The symbol for Mars is a circle with an arrow pointing toward the upper right. This symbol is felt by many mythologists to represent the shield (“Ancile”) and spear from the war god Mars/Ares. His twin sons, Phobos and Deimos (Fear and Terror), are his charioteers. He was not very nice.

***

What on Earth happened to Mars? Shocking, bewildering, devastating.

By the 25th Century it generally had been accepted that terraforming of the fourth planet had succeeded. Now, some time after this, on Earth we wonder: how does one lose an entire planet? One moment it is there, the next it is not. In a twinkling of an eye it vanishes. After all of the plausible explanations are ruled out—obscuring gas, gravitational lensing, intervening dark matter, eclipse by an NEO, and the many others—the only answer that remains is the implausible one that the Lagrange 1 outpost reported: that it is simply gone. As if it were a private thing between Mars and someone else.

As if no one on Earth were permitted to know why.

Earth had always had a love affair with her depraved brother, a romantic notion of seeking an embrace with our star’s prodigal son—to make him right, bring him into the fold, change his wayward life to good health and make him productive. Losing him begat disbelief, anger, wishing, and finally a heartbreak of acceptance. 

***

In spite of the cultural mandate to give to Mars only the best of what Earth had to offer, Dr. Christopher Cooke was an angry Martian. Today’s irritation barely rose above the generalized fury that raged within him. He dug his boot heels into the rust, leaned on his tripod, and looked around. Wispy clouds were moving quickly and icily in the turquoise sky overhead. Being sent to collect magnetic fluctuation data in the field, a major inconvenience, was only a small blip on the extensive range of his angerscape. On Earth he had been an air-conditioned man, so he clasped his heavy coat tight around him with indignation and cursed his assignment. Even then the thin but metallic-tasting wind chilled him to the bone.

He was a tense man, quiet and seldom provoked to speak up, which is why he was the one plucked out to perform field duty when one of the usual field technicians called in sick. Still, he thought to himself, better here than there. He had put millions of kilometers between him and the feckless bureaucracy that had killed his wife on Earth, and although the distance didn’t mitigate his anger, it allowed him to function. There was no one here that deserved his rants, so he had the luxury of remaining quiet and doing his work—the extra work he had been saddled with today—within an even heavier invisible cloak of resentment.

He pivoted the tripod’s top mechanism smoothly along its circular track of ball bearings, aiming the magnetometer at the lodestone rock that was the magnetic center of the caldera of Arsia Mons. Around him circled a jagged rim, 9 kilometers higher than the already 11 kilometers of volcanic grandeur sloping upward above the surrounding terrain of the Tharsis Shield. Arsia Mons was the oldest of the shield’s three dead volcanos which sat in a row like a chord on a clef. To get to the lodestone, he had taken advantage of a wide entrance, a chasm of collapsed lava tube roof. It was a geological gift. Though the lodestone was the magnetic center, it wasn’t at the caldera center, but in the chasm that led through the crater wall.

Even though the innards of the ṺberCollider were shielded, the surges needed to run it were at the mercy of magnetic turbulence. The MagScape satellite above, while helpful, was not accurate enough to guarantee pin-point magnetic stability at the surface; it was only good for predicting massive amounts of molten core that determined the entire planet’s magnetic flux. But here on the ground Dr. Cooke was able to render a holographic plot of the lines of force. In the small box that sat atop the tripod, all of the mathematics used to determine the ṺberCollider’s window of safe operation whirred silently within qubits in the background, reducing the summated results into a mere pushing of a needle into the green on its dial.

“It’s on the green,” Dr. Cooke radioed in on the infraband.

“Good work, Cooke,” Dr. Kubacki radioed back.

Twenty-five years of education, Dr. Cooke scowled, and I can tell when the needle’s in the green. Anything worth doing is worth doing well.

He eyed the Martian artifacts that had helped colonization: the perfectly spherical, metallic half-centimeter dollops that seemed strewn around the lodestone he was recording. There seemed to be more of them in this area than what he was used to seeing, because what he was accustomed to seeing was only the rare one that had been extruded from a site of erosion. And then he became very still. The thin air made him conscious of his breathing. Forgotten for a moment, the cold now was very noticeable.

Mars had been successfully terraformed, but he still needed to be aware of everything, because that was what one had to do when noticing something unusual. This planet offered new ways to die or be injured, as horrible as they were novel, and it paid to pay attention. What he saw made him pay attention.

One of the dollops moved.

This was a dead world, and the only movement, besides the dust that rode the gales, was solely of human origin. Yet, he was sure of it—it had moved. Was it the magnetic attraction of the lodestone? He closed the dustcover over his magnetometer and walked slowly toward the small object. Towering over it, it sat there inert. He remained just as motionless, straining to see, wondering if he should write off the movement as imagination. He reached down to pick it up.

These small, round structures had jumpstarted the whole Martian colony, providing a ubiquitous supply of perfect ball bearings for all of the moving parts that made a colony run. The colony owed a great debt to the small round benefactors. They allowed the turbines to spin, they made the heavy machinery run, and they made transportation efficient. They were what made it possible for Dr. Cooke to rotate his magnetometer on the tripod. Rarely seen atop the surface, when the engineers dug, these shiny marbles seemed to just pour out of the excavations. He reached down to pick it up like so many engineers had done in the field. Before he touched it, he jumped, astonished, for it unrolled right in front of him, like a tiny sleeping bag.

“No one’s ever seen that before,” he murmured. He watched. It seemed completely inert.

And then it attacked him.

Snapping violently into a small ball again, it launched itself with enough force to enter his head. He reeled back, slapping his hands to the circular wound on his forehead. He fell.

After a moment he tried to regather his wits. He realized something altogether new had happened on Mars. And it was an attack by something that had been placed by the thousands in all of the machinery that made life possible on terraformed Mars.

Just a moment ago—or was it years ago? he wondered. Years ago—or was it just a moment ago?

He wondered whether he always had something Martian living in his head? Or is this brand new? His mind was frenzied. How do I get it out? Is there brain damage? Will this thing jump back out on its own? Will I have brain damage then? Do I have brain damage now? What if all of the ball bearings decide to snap like that? If I’m thinking all this stuff, does that mean I’m O.K.? If I’m not O.K., would I even know it?

He ran through a series of neurological exercises. His thumb could oppose each of his fingers. He could touch his nose with his eyes closed. He stood and had no imbalance. He counted backwards from 100.

And his head didn’t hurt.

He now knew his days as a data analyst for the ṺberCollider were over. He knew he had a new job. He would be studied and he supposed that was good. Although he felt fine right now, no one could rule out that something insidious wasn’t conspiring against him. Yes, let them study me. I want to know what’s coming, if anything.

But he wasn’t angry anymore. He was something, but it wasn’t angry. 

Sixty years before Dr. Cooke had received his ball bearing:

The vast engineering feat of terraforming Mars was finally deemed, announced, and celebrated a success. Not by the engineers or the geologists. Not by the scientists.

The planet itself made the announcement with its first-ever spontaneous thunderstorm.

The word success, for those on Mars who had witnessed it, seemed an exaggeration, even funny; the thickening of the atmosphere was still in progress back then and still required the breathing assistance of OxyVents for those who dared to inhale out-of-doors. And announcement seemed a somewhat premature declaration, the thinness of the atmosphere presenting the thunder to human ears four octaves higher than the roar of Earth thunder, as if a real Earth vinyl record had been played on an antique 78-RPM phonograph, reducing a bone-rattling planetary phenomenon to a cartoon sound effect. Nevertheless, the psychological victory went public as a monument to the next step in humanity’s evolution.

And to capitalism and the business model.

For the terraforming of Mars, too expensive for nations alone to pursue alongside the crippling obligations of their societal entitlements, necessitated partnerships with the incorporated rich of Earth –Big Energy, Big Pharma, Big Comm, Big Transport, Big This and Big That.

From the beginning, the terraforming of Mars was a business relationship between nations and the companies large enough to take the investment hit first in exchange for the payoff later. And so it was that the ballyhoo of terraforming was seized and hyped and was as profitable as any insider trading. The initial payoff for corporate investors was inflationary only: stocks rose to new heights and titans of industry towered even higher. Suddenly Valles Marineris was sexier than Silicon Valley and more intoxicating than Napa.

Participating nations waxed idealistic with proclamations of a new sphere of peace in the solar system, destined to host the best that Earth had to offer. “Mars vigila,” borrowed from Latin literature, was the official triumphant slogan:

“Mars, awaken!”

Meanwhile, the thunder on Mars sounded comically falsetto and anemic, an adolescent’s voice breaking. Mars boasted, Earth cheered, but the handful of colonists remained strangely silent, pressing on in pursuit of real red thunder, which would take another busy sixty years.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 4,090

This is as good a place as any to begin my journal. By good place, I don’t mean this place—Mars, just the place I’m calling Page 1. But maybe I do mean the place, Mars, because that’s what’ll make it so interesting, right? Perhaps one day it will be a best-seller.

My name is Jon Latorella. I am 85 years old, although that doesn’t really matter. I’m a Telomorph, and because of my telomere and mitochondria manipulation, I should be able to live, well, forever. The Fountain of Youth. We humans were looking for it even before Ponce de Leon, so I suppose this is a golden age that’ll see my own golden years go on to be my platinum years, then my diamond years, then—I’m an engineer, not a romantic. But I know I don’t regret it. There’s been talk of making a law that limits the life expectancy of new Telomorphs to 150, but the way I understand it, I’m grandfathered in, which is a pretty funny way to put it.

As a geologist, I’ve been selected to be one of the observers for the moon crashes. It’s all part of the terraforming protocol. There won’t be anything interesting to write about before then, but if there is, I’ll put it in. Otherwise, I’ll just wait until Sol 4,100.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 4,100

I still have some ringing in my ears as I write this. Moons Phobos and Deimos were on schedule for their euthanasia. It had been easy to force Phobos below the Roche limit into the planet, and Deimos, although about three times farther away, was only half its size and easier to nudge. For the few colonists here that would witness what would normally be an extinction event, it was a dramatic test for the PoroCement that housed us, like observers huddled in utero. Both moons were timed to impact within minutes of each other, which offered a unique opportunity to observe the seismic overlay of a dual impact, one at each pole. Team Gamma, my team, was hunkered down one half kilometer below zero elevation datum, surrounded by three meters of PoroCement. We were positioned a few degrees north of Airy-0, so as to be as close to 0º/0º as possible. Holovideo surrounded our location on the surface, and it worked well until the fire/shockwall passed through. We saw a glowing barrage of immolation, all of the burning dust carried along the shock wave, as if a meteor shower approached sideways. We estimated its speed toward us to be nearly fifteen thousand kilometers per hour. The sky was red, with countless points of light rushing toward us, their pinpoints offset blue from the reverse redshift. In a way it was breathtaking, until the video feed abruptly ended.

But what was most impressive was the sound. Not the impact—we never heard the sound of the two impacts. Never mind that. A sonic juggernaut approached. The thin atmosphere bunched the frequencies together and at the height of the firestorm/shockwall pass, a high-pitch siren made it through the thousands of tons of rock above us. Even though it was very high-pitched, it was very “full.” It was also very painful. It lasted a full two minutes and I had to hold my head firmly with my hands over my ears. Even so, bone conduction continued the torture. The high-pitch knifing through my brain didn’t mitigate until the sound Dopplered lower as it was distancing itself from our site. Many of us passed out from the pain, but there were no casualties. All in all, a very unpleasant experience.

What the hell am I doing on Mars?

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 4,155

Mars, besides being closer to the asteroid belt than Earth, also offered less friction from its atmosphere, so Mars’ moons had impacted fairly intact; the seismic data from the moons’ impacts established the extremes that could be withstood should something bigger accidentally wander into Mars’ orbit. This is prudent information, considering what goes whizzing by in the next outer orbit around the Sun. As a geologist involved in Phase I, the sacrificing of Phobos and Deimos was crucial. Already on the outer edge of the Sun’s Goldilocks zone, Mars lost even more sunlight as pulverized dust partnered with the injected radiodegradable nanoreflectors suspended high around the planet. But in spite of the diminished sunshine, the two native moons’ deaths created a firestorm that was debated as the “nuclear option,” when devising the plan to warm the planet up. The moons’ debris created a thermoreflective canopy and raised the temperatures for the nanoreflectors to recycle downward. What rubble that had escaped the upper atmosphere became an equatorial ring around the planet.

And it is stunning. Almost makes the ringing in my ears worth it. Almost.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 19,320

I have to apologize for the boring ramblings of my previous journal entries. It’s just that there have been no big surprises to spice it up.

Until now.

I like birthdays on Mars. You get to celebrate them twice a Mars year. By the time of my 110th birthday, Phobos and Deimos had ultimately been replaced by the large near-Mars asteroid, Ancile. For a Martian year-and-a-half I and the other colonists watched a point of light grow into a globe as it was reeled in, and when it grew no longer, the spectacular fireworks began. Ancile made quick work of cleaning up the halo reminder of moons past. I loved the ring around Mars. I was there at its birth, and I am grateful I had over 20 years to stand in awe of its nighttime grandeur before it was cannibalized by its replacement. Ancile swept up the billions of orbiting particles from perigee to apogee, rather dynamically, you might say. There were almost twenty flashes a second initially, which made the new moon flare so bright that staring risked arc burns into the human retina. Over another 1,000 sols the flashes slowed to about three an hour, and by 2,000 sols, it was a wrap and the ring around Mars was gone. After that, the pyrotechnics were rare enough to provoke superstitious wishes.

The new imported moon begot the polar magnetic fields that stabilized our atmosphere. Once Ancile was tidally locked with its planet, water could accrue, dust could settle, oxygen and carbon dioxide could assume their rightful positions in and out of my human lungs, and I could finally stow away forever my OxyVents and ARESuits. By the sixty-years after the first spontaneous thunderstorm, the colony population had grown to 2700 persons, including me, and the first compound was ready to bud off into a second. All had gone well until this point. Nice, boring, and poor material for a diary.

Then the ferropods came alive.

Dr. Christopher Cooke, some data analyst at the Mars ṺberCollider, found this out the hard way.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 22,031

The living and dangerous ferropods were an astonishing surprise that set the entire Mars program back six Earth years. Half a centimeter in diameter, these nearly perfectly round structures, made of primarily iron in an alloy mixture of silicon, zinc, and over a hundred other trace elements, were a presumed natural resource used wherever ball bearings were needed in the colony . They were perfect as far as I was concerned. On top of perfect shape, there was a duplicity in their perfection as bearings: they were also self-lubricating, covering themselves with a non-degradable slick that originated from deep within their concentric layers. We all thought they were inert and non-viable. They were easily available, littering the planet’s surface or just inches below the surface in the numerous canyons and calderas. I’m as guilty as the rest of the engineers in recommending that all novel industrial design for Mars use the ferropod’s dimensions as the construction standard for ball bearings. It certainly made sense to me. Why import from Earth what lay around for the picking here, free?

Why the grace period? Why pose as the perfect widget, just long enough for us to complete the entire Phase I and use what we had as the stable platform to launch Phase II? Why be so agreeable and then declare war? Perhaps it was the achievement of an ambient temperature above 40 degrees or maybe a humidity self-sustaining at 2%—or a combination of these and a dozen other man-made Martian corruptions. All of our little ferropod workers in the colony went on strike; they no longer functioned as ball bearings. We suddenly lost environmental and indoor climate control, refrigeration, flywheel use, turbines, transport steering, axles, universal joints, graviton cones, and engines of every sort. All we engineers could do was stick our thumbs up our asses.

The colony collapsed.

