With my control of general policy, it was a small task for me to divert a thousandth of a percent of the available power away from the Icarus and let it deflect slightly off course. Just enough so that it caught the newly constructed relay that bounced it back to the midpoint between the Earth and the Moon, where our main construction site had its assembling point.

  The biggest issue in the construction was not the size of the ship, nor was it its complexity. The ship itself was pure simplicity: a row of globes housing everything from living quarters and gymnasiums to storage units, and everything else that was needed to sustain 140 people on an eight-month voyage to Mars, and hopefully, indefinitely on the planet’s surface. Each globe was divided into several sections according to its usage, and several of the individual sections could be separated from the main globe on built-in tracks, ready to be dropped to the surface of our destination. This was the easy part. Launch a bunch of globes into space, line them all up, slap it all together like a huge Lego castle, and voilà: a spaceship.

  The hard part was the shielding. The spheres at each end, each measuring 180 yards in diameter, together with the main globe midships, constituted our main protection against radiation poisoning and slow death: the PPMS device. It was a prototype, but I was assured it would work perfectly. The spheres would spin up, magnetism would course through the rod running the length of the ship, and the center globe would create a miniature Earth. Or rather, the magnetic shield that the spinning Earth-core created. Tubes of plasma would travel from each end-sphere to the center globe, and the spinning would create a continuous plasma shield generated by opposing magnetic forces at each end of the ship. In theory, all that was needed was to keep the spheres spinning, and we would be safe from the previously mentioned agonizing death. In theory. I never trusted theory, I trusted results. And since results with this kind of device were nonexistent, it was with a nervous grin I gave the order to spin it up.

  It was just Captain Reinholts and I on site, sitting tight in a SpaceX shuttle. All the workers had been shipped back to Earth, and the support staff, the members of the crew, and the colonists had yet to arrive. The ship hung there in the void, silent, globular and perfect. It was only our proximity to it that revealed its presence, if we had travelled but a few miles farther out it would’ve been invisible—no light, no radio, no heat signature. As it was, it hovered serenely just a few hundred yards ahead of us. It was not powered up and none of the windows showed any sign of life. And yes, we had windows. Lots of them. If the shielding worked as it was supposed to, there was no point hiding behind walls thicker than your Uncle Bob. If it failed, we’d die. Might as well enjoy the view.

  I pushed the button. The turbines started their slow wind up, deep in the heart of Globe 0, and the rod and the spheres with it started to turn. This was the critical moment; what I was here to observe. If anything was not aligned, if anything did not pivot exactly as planned within a thousandth of an inch, the whole ship would tear itself apart.

  Nothing happened. Not for a long time.

  I watched with increasing anxiety, my heart beating faster and my breath more shallow every passing second. And then the first bolt of plasma emerged. Nothing spectacular, just a little glitter reflecting the light against the background of stars, but it was as beautiful as the morning sun. I sighed in relief and ordered the shuttle back a few hundred yards. As we slowly pulled away, I saw the emergence of the shield for the first time. A few glitters among the stars became a lightshow to rival the Milky Way, finally coalescing into tubes worming their way from midship to either end of the structure. Erratic cascading settled down into slowly spinning wires, moving faster and faster with every moment, until it was impossible to distinguish the individual tubes. Finally, it all merged together into two oblong spheres of protective plasma encompassing either end of the ship. The Wayfinder was alight with wonder, with magic. Slowly the glittering surface of the two spheres turned opaque, then finally vanished altogether. The shield was in full operation, and the stars again shone unhindered in the darkness.

