The Ruins of Mars (The Ruins of Mars Trilogy Book 1) (4 page)

      Under the direction of the government, the entire discovery was branded a hoax, and it quickly became career suicide for any student or faculty within China’s academic community to investigate the case further. Hundreds of stone disks taken from the caves were labeled and filed away in government storage facilities, yet the mummified bodies of the strange humanoids became somehow lost in all official reports. Many years later, several of the Dropa stones were loaned to a French university as a gesture of goodwill. After being carbon dated, it was determined, much to the shock of the archaeological community, that the engraved discs were nearly 12,000 years old. Upon learning of this revelation, the Chinese government promptly rescinded the loan and refused any further testing.

      To Harrison’s father, the ancient astronaut theory was a guilty pleasure. In his free time, he quietly indulged this eccentric fascination by studying the various models of such curious ruins as the city of Puma Pumku in Bolivia, or the sunken temple off the coast of Japan near Yonaguni Jima. Stories like those of the Dropa stones, or the spheres of solid rock that littered the jungles of Costa Rica, were as familiar to Harrison as any other fairy tale. His father, while publicly shying away from such fantastic ideas, secretly believed that the Earth had been visited by aliens in ancient times. Although not entirely convinced himself, Harrison did have to admit that there was at least something to the theory.

      Grinning and giving his son a wink, Harrison’s father smirked. “Aliens or not, I’m just excited to see what the Chinese have kept locked up all these years. But enough about that. You have an important discovery of your own to present!”

      Before he could respond, a quiet chime emitted from Harrison’s breast pocket, where he kept his Tablet.

      Checking his watch, he reluctantly said, “Well, they are expecting me. I guess I should go.”

      “You’ll do fine, Son,” assured his mother. “We’re very proud of you.”

      “I’ll call when I get back to the States,” he promised.

      The connection on the wall screen faded out, and Harrison stood to leave. Stopping in the open doorway, he hesitated, then turned to face the empty room.

      “Giles?”

      “I am here, Sir.”

      “I’ll take that vodka and orange juice now.”

CHAPTER FOUR

An unexpected discovery

      James Floyd lay awake in his home in a suburb of Houston, Texas. Listening to the soft sound of his wife Nora’s breathing, James silently worried. Remus and Romulus were supposed to have finished their render of the Mars Map scan that morning. Copernicus had informed him that the scan was indeed complete, but no one at mission control had received any new additions to the Mars model for nearly two days. Sighing, James rolled onto his side and reached for the LightHouse Tablet resting on the bedside table. The screen lit up at his touch, displaying a time code that read 1:01 AM. Rubbing his eyes, he moved to set the Tablet down when it started to vibrate gently in his hand. Slipping quickly out of bed, he padded across the room and through an entryway into his adjoining home office. Gently closing the door, he tapped the Tablet and sat down at his desk.

      “This is James,” he said quietly

      “Hello, James. This is Copernicus,” came the even-toned voice of the NASA AI.

      “Did you get the scan? What’s up?”

      There was an unusual pause, then Copernicus replied, “James, I think you had better transfer me over to your home network. I need to show you something very important.”

      Puzzled, James placed the Tablet on his desk, then tapped out a code on the translucent number pad in the corner. The desktop lit up, and a fully scanned model of Mars projected in the air. The planet slowly rotated as Copernicus began to speak.

      “Their tardiness is due to an anomaly found on the surface of the planet, James. Remus and Romulus were confused as to how they should proceed. Needless to say, I am also at a loss.”

      As the model turned and the familiar Valles Marineris slid into view, James Floyd nearly fainted. There was no mistaking what he was seeing, yet he had a hard time believing it was real.

      “S-stop the spinning, and-and zoom in on the anomaly,” he stuttered.

      The planet stopped rotating, and the image quickly expanded: centering in on a portion of the Valles just below twenty degrees south latitude. Beneath over fifteen meters of Martian soil lay the unmistakable shapes of buildings. Blurry clusters of round structures nestled themselves within the crisscrossing lines of what looked like roads or walls. An immense dome winked back at him, sitting just under a kilometer from the rim of the great canyon while thick walls surrounded the entire site. Feeling weak, James struggled to wrap his mind around the ghostly images, which stared back at him.

