Date Point 10y7m1w6d
The Box, Omaha, Nebraska, USA, Earth
Xiù Chang
“…Mars?!”
Kevin Jenkins spread his hands and nodded. “Yup.”
He’d caught up with Xiù, Julian and Allison during their lunch break as they wound down after their morning education sessions. There was still a lot to learn before they were flight-ready after all, and their schedule was just as crowded as before.
Nor was the pressure off. They’d got the job—that didn’t mean they got to rest on their laurels. In fact, the onus was on them to surge ahead and prove that they really did deserve it.
“As in…“ Julian pointed vaguely spacewards. “That Mars?”
“Yyup.”
“You’re actually sending us to actual Mars.”
“Uh-huh.”
“…That wasn’t in the contract!” Allison accused him.
At this, Jenkins cleared his throat and gave her an apologetic half-smile. “‘Fraid it kinda was.”
“Yeah,” Xiù agreed. “It was.”
They all looked at her. “Don’t you remember?” she asked. “There’s a clause in there that says we have to go specific places if the Group says.”
Jenkins nodded. He opened the briefcase by his feet and pulled out a paper copy of the contract they had all signed then flipped a few pages until he came to a section highlighted in green.
“…Here we go. ’Specific navigation orders from the Exploration Program headquarters and operations team, or from the Moses Byron Group board of directors or duly authorized executives, shall take precedence over the primary mission excepting that said orders cannot be followed for reasons of crew safety.’ Sorry guys: If Moses wants your asses on Mars, you go to Mars.”
“But… come on, Kevin,” Allison changed tack, going with bargaining instead. “You’ve got that other crew he was talking about finding a ship for, can’t they do it? We don’t wanna be famous!”
Kevin raised his eyebrows at her, then looked Xiù in the eye. “None of you, huh?”
“Oh, come on-!” Julian began. Xiù put a hand on his arm.
“He’s right,” she said, gently.
His righteous indignation faded. “…The whole movie star thing. Right.”
“And uh… you’re already pretty darn famous, Xiù.” Kevin unrolled a broadsheet smartpaper onto the table. The crease-proof flexible polymer was one big screen that could load and print itself with any newspaper, news website or blog, and he selected one that Xiù didn’t recognize from the drop-down—ESNN—and swiped back a few days
Her own face filled the page, alongside the headline ’HUMBLE HERO’. Xiù picked it up and read it.
“Oh Myun,” she groaned. “Mì yè uk weru gai…”
“Gaori, babe.” Allison reminded her. Xiù flapped a distracted hand to indicate that it wasn’t important.
There was a picture of Myun with the article as well. Six feet tall, brown-furred and sporting both a late-stage pregnancy and a tuft of white fur mid-chest, she was in most ways a very different creature to the tiny enthusiastic cub whom Xiù had once taught Gung Fu…except those were the same markings around her nose and eyes, and she was enthusiastically giving the camera two thumbs up and her best effort at a human smile.
“This came out… a week ago?”
“Yup. Moses called me the moment his mirror gave him the headlines.”
“His… mirror?” Julian asked.
“He’s richer than the Saudis, and smart enough to spend it on invisible little creature comforts rather than on… I dunno, a thirty thousand square foot mansion in Cannes or whatever.” Kevin shrugged. “His shaving mirror reads him the news every morning, his private holiday retreat is on Cimbrean, and he pays my hick bartender ass twelve stacks a month plus bonus just to tell him when he’s about to fuck up.”
“…I hope you’re worth the price tag!” Allison exclaimed.
“Every cent.”
“Sorry, could we get back to the part where we’re going to Mars?” Xiù asked.
“That’s about all there is to it,” Kevin shrugged again. “Land somewhere iconic, say some historic words, maybe deploy some gizmos, grab a few boxes of rocks and be home in time for cake and cigars.”
“Nobody’s already gone there?”
“Why? Ain’t nothing there, unless you’re unreasonably fond of sand.”
“What about NASA?” Julian asked.
Kevin shook his head. “Their funding was slashed after San Diego and given to Scotch Creek instead. Nowadays, about the only bit of the agency that’s not running on food stamps and craft glue is the JPL. Face it man, space belongs to the private sector nowadays. I think that’s part of the reason Moses wants you guys to leave boot prints with his initials on the sole all over Mars.”
