by Steve Alten
Mars is the only other planet in our solar system endowed with the natural resources necessary for human civilization. Its soil possesses carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, as well as water frozen as permafrost. Its atmosphere is dense enough to protect inhabitants from solar flares, its solar light ample for greenhouses.
The 3-MP’s mission was based on an exploration approach developed in 1990 by Robert Zubrin, then a senior engineer at Lockheed Martin. The key to the ‘Mars Direct’ plan was to travel as light as possible, with rotating crews establishing habitats that would allow them to live off the land. The soil on Mars would provide for food, water, materials, and rocket fuel.
By September of 2029, the ERV (Earth Return Vehicle), a new multistage rocket constructed using parts from already existing vessels, was sitting on its launchpad in Cape Canaveral, ready for takeoff.
Everything changed six weeks later, when the private sector officially stepped up to the plate.
Project HOPE (Humans for One Planet Earth) was conceived in 2016 by a group of former astronauts, design engineers, and rocket scientists who had left NASA years earlier because of the agency’s ‘good ole boy’ policies. Unlike other private rocket companies, they were not interested in launching satellites. HOPE was interested in space as public recreation.
The key to HOPE’s future was a design for a new space plane, one that could take off horizontally like a jet, rise to its maximum turbojet altitude, then use boosters to rocket the passenger vehicle into space. Once in orbit, the paying public would enjoy twelve hours of zero gravity and a lifetime of memories.
All HOPE needed was a major investor, one that could provide factories and the financial backing to launch the company.
Enter Lucien Mabus, CEO of Mabus Tech Industries.
Lucien had inherited MTI, but was bored with running his father’s company. What he needed was a challenge, something he could call his own.
At the urging of his intoxicating fiancee, Lilith, Mabus struck a partnership with HOPE’s directors. Fourteen months later Project HOPE went public, offering investors an opportunity to claim their stake in the future.
The response from the global market was mind-boggling. Opening at 22, the stock closed the first day of trading at 106. By week’s end it had split twice and was still soaring at $162 a share, making majority stockholder and HOPE’s CEO Lucien Mabus the world’s first trillionaire.
Attitudes in Washington changed overnight. Cape Canaveral Air Station, which controlled the barrier island and all launch facilities east of the Banana River, offered to move the Air Force’s Forty-fifth Space Wing in exchange for a long-term lease with HOPE. Lucien Mabus turned them down, preferring to erect a new complex in the city of Cocoa Beach at half the cost.
On December 15, 2029, HOPE’s first ‘space bus’ took off down its new fifteen-thousand-foot runway. On board were 120 passengers, including key stockholders, political dignitaries, a dozen members of the media, and a crew of twelve.
Nothing real or imagined could have prepared these civilians for the magic of space. The sixteen-hour flight was smooth, the service first-class (just eating in zero gravity an experience unto itself) and the view-well, the view was both spiritual and humbling.
Within two months, HOPE was shuttling four space buses a week at a cost of $100,000 per ticket. Even with its high price tag, there was still a fourteen-month wait.
By April of 2032, three more space buses had been added to the fleet, dropping ticket prices to $39,000. By 2033, over eight thousand people representing every nation had orbited the planet.
The residual impact upon humanity was profound. ‘One Planet-One People,’ became HOPE’s mantra. Many believed it was no coincidence that the last oppressive government fell to democracy during the space bus’s reign. Religious and racial tensions eased. The global economy boomed as technology raced to keep up with the exploitation of space, and the exploitation of space created new Earthbound technologies.
By focusing its energies on the heavens, humankind had finally grown beyond its childish adolescence.
