Meridien K - Chapter 32: The Day They Would Be Judged (Again)

Everyone came off the Lander with an oxygen mask hugging most of their face and a tank strapped to their back. The light hit them hard after months in the cozy darkness of deep space, and it gave them a hard squint and grimace like they didn't want to be there, that kid reflex of I Wanna Go Home.

             

No words between Us and Them. Sizing them up, them gawking at us, truer Martians than any science-fiction comic, comfortable in the dust and heat, no need for excess O₂, as acclimated as we'd get before we choked the atmosphere some more. All of us in different clothes, some in freshly-retrieved and -washed business suits, like we were trying to impress them. Instead it came off like a bizarre pageant. The old joke that in ancient sci-fi movies everyone wore uniforms because it was like we were all on the same team. Over the years on Red, nothing could be less true. We were even more divided than on Blue, where, there, it was liberal and conservative, theist and atheist that split us most; Mars was civilian and military, and, among the former, sticking to your own branch of science if you were a whitecoat; god help you if you were one of the no-use civilians who tagged along for the ride; and, among the mil shop, there were the enlisted and the officers; even sharp divides between privates and pfcs, pfcs and specs, specs and corporals and all those million different variants of sergeanthood.

             

But they didn't know it as intimate as we did. Maybe they saw it in our eyes, like we somehow radiated this We Don't Want You vibe. No one was openly glad to see anyone except Intihar, whose brother came off the transparent jetway with a leashed dog in its own doggie-molded surface suit, and if the ice, then, soon didn't break, guns might've gone off as we killed them all and stole their food and hooted and hollered and threw rocks at the Lander. Ben and I stuck close to a cluster of natives, not eager to introduce ourselves as the crazy Mountainmen. Those stories would come later, hopefully after Ben got his damn rocket, because I was getting pretty close to guessing what he wanted it for.

             

The civilians came out, the men and women, no children despite the rumors, and Intihar's brother and their dog. The Soviets immediately swarmed them, broken English to Intihar and Intihar 2, cooing Russian at the dog, a permanent affection for space dogs; space-dog Laika has shrines in the motherland, is a national hero, somehow odd for a name that translates to "Barker."

             

The rest all filed around the side of the ship, where a panel of the gargantuan Lander lifted up and sort of spit out their whole living quarters, which seemed to have been taken from M3, hidden up there above the butterscotch. It seemed like a straight-up Fuck You to some of us, a We Don't Want To Live Where You Live tell-off, already before introductions or anything, but shit, none of us knew them, and Ben and I would be back up on the half-mountain soon enough, letting all the rest of the mils and civs and neo-zombies and lifers do the socializing for us, spread the rumors, collect them, cycle them back through our covert channels. With M3 boosting the civilian population past the mostly-military M2, we figured being on The Civilian Side would be important. No doubt Ben would suddenly pivot and get all buddy-buddy with Elliott The Civilian, playing his own marked Meridien cards, always scrounging for the angles, for a cache of favors.

             

The requisite mil attaché trotted out, led by a surf-suited two-star general that Colonel Tibbits immediately intercepted, offered his crispest salute, a bone-crushing handshake, and then he whisked the general away for the fifty-cent tour.

             

The rest of the procession was a twilight zone of logic, an LSD hallucination I never had. Offloading: Horses and their handlers, more dogs, some American, some Soviet, dogs don't speak languages, do they? Cats in cages, birds in cages. The Lander turning into a clown car as bigger and bigger vehicles came off, more Rovers, jeeps, then a backhoe and a goddamn full-sized bulldozer, not the mini one we used to clear the road to the caves. Then a steamroller, then - I shit you not - a cement mixer. The gear kept coming and it didn't get any less weird. Then came all the furnishings you'd expect for a small-town town square: Park benches, a stone fountain in four sections, a statue of, for whatever reason, Theodore Roosevelt, and the Soviets had two, one of Lenin, one of Stalin. Then in three sections, giant, embossed blocks pulled out by a tractor, first "NEW," then "MARS," then "COLONY" in English and Cyrillic, none of them pussy European languages for them countries too chickenshit to fly.

             

"New Mars Colony… whatever happened to the Old?" I said.

             

"Jesus fucking christ. If this was on the Lander, what the fuck is up on M3? The rest of a city?"

             

"Looks like it," I said.

             

Intihar finally came over after the Soviets joined their comrades and stopped hogging the Intihars' dog. Our man was accompanied by a new arrival, suited up, the spitting image of Intihar passed through a lens that aged him about five years.

             

"Hey guys, this is Mike and Frank," said Intihar.

             

"Which is which?" asked Ben.

             

"Oh, ha ha, right, yeah, Mike is my brother, Frank is the dog. Mike, this is Ben Meridien and John Kraid. Guys, Mike Intihar."

             

Handshakes all around, genuine politeness given our friendship with Intihar was more real than political, and by default that courtesy would extend to his brother. And their dog.

             

"Meridien and Kraid. Like Meridienkraid, that planet, right?" asked Mike.

             

"The fuck you know?" Ben demanded.

             

"Sorry about that," said Intihar. "I told Mike."

             

"But just me, I swear," said Mike Intihar.

             

"You told Brian?" I asked Ben.

             

"We were having a few drinks one night and--"

             

"And I wasn't invited?" I asked.

             

"I thought you quit drinking!" said Ben.

             

"I did! But you could've invited me!"

             

"Hey guys, how about you leave it on the mountain, hey? Anyhow," and a Intihar gave a hand flourish like models showing off prizes on game shows and, "welcome to Mars, Mike. We call it Red most of the time," said Intihar. "Mars just sounds too impossibly futuristic or something. And Roman God of War, et cetera. Bad vibes. And we call the other place Blue."

             

"You mean earth?"

             

Earth as E-word already, the same sting, the clenched-teeth reaction whenever someone says - apologies in advance - nigger or cunt.

             

"Um… yeah," said Intihar.

             

Mike to Ben with, "So you're the man who wants to talk to one of our techs. Something about a rocket."

             

I was falling fast out of the loop, quickly recovered when Ben turned and gave one of those I'll Tell You Everything Later looks.

             

Smalltalk from Intihar to Mike, "How was the flight?"

             

"I don't even know, man. They just thawed us out like two hours ago."

             

"No shit?"

             

"I feel fine, though. And Frank looks good, hey, Frank?"

