The Colonists

by Keith Fenwick

  “I guess we’ll have to try Google Maps again?” Bill suggested, while Stig carried on muttering to himself and turning the Book around in his hands, looking for any other clues about the functionality of the hardware.

  “Yeah I suppose so. Google should be able to pinpoint our location by identifying the wireless network we are connected to, assuming the location services are on.”

  Bill didn’t like their chances, but he said nothing as Stig replaced the back cover and screwed it tight.

  “Right, Google Maps then,” Stig said, putting the device in his bag, and pulling out the one he had already signed into. He didn’t think anything of it at the time, but the screen was unlocked and ready to go. He touched the maps app and when it fired up, accepted the option to use the location service.

  However, Google still couldn’t pinpoint their location.

  “That’s odd,” Stig remarked. “I’ve never seen a device unable to pinpoint a position when it has a strong wireless connection. It’s a bit disturbing, really.”

  While he had grown up in a pre-Google Maps world, before smart phones and the ability to know exactly where you were, it was a discombobulating experience not knowing where he was in the world.

  “I don’t know what to make of it,” he finally added, admitting defeat.

  Bill searched his friend’s face. He’d only known him a few months, but Stig had struck him as being unflappable, no matter what the situation. Now he was clearly quite out of sorts, which concerned Bill. If someone as level-headed as Stig was worried, then they might be in trouble.

  Bill was deciding how he could reassure his friend when he experienced a sudden sense of vertigo, followed by a drowning sensation as he tumbled down an endless whirlpool. It was the worst kind of nightmare, but before he ‘drowned’, he came back to full consciousness and found himself beside Stig on a field of long grass, like the rough on a golf course.

  “What the fuck?”

  Bill picked himself up off the ground where he had been unceremoniously dumped on his backside and looked around. In the distance, he glimpsed the outline of a built-up area, but there were no other landmarks he recognised.

  The contrast with the dormitory they had been in a few moments ago couldn’t be greater. The smell of freshly mown grass filled their nostrils, and they both had pieces of cut grass stuck to their trousers and shoes.

  “Oh my! It’s like we’ve landed on someone’s lawn,” Stig said, looking around. “What do you think has happened?”

  “I don’t know, but maybe we can ask them.” Bill pointed to a small truck bouncing across the grass, towards them.

  Stig turned to where Bill was pointing. He wasn’t sure what to do next. His first thought was to run, and his heart started to thump in his chest. His next thought was that here was nowhere to go, and they wouldn’t be able to outpace the truck.

  “Hi, boys.” Morris Thwaites poked his head out of the passenger side window as it drew alongside them. “Welcome to Skid!”

  “Hi, Morris,” Bill replied, trying not to sound too surprised to see him. “What are you doing here? I heard you had been booted out of the program.”

  “Well, in some respects I was. Jump in the back and I’ll take you back to our, umm, new home, where we can explain what’s going on, the little I know anyway.”

  Bill and Stig clambered over the side and sat in the back, with their backs to the cab’s rear window as the truck rolled across the grass. Stig slapped a few stray grass clippings from of his trouser legs while he bounced around.

  “This is a bit rough on the backside, isn’t it?” He grunted.

  Bill stood up and banged on the roof to get the driver to slow down. His request was met with a laugh and the vehicle sped up, almost causing Bill to lose his balance.

  “Do you know him?” Stig asked.

  “Yeah, I met Morris in the early days of program. He was in the astronaut stream, but we shared the same living space. He was a good guy. One day he just disappeared, and everyone assumed he had washed out. Guess he didn’t.”

  “I really don’t get any of this,” Stig said, “I think we’re a long way from the South Australian desert, but I have no idea where we are or how we got here.”

  “Me neither.” Bill didn’t feel too concerned. He hoped that was a positive sign, as the ute bounced down a track and came to a stop in a small settlement built beside a river.

  “Welcome to your new home away from home,” Morris said, getting out of the cab.

  Five

  In other news..

  The Federal Government of Australia is setting up a Royal Commission of Enquiry into the disappearance of the thousands of people who had until recently been living at the Woomera MFY space port facility, while concerns grow as the number of missing persons swells.

  While some members of the MFY program have returned to their former lives, and others are now resident on the lunar and Martian colonies, many people appear to be unaccounted for. The families and dependants of those who are missing are asking questions about the welfare of the missing people and are holding the Federal and State governments responsible.

  Several American families have engaged a legal team to file a class action against the Australian Federal and South Australian State governments, and the Martian Reality Corporation, the parent company behind the Martian Reality television series. The lawyers are encouraging other interested parties to join the action. The Martian Reality parent company is understood to have a head office in Auckland, New Zealand.

  Martian Reality company representatives have not responded to media queries over this issue.

  As authorities learn more about the space port and the supporting infrastructure, it has become clear it is unlikely all the unaccounted-for inhabitants were sent into space aboard the rockets launched from the site. However, there is little evidence to indicate how they could have left the site without attracting local attention.