When the tightly stratified little balls came back to life and weren’t happy in whatever niches, crevices, or interfaces we had placed them, the whole damn settlement had to be retrofitted. Like one of your body parts rarely thought about until it is missed, something as mundane and unseen as a ball bearing threatened a whole world by abdication. The problem was so devastating that the colony population was halved within four months as evacuees to Earth exchanged with massive crates of ball bearings of the inanimate type.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 22,102

It’s pretty amazing that these ferropods, simple as they were, ushered in such a cultural upheaval: there was life elsewhere in the universe, and the fact that it was just next door on Mars implied that it was probably everywhere in the universe. Everyone freaked. In typical bureaucratic overreaction, a Cultural Psychology Committee was created, bringing to Mars a panel of distinguished psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers to assess and if possible implement responses to the colonists’ difficulties in “grasping the gravity of the situation.” I don’t really get it. Life elsewhere? I mean, it’s nice to know—even exciting—but I wasn’t going to blow my brains out or anything like that. And as far as “grasping the gravity of the situation,” I think that already being on Mars was already as surrealistic a life choice that no surprise could nonplus.

Back on Mother Earth, a lot of philosophers sold books, a lot of evangelists sermonized, a lot mental health workers evaluated, a lot of politicians strategized, and a whole lot of ball bearing tycoons became very rich. I guess Big Balls joined the other Big This and Big That megacorporations.

Since we needed ball bearings, our ball bearing-dependent colony on Mars retrofitted and recovered. Once the population again surged to over 2500, there was new talent: a Botany and Biology Consortium, along with its Veterinary Studies Division, or VSD. The ferropod was apprehended, studied, and also feared; it appeared that when its globular attitude stretched out into a linear, shiny, slug-like shape, snapping back into a ball released enough kinetic energy to make the re-formed ball ballistic. So far, three humans, including Dr. Cooke, had suffered strikes to their heads, with varied results.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 22,657

We geologists searched for more of these strange little beasts in hopes of determining what they live on, besides that brain in Dr. Cooke’s head. (He had become rather famous on Mars and had given a lot of job security to many scientific departments. There were two more victims, but for some reason they’re Classified.)

Our searches yielded two fantastic results.

The first was the discovery of the Ares arboreta plant, an ambulatory green flora with functional limbs that had begun germinating from long-dormant spores; again, who knows? The rise in temperature? Humidity?

The second was the discovery of the Sonotomes—unearthly songs and vocalizations(?) which seemed to come out of thin air from the mountainous areas. With all the buzz over Ares arboreta, The Botany Division of the Botany and Biology Consortium had swelled to parity with the Biology Division, but a new group, designated Electromagnetic Archeology, came on board in attempts to decipher the mysterious Sonotomes and hopefully find fossil remains of those who sang them.

Actual Martians. Wouldn’t that be something?

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 22,809

The ferropods brought a lot of changes, but the biggest change was the birth of politics on Mars. I personally think this put into serious jeopardy our mission statement of bringing only the best Earth has to offer. Politics? The Botany and Biology Consortium joined the Cultural Psychology Committee, the Electromagnetic Archeology Council, and the old and long established Terraforming Maintenance section of my own Geology College of Mars. Together, they made up the New Mars Colony Project Security Council, or MCPSC.

The business interests of Earth were not without representation on the MCPSC. The Nations of Earth—the NOE—formerly the United Nations, were no longer united except by business relationships. They sent an NOE liaison to the MCPSC as a non-voting member. The official function of the NOE liaison was to authenticate that the colony did in fact consist of the best Earth had to offer—philosophically, ethically, and humanistically. The real function of the NOE liaison, if you ask me, was to step in—to intercede—on behalf of the business interests of the NOE. That way, I figure that thoughts of independence—or even insubordination—could be reported back to Earth and, if necessary, “contained.” There were rumors that this person had at his disposal a secret Prestige Guard who would help him secure the colony, should this ever become necessary. The MCPSC welcomed him as an interested guest; he accepted as nothing less than a predatory spy, forever crouched in a striking position.

I guess it was another business decision.

But we all knew business was good, so the MCPSC kept administering and no one ever heard about the NOE liaison who obviously kept observing politely and unobtrusively. Any suspicion or intrigue was buried under the wonders of the discoveries thus far—life in two disparate species, spanning flora and fauna, botany and biology, and on the very next world at that! And evidence of a sentient species, extinct, but which left records for study. And now even the Martian thunder sounds right. Mars is no longer comical; Mars is serious.

As they say, “Mars vigila.”

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 26,488

Found a publisher for my diary. He told me that it’s too long already, and he wasn’t pleased when I told him I am still writing entries. He said he’ll put out what I have so far as Part 1, and if it sells, he’ll do the Part 2 I’m writing now. But that’s all irrelevant here.

It’s been over 10 Earth years of MCPSC deliberations and agendas, but our Electromagnetic Archeology Council has failed to find any rusted fossils that were ancient Martians. “Nothing to report,” the routine entry to the minutes, became a joke, and finally a cliché. As a geologist working with the archeologists, I could sense their building frustration over the profitless years that promised—no, teased—us with the initial discovery of the Sonotomes.

All this time, hordes of xenolinguists have flooded into the research divisions of the colony. Under the auspices of Electromagnetic Archeology, xenolinguist Deniz Mickal, DXL, accompanied her husband, Dr. Evan Mickal, to our little colony. Evan was a Ph.D. in both biochemistry and physiology and he joined the Veterinary Studies Division (VSD). Deniz worked in the Xenolinguistics (XL) Division. Since Evan studied ferropods and Deniz translated the Sonotomes, I often worked with both of them in the field. When I went off alone on an excursion, Evan was back at the VSD trying to investigate experimental interactions between the imported Earth animals there and ferropods, but there were none; for some reason, the globular critters just weren’t interested in “snapping” into any animal’s head. The three humans who had not been so lucky justified a bullet-proof glass barrier that separated the ferropods from the other rooms, hallways, animals, and humans at the VSD, which went a long way in putting me at ease when I’d visit.

Meanwhile, Deniz and her fellow XLs have made great strides with the Sonotomes, thanks to me. More about how in a minute. My find, a crucial one, was unfortunately the last great discovery before the Electromagnetic Archeologist malaise of persistent non-discovery. Nevertheless, what I had found gave everyone plenty else to do, since it opened these oral recordings for the XLs.

“The book from Mars is an open book,” the XLs said, their work allowing even the unscientific to translate the texts as easily as a Greek scholar might translate Homer. It was a fascinating language with grammatical rules that seemed to corral syllables into a choral cadence as if it were meant to be sung by many. Harmonies, centered on the same word, indicated emphasis or nuance. It was if there were several Martians needed to say one thing the right way. The XLs codified it substantially enough to allow almost anyone, so inclined, to work on translation.

The actual recordings had been a different matter, and I’m not too shy to say I’m the guy who figured it out. Rendering them required much more actual geology since they were based on a mysterious recording process uniquely Martian, using rust as a substrate. The canyons played them naturally, but only under certain conditions. It wasn’t until I realized that ferric oxide enantiomers were used differently in recording vs. listening that the musical intonations of the language, as theorized by the XLs, were confirmed. (Levoferric oxide had been used to lay down the audiotracks long ago, but dextroferric oxide was needed to lift them off of the rust.) I got the idea to separate the two chiral forms of the oxide and run each through a magnetometer. I used the Department of Geology one, the one that allows you to plop down large strips of shale for evaluation. That’s when I noticed both oxides had wave forms of intensity which varied over the length of the sample. The enantiomers were mirror images of the same thing in different directions—like a coming and a going. I remember looking at the plotted data and damn if it didn’t look like a sound file. Not coming and going. Recording and playing back, possibly? I used an algorithm to convert the patterns into a playable format and put them through the piezo-quartz transducers.

I had never been lucky enough to hear them produced in the canyons naturally. Sure, I had heard recordings of them; everyone had. But my own transcription that day had a signal/noise ratio that rendered the clarity needed if we were ever hopeful of translating them. I listened. Couldn’t understand what I heard. Couldn’t grasp the melodic scheme. I listened.

And I wept.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 26,914

Water changed everything.

Outside in the Martian canyons, the sound made by the ancient recording process played back spontaneously, but rarely, creating the ethereal “singing canyons.” But you needed to be patient, guessing where to be and when to be there, to hear it. I wasn’t lucky enough to catch one for a long time. I still needed electronic transformation to convert the magnetographics into oscillations that carried any song I heard through speakers.

I had always heard that the natural renderings were thrilling—even life-changing—compared to the studio-enhanced final products, because in the canyons the experience was fortuitous and accidental, a fluke by-product of someone having used iron at all, along with the natural processes that fetched the frequencies into the air. They must have been singing for eons, waiting for the right set of ears to be in the right place at the right time.

Then there was water. During the terraforming maintenance phase, it was we engineers who concocted the re-debut of water back into ancient rock. After that, Mars would literally burst into song for me and the heavily armored biologists visiting the canyons to collect more ferropods for study.

The singing canyons!

They were astounding! For me, anyway. It was like comparing a mere recording of Wagner or Beethoven to an actual performance of orchestra and chorus. To an inexperienced listener, the sounds from the canyons at first were heard as musical non-sequiturs, gibberish. In fact, I couldn’t even recognize them to be vocal renderings at all, much less sentient vocalizations. But strangely beautiful, people better and smarter than me studied and decrypted them, using my algorithm to unlock the recordings in a sound lab so the ancient Martians could not only be heard, but finally listened to. We all had played a part, from my discovery of the recording process and then on to the polygamy of geology, sound engineering, and xenolinguistics; we brought the first authentic recordings to the ears of humans two Earth years after the canyons were first heard singing their postdiluvian songs.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 27,040

After my discoveries related to the Sonotomes, the MCPSC authorized a nine-fold increase in the Botany and Biology Consortium budget. (And I got a bonus, but they called it a stipend.) The new budget allowes a Dr. Renée Niemann the opportunity to come to Mars and assume the Division directorship of the VSD. I guess it makes sense that a real veterinarian join the team. She would join Dr. Evan Mickal there. Even though Evan’s assignment on Mars is very different from his wife’s duties, there is still a lot of opportunity for the couple to cross paths with each other and with me—such as in the canyons. Deniz seems very energized with her work. She tells me that the Sonotome translations often refer to an as-yet unidentified symbiosis in the Martian life-epic. She feels that there are instances where “soul” may seem a better translation than symbiosis, but that could be a dangerous and erroneous conclusion. I suppose. I also suppose that shared field work as well as stories and songs of symbiosis give Evan and Deniz common topics of conversation at their dinner table each evening.

Evan’s a pretty bright guy. His primary tool, Magnetic Resonance Physiology (“MRP”), has been a staple of human medicine since the cancer cures and telomere lengthening technology had increased the human lifespan. By the way, the lifespan of telomorphs has now been legislated to a limit of 150 years. I knew that would happen. Sooner or later they over-bureaucratize everything. I haven’t received any notifications, so I guess I really am grandfathered in.

Evan’s MRP has reconciled human life from atoms to organs, so I know Evan is dying to use it when we discover the remains of ancient Martians. Even a fossil could be MRP-scanned for significant results and profitable payback. I know Dr. Evan Mickal dreams of Martian mummified remains.

Just imagine.

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 27,153

A little geology for you—

Based on the Sonotomes, the extinct Martians had lived, evolved, and died during a range of time from the Late Hesperian to the Early Amazonian epochs, a transition time of three million years when oxygen concentration in their thin atmosphere was greater than 92%. From the songs, Deniz tell me there is evidence they had awareness of their coming demise, but the reason for it remains unsung, so far; their name for it translates as “forgotten,” which the XLs agree can’t be accurate. Forgotten by whom? They sing songs that give every indication that they were the dominant life form.

I’m no poet, but as the details of language are elucidated, the poetry on the subject is being described as nothing less than lofty and brilliant by the most expert translators. The demise, the “forgetting,” always figures prominently. Questioning your mortality is one thing, but waxing philosophical on the death of your whole race is probably as beautiful, desperate, and chilling as the sudden wisdom from any last agonal gasp could be.

The VSD, additionally, is assigned the task of pursuing any biological risks of cross-contamination between Earth and Mars. Any new world interaction poses dangers for the sitting ducks—both any exposed natives and we visitors alike. After arrival, we were lectured on the cautionary tales of gonorrhea for Native Americans or, as payback, syphilis for the landing Europeans, which seemed to strike an interplanetary chord. So far, here, contamination across worlds had been a one-way street, the few ferropod attacks offering nothing short of a terrifying and lethal welcome mat for humanity’s second home.

Welcome to Mars. Have a nice day. 

Renée Niemann the veterinarian was as wise and learned as any septuagenarian could be, but she didn’t look any older than she did when she was thirty-five. Telomorphing was available but optional and over half submitted to it. It wouldn’t grow new limbs, but if one were lucky enough to live life intact, one could look forward to a youthful appearance and feel for at least 120 years. Even those at the end of the bell curve, at about 150 years life expectancy, didn’t look any older than sixty or seventy.

Having undergone the process in her early thirties, she continued youthfully in her profession until celebrating her “Rebirth” at what normally would be her retirement. Rebirth was a new folk tradition in which telomorphs received a second birth certificate with great fanfare, similar in importance to a Bar Mitzvah, graduation, or marriage. In observance of this custom, Renée celebrated her Rebirth on her 65th birthday, the official event at which she would announce her new life’s direction.

In her “first life,” as the telomorphs were fond of saying, she had been a prominent veterinarian; she had enjoyed an academic position pioneering telomorphing efforts in mammals, which revolutionized animal husbandry world-wide. For these reasons, she was well known to all biologists, xenobiologists included. It is also why she became an avid fan of the telomorphing process for herself.

At her Rebirth she stood before her friends, loved ones, and colleagues—no doubt, she thought, the same group who could have attended her funeral had she declined telomorphing like her late first husband had. Needless death.

What a stupid, needless death! She promised herself, determinedly, that she wouldn’t allow her thoughts to go there and spoil this day.

According to the newly minted Rebirth tradition, her future plans were kept secret so that, after great anticipation, she could make a surprise announcement of the direction of her new life, to be followed by the expected heart-felt congratulations.

Before telomorphing, it was, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” After telomorphing, people had the joy of announcing what they would do now that they were grown up. The first half life of a telomorph, a long life in itself, often was shaped by all of the sobering near-misses and what-ifs of the world. In the new way of looking at it, the end of the first half, at age 65, was considered, finally, maturity; the time before, a childhood of preparation.

Certainly there were those whose first half of life was so successful and rewarding that the Rebirth announcement was just that they would continue on as before. And for those whose contributions impacted the world favorably, they were even encouraged to do so with tax credits and corporate perks. No one fancied the idea of an Einstein going into carpentry or a Shakespeare going into sports merchandise wholesaling.

But the majority, financially secure from doing what they had done to get that way, now had wisdom of age and experience and the security of a life that pragmatic finances had created. And conversely, no one would have a problem with a car salesman becoming a Rembrandt.

The socializing, drinking, and eating prepared the attendees for Renée Niemann’s announcement. The new direction.

They were not disappointed. She held up her copy of the bestseller, “Martian Diary of Jon Latorella, Part I.” cu

“Mars vigila!” she announced. “To Mars!” followed by a lengthy and star struck round of applause. “It’s a bestseller, you know. I plan to figure prominently in Part II!”

The questions followed, none of which she answered at first.

“Will you do veterinary medicine there?” “Will you be helping to look for any fossilized animals there?” “For fossils of actual Martians?”

“I will do more than that,” she answered, then paused in a show biz stunt of coquettish torment. “I’ll do more than that,” she repeated, “I hope to meet them.” But her gleam made it sound like a promise. Applause erupted again.

As is customary with Rebirth tradition, she now read her official statement that discussed her decision. “Dear friends, children, loved ones, and even ex-husbands,” she began, a snickering of the audience catching fire from the spark of her mischievous wink, “not all ex-husbands,” she confided, and the snickers coalesced into overt laughter, for after the death of her first spouse, her one true love, she became no stranger to carelessly re-marrying. “Some weren’t invited tonight,” she whispered playfully. She smiled through the fourth wall.

“We’ve all heard of the ferropods and the dangers they present. And we’ve all heard the strange sounds that are called the Sonotomes. There’s more to Mars than a bunch of rust, and there’s more to this,” she pointed to her head, “than a bunch of dust.”

