A Long Martian Tale {By FlyingSircus}

[Anthraxus]

“You can’t catch me!“ my little sister taunted me, her rich brown pigtails flying behind her from the sides of her head as she ran. I was chasing her when the initial blast knocked us to the ground. My sister, who only turned seven last month, hit the pliable Safe-T-Foam covering on the playground so hard I watched her wrist bone punch through her skin. She was so terrified she didn’t notice, and she didn’t scream.

I never took my eyes off her, even as I was thrown twelve yards from where I had been running. I landed on my shoulder and fought the force of impact to get back on my feet and run towards her. The wind had been knocked out of me, but adrenaline rushed through my system like water over a busted levee and pushed me like a primal autopilot. Some people on the playground started screaming in pain and in terror. Others, like me, started running as soon as they got to their feet. I had to get to my sister.

I could see her sitting stunned by the slides, too shocked to move. I feared she had hit her head on the slide, because something about her eyes didn’t look right. Her hair looked wet, and the shoulder of her shirt was slowly soaking up dark blood. I couldn’t make my legs work fast enough.

The sky was too bright, and it was hard to breathe the hot air. It was like someone had turned on another sun. I didn’t look around at the horizon, but I could see my sister staring at the trees in the distance.

I was almost to the swings when someone strong grabbed my arm and yanked me sideways. Agony wrenched my shoulder and back , and I yelped as I tried to pull away from the stranger. I felt something snap in my shoulder , and I fell to my knees instinctively, blinded by pain, but the stranger did not let go and instead dragged me further away from my sister.

“My sister!” I screamed, and words felt like a serrated dagger being ripped from my throat. The heat of the air scorched my windpipe and I gagged at the alkaline bitterness of the air.

I was losing consciousness. I was being dragged by my injured arm, and I couldn’t tell what was causing the blackness that was enveloping me. The stranger’s grip on my arm was slipping with all the sweat from the heat, and he swung me over his shoulder and started running with a limping gait. I fought the nightmare pain in my neck and shoulder to lift my head, only to see the silhouette of my sister, sitting motionless and staring blankly at the sky, before I blacked out, bouncing away from oblivion.

When I came to, I wished I hadn’t. The air had gone from tasting bitter to tasting stale. I could hear a low roar in the background, and my ears and head felt like they did the first time I dived down into the deep end of the pool at the playground. I remembered my sister, and I tried to look around, only to find my head had been restrained. My vision was severely blurred, though I could make out a row of fuzzy lights and some vague shapes. Squinching my eyes open and shut didn’t help at all, and only made me aware of a low headache behind my left temple. I groaned, and heard footsteps coming toward me.

“You’re safe. Try not to move,” said a tired voice. The footsteps stopped. “You’ve been through a hell of a lot, and that’s all you need to know until you’re a little stronger.”

I tried to talk, but my voice felt like it had been ripped from my throat. I croaked a little instead. “The battery fallout burned your throat,” the tired voice said. “I have a lotion for you to drink that will soothe the burns and help you to heal. Now that you can open your eyes, I have a solution we can flush them with to heal those burns as well. I’m sure you’re frightened, but take some comfort in the fact that you are not badly wounded. You have a moderate concussion, which is fading well, and a dislocated shoulder that will heal rapidly with rest.” She paused a moment to let it all sink in. “You’re safe, you’re healing, and you need to rest. Some terrible things have happened, and you will need all your strength very shortly. Focus your attention on resting and healing, give your voice a chance to heal, and I will answer as many of your questions as I can once you can speak again.”

I could hear liquid being poured, and the tired voice spoke again. “Drink this, and then I’ll flush your eyes.” There was kindness in her voice, and a sense of thoughtfulness, and I felt I had no choice but to trust her. She put a cup to my mouth, and I took a drink of the thick liquid. It tasted like a slightly sweet thinned yogurt, and it soothed my throat instantly. Suddenly I became aware of how hungry I was, but my next gulp finished the cup. I hadn’t realized how raw my throat was until the medication took effect. I relaxed slightly, still on guard but not afraid for my life. My stomach growled.