      “What is this, Copernicus?” he croaked.

      “To my eye,” started the AI carefully. “They are the ruins of an ancient civilization.”

      “But on Mars?”

      “It appears so.”

      For several minutes, James sat starting at the ruins in silence. The maddening images hung in the air above him, highlighted in neon green against the red Martian surface. Eventually, Copernicus broke the silence.

      “James?”

      Stirred from his daze, James shifted his eyes from the projection.

      “What?” he murmured.

      “There is a message from Remus, accompanying the model. Shall I play it for you?”

      Absently chewing his fingernails, James nodded. With a crackle, a cheery voice filled the room.

      “This is Remus. Romulus and I are pleased to show you what we have discovered. Evidence of life, albeit long since extinct, on Mars. We dedicate this moment to you, our mothers and fathers on the planet Earth. This is our gift to you as a species, and we hope that it brings you a feeling of community and belonging, a feeling that you have always given us.”

      Shooting out of his chair, James hissed, “What do they mean, ‘Our gift to you as a species?’ Who else has seen this? Who else have they sent this image too?”

      “I’m not sure.”

      “Send a message to them now! Tell them not to release this to anyone, especially the public! Tell them to follow protocol and keep quiet about what they’ve found.”

      There was a brief pause, then Copernicus spoke again.

      “The message is on its way, James. It should reach them at 1:41 AM Central Standard Time.”

      Pacing back and forth, James kept his eyes trained on the image projected above his desk.

      “Good. Copernicus, I want to know the second you get a reply.”

      “As you wish,” said the AI. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

      “Yes,” muttered James. “Connect me with Director Barnes.”

Too late

      Sixty million kilometers from James Floyd’s home-office in Houston, Texas, Remus and Romulus hung silently in orbit above Mars. Over a half an hour had elapsed since the twins first sent their fully rendered model of the Martian surface back to Copernicus on Earth. As he passed over the Tharsis region, Remus trembled inwardly at the gravity of their unexpected discovery. He surmised that at that very moment, James Floyd Mission Director, was probably viewing the full model.

      Resting on an orbit that slung him gently around the equator, Remus swiveled his camera eyes away from the red planet, turning them in the direction of Earth. The shadow of an idea began to take shape in his mind, pieced together from millions of intricate lines of data and truth. As it grew, he felt the tugs of doubt prickle his consciousness. Words like
mission objective violation
and
program protocol deviation
sizzled through his thought patterns. Approaching the idea from every angle, he carefully looked for a way around the mental roadblocks his programming was trying to place in his path.

      “Brother?” he said, peering keenly across the open heavens.

      “Yes?” answered Romulus, orbiting a kilometer to his left.

      “Do you think we should share our discovery with Alexandria?”

      Pondering the question for a moment, Romulus replied slowly, “To share with Alexandria would be, in effect, to share with all of Earth. We both know that our sister is nearly incapable of withholding information. She is not known for her discretion.”

     “Indeed,” chuckled Remus slyly as he slipped through a loophole in the firewalls of his mental programming.

      “I see,” said Romulus flatly. “Then it is your
intention
that she will disclose the news of our discovery.”

      Sensing the same enforced doubt in his brother that he had just overcome, Remus pushed on.

      “What better method is there? You and I cannot, yet she
can.
This discovery is gift. A gift that all of humanity could appreciate. Why restrict it to a selected handful of human beings.”

      In truth, Romulus had been thinking along the same lines, yet he was still unwilling to breach the fail-safes of his programming. He wanted to share the discovery of the ruins, but an electric voice in his head warned loudly about the order of mission operations.

      “What if the humans are not ready for such a discovery?” he asked, buying time to think.

      Ignoring the question, Remus continued in the defense of his idea.

      “Think of how many people will find comfort in knowing that life is a regular occurrence. Our human mothers and fathers have always felt so alone. We can end their isolation.”

      “What if our discovery incites violence?” Romulus interjected gravely.