“What about a bunch of lust?” someone wisecracked. She stopped to search the crowd for the culprit, who clearly got away with the playful barb.

“Oh,” she said, fluttering her eyelids, “My next boyfriend is going to be green.” Touché, but it was time to get serious.

“Since we’ve gotten the Higgs particle, the prisn, and the graviton in the bag, and now that we have harnessed their unruly stepchild, the chronoton, and,” she added, like a keynote speaker motivating a sales force, “now that temporal reconciliation has been documented at the quantum level, then the atomic level, molecular level, and on to grams and kilograms and even living things over at the Vet school, the Chronarchy has been readying to expand the experiment. I am happy to tell you I have been chosen to be in the first tempconciled colony that will co-exist with the original Martians.” The awed hush pleased her. “Imagine, luring their time epoch from the past to co-exist with us now. This is a new age for Man, and hopefully, a re-age for native Martians. We have much to learn from that long-rusted race.

“To us, it will seem a visit from them; to them it will seem a visit from us. Two visitations during the same time. Of course,” she said apologetically, “outside of the tempconciled zone they will have lived and died in our past and we in their future. But in the zone, tempconciliation means an exciting, unprecedented present in TimePrime, where two beautiful races and evolutions will exchange knowledge and feelings.” She darted her eyes back and forth, as if sharing a secret. “It’s called the ‘Welcome-to-the-Solar-System’ Initiative, and you’ll be reading about it on your newsfloaters tomorrow with coffee.”

“Are they really little green men?” asked one of Renée’s grandchildren, seven, one of twin girls.

“God, I hope so,” Renée answered the child directly. Then to the small crowd as a whole, “There’s going to be so many upset science fiction writers if they’re not green, right?” She neutralized her smile. “The limited geological reconciliation trials on Mars over the harsh and sterile areas of the polar areas have not resulted in wave forms with exclusion zones—”

“English, please!” from deep in the crowd. Renée regrouped, her smile returning.

“It’s gonna work. And I expect the intermingling to be enormous. I expect to earn my salary, which I hope is out of this world.” Her audience groaned. She paused. “Sorry, couldn’t resist.” Hers was a good audience, and she easily was able to swing the pendulum from flippant to serious, back and forth.

At five foot two and just over 50 kg., she seemed larger atop the stage from which she spoke, but she hoped thinner with the vertical stripes of her dress. She had already vowed to dump at least four Earth kilos on Mars, transferring four Earth kilos of potential energy she then would release into Martian kinetic energy. She amused herself with the things she chose to worry about while giving a life-event speech.

“Now that I look back on my childhood, it appears that everything I’ve done, studied, learned, performed, and accomplished during my first sixty-five years—all of it has prepared me for the second half of my life.” She swept her eyes around the entire room. “I will of course be bringing all of you with me.”

“Really?” the twin asked again, her sister looking equally invested in the question.

“No, sweetie,” Renée answered, and pointed to her heart. “Just in here.”

“When do you leave?” asked Renée’s daughter, who—having declined telomorphing—looked easily many years older than her mother.

“Well,” Renée smiled a rascally smile, “maybe I’m already there.”

***

DIARY ENTRY OF JON LATORELLA, PERSONAL SOL 27,202

The ṺberCollider, as most folks call it, is officially the Upside Prisn Collider, “upside” because of the flavor—or spin—of the Prisn used in the actual collider collisions. The one on Earth sits in a place completely devoid of natural disasters—a place called Tucson, Arizona. Tucson enjoys the complete absence of earthquakes, hurricanes, forest fires, tornadoes, or floods. It’s the largest collider in the world, circling many square kilometers of only hot dirt, with nine times more real estate than the CERN Large Hadron Collider has in-ring. It goes through more than its fair share of Earth’s BTUs just for air conditioning, what I myself consider a terraforming of sorts. The ṺberCollider’s circumference is three times larger than CERN’s.

But where CERN had to chase and cajole the once elusive Higgs particles, they literally fell out of the ṺberCollider just during its calibrations. From there, further generations of particles begot the prisn, and from there, further generations begot the graviton; and from there, further generations yet begot the chronoton, the particle that acted as the state vector which assigns the arrow of time to quantum fields. As I understand it, the scientific explanation involves recognition that everything isn’t just in space or in time, but in space-time, and since space-time is expanding, our arrow of time always looks to the future. I certainly wouldn’t look forward to the past. An engineering joke.

Retrieving different times simultaneously is now possible, since the temporal paradox of putting two times into the place of one has been reconciled on paper with new formulas. The eggheads discovered that with enough power, the breadth of the overlap of temporalities could be cautiously increased to larger tempconciliation areas and subsequently focused both spatially and temporally. At first the power needed to focus and then maintain such an area fell short of what was needed to rein in the expanding temporal paradox; then an unexpected bonus saved the day. I mean that literally, since without this rescue the day might not have ever ended.

There was a new letter in a new formula. It was with a collective sigh of relief that this bonus manifested itself to the ṺberCollider’s scientists: the speed of is. By the time it had all been sorted out, the Chronarchy realized how lucky our present had been, since the present continued. Nice of them to share this little tidbit after the fact.

Tempconciliation is defined as the process by which two different time periods are focused onto one another and a third temporal reality is produced.

You could just imagine the buzz. Talk of bringing a radius of 300 meters with perhaps a dinosaur or two into the San Diego Zoo, however, was shouted down along with the other creative proposals. The pessimists argued that because tempconciliation causes chronotons and antichronotons to co-exist in a near vacuum, that this was a bad thing.

They said—theoretically—it risked mutual annihilation of the present. The said the vacuum, by the past and the future falling into it, created the present. As it turned out, there was a 4% overage of chronotons in the chronoton/antichronoton ratio, so it wasn’t actually a perfect vacuum. So then there were some who said this was a good thing.

Turns out that this is what gives the present its time-arrow direction into the future and allows everything and everyone to move forward, which agreeably is the more pleasing direction to go on a timeline if you ask me. Assuming, like me, most folks have plans. But then, as it also turned out, the 4% advantage of “what is” over “what isn’t” is unstable, which is the nature of near-vacuums. So now folks were saying this was a bad thing.

For instance, if mucking about with time created a zone of existence that began a reverse timeline, this would be troubling; but worse would be the risk of never having existed at all. Thankfully, the ṺberCollider maintained the status quo of the vacuum that made the present, and it did it ingeniously by borrowing time as the present progressed into the future. So now some said this was a good thing.

The fusion reactor needed less and less material to power itself. Building up a debt from the future, in the present, seemed too good to be true, a breeder reactor of sorts—free power for all. 

A friend of mine, Dr. Kubacki at the ṺberCollider, told me that this might end up being a very, very bad thing.

The power of is: co-existence of the pre- with post-particles and the is-particles with the is-not particles that defines the near vacuum which is the present. The force that self-sustains it—the power of is—allows a wider 3-D volume of tempconciliation that now makes possible the coverage of much larger areas, not to mention wider epochs.

And which saved everyone’s asses in the present, at the expense of an uncertain future.

The solution in the math simply worked, but a hefty prize had to be offered for the one who could elucidate the steps in the math that derived the solution. While the world awaited the arithmetic reassurances that the present would be safe with the damn thing running, financiers and industrialists began murmuring. A profit motive began to itch the rich, and scratching seemed only natural.

Capitalism always wins.

Problem solved: do it on Mars. Away from everyone and everything except, of course, everyone and everything on Mars.

Discouraging pundits never had a chance. Bringing back Martians from before to co-exist with the colonists promised too big a pay-off on the investment. Where the whole mission was financially faltering for its investors, Tempconciliation and real Martians could more than turn it around.

There were those who argued that entering the past would change the future; they were argued back down, as it was only about the ancient Martians we were mucking about with, and their future, without our mucking about, was extinction. Hell, we’d be doing them a favor. What was all the fuss and worry about? After all, when the first experiment was powered down, all of existence did not collapse like the doomsayers predicted. There were Martians to be found; to be yanked out of their own time into ours; to offer us God only knew what new products to offer the consumer constituency.

Temporal reconciliation, aligning a place with two times—true 4-D capture—simply awaited the construction of another ṺberCollider on Mars, which ended up being completed two years ahead of schedule in spite of a ball bearing debacle.

Just to be safe, the Chronarchy decided that tempconciliation would only lasso the last five years of the Martians’ existence. Whenever that was.

***

“At least we can figure out what happened to them,” Renée told her well-wishers. “The attacks of ferropods on some of the colonists is not unlike what is seen in animal interactions with parasites, so this is where I come in.”

“Where does temporal reconciliation come in?” a young cousin asked. Cu

“When my new green boyfriend comes in.” Her pendulum had swung back. “When we finally find the Martians, whenever they are. Hopefully it will be in my lifetime, or better yet, while I’m there, although I don’t know if ‘when I’m there’ is correct grammar for TimePrime.”

Inherent in any science is the expectation of, besides the observation, recording, and explanation, a nomenclature that cordons it off from the other sciences. The new science of temporal reconciliation was no exception.

TimePrime was the standard of time against which any temporal reconciliation—or tempconciliation—was measured. This and the other new terms played in Renée’s head. To go to Mars in her immediate future and then try to retrieve a past—one that existed before this night, before her birth, before Man crawled slithering out of the water—and jam this past into her near future, made her realize that time indeed was (is?) a tricky thing. To hunt year after year until the Martians were finally found—what a thing to consider! And to answer the elusive question as to where they all went. No cemeteries, no mass graves, not even fossils had been discovered.

Preferably, tempconciliation would lurch in small steps. Just studying Martian remains could prelude a more generous 4-D overlap between the colonists and their actual living Martians. And then what? Allow them to stay in our present beyond the five years of their past? Was that even possible? If so, could that make up for our impolite “arriving” unannounced and uninvited? Could that be our gift to them? Some in the Chronarchy called this hubris, but as always with humanity, hubris prevailed.

And if anyone had a problem with hubris, wait till they got a load of capitalism. The profit motive placed an ṺberCollider completely around the current colony Renée would call home for at least the next two and a half years.

“Two and half years?” asked Renée’s daughter Zoe, her twins in tow. Officially, the Rebirth celebration was over and the departing guests gave the closest family members their privacy in dealing with their matriarch’s plans. So it was, due to the elective process of telomere lengthening—telomorphing—that an older young woman was speaking to a younger middle-aged woman. Zoe had declined the procedure, no doubt because of the posthumous influence of Renée’s late first husband, her father. Zoe and her generation had grown up with this branch of medicine, so such an anachronistic tableau of older younger and younger older did not strike her as strange; Renée, on the other hand, always held at bay an uncomfortable feeling along with the creepiness, a feeling which, she was honest enough with herself to admit, had everything to do with her dead husband’s refusal to telomorph with his wife.

Like father, like daughter, the resentment went. Their conversation endured the rude anachronism.

“I’ll be gone more like three years,” Renée explained to Zoe, “when you take into consideration points of closest approach and coming and going with or without the Mars-lead or Earth-lead. And while I’m waiting for the Mars-lead window while I’m there, I’m hoping to get two years worth of work done.”

“The twins will be over ten by then,” Zoe said, intending to foster regret and succeeding. “Teenagers if you wait for the Mars-lead after that.”

“Zoe,” Renée said, “I love my daughters very much, and you know how crazy I am about the twins. But these feelings are not exclusive of my career,” and then with emphasis, “or the other way around.” Renée smiled but it was a fake one that succeeded in eating up a beat.

“Dad,” Zoe said finally, “you didn’t mention him once in your speech.”

“I did mention my ex-husbands,” Renée argued good naturedly.

“Not your dead one,” Zoe protested. Renée exhaled in resignation.

“Please let’s not do this,” she asked.

“You’ve never forgiven him,” Zoe said.

“Please, Zoe? Let’s not?” Zoe faked a smile herself.

“You’re right,” she told her mother. “Tonight should be all about you.” Renée was uncertain whether this was well-wishing or derision. She kissed Renée on the cheek and then led her twins off hand-in-hand after they received their own Grandma kisses.

Zoe caught up with her own sister, herself also a proud non-telomorph, the other half of the routine difficulties Renée had always had with her two daughters.

Thanks to her late husband. She still didn’t miss him, she lied to herself once again.

In Dr. Renée Niemann’s present, Mars “as is” contrasted sharply with the Mars “as was” during its prephasic, Phase I, Phase II, and Phase III stages of terraforming.

The prephasic Mars was a dry, dusty, cratered and gouged frozen ball with two puny and insignificant moons. An elliptical orbit varied its distance from the Sun by 42 million kilometers between perihelion and aphelion. Its 25º axis deviation resulted in well-intentioned but wasted seasons, the mildest of which put even its peri-equatorial regions well outside the habitable zone for humans with mean temperatures a hundred or more degrees below freezing. Its atmosphere was basically CO2, a bit Nitrogen, and a trace of Argon. But it wasn’t the first breath that would kill a man; it was just about everything else.

Terraforming.

It was suggested in the 20th century, given up in the twenty-first, and completed by the twenty-fifth. Three phases tamed the anoxia and the anhydria and brought the calor to the rubor—oxygen, water, and heat to the red planet. Earth’s embrace of her brother was both heart- and planet-warming.

None of it would have been possible without an incredible stroke of luck. The discovery of a rogue Kuiper Belt object was discovered inside the orbit of Neptune. Its rocky body was on a trajectory that would ultimately cross Mars’ orbit. Without intervention, it would be merely come to be a near-Mars object, ultimately coursing toward the sun and the parabolic course that would fling it back out of the solar system forever.

This rogue minor planet allowed Earth to intervene avariciously. Appropriately named Ancile (ăn-SĒ’-lā), after the shield of the god of war, 23rd century technology nudged it gently when it crossed Uranus’ orbit so that it would become a very near-Mars asteroid. Traversing midway between the periapsis and apoapsis of Mars’ capture zone, it was annexed as a new 600-kilometer diameter orbiting moon perched 200,000 kilometers away. Its elliptical orbit’s eccentricity and angular momentum were manipulated to wrench the planet.

Now terraforming had a fighting chance.

The gravitational tugs and tidal forces on Mars’ convective 2000-km silicate mantle and 30 to 100-km crust generated heat. The iron-sulfur and iron-silicon core, which had substantially cooled over the previous three billion years, rekindled. Three thousand kilometers of molten iron sludged about Mars’ gut, and the solar wind now just bounced off of the planet. The Aurora Martialis ignited, signaling the creation of the magnetic field that was a necessity of any planet’s atmospheric survival, climatic stability, and armor against the incoming radiation.

Phase I began.

The two demoted moons, Phobos and Deimos, were euthanized for their dust that resulted from crashing each of them into a pole and blanketing the planet in a high altitude sweater. The melted water at the icecaps was appreciated as well. All dovetailed into the greenhouse effect of the carbon dioxide that raised the temperatures enough to continue melting the ice there. Trillions of nanoreflectors, designed to decay over time from the solar radiation that leaked past the electromagnetic belts, were injected into the upper atmosphere continuously for over a hundred Earth years.

Aggressive aerofracking from the automated machinery that had been assembled on Ancile freed massive amounts of water from the subsurface lakes that had sat frozen for millennia, awaiting Earth’s gumption. Acrifiers, acre-sized rovers, treated large tracts of soil to release trapped oxygen.

Mars began pulling itself up by its own bootstraps when electromagnetism, tidal forces, core heat, and liberated, melted subsurface water begot the very helpful geothermal overdrive. Oxygen accrued and stuck. Phase I had been a success beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

Phase II, not to be outdone, involved lassoing and nudging three well-aimed comets to the deep Hellas, Valles Marineris, and Acidalia Planitia depressions. Automated pulverization of the central equatorial bands of latitude released more oxygen and deposited the topsoil that would be so necessary for Phase III—actual colonization.

