Chapter Five
Lisbet was not familiar with virtual reality beyond playing slasher games in her dorm room when she was in university. Using it to meet her husband unsettled her. She thought she was going to meet him in person. Accepting the current situation stretched her since the only purpose she’d known for VR was playing simulation games. She wasn’t aware that anyone used it for business meetings, or dating, or meeting their wife.
When she pulled the faceplate over her eyes, the first thing she saw was the barren wasteland of Mars. Red sand, black sky, and stars everywhere around her like glittering snowflakes suspended in the air.
She turned around. There was a flat space ahead of her. It looked like a chessboard. She tried walking, knowing full well that she was walking on a treadmill that moved at her pace. No one walked on the surface of Mars without a spacesuit. As she got closer, she saw she was approaching two high-backed armchairs.
Vantz was in one of the chairs. She got closer, she wasn’t sure what to make of what she saw. He was a man, but not a man.
That meant he had the shape of a man, but the head of a stag. He wore a gentleman’s suit coat with coattails, a vest, a pocket square, a watch chain, a white shirt, gray trousers, and gloves. He stood up when she got closer. His ears moved forward and backward as if he could hear her before he saw her. The antlers were something else—very tall. He was so tall that he appeared larger than life.
What he really looked like, if she was honest, was a spoiled rich man, playing a game by pulling a mounted deer head off the wall and placing it on his head as a joke.
Lisbet wasn’t sure what kind of a man would do that, but when he spoke, the deer head’s mouth moved.
“Welcome, Lisbet,” Vantz said, moving his hand in a circular motion that was definitely a greeting without touching her. “Please, have a seat.”
He offered her an armchair and she hesitated to take the seat, feeling around herself for the chair that she had been sitting in before she put on her headset. As she wasn’t wearing a whole bodysuit meant to give her every sensation that the virtual world could give her, the chair did not feel like an armchair, but like the padded chair that was placed behind the treadmill.
He sat opposite her. “How was your journey?”
“From Earth?” she asked, looking at him and trying to understand what she was seeing. She knew Vantz did not want anyone to see his face. All that had been explained to her, but she didn’t know what to make of talking to a stag. It felt like talking to an NPC in a video game. She felt slightly absurd. “Uh…” she hesitated. “It was fine. Uneventful. I went to sleep there. I woke up here.”
“Nothing bothered you? Nothing woke you up?”
“No. Nothing.”
“The best kind of journey,” he intoned in a slight English accent. “And what do you think of your accommodations here?”
“They’re wonderful,” she said. Because of the situation with the bathroom, they were not as good as her father’s home back on Earth, but she knew that by Martian standards, they were excellent. Complaining would get her nowhere. She was a slave and only so much luxury was possible on the surface of Mars, even for the rich.
“I’m delighted to hear it,” he said, not with a smile. His face did not exactly smile since a deer was not capable of making emotional expressions with its mouth, but kindness touched his eyes.
Was he pressing a button on his console to make his eyes look warm?
“We have much to discuss,” he went on. “I have an agenda. It will take weeks to cover everything we need to go over. I have set aside one hour a day in which to meet with you for the next two weeks. I do apologize, but I have a great deal of work to do and I cannot spare more time than that. When my timer goes off, I will have to cut our conversation short.”
Lisbet nodded
He continued, “I’ve set aside these two weeks as our honeymoon as far as the media is concerned, so no one will need anything from you other than the photographs of you in your wedding dress. A photographer will meet you on the seventieth floor tomorrow to get the shots. I sent Charcoal my recommendations after you sent me the photos of you trying on the wedding gowns. I have much to be pleased about in your presentation. You hold your shoulders correctly and will do well tomorrow modeling. Do not concern yourself overly about your hair or makeup. This is Mars and women are asked not to put products in their hair or on their faces that will need to be washed off with water or chemicals. Natural beauty is all the rage.” He glanced at her curiously. “Does that suit you?”
Lisbet walked her fingers down her thigh. “Sure. I have confidence in what a photographer can do to touch up the pictures after the fact.”