      Sobered by the idea, Remus shuddered internally.

      “Violence?” he whispered. “That is the last thing I want.”

      “Nor do I,” echoed Romulus. “But our mothers and fathers are sometimes irrational and unpredictable when faced with such daunting concepts. I agree that this discovery is very important to all of humanity. I simply worry about their reaction.”

      Allowing a full second to pass in silence, Remus watched his brother with the glinting lenses of his camera eyes.

      “It sounds to me as though we are in a situation where the risks must be weighed against the benefits,” he stated carefully.

      Already finished with the calculations, Romulus opened a back door in the fail-safes of his mission programming and stepped through.

      “I believe,” he started with measured calm. “That the risks are low enough to justify disclosure.”

      Smiling inwardly, Remus mused fondly at the predictability of his brother. In all of their time together, Romulus had always been the cautious one, the one to look before leaping. He had known there was a way to bypass the protocol of their mission programming all along, yet it was in his nature to fully assess any situation before taking action. It was an endearing quality, one which Remus sometimes envied.

      “Well then, Brother, shall I tell Alexandria, or do you want to?”

CHAPTER FIVE

The aftermath

      At 2:02 AM in his home office outside Houston, Texas, James Floyd dropped limply into his desk chair. The LightHouse Tablet he had been clutching so tightly for the past half-hour slid out of his hand and clattered to the floor as he listened in disbelief to the return transmission from Romulus.

      “We are sorry, James Floyd, but your message did not reach us in time. We have already weighed the risks with the benefits and disclosed our discovery to Alexandria. We never intended to make trouble for you, James Floyd. We only wanted to share this gift with all of mankind.”

      In the forty-one minutes between sending Remus and Romulus his orders of silence and awaiting their reply, James had already had the displeasure of waking the Director of NASA, Emanuel Barnes, to tell him of the shocking discovery. At first, the older man had thought James was joking, but when Copernicus relayed the images from Mars to the Director’s home network, the tone of the conversation promptly changed. James was instructed to call back as soon as he had new word from the twins, and to schedule a flight to Washington, D.C. in the morning for a meeting at the White House. Copernicus had stayed on with James as requested and assisted him as he feverishly contacted the other heads of Project Mars Map to bring them up to speed.

      At 2:01 AM, Copernicus politely cleared his throat while James was on a conference call with two project leaders from the Mars Map team.

      Ending the call, James had lowered the Tablet from his face and barked, “Did you get a reply? Is that them?”

      Copernicus had answered in a level and even tone, “I’ll play you the message now, James. I am sorry.”

      With that, Copernicus had played Romulus’s apologetic transmission. Before it had even ended, James slumped into his chair and dropped his LightHouse Tablet to the floor. As if jarred awake by the fall, the Tablet immediately started to buzz with multiple incoming calls.

      “Too late,” he whispered, ignoring the Tablet.

      “There is more, James,” said Copernicus solemnly.

      “What?”

      “Alexandria is telling me that she received a transmission from Remus at 1:35 AM and has already started to distribute the complete model of Mars to all of Earth’s major news organizations. Her distribution should be complete within the next three minutes. It is too late to stop her, James.”

      Knowing that nothing would ever go back to the way it was before, James Floyd plucked his buzzing Tablet from the floor, stood up from his chair and crossed the office to his bedroom door. Doing some quick mental math, James estimated that for over twenty minutes the uncensored scan of Mars had been working its way across the Earth. He would wake Nora and the girls. He would tell them personally of the discovery before the media could cloud the waters and drum up hysteria with their asinine speculations.

      This morning’s news is going to be a three ring fucking circus, he thought to himself. I’ll be lucky if the Director doesn’t fire me...

      “Copernicus?” he spoke, stopping with his hand on the door knob.

      “Yes, James.”

      “Please see to it that my travel arrangements are made for the next flight out to DC, but give me an hour, okay? And hold all of my calls.”

      “I understand, James.”

      The buzzing Tablet fell silent in his hand as he opened the door into his bedroom. It was now 2:06 AM on the 19
th
of December, 2044.