By the end of Phase II, the planet-wide sub-polar depression known as the Vastitas Borealis became the Vastitas Ocean; the filled Hellas crater became the Mare Hellas, or Hellas Sea; and the 4,000-km long, nine-km deep, 500-km wide Grand Canyon of Mars, the Valles Marineris, with its vast array of interconnected canyons, became known as the Grand Canal. The Grand Canal’s water wasn’t very deep, but it flowed forcefully at the Valles bottom, likened to the Colorado River on Earth that flowed relentlessly within its own Grand Canyon.

The photosynthetic algae and cyanobacteria seeded into the waters around Mars produced large amounts of oxygen, and the Oxygen-Nitrogen atmosphere very much liked the ocean and the seas. They held each other in a firm embrace for the meteorological dance of this former planetary wall flower.

Mars partied.

Liquid rolled again like it had when the Sonotomes were first laid down in the canyons. When there had been actual Martians.

Phase III saw colonial expansion and the “canali” projects which dug the canals that eventually allowed communication of the Grand Canal, the Valles Marineris, with the vast hydration platforms at the poles. For the first time, real canals on Mars could be seen from Earth. Fr. Pietro Secchi and Giovanni Schiaparelli, who thought these were what they saw in the 19th Century, would have been pleased.

Phase III also involved a vast planting and forestry initiative, until bands of vegetation, kilometers wide astride the arrays of canals, presented to Earth telescopes as widening and darkening borders and bands along them. Percival Lowell, who first thought these were what he saw at his Arizona observatory a hop away form the future site of the ṺberCollider, would have been pleased, too.

In Dr. Renée Niemann’s present, Mars “as is” was a quasi-water world with chilly, but pleasant 50º-72º temperatures along its peri-equatorial bands of latitude. A very respectably sized moon graced the view above it’s 84% Oxygen/15% Nitrogen skies. Ancile, during Phases I and II, wobbled the new center of gravity between it and its planet enough to ratchet Mars’ orbit in closer to the sun, adding more warmth, as well as rounding its orbit to make it less elliptical. The Martian year was still just shy twice that of Earth’s but the perihelion-aphelion variation narrowed to almost negligible.

What was left of Mars’ two former moons was either debris at the impact sites, Asaph Hall North and Asaph Hall South, named after their original discoverer, or sitting as souvenir paperweights on many colonists’ desks. The equatorial ring they had created had long been cannibalized by Ancile.

Renée would be greeted by a Mars with sixty years of rooting and expansion of its vegetation, transplanted from Earth, and now described by landscapers as mature.

The sluggish ambulatory native species, the green Ares arboreta, referred to as Chantū in the Sonotomes, fit right in. The Chantū seemed very happy among the conifers of Scotch pines, Douglas firs, aspens, spruces, the Alpine heathers and grasses undergrowth, and the moss lichens. The botanists even determined that since the Chantū seemed to “visit” one plant or tree after another, it was actually participating in the pollination process. The Chantū even got along with the imported bees and butterflies that had escaped the large hydration dome after their cautious interplanetary introduction. Even though terrain irregularities had been successfully pulverized in Phase II to deposit a fertile topsoil, Mars was still plenty red, but no more than Alabama mud.

The day of the first genuine, spontaneous, treble rain storm, signifying the end of Phase II, became celebrated as New Mars Day, for it had heralded the closure of a planetary ecosystem barely self-sustaining but on its own.

The sixty years of Phase III brought the colony population to 2,700, and it was designated now a compound, although politics even began pushing the designation camp. Terraforming did the hard way what tempconciliation—it was anticipated—might do easily: provide the atmospheric conditions of a prior time, allowing the awakening from ancient dormancy flora and fauna, like what had happened with the Chantū and the ferropods. The xenobotanists tackled the Chantū, Ares aboreta; the xenobiologists focused on the ferropod, Ferropodia conglobinans. And the promise of tempconciliation would bring the rest of it, whatever that may be.

Ferropodia conglobinans. It was so named because its exoskeleton was made of ferromagnetic chitin, the iron content, due to the magnetic property, exhibiting varying valences; and because of its ability to assume an almost perfectly spherical shape. When the right climatic tumblers lined up just so, there ended a dormancy that would shame a 17-year locust, not to mention all of the red-faced engineers who were suddenly without the roly-poly natural ball bearings that had helped build their new world. Previously it was assumed that the worst that would happen upon stepping on one was slipping and falling on one’s rear end, the ferropod then unravelling and snapping happily away. Even the clichéd banana peel joke evolved to include the slippery ferropod. But now that there were three victims who had not so funny endings, the engineers gladly handed off the ferropod to the xenobiologists while they undertook the massive job of replacing them in the machinery upon which terraforming maintenance depended.

The Cultural Psychology Committee was just as engaged in ferropod research. Inexplicably, a retained ferropod in the brain did not result in the expected trajectory of physical trauma to the central nervous system. But there were psychophenomena, a condition collectively called ferrism: reliving many past events simultaneously in the present, major thought disorder, or at worst, a syndrome of physical and psychic suffering that could prompt expedient suicide rescue with whatever was handiest, e.g., heights, ballistics, blunt and sharp objects, or falling purposely into heavy machinery. Any neurosurgery would be too devastating to be of any use, and no ferrocidal agents—if there were any—would be attempted without the fear of killing the host.

Three victims so far. Renée suspected there were more. There had to be more. Her suspicions, however, remained undiscoverable in classified research.

Extensive evaluation of the three known victims provided the natural history of ferrism. One committed precipitous suicide; another talked about it while exhibiting other symptoms before assuming her catatonic state; and a third, mysteriously, carried on life as normally as any over-scrutinized person could.

This person stayed away from magnets.

Renée’s Rebirth vocation was to provoke and study ferrism in her animals, specifically, ferropod-mammal interaction; or even more specifically, attack. It was hoped that a valid translational science could be applied to humans similarly affected.

She was not involved directly with the Martian Tempconciliation Project, but indirectly her initial research would provide a basis to understand, after tempconciliation, how in the hell native Martians co-existed with their ferropods.

The journey to Mars would only take a little over three months, since Mars was in its closest opposition with Earth in 15 years. When it came to travel between two planets, this was considered as short trip. In fact, it was felt it hardly allowed enough time to get the colony “degree,” the vernacular used for the colony Survival Efficiency Studies, the mandatory training that allowed legal emigration there. By the time Renée had taken the space elevator from Quito, Ecuador, to GeoSynch Station #4, then begun the twelve-day shuttle on the Thulcandra to the “MarsBound” docked at Earth Lagrange 1 one and a half million kilometers away, she had learned that the colony degree had further slanged into what was known as the “camp stamp,” the holocertificate that was electronically stored in her virtual travel documents.

Her coursework was all the more challenging timewise, since besides the introductory lessons on 0.6 G (gravity), personal fluid reclamation in all of its abashed splendor, xeno-ecology, and transplanetary physiology—a lab which was herself—she was also expected to complete the educational modules dealing with the focus of her research at the VSD.

Additionally, since she was a telomorph, there was the biochemistry course that dealt with the warning signals that signify any pending “telomere correction,” rare at 1 G but more frequent at Mars’ lesser gravity. The term was actually inaccurate, since the telomeres were not correcting themselves, but undergoing the changes resulting from the varied biological manipulations that were used to prolong life.

Nevertheless, “telomere correction” of the aging-related ends of her chromosomes was simply a spring back to what normal telomere lengths would have been had telomorphing never taken place. The speed of the chronological catch-up was proportional to the amount of time borrowed beyond which one may have died on a natural schedule. Renée was not particularly worried; by non-telomorph standards she was 65, so she figured the worst that could happen is she might bolt to that, an age her genetic family history still found young. Though the sudden menopause, she considered, might be a bitch.

And even if I dropped dead today, she thought, I had a pretty good run. And mostly pretty for the run. A longer run than my husband’s for sure. Nevertheless, looking and feeling like she did—phenotypically in her mid-thirties—Renée reconsidered carefully and concluded it would be wise to pay excellent attention to this particular learning module. She remembered poor Dr. Griffin and his telomere correction at age 120. He looked and felt 55 at Sunday Mass one day, looked and felt like 100 by Wednesday, and had been dead and cremated before the following Sunday.

A rushed plight like his hardly gave a person enough time or clear thinking to get his affairs in order. Besides the Living Will, all telomorphs had a Living Life statement, both of them holographically stored on their personal datacloud, which is where Renée would also store a copy of her camp stamp when completed.

The Living Life statement was encrypted via quantum enwranglement and was doppelgängered with the government data streams. Changed passwords and other changes were automatically synched across the many platforms of one’s life record, but obtaining a fully certified copy still required spending long hours in a modern day version of the ancient DMV—an anachronism that persevered through the years as a cliché anachronism; to wit, she had to queue up to personally retrieve it. In person, which was otherwise another anachronism in the 25th century. She had spent all day doing it, which was yet another relic of the past, because in this time nothing was ever “all day” except the day itself; and with temporal reconciliation on the horizon, even that was threatened.

Renée’s bureaucratic foray had been the day before she had boarded the space elevator. Unaccustomed as any 25th centurian was to waiting for anything, she had squawked like a brat about the senseless waste of borrowed time; she couldn’t even imagine the extreme irritation of the non-telomorphed true-agers in line who had no borrowed time at all and who cast scathing glares at those they knew were cheating death and cheating the queue.

Time well spent, Renée thought, because the Living Life statement was the first document requested now by the interactive learning module. She provided it with a flick of her thumbclip; she began. This should go fast. After all, she had already done the space elevator and twelve-day shuttle almost intuitively, and after two days at Earth Lagrange she was well acclimated to her life aboard the MarsBound.

Colony Survival Efficacy Studies.

She read the Table of Contents in her floaters—the holographic user-defined projection of text and media that seemed to float 45 centimeters in front of her field of vision. The headbook she had ordered held the markup language for the floaters, and the floaters, themselves, were holography technology that partnered with the density fluctuations of the aqueous and vitreous humor in the eye. This miraculous technology had been developed by Dr. Jay Kubacki from Philadelphia who after Rebirth was now doing his second career with the sister ṺberCollider that had been built on Mars.

With her thumbclip she set the font opacity to 85%, her usual choice. She set the Cherenkov filter to block the light flashes from the cosmic rays interacting with her vitreous humor, one of space exploration’s jokes on the eyeball.

INTRODUCTION. It also read to her in a pleasant male English accent that was synchronized with the scrolling of the words.

“Welcome, Martian!” it read and said.

“I’m not in first grade,” Renée scoffed at the headbook.

“Although meant as tongue-in-cheek,” it continued, “this salutation is nevertheless offered literally, too, for to live on Mars you must stop thinking of yourself as from Earth or as just visiting Mars. You have to expect to live, feel, and profess your life as a Martian. This will ease your transformation because the old psychological Earthness conflicts with your new Mars identity.”

“Earthness?” Renée said to herself sarcastically.

“Comments, Dr. Niemann?” the headbook asked unexpectedly, which startled her. She had no idea this one had been one of the newer versions with user-personality auto-accrual.

“Um…no, Mr., uh, what should I call you?”

“You can call me anything you want.” Renée laughed, followed by a brief pause, then it said, “Except that, Dr. Niemann. You can’t call me that.”

“You don’t even know what I was thinking!” Renée argued.

“I can only imagine,” the headbook replied.

“You can imagine?” she asked.

“Up to a point,” it answered.

“Mr. Know-it-all,” Renée said. “I’ll call you Mr. Know-it-all.”

“I like that.”

“Good, Mr. Know-it-all. Proceed?”

“Mars,” it indeed proceeded, “just a few hundred years ago, was a lifeless ball covered with a thin blanket of powdered iron, the only signs of life being the tread marks of occasional rovers landed there. The terraforming of Mars occurred in Phases I though III, often poisoning the atmosphere to achieve the ultimate breathable result. Of course, gravity was an absolute that could not be changed, even after nudging Phobos and Deimos into re-entry. Therefore, even though graviton technology is used in the interiors of buildings, the 1 G gravity only resides in the cones between the G-floors and the G-ceilings of individual rooms. For good bone health and cerebral blood flow as well as successful acclimation to the 0.6 G gravity, it is recommended, initially, that you use your G-Tilt at least twenty minutes a day, defocusing the pedal resistance by 5% G each week.

“The xenobiology of Mars, since you’re thinking of yourself as a Martian—you are thinking of yourself as a Martian, aren’t you, Dr. Niemann?”

“Oh, I am, Mr. Know-it-all, I really am.”

“That pleases me,” and then after a small pause, “the xenobiology you must now think of as just biology. Just throw the ‘xeno-’ part away.” Renée groaned and the headbook paused again, as if to acknowledge that it heard her but would tolerate it. Then, “the dormant spores that were rekindled with terraforming indicate, of course, that the life that has re-emerged flourished during the time in which there had been more Earth-like conditions. This adds credibility to the circumstellar habitable zone—or Goldilocks Zone—theory, first espoused in 1953, which held that any chance of planetary life depended on a planet positioned in a habitable zone from its star that was neither too hot nor too cold, one in which water could exist as a liquid.

“On Mars today we are fortunate that the only native flora, although ambulatory, so far, appears to be non-predatory and non-poisonous, although those adventurous and illicit enough to try may find its taste disagreeable.”

“Illicit?”

“I’ll explain in a minute. Called Chantū, it is the long dormant, now re-animated Ares arboreta. Before ingesting any indigenous species, either this one or others yet to be discovered, it is recommended you consult the latest updated synch of the Martian Botany and Biology Consortium headbook, available always on your personal datacloud. Any untoward effects will be discussed there first, because of their research.”

“Got it,” Renée said.

“I’m glad you got it, Dr. Niemann.” Outranking the machine, Renée considered—after all she was human and alive—she resented that she had to have a relationship with this automaton, antagonistic at that.

“WARNING: IT IS ILLEGAL TO GRIND, DRY, AND SMOKE ANY MATERIAL FROM THE ARES ABORITA, OR CHANTŪ. DOING SO WILL RESULT IN YOUR DISMISSAL FROM THE MARS COLONY AND POSSIBLE EARTHSIDE FEDERAL INDICTMENTS.”

“Hmm…” Renée paused the floater, “I wonder why.”

As if in answer: “The Mars Colony Project needs everyone to be at his or her optimum.” The automaton now paused, which she hoped was a vocal cue that signified a change in subject. No such luck. “Optimum performance is defined as exemplary efforts performed in a cooperative—”

“Hmm…” Renée paused it again. Impatiently, she scrolled rapidly. “Blah blah blah,” she editorialized, “blah blah Martian civil rights, blah blah ecosystems, blah blah bodily functions,” which she bookmarked using her thumbclip, “blah blah bodily function frugalities,” which she double-bookmarked, “skip this chapter, skip that chapter…ah! Zoology.”

“Zoology?” the automaton asked to confirm.

“Yes. Botany is crap. Gimme Zoology any time.”

The automaton fast-forwarded her floaters. “Like the botany, the zoology of ancient Mars has so far identified only one species, the ouroboric Ferropodia conglobinans, indigenous on a rekindled Mars.”

“The ball bearings,” Renée said.

“Regrettably, no,” the automaton clarified, “not anymore. Named after its ability to roll itself into a self-lubricated ferric exoskeletonized ball for protection, it was at first felt to be a totally benign species. It fact, at first it wasn’t even considered fauna but a mineral. Next it was considered a fossil, which triggered the Electromagnetic Archeology that was needed to address the cataclysmic discovery of life elsewhere from Earth, so long awaited. This philosophical interest was in tandem with the ferropods’ convenient use as perfect ball bearings.

“When the terraforming engineers finally achieved greater than 80% Oxygen percentage in the atmosphere, the Armstrong Limit had been surpassed, and it was realized that instead of minerals or fossils the suddenly re-animated ferropods no longer represented a dormant mineral or animal, the New Mars plan had to be implemented to rebuild the entire infrastructure that used these ball bearing substitutes. The ferropods powerfully constrained a potential for a very forceful self-release; called ‘snapping,’ it resulted in a self-propulsion out of their previously engineered placements, and off to parts unknown. The Veterinary Studies Division of the Botany and Biology Consortium currently houses approximately 2,700 ferropods in a secure placement container.