“Jesus,” Allison looked scandalized, as if she’d just caught somebody masturbating in church.
“Probably not literally,” Jenkins scaled himself back. “Though it won’t be like the moon prints. It’s hella fuckin’ windy on Mars, so whatever marks you make’ll be gone not long after you leave anyway, and you’re gonna bring back so many samples it’ll keep the NASA geeks’ grandkids happy.”
“So we’re making an ephemeral stop purely as a PR stunt to let the world’s governments know that corporations run the show in space now,” Julian summarized. “Fantastic.”
“That’s how Moses sees it,” Jenkins shifted in his seat.
“You’re kinda giving the impression you don’t like the Group very much,” Allison observed.
“No, I do. Moses is one’a the most honest guys I ever met, in a manipulative glory hound kinda way. It’s just my job is to keep ‘em on the straight and narrow, and that means I’ve gotta be cynical.” He chuckled. “Comes naturally. But between the four of us… look, if y’all can think of some way to make it actually mean something, I’d appreciate that. Mars deserves better than to be just another one of Moses’ moon lasers.”
“We just have to say the right words . How about… ’How could we race for the stars without remembering our old companion’?” Xiù suggested. “Something like that.”
“Hey, you can sort out your own sound bite.” Kevin waved his hands. “Take it that means you’ll be first out?”
“Umm…” Xiù glanced at Julian and Allison. Julian shook his head vigorously while pointing to his own chest, and Allison raised a hand palm-upwards in a ’be-my-guest’ gesture.”
“I… suppose so,” she agreed.
The magnitude of it simply refused to sink in. The first person on Mars? The first. On Mars. In an abstract, distracted way she knew exactly how huge that was, but on the visceral level it just didn’t register, as if there was some other Xiù Chang and the whole conversation was about what that Xiù would be doing in a few months.
“Good. Guess your childhood dream of being a celebrity is coming true after all.”
“That isn’t quite how I imagined it…” Xiù said. Which was true, but the silly schoolgirl part of her that had always dreamed of the fame and fortune life before callous reality had slapped her round a bit was now thoroughly awake and her palms were sweating. A distracted corner of her head was muttering anxiously about practicing her autograph while another, much lower-profile corner was trying urgently but fruitlessly to make it sink in that this wasn’t just movie star fame they were discussing, but history book fame, which was probably a very different beast.
“So you’re trading the red carpet for the red planet. Fuck it!” Kevin chuckled. “I figure interstellar explorer and starship pilot’s a way better role model than having to talk about whose dress you’re wearing for the premier, right?”
“Role model… right…”
Their watches beeped simultaneously, summoning the three of them to PT. Kevin snorted and put the e-newspaper and the contract away. “Make the best of it, guys,“ he advised, and was gone.
“…Baby, if you want to break his nose again, just say the word and I’ll hold him down.” Allison said, after a moment’s silence.
“What? …No! No, that’s not it at- no!”
“You sure? ‘Cause right now I’m feeling pretty fucking pissed off with Moses Byron and his Group.”
“So why take it out on Kevin?” Julian asked. “He said it himself, it’s not his job to make the decisions, it’s his job to tell people when they’re making a bad one.”
“And if they go and ignore him?” Allison asked.
“Hardly his fault,” Julian shrugged. “Besides, is this a bad idea? Just because it’s not what we’d have chosen…”
Allison brushed a stray hair strand out of her face and sighed. “Julian, baby, when you just calmly take shit like this, it makes me worry that you don’t really know what you want from life.”
“I know exactly what I want, and they’re both sitting at this table,” he retorted, taking her hand softly. “The Group only gets two years out of us, Al, and we’re a third through the first one already.”
“Great, so they get to jerk us around for another twenty months.”
“Are they jerking us around?” Xiù asked. “Aren’t you even a little excited?”
Allison sighed and stood up. “No,” she said. “Come on, we’re late.”
Julian and Xiù exchanged glances as they stood up to follow her, and pretty soon Xiù was so distracted that she entirely forgot to think about Mars for most of the rest of the afternoon.
