Jezero City: Colony Four Mars (Colony Mars Book 4) Read online

  Jezero City

  Colony Four Mars

  Gerald M. Kilby

  Contents

  Reader’s Group

  Maps

  1. Five Klicks Due South

  2. Colonist Number 897

  3. Old Town

  4. Like An Everyday Gal

  5. Terraforming

  6. At The Red Rock

  7. G2 Unit

  8. NIli Fossae

  9. Distraction

  10. Central Logistics

  11. Dumb Droid

  12. Smoking Gun

  13. MASS

  14. Harsh Environment

  15. Way Station 29

  16. Council Session

  17. Reboot

  18. Droid Down

  19. Decentenial Celebrations

  20. You Want Me To Do What?

  21. Space Station

  22. Star

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Reader’s Group

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  1

  Five Klicks Due South

  Jay Eriksen was just five klicks due south of the way station when he first felt a slight change in the rover’s operation. Nothing major, just a different sound. But it came with a vaguely troubling vibration, the sort that could be nothing—then again it could mean trouble.

  His senses were now on high alert to any further fluctuations in the mechanics of the machine. Jay was acutely aware that the only thing keeping him alive on Mars was technology, and if some vital component failed, then he would probably die. But he was not unduly worried, since he was nearing his destination: the way station near the entrance to the six-hundred kilometer long Nili Fossae trench. It was a small but fully resourced outpost, used as a transit stop for traffic going north to the mines and research stations, and west to Jezero Crater.

  There were a great many of these way stations, or relay points, as they were sometimes called. They radiated out from the main population centers in Jezero Crater and punctuated the routes to the new mines and scientific survey outposts. A welcome refuge for the weary traveler along the expansive Martian highways.

  The road Jay was currently on would take him to the mining outpost at Nili Fossae. It was a well-traveled route, with machines crossing the high central plateau loaded with ore for processing back in Jezero—the ever expanding epicenter of human colonization on Mars.

  The rover bounced and rocked along this dried-out river channel that once fed the vast lake at Jezero Crater, back when Mars had been a wet planet, millions of years ago. Now it had a new purpose, as a road that wound its way up through the rugged and broken landscape to the entrance of the great canyon at Nili Fossae.

  Jay knew it well. He had delivered supplies many times to the mining outpost as well as to the various way stations along its route. These were an important component in the fledgling highway infrastructure of Mars. They facilitated longer journeys, expanding the reach of the exploration teams and miners. As on Earth, useful resources were seldom conveniently located on one’s doorstep, so long journeys needed to be made to access these resources. Up here, all across Nili Fossae, was an area rich in calcium carbonate, a significant compound in the manufacture of cement. This made the expansion of Jezero possible. Here the raw materials for construction were extracted and transported back down to the Industrial Sector, where it was processed into a thick viscous sludge to be used by the multitude of industrial 3D printing robots that now dominated Jezero’s landscape. They worked non-stop, 24/7, or as in the case of Mars 24.5/7, laying down new layers and constructing ever more intricate buildings. The old Colony One, now known as Jezero City, had expanded beyond all recognition over the last decade, and currently housed over nine hundred people.

  The building never stopped, the machines never slept. It seemed to Jay that with each passing sol, some new sector was being brought online, plugged in and filled with an atmosphere. Some of these new structures were just basic concrete domes to be used for food production. Others were better crafted, for use as accommodation, or medical, or manufacturing. There were also many new municipal spaces simply for the enjoyment of the growing population.

  But the construction robots had also been busy elsewhere. The new Industrial Sector, site of the old Colony Two, had also grown significantly under their ceaseless mechanical hand. It now expanded out from the cave at the base of the crater rim to accommodate the workshops and processing plants of the burgeoning asteroid mining industry that was the main source of Jezero’s wealth.

  Even the vast formerly empty space of the central crater basin had not escaped the hand of humanity. Here a two kilometer diameter pad of concrete had been laid down to facilitate a spaceport, with a myriad of ancillary buildings for administration, immigration and technical support hugging its western edge.

  Over time, natural roads had been etched out across the crater connecting all these different sectors. They had been created more by constant use than by design. But other natural roads existed, ones created long ago by the geological nature of the planet, back when Jezero was a vast lake. To the west and north, two great channels had been carved into the rock by rivers feeding the lake from the highlands of Nili Fossae. To the northeast another natural channel would have drained this primordial lake into the Isidis Planitia, a vast circular lowland plain over fifteen hundred kilometers across. Further out, the northern rim of Isidis merged into the immense, and poetically named, Plains of Utopia. North of this were the research stations of the UN Mars Alliance Scientific Survey (MASS). To the west were the platinum mines in the lee of Elysium Mons, a long extinct volcano some fourteen kilometers high. It was out there that the furthest reaches of humanity’s footprint on Mars extended.