  ◆◆◆

  Life on the Wayfinder settled into familiar routines fairly quickly. You had your job, be it to clean the toilets, clean the hallways, clean The Cage, or clean yourself. The job, the exercising, and the boredom. And the occasional knife fight. It is amazing how quickly i
t becomes boring to gaze adoringly at the stars when they are exactly the same day out and day in. Luckily, I had had the foresight to install the cage. It was a to fight to get it through though, the engineers would never have let me have a blank room installed in a space-is-everything vessel if I had not been the one to pay for the party. But I had had a feeling that we would need the diversion, and if the crew weren’t into knife fighting before they left (they weren’t), they would soon enough be lining up to get their personal blades cut when shown the virtues of stabbing somebody you didn’t like (they were). The Cage created the perfect balance between fun, exercise, and competitiveness, as well as an outlet for built-up aggression and frustration. But it was only after my now-infamous fight with the captain that the crew really started to take it seriously. Scoreboards were soon posted in both sections of the ship, and fights were regularly scheduled to find the most accomplished fighter among the crew. The captain and I never fought another match, at least not officially, but the rest of the crew really went at it. It came to the point where it was decided that we wanted to have an upper versus lower ship tournament, and plans were laid to circumvent the fail-safe that had been put in place to prevent such a mingling of the crew.

  The ship was, physically, carved into two identical parts. The crew were divided as well, with each of the globes adjoining the center one containing the living quarters for half of the population. One bioengineer in the upper globe (closest to Mars) and one in the lower one (closest to Earth). One 3D-modeler mechanic on each side and one cook for upper and one for lower. And so it went for the entire spectrum of specialists and crew. Two globes for crew, two for the gyms, two for dining, two for storage of food, and so on for the entire ship.

  Every globe was sealed off from the next one with an airtight double-door corridor, and you had to traverse the confined space of the ladder and the rod when you shifted from one location to another. Of course, most of us never ventured outside the trio of living quarters, gym, and dining globe. No need, everything we wanted was right there. And no one crossed the upper/lower boundary of the ship. Not because it was forbidden, nor because it was frowned upon. You couldn’t. The center globe was a spinning mass of a fuckload of metal in strange shapes and forms, some of it liquid, some of it in shapes that defied logic. You certainly couldn’t just grab it and pull yourself along as you could with the other globes if you found yourself on the outside. Nor could you use thrusters, instruments, or navigation equipment any more advanced than what you could make with a plastic bottle of compressed gas and a roll of duct tape, due to the immense magnetic forces that would be suffered in the crossing. If you tried, chances were that either your hand would be ripped off or you would find yourself humming “Space Oddity” while drifting alone in space some miles off our hull. There was no physical way across the gap that the spinning center globe presented, except going around.

  Of course, that didn’t stop us from finding a way to get across to each other. At first, it was just a few technicians who were forced to float over after a breakdown in communications left the upper part of the ship unable to send transmissions, only receive them. The layout of the system and the shape of the Wayfinder made it impossible to use the long-range radio to talk to each other. Although it was not necessary that each end of the ship communicated with the other, we quickly found that it increased the feeling of isolation quite substantially. Bouncing radio signals off of satellites orbiting the Earth or the Moon to talk to an engineer that was literally sitting three hundred feet away from you felt like a tremendous waste of time and effort, even though the signal didn’t take that long to travel back and forth. However, the distance would increase, and if a solution could not be found, the long-range bouncing would soon make conversations impractical.

  So we found a way over the gap. The maneuver was quickly dubbed “rolling the ball,” and consisted of donning a space suit, climbing outside through one of the doors between the globes, and using handholds to station yourself on top of the living quarters. Standing there, you had a perfect view of the universe, since the shield was in all instances invisible. You also had a perfect view of the massive sphere that was spinning so fast in front of you that it appeared to be rock solid. Matte black, seeming to suck light instead of emitting it, and going faster than any man-made object in history. The safe and boring way to traverse the gap was to pack enough gas cans to last you for the journey and puff your way slowly to the other side. However, after one of the engineers was overheard bragging about how fast he had managed to cross the gap, it quickly turned into a contest. It elicited a certain thrill, standing on the edge of the abyss, readying yourself for a jump, carrying just enough juice to steer yourself in the right direction, maybe enough to slow your speed a little at the end if you were of the timid sort.

  Now take a deep breath. Check your angles. Say a prayer. Jump. And don’t miss.

  I jumped. I missed.