Their PT sessions were something else nowadays. After three months of hard training, even Julian’s atrocious form had finally been corrected, and he’d learned to… well, if not to love the gym, then at least to get into the same kind of meditative mindset he fell into when splitting firewood or whatever. Allison’s fitness was hugely improved and thanks to her long legs she could now run both of them into the ground at an easy stride.
Dane, meanwhile, was starting Xiù in on Parkour on the grounds that she was already strong, mobile and flexible, so all she really needed now was the experience and practice. She was relishing it—learning how to flow over obstacles or even use them to gain height or speed was exhilarating, and she briefly wondered what Ayma would think if she could see some of the tricks she learned just in the first session. Ayma had often joked if humans were secretly able to fly and had just forgotten how.
And then of course there was actually flying. Xiù had cleared her accompanied simulator training toward the end of the second month, and was now furiously practicing her skills using the pilot station built into the Box itself. It was a perfectly accurate replica of Misfit’s cockpit that surrounded her with fully functional duplicates of her instrument panels, wired into a simulator that played out on the huge HD holographic arrays right in front of her. The realism was breathtaking, and armed with that resource she could get back from PT, grab a quick shower, then spend three hours in the evening pursuing ever-more-difficult challenges designed to test and develop her skills as a pilot.
It was so much like playing an addictive videogame that she was always the last to finish. Julian and Allison had their own simulators in the lab and engineering section, which tested and trained them on their own responsibilities. Julian was usually the first to finish, which meant that he usually cooked the evening meal.
Tonight’s was a chicken, sweet potato, corn and kale bake and it smelled divine.
Xiù cuddled up with Allison on the couch. She was watching a dramatization of ancient Roman history that seemed to involve rather more orgies and bath-house scenes than were strictly necessary for the plot, but neither of them complained—the actor playing a young Gaius Marius apparently had no problems at all about regular full frontal nudity.
That got her thinking about acting, and movies, and musing about how sex had become a much less scandalous subject in the years since her abduction. That got her thinking about how she’d have handled sex scenes in her own career had she successfully gone that route, which got her onto the subject of her new vocation as a pilot and…
Apparently several hours of distraction had given the Mars thing enough time to make itself Xiù-shaped, and now that she remembered that they were seriously talking about her being the first person on Mars…!
She completely forgot about the TV and sat staring at nothing as the idea rampaged around her head. Mars. Her, Xiù Chang. First person on. No, seriously.
How had that happened? She wasn’t anybody! She’d just been in the wrong place at the wrong time and everything after that point had been alternately terrifying, lonely, strange or fearful, and often all four at once, with tragedy, anger, pain, disgust, occasional amusement, and a whole mess more besides thrown in for good measure.
How had that become being a spaceship pilot? And how had that become being the first human being to set foot on Martian soil?
That wasn’t right! In fact it was badly wrong! A headache speared right through her and she gripped her temples, wondering why she was feeling so strange, why she wasn’t getting enough air no matter how heavily she breathed like there was something wrong with it, why the room was so small, why she was hūxī kùnnán, wèishéme tā gǎnjué bùshì, Yiwisin yei fu aoi and oh no she couldn’t even remember which language to think in and-
Lost somewhere in the maelstrom of unchained berserk thoughts, she became aware of comforting words and warm arms, of a hand gliding up and down her spine. Julian and Allison, her anchors.
Panic attack. Just a panic attack. Just had to… just had to breathe. The problem wasn’t with the air, she just had to… to slow down.
Yes. Slow down. Quietly now, calmly.
Pause.
…And breathe normally.
She hiccuped, which had the perverse effect of making her laugh, which made her hiccup again, and she finally found herself well enough to reconstruct her thoughts and speak again.
“…Sorry.”
“Jesus, baby, you scared me.” Allison didn’t stop rubbing her back. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I’m fine.” She took a deep and cleansing breath which she focused her attention on and settled. “It just—hic!—the whole Mars thing kinda sank in all of a sudden.”
“…Are you sure you’re okay with it?” Julian asked. “We could always all step up and say-”
“Please…” Xiù waved a hand, pleading for peace. “Let me—hic!—get my head straight…”
Julian paused, then kissed her delicately on the cheek and returned to his cooking. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the feeling of having her back rubbed, hiccuping every few seconds for a minute or two, until her euthymic mood had properly re-established itself.
