Funny thing, even the folks of the late 22nd century hadn’t quite cracked the whole cryopreservation thing yet. According to the database Neera gave me access to, there were still a handful of cryonically preserved denizens of the 21st century floating around the remaining nations of the world. However, they were still essentially no better off than when they died.

Sure, most of the ailments these remaining “corpsicles” had could be easily treated now, but the issue of resuscitation was still the controlling factor. Despite major advances in medical knowledge, the thawing process still resulted in massive and rapid cellular degradation, and an “unrevivable” subject. While replication certainly didn’t live up to the full benefits of the “Platinum Package” I had won a few lifetimes ago, I was actually starting to find my new form to be pretty damn cool, all things considered…

Now when FAITH sold me off, I could’ve easily ended up on the dissection table of some biomedical researcher, or rotting in the ground on some body farm. OR they could’ve simply opted to unceremoniously dispose of my “heretical” corpse in a mass grave. All things being equal, having my brain “cubified” and being shipped to Mars and forgotten in some space-pilgrim’s storage closet was a relatively ideal turn of events. Especially considering I just “slept” through most of the nastiness of the last century and a half, and now found myself in what surficially appeared to be a new “Golden Age” of humanity, at least from my perspective.

Another key aspect to the journey of Dr. Samuel Scott’s consciousness through space and time, I had been recovered by the U.S.E. They were the only remaining nation on Earth that I had any sort of cultural ties to, at least potentially. After the fairly recent bombardment of the Americas, many survivors from the former United States made their way across the Atlantic and joined the U.S.E. as refugees after denouncing FAITH. While this group only made up a marginal percentage of the remaining 6 billion people on Earth, it was still strangely reassuring to know that at least some of my fellow countrymen had persisted into this new age. One thing that would take some getting used to, the fact that I was apparently just “a backup of a backup”.

Shortly after entering geosynchronous orbit around Mars, the U.S.E. mothership dubbed “The U.S.E. Francis Drake” or “The Drake” for short, located two roughly “Big Wheel”-sized rovers not far from the abandoned FAITH colony site. The abandoned site was located in the southern hemisphere of Mars, in a small crater along the northern rim of Hellas Planitia. An interesting colonization target given what I already knew about Martian geology and former ideas for potential Mars missions, but the exact motives that led to me being dropped in this particular “Hellas hole” still needed to be determined. That little research project was on my rapidly growing to-do list.

The mission logs of The Drake revealed that after landing, a few “rovers” were sent to investigate the dust-covered scrap heaps they’d spotted in orbit. I say “rovers” because the robot explorers employed by the U.S.E. didn’t really “rove”, so much as “gallop”.

They were roughly the size of a horse, with four legs and a massive actuated robotic arm in lieu of a head and neck. I wasn’t sure what the state of “patent law” was after 150 years on ice, but if it still existed as I understood it, then the Boston Dynamics company would have a CLEAR case against the U.S.E. These “ExoPONIEs” looked like “Spot” on steroids, with the only notable difference being that they were clearly purpose built for geochemical analysis and sample collection on Mars and other terrestrial bodies.

The “ExoPlanetary Observation and Natural Investigation Explorers” were apparently quite useful, as the Eurasia Space Control Center had elected to bring 2 of them along for the interplanetary journey, and apparently a third unit was actively being printed.

Yes. Printed...

3D-printing had been taken to the technological extreme over the course of my extra long nap, and humanity could now print objects ATOM by ATOM! That, paired with the realization of portable fusion reactors, made the availability of certain elements the only controlling factor in terms of production. If you had the ingredients, you could print virtually anything, even complicated devices like a replicant matrix. Not quite a Star Trek “replicator”, but essentially just as useful, and it was scaleable. These printers ranged in size from a microwave to an airplane hanger, with even larger examples called “Auto-Factories” found in orbit around Earth. Combine these “Clark-tech” like printers with the slightly terrifying “recycling nanites”, and you could break down almost any old pile of junk and turn it into something useful.