  The distances to these far-flung outposts of humanity were immense. The mines at Elysium were some two thousand kilometers from Jezero, too far to travel directly in a standard rover. So all along these routes way stations were dotted. Positioned approximately two to three hundred kilometers apart, depending on terrain, they were the Marian equivalent of truck stops. Here the weary traveller could lay up, find some sustenance and a bed for the night. They were completely autonomous structures, kept stockpiled with supplies of food, water and air. They also had solar energy generation and a methane reactor for refueling.

  Jay Eriksen was one of many couriers, as they were called, moving goods and supplies around the expanding human infrastructure on Mars. He was in essence a truck driver, and the irony was not lost on him, that since more truck driving jobs were being lost to autonomous vehicles on Earth, there were far better prospects for the profession up here on Mars. Yet he would shortly be giving up this life, and finally realizing his dream of returning to Earth. He counted down the sols to his departure.

  He had been so immersed in his reverie that he hadn’t noticed the temperature alert flashing on his console. It was Banjo, his G2 unit, that brought it to his attention. Banjo was a semi-autonomous droid, designed by the fabled engineer Nills Langthorp, from an original prototype that still existed. That original unit was highly intelligent and virtually sentient. But whatever level of brilliance the original of the G2 species possessed it certainly didn’t pass it on. Banjo, like all other mass produced G2 units was as dumb
as a bucket of plankton. Its purpose was to lift, move, stack and sort, which it was pretty good at, and it would do it all day long without complaint. It responded to simple voice commands and basic interrogation, but beyond that, one could hardly call it sentient. Jay considered this was probably a good thing. Firstly, the processing power required to maintain a high level of intelligence in all current droids would probably be enormous. But mainly, it would just be a pain in the ass to communicate with. What’s more, what would happen if they all got pissed off lifting and stacking and banded together to sue for more rights? The colony would grind to a halt.

  “Temperature anomaly in left-hand rear drive transmission,” the unit announced.

  Jay snapped back to the here and now and looked at the readouts. “Damn.” He slowed the rover down.

  “How far to the way station, Banjo?”

  The G2 unit took a second to respond. “One point six kilometers”.

  Jay considered his options. If the drive was heating up it could mean a bust bearing. And considering the outside temperature was ridiculously cold, for the drive to be that hot meant it must be pretty bad. If he kept driving it could shatter and he would be stuck here. However, if a fragment from the damaged bearing punctured the skin of the rover, then he would then be losing atmosphere.

  He could take a risk and push ahead for the way station, or he could play it safe, stop the rover and do the one point six kilometers on foot. But before he could come to a conclusion, the decision was made for him. A horrendous noise emanated from the rear of the rover as the bearing housing disintegrated.

  Smoke filled the cockpit and warnings blared out from the console as a fire started sucking in oxygen at an alarming rate.

  “What the…” he looked over at Banjo. “Put out that fire, Banjo.”

  The G2 unit spun around to size up the situation. But Jay was beginning to get the feeling that this might be more serious than a bust bearing. He considered that getting the hell out of the rover might be a good thing, at least until the fire was out. That wouldn’t take too long as there was only so much oxygen available to feed the flames.

  He grabbed his helmet and clipped it on. The visor closed and his EVA suit booted up, checking various stats in sequence. Once he got the green light he hit the button on the rover dash to open the emergency exit on the driver’s side. The hatch blew, sucking out all the air and extinguishing the fire. Jay clambered out the opening and down the side of the rover. He had just put both feet on the ground when the machine blew up—completely.

  The force sent him sailing through the thin Martian air for quite a distance. He hit the ground, spinning and tumbling around twenty meters from the blast. He was lying on his back looking directly up at the sky. Across his field a vision he could see a hairline crack begin to snake its way across his visor. He instinctively raised a hand to cover it, he could hear a faint hiss of escaping air. He raised himself up and looked back at the blackened husk of the rover. He could just make out the dismembered remains of Banjo scattered about. This is not good, he thought. But he still had a chance, he could try to get to the way station before his oxygen ran out.

  He forced himself to move. Up, get up, get moving. He stood up, and staggered. He was very unsteady, his legs were like jelly. You’re just in shock, it will pass, now go. He moved with a faltering gait at first but as his mind began to focus more he found a rhythm, one foot in front of the other.

  He picked his way up out of the gully he had been thrown into by the blast. It was difficult as every now and again he would remove his hand from the visor to get his balance and would hear the faint hiss again. By the time he scrambled back up onto the road his EVA suit was flashing a low oxygen warning. Something was wrong. Even with the cracked visor it shouldn’t be losing air at this rate. It was at that moment that Jay began to panic, as the full implications of his predicament began to sink in.

