Day 3:
“PLEASE DESCRIBE THE EVENTS OF THE LARGER CONFLICT THAT LED TO THE ATTACK ON 2ND JANUARY 2065.”
“Where do I start, MAI?”
“BEGIN WITH THE FIRST INCIDENTS.”
And it was hard to find a place to start, even if my mind wasn’t struggling to function again after what must have been months of chemical hibernation.
“With the Discs? Or the Ecos?”
“BEGIN WITH THE FIRST INCIDENTS.”
“Pause playback,” I order the screen, and watch my image freeze just as I’m about to answer.
“You’re right,” Matthew agrees with my original impression as we review the video record of my post-sleep “evaluation” with MAI. “This is weird.”
“It isn’t anything like the standard post-sleep evaluation,” Staley concurs, uneasy. “It’s more like a debriefing.”
I take a breath, and settle back in the chair I’ve got wedged into a corner of Matthew’s tight quarters.
The “Deluxe Senior Officers’ Accommodations”—the best and biggest the base has to offer—are cells about two-and-a-half-meters square, mostly filled by a single bed, minimal storage cabinets, a small desk workstation, and one chair. This is 50% larger than what all but eight of the top officers and department heads get, and most of the junior officers and techs get packed in at least two to a cell. The rest—the vast majority—bunk in barracks (but there’s a rack for each body, so at least no one has to share “hot bunk” style).
Only about a third of us have been medically released from the Hiber-Sleep chambers to those bunks, and that’s only partially because we’ve only got three physicians and a half-dozen nurse practitioners to clear almost twelve hundred people. The hibernation-inducing drugs aren’t clearing our systems like they should. I remember feeling significantly better by post-sleep Day Three after the shuttle ride. But this time Day Three still feels a lot like Day One, and I’m not the only one suffering. The medical staff checking us out look worse than the personnel they’ve released.
I’ve managed to move back into my own quarters—about half the distance to Command, just below the Tower on A Deck. But I haven’t been further than that since Day One. I certainly haven’t tried climbing up into the Tower again. No one else has, either.
Anton’s managed two short trips to Aux Ops to start poking MAI’s guts, but he’s having trouble concentrating for any length of time, and his fine motor skills are shot.
It took three of us and a wheelchair to get Matthew to his quarters next to mine. Doctor Ryder didn’t want to release him yet, but I argued it was an issue of mental health and morale—he’d more likely sit put and rest up if he wasn’t worried about how sick and weak he looked in front of his officers and troopers. I promised Ryder I’d do regular checks on him, but I can barely stay out of bed myself.
So Matthew’s propped up in his rack with a stack of pillows behind him, because Ryder’s ordered him to another few days strict bed rest, and the only way I could keep him there (I found him laying on the deck at the bottom of the Tower stairs once already) was by suggest we use his quarters as a place to do some private conferencing. That means Anton has to perch on the foot of the bunk, because there isn’t room for another chair without blocking the hatch (so it’s either sit on the bed or on the retractable toilet in the small-closet-sized bathroom).
Our first piece of business: Get more eyes to review the bizarre conversation I had with MAI on Day One. But not too many eyes on it, not yet. Given our condition, we’ve probably been under a lot longer than a shuttle ride, but we still don’t know how long that was (despite Anton’s drugged efforts at AI diagnostic and repair). We still don’t know what happened outside our little tomb (and being too weak to do a damn thing about it only makes the long Rehab more unbearable). All we know is no one has come to dig us out yet. (Uplink is gone, but if anyone was close, they’d be heard over our short-range Links, and all we’re getting is static and each other.)
The last thing I want is panic over all the things we don’t know. So the official word is: We’re buried, we’re okay, we’re trying to get something working enough to call out, but it will probably be awhile yet before anyone can get to us.