“…Sorry,” she repeated.
“For what, for having a panic attack?” Allison asked. “You don’t need to apologize for that!”
“I’ve not had one like that in months…”
“Well, we had some pretty big news today.” Allison curled her feet up onto the sofa and leaned into a cuddle. “I was kinda freaked out myself.”
“Yeah, you—hic!—you were pretty angry.”
“Angry?” Allison laughed softly and laid her head on Xiù’s shoulder. “I’m scared, dummy.”
“Scared?”
“Stupid, isn’t it?”
“Not stupid,” Xiù shook her head, “I just don’t think I’ve heard you adm—hic!—admit to being scared of anything before. What are you scared of?”
“Take your pick. The eyes of the world on us, spending the rest of our lives dodging the media, maybe not being as in control of my life as I wanted…” Allison sighed. “…Maybe I’m just shaken. I guess I was dumb enough to think we could trust Byron to stick to the spirit of the agreement.”
“Maybe he just had a different idea of what the spirit of the agreement is,” Julian suggested.
Allison looked like she wanted to argue, but she saw Xiù nodding, sighed, and gave up. “…Okay. Mars here we come!” she said, and waved a tiny imaginary flag.
Xiù kissed her. “I’d better go call my parents,” she said.
“Sure.”
Her hiccups wore off as she was checking her phone out of her locker. They had a limited allowance of use, on the grounds that they needed to acclimatize to being out of contact (which was absurd: All three of them had spent years out of contact after all) But the only people that Allison and Julian even wanted to call were each other and herself, so in practice they just let Xiù have their allowance to talk with her family.
She called her brother.
+Click+ “Wei Chang.”
Xiù took a deep breath. “Wei? It’s me. You’re not going to believe this…”
Date Point 10y7m2w AV
Alien Quarter, Folctha, Cimbrean, The Far Reaches
Champion Genshi of Whitecrest
Regaari had selected an excellent spot for Whitecrest’s Folctha office. According to the evaluation of its alien owners, the building was an unattractive location tucked away at the rear of the Alien Quarter, far from the gate and near nothing exciting, attractive or useful. The building therefore was inexpensive, and the Clan had purchased it outright from the Locayl development company who had erected it, with plans to rent out its ground floor and basements as a workhouse and gambling hall.
It was, however, on the main road from the Female commune to the market, at exactly the right distance—far enough to show respect, close enough to make sure that males using the building would see (and be seen by) plenty of young Sisters and Mothers a day. Not only was this good for the Clan but it meant they could charge a premium rate on the workhouse, a rate that the Clanless who used it would happily pay.
Details, those were the key things. A good Whitecrest always thought about the little details, always cultivated new relationships, always had what the humans called ’an Angle’.
Being a newly acquired building, it was a hubbub of activity. Clanless workers were swarming all over everything assembling the furniture, plastering the walls, installing the wiring, laying the floor mats and being politely steered away from the Clan Longear communications engineers who were doing arcane things with fibre-optic cable and locked closets full of cryptic boxes.
Then there was the Brother patrolling back and forth across the rooms with his nose buried in a device of some kind, presumably checking the wireless signal. Longears were aptly named—theirs were huge and expressive, and this particular Brother was putting on a fine show of otological deftness as he carried out his survey, eartips swivelling this way and that. Impressively, he was so engrossed in his work that he didn’t even notice the two Sisters who had dropped in to watch the males work and who were now eyeing him with amused interest.
Genshi did the poor oblivious fool a favor and made a small show of thanking him for his work while also discreetly drawing his attention to the females. All very calculated—it paid to cultivate a good relationship with Clans as useful as the Longears.
Besides—selfless males got attention too.
Regaari was the busiest of them all, doing his best to herd a mob of unled Clanless laborers with one paw while the Longear Father overseeing the installation demanded a monopoly on his attention with the other. The set of his own ears upon noticing Genshi’s arrival conveyed surprise, delight and the general impression that while he, Regaari, was glad to see Genshi, now was an incredibly stressful time and if his beloved Champion might see his way clear to offering a little help it would be much appreciated.
