The Freedom - Bring Solar System To Life

Part 4 - Tears And Life

PART FOUR – TEARS AND LIFE

BETWEEN RUINS

When Mars was attacked, its settlers tried to use any radio channel, any way of communication, asking for help. Their screams could be heard through the whole Solar System. Recordings of their calls exist from Mercury all the way to Sedna. They were calling anyone, anywhere, asking for help or a way out. In response, they got a single message from Aral Space: "One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic". History proves this completely true.

Joseph Browell, Solar System Colonisation, 2387.

March 18th, 2334. From the ruins, Mars is transforming itself. Factories are being built everywhere. They build habitat modules and life support systems, to rebuild new colonies. People are subject to massive relocation programs. Many colonies from the North are being moved away. That is where the new oceans will be. New rails are also being built. The whole planet is becoming a large building compound.

In addition to all this, settlers are working to produce greenhouse gasses. They are mining and refining fluorine, mixing it with sulphur and releasing in the air sulphur hexafluoride. Mars needs far less of this gas then the moons of Jupiter. The process should work much easier here. In addition, comets are to be brought and splashed on the planet to create an ocean. Mars will have oceans and a thick atmosphere. Terraforming was the first condition imposed by Aral Space, without any right of negotiation.

But, for the people living on Mars, life is anything but happiness. They are the ones who must work to rebuild their country, even if under guidance. They have to spend long hours building assembly lines for future factories that will build all components they need. They are the ones who must assemble parts needed for colonies like into a giant puzzle, piece by piece, until everything fits in place. And at the end of the day, they only get a bowl of tasteless Chlorella algae to eat, a dirty bed to sleep in a crowded room and a body wash every ten days. All is done under strict supervision by Aral Space military patrols.

People have no right of movement and no access to any source of information other than propaganda. Their lives are simple: work and sleep, with two breaks for eating and listening to propaganda. Nothing else. Families are separated on purpose. And there is another important rule: don't speak. People saying a single word, a single whisper, can end-up in a public execution. Speaking is strictly forbidden, except when asked.

Nobody from the outside world is allowed to come to Mars and nobody from Mars is allowed to communicate with the outside world. The planet is transformed into a giant prison. No commerce occurs at all. Still, Mars remains called a 'free state' even if it is not.

Some people have been sent out from the planet to rebuild Phobos and Deimos. Others are planned to be sent even further away, they have no idea where that will be.

The only hope they have is that terraforming works and one day they will be able to breathe fresh air outside of their domes and habitat modules. Greenhouse gasses already make the planet warmer and the carbon dioxide polar caps are sublimating in the atmosphere. Now they wait for comets to come and create oceans in the North. Once that happens, the old valleys, that have been dry for millions of years, will have water flowing again. Life will spread on the red planet and humans will be able to live outside of their shelters. But, until then, there is a long way to go. And Mars is not the only planet targeted for comet impacts. The same will happen with the Moon and with Mercury.

A BLINK OF HOPE

Life finds its way in the most difficult environments, from the deep ocean trenches to the highest mountains, from the hottest and driest deserts to the coolest and most inhospitable polar ice caps, from deep underground caves to thermal toxic vents. The only place where life has not managed to go is outside the Earth until humans took it out there.