“Continue playback…”
“The Discs started in ’51,” I listen to myself trying to answer the AI, playing along despite its refusal to answer any of my questions, trying to understand what’s gone wrong with it. “Or maybe in ’49, depending on what you believe, when AAV-4 went down in Coprates on a recon flight during the First Sprint Mission. The official theory was it got hit with a micro-meteorite, but the angle was all wrong, too shallow. Still, nobody seriously considered there was anything else here but us. Of course, there’s never been any sane reason to believe the Disc drones aren’t ‘us’, aren’t of human engineering, just someone with impressive tech resources and an agenda to hinder us.”
“DECRIBE WHAT HAPPENED IN 2051.”
“Second Sprint Mission. Major Mark Harker came back for another trip since he was the first boots-on-the-ground in ’42, if you’re testing my memory for history. In April of 2051—don’t ask me the day—after they’d had a productive but incident-free month on-planet… He’s out on a rover trip, just a few miles from where we built Melas One, riding with one of the team geologists when he sees something in the dust: something moving very fast, skimming just above the ground, using the landscape and the haze for cover. It’s there, then it’s not. In his own report, Harker says he was reluctant to call it in, even when the geologist said he saw it, too. Given what the Discs looked like when we did get a good look at them, I can understand his hesitation: They’re a stereotype UFO—a bad sci-fi flying saucer. Only small: maybe two meters across and half-a-meter thick. Too small to have anyone inside, so it must be a drone, an ROV. It played Hide-and-Seek with them for several minutes, then made a run at them and opened fire with some kind of small mounted machine gun. Harker ditched the rover and dove for cover. Then it was over, just like that. The dust clears, the rover’s a wreck and his geologist has a leak in his suit, but the saucer is gone like it never was. Nothing on radar, not even from orbit. The team picked over the site with a microscope, but found nothing that wasn’t Mars dirt. It was much later we learned that the Discs’ weapons fire projectiles that break up and degrade back into base elements, just like the whole drone does when we manage to bring one down. Some kind of advanced nano-material with a built-in failsafe. Whoever makes them doesn’t want anybody to be able to examine one.
“The incident was kept quiet, and when it didn’t repeat, things moved ahead on schedule. The popular theory at Intel was that somebody who had an interest in slowing down the multinational project had landed some kind of new drone. There were a lot of countries involved, a lot of corporate backers. But every investigation on both planets came up empty. So Marineris Landing Site One becomes Mariner Colony, and the colonial ‘Land Rush’ starts not long after, as soon as the corporations figure how much money they can make using Mars for high-risk research projects, for stuff they’d never get away with trying on Earth.
“And that’s what started the Eco Movement: people got scared of what the corporations were doing here, or what they imagined they were doing. Scared enough to make the Ecos popular. Scared enough for the Ecos to get militant and try to stop the corporations on-planet. But while the Ecos are still getting organized, the first five research colonies are up and running by ’55. By ’56, they’ve already sent back cures for four major cancers and two strains of HIV, not to mention the nano-ware and ‘smart’ materials that make hundreds of billions worth of bleeding-edge consumer goodies.
“But the DNA re-sequencing and the nanotech—especially the hybrid biotech that promised to be the answer to everything that ails the mortal body—are scary enough that the Ecos do start resorting to violence. They’re terrified we’ll lose control over it and it will wipe us out as a species in nothing flat.
“They start with sabotage fi
rst, relying on sympathizers already imbedded in the colony projects. Then they get enough balls and support to actually stage coordinated mutinies and take over Industry and Liberty colonies. UNMAC holds off on an armed response in hopes of avoiding bloodshed, but the corporations—who are losing billions for every day a facility is off line—push for a more aggressive solution, and UN Peacekeepers start getting sent despite mass protests on both planets.
“Shooting starts. People die. More troops get sent. And it all makes the Ecos even more popular. So UNMAC tries to make peace. And the corporations push to break it when they don’t get the results they want…”
“Which is when we found ourselves on a Hohman shuttle...” Matthew interjects sourly.
