To Get it Right

Through the lens, Beth could see her former home. The shrinking continents were colored a pale tan, with only the lightest smatterings of sickly green near the watery poles. She looked at the United States, zooming in on her homeland in the Rocky Mountains. Supposedly, her family originally lived in the state of Florida, but that was generations before her or her father. The peninsula was gone now, smothered by a hot, angry sea.

She put the telescope down and rubbed where it was pressed against her eye. The skin was beginning to protest more and more after a week of intense Earth-gazing. After a few teary blinks, she carefully slid her glasses on her face. She had to be careful; if she broke them, she couldn't fix them here on the Red Planet.

Once she could see again, she noticed her father had been waiting quietly in the doorway of the room. His clean, polished nails tapped the metal of the prefab as he held up one eyebrow with impatience. He wore a tailored suit with pinstripes and a slightly lighter black than the one before, just as distinct as the last seven. His gelled hair hadn’t been disturbed since his shower this morning.

“I’m worried, Beth.” He shook his head as he paced into the room. “You seem to spend more time watching the Old World than living in the New.”

Beth sighed, “I just hope the people we abandoned are alright.”

“Tsk, tsk.” Her father narrowed his brow. “An ugly and inaccurate word. We didn’t abandon them. They simply lost the drawing. They’d have been expected to do the same to us, had they been lucky.”

“Lucky…” She let the word leave her lips with a weary breath. She stared out the window of her room, watching the families of Dome Plymouth go about their days. So many faces were familiar to her. Men and women introduced as uncles and aunts over the years despite her father having no siblings. Most had lived in houses as big as his back on Earth and now occupied the largest prefabs. Over two-thousand people lived in the first settlement of Mars, supposedly a representation of all humanity, but she recognized over two-thirds of them.

“Come now, honey,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder, “be happy. We’re alive and starting a whole new adventure! In fact, Jeff Polek and his wife are throwing a party tonight. The first one ever on Mars. Best get out your finest necklace and earrings, are they still packed?”

Beth frowned. “I didn’t bring any jewelry. Why would that be useful?”

Her father’s mouth dropped. “None? It weighs so little, why didn’t you bring at least something?” When she gave him an irritated stare back, he started rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Well, I’m sure they’ll understand. Just be in your dress in a few hours.”

“I didn’t bring a dress, either,” she snapped, “I thought I would be terraforming and farming, why the hell would I bring a flimsy dress?”

He scoffed and looked at her as if she’d wet herself. “Why would we be the ones doing those things? We’re not laborers, we’re not built for that! For God’s sake, you’re blind without your glasses!”

So why am I here? She thought but smartly didn’t utter. “Right. So, will the laborers be at this party, too, then?”

His eyes fell to the ground, then to the ceiling and around the room. “Well, no. They unfortunately still have work to do. They're already a few days behind on building. Don’t worry, though, we made sure they knew their efforts were appreciated.”

“Should we be worried about our resources running low?” Beth asked.

“No, no, no, of course not!” Her father waved dismissively. “The other planners and I have made sure of it, we know exactly how to keep the labor force moving until the job is done. That’s really what corporate management is all about. Workers tend to get lazy if we aren’t around to keep them motivated.” He shrugged casually. “It’s just how things go.”

Beth knew better than to argue. She turned around and rolled her eyes, making sure he couldn’t see her disagreement. She removed her glasses and brought the telescope back to her eye again to spy on the Old World. What she saw made her freeze. Her hands opened without her permission and the telescope fell to the ground, the glass inside shattering from the impact.

“Beth, what the hell?!” her father yelled, “I spent a fortune to get that for you!”

She could do nothing but stammer, her vision still fixed on the dot in the sky that used to be her home. “It’s… it’s…”

He picked up a few large bits of glass that fell out of the broken telescope. “Spit it out, Beth, what are you muttering about? What did you even see?”

“Fire!” she spat, “and ash! The whole damn planet is charcoal!”

“What?” He scrunched up his face as he reentered the room and opened his own telescope to peer at the stars. “My God…” he whispered once he saw what she had.

“What the fuck happened!?” Beth cried.

“How the fuck should I know?” her father snapped, “I had nothing to do with it!”

As they stood, stunned at the sight, the windows suddenly flooded with a jarring blast of light. The pair covered their eyes and a booming voice pierced deep into their minds:

“Humans! Exit your homes! This is not a request! We have an address!”

The words echoed in Beth’s skull. The authoritative speaker clearly didn’t care if the message was painful. In fact, the order likely was supposed to hurt. What better way to get attention? She thought when the pain receded. Her father’s brow was creased with worry as they shared a glance. They nodded at each other with understanding and walked to the front of the house. Her father depostied the glass shards on the table near the door to the prefab as they exited their home.

Dust filled the outside air as all the families in Dome Plymouth filed out into the streets. Some brought weapons with them and tried to look upward into the glaring brightness that hung above. The crowd surged and in both sound and shape, the people’s fear spreading like poison gas from a smokestack. A few minutes passed, and a few stubborn stragglers stumbled out of their homes, holding their heads and grimacing. Once it appeared everyone was out, the lights dimmed, revealing a massive metal craft hanging above the plexiglass snowglobe that housed the remainder of humanity.

A section of the ship detached and started to lower. Upon it stood several shapes. Each was encased in an armored suit made of sleek, purple steel, but they were clearly different species. A few looked at least vaguely humanoid, but of differing heights and head shapes. One’s mask jutted forward in the shape of a beak and another had extremely long legs relative to its body. On the left end was a creature that held itself up with thick arms while its bottom limbs hung meekly from its center. The last creature was nothing but a strange blob with what appeared to be over a dozen tentacle-like appendages sticking out in random directions.