  Feel your heart rate climb. Feel your breath going faster and faster. Feel the sweat forming on your brow, feel the hairs on your arms standing up. Feel your vision constrict and your bowels clench. You are going to die. You are going to die, and there is nothing you can do about it.

  The center globe passed beneath me, all black and menacing, moving away from me with every passing moment. It was not supposed to do that. It was supposed to stay an even two yards beneath my feet until I hit the top point where I could align my thrusters so that I could work my way down onto the lower globe. I had missed with my parting jump, and missed badly. I now deeply regretted my decision to make the jump, having made it in the first place for nothing but bragging rights and for the thrill of it.

  I was just about to scream like a little girl when I thought to myself, ‘in space, nobody can hear you cream.’ Seriously, those were my exact thoughts while floating to my death. I burst out laughing, and with that, all the tension of the moment disappeared. I was not screwed. I was not going to die. I just had to do a little inventive thrusting (giggle again) and keep my wits about me. I quickly used a few puffs to align my body so that I was pointing downwards at a steep angle. Since I had jumped off my habitat at too steep an angle, I needed to come down at the same angle. The problem was the speed I would be moving at.

  I was now traveling at a greater speed relative to the rest of the vehicle, and if I missed my target I would in all likelihood bounce off the hull and disappear into the nothingness of space. My target was one of the handholds on the surface of each globe, and all I had to do was clip my carabiner to one of them. There was one every meter along the outside of each globe, but in reality I would be aiming for just one of them. If I missed it, I would not get the chance to hook up to another since I would be bouncing off in the general direction of Jupiter.

  At the top of my arc I fired all of the available thrusters in my suit and focused on the lower globe. At the center of the Earth-side shelter, I could see the row of hand holds that was my target, infinitesimally small against the backdrop of stars. I was going too high, too fast, and the most likely scenario had me bouncing off the hull after smashing against it hard enough to break my bones.

  But my enemy was down.

  I soared down towards the handhold I had chosen and worked the thrusters vigorously. Speed was not the issue. If I managed to clip on to the hook, it did not matter if I was going too fast. The rope would hold me no matter what. The problem was getting to the right point on the hull, and if I could gain a degree by going a few clicks faster relative to the vessel, I would do so gladly.

  I slammed into the hull at tremendous speed, having emptied my thrusters in one solid burst to obtain the correct trajectory after passing the horizon of the center globe. I could feel my wrist breaking against the handhold as I bounced off the hull, traveling at full speed off to the stars. The last thing I saw before passing out with a smile upon my lips was my plastic carabiner hook securely hooked on to the center handhold, and the rope twisted around my broken wrist. The smile died as the rope vic
iously constricted around my arm and the bone broke through the flesh.

  The crew heard my screams.

  6. The Organizer

  Anna Stokes, MD-PhD, was at work when she got the call. She was annoyed that her schedule had been interrupted, and although she knew that her assistant would not have forwarded the call if it were not important, she also knew that she would have to find a new assistant if this kept up. She had allotted certain periods of her day to answering phones, and this was well outside of her normal rhythm. She carefully placed the pen back on her desk, taking care to align it perfectly with the other two already there. She removed her glasses, folded them and placed them on the nose of a small, black stone man with an enlarged nose made specifically for holding glasses. The fat, smiling man was the only item present on her desk not entirely dedicated to her job, and it had been a gift from her research staff when they discovered that she threw away flowers, chocolates and any other gift that did not have a specific purpose. She tolerated this one because her glasses were the one item in her life she never did seem to have any control over, and Erasmus (as she had secretly nicknamed the little man) did an admirable job of taking care of her wayward sight-enhancers. She sighed and keyed the phone for speakers.

  “Anna Stokes speaking, why have you interrupted my day?” Maybe she could dissuade her caller by being blunt and so be able to get back to her work more quickly.

  “Dr. Stokes, I have moved your car ten inches to the left so that both the front wheel and the back wheel are sitting directly on top of the white line separating the parking spaces. I believe the front wheel is also sitting at an angle.”