“You’re probably hungry, but I’m afraid solid foods would tear your throat up before it has a chance to heal. If you rest, I will give you some water which should help you feel less hunger.” I heard her put the cup down. A minute later, she said, “Open your eyes. These eyedrops will feel somewhat oily and blur your vision further, but in a few hours you will see a marked improvement. Once I administer the medication, blink five or six times to coat your eyes, then close your eyes for at least two hours. When you reopen your eyes, you’ll notice a big improvement.

“The liquid medication you drank contained a mild dose of sedative. Close your eyes now, and it should take effect shortly. When you awaken, your eyesight and voice will be strong enough to talk. Rest your mind. You will have plenty to think about…”

I couldn’t stay awake long enough for her to finish the sentence. I slept.

The next time I awoke, I was ravenous. I noticed my hunger and thirst before anything else. The air still smelled stale, and the low roar was still humming away in the background. I tried to move my head again, but it was still restrained. My shoulder was not as sore, though I did notice a slight burn in my nostrils. Then a woman in a grey t-shirt walked up to the side of my bed holding a clipboard, and I realized I could see clearly.

“Where’s my sister?” I asked. My voice came out weak, but audible.

She smiled, her face tired but compassionate. “First, we have to figure out who you are. Then we can figure out who your sister is.” She sat down in a chair next to my bed. “But before that, let me tell you who I am and where you are. You can call me LakeSky. I am not a doctor, but I have been trained by our head physician, Dr. LomaxMD, to administer some of the more common medications, especially for burns and blood poisoning.

"Your burns were pretty easy to heal, and Dr. LomaxMD will be around shortly to check up on you. Right now, I’d like to talk with you a little bit, to get to know you and to bring you up to date on the tragedy that has brought us all together here. What are you thinking about right now?”

“My sister. We were playing together on the playground, when there was a big explosion that threw me across the playground. I felt like I was flying, and it scared me, but I didn‘t want to lose my sister. Then there was a lot of screaming, a lot of people running around, like a circus gone wild, and I was afraid she’d be trampled. I wanted to get her, but someone grabbed me and pulled my arm and my shoulder popped and I blacked out. All I remember is being pulled away from her.”

LakeSky looked at me with sadness on her face. “We have started a tradition on this ship of calling people by their first memory of the explosions. In this way, we will never forget what brought us here, and it helps us to accept that we are all starting new lives, to differentiate between the person we might have been on Earth and the person we all agree we must become at our new destination.”

“Ship?” I asked. “New lives?” I stared at her. “What do you mean, ’might have been on Earth?’”

She leaned closer to me and looked me directly in the eyes. “Earth is no longer habitable,” she said. “The International Geothermal Battery System had a meltdown. We don’t know what caused it, but battery stations all over the world started exploding, one after another. Do you remember how the IGBS worked?”

“Of course I do!” I replied. “Back in the 2600s, the nuclear waste on Earth was being stored at dangerously high and unsafe capacities. Then scientists in Manila discovered that nuclear waste could be stored in giant containment tanks deep below the earth’s surface. The thermal convection currents charged the nuclear waste, and then Microsoft Energy Systems scientists discovered a way to tap the energy created by the convection of the waste products in a huge battery system. The energy stored in these giant batteries created an unlimited supply of cheap energy, which charged our vehicles and lit and warmed our homes with.
We eradicated smog and rebuilt the ozone in the 2700s and just 100 years ago finally eradicated poverty with all the jobs that were created in maintaining the battery grid. Each tectonic plate had a major battery installation in its direct center, to minimize the chance of seismic activity disturbing the batteries, and this main battery fed energy to smaller battery locations radiating outward from it. Each main battery was protected by a multilayered defense in order to prevent sabotage. No batteries attached over fault lines, so each tectonic plate had its own energy source and arbitrary country boundaries became meaningless. Economic regions were determined by plate boundaries. This also was supposed to keep disasters limited to one tectonic plate, as blackouts should not have been able to jump plate boundaries.”

LakeSky smiled. “I’m glad you remember your elementary education,” she said. “The thoroughness of your answer tells me your concussion is essentially healed. Dr. LomaxMD will be glad to hear it. Let me pour you some water for your throat so you don't irritate it. It will also help with your hunger.”

