Constellation Games (33 page)

But maybe there is one absolutely perfect match for everyone, one true pairing, one person who fits with you to form something bigger, like the two hemispheres of a Farang brain. If that's true, maybe we should be glad that almost nobody ever finds that other person.

Your friend,
Ariel

- - -

Hey, welcome to page eight. One thing I've learned from crime shows is that the cops might go away if you put up a little fight and then let them see something that's embarassing but not incriminating. So read this eighth page, chuck it, and when Krakowski shows up to talk about me, show him the first seven pages about how we met. He'll say "Wow, you kids are fucked in the head" and leave you alone.

The thing I want to tell you is: don't get rid of those notebooks I left at your place. The paper they're made of is smart paper, and that box of notebooks is a major Outernet hub. That's what Tetsuo meant when he said the notebooks were soft-dolls. He wasn't (just) being a snob. They're fake replicas: super-advanced routers disguised as old embarrassing notebooks in a plastic tub.

Tetsuo tells me that the two big overlays, Plan C and Save the Humans, have cut a deal. StH dropped their objections to sending a port back to Constellation space, and Plan C agreed to work their haunches off to make sure that port never has to get there. The first step is to set up a communications channel that can't be shut down: the Outernet. As one of the few people to belong to both Save the Humans *and* Plan C, Curic is right in the middle of the combined overlay. The fake notebooks are her idea of a joke.

Don't keep the notebooks in your apartment—eventually the feds will be able to use frequency analysis to find the hubs. But please keep it all together for a while, someplace warm, until more Americans own their own smart paper and the Outernet can get along without hubs.

My original plan was to take the notebooks to the dump, a plan which I'm sure would be agreeable to you. But Tetsuo says the Constellation is about to scoop up a lot of dumps from Earth and salvage our garbage. This would bring the notebooks right back to the space station, where they can't do any good. Maybe you could rent a storage locker and forget to pay for it.

Goodbye for real this time.

I don't love her. I'm settling for her. I love you.

Fluid overlays are how the Constellation gets everything done, and the great thing about them is that you can just walk up and join one. As long as you're not incompetent, they'll find something for you to do. This is doubly true if you're volunteering to carry heavy things.

Right in front of the port into Mars, a tiny Gaijin male was darting in and out of a
second
port, trundling large white tubes out of Utility Ring and stacking them just inside the airlock dome, just outside the port to Mars.

"Need help?" I said. The tubes looked like solid extruded PVC. They were longer than the Gaijin was tall, and the gravity differential between Utility and Gaijin Rings tossed him around every time he came out of the port with one.

"Hello, human!" said the Gaijin through his translator. "Naturally! Help!"

"Hand them out to me and I'll stack," I said. "I'm Ariel Blum, by the way."

"Because He Was Quick!," said the Gaijin. "I'm with Constellation Shipping. Hand delivery, as it were!"

"What are we delivering?" I asked him.

"FERNs," said Because He Was Quick!. "It's what you call an acronym. It stands for High-Dimension Fractal Carbon Accumulators!" He tossed me a tube.

"Oof!" The tube weighed thirty pounds in Gaijin Ring gravity, and I was already wearing a backpack that massed out at 4.99 kilograms. "That doesn't spell FERN," I said.

"The Martian atmosphere is carbon dioxide," said Because He Was Quick!. "FERNs pull out the carbon and leave the oxygen. They Earth-format the planet and yield carbon to use in manufacturing!"

We made a huge pile of FERNs in the airlock dome, and then we crowded into the dome ourselves and Because He Was Quick! opened the inner door. We carried the FERNs through another gravity differential and stacked them up again on Mars.

The sun, weak and distant, was setting on the base camp. Electric lamps strung between Quonset huts gave off pearl-strings of light; occasional shadows moved between the huts. The stars above barely twinkled. The camp was drowsy in the thin air, murmuring radio chatter into my suit. No one noticed us; no one cared. We were two halves of a fluid overlay, gettin' shit done.

We piled the FERNs next to the multinational flag, still standing where Colonel Mason planted it a week ago, tilted forward and waffling in the wind. They should cast that ugly thing in concrete. This isn't the moon; things don't stay put.

"Just like home!" said Because He Was Quick!, casting his sense-apparatus down at the rust-red ground, covered in footprints and Gaijin walker-tracks. "Exploring, building roads, catching things in the river!"

I nudged a FERN with my FOOT. "How do these things work?" I said. "I'm curious."

