Is There Life on Mars?

04-30-2309

Swine Flu, Shwine Flu.

I’m sick of seeing it everywhere, hearing it even when my ears are closed. Wash your hands! Be careful, use some sanitizer! Stay indoors. Gork, it goes on and on! I don’t care! Everyone on this planet is slagging bricks and I can’t raise an ounce of alarm.

It’s just a flu. I don’t care if you call it dimetrodon flu, or ptera flu or H1N1, it’s just the gorking flu! People die of the flu every year, but it’s only the really young or really old that need be concerned. We have vaccines for them. So what if there’s been something like 150 people who’ve died during this Martian flu season. They were all living in Martia, in the southern hemisphere; their healthcare is terrible down there. I’m not gonna worry.

Especially because my day already consists of shutting myself up indoors, away from people and public places for as long as I can stand. My only contact with the outside this screen: the way I like it. Since it hardly disrupts my usual routine why should I get my spacesuit in a bunch?

PREV: CH. 36 «The Screen»

NEXT: CH. 38 «How to Plan a Summer Road Trip»

04-08-2309

Walking home last night, it was about 6 or 7 when I saw this girl on the other side of the street watching a video on her COG. We simultaneously pressed signalcalls on either side of the crosswalk. I caught her take a peek at me then quickly return her attention to whatever she was watching on a screen that was projected from an unseen device in her palm. As we passed each other in the middle, she focused as hard as she could on the holographic image, intent on pretending I wasn’t there—though she could clearly see me through the blue frame. I glanced back, then shook my head to myself as I reached the other side.

It’s said we spend over 12 hours a day staring a screen. It seems like a lot until you consider your comm, PDA, GPS, HUD, etc; think about your computer screen. Gork, I watched the news while I was taking a shower this morning. Even when we have screens everywhere from our vehicles to our vanities, 12 hours a day staring at CRTs, LCDs or optic diode arrays is still a lot.

It’s also said that a little under half that time is spent staring at the teli screen alone. The TV world is a dangerous place to expose yourself to for extended periods of time. All the people that exist there are so beautiful and rich, and more successful than we’ll ever be. They lead fantastic lives and go on compelling and extravagant adventures. Stories that don’t have to be good, just have exciting enough sequences to make the cut for TV audiences. These plots still are automatically on a par more astounding than any real life event could be.

I think this leads to a supreme disconnect in our society. I’ve noticed everywhere I go, if someone is walking they’ll have their ears and/or eyes occupied with some form of gadgetry. Typically they’re listening to music emitted into their ears directly by tiny earbuds. No biggie, people have been listening to headphones with portable players for years. But these days, its on their comm–and always texting. Seems you pull your comm out reflexively as soon as you’re about to walk by someone.

Best to have a good excuse for not making eye contact with someone, rather you get caught in an awkward staring match as you pass; because you’d rather not say anything to a stranger, right? Does anyone remember when people used to greet everyone they met all day? Does anyone care about a person they don’t know if they don’t look like they’re someone who can give you something? How can you be sure they actually have what you need? We know we can get it from the screen. Whatever we want or need, we know we just have to ask a screen to give it to us.

In order to develop properly, Gerund says, one must establish stable, long term relationships with other people they trust and know, real face to face interaction with other humans. I think we’ve all but substituted these, creating relationships with people we don’t know–celebrities and media personalities. Just characters, synthetic humanoids. We’ve mistaken our aliases and handles for our real names, our screennames becoming more synonymous with who we think we are. I almost wonder what reality is to some people, if they feel like they’re just playing a part. Do you realize there are no characters you can become cast as, you can always change your role.

And whenever I think about loneliness and feeling disconnected, I quickly realize there are at least half a thousand people living in Villa Venusia, and another two thousand in this square mile. Everyone’s in their own little world though, the screen their only eyes to see it with. And when nothing seen is real, they forget that the people and things they see out in the world aren‘t just fake too.

Meanwhile, just around the corner is a person whom I may have something in common with, someone I can have a conversation with and be friends. Who knows, maybe even a girl with whom I could be falling in love!

I’m looking in all the wrong places and my eyes hurt too much. I have to stop staring at the screen

PREV: CH. 35 «Birthday Break-In»

NEXT: CH. 37 «The Martian Pandemic»

03-18-2309

It began like any other day for me–sometime in the early afternoon.

