by Read, John
Leeth served first. I missed the shot and looked up at the score. The scoreboard displayed both our last names. According to a giant Holovision screen, our game was sponsored by Rolex.
“So what brings you to Mars?” Leeth asked, his voice rendering perfectly over my headset. “You seem older than most colonists.” He was right; I was thirty-two, while most colonists were in their early twenties. I guess most folks planned to do their time on Mars, and then come back to Earth, having banked considerable savings.
“I’m an engineer,” I said, returning the ball.
“I’m a nurse,” Leeth said. “I was working with survivors in San Diego. But SAR stopped bringing them in, so they didn’t need me anymore.”
“The evacuation is over,” I said, missing the ball. Leeth was up forty-fifteen.
“Right,” Leeth said with a somber tone, and then served the ball. “So what do you think of H3?” he asked as we continued our rally. The way he said “H” sounded like he was saying, “eye-itch.”
“H3?” I repeated, thinking about triatomic hydrogen, a very unstable molecule.
“Henry Allen the third, CEO of Red Planet Corporation,” Leeth said, sounding surprised I had to ask.
“Oh yeah,” I said. “I hadn’t really thought about him.”
“Mate, that guy has been in the tabloids all year. He’s been trying to lobby the world’s governments to cancel the freeliver’s wage and deny them access to the auto-farms. He thinks middle class people need a certain level of discomfort for the betterment of society.”
“I don’t read the tabloids. All I know is that he’s a peculiar fellow, you know, eccentric.”
A few years back when Linda Hernandez lost to Jake Bush, Henry Allen had protested the Bush Presidency by donating millions of hyperloop tickets to the homeless. It got the transients off the streets, and it stung the middle class freelivers by taking up all the reasonably priced seats.
Leeth smashed the ball into the net and jogged over to pick it up. “Anyway, H3 will be on Mars when we arrive, which should make things rather interesting. I guess he thinks he can squeeze more productivity out of the mines if he’s around.”
“He’s not on the Mayflower is he?” I asked, pretty sure the Mayflower didn’t have first class.
“Ha! Mate, you really don’t know H3. First, he only hangs with the rich, and second, he doesn’t leave for another four months.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said, returning another one of Leeth’s killer serves. “It takes six months to get to Mars.”
“Not for him. H3 just built himself a constant acceleration spacecraft. Hawking magazine calls him ‘Fastest Man in the Universe,’” Leeth said, imitating a newscaster.
“So how’d you end up on this ship?” I asked.
“Well,” Leeth began, “Australians are known for traveling the world. Go to any youth hostel and I guarantee you’ll find at least one Aussie. But I’ve never been one for freeliving, you know? I gotta always be helping people, else I feel, I don’t know, off. I was gonna head to South America after I finished up in California. But then I found out the Mars needed a nurse. So, I filled out the form and well… Any excuse to help people in new and exotic places.”
“Well, that’s as good a reason as any.” I served the ball back over the net.
I got to know a lot more about Leeth during our game. He’d traveled all over Earth with the Red Cross, chasing all sorts of natural disasters. And when he wasn’t wearing his scrubs, he volunteered as a lifeguard, saving amateur surfers who got in over their heads.
I lost our tennis game that day, but I was happy to have found a friend.
Later that day, a looping message played on the Mayflower’s communal holovisions. The video opened with a view of Mars from space, the camera zooming in on the planet like a spacecraft on approach. It reminded me of the videos shown to American schoolchildren during the Cold War, warning them to get under their desks in the event of a nuclear blast. At first I couldn’t decide if it was meant to be a kind of artistic irony, but then I considered the source. It was more likely the company had inadvertently reinvented the authoritative-hysterical style. The view of Mars was accompanied by a deep voice narrating in a flat mid-Atlantic accent:
“One global risk persists on Mars. Storms! Martian storms usually last only a few days, harmlessly covering all our domes and solar panels with dust. However, it is possible that one of these storms could last months or even years. If a multi-year planetwide storm were to occur, some of us might like to evacuate, but like the Titanic, there are simply not enough life boats.”
