The Ruins of Mars: Waking Titan (The Ruins of Mars Trilogy) (22 page)

             
“Have I ever thanked you for being such a great friend?”

             
“Hey, I’m on your side! I’m just telling you that it sounds crazy because it does, man.”

             
“Goddamn it, I know it makes me sound crazy, but it’s true.”

             
Grunting softly, Marshall heaved the door to the underground storage crate closed then started back towards the Electrolysis Plant for more fuel cells.

             
“How did this all start? What set it off?”

             
“I think this is happening to me because I touched the metal ball that powers the mini-Sun.”

             
“Sure, why not,” chuckled Marshall.

             
Ignoring him, Harrison had an idea and sat up straighter in his chair. “Maybe that’s how I can prove it’s real. We take a trip back to the caves and you touch the ball too. Then when you have a dream about ancient Mars, you can back me up!”

             
“Pass.”

             
“Come on, man,” Harrison whined. “I’m trying to meet you halfway.”

             
“Nope,” Marshall said. “I like my dreams full of unexplored fantasies, not dead civilizations and murdered Martians. You know, though, a trip back out to the caves isn’t a terrible idea. We could set up more monitoring equipment and, if you really think that metal ball is behind this, maybe catch something on one of our more sensitive scanners. It’s too bad Braun isn’t around or else we could put some Eyes on that thing and really get a closer look. Actually, screw that. The real shame is that Braun isn’t here to do all the remedial tasks I don’t like doing.”

             
At the mention of Braun's name, something caught in Harrison’s mind but he was too preoccupied to dig deeper at its meaning.

             
“Tell me again why
you
don’t have to do this shit?” Marshall grumbled, waving a gloved hand towards the Electrolysis Plant.

             
“Your Lander, your fuel cells.”

             
“Seems fair,” said Marshall sarcastically. Then, “But seriously, why not make another trip to the caves? The moratorium has been lifted, so we’re just fucking around here doing stupid stuff to take up time. I’ve got enough damn fuel cells to fly to Earth and shit in my own bathroom again.”

             
Grinning, Harrison watched as Marshall’s view jumbled a bit then looked down at a rock he had caught his boot tip on.

             
“Damn rocks!” he shouted, unsuccessfully kicking at the stone that had tripped him.

             
“You know,” Harrison muttered absently. “Viv
has
been all over me to submit an outline for another cave mission. She wants to collect some of the skeletons to run bio scans on them.”

“Well, there you go, buddy,” said Marshall, aiming another kick at the rock. “Call up
the captain and see if she’ll give us a hall pass. I’ve been itching to get behind the stick anyways. Walking on this planet is so overrated. Flying is where all the fun’s at.”

             
“Alright, hold on,” nodded Harrison. “I’m switching channels for a minute.”

             
Tapping out a quick command on the Tablet screen of the Communications Console, he jumped to a different channel and hailed the ship.             

             
“Go ahead,” came Captain Vodevski’s voice after a few seconds.

             
“It’s Harrison.”

             
“Good morning. What can I do for you?”

             
“Well,” he said slowly. “I was hoping to get a green light for an EVA to the caves. Viviana wants to collect skeleton samples and I want to put some better monitoring equipment on the mini-Sun.”

“When?”

“I think we can be ready to go tomorrow.”             

             
“Tomorrow?” the captain said with some annoyance in her voice. “Does that really give you enough time to prepare?”

             
“Of course. It’s just an EVA to the caves. We’ve been there loads of times. Is there a problem or something?”

             
“No,” she answered quickly. “It’s no problem. Just send me a mission timeline by this afternoon and make sure Dr. Kubba briefs you on the new safety protocols.”

             
“You’ve got it, Captain,” Harrison replied happily. Then, “How are things on the ship?”

             
“They’re fine, thank you for asking. Be safe tomorrow and bring extra Survival Packs with you. Over and out.”             

             
With that, the channel went dead and Harrison was left oddly jilted by Captain Vodevski’s abrupt departure. Shaking the feeling off, he punched up the channel he had been using to talk to Marshall, then added another feed to the conversation.

