On a well-settled Mars, the five major city Council regimes
struggle to meld into a stable, working government. Embracing an official
Unified Faith In Humanity, the Councils are teetering on the verge of pogrom
directed against Christians, Molesters , Jews, Rapists, Buddhists, Murderers,
Muslims, Thieves, Hindu, Embezzlers and Artificial Humans – anyone who
threatens the official Faith and the consolidating power of the Councils. It
makes good sense, right – get rid of religion and Human divisiveness on a
societal level will disappear? An instrument of such a pogrom might just be a
Roman holiday...To see the rest of the chapters and I’m sorry, but a number of
them got deleted from the blog – go to SCIENCE FICTION: Martian Holiday on
the right and scroll to the bottom for the first story. If you’d like to read
it from beginning to end (70,000+ words as of now), drop me a line and I’ll
send you the unedited version.
The young blue man
stepped up to Aster Theilen, Consort of Mayor Etaraxis of Opportunity Dome. As
a group, the derogatory epithet was inti
– because Artificial Humans had
had all their introns removed – the non-coding sections of their Human DNA.
They could only reproduce via cloning. They called themselves the aych, short for AH, as in Artificial
Humans. He said, “Great-Great said that you need to watch vo’Maddux. That
she was a slimy evil.” He leaned closer, “We will watch for you, your Majesty.
We will watch and protect you.”
The look he fixed on her
made her want to shudder.
She wanted to say she
was just a secretary who’d been randomly chosen by the Mayor. But God had his
hand on her life and called on her to do something that hadn’t been
successfully done on Mars yet. She nodded slowly and said, “Go, then. When the
moment is right, I will give the signal.” He grinned, turned, and ran into the
darkness.
A moment later, Aster was alone. She wasn’t certain how to get out
of the Underground, but there would have to be ways for both Artificial Humans
and Naturals to get down here. She pulled out her phone and tapped it to project.
On the Burroughs Dome home page hovering in front of her, there were no simple
icons to swipe to get a map of the Underground. “No big surprise there,” she
muttered then pursed her lips. There had to be access – she couldn’t be the
only civilian who found themselves in the Underground.
“Ah!” She keyed through to a general search page, tapped her phone
to audio and said, “BexMars – Exploring the Underside of the Planet.” There had
been both reports and documentaries she’d seen in passing regarding Naturals
who explored the Underground for thrills. A few moments later, she ended up on
a page that detailed the tours they both offered and encouraged.
She scowled, struck by how the organization could easily be a
front for Naturals sympathetic to the cause of Artificial Humans. Possibly even
a contact FardusAH might not know of. Despite the resemblance to an ancient
Earth organization that had ferried another group of slaves to freedom, there
was nowhere on Mars an Artificial Human could run to. Always identifiable,
often programmed to die young, and so far with only few Natural Borns offering
support; they could not be spirited away to the Northern Lands to claim their
freedom.
Aster sighed and kept at the site. She didn’t have much trouble
finding where she was on one of the maps they displayed, though they were
somewhat vague. As she looked around the hub station stood in, she noted that
the map excluded three of the exit tunnels and showed nothing of the small
doorways between three tunnels. While she had no idea what those might be for,
it was their absence on the maps that intrigued her.
She started when a male voice said, “I’m
here, Aster.”
For an instant, she thought Etaraxis
had followed her – or more likely had her followed – then she recognized her
father’s voice, altered by the size of the space.
“You didn’t have to, Dad. I have a map.”
“They aren’t much good if they’re put
out by the Dome…”
“No, these are by a bexing group…”
“A what?”
She laughed, crossing the hub,
following her father’s voice. When she reached him, she said, “Bexing is the art
of exploring Human-made structures from a side not normally seen.”
“You sound like an advertisement,” he
said, taking her hand and leading her into one of the pitch-dark tunnels.
“That is what they said on their
website. The maps they provided weren’t entirely accurate, either.”
He stopped suddenly and turned to her, “They
have online maps?”
“They aren’t really accurate…”
“They don’t have to be! If the
authorities have even an inkling of what the Underground looks like, they could
very easily have tracked you down here!”
“I don’t know…”
“You probably have a tracker on you!”
Aster shook her head, “Dad, please give
FardusAH some credit.”
“Who’s that?”
“She the Artificial Human who serves
Etaraxis – and she knows I want to use my position to change Martian society. I’m
sure anything the Mayor put on my to track my whereabouts – and I don’t think it’s
come to that yet – she would have neutralized or redirected…”
“It’s not the Mayor I’m worried about,
Aster. It’s vo’Maddux…”
A voice in the darkness said, “And you’d
be correct to worry about just that, Madame Consort. Entirely and completely
correct…”
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