"Ah!" said Because He Was Quick!. "Help me move one off to the side, and we'll set it up!" We lifted one of the FERNs, carried it just outside of camp, and set it on edge so that the mouth of the tube faced upwards. Because He Was Quick! said a magic word and the FERN
unfolded
, anchoring itself in the soil on one end, growing and branching on the other into a huge, bushy, infinitely detailed solar-collection fractal. It looked like a smooth white tree, towering over me (not that difficult) and Because He Was Quick! (even easier).

"Is it alive?" I said.

"No, no!" said Because He Was Quick!. "They reproduce slowly, but they're not alive!"

"It breathes, it reproduces, I don't see any real difference between this and a tree."

"Ah, if you count a
tree
as alive, then maybe! Maybe you'd say the same."

Because He Was Quick! stepped back from the practically-a-tree. "Now I'll enjoy a luncheon under the stars!" he said. It was a statement, not an invitation. He slithered into the distance on eager walker tentacles.

"I'm looking for a friend," I called out after him, and walked back into camp.

For the first time in months, I could relax. I had come a long, long way, but everything was going to be okay. This was where I needed to be. I saw her from behind, working on a heating unit with a wrench.

"Hey, Tammy," I called out. Not over radio: my own voice through the thin air.

Dr. Tammy Miram started and dropped her wrench. It fell in slow motion through Martian gravity. The wrench landed on its head and fell over in a puff of rust-dust. It was not a wrench of human design.

"It's me," I said.

Tammy whirled around. "Ari! What are you—Jesus!"

"I came here to be with you," I said.

"Don't use the suit mic," she said. She beckoned me into the shadows, towards her. "Just talk normally and no one will overhear."

"What's wrong?" I said.

"You can't be up here." Tammy wiped the dust from her faceplate, exposing her naked panicked face. "What were you thinking?"

"I was
thinking
that I
love
you," I said, "and it would be nice if we got to see each other occasionally."

"You don't even have an exit visa," she said, "much less security clearance. How did you get up—no, I don't even want to know. You're a fugitive! I can't be seen with you! Oh my G-d."

"I abandoned my entire life to be with you," I said. "It's fucking
romantic
, okay?"

"Not telling you to go back," said Tammy. "Don't go back, Jesus what will they do. Just get out of camp. Go back to the station. You'll throw everything off. Shit, shit." She covered her faceplate with gloved hands, pressing the rust back on in whorls.

"I brought you something," I said. I twisted around and took off the backpack. "Your go bag. The one you packed and then forgot on Earth."

Tammy kind of stooped and rested one hand on the heating unit. "You broke into my
house
?" she said.

"No!" I said. "You told me what was in it! I made you another one!"

"Take it," she said. "I don't need it anymore. Don't
scare
me like that, Ari. Take it and go."

I backed off. "Is this it?" I said. "I come all this way, and it's over?"

The sun had set. I could no longer see Tammy through her spacesuit. She said nothing.

"It must be worth something, the sheer distance I traveled."

"This isn't a game," she said. "You don't get
points
."

"Is this it?" I repeated.

"Don't make me answer," she said. "You won't like the answer."

Tammy turned and stumbled around the Quonset hut, hugging herself like a wounded animal. The wrench lay dead on the ground.

"That's not—" No one heard me. Because He Was Quick! was gone. Tammy was gone. I was alone on Mars.

The green daylight of Gaijin Ring shone through the port like a flashlight, a cone-shaped swatch of light incongruous in the red Martian dusk. I walked back, past the active FERN to the border between two worlds: the planet and the space station. I gave the drooping flag a mock salute. I walked into the light.

"Mason here."

"Hey, Colonel Mason, you're the leader, right? Of the Mars expedition."

"Well, it's not a hierarchical thing, but yes."

"Okay, yeah, my name's Mr. Blum."

"Mr. Blum, good to talk to you, but I
really
can't do any more classroom chats right now."

"That's understandable, I also hate schoolchildren, but it's not what I'm calling about."

"Well, whatever it is..."

"I need to talk to Dr. Miram."

"If you can call me, you can call Tammy. Ground Control won't put you through or what?"

"She won't talk to me. I'm... I was her boyfriend. It didn't end well."

"Oh, you're up here! I thought you were calling from Earth. You're the punk who was hassling Tammy the other night."

"Well, we each see events from our own unique perspective..."

"You want some advice, son?"

"Not really, dad."

"We've got a good thing going up here. You and I, a few hundred other humans, are privileged to enjoy a society that operates on common courtesy instead of on scarcity and coercion."

"I'm hearing this from a fucking Air Force colonel? You're worse than Charlene Siph."

