Rasp’s transport had been delayed by three days, due to malfunction in the imaging software. He and three other men, linked to nutrient drips and cathed, played Gin Rummy with a stack of cards with naked women printed on them. Every color of the rainbow. All lithe. All hairless. All smiling. Delicate slender apes enhanced with microscars and resewn nipples.
One of the men had chemical burns on one side of his face. His skin was shiny pink under a loosely taped layer of gauze. Rasp knew him from the chow line on the rig, slopping potato glistening with shine onto their plasticine trays they fed into the chipping slots after each eight-minute allotted meal. He shifted and rearranged his nutrient line.
Rasp nudged him.
“Tastes better than rig food, huh?”
The man smiled as best he could, wincing as the flaking skin on his cheek pulled away from the scabbed, red dermis. He discarded a ten of spades with a woman wearing nothing but a belly dancing belt, her plump belly peeking over the tiny brass bells. Her breasts draped over a tiny jeweled belt around her rib cage, each capped with a large, soft nipple.
The other men were identical twins, each with a light sprinkling of freckles across their thin bare arms and chests. Their red hair was cropped close and their teeth overlapped in a strange sameness. It was rare that The Corporation allowed siblings to have their contracts assigned to the same project. But, only one twin spoke at a time and scuttlebutt said that they scored a perfect score on their mechanical aptitude tests. The twin missing his pinky and ring finger discarded the queen of hearts.
Rasp looked at his hand. A full meld.
“Georgie Porgy, pudding and pie kissed the girls and made them cry. Gin.”
The man with healing chemical burns on his face threw down his hand. The twins looked at one another. Reflections of the same grim mouth, the same gray eyes. One intact.
Rasp reached for the pile of Commissary credits. A single card fluttered to the table from the collar of his jumpsuit. An ace with a coy redhead on it. The men watched it, their eyes snapping up at Rasp when it was finally face down among the others.
The intact twin reached across the table and snatched the front of Rasp’s jumpsuit, dragging him across the smooth slab. His nutrient line tugged at his arm and popped free. Blood oozed from the hole. The twin struggled on top of Rasp and pressed his knees into his chest. The others looked on. The chamber was silent except for the two men huffing.
“I told you to stop fucking cheating, Rasp.”
“Come on, you’ll pull out my cath.”
“You little shitbird.”
“Look take back the credits. I’m sorry. I really am sorry. Want to hear a joke?”
The twin lifted him up and slammed the back of his head against the hard surface. Blackness flashed across his eyes. He swung down with a closed fist at Rasp’s cheek. His own nutrient line popped from his arm and misted the walls with blood. Their hearts throbbed with the ape need to crush. To survive. The light changed so slightly. Suddenly, calm. The honey-sweet smell of sedation dust filled their nostrils.
***
Rasp’s transport shuddered as it entered the Martian atmosphere. After the sedation dust wore off, the men found themselves strapped onto narrow boards facing outward. The grav field had been turned off. The screens around the restraint barracks hummed to life. A beautiful nude woman appeared on the screen, her long blond hair combed into voluminous waves. She sat with her hands clasped in front of her, her glossy red fingernails glinting tiny white squares of light. She took a deep breath and peered past the camera, her eyes jerking back and forth as she read from a teleprompter somewhere behind the camera. Her voice, deepish and smooth, flooded into the barracks.
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“Greetings, potential Martians.
You have been chosen as laborers and potential citizens to the Martian Entity. Congratulations.
Due to the sensitive nature of your work here on our greatest achievement, it is necessary to give you some background information of the world which you will undoubtedly come to love.”
She cleared her throat and absently brushed her hair over her right shoulder.
“Mars was terraformed even before Earth fell to The Event. It started with great clear domes, rooted to the red soil by quadruped bots. But in those days, the people of Earth barely noticed. The clung to their tiny lives, putting up pictures of themselves again and again and again for their friends to see and feel jealousy or indifference. Pictures of glistening meat, farmed just for them, shiny with fat and rich red with blood and crusted with herbs. Pictures of sunsets, rippling orange-red across an endless beach horizon. Pictures of men and woman clinging to one another, before the great separation. Pictures of marches across the globe, human beings demanding change, change, change, but never changing themselves. Others rotting away in government cells, never to be useful again, some just for sedating themselves against the tragedy of purposelessness. Very sad indeed.”
She reached under the desk and pulled out an electronic cigarette and screwed it onto a long cigarette holder. She drew it to her mouth and wrapped her lips around it, blowing a perfect smoke ring that glided toward the screen, splitting and enveloping the screen in a fine mist.
“Those days were dark. According to The Corporation’s research nearly half of the planet was incarcerated and two out of three individuals were unemployed. 45% of women killed their babies in utero and pharmaceutical regulation was at an all-time high at 80% profits lost. Earth needed The Corporation.
The Corporation was the first entity to deploy the missiles to Mars, warming its surface and building its atmosphere. Creating thousands of jobs in the process. It was a triumphant idea, really. Using the incarcerated to give them purpose again. To build their job skills for when they were released. There was only a 1% recidivism rate after that. “
She looked at someone off camera and uncrossed her arms, resting her breasts on the table.
“And now potential citizen, you too have the potential for greatness. Your work is your currency. Your labor, your ticket to betterment. Welcome. Welcome.”
The screens snapped off and the back hatch to the shuttle parted, giving way to an eerie pinkish light. Rasp’s lungs burned and his skin prickled with gooseflesh. The twins struggled against their restraints across from him. The craft rocked gently in the Martian dust storm. Waist-high robots zipped up the ramp, unlatching restraints, clipping tiny breathing apparatuses to their septums, and draping them in light, reflective fabric. A fixed screen attached to the center of their square, plasticine bodies flickered and started while four long multi-jointed limbs waved and fussed over whatever task was at hand. The robot in charge of Rasp flashed an image on its screen of him in a pink teddy bear costume, bouncing across the screen. A comfort image.
Little Bouncing RASP (INDENTURED 2544-46). The screen read in a bubbly font beneath the screen. The robot’s arms drifted around his face, plucking debris off his jumpsuit.
“Hey, that’s me.”
“Yes, RASP 2544-46, INDENTURED, that IS you.”
The robot’s voice was a gentle older man, in some Earth accent he had heard once on The Corporation’s Diversity Channel. Australian? English? Continental?
“Now, that you’ve been properly identified and soothed, let’s get you to decontamination and off to bed. Tomorrow is a big day for you.”
The robot rolled ahead of him into the butterscotch landscape, one long arm trailing behind, wrapped snug around Rasp’s shoulders. Mountains rose behind a small dome settlement, richly orange and huge, capped with soft snow. The domes, like a clutch of eggs, were painted different pastels colors, each with the stylized O on the side. Further in the distance, a huge dome sent long spirals of white vapor into the air from several stacks jutting from the roof.
Rasp looked back at the transit. The twins followed behind another identical robot. The man with chemical burns was nowhere. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. He was nil.
The glossy obsidian path squeaked under his boots. It snaked in front of him, dead ending at the giant dome.