She poured the water and watched me drink it. Suddenly, she became serious. “We don’t know what happened on Earth. We know from communicating with other ships that battery systems all over the world started exploding, spewing radioactive nuclear waste from the past into the atmosphere. Not many humans escaped Earth before the toxicity levels reached fatal levels. No one on Earth is responding to our communications anymore, and we are well within comm distance.

“The explosion you felt was your local battery system reaching critical mass. In some ways, you are fortunate that you lived where you did, closer to the edge of a tectonic plate, because if you were in an area overlapped by more than one battery, you would certainly be dead now. You also lived close enough to the spaceport that someone was brave enough to take you along and rescue you from the fallout.

“You are on a private ship that is on a course to Mars. “

“You are on a private ship that is on a course to Mars.“

My stomach heaved, and I vomited milky water all over my chest. The sour smell started my nostrils burning, and stomach acids reirritated my throat. My head had been spinning with this information, but now the reality was overwhelming. My mother managed the battery workers’ credit union, further in-plate…she was now most certainly dead. My father worked as an account executive in a high rise even further in-plate. I tried to shut out the images of panic I had seen on the playground, where about twenty people were caught by the attack. I could not imagine how the thousands of people in the high rise must have reacted, or what they would have seen from their glass-walled vantage points. I recalled office locations and homes of old, dear friends one by one, and felt my empty stomach heave and heave again as I scanned my grisly mental checklist.

I thought of my sister, bleeding, and staring vacantly at the sky, and suddenly my pain vanished. I felt dull, dumped out, and hollow. In that moment, I stopped caring. My friends were dead, my family was dead, my planet was dead. The grief was like a god, everywhere inside me, overpowering me, demanding my constant attention and finding me infinitely inadequate.

LakeSky didn’t say a word. She looked at me with eyes that told me she’d seen my story before on a hundred other faces. She cleaned my face and neck with a cool cloth, replaced the blanket I’d soiled with a fresh one, and said, simply, “Dr. LomaxMD will see you in a moment. He's been expecting you to come out of your coma for two weeks now. I've found that it's common for the people rescued on this ship to wish they were dead when they discover Earth and all they love have been destroyed, but I do hope you’ll listen to Dr. LomaxMD. We are glad you’re alive, even though you might not be.”

She touched my hand for a second, then walked to the door without looking back.

The room was quiet except for the sound of my breathing. I noticed there were no other beds in the room, and that it looked more like a hotel bedroom than anything else. The blanket LakeSky had covered me with was not a hospital blanket, but a thinly quilted comforter. The carpet was slightly worn, burgundy, and had a busy, regal pattern similar to a fleur de lis. There was a small sink with a mirror embedded in the wall farthest from me, lit by a track of three small lights. A small wardrobe stood to my right, and next to it was a petite chest of drawers. There was nothing personal about the room at all; no knickknacks, no paintings, no personal effects by the sink. My observations were interrupted by a quick knock on the door.

I said nothing. The door cracked slightly, and a man poked his head and neck in the door. “May I come in?” he asked.

I remained silent. He smiled and walked in the door. “You never said no,” he said gently. “There was an old, old children’s poem written about that.” He, too, carried a clipboard, and he wrote on it without looking at it. His manner was gentle, and he sat down in the chair LakeSky had visited me in earlier.

“How are you feeling?” he asked. “And don’t tell me ’With my fingers.’ I’ve heard every possible response to that question, and I tell you it’s like a chicken crossing a spaceway.”

“Lost. Dead. Failed. More alone than I’ve ever been in my life. Where‘s my sister?”

Dr. LomaxMD looked at the clipboard, “Well, I hate to say this, but you are so far right on track with the other hundred or so survivors on this ship. You’ll find a lot of support in your fellow shipmates here. LakeSky told you our destination, did she not?”

“Yes,” I answered. “Mars. She said Earth had been destroyed.”

“Well, not quite destroyed,” Dr. LomaxMD corrected me. “Uninhabitable. The planet itself is still there, and if you want to, later, I can show you some of the aerial pictures taken as we were lifting off. They’re not easy to stomach, but they do help some people to understand the extent of the damage done. Many people can’t comprehend what they cannot see for themselves, and I do not expect you to take it on faith that what you are being told is indeed factual. Healthy skepticism will serve you well on Mars.”

“You sound like you’ve been there before,” I said.