Plans were soon revealed for Space Port-1, the first space platform/hotel designed to accommodate the paying public. When completed, SP-1 would contain three main structures, each configured in the shape of a bicycle wheel. The upper wheel, known as the ‘hub,’ would house a restaurant, bar, gymnasium, and, at the very end of the structure, a nonrotating zero-gravity observation deck. Below the hub, connected by a main elevator shaft surrounded by spokelike corridors was the middle wheel, or ‘Spotel.’ The largest of the three structures, the 1,950-foot donut-shaped living quarters, rotating one revolution per minute, would provide guests with a third of Earth’s gravity. Below this massive wheel, connecting to the Spotel through an access shaft were SP-1’s control room, infirmary, crew and staff’s quarters, and the Space Port’s docking station.
Seventy-five private guest modules would afford SP-1’s clientele five fun-filled days in space. No amenity would be spared. All suites would be equipped with videophones, Internet uplinks, twenty-four-hour-a-day room service, and private viewports. Activities would include space walks, guided tours of the command center and engine room, and full-body, gravity-free workouts in the gym. For another $30,000, a lucky few could even board a lunar shuttle for a two-day excursion around the moon.
Advertisements were already flooding the global market: SPACE PORT-1: Join the 220 MILE CLUB. Total standard vacation package (including round-trip launch fare) a mere $120,000 per person.
Six months after its plans were revealed, SP-1’s reservation list (nonrefundable 15 percent deposit required) was already two years long, and three more hotel chains were negotiating with HOPE to build a Spotel on the moon.
Undaunted, NASA’s MP-3 program continued moving toward the successful construction of its Mars Base. With the global economy humming and humanity focused on space, the U.S. Congress increased the space program’s budget to levels previously enjoyed by the Defense Department, allowing for the design and construction of a moon base and lunar observatory/radio telescope.
Not to be outdone, young Lucien Mabus and his new bride announced that HOPE was in the process of completing final designs for its own Mars Colony. The first Mars shuttles carrying engineers and supplies would arrive on Mars in winter of 2047-two full years ahead of NASA.
NASA officials were incensed. Lucien Mabus’s plans were clearly pushing the envelope of safety and science, all in the name of profit.
The Mabuses scoffed. For sixty years NASA had kept the exploration of space to itself. Had the program been run efficiently following the Apollo Program, man would already be living on Mars. Given NASA’s time schedule and its propensity for overanalysis, it might take another six decades before the first civilians could experience the Red Planet’s wonders. Like it or not, humankind was evolving, pushing for new sensory experiences in space, and he, Lucien Mabus, cosmic pioneer and heir to the Mabus fortune, was driving the herd.
Unbeknownst to Mabus and the White House, the frontier of space was about to take on an all-new meaning.
A wisp of thought, in the consciousness of existence.
As the transhuman, Bill Raby, I had managed to use telepathy to open the sealed vault of our alien hosts. Heart pounding, I stepped inside the entrance of the ancient megaplex-a dark antechamber that went instantly ablaze with piercing violet lights, projected from multiple angles.
I was being identified.
The antechamber led into a great hall, and somehow I knew that everything man had ever known about his existence was about to change.
They were everywhere, stacked vertically along invisible shelves of energy. Millions of cryogenic glass pods, eight feet tall, four feet across… specimens in a zoological library, a thin layer of frost concealing their contents.
Approaching the nearest pod, I wiped ice from the outer glass and peered inside.
It was a gangly bipedal humanoid, seven feet tall, floating within a clear liquid gel. The ha
irless skull was elongated, just like mine, only the bands of blood vessels traversing the scalp were infinitely more pronounced. The skin was mouse gray, more silicon than flesh. Protruding from its lipless mouth was a thick tracheal tube, the hose of which connected to a control panel somewhere within the hidden base of the glasslike container.
The nostrils were plugged, as were the earholes. The eyes were wide-open, the pupils twice the size of our own, twinkling a luminescent azure blue.
Star-shaped electrodes pulsating violet flashes were affixed to the crown of the being’s elongated head, the center of its hairless brow, and along the base of its throat.
Kneeling, I scrapped more frost from the glass, hoping to see the lower torso.
The being was hairless and naked, yet contained no noticeable sexual organs. The five fingers of each hand were long and slightly webbed. From my poor vantage, I could not see the toes.