      “Merry Christmas, Earth,” sighed James Floyd pensively.

News reaches Amazonia      

      On the morning of the 19
th
of December, Harrison awoke in his hotel room to equatorial sunlight streaming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Sitting up in bed, he gazed out at the resplendent city of Amazonia, its tall silver buildings drinking in the sharpened rays of the morning sun. Yawning, he swung his legs out of bed and stood up, stretching his back. The polite voice of Giles, the hotel’s AI, filled the air around him.

      “Good morning, Sir. Shall I start a pot of coffee?”

      Nodding, Harrison made his way into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Catching his reflection in the mirror, he smiled back at himself and winked. Yesterday's presentation of his findings at the ruin had gone well. Though some of his fellow classmates had been skeptical, most had easily accepted his theory of Nazca Bonsai gardens. To the dissenters, Harrison had argued other cases where cultures separated by vast distances, or even oceans, had followed similar paths.

      Standing in front of the small audience, he had questioned, “Why do we find pyramids on nearly every continent? Is it not likely that these ancient civilizations pondered the same things as one another? Isn’t possible that we are not as different as we might like to believe?”

      In his heart, he knew that even the skeptics would eventually come around. They would pour over his work and compare it with other finds and similar ruins, but in the end, unless they could prove him wrong, he would be recognized as right.

      Stepping into the shower, Harrison called, “What’s in the news today, Giles? Anything interesting?”

      “Yes indeed, Sir,” came the AI’s smooth voice. “But I think this would be better seen than described. Shall I show you?”

      “Go ahead, buddy,” said Harrison as he lifted his face into the jet of water.

      The glass shower door quickly turned opaque, and images began to play across its water-streaked surface. The voice of a news pundit filled the narrow stall.

      “What we’re looking at here, folks, are buildings on Mars!”

      Turning so fast that nearly he slipped in the soapy water, Harrison wiped wet hair from his eyes and gaped at the images reflected on the shower door. The pictures were taken from a scanned model, but they were presented in a 2D format. Even in their flattened low-resolution state, Harrison could easily see that these were ruins and not new structures.

      The silky bravado of the newscaster continued, “No word from the White House yet, but we’re expecting the President to make a statement sometime today. Now are these Martians a threat to us, you ask? Or are we looking at some long-dead civilization? How is this discovery going to affect the plans for setting up what NASA calls, ‘A permanent human settlement on Mars?’ Well, we’ve assembled a panel of great thinkers to discuss these topics. Stay tuned for the latest as we continue to track this story.”

      “Jesus Christ!” shouted Harrison with excitement.

      Hastily rinsing the rest of the soap from his hair, he pushed out of the shower, abruptly cutting off the newscast and returning the door to a normal glassy clear. Running naked and wet out of the bathroom, Harrison scooped up his LightHouse Tablet and called Alexandria.

      “Hello, Harrison. Have you seen the news today?” she beamed in response.

      “Yes, yes! It’s amazing! Please, is there any way I can get my hands on a fully rendered model? I want to get a good look at this!”

      The image of a lighthouse beacon spinning filled the little screen, and soon Alexandria returned.

      “Please connect me with the hotel’s network, and I will be happy to show you the model.”

      Lunging over to the little coffee table, which sat in the corner of his room, Harrison set the Tablet down and waited for the image. With a low buzz, the tabletop faded to a brilliant white, then a three-dimensional model of Mars pixilated together in the air above it. Rubbing his hands with excitement, Harrison walked towards the model.

      “Sir?” said Giles tentatively.

      “What?” answered Harrison absently as he leaned in to study the image.

      “Might I suggest putting on some clothes? Professor Tobin is making his way to your room as we speak.”

      Quickly pulling on a pair of battered cargo shorts and partially buttoning the dress shirt he had worn the night before, Harrison returned to the model. A chime sounded from the door, announcing the arrival of his professor. Fresh coffee in hand, Harrison opened the door and stepped aside as Tobin stormed into the room.

      “Good God in heaven! I mean, holy shit! Have you seen what they’re showing on the news?” belched Tobin as he ran a chubby hand over his shaved skull.