             

Mike pet Frank's surface suit. Frank stared up at us, marginally colorblind but still sensing something not right, probably the sanest of all us mammals.

             

"Get him out of that suit. He'll be fine. Let dogs be dogs," said Ben.

             

Mike gave Intihar a Look, and Intihar gave Ben a Look. One of those Rules: You never fuck a friend's ex-girlfriend, you never play another man's guitar without his permission, and you never give advice concerning someone else's dog.

             

But it seemed Mike considered the suggestion. And, given Ben, he'd push Mike over the edge.

             

"Come on, man. Look at me. Look at your brother. If you don't believe us, take off your mask right now. You look like a cancer patient with it on."

             

Intihar was never one to back down from a dare and it seemed his brother followed the mold. Without hesitation Mike took off his fishbowl. He had that First Breath that always scares the hell out of you, trying to fill your lungs with something taken for granted, something that isn't around, like going up to the Rocky Mountains for vacation and taking a ten-mile hike the first day, wasted just walking up the sloped parking lot to the trailhead.

             

"Just breathe, Mike. You'll be lightheaded a bit but you'll turn out fine," said Intihar, leaving out the caveat of you'll be fine… in a few months.

            

 Mike bent at the waist and stood and he was all right.

             

"Christ. It's like when I'd panic and smoke to calm down the day before a marathon. And then I'd get my ass kicked in the marathon."

             

"You ran marathons and smoked?" Ben asked.

             

"You've got three daughters and a wife and you're on Mars?" Mike shot back with a grin, crossing a barrier he, honestly, didn't have much business crossing.

             

I waited to see if Ben had a knife stashed somewhere, since that moment, more than any other time, would be the perfect opportunity for the first shanking on Red. But for whatever reason, Ben went with it, laughed a ha-ha ha-ha, like he could shrug off the fact that his family roster somehow became public knowledge. If it was anyone else who made the crack, Tibbits or that two-star, Ben would've put a death-grip on their throat until their face went purple and their heart gave and they involuntarily shit themselves.

             

"Now take the dog out of the damn suit," said Ben.

             

Mike and Intihar both worked at it, unzipping panels that had more zippers underneath, locked seals to rotate, Frank squirming all the way through, and then he was out, out in the open, already panting from the heat, first a noise like he was going to throw up, then a hoarse breathing rhythm, rough but alive, finally visible, a brown mutt with a black pirate's patch over one eye and he immediately smelled the ground and sniffed deep and sneezed and shook and was fine.

             

Ben bent down and talked in a voice I never heard before. It was like a six-year-old version of himself waking up on Christmas morning.

             

"Yeah! Good puppy!"

             

"He's six," said Mike.

             

"All dogs are puppies," Ben said.

             

Ben rubbed Frank behind the ears and Frank's tail moved so fast you could barely see it.

             

"Sit. Lay down."

             

Frank complied.

             

"Yeeeeeaaaaah!"

             

Ben looked like he was attacking him. Frank rolled over and Ben vigorously rubbed his belly. Frank then got up and sat patiently, tail still erect, wagging, waiting to play dominant-submissive with Ben some more.

             

The sound of some sniffles and it was right at my ear. I turned and Intihar's eyes were red and puffy like how eyes normally looked below the dustline, but he was wiping away tears.

             

"Oh my god," he said, voice shaking like a burning leaf and, "god, I'm so embarrassed. I… I don't know. I just don't know," and he crouched and pet Frank the dog.

             

Fur flew off, like Frank was blowing four excess coats, probably a byproduct of the deep freeze. But the hairs settled on the dust and blended in with the hard-packed rocky soil underneath and, besides, who'd get on our case to police anything up like that?

             

Ben kneeled again and put his face an inch from the dog's. It was like we all disappeared, and it was just Ben and the dog on Mars.

             

"You'll be fine, boy," Ben said to Frank. "Just you wait. You'll be all right."

             

A universal emptiness to that phrase, You'll Be All Right and Everything's Fine said to too many cancer patients and housefire survivors. But Ben, somehow, said it with an assuring empathy. Nevermind that Frank didn't have to worry about all this bothersome Consciousness.

             

I was waiting for--

(Chapter 33 coming Monday, January 30, 2012.)

The kind of notes I take while prepping Film 3

Meridien K - Chapter 31: The Condition (Again)

The room seemed to get colder each minute. Like a classic interrogation seen a million times in a million movies. Wondering, then, how much time had passed. No clocks in the room, and when it was the only timepiece around, I was irrationally wary of my own wristwatch. No sound. No hiss from the visible air duct. It could've been an hour or five minutes. I was never good at gauging blind time. And no double-mirror or cameras to monitor my reaction. I was alone.

             

The door opened and someone in a suit came in with my file. When he sat across the table from me, his tie flopped onto the table, and he pushed it down into his lap. He opened my file and read from it. I couldn't tell if it was a show or if the man, really, had never looked at it before.

             

"Robert Meridien Kraid," he said.

             

"Yes."

             

"Fifteen. You don't look fifteen."

            

 "Oh?" and guarded, austere, probing whether or not to raise my shields.

             

"Relax, Robert. This isn't an interrogation."

             

"Seems like an interrogation room."

             

I was playing it too obvious. I did that when I was nervous or felt threatened or, in that case, both.

             

"It does," he said, looking up from the file.

             

"I suppose you want to give me the once-over, maybe the twice-over before you let me in. Make sure I'm not a spy."

             

"And why would I think that, Robert?"

             

"People call me Bobby."

             

"Pardon?" with a tilt of the head, like he didn't hear what I just said.

            

 "My mother calls me Robert. Everyone else calls me Bobby."

             

"This says your mother is dead."

             

"That's right," and my instant reaction, no recoil at the insensitivity, maybe part of a test.

             

"Part of the reason you're volunteering for a job that everyone knows could very well kill them?"

             

"I don't plan on getting killed, sir, but yes, if you must know, the death of my mother has caused a certain rift in my family that has led us to different paths."

             

"I see. I also checked the file of your brother, Ridley. A captain about to end his time with us. A solid record."

             

"So I've heard."

            

"You hear often?"

             

"My brother and I don't speak often, sir."

             

"Please, I'm not a 'sir,' Bobby."

             

"Fair enough."

             

"You're still awfully defensive, though."