More star-shaped electrodes flashed over the solar plexus, heart, sacrum, and feet. I recognized these seven spots as chakra points, the body’s energy centers. Hindus had long believed the body’s chakra points channeled spiritual energy.
I estimated a million of these humanoids were being held in suspended cryogenic animation, stacked one atop the other within invisible energy fields. It was impossible to tell how many of them there were, for the stacks disappeared high overhead into the darkness, and wound around the entire interior of the building.
I knew they were alive, and I knew what they were, for somehow, I could sense their unified presence observing me.
They were posthumans. Alive but not alive, unified yet all alone… unable to touch or feel.
Unable to love.
In the chaotic months that followed, every member of our colony would complete the transhuman metamorphosis. Coming out of our comas, we were like infants suddenly made aware of our bodies, each day revealing wondrous new discoveries about our genetic transformation. Besides the obvious leaps in intelligence and body strength, we found we could communicate concepts telepathically.
More astounding was our ability to extend life expectancy.
Numerous factors cause aging and death among Homo sapiens. One is telomerase, an enzyme that elongates the ends of chromosomes. Every time a cell divides, telomerase shrink. When the length drops below a set threshold, Homo sapiens cells stop dividing and mortality approaches. Other proteins, like apolipoprotein E, can postpone aging, but are present in limited quantities, as opposed to free radicals-the highly destructive, oxidizing molecules produced by the body itself that lead to senescence and disease.
Given the gift to control our own cellular functions, we found we could now isolate and eliminate free radicals from our bodies while increasing the production of apolipoprotein E and glutathione. Further, we could reduce the loss of telomeres, potentially increasing life expectancy tenfold.
Perhaps more.
Our newfound focus was not just inward. Telepathy allowed us access to all of New Eden, including its recorded history, and we soon discovered the aliens’ society had been a dichotomy of existence.
Long before we arrived, the world we had named Xibalba had been a planet influenced by two distinctly different cultures. The first was the transhuman race responsible for constructing the floating city. The dwellings, the landscaping, the agricultural pods and environmental controls-all were designed for these beings. Little was known of their origin, but it was obvious they had cultivated their domain over thousands, perhaps millions of years. They were space travelers, masters of genetics, and were far superior to us in every way.
At some point in Xibalban history, a fantastic scientific discovery was made that allowed these ever-curious transhumans to transcend their third-dimensional physical world and enter the realm of the spiritual. The decision to pursue or ban this science would split the Xibalban race in two. The group that rebelled against the discovery would leave the planet, traveling to God-knows-where, while the other group remained behind, intent on evolving beyond their physical forms to walk in God’s shadow.
Self-programming, immortal, and unlimited in power-the group that remained behind would evolve into the posthumans. The beings held within the cryogenic pods were their physical remains.
It is the traces of posthuman DNA, Jacob, that makes us Hunahpu.
Professor Ian Bobinac was the most accomplished geneticist in the colony. On Earth, he had pioneered the use of ‘Vee-Gees,’ vaccine genes-genetically engineered cells used to produce antibacterial, antivirus, and anticancer substances directly into the human body. On Mars, his work in genetic manipulation would have been applied to alter reproduction schedules among cloned livestock.
Bobinac was a genius even before his brain had been affected by transhuman metamorphosis. Having ‘evolved,’ he now spent most of his time living inside his own brilliant head. What finally brought him out of his self-evolving ‘funk’ was the mystery surrounding the alien lines and glyphs flashing along the exterior of the great posthuman hall.
Bobinac soon discovered a communication emanating from the structure-an audible communication-translated at a refresh rate of 267,000 cycles per second. By comparison, the spoken word is transmitted at a mere 16-20 cycles.
What Professor Bobinac had discovered was a posthuman language, composed of 212 distinct graphemes (English uses only forty-six phonemes). Most bizarre, the posthumans’ collective mind was still dispersing their communication across the planet.