The U.S.E. lander had both a small unit for printing minor items and individual parts in the main cabin, and a large unit built into the lower section of the ship for printing larger items and surface equipment. At this moment, the large printer was cooking up one of those “peripherals” engineer O’Donnel had mentioned to me yesterday, in the form of my own Martian Robo-Horse.

While running through the specs of the ExoPONIE, I felt giddy, like a kid in a candy store. I couldn’t imagine any little girls asking for one of these PONIEs for Christmas, but I could think of a couple formerly living herds of geologists that would’ve literally given an arm and leg for a few hours on one of these bad boys.

Ground penetrating radar. X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. Inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometer. Laser-induced breakdown spectroscope. A fully automated sample collection and cache system. And the cherry on top? All this juicy instrumentation was powered by a miniaturized fusion reactor, that would’ve had Tony Stark drooling, built into the belly of the mechanical beast. This reactor could power the unit almost indefinitely, only needing to be topped up on reactants a few times each year. The deuterium was courtesy of processed Martian water ice, and the large Helium-3 reserve attached to The Drake was the result of the takeover and reactivation of the semi-autonomous ApSyn Inc. mines on the Moon.

The last set of features of the ExoPONIE that sufficiently blew my simulated mind was the onboard 3D-printer unit and a “Resource Collection System”. The “RCS system” was essentially a small grappler and tether that was shot from the base of the rover’s body into whatever target you wanted to extract material from. After making contact with the target, a fleet of nanites moved down the tether like some kind of ferrofluid, until finally reaching the surface of the object. The recycling nanites then start to “chow down”, quickly removing the desired elements from the target, nanogram by nanogram. And presto! Just like that, you can print whatever futuristic doodad you’ve got the plans for. ------------------------

So shortly after being sent out on their mission, these ExoPONIEs reached the two derelict rovers covered in decades worth of Martian dust, and after careful removal of the layers of dirt and grime using some kind of sonic cleaning tool, a weakly faded “Applied Synergetics Inc” badge was found attached to the side of each rover. This confirmed the suspicion of the U.S.E. team that these were in fact leftovers from the abandoned FAITH mission. Also of note, each rover held a removable replicant matrix that appeared undamaged upon first inspection. Predictably however, the simulated synaptic network the device was designed to hold had been wiped clean by the FAITH trojan. The hardware log from the rover still needed to be extracted and analyzed, but it was pretty clear that these were the empty shells of a digitized soul.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Soul”, in the strictly unconventional sense of the word. As any conventional definition had lost all its previously held meaning after quietly renouncing my faith as a teenager growing up in the heart of the old American Bible Belt. Actually, my introduction to Earth Science as a kid had played a big role in my move away from religion, and in the development of my own personal metaphysical philosophies. I didn’t have a problem with religious people, so long as they weren’t the type that tried to force their worldview and values down the throats of anyone they deemed a “sinner”, like FAITH for example. Upon the revelation that the Earth was in fact 4.5 BILLION years old, and that the universe itself was about 3-times as old as that, my newfound perspective on the nature of reality didn’t exactly mesh well with the teachings of the Southern Baptist Church my

parents had tried so hard to indoctrinate me into.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love my parents. Or is it loved? No.I still love my parents, despite them undoubtedly passing away a long time ago, probably not far after me. The thought of my parents on their deathbed, and of my older brother “Tanner” burying them by himself, brought a simulated tear to the corner of my avatar’s eyes.

My parents, my brother, my friends, my students, former girlfriends, lost loves, and literally anyone else I once held dear was undoubtedly dead and gone. And to boot, these people I cared so deeply for, had to deal with the trauma of my own premature death while they were still alive. I wonder what my funeral was like? Honestly, I just hoped Tanner was able to rehome my little herd of trailer park cats. Maybe he even adopted them himself?

That triggered another realization. The remains of all of these people, my cats, and whatever was left of my body, were more than likely vaporized in the orbital bombardment of FAITH about half a century ago. And here I was, the only remaining testament to their existence. A sentient paperweight on Mars.

I quickly shook off the macabre thoughts and made a concerted effort to stuff them deep down inside my coding to deal with later.

