Is There Life on Mars?

03-29-2308

With the end of the Martian-Terran War Io was forced to give up the last of its colonies on Luna to the rule of Earth. The white satellite world had long been linked to space lines of the UTE and progressive colonization by its growing population brought ad-hoc terraforming into an infrastructure that could support the atmostphere of the Moon. The Outward Expansion movement had taken off; powered by the spirit of Earth’s daring pioneers and their Earthling Dream. The annexation of Luna’s last territories by laser-armed acquirement was seen as a great achievement by some within a nation growing a sense if industrial imperialism. This competitive capitalist machine had been driven by its people to conquer an entire world beyond their own and it brought home prosperity by the starship. Self-Manifested Destiny.

The treaty that ended the unnecessary war also granted to Earth all the territories of Mars’ Northern Hemisphere. The deed included the highly exalted territory of Amazonia, renowned for its broad golden coastline and remarkable weather year-round. All of new land was deemed a great financial opportunity to the growing Earthling nation but it would be a little more difficult to incentivize its people to pack their bags for Mars. The red world had poor air and was too windy and sun beaten; the weak magnetosphere struggled to hang on to the shreds of atmosphere that remained enshrouding the dead desert planet.

After all, the small civilization of Ionians that lived there rarely even tread upon the surface of Mars. Instead the colonists and missionaries learned to intermingle with the native Martian society and intertwine their civilization inhabiting the ancient subterranean tunnel systems they used. Of course, by intermingle I mean dominate and destroy through interbreeding…and by intertwine I mean steamroll, exploit and flood with images of their god.

The first step to turning any planet into a habitable one is to remove the existing inhabitants. Either that means you exile them from their ancestral lands, cordoning them off into smaller and smaller reservations; or you could just eradicate them entirely. The Insta-Terraforming Kit usually includes plenty of Lasers, Germs and Plastics to help aid the pale human in clearing out those pesky natives. Any extant remnants will usually be taken care of with a little alcohol. I know, pretty grim way of looking at it… but take a nano to think about the way the ground you own now was first taken away from somebody else.

The second step is to bring the space lines in. Linking Mars to the existing transit and freight systems of Earth was an arduous feat, but the completion of the Trans-Planetary Line brought our red sibling within reach of the common Earthling. Boomtowns sprouted up around every major stop and gave harbor to the workers needed to labor on the land. Their dream-driven hands built the electric grids, irrigation systems and atmosphere generators that support us today. And without the explosion of industrial agriculture the plains would never have been seeded with the oxygen bearing crops that would give the settlers sustenance.

The final step is to then populate your freshly prepared planet. It seems like the most effective way of doing this is to spread rumors of precious minerals and the people will bring themselves. Thus arose the Martian Gold Rush of 2149; prompting a mass-migration of exodus proportions. Earthling families loaded up the caravans and set a course towards unknown adventures and untold fortunes outwards. Whether this great act of faith was precipitated by a genuine gift from the heavens, or a good story fabricated to exploit the Earthling Dream; the Martian Dream was born. Its call to come outwards could be heard by any who felt its divine entitlement.

For the record: I never believed Mars completed terraforming before everyone Headed Outwards. I still maintain the opinion that this desolate rock is as dead as our Earth will soon be. No matter how much we’ve tried to transform the face of this planet, we can only make it appear like home. It’s just a front. At its core, the planet is cold and silent. Mars could never support life the way Earth can, and anything that tries to convince you otherwise is part of a masterfully crafted illusion. Novus Angelicas is in the business of suspending our disbelief.

Mars isn’t just like it looks in the movis. The air quality is the worst in Sol, with a majority of the non-urban population sequestered within their life-supporting home biospheres. Those in the cities are privilege to the highest levels of smog and exhaust fumes found in the Union. The green patches that Martians call lawns wouldn’t last without constantly irrigating sprinklers and/or chemical enhancement. But all the palm trees, coastal scrub and xeriscaping just make up the meager façade this place puts on in visage of fertility. Not to say I haven’t seen impressive displays from succulents and cacti, but that’s only in over-watered neighborhoods where every unit on the hill runs on a timer set to go off at least twice a day. Meanwhile, there’s an ever-present water shortage concern world-wide.