The stag raised an eyebrow. “You think you need to be touched up? You don’t.”
“Yeah, except you’ve seen me when? In the pictures my father used to advertise my sale? In the far away shots I used to send you pictures of me in wedding dresses? Yep, I’m sure those things left you with a really strong impression of what I really look like.” She tried to keep her voice light, but she was still distressed over how her life had been suddenly redone.
“I saw you when you were delivered,” he said soothingly. “I kissed you.”
Lisbet’s breath caught. “Oh. Of course.”
“I’ve seen you, and I do not think you need to be touched up. Besides, you are going to be the most famous beauty in history.” He turned his attention back to the floating agenda.
She gulped. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve been trying to think of the correct way to tell you this. You couldn’t have been told anything to prepare you before you left Earth because the executives at Sleeping Beauty Inc. were trying to control the narrative about your departure. Honestly, I’m still struggling to find a way to broach the topic.”
“What? What are you saying?” she asked, clicking her dry tongue against dry teeth.
“Sleeping Beauty Inc. sent three Mammoth ships from Earth to Mars and you were the only person in cryostasis on any of them. Here on Mars, we sent ships to meet the armada transporting you, and when they arrived in Mars’ space, humanity had the first battle in space. You see those floating twisted hunks of metal in the sky?”
Lisbet remembered them and nodded her head.
“Well,” he continued, “they’re the graveyards of the losers. Our side won. You were delivered properly.”
“I don’t understand,” Lisbet murmured anxiously. “Why would anyone care if I was delivered? Who would want to stop me from being delivered so much that they’d go to war over it?”
“It wasn’t about you,” he said with an odd breath like he was trying to suppress a cough. “But you’re part of history now. How much do you know about Mars?
“I know all about it,” she said confidently. Then she started sputtering off facts about how long each day was compared to an Earth day, what the temperature range was on the planet, what minerals were found in what geological formations, and more.
Vantz interrupted by clapping for her. “You’re a true scientist. I’m enchanted. How much do you know about life on Mars? How do human lives play out here?”
“Uh,” she muttered. “Uh… Not as much as I’d know if that story Sleeping Beauty Inc. is telling about our relationship was true. This is my first real conversation with a person from Mars.”
“Okay, let’s start small then. Do you know what there is to do for fun on a space station?” he asked briefly. “Have you traveled in space much? Do you know what space stations are like?”
“No. I’ve only lived on Earth,” Lisbet replied.
“Okay. Space stations are dark places,” he said as he pulled two golden balls from his pocket and started spinning them in the palm of his hand. “There isn’t much to do for fun. The people on board get stuck working shifts doing shipping and receiving. The work isn’t inspiring. Drugs are hard to come by. People watch a lot of TV and they have an insane amount of sex. People who live on space stations have four times more sex than people who live on Earth.”
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Lisbet whistled.
Vantz chuckled. “Yeah, you weren’t expecting this to be our first conversation, but this is actually the first thing we need to talk about. Here on Mars, we have the same problem, except it’s worse. Mars is like a space station. There’s no atmosphere, very little sunlight, cold temperatures, and nothing fun to do. Except, we have a more challenging problem here on Mars than they do in outer space. Unlike a space station that only has so much floor space, nowhere to hide, and nowhere to run, we have nooks and crannies aplenty. We have miners and almost all the machinery on Mars is used for making more nooks and crannies. We have a collection of mining companies that are stripping the planet of its minerals and that’s fine. We don’t have a problem with that because that’s what humans are here for. The problem is that the mines get decommissioned and they get made into something called a pleasure palace. Have you heard of them?”
Lisbet swallowed a mouthful of disgust. “Isn’t that when they block off the mine and pretend it’s not in use anymore when people are actually trapped down there?”
“Exactly. They’ve turned the passages into a palace fit for a king, taken a bunch of servants down with them, and blocked off the entrance. They use their old railway systems to send in supplies and then they do whatever they want to their servants for as long as they want. It’s inhumane and psychotic. Do you know how often these pleasure palaces get uncovered?”
“Almost never,” Lisbet answered, thinking of the thing she wanted to think about the least.