I stepped out of my apartment used the KEY to seal the airlock behind me, then put a cigi between my lips. Heading down the cement stair, I was fumbling around in my worn shoulder bag for a lighter when I bumped into one of my neighbors, the Dionian woman who lives downstairs, and her son. I quickly snatched the cigi from my mouth as I waved to greet them and then continued on my way. I chuckled to myself as I lit it a moment later, I’m so used to not being able to smoke around Rei.

It was nice and pink out. Spring has always been a pleasant time of year anywhere I’ve been, and within the spherewalls of Villa Venusia was no exception. The gurgle and gabble of fountains lining up beside the walkway sparkled in the midday sun, and bowed as I passed. The stream ran under the path and along the other side where a breeze-borne regatta completed its last leg, the leaf boats quickly approached a waterfall finish line.

The unnaturally blue cascade emptied into the pool at the dead end of one of the complex’s many canals. The water was tranquil, hardly disturbed by this trickle. Its mirrored surface hid its true depth. When you look straight into it the water anywhere here it appears a hundred feet deep, impossible to see the murky bottom through its dark color, though it’s less than a foot.

My path takes me past this calm end first, and here there is a strange array of solid blocks that float above the water. About a square meter of space each, many of the blocks host planters with strange palms while the others make up a path to nowhere. Well, not nowhere–it’s a nice place to stand and feed the dacts; they come at you from all sides. But I had to time for that today, I continued along the path which parallels the canal. Down here is one of the main spots they like to congregate, this green grassy strip in between that slopes down to its edge is one of the few spots I see them sleeping at night. In the middle of the day they were playing in the water, bathing and chasing each other away from their mates.

My domed community is ripe with large habitat pods lined by our apartment units. Some lucky residents lease spaces with waterside patios and kayak moorings. The artificially azure river runs through every sector like blue arteries, pooling up in the center of the life supporting habipods. I’ve noticed each of the unique environments being simulated in these atriums is populated by its own distinguishable community of avian squamata. The gaggles of leatherback geese, pterodactyls and razorfoot coots all somehow disseminated the pods into distinct neighborhoods and come back home to familiar roostmates. I wonder if it’s something they all agreed to or if possession of the zones is contested.

Around the ugly side of a unit the next landing I passed looked almost identical to the last. This pod’s canal is a much larger vein though, breaking off into many smaller vessels, including the one I call my own. It’s also reigned over by two particularly disagreeable pteradons that appear to have claimed their sovereignty by force. Regardless of what concentration of scaled waterfowl species inhabit a pond there always seems to be a pair of bigger dacts running the flock. I don’t particularly enjoy walking through this sector when I know the bosses are around; I haven’t liked pteradons since I was a traumatizing childhood experience.

Aside from falling into a pecking order, these dacts don’t have it that weak. The environment is contained within the negatively ionized forcefield of the biosphere quite wonderfully here, making for a fertile and moist ecosystem that is indeed rare for Mars. They’re provided all the food and water and shelter they need here, and there are no natural predators or civilizations encroaching upon them. I’d say it’s a pretty astro deal.

The dacts don’t have to worry about debt or a failing economy threatening to take everything they have. This upscale community is truly free to them. Even if they don’t possess that concept this must still seem like a paradise to them. They are absolutely free.

The path led me over a wide artery by crossing a bridge that was not only mocked up to look like a boat dock, but actually acted as one for the little kick-tread paddle boats you could take out from a dock at the main office. This bridge serves as a buffer, preventing the boats from coming any further down into the residential side, keeping them on the larger, deeper segment of the body. When I reached that side I stepped off the path and paused to let a young Saturnian girl in jogging sweats running with her spiky lap-squog pass. I smiled and politely excused myself but didn’t get so much as “Thanks” or even “Hello”. Looking back I noticed headphones trailing from her earlobes, shrugged and continued on the path.

I see my crawler across the parking lot, closest spot to the front portal. As I approached my slumbering lump of plastic on treads my mind was still on dacts. Do they greet each other when they pass? Do they feel snubbed when another dact is too busy listening to their Tuni? My quandary was interrupted when I noticed something was off about my crawler. From where I was it looked like there was a portion of my driver’s window that wasn’t reflecting the pale red sky. When I got closer I figured out why.