The alien with the huge legs held out its proportionately short arms. “Humans! We have been watching you for some time now!” Its voice rang in their heads again, much to their dismay. “You’ve abandoned your kin back on your dying homeworld. We regret to inform you that that world is now gone.”

“You burned it!” Beth’s father screamed, his finger pointing to the sky. She elbowed him, but his accusation was already in the air. “You killed them all!”

“They were already dead!” the alien said, his tone turning bitter and severe, “in the months it took for you to travel to this world, their civilizations starved and crumbled. They quickly waged wars for what was left, and soon after atomic fire ended the conflict without a victor. Most died in the radiation, and those that survived were wasting away in agony. Hunger, thirst, and DNA alteration are horrifying ways for any creature to die. Nothing could have saved them, so we ended it quickly.”

Beth could tell her father, as well as many of the other planners, wished to continue the argument, but the voice never paused to let them.

“You have one final chance, last of Earth’s life. We cannot allow you to hop from planet to planet, destroying each in the same manner as the last. Nor will we give you assistance before you can prove you are deserving of a place in the galactic realm. If you fail in your task and send Mars to its destruction as you did Earth, we will make sure your toxic species ends here. Success will net you both a suitable world to live on and a place in the domain of the Milky Way. Prove yourselves or fade into ash.”

As the last of the alien’s speech sounded, the platform rose back into the craft. The ship suddenly lurched forward and sped away faster than the humans could perceive. As the stunned crowd bent their necks to the cosmos, Beth felt her father’s hand on her wrist. He started to pull her through the crowd, and before she could say anything, they were back in their house. Jeff Polek followed shortly after, the stout man hurrying as fast as his paunchy body let him. Beth looked between the two, still in a daze from the alien's revelation. However, her father and Jeff wore looks of determination. Both had hard faces, their brows folded in thought, their eyes darting around as ideas filled their heads. Curiously, the two corporate giants almost seemed to have had experience in dealing with this sort of thing.

“Clearly, we need to be careful here, Rudy,” Jeff said, a balled fist under his chin.

“Agreed,” said Beth’s father, “their technology is pretty far past ours currently, but with your blueprints, we might be able to match them, so long as we are good enough at hiding our cost-cutting measures.”

“I’ll get everyone together at the party tonight, the leaders will all be there already. We'll make sure to get a ruse going so they think we're heeding their commands.”

“Yes,” Rudy mused, “We have to get some fear in the laborers, as well, weapons need soldiers to wield them and xenophobia is going to be the easiest to sell. We should also make sure their pairing up and reproducing sooner rather than later. I know most had families back on Earth but we need to make it clear that it’s their patriotic duty. We need to start building manpower again.”

Beth’s face started to fall as she began to understand. “You mean for us to fight them?” Her jaw dropped and she took a step toward her already disapproving father. “Why? Weren’t we going to be more conscious on Mars than we were on Earth anyway?”

Jeff glared at her, then to her father. “Take care of this, Rudy. I’ll see you tonight.” He quickly left the prefab and into the dispersing crowd still outside.

“What does he mean by that?” Beth put her hands on her hips.

“You have to understand, honey, if we do everything that they’re asking of us, things are going to get hairy fast. We have to cut corners if we’re going to build an economy-”

“An economy?” she asked, “what do you mean an economy, we need to focus on surviving!”

“This is part of surviving.” He wagged a firm finger at her. “We need an economic status quo. We’re the smartest, the strongest willed, and if we don't stay at the top, the rest of those morons don't have a fighting chance.”

“You and your friends let the Earth die and rigged a drawing so you and all your families got to escape the hell you created!” she hissed, “then you made sure the laborers were torn from their families so you could run them ragged while you could sit on your ass-”

She felt the sting of his hand before she knew what had happened. The silver ring on his finger had struck her cheekbone, sending lighting through her face. When she touched the spot, her fingers came away with blood.

“How dare you, you ungrateful brat!” he sneered, “I worked my whole life so we could live like the kings we are! We are the hardest working! We are the most intelligent! We aren’t at the top because we’re lucky or privileged, we are at the top because we goddamn deserve to be! And I won’t be disrespected just because you’re too weak to realize how the world works!”

“How you’ve made the world work!” Beth growled, shoving her father into the wall, “and you’re going to kill us all again just so you don’t have to sacrifice your status!”

His eyes went cold. “I refuse to give up my way of life. The other planners refuse as well. Nothing you can say will stop it.”

“No…” She shook her head. “I can’t say anything to change your mind, nor the minds of the other elites.” Beth took a deep breath and backed up to the table in the entryway. Her father stared down at her his face turned to stoic ice. He was an exterminator watching a rat.

Her fingers wrapped around a shard of glass the size of her hand as he spoke again. “You can fall in line, or be removed, Beth. Those are your options. The same options given to the laborers, the same ones my ancestors gave those beneath them. I have no problem doing what needs to be done.”

She watched him step closer, all the muscles in her body tensing. “Neither do I,” she said quietly.

He cocked his head. “What are you-”

His voice turned to gurgles as the shard pierced his neck. Beth’s hand bled as well, but she didn’t care. A tear fell from her eye, and with it went the last of her happy thoughts about the monster that had raised her.

“It has to change now.” Her voice was shaky, but not from lack of determination. “This is our last chance. I’ll rally the laborers and we will cut out you and your kind. We will make something better.”

Rudy coughed as he fell to the steel of the floor. “You're our kind, you foolish girl.” He spat his words with bitter hate and blood.

“And I will do everything I can to fix what we’ve done.”