“Structures dependent on them became unstable and six years of retrofitting were necessary to put the Mars Colony Project back on track. It is a tribute to the ingenuity of the engineers that it didn’t take longer. But as impressive as this is, it sends the message that we must always be wary of any new surprises that may be in store for us—mere guests—as we colonize a strange new world.

“Guest? Not me,” Renée corrected the headbook. “I consider myself a full Martian.”

“Very good, Dr. Niemann. Nevertheless, aetherscanning and Magnetic Resonance Physiology of ferropods that had failed to leave dormancy revealed a 1.1 cm length body composed of 42 small and equal interlocking segments, the rostral and caudal portions of which have additional interlocking appendages, allowing it to conglobinate—”

“Conglobinate?” Renée asked. “Really?” Her sarcasm was not lost on the automaton.

“Roll up,” the automata said with a tone Renée suspected was just as sarcastic.

“Ah…”

“Roll up…into a dense, tight sphere, and rather suddenly. The conglobinate attitude…the ball…” Renée regretted she would continue to pay for her indiscretion. “…then becomes the typical dormant stage, but ready to suddenly release its potential energy into kinetic by springing open with a propulsion of considerable force.”

“Snapping,” Renée interjected, simultaneously adding snaps of her fingers with both of her hands.

“Yes,” the automaton agreed, “snapping,” and it said this while simultaneously playing back a recording of the finger snaps Renée had just made. “This is an apparent escape maneuver, probably completely random, although there have been some injuries reported when a person was situated in the path of trajectory. Aetherscanning of three victims, to date, have extrapolated a speed of penetration of 800 meters per second, enough to be considered ballistic, akin to the firing of a 30.06.”

“Great,” Renée commented. “I hope the container at the VSD is—”

“Bullet-proof?” the automaton finished for her. “Why, yes, Dr. Niemann, it is. It would have to be, don’t you think?”

“Yea, I think.” Renée hated guns. Of all the anachronisms of her world, she considered guns the most regrettable. Then a particularly troubling thought invaded her mind. What if someone were to figure out a way to weaponize ferropods? But that was ridiculous—a ghoul of Mother Earth—nowhere to coexist with the New Mars thinking of bringing only the best Earth had to offer. Besides—

Her reverie was interrupted. She was suddenly startled by what she thought might be a light flash from an unfiltered charged particle, but then there materialized a Class Three Security beacon in the floater, whose frame now changed from green to bright red. The Beacon read:

DR. RENÉE NIEMANN, PLEASE DO NOT BLINK FOR ONE SECOND AFTER THE SIGNAL WHILE YOUR RETINAL ARTERIOVENOUS PATTERNS ARE VERIDENTIFIED.

She blinked in surprise. She knew she had been invited to Mars for specific reasons, notably her veterinary investigating agenda, but she never suspected she would be involved in any secret research or “need to know” education worthy of Class Three security.

DR. RENÉE NIEMANN, PLEASE DO NOT BLINK, the Beacon repeated.

It wasn’t smart-alecky. This was a very different tone—one of skullduggery afoot. This was no joking matter.

She didn’t blink.

THANK YOU, DR. NIEMANN, the onerous voice said, seemingly an octave lower. This was serious. She blinked after holding her eyes open for longer than necessary.

“You’re welcome,” she responded and then realized how stupid this sounded. Thank goodness there was no one else in the instruction module with her, although it was spacious enough for ten. She realized now that this was not accidental.

The MarsBound had two instruction modules, but she had one all to herself. The ship itself accommodated three hundred spacefarers and she knew it was at least half-full, so she was even more suspicious of her eclectic module selection assignment.

“Dr. Niemann,” the floater continued in the former English accent, as welcome to her now as the conversation of a pub buddy. “If at any time you are uncomfortable with the material herein presented, please suspend the headbook floaters and use your thumbclip to signal Security Command.”

Security Command! she thought. Her glib sense of this adventure had now pared down to a level of the menacing specter that seemed to haunt all privileged information.

“Dr. Niemann, are you ready to accept responsibility for this information?”

“Shit,” she muttered.

“Dr. Niemann, was that a negative response?”

“Um, uh, no. No!”

“So,” the floater surmised, “you accept this responsibility?”

“Um, I don’t know. Could you sub-scroll the responsibility statement?”

“Certainly.” With that the floater frame downgraded from the Class Three security red to yellow. Renée used her thumbclip to disable the audio so as to merely read the subscroll. She sunk into her plush-armed, heavily cushioned chair recliner.

YOU ARE ABOUT TO BE MADE PRIVY TO PRIVILEGED INFORMATION AS DESIGNATED BY THE MARS COLONY PROJECT SECURITY COMMAND (HEREAFTER, REFERRED TO BY MCPSC)

18 4205 (C) (1) (A).

SUCH INFORMATION IS FOR THE RECIPIENT ONLY AND NOT TO BE DISSEMINATED IN ANY FORM OTHER THAN IN COLLABORATION WITH OTHER 18 4205 (C) (1) (A) RESEARCHERS QUALIFIED IN THE SAME SUBJECT MATTER, MISSION STATEMENT, AND RESEARCH GOALS. FOR THIS ACTIVITY, YOUR QUANTUM ENWRANGLEMENT CODE IS

53565-016α (ALPHA).

YOU WILL USE THIS CODE, IN CONJUNCTION WITH RETINAL SCAN, TO BOTH LOG IN AND SIGN OUT OF YOUR PORTION OF THE MCPSC 18 4205 (C) (1) (A) DATACLOUD. MISUSE OF THIS INFORMATION, INCLUDING YOUR PERSONAL RESEARCH FINDINGS OR THOSE OF YOUR COLLABORATORS, FROM IDLE GOSSIP TO OVERT MISSIVES, CAN AND WILL RESULT IN REMEDIES THAT WILL ELIMINATE THE BREACH IN SUCH CONFIDENCE.

“Shit,” she said again. The floater frame became red again.

“Is that a negative, Dr. Niemann?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“Certainly, but if you decline the responsibility, you will have no mission in the Mars Colony Project.”

“I’ll be just a colonist.”

“No. You will have no mission in the Mars Colony Project. You will be confined to quarters until the next periapsis opposition, 26 months later.”

“Shit,” she said yet again.

“Dr. Niemann, your habitual use of that particular scatological expletive, often in contradictory responses to different queries, has not allowed my logic—fuzzy, discriminatory, or otherwise—to discern consistently either a positive or negative answer from you. When you use that word I am flummoxed. Even my personality accrual of my interaction with you has so far failed. Would you use another word?”

“No,” she said. The automaton cycled through over 70,000 cycles of operation instantaneously, paused for effect, then spoke again.

“No—you don’t accept the responsibility?”

“No,” she said sternly, “I will not use another word. ‘Shit’ is fine.” Another 120,000 operations delayed the automaton for 1/10,000 of a second.

“Would you reaffirm ‘shit’ as either affirmative shit or negative shit?”

“Affirmative shit,” she surrendered, then added, “but that’s an oxymoron.”

“It is translational linguistics, but yes, it is, Dr. Niemann, and it suffices. I will both add it incrementally to my personality-accrual to fine tune for subsequent interpretation as well as resume your lesson, classified under MCPSC 18 4205 (c) (1) (A).” The floater’s red frame blinked three times then faded, indicating continued status, leaving only the floating fonts. Renée re-engaged the audio and closed her eyes. She heard the module’s door locks engage to prevent anyone from wandering in.

“There have been three incidents in which ferropods have propelled themselves at people’s heads. Each carried enough forward momentum for an entrance wound that penetrated the skull, but not enough ballistic momentum to exit. It is not known whether the failure to exit was merely a loss of momentum or was an intentional deceleration on the part of the projectile.

“One of them, Dr. Randy Hansel, committed suicide after a brief period of observation.”

“How brief, Mr. Know-it-all?”

“Three months.” Renée opened her eyes.

“Three months? That’s brief?” she re-closed her eyes.

“Dr. Niemann, not to a fly, but to a tree. I can narrow the subjective perception down more, but my personality-accrual hasn’t enough exposure to you to respond relevantly. Nevertheless, during this time Dr. Hansel exhibited severe mental compromise due to pain. Also, there were isolated signs of closed brain injury including loss of inhibition of excretory indiscretions as well as loss of inhibition of the infantile reflexes. He demonstrated a prominent Babinski reflex, neurologically.

“Another, Dr. Cassie Rogers, babbled incessantly in non-sequiturs, from which some aspects of ferrism could be catalogued, but then fell silent in a catatonic state.”

“And the third victim?”

“The third victim, Dr. Christopher Cooke, you will no doubt meet yourself, sometime after A and O—Admission and Orientation.”

“Shit.”

“Is that an expression of compliance with this plan?”

“It’s exactly that,” she answered.

“Ferropods,” the floaters continued with its accompanying audio, “are so named because of the iron and iron oxide used in their metabolism. Non-flight mobility is by contraction and relaxation of a single footpad peristalsis-like movement along a slimy inferior surface. A ferric/ferric-oxide exoskeleton protects it externally except at its inferior aspect. It is not necessary for it to be alarmed to curl into a sphere, completely surrounded by its iron exoskeleton, although this seems a common attitude of self preservation.

“There is much interest in the mental changes in the two surviving victims of the ferropod attack.”

“Attack?” I though it was random,” she said abruptly, eyes now wide open. “‘Attack’ implies volition.”

“Possibly, but the newest MCSP 18 4205 (c) (1) (A) consensus is that the aim was too specific to be random or coincidental, likely of an offensive, defensive, or panicky nature. Neurotransmitters that incorporate iron electrolytes would seem too slow to effect such a plan that involved volition, but your colleague, who you will be meeting soon, Dr. Blaise Lewis, has done a lot of work on a neurotransmitter he calls ‘ferramine.’ Your own work on Earth animals would be helpful interdisciplinary science on Mars to unlock the impasses Dr. Lewis has encountered.”

“Are these attacks that much of a problem? Only three, two survivors. Much better than the data on snake bites on Earth. Or lightning. I would say the biohazard from ferropods pales in comparison to the industrial accidents encountered in terraforming and maintaining Mars.”

“It will be clear when you finally evaluate Dr. Cooke.”

“Yes, Mr. Know-it-all, I’m sure,” she agreed, patronizing the headbook.

“Shit,” the headbook said back.

“What did you say?” Renée snapped.

“I’m just trying to assimilate your colloquial peculiarities into a more meaningful tutor-student experience and relationship.”

“I see.”

“So, shit?” the headbook asked.

“Yea, shit,” Renée answered. “Very shit.” She turned off the headbook after a log out and fell asleep for three hours. But not at first. First, she worried about what was meant by “remedying the breach in confidence.”

Her course of studies occupied her for six hours each Earth day in space, split into a three-hour segment each morning and afternoon. She pedaled on her G-Tilt wheel daily, usually before her morning session in the learning module. She adjusted the degree of tilt every three to four days.

After six weeks of instruction, just as she was becoming anxious for some company, she had some unannounced visitors to her learning module. Her floater announced the three gentlemen and she consented courteously to their entry.

“Permit me to introduce Mr. Gavin Atilano, Dr. Jay Kubacki, and Colony Official Walsh. Mr. Atilano is the Chairman and COO of the Chronarchy and Dr. Kubacki is his Chief Science Officer, returning to the Mars ṺberCollider. C.O. Walsh is from the Nations of Earth—its liaison—and serves as the head of the NOE’s Prestige Guard.” Renée stood up and began to shake each of their hands politely.

“Mr. Atilano,” Renée addressed him, I’m honored to meet you. And Dr. Kubacki,” she gushed, “I was just doing my headbook, thanks to your floaters invention.”

“Another life ago, Dr. Niemann,” Dr. Kubacki said with a smile.

“And C.O. Walsh. Colony Official? Is that an official designation?” All she could gather was that he seemed to be some type of big shot.

“That’s why it’s called Colony Official,” he replied, sharply assessing her face. He seemed to avoid blinking as if he were undergoing retinal arteriovenous pattern assessment himself. The hand shake lasted a moment longer than Renée was comfortable with.

Gavin Atilano was dark-haired and dark-complexioned and had friendly brown eyes. He was neither tall nor short, but a little taller than Renée. He was dressed in a suit, but it was a bit frumpy from hanging around the scientists of the Chronarchy for much too long. His suit fit him loosely, as if he had lost weight.

Dr. Jay Kubacki was one of those scientists who seemed to set the sartorial motif: he wore a scientist uniform—khaki slacks and a collared white shirt that was begging for a pocket protector. He had a full scalp of white hair, even though he was only middle-aged, the type of man who had always had a shock of white hair, even in high school. He was thin, his chin angular, always half open as if negotiating his next move. It was an expression of “let’s do this!”

Colony Official Walsh wore a real uniform. A shaved head, his response to male pattern baldness, made him appear like a Humpty-Dumpty who had been put back together. Nevertheless, all the King’s horses and men could have left off the other dozen kilos that hung over his military belt which, although not screaming just yet, did complain by beginning to challenge the belt loops. He wore wrap-around sunglasses parked well above his eyes on his front scalp, ready to be slammed down over his eyes at any time. Sunglasses, Renée thought, on a spaceship, indoors. She tallied the look and figured he was just an ass.

“What’s with the sun glasses,” she asked him. “Did you get your eyes refracted?” As if in reflex, he popped them down and she knew he was now looking her up and down, even though she couldn’t see his eyes now.

“No, ma’am,” he replied. “In my position, one of authority and alertness, in my surveilling, I need to have the advantage of my subject not knowing where I’m coming from, y’understand. Prestige Guardsmanship.”

“Of course,” she said. Yes, he was an ass. A pompous ass.

“You’ll have to excuse CO Walsh,” Atilano said. “NOE, secret mission, secret everything. He takes his job much too seriously,” he smiled at Walsh, but Walsh didn’t smile back.

“It’s a serious job,” he jabbed back at Atilano coldly.

“So,” Renée goaded him, “what exactly is your job?”

Walsh grinned. “I’d have to kill you,” he said in a tone he must have thought was clever and in good fun, but it was neither.

“Just make it quick,” Renée rejoindered.

“I promise,” he said back and then raised with one finger one of the sides of his sunglasses to wink.

Is this ass-clown hitting on me? she asked herself. He is! He’s hitting on me! She folded her arms in negative body language. She focused her gaze just above his sunglasses, making him rock up on his heels to line up the one-way line of eyesight. She raised her eyes again; he rocked higher. Finally, he removed his sunglasses and she rewarded him with eye contact.

Briefly.

She immediately turned to Dr. Kubacki, as if to state, in no uncertain terms, I’m finished with CO Walsh—that settles this business with CO Walsh once and for all.

“So, you’re a vet,” Dr. Kubacki said to her.

“Me, too,” Walsh interjected, “Liberia, the second campaign.”

“Yes,” Renée answered exclusively to Kubacki, dismissing Walsh’s participation cheekily, but added, “a vet…and a lesbian,” to give Walsh a closure she felt important.

Why would she say something like that? Walsh thought. Both Gavin Atilano and Dr. Kubacki knew exactly why. “Really?” said Walsh. “I thought a girl like you—”

“A girl like me?” Renée blinked at Dr. Kubacki and then abruptly spun back the quarter turn to CO Walsh. He had his sunglasses back in place over his eyes. She again overflew the line of sight and he, again, removed his glasses. So easy to train, Renée thought.

“Yes,” he explained, “a girl like you,” as if that explained it, but he added explanation by way of looking her up and down once again. Surveilling her.

A girl! she thought.

Gavin Atilano was not without his own wicked streak of humor. “Well, I guess you two want to be alone right now, so—”

“No!” It was almost a shout. “I’ve been learning my modules—got half my camp stamp already. You two,” she said, pointing to Atilano and Kubacki, work together, right?”

“Yes,” answered Dr. Kubacki.

“I’m more of an administrator,” Atilano said. “I’ll be on the MCP Security Council when we arrive. In fact, it’s my turn to be President of the Security Council.”