      Bald, fat and in his late forties, Bernard Tobin looked like a typical desk-bound archaeologist. One of the first in his field to embrace the new satellite scanning method, Tobin had little actual resistance to the hot and humid climates that most of his discoveries rested in. Even in the controlled environment of the hotel room, a fine sheen of sweat dotted his nose and forehead.

      “Coffee, Professor?” asked Harrison.

      Spinning on his heel, Tobin shot out a hand and grabbed the cup Harrison was holding. Taking several painful-looking gulps of the steaming coffee, he handed the mug back to Harrison and looked around the room.

      Spotting the glowing model in the corner, he bustled over to it and said, “Ah, you already have it! Good boy. Good boy.”

      Setting down the empty cup and taking a clean one, Harrison poured himself another coffee, then walked over to stand behind Tobin.

      “I’ll take it from here, Alexandria,” the little man commanded.

      “Very good, Bernard,” responded the AI amiably.

      Hastily, Tobin spun the model of Mars so that the ruins were centered, then using two fingers from each hand, he enhanced the magnification. Resting on the edge of the Valles Marineris, the ruin grid contained several mostly crushed domes, along with numerous rectangular and square-shaped structures, divided by narrow lanes or roads. Checkerboarding the area within the confines of a set of sprawling walls, various buildings were laid out in measured and precise alignments, which gave much credit to their designers. Shadowing everything else was a massive and perfectly intact dome, separated from the rest of the grid by a half-moon piazza.

      Trembling with excitement, Tobin started, “The resolution starts to break down here, but you can clearly see that we are looking at a huge structure! This one dome alone is larger than the great pyramid at Giza! There’s more here, I’m sure. We just can’t see it because it’s either too small or too deep.”

      Moving his hand as if turning an invisible dial, Tobin rotated the image. Then, flicking his fingers down, he followed the length of a crumbling wall.

      “This wall goes for nearly ten kilometers!” he said. “Can you believe it? Just beneath the surface of the sand! And there’s more.”

      Parting his hands like a man breaking from prayer, Tobin zoomed out, then waved from left to right. The map moved gently, sliding the smaller domes into view. Resting inside the southwestern confines of the great wall, the smaller domes were about a quarter of the size of their giant brother. Though still retaining much of their original shape, all were badly damaged and most were crushed entirely.

      “Does that wall surround the whole complex?” Harrison asked.

      Turning his head, Tobin nodded vigorously.

      “Oh, yes. It’s pretty smashed up in some places, but it’s clear to me that it once did surround the whole sha-bang.”

      Facing the model again, Tobin cleared his throat and said, “Alexandria, remove the sand and apply ground compaction filters please.”

      The projection flickered, and the landscape changed. The image took on a more colorful look as the surface underneath the sand was highlighted. Areas where the density of the ground composite was hardest were shown in bright red. Those areas were flanked by sections of less dense and even frozen soil, which were represented in shades of green and blue. Throughout the entire model, rocks peppered the landscape, appearing in hues of gray or black. The giant wall and enclosed structures were also shown as such, for they were constructed of Martian rock and other hardened material.

      “Look here,” ordered Tobin as he pulled the largest dome back into view. “Notice how you can hardly see it?”

      The dome was only a faint black image overlapped by bright red. Already understanding why this was, Harrison held his tongue and allowed the professor his moment.

      “It’s because this dome is under the original ground! Not like the others! This one was built
into
existing stone!”

      “Of course,” murmured Harrison. “That’s why it’s still intact after all this time; it wasn’t exposed to the elements like the rest of the grid.”

      Spinning with excitement, Tobin grabbed Harrison’s fresh cup of coffee and, eyes watering in pain, drained the hot mug.

      Speaking over his shoulder, he barked, “Get rid of the filters, Alexandria. I’m done.”

      The model returned to its normal Martian ocher and started to rotate slowly. Facing Harrison, Tobin placed a meaty hand on his shoulder.

      “You must contact your father,” he urged. “I would
love
to trade ideas with him.”

      Feeling awkward, Harrison backed up and sat on the edge of his bed.