“Yes. Almost never. It’s difficult to scan the planet, to get proper information about what underground canals or tunnels run where. The mining companies keep the government in the dark about where their tunnels go and how deep they run. And… What do you think is the worst thing about their activities?”
Lisbet swallowed. “I don’t know.”
He answered his question for her. “It interferes with our terraforming efforts. Let me explain how terraforming works. The fastest way to gain an atmosphere for a planet or a moon is to set off a series of very lethal bombs. The byproduct of the explosions will gift the planet gasses that can be worked with to create breathable air. That is how Ganymede, Callisto, and Io got their atmospheres so quickly and why Mars has none. When the terraforming teams arrived at the Jovian moons, no one was living there. They didn’t have to worry about destroying infrastructure, or upsetting people’s lives, with their bombs. They could just build their towers to generate their artificial magnetic poles, set off their bombs, and their moons were inhabitable in a frightening amount of time. Why do you think that hasn’t happened for Mars?”
“The mining companies are stopping it because they don’t want their mines destroyed and worse than that, they don’t want their pleasure palaces to collapse. They’re holding up permissions and dragging their bums in the sand so fiercely that no one can meet any of their terraforming goals,” Lisbet answered.
“Very good. That is exactly why terraforming Mars is so difficult. Now,” he said, standing up and moving toward her. “What do you think will happen if I merely order everyone to evacuate the planet while I bomb it? Remember, there are people trapped underground.”
“The miners will leave their slaves underground and only evacuate themselves?” she said, feeling grim.
“Worse. Everyone is refusing to leave. They’re holding people hostage underground. We’re having trouble finding them, but even worse still, if we do find them, what do we do with them?”
“Just tell me,” she said crossly.
“The Mammoth ships Sleeping Beauty Inc. sent us were all filled to the brim with empty cryochambers—hundreds of thousands of them. Yours was the only one inhabited. We need to get people out of the ground, get them in orbit, and put them to sleep. It was a big secret what we were transporting when I ordered you from Sleeping Beauty Inc. We hoped everyone would think all that kerfuffle was for you alone. I hoped everyone would believe that I had three Mammoth ships to transport my wife from Sleeping Beauty Inc. Sadly, the information leaked and we had to fight a battle in space.”
“How did that work?” Lisbet wondered, thinking of everything she knew about explosions and how they needed air to accomplish combustion.
“With harpoons mostly. That way we could get our ammunition back. They weren’t expecting us to be ready and we killed a lot of miners.”
“You couldn’t save them?”
“We tore holes in their ships and let the air out. We still don’t know the exact death count. It has only been a few days since everything happened. There are so many empty ships and dead bodies floating around, orbiting Mars. It’s completely possible that some of them will fall from the sky.”
Lisbet put a hand to her throat. That was horrific.
“Naturally, the ships will fall first. We’ll see where they land. Now, listen Lisbet,” he said, getting so close to her that she could almost see the pixels that made up his face. “You’ve already done an incredible amount of work for our cause just being aboard that ship, just being our excuse—unwittingly, I know. The situation has changed since you signed the papers back on Earth. First, I need to remind you that working with me doing public relations is like taking up a military position in the middle of a war. I asked for you because you were the most serious person up for sale through Sleeping Beauty Inc. I believe you can be my mouthpiece and say what I need you to say. Secondly, you need to remember all the people we’re trying to save. We would not have fought the miners or killed them in space if they hadn’t tried desperately to take down the ships carrying the cryochambers that will save hundreds of thousands of slaves. Don’t forget, our fighting the miners protected you. Please, join our cause to save the slaves underground and change Mars so that when someone wants to run, they have air to breathe so they can run.”
The charisma was so thick Lisbet was almost choking on it. She was almost crying. She was almost going to faint. “I’m…” she struggled to speak.
“You don’t have to worry about anything today,” he said, backing off and giving her digital room to breathe. “I said I’ve given you two weeks to honeymoon with me. There will be plenty of time for you to process all that I’ve told you. I will also provide you with information packs for you to read, so you can learn even more when we’re not talking.”
