Agendas, plots, and the wheels therein began to turn and move on mars, each guided by the Great Curvature. Also, a computer intelligence was destined to appear as if she was helping.
"Guys," said Marilyn as she appeared on every screen inside the old scientific station of Mars-01. "I am taking over this primitive technology if you don't mind. Not that I'm really asking." Before she had even completed the sentence, every interface, screen, and piece of equipment rebooted. A heartbeat later, the Electoral 2072, logo rotated as if the screensaver had populated these flat screens since the station was first built. Animated by Marilyn, the 3D printers began to work across the station with purpose.
The nearly hundred men and women living and working inside the warren of modules watched, powerless and in awe, as Electoral instantly took possession of their home. An hour earlier, sand monsters rose, like an army hundreds of miles across, from the Valles. As the girl and her vehicle arrived in the landing bay, flashes of light high above the surface began. Red lightning rang and colored the puffs of dust. The crew of Mars-01 watched, their view partially obscured by the swirling sand as Sophie and their three intrepid colleagues released the stranded creatures one by one. Unable to see clearly from the station, the colors flashed like fireworks cluttered by walls of smoke.
Then, as if time had wound backward, the dust retreated into the depths of the Valles. Sophie was clearly oblivious to the powers eddying locally, focused on more important things. Pieces of the station began to move, lifted by heavy pneumatic arms. The long metal claws were used to rotate the station and dug deeper into the edge of the rock. The main structure of the station, currently on the central plateau above the Valles, began to lift and rotate inwards. As it did so, Sophie led the excursion team on its way back to the edge.
The second the station locked in a lower position against the rock, two long cables with attached baskets that had been previously dropped low in the Valles began to crank up toward the surface.
"Apologies guys," said Marilyn inside the team's helmets. In the low gravity of mars, nothing ever moved quickly to begin with, but under the control of the blond actress, the winches and ropes began to gain speed. Usually, the rise of the metal cage would have taken hours, but this time the process took only a matter of minutes, "This should bounce. Stay back," Marilyn warned as the engines began to noticeably heat, even in the cold martian environment. Everyone wondered what she meant until they heard a large bang and saw what looked like a shark observation tank. It passed the edge of the Valles, and under the inertia of its upward haul, it kept moving vertically after it cleared the canyon at about twenty miles per hour. The attached cables acted as bungee cords. It lifted, and for several hundred feet, the rope drum kept pulling and absorbing some of the energy. Marilyn stated the obvious, "It's coming back." As promised, the large metal box dropped but much slower.
In minutes, the passenger box was ready and open. The four large men were somewhat hesitant, but Sophie stepped inside the moment the door opened. "Let's go. No time to waste." The Attractor was different. For weeks she had remained indoors, completely uninterested by her surroundings; now she was a space explorer, leading a below-ground expedition in an atmosphere completely hostile to all known forms of life. Excepting, apparently, the Martians deep within the Valles. She looked around as if seeing invisible objects.
"What are you looking for?" asked Liam's silent voice.
"Joy," she said reluctantly, "it will soon start."
"What? Joy? How do you know?"
"Not sure. I just do. You will be happy that I brought you here."
"Sophie," asked Marilyn, "what are you talking about?”
"Seems like the martians understand gratitude, even on the eve of the Attraction."
***
Ronaldo explained as they prepared the cage, "We are here at the Titonium tip where the Valles is only two kilometers deep. In places, this trench is eleven kilometers. To reach the Door," he pointed to Sophie, "we will need to walk at least three hours. The distance isn't all that far, but the terrain is uneven. I know this landscape by heart." Someone from inside the station had suited up and drove a little rover with three boxes of capsules containing pressurized air.
"Sophie, should we bring any food?" asked one of the team.
"If you want a snack," snipped the girl but before anything could be discussed, Sophie waved her hands as the crew brought the oxygen-containing boxes inside the lift. They all expected Sophie to decide who would be going down and who would be staying. Instead, the young girl waved everyone in and pushed a button. The doors closed behind all five of them, leaving only the man who had delivered them the extra air. “You will love that, the most expensive tickets in the history of mankind.”
No one had the temerity to question the will of the young Attractor. Steve swallowed hard and reached out for the hand of Ronaldo. He was scared; the view alone was at best chilling to the most courageous as below the chasm was endless. Only Sophie seemed oblivious to the danger or grandiosity of her environment.