             

"I think that's the room's effect."

             

"It is," he said with a laugh. "I just came in last week. You're my first case here."

             

"Case?"

             

"I check the file, ask you a few questions, then send you on your merry way."

             

"I thought the Forces needed bodies and didn't ask questions."

             

"Well, Bobby, that depends. What do you want to do in the Forces?"

             

"My brother said you pick at the end of training."

             

The man leaned back in his chair, stared at a particular point in the ceiling, looked genuinely unsure what to say, looked at me, kept his posture and body language open, tried to cut through my natural defenses.

             

"Your brother said that? What about Lieutenant Matakis who sent you here?"

             

"You mean Seth?"

             

"Seth, sure."

             

"Yeah, he said the same."

             

"So that's what you want? Get on a southbound bus and go through grunt school?"

             

"I was thinking of becoming an officer. Join the EOP. If it's still around."

             

"Oh, of course. But I beg pardon. I usually handle cases for enlisted men. You're the first officer candidate I've interviewed."

             

"It seems like I'm the first for a lot of things," I said.

             

"Is there something fundamentally wrong with that?" the man asked.

             

I didn't say anything.

             

"Let me tell you this, Bobby. I'll tell it straight. You know a fair deal about the Forces. You know about the war. But what you don't know, what your brother doesn't know, and what Seth doesn't know, is that we're looking for special cases. Certain young men for certain assignments."

             

"What, like you're looking for operators?"

             

"Not exactly. You fit a Profile, Bobby. You have a certain…" and his hands shaped like he was holding a ball midair and rolling it back and forth, midair, between his finger, "Condition."

             

"Doesn't everyone?"

             

Back to the file and, "Your voluntary medical records show a tendency toward obsessive compulsion, bipolar disorder, a cluster of anxiety disorders, and schizoid personality disorder. Do you know what this means?"

             

"In a general way or a DSM VII way?"

             

"Both."

             

"Are you saying the Forces doesn't want me?"

             

"The opposite, Bobby. Think of it this way. Don't think of your Condition, your Profile, your whatever, don't think of the negatives. Think of the positives. Someone borderline OCD knows their details. Someone with bipolar disorder, when in a sustained hypomanic state, functions at the height of their abilities. A schizoid person is very detached. These can be admirable qualities."

             

"You want hopped-up, cold-blooded killers?"

             

"Of course we do, Bobby. I'm not going to lie. But you also happen to score in the ninety-eighth percentile in most of your testing, a few cases in the ninety-ninth, which usually means a perfect score. Your prelim IQ screening places you in… well… let's just say there aren't a lot of people like you around. And you're young."

             

"Impressionable."

             

"Let's not make this malicious, Bobby. You're here on your own free will. What if I was to tell you that you could quit at any time? That at any point during training, deployment, or leave, you could walk away?"

             

"What?"

             

A shrug and, "You don't like training, you don't like killing, you see something that fucks you up inside, you get a minor wound, whatever, and you can walk away at anytime."

             

"If my legs get blown off can you wheel me away?" I asked.

             

A smile from the man that, for whatever reason, was polite.

             

"Do I need to explain further?" the man asked.

             

"Why would you let that happen?"

             

"Because the Forces are changing, Bobby. You think we want to keep kids enslaved to their contracts and drag down morale?"

             

"I don't know what you want."

             

"We want people exactly like you, Bobby. Smart, self-motivated individuals for special assignments. Special units that operate under little authority so the Forces won't have to babysit. Units that can go out on assignments for days, even weeks at a time."

             

He let it hang out there in the dead space.

             

"We made some changes to the EOP. At the end you're not part of the Forces proper. You're… something else. But you get college training, military training, the works. And no timelock contract on your end. Does this sound like something you'd be interested in, Bobby?"

             

I said nothing, chose my words carefully, though he knew I'd say it.

            

"Look, I'm not an experiment. I'm not a labrat."

             

"No experiments. You'll be a Forces guard, same as the rest. The only experiment is the Unit."

             

"An experimental unit?"

             

"Eleven other young men, like yourself. Training Stateside for a year or so before expedited deployment."

             

"And are they--?"

             

"They fit their own separate Profiles. You'll go by codenames. You'll never know their real names. They'll never know yours. If you want to share, fine. But I'm guessing you wouldn't or won't. My apologies for speculating, naturally."

             

I said nothing for a while. It was still his move. I signed up for one thing and he was pitching another.

             

"Look, Bobby. You're still in this room, listening. It means you're thinking about it."

             

"It means I just haven't left yet."

            

"And you don't have to make a decision today and--"

             

Maybe too eager and, "But I can quit? Anytime I want?"

             

"Anytime."

             

"Say I'm on the bus to Basic and I decide to quit."

             

"Then tell the driver to turn around."

             

The air duct hissed and the room stayed the exact same temperature.

            

 I stood. He stood. I crossed the distance around the long metal table. The echo of my footsteps dying against the walls. I extended my hand, shook his, nothing ominous, no Satanic pact.

             

"I quit anytime I want," I said.

             

"You won't want to," he said.

             

I looked down for the form to sign away my mortal soul but there was none.

             

"Don't I have to sign something?"

             

"No, Bobby. We do things differently now."

(Chapter 32 coming Friday, January 27, 2012.)

Congratulations to Terrence Malick

On behalf of everyone here at MPC, we're all absolutely thrilled that Terrence Malick was nominated for the Best Director Academy Award for his breathtaking (and our 2011 favorite) The Tree of Life. It seemed impossible because he wasn't nominated for a DGA award, and getting an Oscar nom without a DGA nom has happened very, very few times. So while it might not equal a win, it's a magnificent achievement for a man who made a film about family, human nature, and the entire universe.

Also fantastic: The Tree of Life's nominations for Best Picture, though the Academy, at press time, was unable to come up with the laundry list of producers attached to the project. (Producers are awarded the Oscar for any Best Picture.)

Even more fantastic: Though X-Men: First Class/Winter's Bone's (ha!) luminary Jennifer Lawrence (and one of JDK's indiecrushes) only announced the major categories, Oscar.com has the full list. And lo! MPC favorite Emmanuel Lubezki was nommed for Best Cinematography (as he was for Malick's 2005 epic The New World).

Best of luck to the aforementioned. It takes an enormous amount of courage to make a film like The Tree of Life in the studio system.

