"Captain’s Log – Mars Date 02941.3:"

“It’s another boring day in the afterlife. The colony’s quiet. The red dust stays where it belongs, outside the domes. The air processors are humming along like overworked librarians, and no one suspects a thing. Me? I keep my head down and my nose clean. Around here, I’m nobody special -just another cog in the Martian machine. Which is how I like it.”

Adam paused, glancing at the corner of his tiny quarters. The one window -if you could call a screen showing simulated Earth sunrises a window- bathed the room in an artificial golden glow. It clashed with the cold digital display of his recording device. He tapped the watch’s face, chewing over his next words. A system message, ‘waiting for input’ appeared.

“Oh, right. Another ship landed today, full of fresh-faced colonists -the optimistic fools have no idea the hell they’ve signed up for. I skimmed the manifest, of course. Out of habit. Nobody caught my eye. But you never know. They didn’t think much of me when I first arrived, and now I’m… well, let’s just say I’ve got my secrets. Hell, I’m not even supposed to be alive, let alone here.”

A sardonic smile tugged at his lips as he saved the recording -hit encrypt and leaned back, letting the creak of the cheap metal chair echo in his solitude. He’d kept this little ritual for almost two years, cataloging his thoughts into private logs ever since the day he boarded the colony ship under an assumed name.

Adam. The name still amused him. A new name for a new life. Back on Earth, it was a throwaway phrase: “I don’t know him from Adam.” He thought it ironic then. Now it felt prophetic.

Sure, he was a wanted man -just not the bad kind- it wasn’t like he was a criminal mastermind.

So, then why were they after him, you might ask? I’ll tell you.

Besides his sharp mind and his cosmic ability to get into trouble, the most important bit was -he had a technological treasure that every major player on Earth wanted, and nowhere left to run.

Perhaps you’d like to hear the tale, of how a young man who had everything – lost it all because of a curiosity he couldn’t let go of?

Oh, who am I, you might ask? Let’s just say I’m someone who knows a thing or two. A concerned individual with a good view of the bigger picture. You can call me Legacy, and I’ll be your narrator for this journey. I’ll try not to interrupt or get in the way. My job is to tell the story. The rest? That’s on you. Fact or fiction. Truth or a dream. That’s for you to decide.

∞

The colony’s corridors were spotless -gleaming stretches of steel and polymer built to endure the hostile Martian environment. Adam’s cleaning drone hummed at his side as he patrolled Sector C. The machine chirped as it detected a smudge on the floor. Adam snorted.

“Yeah, yeah. I see it,” he muttered, steering the drone towards the offending dirt. “Can’t have the mighty minds of Mars tripping over a coffee stain.”

The device beeped in agreement, and Adam wondered -not for the first time- if someone had programmed it with a sense of humor. He crouched, mechanically wiping the floor himself, even as the drone hovered uncertainly.

“Relax,” he said, patting its shiny surface. “I’m just earning my keep.”

His work was unremarkable, by design. Invisible, like him. While the colony bustled with news of the latest discovery.

The buzz of rumors was worse than a swarm of honeybees, the kind of rumor that spread faster than a crack in sugar glass. In break rooms and mess halls, hushed voices traded half-truths and wild speculations.

“Did you hear? They found a hidden chamber,” a woman in a white lab coat, a scientist on her break, whispered near the coffee dispenser.

“No way. I heard it’s a burial site,” another woman, a brunet in matching attire, who looked like she hadn’t seen a good night’s sleep in a week, said before taking a long drink of her caffeine.

“Burial site? It’s got a freaking machine in it!”

Adam pretended not to listen as he scrubbed at a non-existent stain on the floor nearby. He didn’t need to join the conversation; the details flowed freely, filling in the blanks like gossip always did.

“Ancient tech, they said,” the first woman continued, lowering to a conspiratorial hush. “Like… way beyond us. Sealed up tight, but still intact. Can you imagine? A computer that’s possibly been ticking along for millions of years?” Correction, not a scientist, maybe an intern or something, Adam thought.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Don’t tell me you believe in ancient aliens,” the second woman chided half-heartedly.

“You don’t? I mean, isn’t that the entire reason we’re even here,” the intern replied with a chuckle.

“And the central chamber,” another person chimed in, this one a man. “What’s in it? Data storage? Alien embryos? Both?”

“Don’t be stupid,” both women replied.

“They wouldn’t bring embryos into the lab,” the first speaker finished.

Adam rolled his eyes but kept scrubbing. The speculation bordered on absurd, yet it wasn’t entirely unfounded. The whispers about an intact Martian computer intrigued even him, despite his better judgment. A machine predating humanity’s grasp of technology? If the rumors were true, it could rewrite everything scientists thought they knew about the Red Planet -and humanity.

But Adam had no intention of getting involved. He wasn’t here to poke at ancient mysteries or gamble on alien artifacts. His job was to keep the floors clean, his head low, and his name off every list that mattered.

