She flipped the cap on the charge and tagged it to her control. She set it back in its compartment along with all the others and closed the door. She then crawled around to the back of the rover where the control panel was and switched it on. The screen illuminated, displaying options for rover operation. Jann deactivated all remote control functionality so that Annis could not hijack it again. She then tagged it to Annis’ suit. Now, as soon as she switched the power on again, the rover would dutifully roll off to rendezvous with the first officer. It was now or never. Jann hit the power button and moved back. The rover took a few seconds to orient itself, read its new instruction set, and then it moved off to find Annis. “Nineteen minutes.”
The first officer had reached the fuel plant and was loading up the last of the canisters. She stopped when she noticed the seismic rover moving in her direction.
“Jann, are you still alive out there?”
It was Jann’s turn not to reply.
“What are you trying to do, run me over? Well, that’s pathetic. But then again you always were a total waste of space.”
She could hear Annis laugh at her own joke.
“Too late anyway, it’s time to go.”
Annis hefted the last canister and started off. The seismic rover noticed the change in direction and turned to follow. “Twelve minutes.” The rover closed the gap, Jann flipped on her 3D control interface.
“I’m sorry Annis, but you leave me no choice.” She hit detonate.
An explosion in the thin atmosphere of Mars is a strange phenomenon. There’s virtually no sound. It was just a slight tremor that Jann felt as the nighttime sky illuminated in a fiery ball of methane/oxygen rocket fuel. The light was blinding and she covered her visor with her arm and looked away. There was a brief moment before the debris rained down, peppering the entire area with dust and rocks and shards of metal. It was some time before Jann ventured to look again after the last of the destruction had stopped falling. She couldn’t see much, just an enormous plume of dust. She switched on her helmet lights but even they could not penetrate the murky darkness. She switched them off and rolled onto her back. Nine minutes, well this is it, she thought. Now it was time to die. She had prevented the decimation of human civilization and no one would know, no one would care. It was her time now, her work was done.
The EVA suit blinked a new alert to warn its occupant of the impending low oxygen emergency. From her training, she knew it would now try to maximize the remaining reserves by substituting nitrogen. This way her body would still feel like it was breathing, even though there would be less and less oxygen in each breath. It was a calm way to die; she would simply drift into unconsciousness and never wake up.
“Five minutes.”
As her mind drifted, she had the feeling of being lifted up towards the canopy of twinkling stars. They began to move, or was it her that was moving, like she was being transported somewhere. She felt no fear, no pain and no care. Her eyes closed and she drifted off into the heavens.
25
The Garden
The sudden loss of atmosphere from Colony One could have been the end of the facility, save for the fact that Jann had managed to close the lab’s inner door while she was being ejected. By this action she had averted a potential catastrophe. As soon as the tsunami of evacuating air had ceased, Gizmo was able to right itself and could now move into action. Since there were no longer any Earthlings in the colony it could get radical with the analysis of priorities. It shut down unnecessary sectors and killed power to all nonessential systems. It set about rerouting energy and reassigning all priority protocols to the biodome, trying to bring it back up to nominal levels and stabilize the fragile ecosystem. After monitoring the effects of its efforts it estimated it could save 67.3% of biomass and 71.2% of diversity. It meant that several plant species had now become extinct on Mars. However, this would still depend on it physically fixing the damaged infrastructure within the biodome. So it raced around righting hydroponics, untangling ducting and covering exposed root systems.
It was during these latter tasks that a new data stream entered its silicon consciousness. It was another life support system going critical. But this was not in Colony One, this was out on the planet’s surface. At some point Nills had interfaced Dr. Jann Malbec’s EVA suit with colony systems so that he, and Gizmo, would get feedback on her state. Gizmo considered its own internal instruction set for any preprogrammed routines that were to be executed for such an event and found none. However, after it ascertained that it had no preset actions to take, it did the next thing on its list of priorities—Gizmo analyzed the situation.
Its number one priority had always been to ensure the safety of Nills Langthorp, but he was now dead, blown out through the hole in the Research Lab wall. It also assessed that no other human was alive on the surface of Mars, save for ISA crewmember Dr. Jann Malbec, whose life was fading fast. But, it was precedence that tipped the balance for Gizmo. Nills had saved her life before, back when the demented commander tried to kill her in the Medlab. So this must have been a priority for Nills and therefore, by extension, for Gizmo. The final decider was its analysis that it had a 54.8% probability of saving her life. All this, its silicon mind calculated, in a fraction of a microsecond.
Gizmo made its way to a functioning airlock and exited out onto the planet’s surface. Its tracked wheels enabled it to race across the dusty terrain at great speed. By the time it found her and lifted her up she was just losing consciousness. Gizmo finally got her back through the airlock just as the EVA suit shut down.