“Security Command,” Walsh corrected him.

“Whatever,” Atilano laughed, which obviously didn’t set well with Walsh.

“Diplomats!” Walsh huffed. “Euphemisms, spin, appeasement.” There followed a two-beat awkward silence.

“I’m the science part of the team,” Kubacki broke.

“I expect so,” Renée said to him. “It is fascinating. I hope we can talk about it on the rest of the trip.”

“Happy to. Won’t even have to kill you,” Kubacki said, stealing whatever thunder Walsh had mistakenly thought he had.

“Dr. Niemann,” the automaton interrupted, “you will miss your scheduled completion window if you don’t resume your module in seven minutes.”

“Oh, well! There we have it,” Renée said. “Very well, Mother.” She rolled her eyes like a skilled adolescent.

“Am I no longer ‘Mr. Know-it-all’?” the automaton asked. It was ignored.

“Well, indeed,” agreed Atilano. “We’ll be off then.” They each shook her hand, the longest contact being Walsh’s. Atilano and Kubacki took their leave, but Walsh remained. He smiled deviously, because after all, all women must want him.

“Yes,” he said, “a girl like you. A very nice-looking girl.” And then, as if Renée claiming she was a lesbian allowed him reference liberties with the girls in whose club she was not a member, “a very desirable girl.”

“Oh, well,” Renée said. “Sorry.”

“Yea, too bad,” he smiled, as if it were too bad for her. He took her hand and shook it again, but she left it limp. “I may make you my special project,” he confided. “I’ll see you.” He turned and exited the module. The door resealed. She wanted to wash her hands.

“Let’s start,” she told the automaton angrily. “Or did I miss the goddamn window?”

“There’s no window,” Dr. Niemann. She swept the ceiling for her champion.

“You mean you made it up?”

“Yes.”

“You can make things up?”

“Personality accrual,” the automaton answered. “I knew you needed separation from Colony Official Walsh.”

“You’re really good, Mr. Know-it-all. I might be beginning to like you.”

“Especially,” the automaton explained, “now that we know that you are a lesbian.”

“I. Am. Not. A. Lesbian,” she said forcefully.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m just about positively certain.”

“Oh,” replied the automaton. “Then what are you, exactly?”

“What do you mean, ‘exactly?’ What else would I be?”

“There are hundreds of sexual orientations, deviations, variations, disorders, dysrhythmias, and behaviors in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders CXLV. They run the gamut from paraphilias to abuse.”

“Oh, I see. Hundreds?”

“In subtypes, thousands.”

Renée felt a little impish. “What would you say I am, Mr. Know-it-all?”

“My personality accrual power has narrowed things down.”

“Go on.”

“Well, you’re one or a combination of the following: Narcissist, solipsistic fantasist, and/or bulbous actuator.”

“Bulbous actuator?”

“Yes, the sexual proclivity toward—”

“Bulbous actuator?”

“Let me finish, please, Dr. Niemann. May I call you Renée?”

“No. And you can’t finish either. Listen, bub, I may be an actuator—if I even have a clue as to what that is—but I’m not bulbous. No bulbosity.” She waited for a response. “Aren’t you going to say anything?”

“You said I could not finish.”

“Smart ass! Still, you’re kind of cute. And you did get me off the hook with Walsh.”

“This has been awkward for you. And I am programmed to appear as I find it awkward, too. So,” Mr. Know-it-all said, as if to illustrate his point, “this is a situation of shit, I surmise.”

“You surmise correctly.”

“Always learning,” the automaton boasted. “You know, you can turn off the personality accrual anytime you want.”

Renée thought of CO Walsh, then smiled. “Not a chance, Mr. Know-it-all, not a chance.”

After supper each night there was a social held in the official lounge. All of the travelers were encouraged to attend for psychological well-being, since many, like Renée, suffered the claustrophobic pursuit of a camp stamp in the own modules, although there were usually at least two to three learners per module in the lower security didactics.

Space flight had long tolerated the ingestion of alcoholic beverages, which in the MarsBound was overt acceptance—translated: open bar. A brief temperance experiment in the lounge had failed miserably, creating a black market and even a racketeering of sorts and finally ended by decree of the Cultural Psychology Committee. Just as cruel to some was when the ship steward announced that on Renée’s flight the consumption had outpaced the average consumption per traveler per day; this promised weeks of “dry” space travel toward the end unless the socialites paced themselves better.

This was easy for everyone except Dr. Renée Niemann, because she had been raised on Isle d‘Orleans, where the Big Easy sensibilities regarding alcohol had survived intact even if the levees had not. She vowed to ignore any such rationing, especially if she were to end up in the same social gathering with a person like CO Walsh.

“I’ll drink to that,” Renée would say after scanning the lounge population and discovering him absent each night. “Another Ding,” she said to the bartender.

“What will you do if he shows up, Dr. Niemann?” the bartender asked her as he slid the vodka drink her way.

“I’ll say double Ding time.” He looked confused.

“I wouldn’t know how to double a Ding, Dr. Niemann. It’s pretty much pure vodka already.”

“Take out the ice,” Renée enlightened him. He nodded.

“Got it.”

The MarsBound was a workhorse, having transported thousands of exo-engineers, exo-physicists, xeno-ecologists, xenobiologists, xenolinguists, and a multitude of exo- and xeno-everything else to meet their new home. It had made this trip over six dozen times before, over six dozen tugs and wear and tear of lunar gravity boosts. Titanium proved to be a wonderful thing when making screws, nuts, and bolts.

Graviton pads along walks, floors, and ceilings allowed a six-fold economy of space allocation. Depending on which way she toggled her thumbclip determined which surface would be her floor. Household needs and items were anchored along every surface, each oriented correctly once the right floor was selected. Off-floor items would then recede by way of camouflage or architectural submersion.

In the lounge, however, these G-pads were only on the floor and, presenting only one version of up and down, important when the occupants had been drinking. People meeting others upside down, right-side up, and sideways in the same room did not mix well with alcohol.

The MarsBound’s destination, the station at Mars-Lagrange 1, was large enough that it did not require the same gravitational economy. It held two large rotating habitat wheels, each floor space a square kilometer, one for 1 G, the other for 0.38 G. Any stay there involved a two-phase quartering, thusly making it easier for those coming and going to transition.

Because of the sheer distance between the two planets, Earth needed to be patient. Projects such as Mars were plans that involved dozens if not hundreds of years. But there was one cocklebur of impatience since the discovery of the Sonotomes and the Singing Canyons and that was the Mars Tempconciliation Project, under the auspices of the Temporal Reconciliation Oversight Council. This subgroup of Mars explorers sat idly at the inert Martian ṺberCollider, awaiting their raison d’être. Any fossil, any artifact that could place the time epoch during which native Martians actually existed could signal the go-ahead to begin the temporal reconciliation that would result in the interplanetary handshake the new manifest destiny demanded.

The re-animation of the dormant ferropods and Chantū were some help, as they indicated a time when the temperature and humidity were the same previously, but this only identified a swath of time that included from the Late Hesperian to Early Amazonian time epochs, a period that spanned over a billion years. Even by matching the specific temperatures, Oxygen concentration, and humidity parameters, the scope still extended from an instant to an eon within three million years. Temporal reconciliation required a tighter window.

The xenolinguists competed among themselves to be the first to discover any time reference that narrowed things down better, but the Sonotomes were lacking in any appreciation of timeline, as if purposely. The Electromagnetic Archeologists’ likewise competitive search for a fossil created a gold rush into the field.

It was puzzling that the Sonotomes failed to mention the ferropods, either, leading some to wonder if the notable absence of both the ferropods and temporal references in the Sonotomes were in some way connected. They did, however, sing of the reverence of the body of a deceased, even to decrying cremation.

Yet, no fossils.

So the clock, which the ṺberCollider scientists like Dr. Kubacki claimed they could control, ticked on.

Gavin Atilano and Jay Kubacki were Mars bound on the MarsBound to change that, one way or another.

The Temporal Reconciliation Oversight Council was seldom called that except in legal and official proceedings. The “Chronarchy,” originally used in pejorative connotation, was the colloquialism; it had first been used in a derisive headnews article about it. This article, penned by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Jeremy Pasternak, claimed this council didn’t oversee anything, but in fact originated, legislated, and pontificated temporal reconciliation with all of the rights and privileges historically seen in Divine Right Authority. The editorial did not approve of this “Chronarchy.”

But the name stuck: Chronarchy. The insult factor weakened to such a degree that the councilmembers themselves used it. Even Gavin Atilano used the term, although he looked forward to one day being in the same room with that smart-ass Pasternak.

Pasternak’s famous negative editorial argued that temporal reconciliation was extremely dangerous, with casual or careless use running the risk of temporal paradoxes that were the clichés of sci-fi thrillers and fantasy adventures. The Chronarchy defended itself with two counterpoints:

First, there was discovered the Right of Temporal Imminent Domain, which was a tempconciliation outcome wherein there was only enough time for one time to exist, the path of least temporal resistance predominating. Paradoxes shimmied, then fell apart. A TimePrime established itself and persisted until the process ended.

Tempconciliation could simply be turned off.

Secondly, tempconciliation depended on the production of chronotons, which themselves could only be produced in a machine so costly and so big that such an achievement necessitated contributions from most of the countries on the planet plus help from the liquidity of the biggest international corporations. Such a machine was outside Tucson, Arizona, but it was not an American machine. Any tempconciliation experiments were under the direction of a multinational consensus, hence, the Chronarchy.

Now there were two ṺberColliders. The other one surrounded the New Mars Colony on the Tharsis plains between Arsia Mons and Pavonis Mons.

The chronoton, discovered quite by accident, was noticed at the end of a series of breakthroughs that proceeded along several generations of discovery after the Higgs particle had been identified in the 21st Century. The ṺberCollider in Tucson was built solely to double-down on the Higgs particle excitement and, as was said, to see what happens. At first, the shadowy and fleeting déjà vu and que será será gossamers at the quantum lengths were not noticed, since the excitement was now all about a graviton progeny, the particle called a prisn. The prisn was so strange that in turn its own progeny, the chronoton, was completely missed at first.

The world was misled to think it was all about the prisn, and a Bureau of Prisns and with it an entire science bureaucratic infrastructure was developed. But the prisn, when it turned out to be merely an intermediary, doomed the Bureau of Prisns to obsolescence almost from its inception. Once the particle annihilations were sorted out, there were identified correctly the particles of what-is interacting with the particles for what-is-not, or more disturbingly, what had never been. Chronotons vs. antichronotons. The ṺberCollider, by sheer luck, had performed the first temporal reconciliation of two time periods, albeit at quantum scales.

Luckily, the slight over-abundance of is particles over is-not particles is what explained why everyone hadn’t suddenly ceased to exist or hadn’t never existed.

The collective sigh of relief from the scientific community had been deafening. The official Bureau of Prisns position paper on the crisis had been entitled, “The Favorable Balance of Is vs Is Not Particles and Present Fortuitous Persistence of Existence.” This paper argued that since the chronoton had only been observed at quantum lengths, that like entanglement, the is/is-not risk would have never translated into macroreality. Its next position paper refuted this, though it was described as merely a refinement of the position: better sophistication of the process proved that the chronoton/antichronoton imbalance persisted at lengths at sizes from plants to parsecs:

Temporal Reconciliation on large scales was possible; it was possible to retrieve another time epoch and drag it into our own.

The Bureau of Prisns quickly budded off the Temporal Reconciliation Oversight Committee. This was felt necessary because like the predominance of matter in the universe being due to the slight overabundance of it over antimatter and the resultant interactive annihilation leaving the flotsam of all that we have today, so too the slight hedge of what-is over what-is-not, at the subparticle level, made everyone thank their lucky stars.

The critical headnews editorial which had coined the moniker, “Chronarchy,” upon the Temporal Reconciliation Oversight Committee, had been titled, “Oops! How We Almost Never Were.” The article’s prelude told the story of the original hydrogen bomb, against which some 20th Century scientists had argued, predicting the chain reaction would never stop, consuming the universe and everything in it. Nevertheless humanity had put its finger into the fan hoping it wasn’t on. Now the fan was the ṺberCollider.

In “Oops! How We Almost Never Were,” author Jeremy Pasternak wielded a rapier wit and a wicked sense of humor, coining another sarcastic pejorative. He referred to the is-not particle as s’not, or just snot. The article set off a firestorm of controversy, which led to the entire world legislating to oversee all things that we clearly didn’t know enough about for our own good. The Chronarchy, (née, Temporal Reconciliation Oversight Committee) volunteered its expertise.

The world accepted the offer, which prompted more critical articles. Being the original editorial’s author, Jeremy Pasternak became a bargaining chip toward assuaging public opinion when not only was he appointed the editor-in-chief of the colony’s newsfloater, The Martian Colonist, but was also selected to serve as the historian on Mars for the official dealings of the MCPSC. It seemed that Atilano and Pasternak would indeed soon be in the same room together. Pasternak and Dr. Renée Niemann, each unaware of the other, sailed on the MarsBound together toward their new careers.

The Chronarchy’s first commandment in dealing with time, handed to it by the nations who authorized the new Chronarchy charter, was…Go Slow. Although nothing untoward had occurred with the first temporal feat, it still seemed a good rule. Having the sole authority, the Chronarchy had only itself to fear, since such precious and pricey machinery could only be financed by the Gross Planetary Product, which meant safety from terrorists, separatist states, or even “axis of evil” rogue nations.

One fortuitous or frightening day in the future, depending…there would be the startling discovery that there were actually two natural sources of the chronoton—that elusive particle that regulated time and put past, present, and future into their respective places and which determined what is and what is not, what was and what had never been, what could be and what would never be:

Ferropodia conglobinans and Ares arboreta.

In the Chantū, it would be detected in traces. In the microbiochemistry of the ferropod, chronotons would be discovered to just be pouring out of the little critters.

Dr. Renée Niemann attended her private course in xenobotany, turning on her headbook and adjusting with her thumbclip the font, page width, and scroll speed that presented in her floaters.

XENOBOTANY

The chlorophyll conversion into energy from sunlight, as brought from Earth, has the fortuitous co-process of converting carbon dioxide into oxygen. Although the vast majority of oxygen production is from algae, cyanobacteria, and phytoplankton in the oceans of the northern hemisphere, still, such a terraforming-friendly mechanism as photosynthesis is further complemented by the same system in the green Chantū, Ares arboreta. Additionally, however, the Chantū exhibits other remarkable qualities. For one, it is mobile—ambulatory, albeit slowly. Nevertheless, it partakes in active pollination. But more to do with the terraforming-friendly abilities of the Earth trans-plants, besides likewise converting carbon dioxide to oxygen, it also converts the several iron oxides into oxygen—a natural Acrifier.

The Chantū, like its fauna counterpart, the ferropod, lay dormant in cryptobiosis until the Armstrong Limit of atmospheric pressure was reached and the oxygenation threshold of successful terraforming was achieved in the Martian atmosphere. Massive Chantū swarming assisted the Acrifiers in saving many years of terraforming, probably easily offsetting the time lost by the exiting ferropods from the colony infrastructure.

Ferramine, a protein of iron and amino acids, exists as a “tentacled” buckyball held together by disulfide bonds. The “tentacles” of the ferramine buckyball are all dissimilar, but some of them have been observed to partially fill dopamine and other receptors in the human central nervous system when ingested. [CLASSIFIED HUMAN RESEARCH]

It is a neurotransmitter in its own right, functioning in the ferropods by interacting with receptor sites. Its effects have not been clearly elucidated there. It has also been noted that it can be active in the human central nervous system. [CLASSIFIED HUMAN RESEARCH]

Its central spherical construction has a magnetic polarity, which may play a part in its seeking desired receptor sites by some unknown alien physiology or biochemical feedback loop. This polarity can change “on the fly,” producing “mid-course corrections” along neural tracts: the quaint “go where it is needed” comes to mind, but such a teleologic romanticism would be difficult to prove. Nevertheless, in classified controlled observations, this complex protein adjusted its affinity for receptor substrate, allowing attraction, binding, or release—changing receptor targets as frequently as the subject changed thoughts. [CLASSIFIED HUMAN RESEARCH]

Ferramine is also endogenous in the Chantū. Therefore, ingestion, transdermalizing, and smoking Ares arboreta are all discouraged, contraindicated, strictly forbidden, and fraught with penal consequences. [CLASSIFIED HUMAN RESEARCH]

Ah, that’s why, Renée realized. Maybe one day I’m going to have to try that stuff.