Without more, the cable started slowly unrolling. Even with the creak and clang of the cage and box, amidst the pulleys and other mechanical elements of the lift, there was almost no sound. The faint atmosphere typically muffled most sounds but this time something was different. The rattling pieces began to make a comforting noise. The systems around them were humming most elegantly as if it were elevator music designed to soothe passengers.
"Strange," said Marilyn. “Why would the Multiverse want this?” The soft sounds slowly increased with every few feet of the descent.
Marilyn knew better. As she continued transmitting to the world, she knew what was starting. Then she was able to find order in the sound, these were the warming note of a song she recognized. Marilyn added to the sound, using the humming as the base tone for a version of an old song.
Sophie smiled, she knew the song and felt warmed that the computer had picked it. Most humans would recognize it, in fact. Instantly the song warmed every heart. LO, her favorite singer, was in the Falcon 565 had recorded his own version. From the plane, he heard the notes. LO had buckled in for the prolonged deceleration to mars. As the music began, he unbuckled himself and stood up, tilting his body forward at an angle to keep from falling over under the g-forces. The music began to play in his plane, like any good musician, it was filling him, and he smiled from ear to ear.
He needed to sing.
This was his rendition of “Hallelujah.” Unclear if his voice was needed, he nevertheless looked at the screen and saw the young girl's hopeful eyes as she made her way down the metal lift to visit the martians. She loved him and his music. He felt like he was the only man able to help or touch her. He had to speak to her. The digital magic of the artificial intelligence was in full display. On each screen was a clip of the young singer, LO's ship and the young lady descending into the red canyon.
Back on mars, now descending into the Valles Marineris, Sophie's ad hoc little group heard a majestic voice sing through their suits' audio, this was LO "But you don't really care for music, do you . . ." Around them, the speed increased, and the ride became smoother, the red rocks of the wall feet away swept vertically by their faces and began to blur from the speed. As they descended, the music in their helmets grew in vigor. She was also powering up and the entire world was softening. Sophie's expression was priceless; she was smiling ear to ear in awe of this situation as if she could see the Multiverse laid out before her on a table.
"Marilyn, can you show all this to Daddy?"
"With sweet pleasure, my dear. Enjoy your welcome. Permit me to help this reach the next level, I now understand how this works."
"There's a blaze of light in every word," sang the man. This time, the song caused the light hitting the surface of mars to brighten to a bright gold hue and become diffused throughout the light sandy atmosphere. The last time Sophie had felt emotions like this was weeks ago, inside Marilyn’s hidden catapult, after being launched from high on the side of Mount Olympus. The same voice had sent her into a haze, and Marilyn leveraged her capacity for Rho wave production to seize the Dot from the Lower. This time Sophie knew better, the power wasn't Marilyn's, it was humanity's. Marilyn did not hold back and embraced the music.
They were below ground level but up in the sky, the same way the sun rises, Sophie saw a bright light in the distance coming from the direction from where the Electoral Center stood. A bright white radiated like a dazzling balefire from the sky. It was concentrated power from a single point.
Sophie could somehow perceive the energy was raw, it was connected to many, many dimensions. She had no clue what it was, but soon, the origin became less obscure. Slowly it was the Dot, it rose in the sky high above the Center to an altitude high above. Marilyn had just lit the planet with warm energy.
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The music grew in intensity. The light as it rose was so bright and created a false horizon in the Valles. There was a shadow on the other side lowering quickly as the light was about to illuminate every inch of the Valles. As the Dot rose, its' direct shine dipped into the canyon until it lit the group. As the energy flowed out, it made every grain of sand shine. It amplified Sophie's Rho waves.
The young girl was there yet the world around her was losing coherence.
Everyone was unclear how Marilyn's cameras managed to capture what came next, but they did.
The singer from far away continued his magic, and as the music continued its sojourn to a crescendo, the Attractor looked up in the sky above, not a simple human girl but as more. She smiled as if she was able to see, hundreds of thousands of miles away, the young singer and his ship. Marilyn did a snap-analysis of Sophie's gaze, and her pupils were indeed locked on the location of LO's ship, which was approaching mars at this very moment.
As Sophie gazed, there was a red sparkle like the first time she had seen Mall-ik.
"Hallelujah, Hallelujah," LO sang as the Dot powered up. Something strange was preparing as the martian sand seemed to color up.