"You're hearing it from the guy who's gonna wring your scrawny neck if you come to Mars again. Now, you prolly don't give a shit about fluid overlays. You think you came up here to be with Tammy. But if you can somehow make yourself useful to Constellation society, I think you'll find it a rewarding experience. But, do it on the space station. Don't let me see you here."

"Look, just give her a message. Tell her I know what happened to the shipping containers."

"Are you
threatening
one of my men?"

"Oh, Mister Wring-my-neck thinks
knowledge
of the
disposition
of some
shipping containers
might constitute a threat? Also, your gender-neutral use of 'men' isn't nearly as endearing as you think it is."

"I got work to do, Mr. Blum. A dozen overlays need my attention."

"The first time we met, we— she doesn't even have to respond. Just tell her I know what they did with the shipping containers."

"Don't call me again."

[This post is friends locked.]

GameFUQs Presents:
Mission To Mars!
a walkthrough by Ariel Blum

1. Get a spacesuit.
   
2. Wear the spacesuit.
   
3. Take the zipline to Gaijin Ring.
   
4. Walk through the port onto Mars.
   
5. FUCK
   
6. FUCK
   
7. She's gone
   
8. and I'm left
   
9. with nothing.
   

In Alien Ring there are
cma
, organisms we'd call trees, miles high. The Aliens have carved niches in the trunks and built their houses inside the
cma
. One of these houses is the house Tetsuo left for the guest room in Bai's duplex, and for half a tiny office at UT Austin.

The door's not locked because there isn't any lock. It's a two-room house. The first room has furniture: a mattress embedded in the floor, and some monkeybars. From the second room, I heard one Alien speaking with another in Purchtrin.

"Hello!" I called every five feet, uncomfortable in someone else's house, shuffling slowly towards the second room. There was no interior door. Somn (a.k.a. Ashley Somn, Tetsuo's wife) sat on her hindarms on another embedded mattress, leaning forward, facing me, her hand poised over a large sheet of smart paper. A human computer. Yes, I now think of smart paper as "a human computer."

"Heeeeeee... bllo," said Ashley/Somn in English, her thin black tongue sliding around the word. Then she switched to subvocalization and took on the synthesized voice of B-list comedian/actress Padma Dhanjan.

"Ariel!" she said. "Tetsuo said you might come here."

"He gave me your address," I said. "I tricked him; he thought it was for charades. I live here now."

"Welcome!" said Somn. "Welcome to. Well, you don't live in Alien Ring because of the nitrous oxide. Welcome to our little artificial planetary system."

"Are those eggs?" Somn was straddling three large football-shaped
things
.

"They're
my
eggs," she said, and cuddled them. "I thought you knew that Tetsuo and I..."

"I guess I thought they'd be in incubators," I said.

"No, they're perfectly healthy, thank goodness."

"When do they...?"

"In nine weeks."

"I heard you talking to someone. Were you..."

"Oh, yes. I'm talking to Daisy Cept." Somn gestured at her smart paper. "She's Tetsuo's mistress; you remember her."

"You really need to stop running relationship words through the translator," I said. On the paper I saw Outernet video of naked Farang and spacesuited Aliens and Goyim, all swimming gracefully through murky water.

"Daisy is working with the Raw Materials overlay," said Somn. "We're removing a garbage patch from the Pacific Ocean. We get to keep the plastic."

"I thought Daisy worked with dolphins," I said. I sat down against the wall.

"The dolphins are helping," said Somn. She wiggled her fingers at her paper; one of the Aliens waved back with a hindhand.

"Are you okay with this? Staying here with the eggs while Tetsuo and Daisy...?"

"I miss Tetsuo," she said. "I do, I do. But I couldn't go to Earth. All that horror. Murder and torture."

"It's really not that bad," I said. "You know we got fossils there, right?"

"Yes," said Somn, "in Guizhou, and Montana." Like the two places were equally bad. "Ariel, I have these thoughts. I stop myself. But I have thoughts for a moment. What if you simply hadn't been here? If we'd arrived two million years earlier. It would have only been the dolphins and the chimpanzees. It would have been easier. I'm sorry. I know it's horrible."

This, I felt, was a terrific time to exploit Somn's guilt. "I need some help," I said.

"Yes, of course. Anything."

"I brought some stuff for the repertoire. Scotch alcohol, delicacies from Earth. Uh, I don't know if the repertoire can copy living things, but plant seeds."

"Seeds are fine," said Somn. "We'll clone them. Thank you. You didn't have to do this." She looked around, like, where are the seeds?

"Thing is, I brought all this stuff as payment," I said.

"Payment?" Somn wrinkled her mouth. "Are you being blackmailed?"

"I want to make something from the repertoire; something really big."