Genshi obliged him and took over calling instructions to the Clanless while the five Brothers who had come with him for this secretive mission of the humans’ made themselves similarly useful in other rooms.
Things resolved quite quickly after that. The Longear Father retreated to go oversee some sensitive configuration work, the last of the furniture in this office was assembled, the Clanless were paid and Regaari was finally able to lock the door and lean heavily against it.
He gave them all a wide-eyed grateful look. “Champion. Brothers.”
A collective chitter swept the room.
“That was well under control. You didn’t need us at all,” Genshi joked. Regaari chittered again and shook himself off—not necessarily the most civilized gesture, but an entirely understandable and natural one.
“I’ve had a busy week,” he said. “Brothers, if I can brief the Champion first?”
“Don’t leave us waiting for too long,” Faarek warned. He led the other four—Deygun, Shim, Ergaan and Thurrsto—from the room, and left Regaari and Genshi alone together.
Genshi watched in mild amusement as Regaari sprang nervously into action. That was the problem with being Champion—his brothers forgot how to relax around him. Even Regaari, who’d made the rank of Officer well in his youth and had navigated his way out of every diplomatic trap that had been set for him, wasn’t immune to the intimidation of rank.
Fortunately there was an easy solution to that—he pounced.
There was a moment of friendly twisting and winding, some wrestling, a couple of yips and Regaari found himself pinned flat on the floor, blinking and confused.
“You turned your back,” Genshi mentored him.
“…Right. Yes. Thank you.” Regaari’s ears came back up and forward as he relaxed. “Always control the conversation.”
“So you do remember,” Genshi stood up, and helped his Brother to his feet. “Brief me.”
Regaari unlocked a case and placed a folder neatly on the desk. Genshi recognised English, even though he couldn’t read it. “The humans have shared some information with me. They still haven’t gone into detail about their taboo against implants, but it’s now very clear that they think there’s a serious security flaw in them. Even in translators.”
Genshi duck-nodded. On closer inspection, the file was full of stick-on paper notes in Regaari’s neat but scratchy Gaori hand. “Yes. Brother Ruuvi thinks it may be some kind of eavesdropping or signal hijack. If so, that would be an ingenious means for the Directorate to listen in on almost any conversation in the galaxy. Certainly the great majority of the important ones…”
“That would seem… plausible.”
“As opposed to some of the more outlandish explanations. Yes.” Genshi chittered again. He read one of the sticky notes. “What is this word ‘Sacred’?”
“SACRED STRANGER,” Regaari said. “Humans love to hide classified information behind code phrases, even their names sometimes. WARHORSE, STAINLESS, NOVA HOUND, SACRED STRANGER… And now we are going on a mission to meet with an intelligence source known by RANDOM THRONE.”
“And sacred is…?”
“A human concept. It has to do with this ’religion’ thing the Starminds are so enthusiastic for, but I gather it means something like important, or precious.”
“Is that important, do you think?”
Regaari ducked his head and twisted his ears to convey ignorance. “Metaphor gets nearly everywhere in human speech, but only nearly everywhere. Sometimes you encounter nonsense or completely alien ideas, and trying to guess which is which is what they would call a ’minefield’. And, please don’t ask what the literal meaning of that word is.” He gestured, inviting Genshi to sit down, and Genshi mentally awarded him some points. Now that he had relaxed, he was properly thinking about etiquette and control again.
He obliged him by sitting down. “So what is this?” he asked.
“Before I brief you…” Regaari pulled a human-made computer of some kind from the same case. “They insist on the proper paperwork. It’s their version of a secrecy contract. They call it a non-disclosure agreement, and it’s quite comprehensive.”
Genshi perused it. “That it is…” he muttered to himself as he read it. “’…denotes material whose disclosure would cause exceptionally grave and irreversible damage to the security’ …hmm… ‘MALICIOUS DISCLOSURE: By signing this Agreement, you understand and agree that Allied Extrasolar Command and her Several Members consider breach of contract a grave and exceptionally dangerous matter. All Members are authorized ultimate sanction against those who willingly violate this Agreement.‘”
He lowered the tablet. “In more direct words, if I don’t keep this to myself then a team of angry deathworlders will hunt me down.”