But to whom?
The moment I heard of his discovery, I asked to be transferred to Bobinac’s team. As marine geneticist Bill Raby, I immediately recognized the 267,000 harmonic cycle as one shared by a sea creature back on Earth – whales.
While the effects of our genetic metamorphosis were universal, our newfound powers affected each of us differently, magnifying our own unique personality traits.
Lilith Mabus and her son, Devlin, craved power. As time passed, the olive-skinned Adonis grew increasingly belligerent, his sociopathic tendencies, combined with his mother’s influence, driving him to lead the life of a modern-day Caligula.
Whiffs of wild tales spread through our small community. Some told of private gatherings hosted by Devlin in a transhuman dwelling he had taken over, referring to it as the ‘president’s mansion.’ There were rumors of lurid orgies and Satanic rituals led by the bewitching Lilith, though nothing could be substantiated.
In truth, most of us were too involved with our adjustment as ‘superior beings’ to take the time necessary to investigate these tales. But as the fourth anniversary of our arrival on Xibalba grew near, there was a growing movement to oust the planet’s self-appointed leader and his wicked parent.
Devlin and Lilith had other plans.
Prior to abandoning the planet to hunt the Xibalban transport in Earth-space, the Guardian had taken DNA samples from posthuman subjects. Ten thousand years in our past, they had introduced dilutions of this super-elixir into Homo sapiens, genetically altering our species, driving us up the evolutionary ladder.
Unbeknownst to the rest of the colonists, both of Devlin’s biological parents had possessed Hunahpu DNA. Cold and calculating as a human, Devlin’s evolution as a transhuman gave him the extraordinary ability to decipher and manipulate polygenic traits within his own DNA.
In short, Devlin Mabus could self-evolve.
Evolution can be traced back to the first bacteria that took life from Earth’s primordial soup. Housed within our DNA is a record of every phase of our evolution, from ocean dwellers to reptiles, from the first insectivorous mammals to our primate cousins.
Remaining in isolation for weeks, Devlin had tapped into his genetic code, manipulating a master gene that would help him reengineer his entire being.
On the morning of our fourth anniversary, New Eden’s colonists gathered in our adopted public square.
It was Lilith who stepped out of the shadows of the president’s box to address the crowd.
‘Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Host
s, who has reached across the cosmos to save His Chosen Ones from death. He has led us to the New World and Blessed us with its wonders. He has given us a taste of His wisdom, and transformed each of us into something better than what we were. And now, He has heard the cries of His children.
‘Who among you has sinned? Who among you suffers inside? Which of you are consumed in guilt? Raise your hands and be made accountable!’
In unison, we raised our hands, many of us weeping at the memories of the deceased loved ones we had abandoned back on Earth.
‘Do you seek salvation? Speak the words aloud.’
For such a small crowd, our shouts were deafening.
‘We are here today because of a miracle. Long ago, my son, Devlin, was given a vision. In this vision, he saw the incubator Earth cast out humankind. Like a modern-day Noah, he was instructed to build a fleet of spaceships-cosmic arks-in which he would lead the chosen few to salvation. Look around you and tell me this is not so. It was Devlin’s vision that led to our rebirth. It was because our true creator touched him that we are here today.
‘And now another miracle has occurred. In your prayers for salvation, the one true creator has sent us his archangel. Behold my son, Devlin, the Seraph!’
Jude and I held hands, our breath taken away as Devlin stepped out of the shadows of the president’s box and into the light. A hush grew over the crowd as we ogled the creator’s handiwork.
He was completely nude, standing before us like some fifteenth-century sculpture of David come alive. Protruding from his genetically altered muscular back and spinal column were massive flesh-toned wings, the appendages spanning no less than twenty feet from wingtip to wingtip.
Devlin had used his Hunaphu awareness and transhuman powers to tap into the master gene cluster responsible for the development and evolution of mammalian flight. He had become Chimera-a genetically altered creature of incongruous parts.