“Indeed I have,” said Dr. LomaxMD. “I actually govern a few settlements there, but they are mostly uninhabited. The captain of this ship also has a few settlements, but I chose to spend my money on speculative colonization. I am also heavily invested in maintaining my settlements. So far, it has paid off, but Mars is not all cupcakes and pie. There is a power lust on Mars unlike any you’re accustomed to on Earth, and settlements are claimed and seized every day.

“But enough about Mars.” He looked down at the clipboard. “You must have quite a story. LakeSky has written your name in as FlyingSirkus. I assume she means circus; poor thing is a rotten speller sometimes. I won’t ask you to relive your arrival here; you’ll do that time and time again as you introduce yourself to your fellow shipmates, and I can read your chart and get the gist of your circumstances.”

He glanced briefly at the clipboard again, then peered at it a little closer. “So someone grabbed you and brought you to this ship?” he asked, eyebrows raised.

“Yes. I wanted to get to my sister, but I got pulled away from her instead. I think it was a man who grabbed me, because he lifted me up over his shoulder after I started slipping from his grasp. I think he hurt himself, because he limped so badly I thought I‘d fall off his shoulder.”

“Phobos be damned,” he chuckled. “Captain Chris_UT will be glad to see you’re awake! He’s been worried about you.”

“Me? Why the Captain?”

“This is Captain Chris_UT’s ship, Domination. It was he who saw you staggering across the playground as he was racing to the spaceport, and he grabbed you and a few others on his way to this ship. Perhaps your sister was among those he rescued as well? When you are feeling stronger, which ought to be any day now, I will introduce you to our Captain and perhaps we can look for your sister then.

“In the meantime, let me see your wounds. Open your eyes wide, please? Very good. Now let me shine this light on your larynx. Your voice is nice and strong now.” He made some notes on the clipboard. “Can you hold your arm level in front of you? To the side? I’m going to press slightly on your elbow; tell me when it hurts.“ He ran a few more simple tests, then said “I will give you a half dose of this potable salve, which also contains a half dose of the sedative. I’ll also redress your shoulder and arm. You should awaken refreshed, and after you get some food in you we can try walking to the bridge. Do you have any dietary concerns, FlyingSirkus?”

“I’ll eat anything that isn’t still mooing, clucking, or oinking.”

“Fine, fine. Rest up, and I‘ll be here with breakfast when you awaken.”

The smaller dose of sedative had no effect on its initial potency. Within moments, I dozed off into dreamless slumber. It felt like only seconds later when I awoke to the smell of buttery potatoes, fresh bread, and sweet jam. I opened my eyes, smiled, and sighed. To the right of my plate was a cup of tea, steaming slightly, next to a small, antique milk-and-sugar service. I could not remember a time when I felt better. Then I saw the burgundy carpet and reality slammed my heart like a sudden g-force. But I felt a little hope; Dr. LomaxMD had promised I could look for my sister, and with that hope my appetite hit me square in the stomach.

I felt that no amount of food could fill me up. I took a spoonful of potatoes and put them in my mouth. They were still very warm, and so soft and light the potatoes felt as if they were whipped into a fine souffle. The bread was sliced thick, soft and textured with wheat berries, and the jam tasted like ambrosia. I couldn’t place the flavor of the fruit. I was so hungry I could have eaten a still-frozen Kelfer RediMeel, but this food was so incredibly well-prepared, so elegant in its simplicity, that I had to take the time to savor it.

The meal couldn’t have been made from more than five ingredients, but the skill and the time taken to coax such complexity out of bread and potatoes was evident, and it demanded appreciation. My stomach was growling a harmonious hallelujah chorus. I removed the tea ball from my teacup and sweetened my tea. The sugar had a dark pink hue.

I had just taken another bite of the bread and jam and was chewing it thoughtfully when Dr. LomaxMD knocked cheerfully on the door as he opened it. He was followed by a young, casually dressed man.

“What kind of jam is this?” I asked.

Dr. LomaxMD laughed. “Hello and good morning to you, too!” he smiled. “I see you discovered your breakfast. I tried to time its delivery so that it would still be warm when you woke up.”