Random: Pretty hilarious that the only picture they could scrounge up of Malick was his on-set photo during the making of The Thin Red Line, which could've been taken anywhere between 1994 and 1997. Before his surprise presence with Christian Bale at an Austin music fest last year, seeing Malick (or just finding more than a handful of pics of him) is about as rare as seeing a leprechaun riding a unicorn underneath a triple rainbow.

One last thing: Glad I bought my Blu-ray/DVD of The Tree of Life when it came out, since every future pressing will have NOMINATED FOR/WINNER OF THREE ACADEMY AWARDS blah blah blah. But those apparently sell more copies of a movie, so if that means more people see The Tree of Life, then it's a necessary evil.

Meridien K - Chapter 30: The Day They Would Be Judged

A kick to the ribs more vigorous than usual. Not night because I smelled coffee. Closed eyelids, Martian sunrise like a rapidly-preheating oven. Grunts on my behalf, still tired from a long night, wanting to sleep under my desk an hour or two longer. Confused because it was usually viceversa, back on Blue and Ben asleep or hungover or still drunk, me doing the shoulder-shake, the Ben Ben BEN until he woke but instead:

             

"John! Get up and take a shower!"

             

Rising in an awkward way, avoiding the big bump of the makeshift desk as I crawled out, wiped the dust off my eyelids before I opened them. Benjamin Scott Meridien, clean-shaven, hair cut, stood there in a fresh white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, in wrinkled but proper khakis and his nicer pair of canvas hiking boots.

             

"The fuck?" I asked.

             

"You forget, chief? You're going to miss the circus."

             

"Oh, shit."

             

"That right. Oh, shit."

             

"Why're you dressed up?"

             

Trademark smirk and, "Because I need to make a good impression so I can bum some favors, of course. Now get the lead out. Scuttle is they'll be here in two hours local."

            

 I got up and slammed half a cup of black coffee from a tin can on a hotplate, so hot I had to wrap my sleeve over my palm to lift it and sip its nectar. I went outside and stretched, looked over my dominion, that gaping Red plain going on out there forever, past all the dry lakebeds, the hills, the haze of distant mountains, Olympus out there, still unclimbed once we shrugged our shoulders and moved on to redder pastures. I walked along the rock wall to our shower, stripped, showed my nakedness to the spirit of the world, rinsed in the lukewarm trickle of water, scrubbed, lathered in the hardwater the best I could with diluted shampoo.

             

Outside in the plastic bin Ben had laid out an outfit similar to his, my blue dress shirt somehow ironed, given it had been wadded up in my pack the whole of the two years on Red. Khakis rust-colored from the impossibility of avoiding the color of the world, like how you can't get grass stains out of jeans. I dressed, moved to our lesser half-hut where a scrap of mirror hung over a washbasin. I took the scissors and snipped away at my beard and hair, removed the Mountainman from myself and became Dr. John Douglas Kraid, PhD. Finishing off with the electric razor with a minuscule charge, not wanting to shave clean because I always cut myself and I wanted the scruff to remind everyone that it was still Mars.

             

I went back to the lab-office-living-quarters. Ben sat in an off-kilter lawn chair outside, looking out past the cliffs and down to the Settlement and the M2 Base. Some people already called it a Colony, if the Settlement even met the prereqs for that criteria. More like the outdoor grounds of a terminal sanitarium.

             

"Lookin' shark," Ben said, barely turning.

             

I pulled up my splintery wood chair and sat next to him. He handed me a closed-top porcelain mug of still-warm coffee fixed with sucrose.

             

"What's the drill?" I asked. "What's the angle?"

             

Ben shook his head.

             

"None of that. Just go down and say hello."

             

"What did Intihar say?"

             

"Intihar said not to scare them but to get down there before rumors kicked up about the crazy men up in the mountains. Apparently we're quite famous back on… well… Elliott say anything?"

             

A long sip and, "Nope. You expected something? I feel bad for the kid. Probably still asks permission to use the latrine. He doesn't have the heart to stand up to Tibs."

             

"What's the load?"

             

"Horses or some crazy shit. The ship's half American, half Soviet. The latter brought dogs. One's named Laika, of course. A lot more women this time. They figure we have enough scientists so it's mostly straight-up civs. I heard there's a fertility doctor. Guess some asshole wants to be first guy to bust his nut and plant a seed on Red. This seems more like a sight-seeing tour. Mothership's staying in orbit and sending down a Lander. There's talk about turning M3 into a space station in sync, like how we turned the moon into a fancy rest stop. 3 prolly wants to hang up there so the mil guys can quest for water so they can fuel the Lander to go back to momma, and for M-Whatever and all that shit to go back home once they show up and offload and take the tour. Like Red is just some place to come and gawk at. Maybe we could go into business building a chairlift ride up Olympus? Charge visiting CEOs a thousand bucks a pop. Fuck it. When we’re among the unwashed masses we should visit the lemonade stand and buy some pirated Hollywood DVDs. God. I love America."

             

I looped a tie around my neck and thought better of it. Then I set it on my desk and wondered where the hell Ben found a necktie. Outside we both took the rags near the Rover and brushed off the solar panels, took the tarps off the tender spots where the dust fucked it up. We got in and didn't bother with the seatbelts, we knew every bump along the road, knew when to hang on to the rollcage.

            

"Let's go join the natives."

             

Ben was still trying to ride all the way down the half-mountain without touching the brakes. It was like playing chicken with himself. I was used to it, sheer drops and certain death and all, not much different than doing the same thing on bikes when you were a kid, except instead of a skinned knee you'd end up as a fresh corpse. It was our calling card, anyway, going so fast we kicked up a wake big enough for the Settlement below to think a duststorm was coming. And then the long winding switchbacks we had carved on the hillside, tires locked and drifting around hairpin turns like rally racers, finally down to our own private road - though not paved like those over by the Base - that encircled our half-mountain and split off to caves where a rotating squad went underground to look for water. Ben pulled the handbrake and brought the Rover to a hard stop that summoned a wall of dust.

             

When it cleared, Intihar was there, holding a handkerchief to his face. I hadn't seen him in a while. He suddenly didn't look so doughy-faced anymore. I stood up and he grinned, probably knowing with me around there'd be about fifty percent less bullshit and shoulder-punching than if it was Ben alone. We shook hands.

             

"How you doing, Brian?"