  Some commentators say that this bears all the hallmarks of the mass suicide of a religious sect, but there are no signs of a mass grave and no other physical evidence to support the theory. The enquiry will concentrate on the fate of the missing people and bringing those responsible to account.

  Members of the colony settlements on the moon and Mars are refusing to comment on the situation. Despite the negative publicity, advertising revenues for the Martian Reality television show appear to have been unaffected. All major sponsors are still on board, in a strong show of support for the brand.

  OK, so here’s the deal, Bruce began. He’d talked it over with Ngaio, which was a new experience for him, since he was used to doing his own thing. They’d decided that Bruce was honour-bound to spend some time on Skid, but not too much time. Ngaio had one stipulation: Bruce needed to be at home at least every second night. She was pregnant and while her parents and in-laws lived close by, she didn’t want to be left alone too often.

  Another reason Bruce had to stick closer to home was because old Mrs. Pratt had become increasingly reluctant to stay in the house and keep her company. Bruce and Ngaio had built a large house that they planned to fill up with a few more kids, and they had included a room for Mrs Pratt, who was effectively Little Bruce’s full-time self-appointed nanny. In a perfect world, Mrs Pratt would’ve joined Ngaio and the boy in their new house. However, she was more comfortable staying with the boy’s grandparents, so this was where she and Little Bruce spent most of their time. Bruce wondered if the reason for this was that she had a new boyfriend tucked away somewhere and didn’t want to let on.

  The truth was that Mrs Pratt spent the least possible amount of time around Bruce, because she was anxious that one day he would seek retribution for the time she had fired a gun at him, mistaking him for an intruder.

  Bruce had long since forgotten the incident and had accepted her apology months ago. The medichines circulating in her blood stream may have preserved her body and reversed the physical ageing process, but there were a few memory issues even the
medichines couldn't repair.

  “We’ll have to compromise I guess. I might even travel with you at the start, but in a few months, I’m not going to want to travel anywhere, and you’re going to have to be home every second night.” Ngaio laid down the law, and then immediately softened her stance a wee bit. “I might let you stay away for more than one night from time to time.”

  “Sounds fine to me,” Bruce replied agreeably.

  He still wasn’t entirely sure what the Transcendents wanted him to do. He’d demanded a clear set of requirements, but he knew he wasn’t going to get them. It had mentioned there were many integration problems that Bruce could help with, without supplying any details. Bruce had also spoken to Lake at length, who mentioned he was struggling with governance issues and sometimes felt out of his depth and had nobody to turn to for assistance. Neither the Transcendents or Lake had given him any firm instructions.

  What is it you want me to do? Bruce asked again. Can you be a little more specific about the integration problems? You haven’t given me much to go on here.

  Talk to Lake, he can help.

  For fuck’s sake, Bruce muttered to himself, and almost had second thoughts about the deal. He had a lot of sympathy for Lake, who not only had to deal with a few thousand needy indoSkidians who acknowledged him as their natural leader, even though they were constantly harking back to the good old days, imagining Lake could turn back the clock. He also had to contend with the tens of thousands of newSkidians who had landed on the planet, had no idea who he was and were probably in no mood to listen to him. They had quite different expectations, motivations, and requirements to the indoSkdians, and would soon clamour to be heard, demanding the right to practise their religious and cultural beliefs and live how they pleased.

  Bruce had always felt guilty about leaving Lake to deal these issues by himself and felt obliged to give him a hand. While he’d promised to be a kind of mentor, he had provided little in the way of tangible support recently. In the weeks after the Transcendents had unilaterally implemented the upload program, Bruce hadn't spoken to Lake at all.

  Anything else? the Transcendents asked.

  It’s like a job interview, Bruce thought. Maybe the Transcendents had been reading some interview guides or had recalled some long-forgotten Skidian pre-Transcendent process. He wouldn’t put anything past them.

  I don’t think so. It had been an easy discussion with Cyril, Rangi, and Myfair when Bruce told them he was going to be spending some time away from the farm. Too easy - the three of them were very pleased to find out that they could run the farm their way.

  I think we are good to go.

  Six

  In breaking news this hour…

  Authorities are on high alert after revelations that Automedon, a recent fixture in near-Earth space, has suddenly left its relatively stable orbit. At this point in time, there is no cause for alarm. The asteroid is tracking away into a higher plane and initial analysis indicates it will eventually leave our solar system for good.

  Automedon is the largest asteroid to come so close to Earth since records began and is of real interest to astronomers. An asteroid of this size hitting the Earth would result in an extinction event greater than the Chicxulub impactor which led to the end of the dinosaurs. Several missions to explore the asteroid have been attempted, but they have been beset with catastrophic equipment failures and none have been successful.

  Automedon was also of interest to terrestrial businesses as a potential source of minerals and rare earths, which could have been extracted and utilised via futuristic industrial modules constructed either on the asteroid's surface, or in orbit. Once the stuff of science fiction, with the asteroid in our back yard these opportunities were close to becoming a reality and could have been the foundation of an orbital industrial complex.