It took the little robot several attempts to resuscitate her on the medlab operating table, but on the fourth attempt Jann’s body responded and she sucked in a long gulp of air. She was still unconscious while Gizmo tended to her broken bones, and it was several hours later before she opened her eyes, looked around, and spoke.
“Gizmo, how did I get here?”
“I brought you here.”
“I thought I died.”
“Well, technically you did, I rebooted you.”
She looked at the quirky machine for a moment. “Thank you, Gizmo.”
“Don’t mention it, the pleasure is all mine.”
But that was a long time ago now and many months had passed. The colony’s systems now hummed and sung with optimal perfection and the biodome had regained much of its lush verdant abundance. Yet it was different. A new wildness had taken over. More tropical forest than kitchen garden. Gizmo whizzed through the connecting tunnel and into the biodome. It zipped along the racks of hydroponics until it came to the edge of the forest area near the center of the vast dome. It slowed down so as not to cause damage to the velvety carpet that was the forest floor, a thick mat of mosses and grasses. It was a product of diligent bioengineering, hard work and time. It moved through the worn gap in the tall overgrown vegetation and out onto the central dais. The pond shimmered and the splash from the tall rock waterfall prismed the morning light into a myriad of twinkling colors.
Standing at the base of the waterfall, Dr. Jann Malbec held her head back as she washed her hair in the gently falling cascade. Gizmo watched from the edge of the pond and waited patiently. She stepped out, shook the excess water from her hair and waded across the pond, carp scattering as she went. She spotted Gizmo.
“Ah… good morning.”
“Good morning Jann, I trust you had a good sleep.”
“I did, Gizmo, thank you.”
“I have brought you some breakfast. It’s the last of the coffee, I’m afraid.”
“Not to worry, I think there’s some still left in the HAB. Next time we’re outside we can bring back the remaining supplies.” She bit into some toast and sipped her coffee. She was naked. Over the last few months Jann had found herself with little reason to get dressed. With no humans for more than 140 million miles there were a lot of things that don’t seem so important anymore. Putting on clothes was one of them.
It took only four weeks for her b
ones to heal enough for her to use her arm again. A remarkably speedy recovery. During that time she had learned as much as she could from Gizmo on the state of the colony after the research lab explosion. Between them, they nursed it back to health and sustainability. It was another few weeks more before she finally ventured out on the surface again and made her way to the HAB. She found the COM communications unit and realized the extent of the first officer’s deceit. They brought it back to Colony One, along with the satellite unit, and Gizmo reconfigured it to function for ISA transmission protocols. So, it was over two months before Jann sent a long report back to mission control.
It had been assumed on Earth that the colony was destroyed and all crew lost. With no communication all they had to go on was the satellite data. It showed images of the destruction at the colony and also the catastrophic loss of the fuel plant. The MAV was still intact, but with no fuel to power it, it was useless. Jann was stuck on Mars, there was no way to return to Earth, unless a new fuel manufacturing plant could be built and new canisters fashioned. Mission control sent her detailed plans on how to do this with materials available in the colony, but she was not great at engineering and, in truth, she was in no hurry to return. The next launch window was not for another year and a half, anyway. She was also beginning to fall under the same spell that Nills had talked about, and as the weeks went by she became more and more at one—with Colony One.
She replaced the hammock that Nills had used with a low futon and curled up on it at night, looking out through the dome at the infinite universe. During these nights she began to gain a deeper understanding of what it meant to be human. It was a kind of feral reawakening. A sense of wild abandon bubbled up inside her and she began to understand how Nills must have felt. And, like him, she realized the critical importance of Gizmo for maintaining her sanity. The human mind was a fragile thing, kept in balance only by the company of others. We are social animals, we feel safe in the herd, and desire its acceptance. Alone, the human mind wanders with no clear purpose, nothing to keep it in balance.
“Will you be requiring clothing today, Jann?”
Jann thought about this a moment. Clothing did have one big advantage in the colony—pockets. Her daily dressing considerations had effectively been reduced to whether pockets would be useful in performing whatever tasks she had assigned for herself that day.
“Or would you prefer more time to think about it?”
“Yes, there’s no rush, we can decide later.” She sipped her coffee and sat down on a low chair to dry her hair.
“Tell me Gizmo, do you miss Nills?”
“Alas, poor Nills, I knew him well. A man of infinite jest.”
“That sounds like Shakespeare.”
“That’s because it is. From Hamlet.”
Jann laughed and sipped her coffee. “You have no concept of death Gizmo, do you?”
“I understand it is reality for living entities. I understand that Nills no longer exists.”
Jann put the towel down and lay back on the recliner like she was sunning herself by the pool. “That’s not, strictly speaking, true.”
“You mean he’s still alive?”
“In a sense.”
“Explain. I hate to admit it, but I am confused.”
“Remember when we checked the MAV and we found one of the analogues from the bio-rack in the research lab? Annis was trying to return to Earth with it.”
“I do. Curious, that.”