"How big?" said Somn. She seemed to see no connection between the last two things I'd said.

"As big as a house."

"What is it?"

"It's a house," I said. "It's
my
house. The way it was before the feds tore it up. Curic scanned it in July; I came here to get it back."

"Let's enjoy doing it," Somn's translator chirped. "I'll ask my mistress Esteban to watch my eggs."

"That is absolutely the wrong word."

"Ariel, do you know how to use a matter shifter?"

"Can't say I do," I said.

"There will never be a better time to learn."

In Human Ring, there are hallways and there are apartments. The hallway you'd design if your idea of space travel came from human sci-fi TV shows. The apartment you'd design if you had to build a refugee camp for humans without ever having met any.

There's also an Eritrean sector, with open space and a soccer field, and now there's also an American house. It's my house. Somn and I built it from Curic's scans. It's got an upstairs and a downstairs, furniture, food in the cupboards, and fake sunlight for me to close the drapes on. Eventually it will have a backyard with replica dirt, and I'll plant a cherry tree in the dirt. The materials are not quite right, but it's more like my house than anything else in the universe.

It took eight hours and at the end I was exhausted, even though I hadn't done much but scamper around listening to Somn explain the matter shifter. After a final inspection of the interior, I lay dead on my couch as Somn called Esteban to reclaim her eggs.

"Wait, don't go yet," I mumbled. "I forgot to give you something. It's in the side pocket of the duffel bag. Can you get it? I don't want to move for about three days. Not the backpack, the blue bag."

Somn crawled to the duffel and took out a little cardboard box. She dropped to her hindarms to open the box, and took out a wad of cotton padding and a fossil trilobite.

"Oh,
Elrathia kingi
," she said. "I'm sorry, Ariel, but this variety is quite well studied."

"It's for you," I said. "A gift. I got it at the rock shop in Austin. I thought you might like to have a real fossil from Earth."

Somn sat back on her hindhands in my living room for a long time. Long enough, I guess, to look up the proper etiquette over her neural computer link.

"Thank you," she finally said. She stood upright and thumped a forearm against her chest, right where the heart would be on a human. "Thank you very much, Ariel." She took the fossil and left the box. And I didn't get off the couch for a long, long time.

* * *

Hours later, still on the replica of my comfortable couch, talking to Tetsuo over the Outernet.

"I spoke with our mutual friend Krakowski," he said.

"I hope you're being sarcastic," I said.

"I am sincere. Wait! Oh no! What is 'friend'?"

I explained the concept of friendship to an extraterrestrial. "Oh, it's that," said Tetsuo with relief. "I thought it just means someone you know, like in social networking. Don't be afraid, Ariel, you and I are friends in this new sense as well. However, I deliver a message for you by the Bureau of Extraterrestrial Affairs. They would really like it if you came back to Earth."

"I bet they would!" I said.

"Krakowski says to inform you that come back now, and the BEA offer you limited immunity," said Tetsuo. "Like, fire resistance, I guess."

"Not happening," I said.

"He thanks you for shunning the media—as do I, incidentally. He also expresses the belief that one day your store goes out of business."

"What store?"

"It was a subtle threat, delivered idiomatically."

"Don't interpret. What were the exact words that came out of his mouth?"

"He said: 'Your patron won't protect you forever.'"

"That's you," I said. "The Constellation is my patron. You're protecting me."

"We're doing nothing!" said Tetsuo. "What do they wish?"

"They wish you to cooperate," I said. "If you're powerful and you do nothing, you're protecting me."

"This is too confusing," said Tetsuo. "Why can't we just have anarchy?"

"Use your history," I said. "What would the Ip Shkoy have said if you suggested that?"

"They would have probably killed me," said Tetsuo.

"Did Jenny— has Jenny asked about me?" I said.

"Not asked me of you," said Tetsuo. "Surely she would ask you directly of you?"

"I don't pretend to understand women," I said.

"I have not finished delivering the message from Krakowski," said Tetsuo. "Please don't distract me with questions about persons other than. The said Mr. Krakowski finally craves the knowledge of how you were able to travel to Ring City, evading his system of document control."

"I bet he does!" I said.

"What shall I tell him?"

"Why is he so obsessed with this?" I asked. "Curic broke the Greenland Treaty and dropped a shuttle for me. It probably showed up on radar. What's so difficult to believe?"

"I presume he enjoys hearing the story again and again. It's sitcom-esque."

"Okay, you know what? Tell him I walked through the other end of the port."

"You had no port," said Tetsuo. "The idea only is a high-temperature fantasy."

"You tell him I walked through the port," I said. "Tell him that, and watch him squirm."