A third of my window hung intact around the top corners of the hatch-frame. Rectangular shards of green safety glass lay splattered across the pavement and the interior. A promotional flyer for a dance club was wedged into one of the last bits of window still in place. I pulled it out and passively watched as the rest of the translucent pieces scattered on the driver seat.

I tossed away the flier without reading it and stuck my head in the opened hatch to examine the damage. Surprisingly, nothing was taken. They didn’t even look in the glove box, console or other compartments. My seat had been repositioned forward and it looked like someone had tried to grab one of the suitcases out of the back. They either failed to angle it out of the window, got scared off by my alarm or someone else coming. Perhaps they ran out of time before the portal closed and they lost their exit–whatever happened, they didn’t get away with anything…

Not that it would have mattered, the cases weren’t mine. When Lou bailed back to Earth she abandoned everything that didn’t fit into the bag she’d packed for her ‘vacation’. I’d lugged the rest of her belongings around with my stuff for too long. Then about a month ago I had to go retrieve another case she’d left in Novus Angelicas. The aunt she’d stayed in the city with was ready to disintegrate it. I was now stuck with two cases labeled Eon Buerot, each containing a different segment of her life. Two cases that were too large to fit in my closet, and took up too much room in the boot of my crawler, I had to leave them in my back seat. It reminded me to worry about finding a way get them back to her or just get rid of them.

Goosebumps tickled the back of my arms and my hair stood up. I suddenly became upset with the ordeal.

Not because my vehicle was broken into; I didn’t really care to worry about something that my insurance was specifically intended to cover. I didn’t really mind that it happened within the spherewall of my community, I wasn’t questioning the security since I had left my crawler so close to an exit, that’s kind of an obvious one now.

I was upset that they didn’t finish something they started. If you’re gonna break my hatch, you better be doing it to get something in return, otherwise you just broke it for no good reason. I guess they could have done it just to break my hatch, but if it was really malicious it figures they would have etched my doors with lasers or broken all the other hatches, too.

I sighed off the tension. It was really no matter to me, I shrugged if off and went about my way, trying to enjoy my birthday in spite of such inconveniences. I didn’t even bother to file a police report; I didn’t figure there was a point if nothing was taken, not that they would have actually helped to get it back.

After I cleared the happy bits of silicon off the seat, I drove back around and parked in a spot near my unit that hid the window from any looky-loos. Getting out, I thumbed my KEY to seal the crawler and chuckled to myself about the futility of it. I lit a new Martian Spirit and began to walk to the front portal of Villa Venusia again.

PREV: CH. 34 «Status Update»

NEXT: CH. 36 «The Screen»

02-26-2309

I really don’t know how to feel about virtual social networks anymore. At first it was nice to create an avatar to help define your net persona, and thus affect how your real identity is perceived by other members. But the programs have degenerated to shoutboxes or personal forums, digital walls for people to leave messages on, and I think extreme egotism might be to blame. See, once you’re given unlimited digital influence you must inevitably fall into an egocentric mindset. It’s only a matter of time before an empowered individual begins to believe that their simple existence is significant.

These social applications allow you to keep your friends, or anyone else stuck in your network, involuntarily abreast of your routine and daily experiences. It’s not uncommon for a person to manage profiles on multiple networks, as each will serve a different function. For instance, one generalized network may be great for keeping in touch with old friends and classmates, while another very similar one may help you meet new friends or dates. You could have an account for artwork and or another for video, an even different writing or a music profile to show off your playlist, too. There are even systems that let you see which sites other members view and enjoy most, or browse someone else’s collection of bookmarks. But most importantly, they exist for you to whore yourself about for personal gain.

No matter what it is you‘re doing, whether you’re using a site to fish for positive feedback on poorly doctored images or showing off feeble attempts at creating a piece of art or something worth reading, you’re undeniably using the internet as a self-esteem booster. You’re trying to turn nothing into something that validates your being, trolling for others who will feed your ego, others somehow even more irrelevant than you. A page of txt or script, or a handful of jpegs that you slag out because you didn’t have anything better to do with your time, raping the eye sockets of everyone you could force them upon. Maybe you just leave notes and cute animations on other people’s walls, even ones you don’t know, and encourage them to respond, just to see a new comment alert the next time you log in.