“THIS IS WHEN YOU ARRIVED ON MARS?” the AI parallels him.
“Okay, see, that’s odd,” Staley notes, pausing the playback. “It’s not asking a question like it’s evaluating your memory, Colonel. It’s like it’s trying to confirm what it knows.”
“Or doesn’t know,” I consider again. “I’m getting the impression it was milking me to fill in gaps in its own memory.”
“Or trying to re-organize scrambled data files,” Staley wonders out loud. He continues the replay, listening as intently as he can:
“Yes. UNMAC was hoping my reputation from the War on Terror would scare the Ecos into cooperation…”
“They didn’t count on what a good diplomat you turned out to be,” Matthew remembers with a weak grin.
“…managed to open talks with them. But the corporations got impatient, pressured UNMAC to hit them hard in. The ’59 Offensive took back Industry, Freedom and Frontier, establishing garrisons in those colonies. The Ecos held onto Mariner. But the bloodshed turned the free world against UNMAC and the nations supporting the war, so the UN offered a major troop reduction.
“And that’s when the Discs show up again, in force. Hit-and-fade attacks against colony labs. Gagarin Colony gets hit hard, and all they were doing was engineering better crops. Then they come after us when we move to defend the labs, tearing up our bases, shooting down our aircraft, strafing convoys. Now everybody is blaming everybody else for the Discs: Ecos, competitors. There’s even a popular conspiracy theory that UNMAC is creating an excuse to further militarize and control the planet, a False Flag play.
“In any case, we escalate. We spend the next three years in a shooting war with the Discs, who show up in greater numbers with each attack. We never do learn where they originate, where they go to ground. We never get one intact, not even fragments to analyze, because of how completely they break down. There’s a growing fringe that insists we’re dealing with extra-terrestrials, but these flying bastards are actually pretty simple conventionally-armed drones. And we never see the things in orbit.”
“UNTIL THE BOMBARDMENT.”
“See!” Staley almost shouts. “There! It’s like MAI is trying to fill in or confirm what it should already know!”
“So it’s got memory damage?” Matthew assumes.
“No sign of EMP corruption during the bombardment, which means the EM shielding held,” Staley denies. “The loss seems to be isolated to archive files, not the operating system.”
“Except it won’t answer a simple question,” Matthew grouses. “Like ‘What day is it?’ or where the hell is Cal Copeland?”
“What about some other kind of corruption?” I wonder out loud.
“Colonel?” Staley looks at me like he doesn’t want me to say what I’m thinking.
“How long can a system like MAI go without maintenance and not show degradation due to age?”
The look he gives me says that he doesn’t know and doesn’t want to think about it.
“So our AI’s gone senile?” Matthew blurts out. “In a dozen or so months?”
Staley doesn’t answer him, but I see him calculating the implication uncomfortably. I continue the playback:
“Until the bombardment,” I’m agreeing with MAI. Then:
“WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE BOMBARDMENT?”
I listen to myself pause at that, remember how incredulous I was at the question. There’s something odd even in the wording of it: “Who is responsible,” not “Who was responsible.” As if it’s not wanting history, but wanting to place blame. I’m surprised to hear my reply come as quick as it does—I was sure I deliberated for several minutes.
“MAI, do you not serve in the capacity of Tactical AI as well as base operating system?”
“THIS IS CORRECT.” First time it actually answered a question. I remember hoping, in my bleary-eyed almost-passing-out haze, that I was finally getting somewhere.
“Then shouldn’t it be you who analyses the available data and provides me with the likely answer to that question?”
“INPUT IS INSUFFICIENT FOR ANALYSIS. PLEASE GIVE YOUR REPORT.”