             
“Viv? Ralph?”

             
“Hello, Harrison,” came Viviana’s lyrical Italian voice.

             
“I’m here,” said Marshall.

             
“I’ve just spoken with the captain. We’re heading out to the caves tomorrow morning. I’ll have mission timelines to both of you in an hour or so.”

             
“Wonderful!” cried Viviana in his ear. “I knew you would come through for me! I can’t wait to see the basilica with my own eyes!”

             
“Basilica?” Marshall laughed. “That’s a bit of a stretch.”

             
“Perhaps to the uninitiated,” Viviana said coyly. “But to my eyes, it is as clear as day!”

             
“She could be onto something, Ralph,” Harrison grinned. “Better bring your rosary just in case.”

             
“Oh, you two!” Viviana groaned. “I’ll come find you as soon as I’m finished in the greenhouse and give you both a lecture on faith. Ciao for now!”             

             
The line went dead.

             
“Alright, Indy,” Marshall said sardonically. “Looks like we ride at dawn.”

Shadow Launch—
Sol 108

             
The Lander Bay doors drew back like iron curtains to reveal the galaxy in a clarity that only pure vacuum could produce.

Retracting the cockpit window guard of Lander 2, for there would be no atmo burn to contend with, Joseph Aguilar prepared to disengage from Braun. In his ear, Tatyana was
taking him through the normal Preflight Checklist in a professional tone. Though only able to do so because he knew her as well as he did, Aguilar could detect the notes of apprehension, fear, and regret in her voice.

Projected in the upper-right-hand corner of the window, a
timecode was winding down, its numbers flipping past like running water from a tap. In order for their shadow launch to be successful, Aguilar would have to hit the thrusters at exactly the right moment when the distant Chinese Ark and Braun were perfectly aligned.

              Reaching up, he released the electromagnetic chassis-hooks that held the Lander in place.

“Check,” he responded automatically to Tatyana’s command.

Eyes closed, Julian listened to the young pilot and
the captain run through the last points of the list, neither talking about the things they should be, even though a better moment to do so couldn’t possibly exist.

             
“All right, that’s everything,” said Captain Vodevski. “We will expect you to return to us in no more than twenty hours.”

             
“Yes, Captain,” nodded Aguilar.

             
It’s all by the books with these military types, thought Julian with a grin. Where’s the passion? Where’s the romance?

             
The countdown clock entered the thirty-second window.

             
“I—” started Captain Vodevski.

             
Julian perked up.

             
“I want you both to be very safe. Remember what Earthside Command told us, make sure you always know where an extra Survival Pack is, and…”

She trailed off.

              “I know, Tatyana,” said Aguilar softly. “Thank you. We’ll be back soon, don’t worry.”

              “Yes, don’t worry,” piped in Julian, bored with all the subtext. “I’ll bring your boyfriend back alive and handsome as always.”
              “Thank you,” said the captain curtly.

             
The clock hit five seconds and Aguilar eased the controls. Drifting in a sideways arc, he brought the Lander out of the Docking Bay then dialed up the speed to its highest level.

             
The timer flashed: three, two, one, zero.             

Silently the little craft shot away from Braun, a hollow blue light trailing behind it as the last of the launch burn evaporated in space.

Watching from the Bridge Deck, Captain Tatyana Vodevski shuddered at the sight. Soon, though her eyes were hawk-like, she lost the Lander among the sea of stars and turned away from the window.

Inside the small ship, Julian and Aguilar sat in silence. The speed at which they were moving gave both men a minute feeling of force against their bodies, yet the flick of a finger was all that one needed to remind oneself that their weightlessness was still very much intact.

Through the cockpit window, stars as small as pinpricks refused to grow in size no matter how close it seemed they were getting to them. The minutes passed with only the hum of the life-support system to occupy their ears.             

“So,” said Julian, deciding that silence was not fit for space travel. “What should we talk about?”

“Girls,” Aguilar frowned, almost spitting the word out like a bad taste.

Bursting into laughter, Julian reached into his armrest storage container and pulled out his Tablet.