             

"I'm doin' swell, John. Real swell. Excited about the landing."

            

"Yeah? Anything special."

             

"My brother's on the ship. He brought our dog. Can you fuckin' believe it?"

             

Ben stood there and gave Intihar a hard stare. But instead of muscling him later he just threw it out there, I didn't care, it was sort of public knowledge, and I was over it, it happened, and it happened to a lot of people.

             

"That's great, asshole. You do know that John's brother is dead, right? So wipe that grin off your shit-stained face," said Ben.

             

Intihar, even with a bad Mars sunburn-tan, went pale, said, "Oh, shit, John, I'm really sorry, I didn't know and--"

             

"Relax. Ben's still in asshole mode," and a turn to my counterpart and, "But aren't you supposed to be nice to these fine folks from the homeworld?"

             

Ben spat on the ground, said, "What homeworld? Home's up on the mountain."

             

"Hey, Brian," I said, "Ben here is trying to convince me he doesn't have an agenda for these M3 types."

             

"Come on, Ben, you're so full of shit," said Intihar. "You told me you wanted to hook up with their aerospace engineer and build yourself a rocket. Talking about it like it's some Gravity's Rainbow shit. To what end, I don't fucking know. Send off fireworks or something equally dumb."

             

"Last time I tell you something I don't tell anyone else," said Ben.

             

"What about Elliott?" I asked with minor incredulity, having long since targeted Elliott as our man concerning those affairs.

             

Ben with another ball of saliva for the ground and, "Yeah, what about him? That's worked out really dandy for all of us. We want an informant and we end up with a timid mouse."

            

I wasn't in the mood to debate. I looked around the Settlement, still separate from the cement barracks over at the makeshift Base, both of which were probably as hot and dusty as our own shack. It wasn't early, but most of the M1 leftovers were waking up, most probably on different parts of their Blue-Red adjustment clocks. They looked at us with the same weird detachment as they would a full-fledged, bug-eyed Martian as they made their way toward the Showers and the Mess over at the Base. From the opposite direction came a busload of the cave crew coming in from an overnight spelunk. Morning everywhere, or at least the morning routine; people going for their coffee same as we had ours.

             

Another syrup-thick Benjamin Meridien plot: What did he want with a rocket? Why suggest cutting Elliott loose when, eventually, we'd need another mind like his? We started walking toward the Base and the new strip, leaving the Rover behind because we'd get an earful if we kicked up any more dust.

             

Only waiting remained, nothing else to do, really, except gravitate toward the Mess, where everyone congregated and had their own bits of gossip that Ben and I never cared for. Inside, we encountered the usual stray glances of the mil guys, standing guard for no reason other than that it was their assignment. Our reputation preceded us, Men of the Mountain, or worse: rebels, rogues, goons, know-it-alls, no room in our hearts for the American flag stitched on their uniform sleeves. Inside, Intihar got in line for chow and Ben and I sat in the back corner. Everyone wore their Sunday best. Other than the work-a-day privates and corporals, who wore their fatigues, most others wore their Class As, all ribbons and medals, Colonel Tibbits with his colonel's hat that I certainly'd never seen before. A tension in them, too, an electric current, like gearing up for a performance review or a meet with the goddamn Defense Secretary. None of the M2 mil guys were wearing their surface suits, and most of them looked like they were going to keel over.

             

"Look at those motherfuckers," said Ben, reading my mind. "Huffing and puffing and it's not going to help them. If it's day one for them with Red air, it's day one. Shit, when we crashed it was about twice as hard."

             

"Like breathing through a straw," I said, that old echo, how we told our story to the new people, how we told it over the comm to Blue for those who were into that, for that nameless audience who could never talk back to us or heckle us.

             

"Now it's like two straws," Ben said.

             

Intihar came back with a synthegg omelet, freeze-dried apples, and powdered orange juice.

             

"Man," he said, making quick work of the omelet, "I can't wait for those hippies they have on M3 to set up a farm so I can get some fresh eggs and meat. I'm not a frugivore like you," with a plastic fork pointed at Ben.

             

"Well, don't get too comfortable," said Ben.

             

"Oh, I'm getting comfortable," said Intihar. "I went and re-upped with Tibbits yesterday. I'll get bumped to sergeant and be on Red as a noncom for three more years. Then, hell, I'll stay."

             

"No shit?" said Ben with some genuine surprise, a gleam in his eye.

             

There was a sudden sink in my spirits, however juvenile; like Ben was captain of the recess kickball team and his first pick became Intihar instead of the default: me.

             

"Yeah. I love this place," said Intihar. "It's an alien planet! How straight-up fucking cool is that? Plenty of land. Pretty sunsets. Even if they turn it into a giant gas station, at least I'll have been one of the first settlers, eh? I'll be as old as you farts if that ever happens. And, shit, women and pets and better air on the way, right? No nuclear wars in sight. No, well, war in the, uh, typical sense. And, obviously, why the fuck come here if I'm just going to turn around?"

             

"Fuckin' A," said Ben.

            

 I checked my watches. Then I checked them again.

             

"Patience, John."

             

"Since when were you one for waiting?"

             

"When all you can do is wait. When that's all you can do, John."

(Chapter 31 coming Wednesday, January 25, 2012.)

Meridien K - Chapter 29: The Known Universe (Again)

One bang on the side of the prefab like the scuttle-scrape of a mortar. The klaxons didn't go off and I gave it no mind until a second sound matched the first. Horse and I were the only ones in the prefab; the rest of 716 went off on a mission to find a shield for the turret or something.

             

"You hear that?"

             

"Hear what?" said Horse, looking up from a thick tome.

             

My own book down and a third very loud knock on the wall.

             

"This is bullshit," spit to no one.

             

Outside in my Death black. Around to the rear of the prefab, positioned on a deserted lot for no-longer-there-even-though-they-were-there-the-day-before tents, were two crews of Regs, one near and the other in a strict formation away from most others. I had to process the sacks on the ground as bases and an overturned crate as the pitcher's mound and our prefab as the backstop.

             

No one bothered to stop. A change-up and a Reg staff sergeant swung early. The ball went past the invisible catcher and smacked 716's prefab.

             

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

             

There must've been traces of authority in my voice because they snapped to, like some brass was prowling the back alleys of the FOB. They saw me and my uniform and the pitcher called time and jogged over.