I’ve lived a year and a half here on a street just across from the abandoned sector of the city; a windswept borough encroached upon by ruddy sand a foot deep in some places. The fact that there is an abandoned sector is a sign I probably shouldn’t live in this town. Gork—who even thought to arrange their home adjacent to the desert? I know Mars should feel a little unusual to an Earthling but it seems downright unnatural to me. Like being surrounded by all the blasted Squamata! Its not easy to remind myself thats just the way life evolved on this planet. Instead of birds in the sky, they’re reptiles. It isn’t rodents or raccoons getting into the garbage at night; they’re reptiles. The wild dark isn’t filled with lions and tigers and bears; its’ reptiles and reptiles and reptiles.

Maybe what’s strange is the notion that other civilized worlds wiped out the beasts that threatened them at night. History is ripe with stories of our noble ancestors slaying the last of the dragons and making their homes safe. Strange that the seemingly savage Old Martians wouldn’t have hunted down all the big bad lizards, but instead have honored them. How could they choose to co-exist with such cold-blooded creatures? The natural world is far too unpredictable to trust. Take if from Earth: its better to kill off what you can’t control if it puts your livelihood in jeopardy.

I try not to subscribe to the ethos of Earth. Though squamata might scare the slag out of me when I hear them slithering across the pavement at night, I rather like them. I’ve always wanted a pet squog…but I shouldn’t think about that right now. I can barely afford supporting myself and keep up rent in my slaggy apartment unit… which will probably be buried under crimson sand in a couple years. In the meantime I have to worry about uninhibited rays of the sun, the deviously diligent dust storms, the unsettlingly frequent tectonic activity, and Martian Motorists.

As if this planet wasn’t dangerous enough to live on.

PREV: CH. 06 «Letting Go»

NEXT: CH. 08 «The Martian Motorist»

03-11-2308

I had to let go.

Their little beating hearts were clutched firmly to my chest, but I knew I had to let them go eventually. The sooner the better too, no use in prolonging the inevitable. I spoke to them like a mother to her infant, as they were the closest to a child I’d ever had. They were our children, and I gave them the best advice I could; cautioned them to stay out of the hot sun and away from the creatures of the night, and if they ever got in trouble just to run, run as fast as their furry little legs could carry them. I told Ginger to take care of his sister and I set them down on the path alone.

They were our babies and I let them go by myself. She was supposed to come here to see them off, she was supposed to meet me on this trail at sunset. She… had better things to do it seemed. It wasn’t even my idea to release them into the wild, she suggested it, and still she couldn’t follow through. I never wanted them in the first place, but like so many weak things I’d conceded to in the past, I’d done it to make her happy. And I had eventually grown to love them.

*Sigh*

On our breaks at work we’d gone to the pet store to hold the puppies and caress the cats, and she’d always wanted a cuddly creature of her own. I’d never found the ability to justify getting an expensive, smelly, little critter, knowing I’d have to pick up the slack and clean up after it when she was done squeezing them. I finally reasoned to get her a rabbit, they were only є30 as opposed to the kittens we saw marked at є1000. I know we could have gone to a shelter to get a cat for much cheaper, but it wouldn’t be the same to her–animals are only cute when they’re babies. She found out that I was getting her a rabbit, tricked it out of me a week before I was going to make the purchase, so I had to up the ante. I’ve always been a performer, always loved to see that shock on people’s faces, and knew as appreciative of a bunny she was, she’d have known it was coming; so I bought her two. With the help of her sister I acquired them, along with a cage and some food, and snuck them into my apartment. I wish I had done more research though, known what I was getting myself into. But there wasn’t time, Christmas was upon us after all.