  There has been much speculation how Automedon came to be in its new orbit and various speculative explanations for its arrival have been circulating ever since its appearance. Acts of God, and theories about it being an advance alien base station, have been discredited by experts from reputable institutions. The discovery surface structures that appeared geometric had fuelled speculation about the origin of the asteroid. A claim that these structures do not occur in nature is unsubstantiated.

  Questions have been asked whether the asteroid's departure will result in the closure of the MFY lunar colony and the settlers there being transferred to Mars. In what has become standard practice for the Martian Reality Show organization, no senior representative has been available for comment.

  These people have no idea what’s going on, Bruce thought. He seldom had time to sit down and watch the news on television these days. It used to be part of his daily routine, along with religiously reading the newspaper from cover to cover every day. By the time Little Bruce was his age, the current television news format and newspapers would have gone the same way as letters and stamps.

  Today, he had been keen to gauge the reaction to the asteroid changing orbit and moving away from Earth. He also was intrigued what the presenters and the experts would make of the globes of pure minerals they would soon discover in the asteroid’s original orbit.

  When Bruce and the Transcendents created the huge internal spaces in Automedon, which were used to process and accommodate people prior to them being transferred to Skid, they refined the ore they dug out. The globes had been tethered to the side of the asteroid facing away from Earth and were going be visible shortly, a gift to the people of earth from Bruce and the Transcendents. All they had to do was come and get them.

  He would much rather have seen the asteroid destroyed in a spectacular explosion, but he had been talked out of the idea. If the explosion hadn’t completely vaporised Automedon, the debris would have posed a risk to earth. He felt a little disappointed the fun police had had their way.

  Robert Cameron shook himself, glanced around the communal area as if he was seeing it for the first time, and momentarily wondered how he’d arrived there. Then he remembered he’d been eating meals in this space and sharing it with his fellow colonists for months now.

  But today something was different, and it disorientated him. He felt like he had woken from a bad dream, looked in a mirror and failed to recognise the face staring back at him. He checked the key environmental readouts scrolling through on a wall monitor. Nothing was amiss as far as he could see. Nothing that would impact on his ability to think and reason. He wondered briefly if there was a problem with the air supply, then dismissed the idea. If there had been, he would likely be dead already.

  “What’s going on?” he asked out loud, “Is everyone OK?” Everyone else in the room looked like he felt. All of them looked as if they had woken from a bad dream at the same time. He’d dreamt he was lost in the fog and had panicked, making it almost impossible for him to think clearly. Now he was fully awake, and the dream was a distant memory.

  Bill Sugden, who was normally quick to respond, remained speechless. He gave Robert a dull look.

  “What are you talking about?” Bill asked, as he groggily collected his thoughts. Robert could almost imagine a set of cogs grinding away in his brain, his thought processes operating at an incredibly slow speed.

  “I feel like I've just been going through the motions for weeks now and my head has cleared. Did we ever confirm we are really on Mars?” Robert added.

  “Of course,” Bill reminded him. “I clearly remember pulling on my suit when we landed and following you out of the airlock hatch, then down the steps to the surface. We walked over to the rover after it rolled out to fetch us and then it brought all of us back to the settlement. Don’t you remember?”

  “Are you sure?” Robert was convinced he must have walked the short distance from the lander to the settlement. It wasn’t far, and if he craned his neck he would be able to see their lander a short distance away out the window, but no rover. He couldn’t remember the walk, but how else could they have made it to the settlement?

&
nbsp; Bill didn’t seem his normal dynamic self either. “I don’t recall much of what happened after that,” Bill admitted.

  Robert had a good look around. There were quite a few more people in the communal area than he remembered. More missions had been planned to follow theirs, but he hadn’t registered when these people had landed and joined the colony.

  Some of them looked like he felt, groggily emerging from a deep sleep, or experiencing a drug-fuelled trip which made them dopey, while others were still unconscious. There was a lot of stretching and yawning going on and those who were awake sounded like Bill, disjointed and vague.

  Robert now remembered getting out of bed, hours ago. So why did he feel he had just emerged from a dream? He peered down at the plate in front of him. It looked like his breakfast porridge, something he knew he was going to miss when they ran out of supplies and had to live off what they grew in their little garden. He must have begun his morning shift, but he was struggling to remember starting it.

  “Why do I feel like I’ve just woken up?” he asked Bill.

  “Maybe you’re unwell,” Bill replied dully. “Maybe you should book yourself into the medical chamber and see what it has to say.”

  “I might do that after breakfast,” Robert replied. He sensed that whatever ailed him, physically or mentally, Bill wasn’t going to be any help in getting to the bottom of it.

  He mentally retraced his steps since he had woken up. He’d gone to the head at roughly the normal time, then run through his morning exercise regime before waking the woman in his bed, who he realised with a start wasn't Janice, but a crew member from a later mission who he had trained with. Try as he might he couldn’t recall when she had arrived on Mars or when she had replaced Janice in his affections.

  After exercising, he had showered and checked for any messages that had arrived during his sleep period. He responded briefly to his private messages and checked the ones from mission control for anything which needed his urgent attention. Nothing did, so he headed for the communal area for breakfast, and thought about the tasks he had to deal with in the day ahead.