It might seem overwhelming to manage it all, but have no fear ‘cause there’s an app for that. Just download a social super-application, one that extends its tendrils to comm and pda systems, and has the ability of controlling all your profiles on other networks. From your handset, COG, touchi or even texti you can receive notice from or transmit updates to the nets from anywhere you can get a signal out. You can begin to complain about your day, or make entertainment and cooking suggestions, or unleash a senseless onslaught of spam, or whatever it is that you do when you get home to your computer — before you even get home to your computer. A collection of blinks from the ephemeral present, already passing. Not only will it update your mood on this profile, but on each and every profile to which you grant it access. It will sicken you when you realize what a useful tool this could have been.

To be honest, I have no idea what to use it for. Really, the novelty of being able to announce to everyone that I got a cup of coffee before I even swipe my chargecard fades out quickly. No, instead I feel the whole idea of a two-sentence update defeats all progress. Anything worth doing or saying can’t fit into 160 characters. No matter how hard we try, we always need more space to say what we need. And frankly I feel like it’s impossible to present my given current state in a serious manner when everyone else around here is just cheering any trivial victory they can like. So since I have this communicative exchange (if it can even be considered an exchange) I feel obliged to inform you with more than two lines.

The year is 2309, today is the 26th of Feb and it’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon. It’s mostly sunny and 71 degrees outside, a high for this week but not uncommon this early in the year. Tonight Phobos will be a waxing crescent and Deimos, as full as it ever looks, will actually rise at about the same time as his bigger brother. Twice or so every week they’ll ride in together from the western horizon to strike fear and terror, respectively. Otherwise Mars’ moons are inconsistent and unreliable at best.

I am a young Earthling male of Ganymedean descent; fair skin, dark hair and hazel eyes. I’m not first-gen or anything though. More like fourth or fifth so I don’t have pointy ears like native Jovians. Since my family doesn’t have anything else exotic anywhere along the line I lack antennae, whiskers and an accent. I’ll turn 22 in less than a month, and have only lived on Mars for two-and-a-half years now.

I transplanted to be close to a girl I was dating back then, but wonderful as that was the relationship only lasted about a year after I came. It used to mean more to me before I realized I had always wanted to come here on my own, and did so to fulfill some sort of sordid childhood fantasy of paradise, using her as an excuse to get closer to Mars. Growing up in an exurb prepared me for OC living. I am more familiar with wealth, narcissism, and decadence in general, than most of us Earthlings who don’t have nice weather year round, palm trees and picturesque sunsets consistently.  I know I’ll need to move up the coast or to Elysium to really use Mars to its full potential, but here isn’t a totally fragged place to start trying to carry out my dream.

It hasn’t been that easy to locate a good launch point for my all-important ambitions to take off. I don’t have a job and the semesters I do go to school I attend very few sections, leaving a lot of free time during which I don’t accomplish much, reading an eBook constantly or watching a lot of movis these days. I still don’t have my crawler legalized so I hang out with Gerund and his lovi Han most of the time. I usually have to use his crawler to chauffer him to and fro, so that I have a vehicle to drive at my leisure some days.

Sometimes Dune meets up with us and the band jams out objectively. Sometimes we drop in when the Zenith Bros. are at their instruments and we have a chance to keep our chords polished lending them some vocals. You wouldn’t accuse us of commiting to any productive activities, spare the occasional courier mission for the imaging studio. Most days we just spark up some fire and get elevated.

Hmm, I seem to have deviated drastically from any relevance…or maybe I was just too basic. Nah, that was just pointless, I should just use one of the million tricks you use when you can’t think of something to say in your headline. Like, I could talk about the video game I’m playing, or the book I’m reading, or the show I’m watching, but I just don’t feel right name-dropping. So I can’t really list what albums I’m listening to, or what movies I’m downloading at the moment. I could write a deeply cryptic message based off a corny inside joke that no one who actually checks my status would understand, but that’s about the weakest thing to do for one of these things. Almost as hax as sending spiteful messages to a loved or hated one via status.

Instead of going on about all of this for a few pages, I think I may just post my favorite cheesy movi quote.

PREV: CH. 33 «Idiot-Proof»

NEXT: CH. 35 «Birthday Break-In»

02-19-2309

I kind of feel bad for people. They’re not given the respect they deserve sometimes, especially when it comes to common sense. I think most people are reasonably aware of what is and isn’t beneficial to their overall existence, or at least the right and wrong of a given daily situation; we normally know our up from our down without anyone having to remind us. Someone in marketing must think we’re really dumb, though. Everywhere you see a product for sale you could surely spot a disclaimer without looking hard. It seems like everything these days is idiot-proofed.

