.Well, I should at least be allowed to live on Mars. With the discovery of vast underground networks of lava tubes around Arsis Mons and elsewhere subterranean troglodyte low-income housing is inevitable on that world. Sure there shall be impressive social bureaucracy and vast networks of trophic pecking orders with prestigious housing for the most aggressive and ignorant on the Red Planet. Then there will also be those extra-planetary fugitives from oppression by the corporatist system seeking to be independent gardeners.
I can’t afford the transport or infrastructure development, but I wouldn’t pollute the place much. An incinolet electric toilet only needs to be emptied of ash every six months so that reduces bio-waste. Maybe glue could be added to make bricks of the ash?
Mars would be a good place for photography and writing poems. I suppose it would be a good enough spot for a few short stories or maybe even a novel. With the distance from worldly government and concerns high quality research into the humanities and social sciences written historically would be possible. One could write truly independent evaluations of corrupt macro-social infrastructure on Earth without concern about being fired and compelled into dire poverty with lots of directed social abuse. Mars seems like a good place to build an igloo like concrete dome with a recycling whirlpool bath for relaxation after a hard day of driving some kind of fuel cell powered vehicle prospecting for things of interest to other-worlds curio collectors in the scientific branch of government. Of course I could do contract exploration for private business too. If people are ‘allowed’ to live on Mars, I should be at the top of the list.
Some believe only robots should be allowed to ‘live’ on Mars-yet what is living, really? Can a robot have a good life or be said to be alive at all with the pure drudgery of driving back and forth on simply tracks excreting nuclear waste? Such a history is hot only in the sense of shame they get when the fuel runs out and all the attractive minerals realize the robots have no voltage.
Mars reclamation processes can begin with a rational N.A.S.A. policy of never, ever sending any extra-planetary mission, manned or robotic, without the landing modules being designed for later use as a building component. I loathe disposable housing. Just yesterday a bear tore up my tent in Alaska. Poor thing was looking for some food before hibernating.
Mars colonization should have already started, as should have that of the moon. Even the space shuttles and space station were designed by economic and settlement idiots that got nothing permanent built for billions and billions-wait for the next next generation in a hundred years to build a hollow insulated aluminum log cabin on the moon!
Mankind and particularly the U.S. Government don’t need to be allowed, they need to get intelligence I.Q. upgrades to settlement opportunities version 2.0
Patrick Voevoda awoke from a turbulent crash in oblivion of fitful rest and introspective binge through existential memories and self-constructed synthesis of reality aware that Cheri was gone. He cast off a glow-moss blanket arising to sit on the edge of a twenty-four inch wide magnetic-alloy bed placing his bare feet onto an icy stone floor. The feet seemed to be swollen to about twice the normal size from some tissue damage by snow and ice water immersion too long. At least the cyanotic blue-black will fade to pink he thought.
Looking at variegated crystalline frost lining the walls of a standard mass-manufactured igloo that was poor compared to the luxury of the space sphere the twenty-nine year old Martian entrepreneur associate philosophy professor reflected on the sense data of the present instant within his eyes and limbs. He had a small dart wound in a shoulder continuing as a minor pain. A laser burn upon a rib was cauterized and no problem though a more substantial pain. Cold blood from the extremities that had made its way toward his heart was receding into a mist of nothingness after hours of natural warming. The heart itself seemed o.k. after the micro-surgical field repair. Biosensors in the left forearm indicated a pulse of 38; blood pressure and chemical levels were normal.
The room smelled like a northern forest. The transfer center sequence had worked effectively.
Thick air hovering near the apex of the dome replayed stored sound waves from the room to the directed area at a whistle. Strained chords with warbled lyrics of the Corporate Department of Revolution Songshop sang the ancient Yorkshire marching song Beneath the Stars. Phoebus rose over the Mars horizon to devour the Earth. The thickair’s latest cluster of poems and stories sent to the Martian Library of Corporate Copyright for domestic profit were snagged by power espionage agents and forwarded to The Leader; Patrick distrusted it because the report came from U.T.M. Security surveillance devices placed at Corporate Copyright.
A blood red sunrise oozed up flooding through a dust storm drifting over the desert without purpose like a spent salmon in a river floating to ravens. Patrick reached into a polit-box for gel-sensor float boots. Commercials running on the boots urged him to vote for Nitrist/ProsWarp brand candidates. Patrick scowled, pulled them on and clicked the heels together to turn off the ad. His candidates all returned one percent value on purchases made with a Crankcruel Party credit card.
Outside the igloo snow peppered red with airborne Martian ust blew sideways around rows of luxury crystal domes in the second-generation Martian suburb of metro Novo Lundinium named Abtendo-Fairbanksargh.
Novo Lundinium rested upon the edge of the Vales Marineris on the Sinai Planum. The cities of Yeltsville and Chang Chang on adjacent Solis Planum and Syria Planum formed a megalopolis sheltering the majority of global urbanites. Abtendo-Fairbanksargh at Oudemans had an excellent view of a troika of volcanoes on the Tharsis Montes and of twenty-five kilometer high Olympus Mons.
The dome warmed from greenhouse effects trapped sunlight melting wall frost sagging into translucent sheets opening a vista. Patrick looked outside considering the remaining orbs in the celestial vault. He renormalized to the Martian world though his extremities seemed like frost damaged parts of a plant
People, or that which was politically classified as human because of a preponderance of natural component parts based on ordinary human deoxribose nucleic acid configuration strolled outside. The sunshine cast moving shades over the perceptible phenomena of being.
With a wink Patrick turned on the dome wall aud-vid circuit to sample agit-prop on commercial media. Typically unsubtle the quasi-crystal foot-thick dome became a scene of the over-crowded billions on Earth pushing, struggling, and yearning to breathe at no cost. Purified air cost a large portion of utility expenses; ground water being polluted people would pay anything for a clean drink.
Patrick got into a conservative energy slobo-suit and went outside through a security-Maoz. He breathed pure Martian air full with respiration of a trillion flowers, held in place by a Vose quasi-layer atomic stability field emplaced up to three miles distant from a planet surface, walked a few dozen meters to enter a circuit of the mag-level shuttle trough feeling fresh after a nights rest like a greased pig ..
Breakfast with the array in Novo Lundinium at the Slaughterhouse on Sixth and Rhine waited. He checked the constitutional rights defenders in the shoulder holsters he never removed on Mars. Cartridgeless ammo with ultra-hip explosives allowed seven hundred rounds to fit in each small magazine. Since the brief tyranny of the four thousand he wouldn’t leave home without never rusting quasi-crystalline, somewhat intelligent weapons.
The mag-levitation sluice was a high-speed weightless tumble through a dream. Years of practiced skill let him maneuver effortlessly through the sluice to exit in a few seconds into the uncertainty district of the slaughterhouse. The City was probably made of quasi-crystal and DNA compote. Seething, epistemological building intellect and DNA helixes incorporated into the atomic structure of building materials made every appearance an uncertainty unlikely to seem the way it was now, tomorrow.
Barton Freewater, Ph.D. of History and department chairman of pre-Chaos Solar System Studies at the University of Texas-Extraneous/Mars and Professor of History Emeritus at Survivors College Oxford sat slumped attentively at a round pre-Clinton era stone table with two other gentlemen imbibing mirth mocha with egg frost crafts at a dark corner of the Slaughterhouse.