“Mmmm,” I said, setting down my slice of bread. “Thank you, it was. The tea was even hot.” I looked at the young man and guessed he was some kind of intern, like LakeSky. “I’m still hungry, but I don’t mind setting breakfast aside for a bit if you want to do a checkup. Will I still be able to get up today?” I tried not to sound too excited, just in case over-enthusiasm might be mistaken as a symptom of something debilitating.

“First things first,” said the young man. “The jam you are eating is made from the finest Martian toinkaberries. Toinkaberries are the only viable source of sugar on Mars; they are a biological cross of a number of Terrestrial fruits and the only plant known to man that can fix the sulphur in the rocky Martian topsoil into sugar, but the sweetness is more concentrated if the bush itself is bruised. The more you hit a toinkaberry bush, the sweeter the fruit it gives.

“I have a few toinka bush settlements on Mars that are worked by migrant settlers. One of my settlers is quite a gourmet, and I built him a kitchen to make jam from the toinkaberries. The jam sells quite well at the outposts. Toinkaberries are also delicious juiced, and the juice is boiled down into the sugar we use on Mars. My friend eddymac runs quite a few sugar refineries on his settlements, and he does rather well for himself.”

I was ravenous again. I ate another big forkful of potatoes, then took a healthy sip of tea. The tea was strong, but the sugar gave it a clean, fruity sweetness. “So you’re a Martian berry farmer?” I asked. I figured the nurturing connection between farming and nursing led him to interning with Dr. LomaxMD. This improved my already positive impression of him.

“Great Boundless Universe!” exclaimed Dr. LomaxMD. He erupted like a volcano with laughter. “Now I’ve heard it all!”

“I have been quite rude,” the young man smiled. He bowed slightly and said, “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Captain Chris_UT of the MarsShip Domination, at your service. FlyingSirkus, I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”

I felt embarrassed, but Captian Chris_UT extended his hand and so I shook it. “I’m very glad to see you’re healing so well,” he said. “Has your handshake always been so firm? I was afraid I broke your arm when I tried to get you away from that playground, but better a broken arm than the fate that would have awaited you had you not been close enough for me to risk stopping to get you.” He squatted down so that he was at eye level to me. “But I hear we might have left someone very important behind.”

The way he phrased that panicked me, despite his comforting demeanor. “You didn’t grab my sister, too?”

Captain Chris_UT’s voice stayed low and level, his tone kindly but matter-of-fact. “I did not grab anyone from that playground but you. My vehicle was already loaded to overcapacity with people. However, I have another friend, a high level engineer on the MarsShip Algonquins, who was on Earth with me helping to moderate a Terrestrial forum on Martian politics. He was driving behind me and stopped when I stopped. His car was not as full as mine, and there is a chance that he picked her up. Their communication system is down right now, no doubt damaged in the rush of the Exodus, but we attempt comm contact every hour on the hour. As soon as it is up I will find you and we can communicate your sister’s description to my friend CSStriker in hopes that the Algonquin alliance is caring for her.”

I was crushed. “How long will that take?” I asked.

“It will depend on the extent of the damage. They have no choice but to have fixed their comm systems by the time they are within landing distance of Mars, and that will be about two days from now. Otherwise they will be forced into a Martiostationary orbit to wait for a magnetic tow, and that will waste an enormous amount of reactable fuel. Fuel is extremely precious now since, we must presume, most of the minds on Earth that held the knowledge of the technical workings of our fissiofusic propulsion systems are…not around anymore.” Dr. LomaxMD put a hand on Captain Chris_UT’s shoulder. The Captain took a steady, measured breath, paused, then stood tall again.

“In the meantime, I have rather a heavy workload right now. This ship is not outfitted for the extra one hundred and sixty bodies on board, and I have quite a few logistical meetings to organize, not to mention preparations for people to have homesteads to settle once we get to Mars.

“I’ll come by again before we land. You'll also receive regular communication from me on the Ship's bulletin board. Dr. LomaxMD will check you up, and if all is well you can move to the barracks tonight and start meeting some of your fellow passengers and crew. Everyone is assigned multiple duties on this ship, so start adjusting mentally to the idea of MarsShip life. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must not be late.” He bowed again slightly to me, nodded to Dr. LomaxMD, and exited the room. As he walked away, I noticed he was limping slightly.

And, as lost as I felt without my sister, I could not believe I forgot to thank him for saving my life.