It was also a surprise to discover they were all wearing standard MFY overalls. Janice felt violated: at some point someone had stripped her of the space suit she had been wearing and then dressed her. She felt a shiver up her spine, imagining some old pervert’s hands running over her body, taking all kinds of liberties, while she lay drugged and helpless for the months the mission had taken to get to Mars.
They separated and explored their new home further. It was much bigger than they expected, with ample room for the forty members of the initial mission profile. After a few minutes, they all gravitated back to the control room, looked at each other, and waited for someone to take the lead.
There was no designated mission commander. They were all adults engaged with the process and it was considered there was no need for a formal leadership structure. This was the MFY party line but in this situation, it wasn't much use: they needed guidance.
They should have found comfort in their checklists and the roles they were supposed to follow. However, they were all still coming to terms with materialising in the control room, instead of walking across the Martian landscape from their landing module. Confusion was fast giving way to panic. They had discovered they didn’t have access to many of the systems they were supposed to be monitoring. What would happen if there was a major systems problem they couldn’t repair? Would someone let them out?
This seemed to confirm they were participants in an elaborate hoax. Janice preferred not to consider any alternatives and suppressed a half-formed fear there was an alternative explanation. Aliens.
Recently, there had been some talk in the media about aliens contacting and infiltrating the government, an obvious conspiracy theory which was used to explain how someone like Ronald Chump could be elected to be President of the single most powerful country on the planet, and then go completely off the reservation. This story had been squashed by the Chump team and designated ‘fake news’.
They stood in silence and waited to see what happened next. They could all hear the whir of pumps and the rattle of the fans in the environmental systems. Lights blinked on panels, and images and text flowed down the screens of monitors attached to the walls and hanging over computer stations. Everything in the room was exactly what they expected to see, the same equipment they had trained on back at the MFY campus, the work stations familiar from the hours they had spent on the simulators.
Janice felt the weight of expectation that she should provide direction and leadership for the little team. Why me? she asked herself. Probably because she was a pilot, and she’d had command training. She should have been the one at the controls on the trip from Earth to Mars, ready to make course adjustments and abort the landing if the autopilot failed. She would be the one remotely controlling the inbound rockets and the drones they would use to explore the planet. Well that’s what the plan said. She had no idea what was going to happen now.
Hang on, she thought. Am I supposed to be a pilot? Why would I believe this when just a few moments ago I was panicking about not being able to pilot the rocket and the lander? Janice shook herself.
“Something isn’t right here.”
Six
“Oh, for fucks sake!”
An annoying notification beeped on Bruce's mobile. He hadn’t got the hang of how to turn them off on his new device, so it beeped and chimed incessantly. Even more annoyingly, he didn't even need the mobile, because all the most important stuff he needed to know was delivered to him by a process he couldn't even begin to understand. Some of it was visual, displayed in front of his eyeballs, and other times the Transcendent or MPU delivered the messaging directly into his consciousness.
“Why the fuck does this thing keep going off?” he muttered, jabbing the screen with a finger in the vain hope he could kill the noise. The notification was from a news service he had forgotten he subscribed to. It announced that the first colonists were about to set foot on Mars ahead of schedule.
This shouldn’t have been technically possible. The ‘crew’ should still be in orbit around the planet preparing for the historic occasion of the first human landing on Mars, not on their way down to the surface.
The world was supposed to believe this was the first manned landing, but Ngaio, along with Bruce, Little Bruce, Myfair and Leaf had all visited the site in recent days to ensure it was fit for purpose. Their visits weren’t for public consumption. The entire population of Earth knew Robert Cameron, closely followed by Janice Chang, were going to be the first humans to step out onto the surface of Mars. The entire event was should be being carefully stage-managed for maximum impact.
Bruce needed to find out what the fuck was going on and called up the minutes of the recent implementation progress meetings. It didn’t really matter if there had been a cock up, so long as the crew were still alive. They had to keep up the pretence that the MFY program had successfully started a colony on Mars, even if at the end of the day the Mars landing wasn’t the main event.
Every part of the landing had been carefully choreographed and practised repeatedly, because nobody could afford to make any mistakes. They had also practised numerous scenarios where things didn’t go to plan. There were back up options to ensure a successful landing in case anything went wrong.
“Fuck!” Bruce muttered to himself, but not too loudly, because he didn’t want to wake the rest of the house up. Sometimes he felt he had to do everything himself. However, he was his own worst enemy because when he got distracted or didn’t pay attention, the project had a habit of going off track because nobody seemed capable of making a decision without him – the exact opposite of what he wanted. Once things got out of shape he had to hit the pause button, corral everyone and re-focus them on the purpose of the project, then move forward again.
This time there was nobody around who could help him with this new challenge, which threatened to derail the plan in the home straight of the implementation process.