As the voices faded into the hum of the mess hall, Adam glanced at his cleaning drone and muttered under his breath, “Ancient Martian computer, huh? Sounds like the kind of problem I’m glad isn’t mine.”

Adam had no intention of poking the proverbial bear. He wasn’t here to get tangled in mysteries. He was here to disappear.

Or so he kept telling himself.

∞

There had been a time, not so long ago, when disappearing hadn’t even been an option.

Back then, he was someone else -a man with a name, a future, and a love so bright it blinded him to everything else. Her name was Claire, and she was the kind of person who brought order to chaos with nothing more than a smile. A nurse with a razor-sharp wit and a laugh that could light up a room. She was his anchor, his reason for working long hours in a cramped campus lab.

They had plans. Big ones. A wedding, children. Gone.

Adam still saw her sometimes -in dreams where her voice was clear as a bell, calling his name across a sea of faceless strangers. He always woke up gasping, reaching for a hand that wasn’t there. She was part of a life he’d burned to the ground, the collateral damage of a discovery that had rewritten everything he thought he knew about the universe.

∞

The equation.

Adam leaned against the cool wall of the maintenance bay, closing his eyes as numbers danced behind his eyelids. It had started as a joke. A grad school urban legend whispered in dimly lit labs: the cipher to end all ciphers, the algorithm to solve the unsolvable. People called it the impossible equation -a theoretical beast, the holy grail of computational theory.

But Adam had solved it. And just that act alone was enough to scare the wrong people -and obsess the rest.

Now he was a dead man. Or at least that’s what everyone back on Earth thought.

How he solved it, well, that depends on who you ask -or which version of Adam you’re talking to. Maybe it came to him in a dream, one of those lightbulb-above-the-head, “Eureka!” moments that scientists love to romanticize. Or maybe he was three beers deep into a Thursday night when inspiration struck, and he accidentally scribbled the answer on the back of a pizza box.

Or maybe it wasn’t this Adam at all. Maybe it was one of the other Adams -one of the infinite versions of him scattered across infinite realities, all connected by some quantum thread. Multiversal quantum entanglement: the idea that if one version of you figures out something big, the knowledge echoes through the cosmos, shared across every version of you like a divine cosmic memo.

Jet Li’s The One? Yeah, kind of like that. Except instead of kung-fu moves, it’s earth-shattering mathematical breakthroughs.

But however it happened, the result was the same. He solved it. He cracked the code. The most dangerous equation in existence, wrapped up neatly in a flurry of numbers that most of humanity wouldn’t even begin to understand.

And then? Everything fell apart.

He knew he had to run. Not walk. Not jog. Run.

The moment he realized what he’d done -what it meant- he knew his life was over. Not metaphorically. Not in the “start over with a new career” sense. His life, pre-Adam, was done.

Because there are two types of people in the world you need to watch out for: those who dream of having ultimate power, and those who will stop at nothing to take it from you. Governments, corporations, shadowy organizations that don’t even bother with acronyms -they all wanted what Adam had. And if they couldn’t have it, they’d bury it -and him- six feet under.

He didn’t know who came after him first -it didn’t matter. Once the first attempt on his life failed, Adam faked his death with all the flair of a Hollywood spy thriller.

He’d erased himself. Staged a tragic accident with the kind of thoroughness you’d expect from someone who could rewrite the rules of reality. There were obituaries, social media tributes, even a deep fake video of the “incident” that left no room for doubt. His supposed death -a fiery explosion staged in the desert, complete with a charred body matching his DNA.

 Claire was the only one who could know, and even she never doubted it, as far as he knew. Her messages, heartbroken and raw -left on his voicemail after he’d ‘died’ still haunted him.

His friends mourned. His family grieved. And Claire -his Claire- moved on. At least, that’s what he told himself to make the loss bearable.

The only thing he kept was the equation. His solution. It lived on a single device -a rooted smartwatch, stripped of every tracking mechanism, every exploitable vulnerability. Small. Unassuming. But powerful enough to make him the most wanted man in the universe.

And so, here he was. On Mars. The Red Planet. The last place anyone would think to look for a mathematical prodigy-turned-fugitive.

On Mars, no one cared about his past.

Here, he was nobody. Just another name on the colony roster. A janitor, of all things.

The irony wasn’t lost on him. Back home, he’d been a rising star, juggling equations that danced on the edge of impossibility. Now, he cleaned floors for people too smart to notice the most dangerous man in the room was the one mopping up their spilled coffee.

It wasn’t glamorous, but it was safe. For now.

The colony wasn’t a bad place to hide. The red sands stretched endlessly outside the domes, silent and indifferent. Inside, life was orderly. Predictable. The perfect backdrop for someone trying to disappear.

Except the universe doesn’t let geniuses like Adam stay hidden for long.