5.

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.”