Colony Mars Ultimate Edition

by Gerald M. Kilby

  But all this was now under threat; he could see it with his own eyes, and he didn't need the figures to tell him. There was a critical CO2 deficiency in the colony environment, and unless he could solve that problem, everything would eventually die. Everywhere around him he could see the plants looking tired and stunted, each struggling to seek out the meager scraps of the vital chemical they required for photosynthesis. No amount of sunlight, water, or high-tech hydroponics could compensate for this one vital ingredient. It was ironic, considering over 95% of the Martian atmosphere is CO2 gas, that the biodome should be suffering from a lack of this seemingly plentiful resource.

  Yet it was a problem he needed to solve, because if he didn't, every plant here would die. And ultimately, when all the stores of food were gone and he could grow no more, then he would simply starve to death.

  He had thought that maybe he could survive on the fish. But most of the aquatics had been destroyed during the infection outbreak, and he was now only beginning to build up the stocks again. The fish that remained were weak and too few to risk harvesting, at least not for a long time -- assuming he could acquire the skills and the knowledge to make success of a highly complex and very delicate process of fish farming.

  He had also experimented with manufacturing CO2, utilizing a brewing process -- after all, he had copious amounts of fruit available to him. But when he ran the numbers, he realized that even with his best efforts he could only produce a negligible amount. Simply too much CO2 was being consumed by the plants for his feeble efforts to make a difference.

  He also tried pulling up and burning the worst affected plants. Theoretically, this would return the CO2 stored within the plant back into the atmosphere. But the AI that controlled the colony environment had been compensating for the lack of CO2 with more oxygen so as to maintain optimal pressure. Any fire that Nills had tried, burned with an uncontrollable rage, so he eventually abandoned the idea.

  The colony acquired its CO2, nitrogen, and a few other gases directly from the Martian atmosphere by simply sucking it into an atmosphere processing unit (APU), filtering out any dust particles, and feeding it directly into the life-support system. However, that system no longer functioned.

  Fortunately, water and oxygen were manufactured directly from the Martian regolith by a completely different set of systems, which were operating perfectly. But while oxygen and water were critical for life, plants still needed CO2 to photosynthesize, and there was simply no getting around this fact.

  The obvious solution, of course, was to fix the problem at source. But doing that would necessitate him going outside, since the APU was external to the main colony infrastructure. It was housed in a small building surrounded by storage tanks, not far from the primary biodome. It had shut down sometime during the six-month-long sandstorm that had happened over two and a half years ago. The problem was likely to be the air intake filters, which had most likely become clogged with the dust kicked up during the storm. They simply needed to be taken out and cleaned, then hopefully the APU could be booted up again.

  Simple, really. It would have been no problem for an earlier Nills. Heck, he could have had it done before lunch without really thinking about it. But now it was almost impossible to comprehend how he could keep control of his agoraphobia long enough to get it done.

  The droid traversed the edge of the dais again, this time with an empty pushcart on its way back to collect more soil. Nills had built it as a way to keep his mind off the horrific events he had witnessed during the outbreak, when the colony had been almost destroyed by the psychotic violence of the infected. Building it had been therapeutic; the process slowly brought him back from the brink of despair after Jonathan died and Bess went out through the main airlock, never to return. From that point on, he had been on his own -- nothing but his plants and his droid.

  Yet he still wanted it to be useful. He needed something that could do the lifting and moving all day long, without complaint. So he designed it to be both dexterous and rugged, scavenging suitable parts from old robotic rovers and utility vehicles that were either no longer needed or had already been scrapped. It took him over seven months to build it, and a further three months to install, program, and debug a relatively simple learning algorithm and voice command system that he had salvaged from one of the older colony droids. This gave it the ability to learn new tasks and to respond to simple voice commands, which Nills continually added to its repertoire. Other than that, it had no deeper intelligence and no way to communicate back to him except to perform the task commanded.

  It was now on its way back with yet another cartload of soil.

  "Droid," Nills called over to it.

  The little robot stopped what it was doing and rotated its sensor array in Nills's direction.

  "Say, Droid. I don't suppose you could go outside and fix the atmosphere processing unit?"

  The droid seemed to twitch a little as its minimal intelligence tried to identify a command within the stream of audio data that had emanated from Nills. But it found nothing it could understand, so it stood mute, patiently waiting for some actionable instruction.

  Nills sighed. "No, I don't suppose you could." He waved his hand dismissively. "Resume."

  The droid's simple processing unit finally had an audio signal it could act on, and it resumed its labors.

  2

  Outside

  Nills stood in the center of the colony's primary operations room, hands resting on the edge of a large holo-table, studying a detailed, three-dimensional schematic of the life support systems. He had been here before -- multiple times, in fact. Each time trying to gain some new insight into the problematic atmosphere processing unit, ultimately trying to find a way to fix it that didn't involve him taking a walk outside.

