Miramar, California

Texier Interstellar, Earth Operations Center

Proxima Centauri Media Room

January 25, 2060 – 5 years, 3 months before Kuora Seed Drop

Bendik knew how to spin a story. He knew this one needed tension to build in his audience before he told it. So, he kept looking at the hologram, not needing to fake or play at his own sense of wonder. When the space was ripe, he turned to them, the speed of the playback increased, and Bendik brought them into his world.

He began by showing them the impossibly glassy foundation walls and explained the molecular alignment of silica used to seal them. The mass of rovers crisscrossed streaks through the valley in the time-lapse, a chaotic mechanized army scouring the soil. He pointed and talked about raw material scavenging, refining, and component production.

He explained the creation of their concrete replacement, an ultra-high viscosity creation they’d dubbed Skate because it slid off anything. Bendik pointed out the two types of bots responsible for creating it. First a small rover, topped with six metallic spheres set in two lines, like eggs in a carton and second, huge twelve-legged tanker types, each as big as a small jet.

These unique bots paired up and began their work, converting towering piles of excavated soil into Skate and pumping it into the trench system from three locations around the perimeter. The audience couldn’t see it, but Bendik explained the Skate virtually ignored friction and would spread evenly throughout the miles of foundation.

The piles shrank, and Bendik slowed the playback just in time for the Skate to rise into view. It looked a richer red than the surrounding Martian dirt and glistened, reflecting the sunlight. Through the miles upon miles of foundation, it was just as he’d claimed, perfectly level.

When the trenches were full, Bendik said, “This is how we cure Skate.” Over about thirty seconds, waves of heat rose from the curving foundation lines, then the whole thing grew dull. That earned a hushed murmur.

He continued on and described their modular rover system, showed them the scavenging heads that were in use, and toured them through other types of production heads that sat in neat rows beside a pair of the squat spacecraft they’d seen on the moon.

Then the hologram replay accelerated, and the sun whipped through the Martian sky, flickering the scene from red to black to red as a staging yard sprang into life and filled with stacks of long bluish-grey metal. He told them about nano-refining the native metals and of the ultra-weather resistant properties that the resultant materials had.

The stockade of neatly piled beams filled to capacity, and the sun’s harried race came back to a crawl. Bendik began to pace the stage.

Around the staging area, trios of rovers began to pull blue-gray beams and fabricate triangular and octagonal panels. At the same time, other groups combined them and assembled the interior structural frames. A city of lattice-work domes grew before their eyes.

The drones soon finished the smaller buildings, and all work focused on raising the main dome. Progress was slow at first, but instead of accelerating the playback, Bendik took control of the hologram, and with quick hand-gestures, moved them among a branching series of completed frames. They were built in pairs and looked like a wire model of two cells stuck together. Bendik explained those would be homes.

Then he brought them through several high-bayed frames where the drones would be stored and maintained. Then to a massive low roofed paraboloid frame where the livestock would graze. He continued this tour through research facilities, two apiaries for pollinators, fitness gyms, and the multi-stage airlocks onto the surface proper.

Finally, he flew their view over a vast portion of land along one edge with just a few structures and easy-rolling hills created by the drones. “This,”–he turned and smiled–“will be a forest bordered by a lake.” Bendik’s expression glowed as his eyes danced excitedly over his audience. He caught General Leven chuckling and shaking his head.

After a long moment, Bendik rolled into discussing the science of soil reclamation. He told them about activated carbon impregnation, the extensive plan for permaculture, organic materials cultivation, and the thousands of planned mini wells, going miles deep to tap the vast underground Martian ice reserves.

Bendik grew excited and animated as he spun this story of scientific miracles and how they’d bring life back to the dead ground.

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The holo-perspective soared thousands of feet up, and the main dome assembly work came into view. As it curved upward, Bendik explained the main barrier was actually a spherical cap, like the top third cut from a ball, which was stronger than a half dome.

It was large enough to hold Manhattan with room to spare. He joked that members of the newborn Republic of New York could apply for a transfer, should they wish to brave the admission interview. The jest was not well received by most.

While he was winding his scientific yarn, several days passed in the Martin scene, and soon after, they watched in silence while the final frame panels dropped into place. The bots scurried off the thin, bluish, mushroom-cap frame like retreating ants.

Above the stage, projected in perfect detail, hung the single largest habitation structure ever assemble by humanity. Encasing more than 8,000 acres, more than two miles across, and a mile high, there was nothing on earth even close. And Bendik’s show was only getting started.