“I have a demonic ex-wife and a beautiful teenage daughter! I don’t want to talk about girls!”

Plugging the Tablet into the C
opilot’s Console, he opened the music application then flipped through a list of albums until he found one he liked and hit, ‘play.’

“Let’s talk about music!”

“Isn’t most music about girls?” Aguilar smiled.

“Oui, but that’s the beauty of it! No song lasts long enough for you to start hating the girl it’s about!”

              “You’re a real prince, frog boy,” said Aguilar, slapping at Julian’s arm.

             
“I have Mariachi music on here if you’d rather listen to that.”

             
“Hey, fuck you, asshole,” laughed the young pilot.

             
“Fuck
me
? I thought you liked girls!”

             
In the vacuum of space where only the screams of silence could manifest, the shell of Lander 2 reverberated with the sounds of laughter. Like life itself, the power of its effect was defiant of the impossible and impossible to defy.

Chapter Nineteen

Safety—
Sol 108

As Harrison started on his second bowl of oatmeal, Dr. Elizabeth Kubba stood at the head of the table in the galley and briefed the EVA crew on new safety procedures designed by Earthside Command.

Though she had not let on as much, it was clear to everyone, especially Viviana, that something was weighing on the doctor’s mind. Deep circles hung beneath her eyes, and her normally impeccable grooming regimen seemed to have slackened, allowing for frazzled strands of hair to poke out here and there, giving her a disheveled and distracted look.

Ever since waking up from the Pulse, Kubba had been oddly withdrawn. Either not willing or not able to talk about her strange behavior, the doctor avoided contact with the others as much as she could. Uncharacteristically jumpy, she no longer made her rounds or conducted informal psyche checks as she had before. Hiding behind the door of her infirmary, Kubba was beginning to seem like a ghost of her former self

With hands that shook ever so slightly, she held up an oval-shaped
Survival Pack, displaying it for everyone at the table. Pointing with a thin finger to a blue sticker midway down the curve, she tapped the shell and spoke in a wispy voice.              

             
“Since most evidence supports the theory that the Pulse was an attack on the brain, I’ve marked these special backup packs with a blue sticker.”

“What’s special about them?” Harrison asked.

“The O2 inside has been mixed with a painkiller in aerosol form,” Kubba replied, not looking directly at him.

When the team exchanged confused glances, she sighed loudly and shut her bloodshot eyes.

“Look, the pain we felt after waking up from the Pulse was really all in our minds. Even though it felt like it, our bones didn’t actually suffer any damage and our internal organs were fine as well.”

“Tell that the billion who dropped dead,” muttered Marshall into his coffee.

“It’s true,” Kubba nodded. “We still don’t know why the very old and very young were victimized, but as it stands for us, in the event of a second Pulse the most important thing to remember is that all the pain is in your head.”

“Then why are you giving us air laced with painkillers?” said Harrison through a mouthful of oatmeal.

Kubba shifted uneasily, finally bringing her eyes up to meet Harrison’s before flicking them away.

             
“So that you might better get over your problems of the mind and deal with the greater and more deadly problems of the flesh.”

             
“Like suffocating?” he asked matter-of-factly.

There was a pause as Kubba glanced around the table, her uneasiness as obvious as it was perplexing.

              “Look,” she began, addressing no one in particular. “If a second Pulse hits, it will fry your Survival Packs. That means they won’t be able to pull the usable gases from the Martian atmosphere to create new O2 for you to breathe. In the hopefully unlikely event that this happens, you’ll have between forty-five minutes to an hour of air left in the pack before you’ll need to switch it for a new one. We should all thank science for the gene enhancement we’ve had or else that timeframe would be more like ten minutes. Anyway, if a Pulse hits and you need a new pack, get one of these with the blue stickers. That way, you have fresh air, circulation of the chemical heating elements,
and
relief from the very severe—yet very imagined—pain that the Pulse seems to cause.”             

             
Raising her hand like a child in school, Viviana asked, “Won't we freeze if the Survival Packs stop circulating the heating chemicals through our suits?”