“Worse, you would compromise the most important strategic alliance our people could possibly forge.” Regaari said. “I was already mostly convinced of that. Having read this…” he hooked the folder on the table with his claw.
“What is this?” Genshi repeated himself.
“This,” Regaari said, “is a summary of the abilities, equipment and responsibilities of the Spaceborne Operations Regiment.”
Genshi needed no further encouragement to sign the non-disclosure agreement.
Regaari double-checked it, then handed over the folder. “I have added a few of my own observations,” he added.
Genshi skimmed them. “…Did you check the unit conversion for errors?” he asked. It was a minor insult to Regaari’s competence, but the numbers involved were so large-!
Fortunately, Regaari was understanding. “I didn’t need to. I can attest from experience that those suits are at least as heavy as I am, and those would be the small and light versions worn by HIGHLAND and STARFALL. I don’t even want to speculate how much weight WARHORSE was carrying when I met him.” He sketched around the diagram of an EV-MASS suit with his claw, indicating his pencilled translations. “I doubt even Daar could wear one of these,” he added, referring to their mutual friend the Champion of Clan Stoneback, who was easily one of the, if not the, biggest and strongest Gaoian to ever live.
Genshi examined some more notes. Shockingly low-tech though it was, the suit was masterfully built—there was nary a weak spot anywhere on it. All of the most vital and vulnerable systems were mounted on the back, if not actually out of harm’s way then at least positioned so that their destruction was only likely in the event of an attack that killed the operator anyway.
But it was, after all, an elegant brute-force solution to a problem that they could just as easily have solved with forcefields. “Why a physical suit of vacuum-sealed armor?” he asked. “Intimidation?”
“Partly, maybe,” Regaari agreed. “They scared me half-witless and I was on their side. But no, I’ve taken a close look at their technology, Genshi. EV-MASS represents the leading edge of their technology, and they don’t like forcefields at all—they only rely on them when there is no alternative.”
Genshi considered the schematic again. “Their technology is less advanced than I thought.”
Regaari duck-nodded. “There are still large parts of their planet where Information-Age technology is nonexistent… actually, there are parts of their planet where Industrial-Age technology is nonexistent. You have to remember, when we say we’re dealing with ’humans’ what we’re actually dealing with is… somewhere between a seventh and a third of their total population.”
He spread his paws. “They’re a primitive species. I admire them greatly, but the most advanced and sophisticated they have live in this city, and even their technology is generations behind our own.”
“And yet their ships neutralized an entire system defence fleet,” Genshi observed.
“If I surprised you with a trick you had never seen or conceived of before…” Regaari let the observation tail off, but his point was well-made and Genshi duck-nodded, understanding completely now why his Brother was so keen to cultivate an alliance. If the deathworlders could achieve so much with such technological slim pickings…
“This,” Regaari finished, tapping the EV-MASS schematic one last time, “is one such trick. We never developed anything like it, and it can achieve and implement tactics and abilities we never could precisely because it works on a completely different technological paradigm. Imagine what we could achieve together-!”
“Gao comes first,” Genshi reminded him.
“Of course. Which is all the more reason to ensure that if there ever were hostilities between humans and Gao, we should know as much as possible about what they can do, don’t you think?”
“And they know that,” Genshi counselled. “So you must ask… why are they telling us this? Why are they involving us now?”
Regaari’s ears pricked up, eagerly. “I think they’re entrapping us, Champion. It’s a test.”
“Because they know how much they stand to gain as well.”
“Yes.”
Genshi picked up the folder again and thought long and hard as he scoured it.
At length, he put it back down. “Very well,” he said. “I’m on your side, Brother. Take their test.”
Regaari growled happily, delighted at the endorsement. Having the Champion on his side was about the biggest coup he could have asked for.
Genshi saw no reason to inform him that he’d been on his side for years. “Oh, and Brother?” he added.
“Yes?”
“…’Ace’ it.”
“Of course, Champion.”
Date Point 10y7m2w2d AV
Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, Earth
Fifty-seven was no age for travelling abroad, even if the company did pay for business-class nowadays. But, that was what Jacob had signed up for when he took the promotion. When working for global health insurers, one of the hardships of the job was having to take the odd expenses-paid trip to conventions and industry think tanks in far off and exotic cities where nobody spoke two comprehensible words of English in a row, like Leeds.