I had parked my crawler at the end of her parents’ street and began to walk with them in my old back pack, a quarter of a mile along the aptly named Skyline Drive. The sun had just gone down and already the cities and suburbs in sight that stretched as far as Novus Angelicas were ablaze in their nightly passion. I crossed the street to a gravel path, the portal was luckily still open though this trail closed at nightfall. It was a nature preserve for fire sage scrub, wild squamata and snakes. In spite of the latter, I’d reasoned it a relatively safe location for the oversized rodents; there haven’t been any squoyotes here in decades, right? Just a couple of paces up the path, by a sign denoting the sanctity of the location, I set my back pack down and unzipped it, taking a rabbit in each hand and holding them to my chest.

It made sense why I had to do this: I brought them to her in the first place, I had cared for them for the past several weeks on my own, I should be the one to see them off. They were getting neglected in her new party lifestyle, the smell was too intense for friends she invited over. It had been over a month since I’d released her from the burden of caring about something. I couldn’t blame her though, they were odoriferous creatures and unaffectionate, not even very pet-like. They were a prey species after all, they didn’t come when you called, only ran for cover when you reached for them, and they never liked to be held; not too unlike her.

I didn’t mind taking care of them though, they would let me hold them, for a little while at least, and it felt good to have a soft, warm heart beat next to mine, even if they would eventually claw and bite their way free as if to say “That’s enough love for today,” then return to their incessant munching. I didn’t even mind the smell, as long as I cleaned up their waste everyday, but its what the smell brought that eventually drove them out.

The persistant odor from the rabbit enclosure had attracted other creatures into the unit. Unwelcome scaly varmints that chewed a hole in the screen of the window and began gnawing another one into the molding around the back hatch of the unit. When my roommate, Pashan, and I began to spot signs of reptilian life left on the floor and counter tops, we knew it was time for change. I informed them that night that this was their notice of eviction as I embraced each of the squirming rabbits in turn.

They were uncharacteristically comfortable with me now though, both of them in my arms at once, as if they didn’t want me to let them go. I didn’t want to either, but we have to do what’s necessary. I set them down together on the edge of the trail and watched them inspect their new, low lit surroundings. They’d never been out like this before, only a little cage in a grassy back yard had prepared them for this experience, and even then we always gave them a bowl of food and water to sustain them. They stayed very close to each other, one always running to stand beside the other if they strayed too far; I took it as a good sign that they’d stick together. They didn’t seem to want to leave though, all they desired was to be locked up in their stinky cage and fed again. But I couldn’t take them back now. It would be too cruel to them, pretending that they were welcome in my home, though they most certainly were as far as I was concerned. And I couldn’t fool myself into thinking I’d ever scrounge up the credits to surrender them to a shelter, where they may even become more neglected than they were at their last home.

All I had to do was turn around and leave them, trust that instinct would overcome their poor domestic teachings and they’d be able to survive on their own, even for a little while. As I reached for my bag, Freddy made one last attempt to get back in it, struggling to get over the side and into the comfort of a confined space. I pushed her away, picked her up and set her in the other direction, into the a break in the scrub, and did the same with Ginger who had tried to follow. I set him down and immediately stood up, zipping my bag and turning away, the longer I lingered the more it would hurt us both in the end.

I turned my heart cold and lit a Martian Spirit as I began to walk away, wishing I could just smolder into nothing like the glowing orange end in front of me. I looked back over my shoulder and could only make out the black lump of my Freddy’s coat in the bushes, her shining eyes catching a last glint of light from the city far below, and then she was gone from sight. On the long walk back to the crawler I kept looking over my shoulder at every rustle the wind blew through the leaves, every snap or every scrape of gravel beneath my feet, wondering if they had followed me down the trail. I was glad they didn’t, comforted to think they’d never make their way down to the road. Better to be further away from any dangers. I hoped they would enjoy their new home. When I finally got to my crawler I lit another cigi and began the slowly burning, lonely journey back down the hill and home.

The first thing I did when I got there was take their wooden, urine soaked cage with all their dishes and bottles, and carried them to a large dumpster beside my row of units. Punctuating the evening I forced it up over the lip into the unknown. I returned inside, swept the remnants of feces and bedding out the hatch and washed my hands.
Letting go is easier when there’s nothing left to remind you of what you had.

PREV: CH. 05 A Martian Rite of Passage – My First Tattoo

NEXT: CH. 07 «Never Terraformed»