“Well here’s the thing, I finally managed to cross reference it with data I had gleaned from the lab IT systems before it was destroyed, and guess what?”
“It’s Nills.”
“Correct. So in a sense, part of him still exists. Even if it is just a facsimile.”
“The plot thickens.”
“Indeed it does, Gizmo. For one, why did COM want Annis to bring this back to Earth? And second, what was it about Nills that was so special?”
“Again, I have to admit I have no answer.”
Jann sat up on the recliner and looked directly at Gizmo. “Did you ever notice any physiological changes in Nills over the time you were together?”
“Sure. Beard, no beard. Clothed, naked. Clean, not clean. There were many.”
“No, I mean more subtle than that.”
“Now that you mention it, I did notice that my recognition algorithm was losing accuracy by approximately 12.34% per year. This I attributed to aging and compensated for it accordingly.”
“Well, as always Gizmo, you are correct. But he was not getting older. No, he was getting younger.”
“My understanding is that is not possible.”
“It’s not probable. But in this instance, it would seem that it is indeed possible.”
“Holy cow.”
Jann laughed at the little robot and stood up.
“So what happens now, Jann?”
“What do you think?”
The little robot paused for a beat and then replied. “They will come for it. If they wanted it that badly, they will return here to get it.”
“My thinking exactly. But that can’t be for at least another year and a half.”
“So we have some time.”
“We do. And time that I need to find out exactly what was going on here. My guess is that COM were on the cusp of some major genetic breakthrough. They may have even achieved it. But all was lost when the sandstorm hit and the infection broke out. I intend to find out what it was that they were doing.”
“Is that possible with the research lab destroyed?”
“Doubtful. That’s why I think we’ll need to investigate the mine at some point. I would really like to know what was going on over there.”
“When do we start?”
“Oh… there’s no rush, Gizmo. Time enough for that.” She looked around at the vast biodome. “Anyway, I don’t really want to leave. I’m beginning to like it here too much.”
TO BE CONTINUED…
You can also find the next book in the series, Colony Two Mars, here.
Colony Two Mars
1
The Animal
Dr. Jann Malbec stood a little over knee-deep at the edge of the pond in the biodome of Colony One. She was still and quiet, her face to the sun so as not to cast a shadow over its surface and frighten the fish. She held a spear high above her shoulder and waited. After a while the fish would start to swim around her legs, sometimes even touching her. Jann held fast until the right moment and then loosed the spear. It knifed through the water, bending in the refracted light.
Damn, only one, she thought as she pulled it out. Her record was two in one throw, three was exponentially more difficult to achieve. The fish flapped and squirmed on the stick as she stepped out and brought it over to the campfire she had set up on the central dais. Grabbing the fish by the tail, she slid it off the spear and whacked its head on the hard floor to kill it and stop it flapping around. From a small mound of dry kindling Jann grabbed a handful of straw, placed it on the dying embers and blew gently to get it going again. Soon it was burning steady. It crackled and sparked as she threw more kindling on.
Sitting down cross-legged, she started to gut the fish with a sharp knife that she kept on a belt around her waist. The area around her was covered in the scattered remains of similar meals she had eaten in this place. As soon as the fish was cleaned she skewered it and set it on the fire to cook. Then she sat back and waited, turning it every so often to prevent the flesh from blackening.
Through the dense foliage all around her she could hear the robot going about its business: harvesting, maintaining, monitoring. She didn’t speak to it much these days. It didn’t seem to mind—it was a robot after all. In the beginning it was different, she had had long conversations with it. But after a while she grew tired of the rhetorical analysis of its dialog. The robot simply took in what she said, analyzed it and regurgitated it back in a reorganized form. It was like talking to a distorted mirror. Sometimes she even got angry at it,
and banished it from her space. Then after a while, oddly, she would feel guilty and would seek it out again. How strange is the human spirit to feel empathy for a machine. Now though, she left it to its work. It managed the colony and there really wasn’t much Jann had to do. The colony didn’t need her input, it just needed the robot.
After the cataclysmic events of the ill-fated ISA Mars mission, Dr. Jann Malbec ended up being the only survivor. Nonetheless, since the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) was still intact, she had a possible way home. Mission control had sent her details on how to fabricate new fuel tanks after the originals had been destroyed when she had immolated Annis Romanov in a fiery ball of rocket fuel. Jann and the robot had set about building these, but when they were ready, she had a new problem. As far as the ISA was concerned, she was still a potential biohazard, a Typhoid Mary, so to speak. They would not let her return unless she could prove she was not a contaminant.
So Jann worked to gain some understanding of the bacteria that had devastated the ISA mission, and Commander Decker in particular. But try as she might she simply did not possess the equipment to gain any further understanding. In the end she simply gave up. And with it, any hope of using the MAV to return to Earth. She had no option but to wait it out until the next ISA mission. The colony was self-sustaining and well resourced, so she was in no real danger.
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