  The colony had a centralized AI that mostly still functioned as intended, managing all life-support systems and resources. He queried the AI again and again, looking for something -- anything -- he could use to effect a remote repair. But the process was a little cumbersome, as he had to interact with it the old-fashioned way: using an alphanumeric keyboard.

  It had originally been designed with a voice interface, whereby queries and instructions could simply be spoken, and its responses were articulated by a reasonably pleasant AI personality. But that subsystem had been destroyed long ago, back during the outbreak when the crazies were trashing everything and everyone they could get their hands on. So Nills had to rely on direct input -- not that he minded that much. It still got the job done, and the most important aspect of the AI -- its ability to adjust systems for optimal life-support -- still functioned perfectly.

  He had planned to fix the voice interface at some point, and he even had the spare parts all gathered together and stacked in a corner of the operations room, ready to be installed. But somehow it always ended up at the bottom of his to-do list, never becoming a priority.

  He glanced up to see the droid rolling in and taking up a position on the opposite side of the holo-table. Presumably it had completed all its tasks, and now, having nothing to do, simply returned to its default position by his side.

  "Hello, Droid." He gave it a wave, then looked back at the 3D schematic, shaking his head. "It's hopeless, Droid. I've been through this with the AI a hundred and one times, and I still can't find any way to reboot the system without me going outside."

  The droid twitched a little, as if anticipating some new instruction.

  "Ah, what do you know, you dumb bucket of bolts." Nills shook a hand at it. "And we still have the other problem to deal with." He stopped and gave it a stern look. "That hasn't gone away, you know. Just in case you’re thinking of ignoring it. Look, let me show you."

  He tapped a few icons on the holo-table, and the schematic was replaced by a 3D topographical view of the colony infrastructure and the surrounding landscape, extending to a radius of a few kilometers. At the very edge of this radius, two new shapes had recently been added to the landscape.

 
One had arrived fourteen months ago, landing down in a blaze of flame and dust, and immediately began unpacking its payload, a fuel processing plant for the benefit of some future mission. A short time later, the second payload landed -- a large habitation module. All this meant only one thing: new people were coming. And by his calculations, they would be here in approximately four months.

  Yet this mission was different. He knew that from the International Space Agency logo emblazoned on the side of the habitation module. They would be scientists, probably here to investigate what had happened. And as such, they would be a very different breed than the private organizations and corporate entities that build the original colony. But it didn't matter -- in the end, they would all die, too. There would be no escaping it. Once exposed to the pathogen that still existed in the colony, some would succumb to its psychotic effects, and in doing so, would wreak havoc and destruction upon everything within their orbit. Some, like himself, would be immune. But in all likelihood they would be the first to die at the hands of their infected fellow crew members. And there was not a damn thing he could do about it.

  He had done his best to hide, to make it seem to the satellites that must surely be monitoring the site that the colony was dead. He did this in the hope of deterring future missions. His reasoning being that if no one was still alive, then there would be no point in coming.

  But coming they were, and soon.

  How long they intended to stay -- or, more to the point, how long they would survive -- was debatable. But he intended to hide out and keep them from discovering him until they had either left or had all died. Yet, during that time he could not run the risk of allowing the internal environment to become so low in CO2 that all his plants died out. There was no way back from that. So if he was going to fix the APU, he would need to do it now. And that only meant one thing: he would have to somehow overcome his fear and take the short walk from the maintenance airlock to the APU.

  He sighed and signaled to the droid. "Come, follow me. We have work to do."

  A short time later, Nills stood inside the maintenance airlock, fully enclosed in an EVA suit with his helmet on and the visor open. Beside him, the droid waited patiently to follow its master out onto the Martian surface. They wouldn't be going very far; the APU was only around thirty meters from the airlock. But for Nills, that represented a major journey, akin to circumnavigating the entire planet.

  He snapped his visor shut and checked the suit's stats one more time. Once he was satisfied that everything was working and he would not die from asphyxiation, he reached over to hit the button to depressurize the airlock. He hesitated, feeling the first tremors of panic rise in him. He moved his hand away and took a few slow, deep breaths to calm the rising tide of fear. When it receded, he steeled himself one more time and hit the button.

  As the airlock began to evacuate the air and equalize the internal pressure with the surface atmosphere, Nills fought to quell his rising panic. An alert flashed to indicate the decompression cycle was complete, and the outer door slid open, revealing a hostile landscape of dust and sand. He could see the APU just ahead of him, and the line of pipes that led from it directly back into the main colony structure. All he had to do was follow that line, enter through the door in the structure that enclosed the APU, and he would be free to work. He just needed to take that first step.

  He stood there for a few moments -- maybe longer; he couldn't tell -- trying to make his body move. Beside him the droid twitched, waiting to follow its master out. But the fear was too great. Hard as he tried, he couldn't get past it. In the end, he hit the button to close the outer door and re-pressurize the airlock.

  When the cycle finished and the inner door opened, he unclipped his helmet and flung it onto the ground.

