The Ruins of Mars (The Ruins of Mars Trilogy Book 1) (11 page)

      Pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes, James asked, “Are they dead? What happened?”

      “I am unable to determine the cause of the spike, but I can say with confidence that they are not dead. They are in what would be referred to in human terms as a comatose state. It is puzzling, but I will continue to monitor the situation.”

      “Great,” grumbled James, dropping back into his chair. “Add that to the heap of shit I need to shovel.”

      Before Copernicus could respond, the watch on James’s left wrist began to chime softly. Quickly swiping a finger across the face plate, he silenced the little silver band.

      “Alright,” he exhaled. “Are you ready to meet our next man?”

      “Quite,” said Copernicus pleasantly.

      “Then send him in, my friend.”

      Less than a minute later, there was a soft knock at James’s door.

      “Come in,” he called.

      The door opened, and in walked an olive-skinned young man. Wearing a black sports jacket, slacks and a clean white shirt, Assad looked somehow older and more mature than his twenty-four years of age would suggest. His short black hair was cut clean and combed back, and his green eyes gazed out from underneath thick eyebrows. Smiling, he walked across the room with his hand outstretched.

      “Dr. Floyd, it’s a pleasure to meet you!”

      James rose from his chair to accept the boy’s handshake.

      “Please,” he gestured. “Take a seat.”

      Pulling up an empty chair, Assad sat across the desk from James, smiling with bright white teeth.

      “So,” started James. “I trust your flight from Amazonia was comfortable?”

      Nodding, Assad grinned, “I can’t thank you guys enough for arranging that. I had already slept on the floor for a night because security wasn’t letting anyone leave the damn airport.”

      “Were the riots bad in Amazonia?”

      “I wouldn’t know. As soon as I saw that morning's news, I made a dash for the airport. I wanted to get back to the States as soon as possible.”

      “Why is that?” James said, with furrowed brows.

      Crossing his legs and leaning back in his chair, Assad waved around the room.

      “So I could try and get in here!”

      Reaching for his cup of coffee, James picked it up, then realized it was empty and quickly set it back down.

      “So you want to go then? To Mars I mean.”

      Laughing, Assad looked surprised.

      “Yes of course! Who wouldn’t?”

      “Well,” said James, with a chuckle. “Three of the five people I’ve interviewed so far haven’t been interested.”

      “Why?”

      Tipping his chair back, James looked at the ceiling.

      “Space is a pretty dangerous place, Mr. Assad—”

      “Please,” interrupted the young man. “Call me Harrison.”

      “Okay, Harrison. Space is dangerous, and there are a lot of things that can go wrong. We here at NASA plan our missions out to the last decimal, but no matter how much we plan, no matter how careful we are, there are always unknowns.”

      Pausing for effect, James fixed Harrison with lingering stare, then went on,

      “Meteoroids traveling at speeds in excess of 70,000 miles per hour could cut through the ship like it was warm butter. Solar flares bigger than the entire planet Earth could bathe the ship in enough radiation to pop the crew like kernels of corn. That same radiation in smaller doses could cause numerous cellular mutations, which might result in deadly cancers. These are just a few of a hundred potential unknowns, and they only pertain to the trip out. Once you get to Mars, there will be more obstacles to overcome than I care to list right now. You see where I’m coming from here, don’t you?”

      Unfazed, Harrison smiled wider.

      “I see, but I don’t think you’re painting the whole picture.”

      Arching his eyebrows, James cocked his head to the side.

      “Yes,” said the young man. “You’re trying to see if I’ll tuck my tail between my legs, like those others, and run back to the safety of my academic life. Or maybe worse, puff my chest up like some soldier and tell you I’m not afraid to die. I think you’re looking for someone in between all of that. Now, I know it’s not public information yet, but do you already have the rest of your team chosen?”

      James nodded, and Harrison went on confidently.

      “Okay, well I’d bet my right arm your crew wasn’t constructed based off of how fearless they were. This mission is as much about technical expertise as it is about bravery. It’s going to take dedicated, knowledgeable people to establish this colony. Not soldiers. Not mercenaries. But scientists and engineers. You need smart, tough people who you can rely on. People like
me.
I can help, Dr. Floyd. I
am
that person. I have numerous technical accreditations in applicable fields, and, if you give me ten more weeks, I’ll have my Ph.D. You’ve seen my body of work. You know I’m serious. Tell me, what must I do to win that seat on your crew? Do I have to be fearless? Or do I have to be smart? I think it’s both.”

      James was silent for a moment. He enjoyed this young man’s spirit and the way he had seen right to the core of the issue.

      “Copernicus,” he spoke evenly. “Do you have anything you want to ask Mr. Assad?”

      Almost immediately, the AI responded.

      “He prefers that we call him Harrison, James, and yes I do have a question for him.”

      Only slightly surprised by the voice of Copernicus, Harrison grinned.

      “Ask away.”

      “Harrison,” started Copernicus. “In your opinion, what is the optimal outcome of studying these ruins? What do you hope to discover?”

      Nodding slowly, the young Egyptian seemed to mull the question over.

      “Well, Copernicus,” he said. “The investigation into any ruin, whether it is here on Earth or on Mars, is always driven by the desire to understand that which is forgotten or lost. There is no such thing as discovering the meaning of a ruin, or the motives of its creators. There is only the hope of
recovering
those meanings.”

      Becoming excited, Harrison leaned forwards in his chair and began to talk faster.

      “To me, the ruins on Mars prove a point my father has been subtly drilling into my head ever since I can remember. Time and history are not exclusive to Earth. We, as humans, must recognize that before us, there
was
life elsewhere, and with that life there was history. All history is important because all history is part of the same story. My optimal outcome would be to recover a lost chapter in the history of our solar system. A chapter that very likely predates the existence of human beings.”