“It took a few weeks to complete the preparations for enclosing the primary barrier,” Bendik said, as he indicated two excavation sites beginning to take shape. The first was circular and centered in the city. The second bordered the would-be forest and was shaped like the beans of a sugar-snap pea, ovals bent into a gentle crescent with pinched union points between.

Separate squadrons of rovers, having swapped from their construction attachments to rotating excavation heads, carved these dry lakes. Interestingly, all of the dirt was gathered in crimson piles around the crescent-shaped lake.

A dozen long ramps, smooth sides glinting with structured silica, followed the downward progress, seeming to appear like fossils being excavated as the drones cut around them.

Each hole was enormous, more than a hundred twenty acres each, Bendik explained, and comparable in depth to an old granite quarry. The contrast between their dark depths and the thin dome skeleton above brought a better sense of scale, and a steady hush of whispers and awe-inspired gasps came from the viewers. Completed sections of the reservoir walls reflected light as the ramps did, the glint slowly creeping down from neatly cut shorelines as the excavation continued.

Time was again marked by the passage of many nights until they were complete. The ramps disappeared, and Bendik slowed the show. “These will be the first freshwater lakes on the surface of Mars for more than a billion years.” He held up a finger. “First, though, we used them to hold the Grak.”

He motioned again, and the hologram view zoomed in on rovers lining up and swapping excavation heads for backpack units that slide into place on rails. The large top-mounted attachments had two flattened pipes curving down to stick out like tines on a forklift close to the ground.

Pairs of the Skate producing craft were positioned around the forest lake's ovals. They were joined by a swarm of the backpack generalist bots. Bendik looked at the room. “Grak is strong enough to stop micro meteor impacts and responsive enough to rapidly self-heal from anything it cannot stop.”

Rover actions blurred as time sped up again. The generalist bots collected soil, sucking it in through the broad flat pipes, then conveying it to one of a dozen collection pipes protruding from one side of each tanker drone. They then drove to a perimeter spot and dumped any material not needed for the Grak, forming a high berm. The cast-off material was deep red, almost black.

Day and night cycles raced by, flashing the room with a red strobe light effect. Then, quite suddenly, all the motion stopped.

Revealed in the still hologram were five massive ovals of coral blue, each connected to the next with a short line of the same color. It looked like pools of blue paint on a red canvas. The projection was stark and breathtaking. It was modern art, arresting in a way that stirred the soul and stamped indelible memory on each observing mind. The room was dead quiet.

After a long moment, Bendik spoke three words. “This… is Grak.”

Time rolled on. The large tankers lined up along one side of the Grak lakes, that closest to the frame. They dropped hoses into the liquid, and other hoses were pulled by rovers to the foundation and hooked up to special solid frame sections with couplings for the purpose.

Then frame began to fill.

The view stayed zoomed out this time, and initially, some people couldn’t see any change, but it didn’t take long for the Grak to spread, and soon everyone could see the crystalline wall growing upward. The blue-gray metal of the frame seemed to disappear as it was encased, leaving only the faintest line that you had to really look for.

It happened rapidly, perhaps too quickly for the skeptics in the crowd to trust. In one day, less than a minute in replay time, it neared the halfway point. The daylight cycled ended, darkness descended, and with it, all ability to observe progress was lost. There was no moon or any other source of illumination other than the small lights on each rover.

When the sun rose over the construction project, the transparent barrier was nearly complete. It finished without fanfare, the lake was once again dry, the bots dispersed, some swapping heads to continue scavenging for raw materials, others parking in a neat row.

Bendik watched their faces. He could see hope and wonder in nearly every eye and smile. In some, it seemed almost begrudged, like something unearthed after a decade buried beneath cynical determination. But it was there all the same. Bendik judged that maybe, just maybe, there were a few aspiring extra-terrestrials in the room after all.

He allowed the image to spin for a bit longer before stopping it and bringing the house lights up. “Exo-Terran habitation will be a reality in our lifetime. This city is now completely operational, and over a thousand people are living–” Bendik stopped short as people in the back corner of the room began to talk excitedly, some standing and pointing toward the door in that corner. Bendik’s eyes narrowed. Yelling echoed from the hall just outside the door.

He took an instinctive step towards Pete and glanced at the man. Pete gave him a severe look, pointed at his ear, then started pulling his suit coat and tie off. Bendik did the same, tossing his blue blazer to the ground–he didn’t wear a tie–and bounded down the short string of steps.

If needed, he and Pete could fight, and should it come to that, the restrictive clothing would only impede them. He hoped, very much, it would not.