The Transcendent had gone off-line, which was unusual. It had told Bruce it was attending a retreat. Why an electronic creature with infinite processing power needed a retreat was a mystery to Bruce. He suspected the Transcendent or the Transcendents he dealt with had decided to check out. Maybe they were enjoying a more physical presence for a while and didn’t want him to be critical of them downloading into an unsuspecting human body. But he couldn’t imagine they needed a rest.
Bruce was never entirely sure if he was communicating with one entity or a multiplicity of Transcendents, because it often felt like there were multiple conversations going on in his mind at any one time, in addition to the conversation he was having. He often felt there were lurkers eavesdropping on his conversations with the Transcendents, like sneaky, nosy neighbours snooping on a party line.
The MPU wouldn’t be any help either. It was undertaking one of its regular upgrades and reboots. The last time it had gone off the rails, the Transcendents had implemented some new control points aimed at making sure it undertook more regular self-assessments. Bruce could interrupt the process but if he did, it was entirely possible the MPU would overlook a critical requirement or miss an important deadline. It was a safer option to let the reboot run its course without interference.
The longer he thought about the situation, the more furious he became. He should have expected the Transcendents to pull a fast one and make a change to the plan they had all signed up for. They were old hands at accidentally or purposely omitting to tell people about last minute changes of plan, and expected the key stakeholders, Bruce especially, to take it in their stride.
Bruce knew the Transcendents struggled if they were involved in a collaborative enterprise, and whatever they said to the contrary, they weren’t comfortable with the notion of cooperating with beings it considered a lower form of life. They could impose their will at any time but had agreed not to. However, they were not above selectively overlooking this undertaking when it suited them.
Another example of how these lapses manifested themselves
was the uploading of MFY team members who asked too many probing questions about the program directly to Skid. Some people grew immune to the mild mental sequestering and sedatives the MPU had employed to stop them putting two and two together.
Bruce didn’t really like the idea of what amounted brain washing or mass sedation on moral grounds, but at least it kept the curious MFYers quiet, and he would make sure it was turned off when they all got to their ultimate destination. He was sure the Transcendents didn’t realise he knew what they were doing.
He read through the notes and discovered the Transcendents had raised the option of dispatching the Mars-bound crew through a wormhole, instead of leaving them in the space craft for the whole trip. If this occurred, the passage of the crew through the wormhole would be manipulated to give them the impression they were aboard their space craft the entire outbound voyage. They would arrive on the planet at the same time as the lander touched down on the surface.
It was the perception problem again. If there was too much scrutiny of the operation, they might have to go to the nuclear option of hoovering up all the people at the Woomera facility at the same time, rather than the structured low-key approach they had planned. The plan was designed to operate under the radar and minimise the risk of a global panic.
Bruce pulled up the issues log from the last few stand-ups he hadn’t attended, and the meeting minutes he hadn't bothered to read.
He discovered a note recommending the removal of the crews from the rockets as a contingency if there was any hint of danger on the long journey to Mars. Reading further, Bruce discovered the human crew could be replaced with walking, talking android replicants before the lift vehicle had even left the launch pad. He realised this was what had happened: the Transcendents never intended the humans to travel to Mars aboard the rockets.
The androids were perfect, and nobody, including himself, had realised they were not human until the real crew had turned up on Mars. They had managed to converse with the MFY control centre, the families of the real crew, and the tame journalists who were allowed access. The Transcendents must have been planning this for a while, because sophisticated androids took a lot of producing.
“You bastards!” Bruce grunted. “Clever bastards.” He knew androids were supposed to fill in for the real colonists when required, but he had never imagined they would fully replace the humans for the entire ground-breaking trip to Mars and, by the looks of things, replace them in the colony itself.
Unfortunately, with their fixation on preserving as many useful bodies as possible, the Transcendents had made a crucial mistake. The first crew had materialised in the control room of the Mars station, while the reality show audience was expecting to see the crew land and plant the first human footsteps on the planet surface.
“You fucken' idiots.” He wondered whether there needed to be an intervention at this point. He could just leave things and watch the process unravel, because the humans were in no danger. However, at some point someone might put two and two together and their entire enterprise could unravel to the extent people would start to ask what the MFY program was up to. He was sure there could be no physical intervention at the Woomera site, but they didn’t want anyone learning the real purpose of the program just yet. Or indeed ever.
Bruce glanced at the run sheet put together for the landing. He hoped it was up to date. However, like everything else he didn’t have his beady eye on, plans had a habit of changing without any warning. As key dates loomed, it became harder to keep tabs on the sheer deluge of information the project produced.
A sizeable chunk of the human population of the galaxy would be watching or listening to the crew in their landing module, preparing to make history and set foot on Mars. His father, oblivious to Bruce’s involvement, had recently rambled on about what a big deal the original moon landing had been. He explained how all the kids at the local school had been rounded up around a radio listening to the momentous event in a draughty old prefab (which were something of an institution for baby boomer schools in New Zealand at the time).