  "Goddammit, this is crazy. I'm losing it, I know I am." He looked over at the droid, as if seeking its agreement on his personal assessment. Eventually, he just gave a long sigh and signaled to it. "Come on, follow me. We can try again some other time."

  3

  Brainwave

  Again Nills stood in the operations room, studying the three dimensional schematic of the colony's life-support systems, interrogating the AI for any options for rebooting the APU remotely. And again, there was no obvious solution.

  He knew this, of course, and he knew he was deluding himself in thinking that there was even a remote possibility of the AI solving the problem for him. It was not like the AI could go outside; it was not free to move around in the physical world. It was trapped in the virtual world of its own existence, only free to exercise its authority over systems and processes that were directly connected to it. That was the full extent of its reach.

  Again, having finished its designated tasks, the droid rolled into the operations room. But this time it chose to park itself beside the stack of spare parts for the AI voice interface. And it was at that exact moment that Nills had a brainwave.

  If he could integrate the droid's internal systems with those of the AI, then in theory the droid could be the AI's interface with the physical world. In short, if the AI controlled the droid, then it could fix the APU. It would not be easy. He was an engineer, so he knew the difficulties of what he was attempting to do. Nevertheless, no matter how difficult the task, it would be infinitely easier than him trying to go outside onto the planet’s surface.

  He jerked his finger at the little robot. "You, my friend, are going to get an upgrade."

  The droid twitched in response.

  "Pick up that crate," he instructed.

  The droid complied, then waited for the next command.

  "Come, follow me. We have work to do. And be careful with that -- it's got a whole load of gizmos we're going to need."

  4

  Droid

  Integrating the droid into the AI systems proved a far more complicated task than Nills had originally thought. He had been working on it solidly now for fourteen sols, without a break, and was beginning to neglect his own health and hygiene in the process. But he was in a bind: the biodome was failing, a new crew was coming, and now he didn't even have a droid. It currently lay in a pile of disassembled parts all around his workshop. He was beginning to think that he had possibly taken on more than his technical abilities could accomplish, yet still he continued working on it for as many hours as he could stay awake. It was either that or face going outside, although a small part of him considered that it might be a more achievable task than integrating this droid.

  His technical problems were twofold. Originally he had thought that the spare parts for the AI voice interface would be a simple plug-and-play component. Far from it. It turned out to be a semi-autonomous subsystem, an AI within an AI. On top of that, he had to figure out how to connect it using the colony's wide-area network instead of simply plugging it into the AI core, as per its design. And that was just the voice interface.

  His second problem was enabling the AI to connect physically with the droid so that it could control it and know where it was in three-dimensional space. All told, they amounted to considerable technical problems. But he was in too deep; there was no going back. He would get this done -- or he would die trying.

  It was around midnight on sol nineteen when Nills finally wiped the sweat from his brow with a dirty rag, stood back a little from the now completed droid, and surveyed his work. It had an ungainly look, more steampunk than space-age, but he was not concerned with elegant design. His objectives were more practical.

  "Well this is it, Droid. Time to start testing."

  He leaned over the terminal interface he had set up on his workbench and tapped in the commands to enable the AI to take control of the machine. It would now run through a set of routines enabling it to get the measure of its new toy. How long that would take, Nills wasn't sure. Hopefully not too long.

  Almost immediately the little robot started to move, testing its limbs and servos. It was a strange sort of dance it did, its purpose simply for the AI to learn. Soon, though, i
t began to move around the workshop space. The AI was now beginning the process of mapping out the entirety of the colony structure and the droid's position within it. He left the AI to its work, knowing it would take a while, and decided to use this time to eat, clean up, and maybe get some sleep.

  He awoke many hours later to find the droid parked up beside his bed. It took him a moment to figure out that it must have finished mapping the environment. "All done?" he asked.

  It didn't answer, as he had yet to activate the voice interface, although that was all ready to go. But like everything else about this upgrade, once he started setting up the interface, he was presented with a million different ways with which it could be finessed. So he slept on it rather than rushing in and opting for the quick and dirty solution. He knew he would have to live with this droid for a long time, so there was no point in having something that sounded like a machine when he had the option to do so much more with it.

  He stood up, dressed, and realized that he needed to eat. So he decided to give the droid a test and find out what level of control the AI had gained over the machine.

  "Droid, I'm going to have a shower. Meet me in the workshop in ten minutes, and bring me some apples and a hundred grams of nuts, if there's any left. I need to eat some breakfast."

  The droid twitched a little, then sped off.

  A short while later, Nills sat on a high stool beside his workbench and waited. He checked the time -- 45 seconds remained -- just as the droid arrived into the workshop. It was carrying the items Nills had requested, but had presented them on a tray along with a pot of tea, his favorite. He was impressed; not only did the AI find what he wanted, but his statement about needing breakfast had qualified the task for the AI, and it correctly calculated what his true request was.