             
“Not if you change it out in under an hour,” Kubba replied somewhat uncertainly.

“During the solar storm, mine cooled down pretty damn fast,” Harrison said flatly.

The air was still as Kubba set the Survival Pack on the table and patted its convex shell absently.

“That was because the severe radiation had unexpected effects on the chemical compounds that comprise the heating fluid. They broke down and reduced themselves to a kind of jelly.”

“That explains everything,”
Marshall joked. “But seriously: what?”

Sighing again, Kubba pulled up a chair.

“The chemical heating fluid that fills the elements in our suits is apparently not capable of withstanding the levels of radiation recorded during the storm. Furthermore, though the packs themselves were created to be used in high-radiation environments, both of your Survival Packs were essentially melted by the time you got back inside the dome. Even if Braun had been able to maintain control of your suits’ CPUs, it wouldn’t have mattered.”

             
“Who designed this shit?” laughed Marshall.

             
“Copernicus,” Kubba responded.

             
“Guess we can’t call him up to thank him for the oversight.”

             
“No,” she agreed thinly. “But don’t worry about it. All of that was a result of too much radiation. The Pulse didn’t register any radioactivity. It’s simply an electrical problem.”

             
“You always know just what to say to make me feel better,” Marshall smiled, attempting to catch Kubba’s distracted gaze.

“You’re welcome,” she said, obviously missing the humor in the pilot's voice.

Glancing at Harrison then Viviana, Marshall scrunched up his face into a baffled expression. Viviana arched her eyebrows and shrugged, clearly as mystified by Kubba’s behavior as the others.

“One last thing,” the doctor went on, oblivious to the silent conversation going on around her. “You are to wear your helmets at all times now. No more taking them off for the flight
. Understand?”

             
They nodded in unison.

“Alright, good. That’s all I have for you. Everything else is the same standard safety protocol that we’ve been following since day one.”

              As the meeting broke up, Harrison got to his feet and deposited his empty bowl in a plastic tub full of dirty dishes then headed for the door. Quickly draining the last of his coffee, Marshall followed Harrison out of the room.

             
“Hey, Carlos Castaneda,” he called.

             
“
What
?” said Harrison, flashing Marshall a confused look.

             
“Don’t know that one? Well never mind. Have you had any more dreams?”

             
Shaking his head, Harrison leaned against the wall. “I didn’t get a chance to sleep last night. I was too busy preparing a vacuum chamber for the bones.”

             
“Isn’t that kind of Viv’s deal?”

             
“Yeah, but I couldn’t sleep anyway. It’s hard getting used to not sharing a bed with someone, you know?”

             
Marshall grimaced internally but worked quickly to keep his face from showing any signs of sorrow. Harrison needed him to be the strong one: the one who always kept him looking forward, not slipping back into depression. However, to Marshall’s surprise, the young Egyptian hardly seemed to notice that he had inadvertently brought up Liu’s death.

             
“It’s crazy though,” he was saying. “I keep getting the feeling, even when I’m awake, that the world I saw in that dream is just beneath the surface of this reality. Like some space that’s in between two other spaces. Sounds fucking weird right?”

             
“Yeah,” Marshall nodded. “But you’ve said some crazy stuff that turned out to be true before, so I guess I’ll take your word for it.”

             
Poking her head out into the hallway, Viviana held up her left wrist and pointed to her watch.

             
“Let’s go, you two!” she called, her face beaming with anticipation. “Mission timeline said launch at 0900, not whenever you damn well please.”

             
“I know,” Harrison laughed. “I wrote it!”

             
With look that seemed to say, ‘
We’ll talk more about this later,
’ Harrison gave Marshall a slap on the arm and the two set off towards the suit lockers near the front of the Dome.

As Harrison, Marshall, and Viviana donned their Tac Suits, YiJay Lee hunched silently over a Tablet monitor in Liu’s old machine shop. Having quietly moved into the space and claimed it as her own, YiJay now spent most of her time trying to salvage and modify what she could of a tattered personality construct that called itself, “Ilia.”