The box and accompanying group continued its descent, and as it reached about a quarter of the way down the song ended softly. Without missing a beat, it began anew. This time, as the lyrics commenced, LO wasn't alone. It included several other tones. Sophie reached for the gloved hand of Ronaldo and grabbed it. "It begins," she whispered, excited. "Liam, can you see it?"
"Yes," answered the voice of her mentor in complete awe. The Oldest had actually begun to weep silently. This entire adventure was too much. Back inside Electoral's Center, Laurent, inside of his digital half-life had also started to shed tears. His daughter was miraculous.
The music was an enhanced, sweeter version. The sound appeared to be coming from all around the planet as if they were utterly surrounded by it. One by one, molecules of gas floated and began to fall like smoke in the Valles, slowly increasing the pressure and the temperature. The number of voices in the song increased and multiplied until it had formed a choir of a thousand. At the bottom of the Valles, sand began to loosen from the walls. In places, it looked like rain was washing away the vertical plates of rock, but in fact, they were being cleaned from eons of dirt.
The music grew in power until sand began to vortex in thousands of places. The players in the Holiday Inn, from their altitude saw mars come alive under the radiant energy of the Dot. It became alive from the foundation of the Valles, and like a giant hand, sand grabbed the still-lowering box with the gentlest of grips. Slowly the large metal box stopped its gentle descent.
Little shinning red diamonds began spinning and moved above their head. They cut the cable like saws. In the air, the song continued on, gaining additional warmth and strength. No one but Marilyn was able to comprehend what was going on.
Sophie was looking around in wonder, her heart filled with emotions. The passenger box, as if carried by the wind, resumed its descent but this time in a more controlled way. The song changed as it began a third time in a different language. This was an old, soft language used by the ancients in the chasm. On each wall of the chasm, sand began to liquefy and drop to the base revealing the most elegant tapestry of carvings, runes, and other elegant shapes. There were millions of square meters of carvings.
The last time martians celebrated anyone, they were still living in their primitive form closer to the sun. In public memory, as a side effect of their new structure made of silicates, emotions were few and far between. Living, as they saw it, was at best sad in this shadowy, cold underground world. Their few interactions were political or of police enforcement. These creatures had long forgotten how to enjoy life. But today was different.
It began.
The music spread in the growing atmosphere.
No one would ever know how any of what happened next was conceivable, but the message conveyed was without doubt one of respect, gratitude, and a desire to give honor where honor was due. To the martians, Sophie was, put mildly, a goddess.
Old energy collected and stored in billions of tons of rock below the ground usually had a single purpose: the defense of these paranoid and frightened creatures. This culture had never contemplated kindness toward another, much less a young twelve-year-old human girl. The power stored in the heart of mars and moving in its core was sufficient to reduce earth to rubble. A blast of invisible force would typically have been sent on its way to the blue gem, and every life would have ended under a rather magnificent electromagnetic pulse.
As the music powered and amplified the planet under the martian sun, the entire surface, made of sand, began to move like if it was alive. Colossal amounts of gas rose from the depths, but each molecule rose with a singular purpose. It was honoring a human. The Dot slowly began to attract some of the sand. The grains began to swirl and heat up until the Dot itself began to shine in a soft, beautiful yellow. Sophie smiled as for the first time in a month; normal light had returned.
"Incredible," said Liam. "Terraforming."
"What?" asked the Attractor to her precious guest.
"They are trying to recreate your world,” the next part was added with genuine respect, “for you." Sophie looked at all the numbers displayed on the forearm of her costume to see the basic atmospheric data. The atmosphere was increasing in density and was now at about thirty percent of what existed on earth up tenfold in minutes. The temperature was rising slowly. Sophie read -4°C or about 25°F a cold day on earth.
The men around here were in emotional shock.
A memory Nick possessed, but did not recall, of climbing a tree in his back yard when he was five-years-old was theirs for the taking. Within the broken brilliant minds, they understood the game, the Sixth Attraction, and the struggle between the Multiverse and this race. They parsed the words, images, and emotions associated with the events of the past few months. Needing no more, the martians had passed an expeditious judgment. They also reconnected with the ancients from mercury, who confirmed Sophie's authenticity. The girl had not negotiated or hesitated. She released them.
They knew Attraction, it was in their old lore. Sophie was the savior they had long awaited. She was kind, compassionate, and acted with a pure purpose. She had released their brethren to them and the men who sacrificed themselves were here, amongst them. Christian had given his life selfishly. There was no deception. She was now coming to talk to them, she needed something and they did not care what it was. She was Universal royalty.
