MESSAGE: Patrick Burke to Elizabeth Nasri CC: NASA Information Office

Z,

Well, we’ve kicked the hornets nest. And we’re getting stung. For the last few days we have been taking all kinds of criticism from Congress, the media, even the Planetary Society for holding back information about your mind-links with the headpiece. In hindsight, we should have released at least a little information. Now, people are dissecting every word and action on that transmission and scattering theories like confetti.

Here are just a few for you to share with the crew:

… No one has seen Ellis in weeks. That must mean he has been killed by a Martian.

… You have been ordered to make-up the entire story. The Elder’s body was a doll we sent on the mission, just to pull-off this hoax.

… And of course, NASA has conspired with a Martian army who will soon attack Earth.

And that’s just the crackpot stuff. Some Senators want a commission to investigate what happened. I’m counseling that we support it; they’ll see that our intentions were honest and we might get some serious firepower behind trying to find who hacked the transmission. I assume the Mission PM has already begun that process with your crew.

Suffice to say that we need to win back some trust, so I think it would be a good idea for you to give an interview to a press pool. I'll negotiate what questions they submit, you can answer them on video, and they can intercut their anchor asking the questions without any time delay.

How we are being hacked is a real concern, at this point. Take appropriate measures when communicating.

Thanks.

Pat

...

Z took in the message from a seat in the greenhouse of Habitat 3. After weeks in the underground city, it was healing to sit in the soft sun that filtered through the shielded panels, surrounded by green, leafy plants. “I guess I got what I wanted,” she said to herself. “I got the mission that will go down in history.” Put like that, it sounded selfish—and maybe for the first time, Z suspected she had been a little too desirous of owning the center of attention, but now she could not turn off the attention, and at some point it would have ramifications for her freedom. She looked through the solarium glass at the arid landscape outside and felt her isolation. Parents both dead. No siblings. No time for serious romance. What person would ever stick around her if her aspiration was to be a lone overachiever in space? It would have to be someone with a small ego, or a patient heart. Or someone like her, whose life was also in space. Dunnie? No. Small ego? Patient heart? Neither. But a good guy to have on your side, nonetheless.

She ordered herself to focus. All that was far off. Right now, she had to dance on this quicksand. She only had this one chance, and if she did anything wrong it would be the last chance NASA would ever give her. They would retire her and send her on PR junkets. She wanted to make history; this was history, made large, and she had to figure out what she was going to do about it.

NASA brass had now officially blessed Arsia A-5 as the location of the first colony and the rest of the crew now moved happily into the final phase of their duties: Nori, Colin, and Dunnie were mapping, testing, and engineering the area to be blocked-off; Ellis was busy keeping the main base operating, monitoring the fuel for the return trip and, in his spare time, overseeing Cupid’s scans of other parts of the lava tube.

The imaging he was generating from Cupid showed other habitations up and down the tube. It was more than anything the soothsayers at NASA could have imagined. Beyond the airlocks of the City, the transportation artery of the lava tube led to veins and capillaries that connected what appeared to be housing, manufacturing, farming—smaller in size than the City, but together representing a large population. Z shook her head in amazement, all of it had been completely out of sight.

Now it had been exposed, and next would come the expeditions of increasing size and frequency. She knew that if she could revive the life support and infrastructure of the cities, it would open a new world readymade for colonization… and exploitation. It was a pattern repeated consistently through time: dwellings of one culture became homes to another whose people brought them new life, added their art onto existing work, saluted new rulers, and built statues to new gods in places where old monuments had stood. Palmyra existed for centuries, through recurring tempests of Roman, Arab, Ottoman, and French conquerors. It had been a city, a colony, an empire, a caliphate and, ultimately, a pile of rubble—destroyed out of prejudice. The colonists would come, not all with the curiosity and awe she felt toward the Martians. Hopefully there would be no live Martians here, because their existence would require that they be conquered. She would never get a chance to see Mars’ future, but she did have the City of Ghosts to explore, today.

...

The responses to the pool questions were being edited in sequence with the questions recorded by World Media’s most popular anchor. Commander Elizabeth Nasri slated the question, took a breath and read, “How many times had you tried on the headset? And how does it feel to wear it?

“I've worn it twice. The first time was shocking because what I saw was so unexpected. It was my reaction to the unexpected that caused NASA to embargo any announcement. My reaction amplified the physical discomfort of wearing it, which is like a headache.”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Then she slated the next question, “Describe your experiences with the headset.

“The first time I tried on what we call the headpiece, or the stones, was just after I recorded the Chandelier Room post. I had mistaken it for jewelry, but it's actually a type of augmented reality device, I think. When I’m wearing it, I can see Martians—not just one or two, a whole city. We're still not sure exactly what it is that I’m seeing.

“The second time, which you heard me describe just before we discovered the Martian, was after I had determined there were no after effects to wearing the piece. There, in the Chandelier Room, I encountered the avatar of a Martian. At first, I thought I was just observing a recorded moment—almost like eavesdropping on the room with a security camera. I followed the Martian, then suddenly he turned directly to me and gestured to the headpieces and the box. I don't know if what I saw was sentient or an advanced artificial intelligence recording.”