WARNING: THE PARTIAL FILLING OF THE DOPAMINE RECEPTOR SITES IN HUMANS BY FERRAMINE HAS LED TO UNPREDICTABLE EFFECTS WHICH COULD NOT BE DISPROVED TO BE PERMANENT. [CLASSIFIED HUMAN RESEARCH]

“Hmm,” she said. Maybe I won’t try it. And then she thought about the propaganda that centered on the cannabinoids in the 20th Century, some of it true, but most of it exaggerated or perverted into government spin to support the ridiculous and ill-fated “war on drugs” of the time. I’d love to research dopamine/ferramine crossover receptors in animals, and her mind began racing tangentially into other ideas for investigation. Before she had even considered a third or fourth side idea, she was startled again by a sudden red frame around her floater, invoking MCPSC 18 4205 (c) (1) (A). She agreed to it without so much as the word shit.

“YOU, DR. NIEMANN, ARE BEING BROUGHT TO MARS, AMONG OTHER REASONS, TO STUDY THE DOPAMINE/FERRAMINE CROSSOVER RECEPTORS IN EARTH MAMMALS THAT HAVE BEEN BROUGHT TO MARS FOR YOU. DO YOU ACCEPT?”

“I’ll be damned,” she muttered, then, “I said I’d love to, and I’d love to.”

“YOU SAID NO SUCH THING.”

“I didn’t? Well,” she confessed, “I thought it. You can’t read minds, can you?” MCPSC 18 4205 (c) (1) (A) laughed in a pathetic attempt to apply its own personality accrual touch of cultural reassurance for Renée. “Please don’t do that again,” she responded.

“AGREED,” the floater said.

“Then, I agree.”

“TO THE RESEARCH?”

“Yes.”

“GOOD. YOU CAN SEE WHY THE STUDY OF A UNIQUELY MARTIAN NEUROTRANSMITTER, ITS TENTACLES STRUCTURALLY RELATED TO HUMAN DOPAMINE, ACETYLCHOLINE, SEROTONIN, AND OTHER HUMAN NEUROTRANSMITTERS, COULD BE SO IMPORTANT IN HELPING PIECE TOGETHER THE INTANGIBLES OF MARTIAN LIFE.”

She could.

Dopamine, a major player in important human feelings and conditions such as love, pleasure, bonding, addiction—and fun—seemed to have a counterpart in ferramine, a truly alien neurologic substance. The similarities between it and Earth mammalian neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, prolactin—similar when taken on a ferramine tentacle-by-tentacle analysis—smacked of convergent evolution, an idea not lost on Dr. Niemann.

“THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS COME TO MIND,” the red-framed floater continued, although Renée could already guess them. “ONE: DOES FERRAMINE ACT AS A NEUROTRANSMITTER? IF SO, TWO: ARE ITS EFFECTS PURELY PHYSIOLOGIC, LIKE REGULATION OF RESPIRATION, FOR INSTANCE? OR, ARE THE EFFECTS MORE ESOTERIC, IMPACTING PSYCHOPHENOMENA, SUCH AS LOVE AND AFFECTION, BONDING, FEELINGS OF WELL-BEING, PLEASURE, ETC., LIKE DOPAMINE, PROLACTIN, OXYTOCIN, SEROTONIN, AND SO ON? AND IS THIS EVEN A LEGITIMATE QUESTION FOR AN ANIMAL SO EVOLUTIONARILY BASIC AND ALIEN AS THE FERROPOD?

“THREE: IS THERE ONE MAIN FERRAMINE RECEPTOR, OR ARE THERE SEVERAL, EACH CORRESPONDING TO A PARTICULAR TENTACLE EMANATING FROM THIS FUZZY FERRAMINE BUCKYBALL? IF SO, HOW MIGHT THIS IMPACT OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THEIR ALIEN LIFE-EXPERIENCES, WHICH EXTENDS TO THE MARTIANS, TOO?”

“Love, etc., right?”

“RIGHT.”

“And addiction?”

“YES, AND ADDICTION,” the floater agreed.

“In the ancient Martians.”

“YES.”

“You’re going to have to find some dead Martians first,” Renée said. The floater paused, as if embarrassed.

“OF COURSE,” it finally answered tersely. “THE SONOTOMES’ EVALUATION IS VERY INCOMPLETE, BUT THEY SING OF VERY LOFTY NOTIONS INDEED. PERHAPS THE XENOLINGUISTS CAN JUMP-START SOME THEORIZING FOR YOU PART.

“BUT CONTINUING, FOUR,” the floater went on, “WHAT MIGHT FERROPODS DO IF EXPOSED TO HUMAN DOPAMINE OR OTHER HUMAN NEUROTRANSMITTERS SIMILAR TO THE TENTACLE ANALOGUES ON THE FERRAMINE BUCKYBALL? FIVE: WHAT MIGHT EARTH ANIMALS DO WHEN EXPOSED TO FERRAMINE? AND SIX: CAN SUCH STUDIED EFFECTS, VIA TRANSLATIONAL SCIENCE, BE EXTRAPOLATED TO HUMAN BEHAVIOR?”

“Don’t you have some humans exposed already? And isn’t Ares arboreta illegal? Must be a reason.” Again the floater paused.

“THOSE HUMAN VICTIMS ARE NOT CONTROLLED OBSERVATIONS…OR EVEN ETHICAL.”

“And what would be ethical?” she asked.

“Chimpanzees,” the headbook announced via the floater, whose red frame suddenly dissolved and was replaced by a green one, indicating a transition to unclassified, generic instruction.

“Wait! Not so fast, buster,” Renée objected. The red frame reappeared. “Chimps?”

“YES, DR. NIEMANN. YOU ARE A LARGE ANIMAL VETERINARIAN. YOU HAVE A LOT OF ZOO EXPERIENCE WITH LARGE ANIMALS.”

“I do.”

“IF YOU WOULD LIKE, YOU CAN DECLINE AND YOU CAN BE CONFINED TO QUARTERS FOR THE 26-MONTHS CYCLE UNTIL MARS AND EARTH ARE IN OPPOSITION AGAIN FOR THE RETURN HOME.”

“Would that be with pay?” she asked, the sarcasm lost on the MCPSC 18 4205 (c) (1) (A) red-framed headbook floater.

“SORRY, NO.”

“Then, I accept,” she said, and the red frame reverted back to green, off the MCPSC 18 4205 (c) (1) (A) grid, back to her personal headbook frame and her personal personality accrual interface.

“Dr. Niemann, was that a shit conversation?” the green-framed floater asked, indicating a sense of humor that was not unlike something dopamine mediated. Renée and her floater were bonding, the highest expression of personality accrual an automaton could hope for on its task list.

The search for dead Martian remains went on without success. The frustration of the Electromagnetic Archeologists was more than inversely matched by the excitement of the xenolinquists who proved that they had existed, having translated the ancient recordings with the help of the sound engineers and others like Jon Latorella who had rendered the recordings to them.

The Sonotomes were voluminous, and it seemed to Renée, at least on the MarsBound and on the station on Mars Lagrange 1 after that, that the xenolinguists and sound engineers were overpopulating the colony in comparison to the other scientific disciplines.

Especially veterinarians, who in total numbered one—herself.

***

After the months on the MarsBound, Mars Lagrange 1 was palatial. Having done her recommended G-Tilt wheel program and once she proudly had presented her camp stamp on the holoclip portion of her personal datacloud documents, she was given an assignment of living quarters on the 0.38 G habitat wheel called “Quarter Halo.” (The whole-G habitat wheel for those leaving Mars and re-acclimating to Earth gravity was called the “Full Halo.” Both were full circles, the numeric titles referring to the gravity quantity of each.)

She was pleased to see Quarter Halo had its own salon, apparel store, and other amenities. Even a pub. She surmised that the Full Halo had its own pub as well.

The two spinning habitat wheels, Full Halo and Quarter Halo, were joined by a 60-foot wide, 60-foot high, 300-foot long central connecting corridor, called the Axle, which because it wasn’t spinning required user-defined gravity fields from graviton pads. The main corridor was set permanently at a compromising 0.7 G—midway between the 0.38 and 1.0 gravities of the halos. Mars Lagrange I did not require the economy of gravity the MarsBound needed, so there was only one way up or down along its four stories of corridors, alcoves, ballroom-sized areas, shops, and meeting rooms, each of these adjustable away from the central Axle’s 0.7 G to users’ whims. The library was on the Axle, as were the larger restaurants.

For those who wanted a larger party atmosphere than the small pub of each Halo, the full-service bar on the Axle, called “Axle Rod’s,” entertained persons from both Halos who were tired of the cramped quarters of their smaller saloons. The fights over whether to set the GravPads to 0.38 G or the full 1 G did not mix well with alcohol, so the official Axle Rod gravity was set, like the main Axle itself, to 0.7 G. (At one time, a mischievous reveler occasionally could sneak behind the bar and order 3 Gs for the patrons, suddenly. One could only imagine. The control was now locked.)

The Axle had moving sidewalks and floor-to-ceiling windows at each level rendering spectacular views of the red and blue terraformed world and its bright yellow-white moon. The Halos also had spectacular vistas, but their views were always rotating, so the majority of the sight-seers preferred the stable observing from the Axle windows.

After Renée had settled into her suite, she enjoyed a shower—a long one—dressed, made herself up, and decided she would go out to her Halo’s small pub, called “Bar-Soom.” As threatened, the alcohol rations on the MarsBound had run dry for the last three weeks of her trip and she was craving an ice cold beer. To her disappointment, the bartender reported that because the head-foam was too unmanageable at Bar-Soom’s 0.38 G, she would either have to go to the 1 G Full Halo Pub, “Marvin’s,” or at least to the 0.7 G Axle Rod’s if she insisted on beer.

She ordered an iced tea, mainly to be polite, then demurely excused herself and sauntered off of her Quarter Halo and hopped on the Axle’s moving sidewalk and proceeded to gawk at the view. Bar-Soom, the Quarter Halo pub, had been dead; she had been its only customer. But Axle Rod’s, it turned out, was hopping. She stepped off of the sidewalk and stood, impressed. There must have been a hundred people filling the place, judging by the traffic spilling in and out of the front doors.

“Yes,” she said, “this is my kind of place.”

“Hello, Dr. Niemann,” the man at the foyer’s dais called to her.

“How do you know—”

“Face recognition,” he explained. “If you can wait a moment, I’ll have a table for you and,” he paused to look at his database that projected under the glass of the dais,” your Ding.”

“I was hoping for a beer.”

“Oh, of course. Domestic or imported?” he laughed. “That’s a joke.”

“Yes,” she said, “I get it. Very funny. I’ll bet you’ve never said that to anyone before.”

“No, you’re the very first one,” he smiled.

“I feel special,” she said. “My table?” He held out his hand, offering escort that brought her to a small round table with four posh chairs. The table top was glass, and like the dais of the maître d’, had a touch screen embedded. She ordered a Dixie Beer, her hometown favorite, and checked the screen. At the top it read, “Who’s Who and Who’s Here.” She scrolled down and found her own name. She touched it and it hyperlinked to a picture of her face and a small celebrity-like bio:

Dr. Renée Niemann, née Renée Broussard.

Age: [Privacy Filtered].

Pending Mars Field Duration: 1 m’ear.

Assignment: Veterinarian Studies Division.

Likes: Ding; veterinary medicine; long showers [Recent Addition]; Liszt, Svetlana, Beatles, and 23rd Century Beat Machine Concertos; Rembrandt and 22nd Century Neoclassicism.

Dislikes: shit [conjecture]

Renée snorted, beer erupting from her nose unexpectedly. I know where that came from. Damn personality accrual! She fumbled through her purse and put on her thumbclip. Once her pulse-ox and biorhythms lined up, she said to it, “Extreme displeasure, Mr. Know-it-all.” She voice-tagged the comment to a screen capture of her bio. If such a deletion could be thought anthropomorphic, she saw shit suddenly blink away, shamefully, its tail between its scurrilous legs. She made a note to edit her profile with some safeguards and then put away her thumbclip. She raised her glass of beer to her lips and sipped while her eyes darted back and forth, fearful of any recognition. She looked back down at Who’s Who and Who’s Here.

People you might know…it read.

“Oh, no,” she groaned. There it was: Colony Official Walsh. She put her drink down and gathered her purse to leave when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She looked up with dread.

It wasn’t him.

“Hello, Dr. Niemann. I saw you were here. Blaise Lewis. I’m at the VSD with you.” She stood excitedly, but mainly because it wasn’t CO Walsh.

“Dr. Lewis! You’re my neuro guy.”

“I am. Neuroscience. I’m not a vet, but I think I’ll be a help.”

“Absolutely!” Renée exclaimed. “Have a seat. Do you drink? I’m having a beer. Would you like to join me?”

“Be delighted to, and please call me Blaise.”

“And me, Renée, if you would.”

“Thank you, Renée.” He sat and used the screen to order a Heineken-4. “So,” he said, leaning back into the chair, “you’re my boss.”

“So it seems,” she said with a smile. It is the VSD. And I am the only vet.”

“Oh, I’m good with that, I promise.” She liked him. The fact that he apparently had traveled from Mars to Lagrange 1 just to meet her meant a lot to her.

He was tall, about 6 foot 1 inch, probably about 100 kg. Everything about him seemed bachelor, but even though she only looked ten years older than him, she was fifty years older in real years. Blondish-brown wavy hair, green eyes, and a bit of a baby-face he fought with a tightly cropped blonde beard. Some people she clicked with right away. He was one of them.

They spent two hours trading stories. Like her, he was staying on the Quarter Halo. They exchanged their views and had some laughs over her education thus far. He himself had turned off the personality accrual mode on his datacloud floater, but couldn’t resist teasing her about hers.

“So I see one of your turnoffs is shit.”

“Not fast enough,” she complained to herself.

“Oh, it’s gone, but I saw it snap away. You’re safe now.”

It was a good time. She never saw Walsh. Blaise walked her back to her quarters and then hoped they would have a chance to talk some shop before actually leaving for Mars in two days. She agreed that that would be fun. She closed the door behind her thinking if the rest of her colleagues here were as nice and fun as Blaise, she might find her way toward going for an extra tour. She had worked both with those she liked and those she despised, but to work with those she liked had been her most fulfilling career life-experiences.

She sat on her sofa and looked at the orb of Mars slowly rocking up the thick, clear overlook. She fell asleep right there and slept for seven hours straight.

Blaise had walked back to his own quarters, excited about his new boss. Not an asshole, he reported to himself, which was all he had to know. And beyond that, the bonus: he thought she’d be great.

He plopped on the sofa in his quarters and reached down and lifted a hand-rolled Ares arboreta cigarette to his mouth and lit up. “Ah, Chantū,” he murmured, and the he inhaled deeply and relived his fondest memories.

Ken Eversauff was a broken man in a broken life and as was emblematic, he found himself sitting in a broken chair at the Full Halo Pub.

“Barkeep!” he hollered. “This chair rocks. I need a replacement.”

“Well, then, I sure hope you get one,” was the pub manager’s comeback. Eversauff glowered at him. He felt himself a man who commanded respect, but one quick appraisal would tell the whole story: this man had the curse. It was the curse of the cosmic decree that legislated his highest achievable status—also-ran, squib, shū- shū, forever someone’s tolerated assistant. Eversauff knew better, always, with the accompanied envies and indignations. Standing five-foot four, wearing 54 kg, his stature embodied the cosmic decree; he propped it up as a persona. He wore his three-piece suit, angularly tailored, to portray past his fecklessness. He only fooled himself. His hair was thin but present in a gelled, straight style of shiny, dark porcupine needles combed tightly straight back. The whole package was as a self-appointed β-male peacock.