The video then showed a row of Martian ascent vehicles and shuttles parked at the spaceport, covered in Martian soil.
A logo appeared and the narration continued: “Red Planet Mining Corporation would like to assure you that we have plenty of power and supplies to wait out almost any storm. We will continue to provide you with regular status updates on our disaster readiness.”
The video panned back into space.
“We hope you enjoy your stay on Mars, and look forward to working with each of you as we build a better tomorrow.”
I had known about the storm threat for as long as I had known about the colony. Geeking out on Mars trivia was a given at NASA. But the warning—as retro-silly as it had been presented—worked. I had watched the Earth receding and played tennis in zero G, but the announcer’s earnest presentation brought it home to me for the first time that I was going to Mars. I was headed farther than far, and there was no going home for a long, long time.
Three weeks into our journey to Mars, I received my job assignment. The message came via a priority SpaceNet channel. I floated freely in my room, having just gotten back from taking my morning shower. I tugged on some clothes before opening the message.
Dear Mr. Orville,
We hope you have enjoyed your journey so far. The attached files contain all the materials necessary to prepare you for living on Mars. Your assigned job will be Director of Solar Panel Distribution. Please follow the training schedule provided.
Yours Truly,
Red Planet Mining Corporation
The attached schedule assigned eight hours of work, Monday through Friday, for the rest of my trip, with two days off per week. I looked over the schedule. Basically, it contained a long list of video seminars and training simulations. The stuff seemed pretty standard and pretty boring. I closed the file.
The next attachment was a document called A General Guide to Life in the Colony. This file had a 3D interactive map of the colony that even had the address and layout of my apartment:
Stephen Building, Suite 258
42 Hawking Drive
Three O’clock Dome
Harmony Colony, Mars.
The apartment bordered a dome wall and appeared to have a view of the hills to the east. I wondered if most people’s accommodations were as nice. The apartment came fully furnished. It had to be. I doubted there was an Ikea on Mars, although if we needed anything, I suppose we could simply print it. I closed that file and went on to the next.
The third file contained information on a vehicle called the “Pelican.” I knew a little about the aircraft used on Mars, but the file contained 3D images of the aircraft, along with its flight characteristics.
The Pelican’s spherical cockpit hung from the fuselage like a gullet. It had a wingspan of a hundred and twenty feet and cruised at six hundred kilometers per hour. Not bad, I thought. It was powered by two engines called wasps. In large circular cowlings, teardrop shaped fans slapped Mars’s thin atmosphere like a bumblebee beating its wings.
I noticed a button marked “Flight-simulator” and the corners of my mouth began to curve upward. I selected the icon with a gesture.
“Please connect motion control arms before putting on the headset,” said a computerized female voice.
Our assigned rooms each came with four motion control arms. Two for your feet and two with feedback gloves that connected t
o your wrists, just like the tennis sim in the gym. I strapped into the restraints. For the moment, the system induced no resistance whatsoever, and I continued to float freely in my stateroom.
I donned the Oculus headgear and suddenly I was in the cockpit. I could feel the rudder pedals on my feet and the control stick in my hand. The Pelican sat in a hangar not much bigger than the plane itself.
“Welcome,” said the simulator. “This aircraft is the MF-33 Martian flyer, the Pelican, current model.” The simulator talked me through the controls and how to contact the Martian Air Traffic Control.
“Pelican, this is MATC,” a male voice said in a very flat tone. “You are cleared for takeoff from the PDC hangar.” The computer pronounced MATC, like mat-ic, which had a nice ring to it—much better than “ATC” or “Tower.” I followed the computer’s instructions, pushing the throttle forward. The system shook, simulating takeoff.