Another slate. “Describe your feelings about discovering the Martian.”

In the editing room, Triche tapped the editor on the shoulder. “Don't take the next question. Use the alternate version where we ask ‘If he was a recording...?’"

The editor looked back at her. “You know that's not the official question.”

Triche smiled. This is what she did for a living. “It makes a better story.”

The editor inserted their anchor, asking the version of the question Triche had selected, “If he was only a recording, then what made you cry?”

On the recording, Z took a moment to revisit the mission’s enormous discoveries and how they had been encapsulated in her tears. “Everything I'd observed—the discovery of the city, the exploration, communicating with the avatar of a living Martian—struck me like a lightning bolt when I saw him dead. He symbolized an entire civilization, and seemingly a great one, all lost to us. A sister planet of living people, gone.”

“Slow motion her as soon as she finishes, then freeze and fade.” Triche watched Z’s eyes slowly close and her head drop ever so slightly before the fade to black, then she leaned back in her chair, smiled to herself, and plotted the future of the courageous Ms Nasri.

...

Through the graces of Triche’s deft instincts, the attempt to regain the trust of the public swiftly created a special connection between the Commander and the world. Where people had been used to receiving a two-dimensional view of calm and capable astronauts, they had seen something quite exceptional in Z’s final response: an astronaut who fully grasped the significance of her place in history.

Z discounted the feedback she heard; she had only answered the questions honestly. And now, since the cat was completely out of the bag with regard to the headpiece and her use of it, Z saw no reason not to use it to learn as much about the Martians as she could. She and her pocket drone traveled deep into Tunnel A in walking tours where she described the scenes that played out around her. In the beginning, she had hoped she could construct narratives by following individual Martians, but she discovered that the recording from the headpiece looped approximately a ten-minute sequence, so she could only follow an action or an individual for so long before the scene reset. Nonetheless through the unique vantage of the headpiece, she was able, piece by piece, to assemble the puzzle of the City into a picture of a culture.

The City was constructed in constellations of atriums. While wearing the headpiece, Z was able to see an ancient city that was vibrant and dynamic, filled with bustling marketplaces, stores, and workshops. Art and crafts of the ruins were restored, banners hung above walkways, cloth cushions encircled tables, woven mats lay on the floor. Murals that had become faded were colorful again. And most importantly, water flowed through the city in narrow canals from which it was channeled into buildings, fountains, and waterfalls.

Although many of the atriums were spacious, life in the city could best be described as compact. The largest boulevards connecting major rooms were no more than the width of an alley and most paths between structures were half that wide. The store fronts and work spaces that lined the paths were often the size of a walk-in closet and the largest were no larger than a living room. Houses were generally compact, efficient, and similar in architecture.

While there was commerce, currency didn’t seem to influence social status. In fact, there seemed to be no differentiation in status or wealth or living conditions among the Martians. In place of wealth, respect seemed to be the delineator of status. Z tried to understand on what principles respect was awarded but, as on Earth, respect is gained over time and time was something unavailable to her.

Technology was everywhere. The dearth of artifacts noted by the crew during their early explorations were the result of the culture's almost total reliance on an augmented reality facilitated by the ubiquitous headpieces. Graphics of all sorts—directional, informational, ornamental—floated in the air. Communications, wayfinding, and controls were available to the inhabitants simply by holding out an upturned palm.

Despite their access to technology, they seemed to be a society of craftspeople. Few household and personal possessions were mass-produced. Z saw clothing and cooking utensils being made and sold in tiny, neat storefronts. Cloth came from a plant that broke apart into threads that could be woven and dyed. Most objects were made from resin-like material that could be treated in different ways to make it able to be formed, printed, or painted.

Sol after sol, Z dedicated extra time beyond managing the mission to observing life in the City and recording her observations for episode after episode of Path of Discovery. On Earth, the recordings were enhanced with an overlay of ghosted Martians to help recreate the street life as Z saw it. Initially, the artist depicted Martians with a traditional science fiction/fantasy style. When Z saw them, her feedback was succinct: “They are not European. Imagine that everyone on Earth could see a bit of themselves in Martian features.”

But while Z threw herself into bringing the Martians to life for people on Earth, the memory of the Elder as a lifeless corpse was hard to put aside. Although she knew the apparition she had seen was not his living self, she was sorry to now remember him through this stronger image of his lifeless body. In a city full of mysteries he had been her chance at finding answers; instead, he had added to the mysteries. Where was his jeweled headpiece? Why hadn’t she seen the body in the antechamber when it had opened before?

The body had always been there. She was sure of it. It had been masked by the virtual reality painted by the headpiece. The headpiece had more power than she had realized. While she had hoped he would be her guide to the culture and the workings of the City, he was just the interface. The truth lay in the power that controlled the headpieces.