I remember getting another shock at this, but then, given the extreme chaos of the event, it made a kind of sense: All the chaotic, fragmented incoming data may have been too much for MAI to process, especially as our communications were being cut. MAI lost its eyes and ears in the middle of it. It likely doesn’t know what happened, what the outcome was. And nobody’s come since to fill in those blanks. Maybe that leaves MAI somehow “stuck” in the moment, unable to resolve the scenario, unable to plan beyond it. Or maybe something happened after, something that also explains what happened to Cal Copeland. (Maybe MAI really doesn’t know what happened to Cal.)
“The most likely conclusion is that it was whoever was behind all of the Disc attacks since ’49. And we still don’t know who that was. But they had to have the resources to build and place the drones on planet. And they had to have a way to access the colony systems to simulate multiple site breaches. And detailed intel on the Shield in order to hack it.
“The Ares’ Shield platform had only been activated a month prior, reluctantly placed in orbit by UNMAC to appease the growing popular fear that an unstoppable nanotech plague might get loose and kill all life. But no one underestimated how dangerous the platform was. Security for the project was extreme. We were agreeing to point nuclear weapons at ourselves. We had to trust that the system was redundantly safe, that no one could use it against us, unless the worst did happen and it was absolutely necessary to protect Earth and we were already as good as dead.”
“WHY DID YOU MAKE THE ASSUMPTION THAT THE WEAPONS PLATFORM COULD NOT BE TURNED AGAINST YOU?”
Now the machine almost sounds prosecutorial. I watch myself trying to fumble for an answer—a reasonable answer—especially given my feelings regarding the placing of the platform.
“I would not have made that assumption, MAI,” I qualified my answer, but I do sound beyond angry, quickly losing any professionalism I’m hanging onto, thinking about the thousands and thousands that must be dead because of the stupidity that comes with fear. “I’m a soldier. I expect things to go wrong. I expect vulnerabilities to be exploited by my enemies.”
“YOUR ASSESSMENT IS LOGICALLY SOUND,” it tells me after a fraction of a second’s delay.
“But you want to know why other people—the ones that pushed for placing the Shield—assumed it could not be purposefully turned against us?”
“PLEASE GIVE ME YOUR ANALYSIS.”
I watch Matthew’s eyebrows go halfway up his forehead. Staley is mesmerized. The AI does sound like it’s desperate for some kind of understanding.
“I expect it was too big, too unimaginable. Tens of thousands of lives were under that gun. The idea that someone would intentionally burn the whole planet, kill everyone … No one considered—or wanted to consider—that anyone was fanatical enough to commit planetary genocide, simply given the means.
“The Ecos were always careful with human life, even in their greatest militancy. And they were beginning to become mainstream, to move away from violence into diplomacy and democratic politics. They might still have a few hardcore holdouts, isolated fanatics, but whoever pulled this off was big and well-coordinated.
And something that big and that scary should have shown up on the radar. Intel should have picked up something. But there was no one we saw with any apparent motive for genocide.
“Even if the Discs—and whoever was behind them—could be considered a threat to the entire Martian project, genocide didn’t fit with their established methods: The drones were always selective with their attacks, only targeting labs and the military. They didn’t target the colony biospheres. And they never touched the ETE terra-forming stations, even when the embattled labs moved their hottest research there for protection.”
“THE DISCS DID INITIATE THE BOMBARDMENT.”
“Yes,” I admitted, feeling the foolishness of the defense I just made, even though I’d never had much faith in it. “So either they were trying to eliminate everyone on Mars, or—if they were being run by one of the national or corporate players on-planet—they were counting on their own interest’s countermeasures to spare them.”
Then I consider the obvious next question:
“Who else has survived, MAI?”
“UNKNOWN.” At least it’s an answer. If nothing else, a willingness to admit ignorance.
“Has there been any contact from Earth?”
No answer. Back to where I was before. But I pushed anyway:
“Has there been any contact from any of colonies?”
No answer.
“Has there been any sign of activity on the surface?”
No answer.
“How long have we been asleep, MAI?”
No answer.
“What happened to Colonel Copeland?”