The Pelican rocketed out of the hangar and into the Martian sky. I leveled off at five hundred feet and got my first look at the colony.
I could see the circumferential, my new home: twelve domes encircling a larger central dome. Transparent channels connected each dome and within these channels, cars raced from one dome to the next.
In the distance, the spaceport abounded with activity. A delta-wing shuttle landed on the runway while an MAV launched into orbit. Green lights on the control tower flashed and radar dishes rotated.
Up on a nearby hill, the colony’s research and development center rested inside a bio dome filled with trees. Near the dome’s roof, birds soared in an artificial breeze. Outside the lush hilltop haven, a single windmill rotated, not generating power obviously. Martian winds didn’t exert much force; the windmill just measured wind speed. Other weather stations were strewn about nearby.
Following the simulator’s instructions, I dove into Valles Marineris, Mars’s deepest canyon where autonomous mining trucks drove in and out of the mines. The vehicles looked like dump trucks without cabs, bumping along on oversized tires.
Following a set of directions on the heads up display, I banked the Pelican into a northern branch of the canyon and back to the colony. A suspension bridge above the canyon connected the spaceport to the rest of the colony. As I approached the bridge, warning sounds resonated through the cockpit.
“Caution,” said the simulator, “you are not permitted to fly this aircraft under the bridge.”
I pulled up on the control stick, and the Pelican shot up into the sky, clearing the bridge by a few hundred meters. I continued up, at full throttle, until the computer said, “This session is complete. Would you like to proceed to the next lesson?”
“No,” I said, but then I thought of something. “Computer, can you change the location to Earth, San Francisco, and keep me in the air?”
“Location established. Please confirm request transition to free flight.”
“Confirmed,” I said. Mars’s red sky faded to blue.
The simulation displayed San Francisco as it was before the impact. It was beautiful. I soared over the Golden Gate Bridge, towards Alcatraz. Below me, a thousand seagulls circled above the waves. I banked hard over Fisherman’s Wharf, cruising down toward Market Street and the Embarcadero.
To my right, Union Square bustled with shoppers going in and out of Macy’s where Marie had loved to shop. I’d let Branson play in the fountain and chase pigeons while waiting for a table at the Cheesecake Factory.
On my left, auto-cars raced toward Oakland on the Bay Bridge. Beyond that, Berkeley’s Campanile rose over the historic campus. The Campanile was one of the tallest clock towers in the world. Well, when Marie taught there it was, before it was destroyed by the impact.
I flew over the Mission district and above Bernal Heights where we had rented our apartment. I banked right again and found myself over Alamo Square, where colorful Victorian houses overlooked a park.
Memories flooded back as if watching a movie in fast forward. I saw Marie and Branson, rolling down the square’s grassy hill, laughing hysterically. They laughed so loud. I would stand and watch, not wanting to grass-stain my pants. I remembered an indescribable joy as my son tumbled in the freshly mowed lawn. We picnicked in that same park beside a garden decorated in children’s shoes. Marie rushed up the hill, chasing after Branson as he wandered toward the tennis courts where old men grunted as they stumbled around the court on aching knees.
Something changed and my view began to cloud. Was the computer simulating fog? No. Tears welled up against the rubber in my headset. I pushed the stick down and the cries of proximity alarms filled my ears. The Pelican dove into the San Francisco hillside with a thundering crash. My view panned away from the crash site, displaying a smoldering crater. A menu popped up. “Reset simulation?” the computer asked.
“No, end program,” I said.
I ripped off the headset and found myself alone in the silence of my room.
The remaining five months on the Mayflower passed by surprisingly fast.
Leeth and I continued to play sports on a daily basis. In our third month we moved on from tennis and started playing hockey. By the fourth month, we had quite the league going. With twelve players plugged in for every game, the computer rarely had to use bots to fill in for shortages.
I even became an expert at my job, at least in simulation. The training programs were interesting and many involved flying. I also enjoyed driving jeeps over Martian terrain and exploring the surface in a spacesuit. I couldn’t wait to do these things for real.
