The First Families of Cydonia
The winds on Mars used to whip at a hurricanes pace. They had ground the surface rock to a fine powder or iron and stone. Over the years they had terraformed enough of an atmosphere to slow the wind to a slow scream, but the powder would need decades to become soil. The powder latched onto Derek's’ wound and coagulated the blood. He was certain it was either infected, or soon to be. Better to be infected than to bleed out in the middle of nowhere, he thought.
Derek was paces away from the gate to Cydonia, the first Martian city. Workers had begun to disassemble the dome and place the pieces at the refinery to be turned into their first nuclear plant. He walked to the docs quarters. It was the only building with indoor lighting. With the amount of blood he had lost, it was a wonder he had made it this far. He knocked at the door. A short, stocky man, wearing a monocle answered.
“Dear lord, Derek. What happened?” Derek's body gave in to his wound as he fell into the docs arms. Derek was at least a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier, so the doc did his best to slow his fall. He dragged him to his surgery table and began his triage.
After a time, Derek woke to the collection of colonists tending to his wounds. His clothes were set onto the floor in the corner. The doc was monitoring his equipment, which was displaying various numbers and lines, which informed him of Derek’s condition. Derek asked,
“How long was I out?”
“Four days now. My monitor only just informed us that you would be waking up soon. I tried to keep everyone away but they weren’t having it.” Derek’s eyes were able to focus after a moment and scanned the room. All twenty of the colonists were surrounding his bed, watching him intently. An old man in the front put his hand on Derek’s leg. Derek winced from the pain shooting through.
“What happened? Where’s Jacob? Where’s my boy?” Derek took his time. He had to think.
“He’s at the mine, Stephen. We found it.” The crowd gasped in relief.
“And how did you get this?” Stephen gripped Derek’s leg. Derek felt the shock running through his entire body. He hid the pain, as best he could.
“I. I don’t know.”
“That horse shit and you know it. Where’s my boy?” Doc took Stephens hand off of Derek and said,
“Please, he’s barely alive. Give him some time to recover.” Doc led Stephen outside of the room.
“To hell with that. I need to know what happened to my boy. He’s supposed to be here. We are supposed to have the fuel. Without that we are all dead.”
“I have my job to do, same as you have yours, sheriff. Please, give me an hour and then you can interrogate him.”
Inside, Derek was bombarded with questions from all directions.
“How much fuel would we have? What was the yield?”
“Enough for a hundred years at least.”
“Is it sweet, or sour ore?”
“Sweeter than the mines back home.”
“How far from here?”
“An hour by buggy. Maybe 10 minutes by buggy.” The doc returned.
“Everyone. I need time to get Derek back on his feet. Come back in an hour. I need the room.” He waded through the crowd, making his way to the bed. The colonists meandered towards the door, mumbling to each other all their plans for the future. As the last one left, the doc locked the door, turned to Derek, and asked,
“Is it done?”
“I think so.”
“You think so?”
“I can’t be sure. He shot me in the leg. I threw a stone. He fell into the mine. He must have fallen 40 feet, maybe more. There’s no way he could have survived that fall.”
“For both our sakes, you best hope so. Stephen will have both our heads for trophies if you’re wrong.”
Stephen walked into the sheriffs quarters. Bill, his deputy, was tweaking his rifle on the workbench.
“Bill. Finish up. I think Derek knows.”
“What happened, Steve?”
“Can’t be sure. He walked back to camp with a gunshot on his leg and Jacob is nowhere to be found. Probably dead.”
“Want me to arrest him?”
“Not yet. He’s the only one who knows where the mine is. If we lock him up he will clam up tight. Plus. I don’t have any evidence. Just a wound.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“We have to wait.” Stephen knew that the vote for mayor was coming up. Whoever could promise the people that they would have power was a shoe in. Everyone wanted nothing more than their power. Power meant supplies. Power meant food. Real food. Not the rations. They tasted bland and reminded them of the bleakness of their lives. They would do anything and follow anyone for the promise of a real life, real food. The taste of the home that could be.
Outside the docs quarters, the people continued to gossip. John and Kelly, the youngest men in the group, were arguing. Kelly, in a mocking tone, said,
“We all know the sheriff wanted to run the plant. Probably use the power for terraforming.” John said,
“Well, don’t you? My wifes expecting, and the idea that our child could grow up in a world where he could be a farmer. It’s what keeps us going.”
“Typical, you only think of yourself. We could start up the replicator and have real food, like back on Earth. All you can think about is yourself. The lot of us are going crazy up here and just because you somehow got Sara pregnant we are all supposed to suffer?”
And with that the colonists conversations got heated. A rift began to form. On the left side of the doorway stood the most credentialed of them. The climate scientists, the economists, the legal professionals and the PhDs all lined up to the left of the doorway. These were people who dedicated their lived to their profession. They spent their 20s studying in all the ways they were supposed to. They spent their 30s working to earn the right to be the first colony on Mars. They sacrificed their own well being and happiness to become the greatest humans ever known. The first colonists of Cydonia.
On the right side of the door were the least credentialed, and hardest working of them. The engineers, the electricians, the nuclear plant construction team and their wives. These were the people who dedicated their lives to the idea of conquering a new land and starting a family. They spent their 20s, together, building a family while studying to be useful they spent their 30s on Earth to earn enough to start a family. They were conscripted to the Martian project. Sacrificed their potential lives on Earth and wanted nothing more than a place they could raise their children and see their grandchildren. The hard working families of Cydonia.