I believe originally it began for new, unusual items that could actually cause harm if used incorrectly, like caustic cleaning supplies or small plastic children’s toys. Harmful if Swallowed and Infant Choking Hazard were insightful and very helpful warnings for the consumer at the time. From some point afterwards, most likely emerging from our recent age of cutthroat legal battles, these caution stickers have been implemented to instead protect the manufacturer from the customer. Following precedent set by a class-action suit against hamburger mogul McKroc’s, you can’t get a cup of coffee without being told the contents are very hot. You can’t find an power plug that doesn’t remind you that it’s purpose is to carry electricity, or that it wouldn’t be wise to take this in the bath with you. You can’t even call those bits of packing foam peanuts anymore.

Somewhere along the lines, probably because of everyone being incessantly instructed on incorrect use, people got even dumber. Or so it would seem with today’s disclaimers. A sleeping aid that warns you it may cause drowsiness. An in-flight pack of peanuts that reminds you it contain nuts. A superhero costume that notifies you it doesn’t award it’s user the power to fly. There’s even an iron that suggests you don’t wear the clothes while you’re pressing them.

This one just puzzles the slag out of me though. In a flowerbed beside the late night drive-thru there is a sign, a little white thing adorned with the graphic of a red line through a glass of water. The plaque informs that the water used in the sprinkler system is recycled and not suitable for human consumption. I don’t think my brain will have the power to comprehend the existence of a person who would ever consider drinking from a sprinkler, even after I eat a double cheeseburger which May Contain Meat and Dairy Products.

I actually feel really bad for anyone who needs all these little signs.

PREV: CH. 32 «Sleeping on the Floor»

NEXT: CH. 34 «Status Update»

02-10-2309

I can’t tell you how much it thrills me to be able to sleep in a comfortable bed tonight. For the past 7 weeks I’ve been making nests of various piles of blankets and sleeping bags, ever since I got kicked out of my last apartment. In almost two months I’ve jumped at every chance I’ve gotten just to lay down on someone’s bed and prayed I could get a couch wherever I crashed. Even when I went home to Earth, I had to sleep on the floor of my old room cause my brother commandeered my bed after my cat pissed on his. I was too amused by the situation to care at the time.

All that tossing on unsporting floorboards and thin carpet just reminded me of when I first moved to Mars and had no where to stay but Leucosia’s unit. Blast, even after I moved into my first apartment with Pashan, where I just had that broken futon, I still spent almost every night sleeping on the ground in my lovi’s bedroom. Even this past summer I spent a lot of time on Gerund‘s floor because I still lived half an hour away from my life. But now that’s all over.

Yes, I am coming to you from my new apartment on the other side of Costa Mensa. I may have mentioned a complex I looked up, last year while I was first trying to move, called Villa Venusia. If not, it’s a beautifully spacious domed community with an artificial lake that runs through the entire colony. Even in between the rows of buildings where walkways and driveways would belong, deceptively shallow streams and tributaries meander about, trickling over boulders or spewing with fountains. The fortunate residents that live within the inner units even have balconies that rest on the water where one could sit on the edge and dangle your toes if you so chose.

I may not be that fortunate, but I’m still lucky I got the place I did. It’s a small 2-Bedroom on the second story of one of the units in the back, but far from a shabby residence. I found the room online through one of those sketchy classified services, so I was expecting the worst when it came to the roommate I picked. It turned out for the best, thankfully.

Witt is a nice Ganymedean woman and we share a few things in common, including a birth sign and roots in Keret, where she grew up and where my father‘s family is from. Although though deep and insightful there is definitely a generation gap pervading our conversations, what with her being my own mother’s age. She does like to drag me into these long talks as I’m trying to get back to my room or out the airlock, but I don’t mind cause sometimes I do actually want to respond, and other times her busy schedule keeps her out of the unit.

That’s part of what makes me so excited right now, I’ve got the unit to myself. No one’s around to make any noise or smell any whiffs of smoke through my doorseal. I can relax and rest all day long, which is just what I need. My back is murdering me and I feel like I’m starting to get sick, so I’m gonna answer the call of a fluffy, inviting mattress.

CH. 31 «Observations on The Earth»

NEXT: CH. 33 «Idiot-Proof»