Though the
Pulse was deadly to all AI, Ilia’s mind had not been online when it had struck Mars. Stemming from YiJay’s compulsion to be the only human Ilia spoke to until she was fully formed, the infant AI was often shut down when not being worked on by the Korean. Thus, at its core, the essence of Ilia was still somewhat intact.

Cloned from the mind of Braun, Ilia had originally been designed to run the Dome as well as any external robotic or mechanical equipment after the crew left for home. However, at the time when Braun had been forced to decode the alien radio signal, the bulk of his technical knowledge had yet to be uploaded into the fledgling AI. Furthermore, YiJay had been working on a new batch of
Open-Code Connection Cells from a remote terminal when the Pulse had hit, destroying the framework that would allow Ilia to grow to the size of Braun.

For YiJay, the reality that Ilia had survived the
Pulse at all was a miracle. In every reported case from Earth, no AI had made it through the event alive. As it stood now, Ilia was the only Artificial Intelligence in existence, yet news of this fact had yet to reach Earthside Command. Not wanting to turn her baby over to the prodding, fumbling hands of other AI specialists, YiJay opted to protect Ilia until she was formed enough to protect herself.

“Good morning, Ilia,” said the Korean. “How are you feeling since last we spoke?”

“Hello, Dr. Lee,” responded an innocent-yet-intelligent voice. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any memory of ever speaking with you. Are we friends?”

Due to her paranoia of losing another AI to the deadly effects of the
Pulse, YiJay had built a failsafe into the very fabric of Ilia’s being. Whenever she was not being directly spoken to or responding to a direct order or question, Ilia went dormant. As a result of this oddity, her ability to recall conversations and events was spotty. There were times when she could remember—to the decimal—extremely long conversions of code and data, yet when it came to interacting with YiJay, her mind seemed afflicted with a form of AI Alzheimer’s.

             
“Yes, we are friends,” YiJay said, running a hand through her hair.

             
“That’s nice,” Ilia replied. “I’ve always wanted a friend. How long have we been friends Dr. Lee?”

             
“YiJay, my love. Call me YiJay.”

             
“Okay. How long have we been friends, YiJay?”

             
Smiling at this, YiJay glanced at a timecode in the corner of her screen. As it counted down from five seconds, the numbers turned green then red. If YiJay did not keep the conversation going by the time the countdown reached zero, Ilia would go dormant per her failsafe—any memory of the conversation wiped from her mind. YiJay let the timer run out then turned her attention to a program file.

Typing quickly, she initiated a rerout
ing override that moved Ilia’s Memory Uplink to a secured bank of processors she had put together the night before. Already having moved the AI’s Open-Code Connection Cells to the processors that morning, her hope was that she could adjust Ilia’s basic programming so that her memories would upload into the new processors before they could be wiped clean by the failsafe. Keeping Ilia’s Open-Code Connection Cells and memories separate from the computers that linked into the Dome was the only way YiJay could figure to resurrect her should another Pulse unleash its deadly AI-killing waves again. As long as no human being was directly touching the heavily insulated processors at the time of a Pulse, the raw data within should be protected.             

Satisfied with the adjustments she had made, YiJay cleared her throat.

“Ilia?”

“Hello, Dr. Lee. How may I help you?”

“Do you remember what I just told you to call me?” asked YiJay hopefully.

“I’m sorry. While I know your name and rank, I don’t have any memory of ever speaking with you. Are we friends?”

Sighing with exasperation, YiJay let the timer run out again and went back to work on her Tablet.

The net

              Magnetically held to the high-back crash seat of his Pilot’s Station, Amit Vyas entered a series of commands on his Tablet screen and brought up the ship’s auxiliary functions list. Selecting Braun’s Ears, the complicated network of antennae that netted and decoded radio signals, the Indian pilot punched in the coordinates for the ruin grid and pressed ‘engage.’ A progress bar appeared on the screen and quickly filled. When it was finished, a list of all incoming and outgoing radio signals from that area presented itself numerically. There were the signal relays from Braun’s Eyes in the Statue Chamber and the IMCs in the Sun Dome—as they had started calling it—but that was all. No anomalous signals detected.