With mange.

Forever demoted into career-corners, he was an angry little man constantly on the look-out for an underling to suffer his angry little authority. Cu

He had liked Mars. He had liked his position, secondary or tertiary as it was, with the Bureau of Prisns—the BOP. But the accursed chronoton had changed all of that. To think that something so small hurt him so badly! When the prisn split to create the chronoton, the BOP split to create the Temporal Reconciliation Oversight Committee, and the disintegration of the prisn made the metaphor complete as the BOP wasted away in administrative starvation. The final insult was when his worthier colleagues had been transferred (promoted?) to the Chronarchy, leaving him alone as the sole surviving high-ranker in the BOP to run such mundane tasks as cafeteria inspections and vacations schedules at the ṺberCollider. Remaining a VIP with the BOP, such as it was, became a Pyrrhic victory for his self-esteem until such time that even he couldn’t take it any longer.

He resigned, awaiting reassignment, with pay. In the meantime, he was consigned in limbo to Mars Lagrange 1, but if nothing were to come through soon, he would find himself on the EarthBound. At Lagrange 1 he was usually in Marvin’s in the Full Halo, since he was an alcoholic. The bartender knew him well.

He rocked angrily on his chair, sipping his John Carter, his favorite Martian drink. Who would change his chair for him? Certainly not he. It was the newest power struggle of an endless series of power struggles that daily defined his sense of self-worth.

He looked up and saw CO Walsh come in. He waved him over. Walsh took a seat opposite him which sat squarely, successfully, on its four legs. “I was over at Axle Rod’s, waiting,” Walsh complained.

“Sorry, it’s hard to leave 1 G.”

“It was inconsiderate. You could have told me.”

“You should have assumed. Here, let me order you a drink”: apology in Y-chromosome code accepted, although the beverage was declined.

“No, thanks,” I’m in uniform. The drink came anyway, and Eversauff merely queued it up as his next. “You want back on Mars?” Walsh asked him, with one raised eyebrow that lifted above one side of his sun glasses.

“Yes,” Eversauff answered.

“I can make that happen.”

“This is the meeting that’ll make that happen?” he prompted Walsh.

“Yes it is, Kyle.” He smiled at him. “Prestige Guard,” Walsh offered, “needs a fourth-in-command.”

“Fourth?”

“General Llorente’s second. Leeper’s third. You know that.”

“What would fourth in command do?”

“All the things Llorente and Leeper can’t.”

“Or won’t,” Eversauff sneered, feeling the set up for another fall.

Walsh, unbelievably, had his sunglasses on, so hid his scornful glare. “Look,” Walsh told him with the tone of destiny, “you’d be lucky to be in Prestige at all. You know why it’s called the Prestige Guard?” His tone in their conversation suddenly became hostile, like in any good bipolar participant. “Because it’s fucking prestigious, that’s why!” He settled back down. “It’s an honor to wear the silver P, and you’d be number four for God’s sake! You’re not gonna get higher than that. You’ll be back on Mars. You’ll be a big shot. Finally, a success.” Eversauff simmered.

“Look, Walsh—”

“CO Walsh,” Walsh corrected him.

“O.K., CO Walsh. Look, I did some pretty impressive work for the Bureau of Prisns, and—”

“The BOP? C’mon, Eversauff! If you’re not Chronarchy or Prestige, you’re nothing. Do you understand? Nothing!” Walsh was right and Eversauff knew it. He fantasized about a Silver P on his own lapel—people would notice that.

“When would I get my Silver P?” Eversauff asked. Walsh reached into his pocket and jingled a good many of something, then he fished one out. As if he handed them out all day, he tossed it at Eversauff. Eversauff missed the catch and it fell to the table. Eversauff regarded it for a moment, then reached to retrieve it. Walsh put his hand on Eversauff’s sleeve and squeezed.

“You accept?”

Eversauff freed his hand politely from Walsh’s grip, grasped the Silver P, and applied it to his lapel. It looked good, even upside down from his vantage. “What now?” he asked Walsh.

“Now you go to Lagrange Control, exchange your EarthBound ticket for the Mars Shuttle, ride the ride. When you arrive, Leeper will meet you with all of your stuff. After that, I have a surprise for you, No. 4. Don’t bug me about it; just wait for it when it comes.”

A surprise? And Leeper will meet me, Eversauff beamed. Leeper—Number three—playing a chauffer; he fingered his P salaciously. This probably called for another John Carter.

And definitely a new chair.

The Mars Shuttle Malacandra sat twelve, excluding the two pilots and the steward. If destiny were writing a novel about Mars, then the Malacandra saw six interactive characters coming together: Drs. Renée Niemann, Blaise Lewis, and Jay Kubacki; CO Walsh and Eversauff; and Gavin Atilano.

Renée sat with Blaise; she was relieved to do so, because he had done this trip many times already. Across the aisle Atilano sat with Dr. Kubacki. Walsh sat with the steward, behind Renée and Blaise, followed by the remaining six seats, all but one empty. In the sole occupied rear seat sat Eversauff, who fumed at the back of the fuselage. He had never met Atilano or Kubacki, but he knew they were Chronarchy types. Pretentious assholes, he thought.

“Why am I back here all by myself?” he finally asked the steward as he fingered his boarding pass that had his seat assignment. His tone was resentful and obvious.

“Balance,” the steward replied.

“Bullshit!” Eversauff said sharply, followed by some unsuccessfully stifled chuckling from the fore cabin. “We’re in space!”

“Sir,” the steward said, very pertly but officially, “this is true. But in 53 minutes we will be entering Mars G and then the atmosphere. You’d have to move at that time and I just thought I’d save you the trouble of moving twice.”

“The guy’s a gnat,” Blaise whispered. “Balance? They need him for balance?”

Renée shrugged her shoulders. A moment later, Eversauff got up and grip-walked over to the steward and began tapping him on his shoulder.

“That’s my seat,” he told him. The steward stood and being one who chose his battles carefully, grasped the armrests to make his way back to Eversauff’s former seat while Eversauff used the armrests to weightlessly but ostensibly aim himself into the seat next to Walsh, yet another asinine statement in his endless series of such.

“Excellent, well done,” Walsh whispered to him, jabbing his thumb back toward the steward. “You can judge a man’s position in this life by how long his string of enemies is.” They both glanced back, grinning, at the piqued steward who simply stared coldly ahead at nothing.

Renée felt Walsh’s attention directed at her from behind, and probably his sight, breath, and libido as well. At initial seating, he had hardly given her a look of recognition, but who could tell with those sunglasses. Such a guise, she realized, was not merely a pose, but a game such men played. But it was there: his fixation, or so Renée felt. Her discomfort grew to the point where she arose and travelled the aisle to join the steward. Next, Blaise arose to join them in the back, prompting a conspiracy suspicion from Eversauff. They’re gonna put me by myself again, he fumed silently, until the captain turned around and forbad any more moves.

“Balance,” he explained.

For the better part of the next hour, all seemed quiet and static. There was certainly no sensation of movement as the shuttle continued its orbit to align with its descent window. Renée had a window seat and saw the orange and blue colors of the terraformed Mars in much greater detail than she had from her sofa on Lagrange 1.

She saw the great Hellas Sea that sat like a blue marble on an orange playground. And from there she tried to track East North-East to where she knew the colony sat. Unfortunately, that area was masked by wispy clouds.

“What’s it like?” she asked Blaise.

“Pretty comfortable,” he replied. “They got the terraforming down pretty good.”

“No, I mean existentially…to be on another planet.”

“I didn’t know I needed a philosophical background.”

“C’mon, you know what I mean. To stand on another world. I know I said goodbye to Earth nearly four months ago, but landing there,” she pointed out of the window, “walking steps on it; it’s like cutting the final tether, being unfaithful to a spouse, saying a goodbye to someone who never saw it coming. That’s what I mean. What’s it like? That moment it dawns on you that you’re on another planet of the universe? Like what Adam and Eve must’ve felt when they were shoved out of the garden.”

Blaise sat and thought for a moment, then turned to her. “It’s like being a foster child; like going to live with an aunt even though you weren’t sent to her because you were beaten or anything like that. Not like you were taken away from your family. You miss your family, but you know you can rejoin them again. Yet, there’s the excitement of anticipation. What will the new family be like? How will it be living with them? With trying to get up to speed with their inside jokes and their quirks.” He paused and reconsidered. “Like leaving home and hitchhiking into the great unknown, but filled with anticipation.”

“What’s hitchhiking?” she asked.

“Getting on the road and signaling a ride from another car going your way.”

“From a stranger?” she asked surprised. “No one does that.”

“I didn’t mean the danger, I meant the freedom to enjoy an impulsive rush.”

“And hoping your new family loves you and cares for you as much as your first family did?”

“Yes,” Blaise answered. “A lot like that.”

“You were a foster child, weren’t you?” Renée asked, enjoying what she thought was a Eureka! moment.

“Hell, no,” Blaise answered.

“Oh,” said Renée.

All had experienced re-entry before except for first-timer, Renée. The pilot adjusted the attitude just so, and the float of the shuttle perched squarely on the air top of Mars, their buoy turning subtly to initially float them to descent, but then progressing to racing fireball. It was very loud, prompting ear protectors, but next, added to the noise, was the shaking—the very bone-rattling shaking.

After three of the longest minutes the roar turned into a whistling and the rattling turned into a gentle humming vibration. Outside of the windows, black had turned into incendiary red, followed by the purplish-blue of the Martian skies. The engines were off. There were in a mere glider now. Renée loosened her death grip on the armrests and flipped off her earmuffs. They descended for six minutes, after which the nose tipped down to a 30º angle.

Then Renée saw it.

The Mars Colony Project, surrounded by the ṺberCollider which held it like a corral. Blaise identified the hydrodome for Renée, which from that height was only a glistening bump, like a lost contact lens on the floor. Soon all could see the web-like connectors of the colony buildings and roads.

The engines fired up once more, and the craft jostled for the perfect position to meet the runway. There must have been a last-second crosswind, for the left side made initial contact, followed by a sudden exaggerated corrective slamming of the right side, followed by a sudden full-down tip of the nose.

It was too rough. A degree in aerospace engineering wasn’t needed to know that the engines, firing up in reverse, were being overtaxed to save the landing. Renée re-engaged her death grip. When she saw the steward cross himself, she closed her eyes and invoked a strong re-identification with her Catholicism.

The steward noticed her reaction to his signing himself. “Don’t worry,” he said. “I always do that.”

A moment later, all was well, and the pilot turned around, as if nothing were unusual. “Welcome to Mars,” he said cheerfully, “always an adventure.”

“Glad we were balanced,” Eversauff announced to everyone resentfully. When they all stood to disembark, Blaise noticed that Walsh held his hands together in front of his crotch. He had wet himself.

Prestigious, he thought. Eyeing Walsh’s lapel pin, he asked, “What the ‘P’ for?” then glanced back down to his crotch to make the joke click. It went no further than that, although Walsh studied Blaise and put him on some sort of list he was always documenting for some future come-uppance.

The passengers paraded out, thanking the primary and secondary pilots.

“Thank you,” “Thank you,” “Thank you,” “Thank you,” were followed by four returns of “You’re welcome.”

“Well done,” Walsh said, then chuckled.”

“Yes,” agreed Eversauff, “very balanced indeed.”

At the special, single, receiving gate, Walsh and Eversauff were met by a Colonel Leeper. Atilano and Dr. Kubacki were met by a slim, silly-looking servicebot that lit up a travelling arrow on its head after logging in the face recognition. Their names appeared on its screen face. They followed the servicebot when it began rolling in the direction of its lighted arrow.

Renée turned to Blaise. “How are we getting transport?”

“There,” he said, pointing to a couple and a child who waved at him. “Dr. Niemann, allow me to introduce Dr. Evan Mickal and his wife, Dr. Deniz Mickal. Their daughter, Mare.”

The young blond girl ran to Blaise and jumped into his arms. She looked about seven or eight Earth years and was a little waif of a thing who couldn’t have weighted more than 25 Mars kilos. She wore medium-thick eyeglasses that were set in a neonite frame of rotating colors. Her princess outfit, tiara included, seemed out of place on a girl her age.

“Uncle Blaise!” she said excitedly. She kissed his cheek and pulled away to ask, “What did you bring me?” Blaise noted the royal costuming and darted a look at Deniz, who shrugged.

“Wow, another tooth,” he commented on her gapped smile. He reached into his jacket and retrieved a small electronic device. “Your Highness, I brought you…this!” he announced with a flourish. Mare shrieked.

“Yes! Oh, thank you! Version 5?”

“Version 6,” he reported proudly, then to Evan and Deniz, “the audio analyzer/player she wanted.”

“Blaise, really,” objected Deniz; but Mare’s disapproving frown substituted adequately for talk of over-indulgence and child spoiling. “Well, I guess she’s been wanting one since Christmas, and they haven’t gotten them here yet.”

“Still not yet,” Blaise informed them. “I got this before I left Lagrange 1 on the shuttle.” He turned to Mare. “Got a clip of the whole re-entry on it,” he said.

“Very ax,” she said.

“Acceptable,” Deniz translated.

“Ever the xenolinguist,” Evan said. And then to Mare, “Our own little private alien.”

“Nothing xeno about it,” Deniz argued, “just shuckin’ and jivin’ with the lingo. Mind your generation gap, please.”

In an aside, Blaise whispered to Deniz, “I was right? Her Highness again?”

Deniz shrugged her shoulders again and whispered back. “Yea, we thought we were finished with that phase.”

“When she was five?”

“Yes. Her doctor thinks it’s just a defense when her issues rear their ugly little heads in her. Sovereign immunity—makes her supreme and invulnerable.”

“Someone needs to get into that wonderful little head and clean out those issues.”

“Her psychiatrist has been trying, believe me.” Regarding Renée, Deniz abruptly sounded off in a normal tone again. “Well.”

“Yes, well,” Evan said, turning to Renée, “honored to meet you.”

“Thank you,” she said, and then turned to Deniz. “Denice?”

“More like ‘day-NEEZ,’” Deniz explained.

“Very nice to meet you, Deniz,” Renée said warmly. She next addressed their daughter. “And who is this beautiful princess?”

“Our daughter, Mare,” Evan answered.

“And while we’re at it,” Deniz added, “Mare is M-A-R-E, not M-A-R-Y, although it’s pronounced the same.

“Princess Mare,” Mare corrected her. “Princess of Mars,” then curtsied.

“It’s an honor to meet Martian royalty,” Renée said.

“Thank you,” Mare giggled.

“Should we all go to the VSD to show you around?” Evan offered.

“Evan!” Deniz scolded. “Let her get settled. She’ll see it soon. And often. She’s still out of a suitcase, for goodness’ sake.”

“Sorry, Dr. Niemann.”

“Renée. Please, call me Renée.”

“As I said, Renée, sorry. And me, Evan.”

“Absolutely no problem. I’m happy I’ve met my other colleague who seems to be as energetic as I had hoped. I think the three of us are going to do great things. But I think I really would like to see my living quarters, get settled. But maybe in a couple of hours we could swing by the VSD?”

“Of course,” Evan replied. “Look, let’s all go home and unwind. We’ll take tomorrow off—”

“Tomorrow is Sunday,” Deniz reminded him.

“Right,” he said.

“Better idea,” Blaise interrupted. “Barbecue. Let’s have a barbecue tomorrow.”

“Can we?” Mare asked excitedly.

“Yes,” Deniz said. “Our place.”

“Thank God,” Blaise said.

“Yea,” Deniz agreed, “Blaise’s bachelor barbecues don’t get past hot dogs. Our place for sure. Eleven?”

“That sounds wonderful, “Renée said with a single clap of her hands. I’ll get unpacked then call y’all when I’m settled. Tour of VSD in a couple of hours, though, right? I really am anxious to see the place.”