Now, as for whose deleted souls had previously inhabited the cubes, that mystery was actually pretty short-lived according to Neera, whose position as “Expedition Commander” had been recently revealed to me.

After landing, “Commander Neera Sullivan” and her team of 4 fellow interplanetary explorers moved in to investigate what appeared to be the only complete structure left behind by the FAITH colonists.

A dome covered in regolith erupted from the Martian surface, roughly 25 feet in diameter, with a simple airlock allowing access to the interior. After gaining entry, the team found that the dome was actually a pressurized sphere built into the martian surface. The upper hemisphere, or ground level, appeared to have been used as a habitation and research space. The lower hemisphere, on the other hand, was divided into several compartments of various uses.

While checking out the lower section, a large pressurized tube was found in the central compartment. Upon inspection, it appeared to serve as an elevator of sorts to a then-unknown destination below the Martian surface. In classic sci-fi movie fashion, after repairing the habitat’s power supply, Neera and her team of intrepid space explorers boarded the futuristic transportation platform, and found themselves descending through a massive, weakly lit vertical lava tube. After about 300 feet worth of eerie views out of the transparent panel at the front of the transport pod, the elevator arrived at its destination. The doors opened into a short hallway, leading to another airlock about 30 feet away.

Finally, after passing through this final series of ridiculously thick airlock doors, the U.S.E. team was welcomed into a massive open chamber lined by dark basaltic rock, with a large rail of lights stretching across the ceiling filling the room with a weakly orange glow reminiscent of an early morning on Earth.

According to the 3D scan of the space I’d found in the database, the horizontal lava tube was almost exactly 1/10th of a mile long and about a football field wide; being approximately 158.7 meters in length, having an average width of 89 meters, and an average height of 60 meters. Despite being accessed by an airlock, the atmosphere within this space remained uncontrolled, at least for all practical purposes, like breathing. It was more tame than the atmosphere on the surface, and more dense, but still hardly anything worth inhaling. The temperature down here was relatively inviting compared to the surface, being about 16 to 17 degrees Celsius on average. As far as ways to live on Mars, this was seemingly one of the better options, despite the ambience of the environment being a little “spooky”.

Relatively speaking, there wasn’t much of interest within this cavernous space, at least not for the average person. Untold geologic mysteries to explore aside, the only thing of note within the lava tube was a small collection of egg-shaped buildings near the entrance.

It was within one of these abandoned structures, one particularly appearing to be some kind of engineering workshop, that I was discovered in the back of a closet beneath a pile of miscellaneous rover equipment and other junk. The container that had held me was marked “Ancillary Replicant Matrix”, as if it was just some spare computer part, and not the entire fiber of my sentient being neatly tied up in a little blue box.

Calum, the team engineer, carefully investigated the matrix, and managed to remove the mind deleting virus that came pre-installed courtesy of my former owners. After that it was simply a matter of printing a NERVE unit for me so I didn’t go completely bananas, and waking me up. And the rest, as they say, is “history”...

Quick inspection of the basic data provided by the NERVE revealed it had been almost a full 72hrs, or just shy of 3 sols since my melodramatic revival with Neera. Thanks to the database, I had been on a 3-day research bender in the virtual office space, but it had only felt like a few hours in retrospect. Time flies when you’re nerding out I suppose.

While Neera had suggested I self initiate a sleep cycle every 10 to 12 hours to help ease my brain into my new reality, I had evidently been just fine without it. I was notorious for pulling similar stunts as an academic back on Earth, but I was always limited by my biological need for REM sleep.This was an interesting development that I’d be sure to put to good use.

According to the direct SMS memo Calum had so kindly sent me, it would soon be time to take my freshly printed ExoPONIE for a test drive. I thought really hard about bringing up the sleep cycle interface, and like magic, a floating screen with the corresponding program opened in front of me. NERVE-tech was pretty sweet.

I wouldn’t consider myself “tired” by any means, but I did want to go ahead and test out the sleep function for curiosity sake. I set myself to auto-wake at the same time Calum had estimated the completion of my robotic stallion.

Then, as if someone had just snuck up behind me and pressed a rag full of chloroform to my face, I instantly lost consciousness.