  He wasn’t going to make it to the way station. Maybe he’d get halfway there, but that wasn’t good enough—he might as well be a million miles away. There were no half measures on Mars. He couldn’t radio for help as his EVA suit didn’t have the range. He sank down to his knees. There was no two ways about this. He was going to die, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it.

  2

  Colonist Number 897

  Mia Sorelli, colonist number 897, hefted a full box of tomatoes onto a robotic transport pallet and tapped the screen on her slate to instruct it to move the load to storage. It reversed out from its position at her side and glided off to a predetermined location in the food processing sector. This was her first load of the sol. She scanned her slate again to check where she should go to next. A long list of tasks scrolled up her screen, color coded for resource requirements, and indexed for credit value and knowledge points earned. The list had already been filtered for her particular skill level by central processing, and since she had only been here a few months, her level was pretty low—she still had a lot to learn.

  It had initially taken Mia quite a while to get her head around the basics of how people worked in the colony. Rather than being assigned a specific job, each colonist could choose from a wide range of tasks which were within their skill level. So she could stay here and pack more tomatoes or she could opt for a change of scenery, and head off to one of the other sectors that needed an extra pair of hands. As each task was completed it was tagged, cataloged and fed back into central. The colonist would then gain some skill points and central would recalibrate the list of task options presented.

  To a newly arrived colonist such as Mia this seemed a chaotic system, considering a great many of these tasks could be better served by a robot, and they had no shortage of industrial servants. But after a few weeks of this work she began to see the method in the madness. The two most important things up here, apart from having air to breathe, were food and social cohesion. Of those, food production was number one on the list. Without food there would be no colony, it was sacrosanct. It was the only thing that really mattered, with the entire colony one-hundred percent focused on this singular task—growing as much food as possible, never stopping and constantly expanding production. Already seventy percent of the physical infrastructure here was designated for growing, processing or storing food.

  After a while Mia began to understand that if all this planting, tending, picking, and packing were to be performed solely by automation then the social fabric of the colony would start to collapse. So, by having everybody involved, nobody felt like they were not needed. If you didn’t like a particular task or didn’t like the people you were working with, you could hop off somewhere else. You didn’t need to ask, it was your choice, you were empowered. It was also a great way to meet new people, listen to their stories, and make new friends.

  Not only did this work physically sustain the population, it was the glue that bound them together socially. Everybody had to take part, no exceptions, even the original colonists, the pioneers as some called them. It kept everybody grounded. It was like one big high-tech socialist commune, at least on the surface. But dive underneath and it became clear to Mia that some very clever algorithms based on market economics were working feverishly in the background to prioritize tasks and motivate colonists.

  Tasks would go up or down the list in terms of urgency. As they did, they became more valuable to the colonist, with greater credits and skill points being attached to them. This meant that simpler or more pleasant tasks were not worth as much as the more complex or unpleasant tasks. But even if all colonists chose to opt for the more arduous tasks their value would drop as the labour supply rose. In tandem with this, other tasks would rise in value as labour became scarce. It was a form of gamification, and after a while Mia began to see how everybody trusted the system to alert them to what needed to be done and when, so that the colony could grow and prosper—and ultimately nobody would starve to death. Once Mia got a handle on the weird working system, she took to it like a bird on the wing and began to
soar. Already she had leveled up several times, which also meant a whole new range of training options were now opening up to her.

  It had been a bold decision to come here, one where she had many sleepless nights wondering if she were really making the right choice in opting to become a colonist. But now all that doubt had faded away and Mia had begun to feel good about life again; she even had a relationship on the brew. But most of all, she had finally put the horror of her past behind her. It was something that, in the darkest moments of her previous life, she never thought possible.

  She checked her slate again. Hmmm… strawberries. Always nice for a change. She tapped on the task list, put her slate back in her pocket, and headed off to a different sector. She still had some time to kill, so rather than going directly to her next task, she made a detour along the main avenue of Jezero City. This was a rather grandiose name for what was essentially a domed area that connected several sectors together. It was a junction, with a wide main walkway that bisected the space. On either side were small, semi-circular gardens with seating and fountains. Around the inner perimeter was another walkway with a cafe, a bar of sorts, and a kind of proto-market, where the fledgling consumer economy of the colony had started to take root. There were small stalls with food and handcrafted artifacts. Central were actively encouraging this retail commerce, and it seemed to be working as there was always something new popping up on the Avenue. Ironically, it was the artifacts from Earth that had the highest value. Odd items, like the humble pen or a pad of paper were wildly expensive—if counted in colony credits.