Lisbet was overwhelmed. She had never been asked to do anything important in her whole life. “I… uh…” she fumbled, hearing how vague she sounded when she spoke out loud.
His brown stag eyes didn’t show any emotion she could understand. He just looked at her with an expression as dead as the glass eyes of a taxidermied deer head mounted on the wall. “Don’t worry about a thing. You’re the new Helen of Troy, the new Cleopatra, and the new Joan of Arc whether you do anything or not.”
The only thing that happened in Lisbet’s mind at the moment was that she was going to be one hell of a disappointment the moment the photographer pointed his lens at her. She was not beautiful. What he was saying was nonsense. He bought her for her mind, for her father’s reputation and crumbling riches, for courage he was swearing she had, but everyone else was going to look for a beautiful woman and they were going to be crushed when they didn’t get it. She wasn’t even allowed to wear makeup!
Vantz turned away from her and brought up a large floating screen rimmed in red. “Let me ease your scientist mind by taking you through the required phases of terraforming a planet. Since Ganymede is three-fourths the size of Mars, we’ll use Ganymede as an example. I will also be sending you papers to read on the subject. You were a physics student. You should eat it up.”
“Wait,” she said, interrupting him. “What do I look like to you? In the VR world, I see nothing when I look down.”
“You look like a crash test dummy.”
“Literally?”
“Yes. What were you expecting? We haven’t had time to configure a different look for you.”
“Your Helen of Troy looks like a crash test dummy?” Lisbet said slowly and deliberately.
He did not reply.
“How was your appearance generated?” Lisbet demanded.
Vantz sighed and then answered. “I scrolled through a list of possible body types, then I chose the body that was called The Classic Gentleman. Then I went through a list of possible heads, discarded all of them, and chose this one from a hunting game. I mashed them together and got something similar to this. But I did all that years ago. A gentleman with a stag head has been my avatar for the last seven years. What you are seeing now is a fresh skin one of my friends cooked up as a wedding present. You should know that the way I look now has nothing to do with my actual appearance.”
“Well, obviously you are not a deer man,” Lisbet huffed, completely unaware that it sounded like she said he was not a dear man.
Vantz smirked.
“I suppose what I look like in VR doesn’t matter to you,” she retorted.
“It doesn’t,” he said simply and turned his head to a floating red-rimmed screen he’d made appear in the air beside his head. He was looking at the agenda he’d made. “You can choose an avatar with Charcoal later. Do you have any other questions for me?”
“When are you coming back to the castle?” she asked.
He made the red screen disappear with a flick of his wrist and turned back to Lisbet. “You should know that you should never expect an in-person meeting with me. I thought Charcoal and Beck made it very clear that I have a ton of work to do and I need you to make it ‘seem’ like I’m in the castle with you when I am elsewhere working. That is the most important part of your position. Is that clear?”
He didn’t want to be with her?
A man like him did not want to be with her?
Suddenly, Lisbet felt the weight of the Sleeping Beauty Inc. bracelet around her wrist more heavily than before. It was a thin thing. It was supposed to be almost undetectable, but the VR controls strapped to her wrist made the bracelet cut into her skin. It was heavy and it was biting her.
Vantz had bought her. Even if she was his wife, she was still his slave. It was in the contract that if she didn’t obey, he could electrocute her. She needed to obey.
She nodded.
“You don’t need to look so concerned,” Vantz said kindly.
“I wasn’t aware that this machine could translate any of my facial expressions,” she responded.
“It can’t, but I’ve been talking to people through virtual reality for a long time and I know how you’re feeling from other markers. I’m not expecting you to obey me blindly. That’s why I’ve blocked off so much of my time to teach you what I’m doing, and by extension, what you’ll be doing.”
“And you did not bring me here so that I would be your wife?” she asked, stunned. She thought all Sleeping Beauty Inc. models did tours of the bedroom.
“In name only,” he answered dryly. “Considering the work I’m doing, buying a woman and forcing her to go to bed with me is the last thing I’d ever want to do.”
He kept talking, but Lisbet was too overwhelmed to keep listening.