             

"Hi," he said.

             

"Hey."

             

He only had a buck sergeant's stripes but he seemed to be in charge. I jerked a thumb at the prefab.

             

"We're trying to get some reading done in there. What? You don't have a fuckin' catcher?"

             

"What? I thought that building was empty."

             

"It's not."

             

"Huh."

             

The sergeant, unfazed, offered his glove and, "If you're in, it evens up the teams. Winners get off nightwatch for a week."

             

Not even a look at the glove and, "I'm left-handed."

             

"Um… what?" like it was a logic puzzle.

             

"That glove is for right-handed throwers. I throw left."

             

"Oh. Um… you think you can manage?"

             

Suddenly I felt all their eyes. It didn't seem prudent to retain my gruffness.

             

An excuse as good as any: "I'm waiting for orders."

             

"Oh, right, right, sorry, sir," and then to the firstbaseman, "Hey Blackmar! Go get something, uh, soft to, uh, absorb the impact of the, uh, soundwaves so this fine man can get some reading done."

             

I took a step back, ready to turn and let them forget my face.

             

"Sorry about the noise, sir. Won't happen again, sir."

             

Not in a mood to correct all the Sir nonsense and, "Appreciated, sergeant."

             

I lingered around the corner and watched the supposed Blackmar reappear with a cot mattress, quickly folded in two and held in place by rocks. The sergeant tossed a pitch and it made no sound.

             

"Batter up!"

             

And then the staff sarge--

             

--at the plate, bat touching the far end, that slow-speed check swing, bent knees, eye on the pitcher, eye on the ball, no guaranteed fastballs anymore at that age, some curveballs that were mostly junkballs. I still swung at most everything. The pitch and I connected with the ball the wrong way, the alloy vibrating hard, stinging my hand like I grabbed hold of a live wire. Foul ball. Then a clean strike, a curve outside that wasn't a strike but I swung anyway, my long reach a match for my height. Batting gloves tightened, the wind-up, ball from the pitcher's hand, followed all the way in, my eyes almost down at my cleats with the swing, the ball's physics-defying dance over my bat, a strike the catcher dropped, yells from the bench to run to first, those awkward few steps of the unexpected, bat still in hand before discarded, a few short steps before I was tackled from behind, face full of brown-red dirt, motherfucker didn't need to hit me that hard, claps for the opposition, back to the bench, my mom close behind the chainlink fence with the spiral-bound scorebook, a big K on the diagram of a baseball field. Drab enthusiasm, solidarity with teammates, hell, not teammates, just guys who happened to sit on the same bench, played in the same defensive field, neither teammates nor friends. To the back of the bench, my Newport Knights cap's brim pulled low to hide the tears, the fucking tears even though I was seven goddamn years old, too old for that shit, saltwater tracking down my dusty face, the look of my dad burning a hole in my neck, dad seated next to Ben Meridien, who drank an Irish coffee out of a covered mug, his three daughters dragged along for a pithy attempt of a setup, Hey, Isn't The Guy Who Just Struck Out Kind Of Cute, You Know, John Kraid's Kid, Bobby?

             

We won but, hell, when was the last time I really felt I won? All the non-existent self-esteem of pre-pubescent depression. Back through the home team's foreign land to the known streets of Easthaven. My dad driving and my mom in the passenger seat.

             

"I'm going out west next week," said my mom.

             

"Again?"

             

"There's still work to be done. And come on, John, it's not like you don't--"

             

"Fine, K."

             

"John--"

             

"No no no, go. You have to. It's your job," and in a crude syncopation to approximate a backward sarcasm, "Because, shit, we all know how important it is how wildlife reacts to radiation and how fast it comes back, because when all the real bombs fall and not some nuke waste in a goddamn suitcase, we'll need to know what's safe to eat."

             

"Are you done?"

             

Sitting on a towel because my ass was all grimy from slides into second on stolen bases, the one thing I could still do without fail, the Gift of Speed, dirty cleats shaking off their grime on the sedan floor that they'd make me vacuum the next day. In uniform for a team, no, a Cause, a Cause I no longer believed in.

            

 "I want to quit," I said to the front of the car.

             

My dad, still driving, unintentionally veered into the oncoming lane as he turned and looked at me.

             

"What do you mean, quit? Quit what? School? Life? Come on, Bobby, be specific for once in your life."

             

The silent disapproval of my mom, resigned to looking out the window at the nauseating rush of vegetation parallel to the roadside.

             

"I want to quit the team, dad. I don't like it anymore."

             

"Why? Because your batting average dropped from nine-hundred to three-hundred once the kids could start throwing curves?"

             

"Part of it, yeah."

             

"You don't have to be the star player, Bobby," said my mom.

             

"Then why the fuck am I playing?" I asked.

            

"Hey!" said my dad.

             

"What? Ben says it all the time."

             

"You shouldn't follow Mr. Meridien's example," said my mom, emphasis on Mister.

             

"His name is Ben," my dad grumbled, "and he has a doctorate. So if you want to be proper, it's Doctor Meridien."

             

Getting close to home, wanting the conversation to end before it took place in a locale I couldn't escape, in the kitchen or living room or my cramped bedroom.

             

"I'll quit after the season," I said, trying to make a reasoned compromise.

             

"Bobby, honey, just because you struck out twice in a game doesn't mean--"

             

"If you want to quit, go ahead," said my dad without any doubt in his voice, without any of those parental tricks that try to get in your head and make you secondguess your own thoughts.

            

 But then that across-the-middle look from mom to dad, that Shouldn't We Discuss This Between Ourselves? look.

             

I didn't need to try to hide a smile. It was only a quarter of the way through the season, early, but late enough to know I had gone from a baseball all-star with a shot at a prep-school scholarship to a passable firstbaseman who simply lost the ability to strike fear into backing-up outfielders when I strode to the plate. And not like the season was interfering with school or my dwindling social life or the scant Quality Time left with twelve-year-old Rid. That look from my mom to my dad more indicative of the growing rift in which my dad gave us approval to, in my mom's opinion, run wild and focus all and everything on academics. She didn't see that as a recipe for a well-rounded childhood. The disintegration of the American Family encapsulated in one look from the passenger seat to the driver, simply in the proclamation of quitting baseball; in my mom's announcement of repeatedly going out to the Zone to work on something other Family Members (dad) didn't particularly condone; in openly swearing; in feeling uncomfortable with those strangers in the car, who'd all get out of the car in the garage, bump into each other as we took off our shoes in the mudroom, retreated to our separate places in the house, my dad to his office upstairs, my mom to her office in the master bedroom.