      Pausing to take a breath, Harrison smiled sheepishly.

      “Does that answer your question, Copernicus?”

      “Yes, you wish to write this chapter, as you call it, in the hopes of proving that recorded history is older than mankind.”

      As if looking for the source of the AI’s voice, Harrison glanced about the room.

      “The Martians already wrote the chapter,” he said gravely. “I just want to translate it into terms we humans can understand.”

      “That is what I want as well,” replied Copernicus warmly.

      As James and Harrison continued the interview, Copernicus watched with growing admiration and respect for the young man. He could tell that even though James was acting the part of a stern project commander, he was just as pleased with Harrison as Copernicus was.

      Now, thought the AI, all we must do is prepare him for a task so difficult that even I find it intimidating. It is the reckless curiosity of mankind that will be its saving grace, he told himself. I only wish I could be there to watch it happen.

Viviana’s garden—October
2047

      On the Moon, Viviana Calise awoke in her bedroom in the crew quarters of Bessel Base. Yawning, she checked the time strip on the wall, which read 4:00 AM. With the grace of a ballerina, she leaped down from her hammock and sank to the floor in the low lunar gravity. Taking up her long brown hair, she neatly wound it into a bun, then secured it with two ornately-decorated chopsticks. As she washed her face at the little sink in the corner of the room, she touched the delicate crow’s feet that had started to form at the corners of her green eyes. Pursing her lips in frustration, she blinked widely and opened her eyes as much as she could. The crow’s feet faded a little, but still they remained. Cursing in Italian, Viviana stripped out of her warm gray pajamas and padded barefoot and naked across the cold metal floor to the nearby storage closet. Inside she found a fresh blue jumpsuit and a pair of soft soled boots. Standing in the long mirror, which hung from the door of her closet, she zipped the jumpsuit up to just above her breasts.

      At least time hasn't tried to rob you of me yet, she smiled to herself as she admired her voluptuous figure in the mirror. This lunar gravity is a Godsend.

      Stepping out of her room and into the crew-quarters hallway, Viviana was struck again by the sheer size of the dome in which she and the rest of the crew now resided. Far above, the ceiling was lost to darkness as the last few rows of lights remained dimmed in the early morning environment. She was reminded of the same sense of awe she had felt when standing in St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican: an experience she, as a Roman, was ashamed to admit she had only had twice. The dome of Bessel Base had the same powerful ambition that many of Rome’s ancient churches were founded on: an ambition to defy simplicity and modesty. Even now, after the dome’s completion, there were talks of adding walkways above to utilize more space and create more workstations.

      Walking quietly down the hallway of the crew quarters, Viviana soon reached the door to her lab. As she pressed a finger to the touchpad mounted on the wall, the door slid open with a subtle hiss. Instantly, she was greeted with the damp and familiarly comforting smell of thriving, growing life. Her lab was filled with trays of vegetables and fruits maturing happily under UV lights mere feet from the sub-freezing surface of the Moon outside. As she walked past a bank of tomatoes growing in a jellylike maroon substance, she bent her head and smelled one of the ripe red fruit.

      Smells like a tomato, she thought. I’ll wait and see how it tastes before I check that one off my list though.

      In these months leading up to their historic departure for Mars, it was Viviana’s responsibility to work out as many of the bugs as she could for the farming of genetically modified plant life in space. So far, she had been successful in growing every variety of seed given to her. It was the taste of some of the vegetables and fruits that bothered her. Genetic modification had enabled these plants to grow in this extreme situation, but it had robbed them of much of their natural flavor in the process.

      Turning from the tomatoes, Viviana headed towards the back of the lab. There, under the yellow glow of warm lights, grew a tray of bamboo shoots less than ten centimeters long. Smiling, Viviana crouched down to peer at the little stalks.

      “
Buona mattina, mi amore,” she said with love.

      At one week old, the bamboo was already growing quickly. Checking her watch unnecessarily, she knew that there were still two more months until they would have to board Braun and start their incredible journey. With an uncomfortable shudder, she put the thought out of her mind and returned her attention to the bamboo.

      “Grow up big and strong,” she whispered to the short stalks, touching their leaves with the tips of her fingers.

      Turning to a desk on her right, she picked up a thin black rod with a shiny metal needle protruding from one end. Poking the needle into the firm brown jelly from which the bamboo grew, she hummed softly to herself and waited for the tool to finish its reading. A green light on the butt of the instrument lit up, and Viviana pulled it free of the jelly. Taking her Tablet from a cargo pocket on her jumpsuit, she set the two devices next to one another on the table. When the information from her reader tool had transferred to her Tablet, she looked over the nutritional levels of the jelly with satisfaction.

      “Not too much, not too little,” she cooed to the bamboo. “You’re going to be very popular on our long trip.”

      The jelly in which all of her plants grew was a combination of genetically modified agar, or seaweed gelatin, and processed human feces. Any method devised for growing plants so far from an available soil source required rethinking how one must grow a plant at all, so Viviana, along with other colleagues on Earth, had invented a two-part system for utilizing human waste as a fertilizer. The first part to her plan involved feeding the crew supplements and foods infused with vitamins and minerals non-essential to human function. These additives would pass through the digestive system intact and fuse with waste, making it higher in plant-friendly nutrients. The second step in her process was the simple task of breaking down and filtering out the useless or harmful byproducts of waste. This was achieved easily enough because all members of the crew were on strictly-regimented, vitamin-rich diets.