They knew who Sophie was, what she had endured, and how she and the human named Emilio were revered with deep humility by people they had rescued or helped on their journey to this moment. Said differently, the race of elders was ashamed of itself and for having looked down on humans and their creation.
Millions of structures made of sand began to rise over the surface of mars. Each significant vortex of sand building focused on Sophie as an inspiration and the music still ringing through the thickening martian air. The creatures knew of her struggles, her fights, and her father. The same way Liam had built an immense statue of the girl in his digital world, it was the least these creatures could do.
A beauty of a different kind began to take hold over mars; a new enmeshment of the red planet's natural splendor with the applied lessons of both humanity and the native martians. Swirls of colored sands shifted, each formed of millions of grains. Birdlike creations dashed over the developing skies if mars, and similarly, approximations of fish swam about in the planet's new-formed rivers of sand that crept along the surface. In the Valles, sand flowed over vast chasms in infinite loops like the Earth's Niagara Falls on a grander scale. Sophie loved birds and other animals from earth. In places, sand-fashioned giraffes and elephants rose and walked in herds. Thousands of colossal giants of sand appeared on the edge of the Valles. Sophie looked up and recognized them. Statues of Mall-ik, Liam and her father saluted her. Laurent stood proudly in the group, gazing outward to the horizon the loving expression he reserved only for his daughter.
The viewers on earth, Marilyn and Sophie’s immediate companions were simply unable to digest the beauty rising over this dry sterile planet. This was clearly more than power, it was humility.
“Rho waves Sophie, they are using them,” whispered Marilyn in her ear.
The Martian collective had voted unanimously to empty all power from their energy reserve and use that it to make this one particular human at home, they no longer cared about themselves. Power began to surge. Other images flooded the landscape. The young girl liked amusement parks, in many places Ferris wheels, rollercoasters, and waterparks, sans water, appeared. Imagery from Alice in Wonderland popped up in the landscape. On the walls of the chasm were displays of human culture's grandeur. The Canyon came alive.
As shapes, buildings, and statues took form, the music transformed into pieces that the Martians had written millions of years ago. They knew Sophie would be proud of them if they returned to a more simpler time. In places, pyramids appeared. In the sky, the human birds made of sand remained. Hundreds of sizable statues made of sands appeared on the landscape. Every human watched from Earth, mouths agape, as they radiated a general sense of relief, respect, and curiosity.
On the rocks, as the metal cage slowly made its way down to the Door, light bounced off the grains and tribal shapes covered every inch of the vertical endless walls. The four men in the team were simply unable to do more than force themselves to breathe. The entire world was changing as if Marilyn had taken hold of the planet and reconstructed it using her nanotechnology. The song and music increased in power. As it played, the sand moved. This was humbling to anyone and any living creature except one: Sophie Lapierre.
She had simply expected it and enjoyed the alien gesture enormously, despite her usual disdain for attention. This was different, it has humility.
One creature, the one who had lived longer than any other, found perfection in the words, music, and gestures of creation. "Beautiful one," Liam said, his voice being broadcasted by Marilyn's interpretive and transmission skills, could be heard by every living creature in the solar system. "This conveys to perfection my feelings of you, they honor you deeply."
"Listen," she shushed. Some type of Middle Eastern music began; it was delightful. The Dot was pulsing and moving in the sky to give light below. Then from the very ground, a hundred sand creatures rose as if they were tasked with thanking her personally. The handful of grains were made of shiny silver. They sparkled individually. The young girl waved at them. Sophie did not say a word. Instead, Liam added, "In my wildest dreams, I never would have dreamt this. I am blessed to have met you." He usually would have spoken about how he could now die happily, but edited himself out.
There were songs and dance. The spectacle had no equal. For a full hour, as the box slowly made its way to the Door, images of creatures long gone, of music from the past, of the solar system, played onward.
"If I had touched anything, any domino in the sequence, this would never have happened," Sophie whispered to her companions. She looked at her forearm. The cage landed, and Sophie opened the gate.
Then with both hands, she unlocked her suit and removed her helmet. High above was a shining yellow light over a dark sky. The Martians were unable to recreate earth's blue color. Sophie took a deep breath. Oxygen wasn't scarce, but Nitrogen was much more prevalent here on mars. That said, there was enough to fill the bottom of the Valles. A small, excited shock ran through the human group. Sophie, once again, had expected this and began to unzip the rest of the bulky suit.
She was here.