             

Night.

             

Awake in bed, staring up at the invisible ceiling. Looking at all the separate parts in the pitch-black room, seeing only the LEDs from various electronics, the different-colored stars of my universe-room. But we were on a giant rock hurtling through space and I couldn't even feel it, shut up in some bedroom in some town.

             

I remembered when I was a few years younger. Back then I had a bad sleepwalking habit that I obviously couldn't quit by sheer force of will. But I was lucid the whole time. Like those locked-in syndromes, except I was moving and my eyes were open but I couldn't stop whatever it was that I was doing. Not that I was murdering captured woodland mammals in the garage.

             

I'd descend to the cavernous main level of the house, lit dimly by rope lighting above the cupboards, lights over the bar. My mind, half-asleep, fractured it as an impossibly-foreign, post-human landscape. My legs took me down to the basement, turning on a CRT television to the station that played old multicam laughtracked sitcoms that were as old as my parents. Jokes long past their expiration dates. Sitting there nightmare-eyed, unable to blink, to shut my eyes, to look away, to turn, to move. Paralyzed. Wanting to do something, anything, to jump out a plate-glass window and run howling down the street, terrorizing the neighborhood before a Police helicopter landed on top of me and pinned me down, SWAT teams coming out and unloading whole canisters of pepper spray in my face. I Want To Get Out And I Can't and watching old sitcoms, ha ha, he tripped down the stairs, ha ha, jokes about the war, the wars. Rising panic, the pregame to full-on panic attacks foretold by a combination of sleepwalking, night terrors and vicious anxiety, something that seemed possible to cook up a heart attack in an otherwise-healthy seven-year-old.

             

Thinking about the summer, barely begun, knowing already that it'd end before I figured out to do with it, all that Time discarded like paper bets at a racetrack. Thinking about some of the few things Rid ever told me about school, about how, god, about how he felt, how he said he was going to join the Forces after graduation because he was so crippled, so institutionalized, that he didn't trust his own free will, even if it meant marching into another giant Machine. Ridley: Not so much His Own Worst Enemy but His Own Worst Nothing, already so Gone that I once overheard Mr. Meridien crassly joke that Rid wouldn't even be at his own funeral and--

             

And then when the curse had its fill of nostalgia-laced programming I'd turn off the television and, still devoid of free will, retreat back to my room, past the closed door and the arrow pointing to both "DO NOT DISTURB" and "ASLEEP" on the homemade sign scrawled on Rid's door.

             

My cloistered bedroom. Hands that weren't my own pulling the sheets to my chin, eyes locked open, staring up at the blackness, the conscious part of my mind knowing there a bumpy textured ceiling there; and I'd look past it, up into the attic, up into the smear of Easthaven city lights, then past that, to the upper layers of the atmosphere, the magnetosphere, past the bright wash of the moon, all the way up there in that ether, the Void, feeling myself rise until, without knowing it, I was asleep.

(Chapter 30 coming Monday, January 23, 2012.)

Meridien K - Chapter 28: The Endless Tower

I had worked on a few doomed projects. The typical undergrad fuck-all pursuits of cold fusion and perpetual motion, anything, really, to solve the energy crisis and once-and-for-all end The Petroleum Age. Theoretical lightspeed travel. Cutting holes in spacetime or warping its immaterial fabric. Idealism followed by disappointment came with the territory. That decisive moment of failure sneaks up on you and makes you realize all those late nights in the lab or observatory or on a fucking-freezing roof were for nothing, that you're chasing invisible dragons. You try to fight it, keep going, even though that nagging feeling falls like fog, that you're wasting the night, every night, all that time that'll come back to you when you're old and dying, wishing you had that time for something else, anything else, spent with other people, maybe; maybe even your disintegrating family, maybe doing something like learning Russian or how to cook or how to tie nautical knots.

             

That moment was much delayed on Red. The surroundings made it impossible to think that anything we did was folly. Ben and I accepted the grim possibility that we were simply laying groundwork, that once we died someone else would take our place. A few half-joked, half-real Death Pacts that we would destroy all our work before we kicked it, just because, well, Fuck It, let the next in line start from scratch, same as we did, back when we were fifteen-year-old rogues pointedly-questioning tenured profs.

             

We built another shack up above the dustline, cleaner clearer air but too high up the sloping mountainside for the Rover until we built a road proper. When we brought up mattresses it was a given that we'd eventually move in there and, like old times, sleep under our desks. From our new roost we saw Colonel Tibbits pick around our old shelter, probably wanting to claim the scrap material to use for whatever kingdom he was building by the old M1 crash, its shards almost fully dismantled and cleared, a few more bodies pulled out for our redgrave cemetery.

             

Intihar huffed it up the hillside to bring us supplies and fresh news and gossip every week. We were rarely heard from and we rarely went down. We were the Men of the Mountains, as Martian as the dragon sky.

             

"Soap, shampoo, microwaveable chow, trash bags, and your precious fruit, Dr. Meridien. You guys need some razors? Those beards are looking fierce."

             

"You see a rank on this collar?" said Ben, pulling on his crewneck white T. "Fuck that. Beards are noble. Besides, every time I get rid of one I can't stop stroking my chin even though there's nothing there. And if everyone thinks we're scary mountainmen, the beards will scare them faster."

             

A laugh from Intihar, one of the few guys we both liked and trusted, and he took off down the mountain on a rickety bicycle to take orders from Lord Tibbits.

             

Typical workday, up there with a bandana over my nose and mouth since the wind was, for whatever reason, blowing up, blowing all that red all over everything, having to wipe my eyepiece every five seconds. Cold one second, hot the next, wearing a ratty hooded sweat-stained sweatshirt I kept putting on and pulling off. Goggles in my pocket but wiping my red, teary eyes with dirty hands instead, blinking away what I could, rubbing in the rest. Punching in coords on the worn-down keypad on the side of the gear base of the telescope, the whir of the corrections, filtering out the daytime and staring up into a black sky, maybe getting lucky and seeing a faraway star. But usually pure black. It was like the lens cap was perpetually on.