For most of the journey, we could see Mars from the theater, but only as a red star in the vast sky. People enjoyed floating at the windows, trying to point it out. Then, with one week left in our journey, Mars began to grow.
When the arrival countdown switched from days to hours, alerts sounded throughout the spaceship. The orbital insertion burn was set for ten a.m. Martian standard time. Most of us had downloaded the Martian time app for our watches and were now accustomed to the twenty-five-hour clock.
There was even a running joke about staying up until thirteen o’clock at night. It was like George Orwell’s book 1984, which began with the line, “It was a bright day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”
Everyone was excited for planetfall. We would experience gravity’s pull for the first time in six months. I was quite nervous about returning to gravity. Despite our exercise routines, and the gravity-simulating running track, we’d still have difficulty walking once we reached the surface.
At nine forty-five a.m., everyone gathered in the theater. Leeth and I took the same seats as when we had first met. From our perspective, the planet occupied more than half of the windows in the theater.
Shortly after settling into our seats, the arrival countdown reached zero.
“Reorientation thrusters firing,” said the ship’s computer.
We jerked to our right as the Mayflower’s starboard thrusters fired. Mars rotated across our field of view. It was breathtaking. Down below, I could see the canal-like canyons that had fooled early astronomers into thinking intelligent life existed on Mars. I could also see the manmade canals. Most of these were the result of strip mining. Other canals reflected a blue-green light. These must be the farms, I thought. And there is the colony!
From space, Harmony Colony was barely visible, with the spaceport’s runway being the most prominent artifact. I could just make out the circumferential: twelve domes positioned in a circle, with a thirteenth dome in the center.
The whole area surrounding the colony glistened. The solar arrays, I thought.
Leeth broke my trance. “Drink, mate?” he said, handing over the flask.
“How the hell do you still have any of that!”
“Told you I had a lot,” Leeth said. “This is the last of it though, so you better enjoy it.”
I took a swig. When I handed the flask back, the port thrusters fired to complete our reorientation. The theater faced out into space with the spaceship p
ositioned so its two engines, each the size of school buses, pointed towards the Martian horizon. The sun beamed through a window and Leeth held up his flask to protect his eyes. I held up my hand to do the same.
“One minute until orbital insertion,” the computer said. “Please ensure your seat belts are securely fastened, and check that the area in front of you is clear of any floating objects.”
The ship’s cleaning drone had been busy all morning. If there were any debris floating around the ship, it would fall to the rear of the spacecraft once the engines ignited. I was pretty sure none of us wanted a floating tennis shoe or stray French fry hitting us in the face.
When the countdown reached zero, the ship rumbled as deceleration pressed us into our seats. “Orbital insertion in progress,” the computer said.
According to the screens, we were experiencing one G of acceleration. But after six months with no gravity, it felt like a sumo wrestler was sitting on my chest.
Another timer appeared. “Twelve minutes, eleven seconds remaining,” it read.
“Twelve minutes at one Earth gravity!” Leeth yelled, sounding like crocodile Dundee, “Ridgy-didge!”
The ship continued to shake as the engines did their job. The spacecraft’s structure carried the engine noise into the theater. It felt like sitting in a car with a booming subwoofer.
The Mayflower curved around the planet in reverse as the engines burnt their remaining fuel. The blinding sun glided from right to left until Mars was visible once more. To our left was Phobos, Mars’s largest moon, orbiting against a background of stationary stars.
With three minutes remaining in the orbital insertion, we crossed the terminator and experienced our first Martian sunset. For ten seconds, the theater turned bright red, as incoming sunlight passed through the Martian atmosphere.
“Wow,” I said.
“Beauty, but I’ve seen better,” Leeth joked and I shook my head. We had become fast friends, but appreciating a solemn moment wasn’t his strong suit.