And the turbulence! Weren’t modern spacekissers supposed to fly too high to even encounter turbulence? He felt certain he remembered that from the brochures. Maybe there was a claim to be made there.
Landing and finding that his company car had got all scratched in the airport long-term parking was just the icing on the cake. He was too tired and too hungry to bother with really letting the hapless idiot who’d let it happen know just how displeased he, Jacob, really was. He’d secured his apology and merged into traffic, heading for home with the radio on.
♪-Ohhhh you’ve got the best of my love, oh yeah yeah! You’ve got the best of my love, Ohhh!!…♫♪
“Ugh… car, change station. News.”
”Thousands marched in Washington today with stacks of Monopoly money to protest spiralling defense spending. Addressing the crowd, Democratic presidential hopeful Congressman Hugh Moritz called the last six years ‘the toughest economic times America has ever seen’, and called for the money to be spent on re-invigorating California’s collapsed economy.”
The Congressman had a rough-edged voice and a Florida accent. ”It’s been six years now, and nobody has told the American people just why our tax dollars are being literally thrown away into space while ordinary people suffer and struggle right here on Earth! There is a critical lack of common sense in this administration, and it needs. To be reined. In.’
Jacob applauded by thumping his hand on the rim of his steering wheel as he got fed up with the truck in front of him and skipped through two lanes of traffic to overtake. “Absolutely!”
”The President responded to Congressman Moritz’s speech with scorn-”
“Of course he did…”
The staccato patter of camera shutters formed a familiar backdrop to the gruff New Jersey cadence of President Arthur Sartori’s voice, just like always. “Well if Hugh wants an explanation, all he has to do is head over to SoCal, and take a look at where San Diego used to be. There are forces out there that want us all dead now that they know about us, and if he thinks we should ‘rein it in’ in the face of that? Well he can go down there and tell it to the grave of two million innocent American citizens. Here in the real world, we’ll worry about paying the bill after we’ve secured a future for the human race.”
There was a thump, and after a few seconds a harassed-sounding voice stepped in. ”Uh, the president won’t be taking any more questions at this time, thank you.”
Jacob snarled his disgust as the report wrapped up and moved on to other matters.
He listened without comment to the sordid details of a murder trial, and to the report on a sex scandal involving a high school vice-principal’s affair with three underage boys, both of which saw him safely off the highway and on the last leg of his drive home. He was less than a mile from home when the news returned to spaceborne matters.
”The Moses Byron Group have announced that they’re approaching the launch of the eleventh ship in their exploration fleet. The new ship, named ‘Misfit’, will apparently be making a historic survey of the planet Mars before departing on its eighteen month deep space survey mission. Addressing a press conference, Moses Byron explained the rationale.”
Byron had one of the most recognisable voices in the world, a famous contrabass with a hint of Louisiana twang and a twist of careful enunciation. ”Somewhere in all the excitement, it looks like we forgot about the red planet. NASA has continued to send probes over there, we’ve still got robotic rovers trundling all over its surface, but somewhere along the line we forgot to put an honest pair of human boots on the ground, even though we’ve had the technology to achieve that for plenty long enough.”
“What is even the point?” Jacob asked rhetorically. He turned onto his street and frowned curiously at some activity near his house. There were lots of vans down there. Power line repairs maybe? Jennifer, their housekeeper, hadn’t called to mention any kind of a problem…
”When asked to comment on the failure of the group’s earlier exploration missions, Mr. Byron was quick to admit that mistakes had been made,” the report continued.
”We got excited. It’s a brave new world out there, full of possibility, but also full of danger and we didn’t adequately prepare for that. That’s why this eleventh mission has taken so long to prepare—we’ve been very careful about who we selected for it, and the crew of three who made the grade in the end are all former alien abductees with plenty of experience of how to fend for themselves out there. We’re optimistic.”
The report returned to the newsreader. ”Although it’s not yet clear who exactly will be the first to walk on the Martian surface, the crew of ‘Misfit’ have been named as Vancouver’s ‘humble hero’ Xiù Chang, along with her crewmates Julian Etsicitty, and Allison Buehler…”
Jacob Buehler nearly crashed into the news van parked outside his house.