             

"Hey Ben, what're the XYZs of that brown dwarf you found?"

             

No response. I turned and Ben's scope was pointed down at the airstrip.

             

"There goes the neighborhood," he said.

             

I indulged him and watched. In a cleared square was a structure that looked far more semi-permanent than our pauper's Settlement. The walls were timber and enlistees were putting up glareproof metal siding. It was about as big as an auto-body garage. Another Reg rested a plywood board against the front, where there was an open counter. He spraypainted "PX" onto it from a milspec stencil.

             

"Glad to see the kids finally put up a lemonade stand," said Ben.

             

"Fuck," I let slip from my parted lips, not quite sure it if was my own thought or just Ben invading my head.

             

"Dominoes," he said, letting me fill in the rest.

             

Eighteen months on Red and already he seemed sick of it; sick of the bloat and the bullshit and the politicking, not sick of the Mission, our Mission on top of it. I was starting to feel that way, too, and I increasingly would when they started construction on what would become their permanent Base. Transporting terrestrial civilization one Lego at a time, faster than we could keep up the terraformation. Some of the guys from M2 still wore their surface suits without fail, day in, day out. They probably used the ghastly self-cleaning module when they hooked themselves up to a hose, which basically simulated a carwash inside the suit, emptying the diaper and spraying antibacterial water all over the place, leaving them wet for a day depending on the severity of the sunlight.

             

"Hey John."

             

Waiting for M3 to come with animals and vehicles. The fantasy gaining traction as a reality; an inevitability. Driving BMWs on fresh asphalt. Hang-gliding off the mountains and soaring above the deep deep trenches. A few decades later, maybe doing the same under a blue sky, heading home to a suburban subdivision, identical starter houses, only different by mailbox number. More women coming over. And kids. A hospital so men could fuck their wives or their girlfriends and have a baby. A grocery store with carts with that seat in front for kids and purses. Banal talk radio on the commute to work, down freeways lined with sound barriers and giant pines peeking above the tops. Traffic jams and gridlock and carpool lanes.

             

Trying to clear out the cobwebs of those Benthoughts that had a bad habit of worming into my ears.

             

"John, you have to check this out."

             

I was facing the opposite direction, out at the vast expanse of Frontier we'd never, ever tame. But Ben was right. I knew he was right. I always knew. While he knew it as an omen, I had to wait to see it before that stomach-pit feeling sank in. Mars wasn't ours anymore. It belonged to earth.

             

"JOHN."

             

"What?"

             

Ben wasn't looking down at the construction. His scope was pointed up and he waved me over with as much urgency as a thirdbase coach windmilling for the runner to sprint for home. I came over. Ben grabbed me and shoved me toward the secondary viewer.

             

"You're gonna miss it," he said.

             

"Miss what?"

             

I put my eye to the foam eyepiece. That familiar blackness.

             

"And I'm looking for…?"

             

"Look harder, jackass."

             

"Zoom in."

             

"If I zoom you won't be able to see it. Look. That bright spot. And then that other right next to it."

             

"You found a star. Congratulations."

             

"Keeping looking."

             

The second bright spot shimmered. But not the normal shimmer of an eye trick or some weird ether. And the initial bright spot stayed locked; didn't give the telltale wobble of a mass giant fucking with its gravity.

             

"Whoa."

             

"Whoa is right."

             

"The fuck is that?"

             

"Way too big for an asteroid. And look, that star to the right is tracking left and look! Now! Now! That spot is moving across that star in the background. It's a backlit planet."

             

"Jesus. Is this vis spec?"

             

Ben either didn't know or kept going and, "I kicked it to the machine using the Equation. We'll get a read-out on the spectra. Mass of the star and the planet. Or planetoid. It could be small. But, shit, this isn't Jovian-sized."

             

"What's the distance?"

             

"Hold on. Let me check the bounce. Should be through."

             

Ben rushed off to the shack and ripped perforated paper spitting out of the printer.

             

"Two hundred light years. Or… uh…" and a necessary beard-scratch, "two-hundred million. Fuckin' zeroes… But man… it's blueshifting like a motherfucker. So much for dark energy."

             

"Impossible. No prospects are that close. We went through the whole damned book of logged extrasolars. Could be gone. And fuck-all if it's like that Gliese bullshit. That was a waste of two semesters."

             

"Or we might just be seeing this for the first time," Ben said.

             

"In that case, it's too far. It's dead light. Especially if it's two-hundred million out and not two hundred."

             

Ben went back to the scope, leaned in and scrolled through the near-vis spectrum. His mouth perpetually agape, a squint to his off-lens eye like he was engaged in casual voyeurism.

             

"Since when are you the optimist?" I asked.

             

"Since Mars became a pile of shit with too much dust, terraformation that was fucked up in the first place, and mil guys trying to muscle us around."

             

We stepped back. That orb in the sky wasn't going anywhere if it hadn't Gone already. Ben was smiling.

             

"That it's, right there. Call it. Write it down. Meridienkraid. Finally."

             

Flashback to sophomore year. Ben getting his parents' house in order when his dad moved and I was out a lab partner and co-author for a final project. We couldn't coordinate scope time or lab slots so I wrote a paper on a theoretical extrasolar planet and gave Ben the head byline. We called it Meridienkraid, if only because Kraidmeridien didn't have the same offkilter lyricism. The paper - devoid of any hard science, endless pages of raw speculation like I had missed the day on The Scientific Method - got a C-minus and almost cost us our scholarships.

             

And then up above the dust, up above Planet Mars, there it was, somewhere far past plain perception. I looked up at the ruddy sky, its stone face betraying the possibility of anything else out there.

             

"And here I thought we were going to have to move to, shit, Europa or Ganymede or something," said Ben. "I'm not living on any fuckin' moon."

             

We stood there a while, in sheer disbelief at the staggering odds of anything. I felt it was like geometric limit: An equation that curves down along the X-axis and goes on forever about to touch zero, but it never touches zero. Or it's like a huge lottery jackpot when everyone buys a ticket and some television dumbass says your odds of winning are about the same as not buying a ticket at all; but if you don't have a ticket, you can't win at all. There's Zero, and there's Almost Zero.

             

And down below, no one had any idea what we had seen. They were mere figures in the dust; players in a game that had no rules except survival.

(Chapter 29 coming Friday, January 20, 2012.)