The arguments were becoming physical. A push and a shove. The arguments became shrill. It had been going on for at least an hour when the sound of a rail gun, firing into the air, calmed the group. The sheriff fired a round into the air from his freshly tweaked shotgun.
“That’s enough. Everyone take it down a notch. I’m going in there to get Derek to lead us to the mine and find out what happened. The next person to so much as cuss is going to get the butt end of ol’ Becky, got it?” On the right, the men held their wives back, making room for Bill and Steve. On the right, the women motioned for the men to back away to make the path clear. Bill stood outside, pistol in hand, while Stephen opened the door and walked inside.
“Doc, is he able to walk?” the Doc nervously looked up. He had an empty syringe in hand,
“Just, Sheriff. In a minute the stims will kick in and he’ll be up and at em. He won’t be able to do any heavy work for at least a week, but he can walk and talk as well as he was able to, before.” Derek felt the stims in his endocrine system. He could feel warmth around his wound. The stem cells in the stim were reconstructing his leg muscles. In a minute he had the energy to stand.
“Derek. You’re going to take us to the mine, and I’m going to find out what happened to my son.” Derek hesitated.
“Steve, I.”
“Sheriff. Get dressed.”
Derek had put on his clothes. The cut in his pants exposed his leg to the elements. The dust which was settling on his skin began to scratch. The crowd of colonists grouped up behind them. Bill and the Doc were in the rear. The fist colonists of Cydonia’s mouths were watering. They were imagining the replicators pumping out food. They were picturing their televisions and monitors showing them all the entertainment they brought from earth. They imagined the AI generated content that would fill their time on this bleak rock. It seemed too good to be true and it was only a short walk away.
The hard working families of Cydonia were thinking of the future. One man grabbed a handful of the grit below their feet and put it into a glass jar which he placed in his jacket pocket. He wanted a keepsake of where they started. The families were surveying the land, looking for where the rivers would flow, once the reactor melted the ice caps. They discussed which areas would be fertile land, to the west of the mountains and beside the soon to be river beds. They imagined the AI generated scans of the area and the wonderful monuments they could build for future generations.
In front, Derek and Stephen were walking towards the mines. Derek was a half step ahead. Stephen broke the silence,
“Sheriff. There’s not enough uranium for everyone. We should use it to make everyone's lives better, today. Think about it, we can eat, we can entertain, we can live the good life. What would be the point of living on this rock if we aren’t living?”
“Derek. Life in Cydonia is hard. We all knew that coming in. I never asked for this, but they forced me and half the people to come here. The only thing holding these people together is the idea that we can build a world for the next generation we can be proud of. A hamburger and naked women on the monitor won’t solve our problems.”
They approached a cliff face. Derek pointed to a small enclave on the side facing away from the colony.
“It’s there, 100 feet inside.”
As they approached the entrance, they could see Jacob, crawling slowly from the entrance. He held a yellow rock in his hand. His leg was smashed and a bone protruded from his shin. As he looked up and saw the colonists, he outstretched his other hand and cried out.
“Help.”
The sheriff turned to Bill while he directed him to watch the colonists. He ran to the front while Bill pointed his revolver at Derek. Stephen ran towards his son,
“What happened. Thank god you’re alive.”
“It was Derek. I told him I found the ore and he shoved me into a pit. So much pain.”
In a fit of anger, Stephen turned towards around and saw Bill, laying on the ground. The Doc had Bill pistol and it was trained on him.
“Sorry, Steve. Twenty years is too long to wait.” The Doc pulled the trigger and Stephen felt like he had been punched in the chest. His spittle tasted metallic. His skin got cold. He had to sit down. In his last moment he looked at his son, and the both of them closed their eyes.
“Grab the ore. Lets refine it and finish the plant. If you people want to eat tonight, then you’ll forget about all this and we can live like kings.” The hard working families of Cydonia protested. They got angry. One took a swing at one of the first colonists of Cydonia. One of the women was knocked to the ground. Derek picked up the sheriffs shotgun and fired at the families. Two were killed outright. Several others were wounded from the scatter. John’s wife was screaming. She took a pellet to the stomach. Derek looked to the first colonists and said,
“Throw them into the pit. They will take control first chance they get and then we will get nothing.”
The first colonists felt a rage. The families of Cydonia wanted everything they worked for, and for selfish reasons. They grabbed the men and the women and ran to the cave, throwing them down the pit into the blackness. Derek dragged the Sheriff and Derek, pushing them over the edge with his boot.
The first colonists of Cydonia, Doc, Kelly and Derek stared around at each other. No one wanted to say anything, but everyone was afraid of who would say something. In each others eyes they saw a conclusion: they would never speak of this again. They walked back to Cydonia yellow-cake in hand, and processed the ore with a new sense of purpose.
It had been a week. Hamburgers for dinner. They were eating lobster and steak and caviar all week and their power supplies were dwindling. Turns out the amount of power needed for luxuries had almost depleted the uranium they had. None of them knew how to mine and so they couldn’t go back for more. The shut down the power to all the buildings in the colony but the docs. He had his laptop open. They were watching the movie Aliens. After the credits, the laptop shut down, the lights dimmed, then shut off. The only sound remaining was the winds of Mars. They had been growing heavier since the terreformer shut down, three days ago.
Kelly and Derek lay down on the ground and got some shuteye. In the morning they decided they would kill three of the first colonists of Cydonia. Less mouths to feed meant more power, and Derek had a hankering for a burrito. He hadn’t eaten a burrito since he was on earth.