The real human crew, the elite squadron as Bruce liked to think of them, were all capable individuals and the mission would probably have succeeded without the Transcendents direct intervention. However, he could understand their motivation in replacing the crew for the outbound trip because they didn’t want to risk this cargo of precious bodies atop a chemical bomb. He just wished they had paid more attention to detail when putting this plan together. They should have beamed them back aboard the lander in time to make a real landing. Materialising in the colony without making those first steps on the surface of Mars was a disappointment the human crew would live with for the rest of their lives and was a recipe for disaster if the androids failed to emulate the crew convincingly.
He kept an eye on a monitor displaying the real crew milling around the control room looking rather stunned, at a loss to understand what was expected of them. Most of the real functionality of their new environment had been locked down, and they were now effectively passengers. Another monitor showed the androids preparing to step out of the landing module, ticking off their last checks before opening the hatch and stepping out onto the planet. It wouldn’t be long now. Bruce felt a pang of sympathy for the human crew. Their moment of glory was being taken from them, but that was probably the least of their worries.
It would also be bloody interesting to see the reaction of the human crew members if they ever came face to face with their android doubles in the settlement. Bruce had no idea how that was likely to play out but there was nothing he could do about it for the moment.
Janice and the rest of the crew knew the complex was crammed with cameras, drones, and sensors. The only time they could count on any privacy was in the toilet, the bathroom, and their bedrooms during rostered sleeping sessions. They had long since got used to the cameras beaming every move they made to the watching millions.
Bruce and the others weren’t prudes by any stretch of the imagination. However, they wanted the show to have broad appeal across all age groups so keeping a lid on any overt sexual behaviour was a small price to pay. Another key reason was, clever and sophisticated as they were in emulating humans in most areas, the androids hadn’t managed to perfect the sex act. Their performance was wooden and mechanical because the Transcendents hadn’t been able to engineer wild abandon into them yet.
Very few people were aware the MFY program was an elaborate fiction designed to send as many fertile, relatively willing, healthy bodies as possible to Skid with minimum fuss. The plan was on track and progressing as planned, albeit with a few minor hitches being worked through when they arose.
The successful landing at the colony settlement was going to be a huge boost to the program. Even though they were well ahead of the required body count, each successful checkpoint completed by the first colony crew and those who would follow brought hundreds more followers flocking to the MFY facility in the South Australian desert, hoping for a chance to head into space. It was regularly announced on the reality show there were still spots available for applicants with the right qualifications. When new fans arrived in the compound, they were quickly vetted. The bar was set low: if they were young and fertile they were inducted, while the remainder were sent on their way.
Bruce felt a need to intervene on Mars because he thought there was a very real risk that the colony team would run into their android lookalikes. If this occurred on live television, then the MFY program would be exposed and the Transcendents would start to indiscriminately hoover up humans. Bruce knew this would be a global catastrophe, and could undermine established religious and political institutions, which would throw the world into chaos. There was a slim chance that the appearance of aliens might have the opposite impact, galvanising humanity to reach for the stars. Bruce thought the risk was too great.
He’d have to be quick. He couldn’t afford to be away from home for any length of time otherwise there would be hell to pay and his life
would not be worth living. In a few hours he was supposed to be going off to a wedding rehearsal, followed by a few drinks with the boys. He had avoided the mandatory beer fest which masqueraded as a stag do in these parts, but he needed to show his face in the local bar tonight and pay for a few rounds of drinks, or he would always be remembered as an anti-social, snobbish tight-arse.
He wasn’t worried about Ngaio’s reaction if he was AWOL when he was supposed to be attending to last minute wedding details. She knew he had other obligations he couldn’t easily avoid.
His mother was a different story. She would never understand. There was her way and... well, just her way. She had had no say in Bruce’s first wedding, and she wasn’t about to let that happen a second time.
Once he had sorted out the first batch of Martian settlers, he would prepare the way for the bulk of the MFYers on Skid, ensuring they had a more satisfactory welcoming party and induction process than simply being met by a dickhead in a Toyota ute, even a well-intentioned dickhead like Trev. Even the refugees and economic migrants they were planning to siphon up deserved a decent induction. It would set the scene for the kind of society Bruce wanted to see develop on Skid. An inclusive one, where a person’s background, skin colour, or religion was of no consequence or impediment to enjoying an equitable share of the economic benefits generated by the new society.
Bruce had wanted little to do with Skid once the MFY program had been initiated. He’d planned a quiet life back on the farm after the initiation stage, but he quickly became restless, wondering if he had made the right decision about his involvement. At the same time his father had taken on a new lease of life, encouraged by the improved state of his health after being infused with the medichines Bruce passed onto everyone he met. In this way these mini machines would eventually be shared across the entire planet like a global pandemic.
The Colonists Page 5