Hello dearest readers, I'm just adding a note here to say that I'm taking a bit of a winter vacation. I'll be back in the new year with more Critical Future's stories, but in the mean time, visit tychoish.com and be well. -- tycho garen

Strategy Meeting #2

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 26th November 2008. (commentary)

Continuing from our introduction to Quinn Dasen, we’re back with more from Chapter 5 of Knowing Mars. If you want to get caught up, check out part one. Enjoy!

“Look where it got me? Worth every moment!” We staged this argument with some great frequency, though the blood-spatter argument was a new one.

“Yeah, Kyp will be here pretty soon, we think, and it looks like they’re going to be able to make it possible for some people to move to Mars.”

“That’s always good. It’s a shame that more people can’t be convinced to go, there’s still room after all this time?”

“That’s what they said. And they could build another colony structure pretty much at the drop of a hat, but there aren’t people yet.”

“It’s not self sufficient yet, I guess that’s still an issue,”

“I think it could be I think. Most of the stuff they send, is–ironic as it is now–that’s easier or cheaper to make here or in orbit and send to Mars. Prefab space gear, mechanical parts, raw or semi-raw minerals and metals, you know. Fascinating stuff really.”

“You should see if they need an ISA bureau,” Quinn said as she looked over her shoulder for a waiter.

“You could have some of this,” I said, pointing to my mostly untouched muffin–there had been a moment of weakness before she arrived, but the muffin was still intact.

“It’s ok,” she said. The waiter arrived quickly and she placed an order for coffee and a sandwich.

“I don’t think I’m quite ready to pack up and leave everything, at least not yet but the idea has occurred. And it’s funny that there isn’t ISA folk there.”

“I doubt we’d be talking about it if there was.”

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Strategy Meeting #1

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 25th November 2008. (commentary)

Continuing from our introduction to Quinn Dasen, we continue with more from Chapter 5 of Knowing Mars, which is narrated as usual by Matthew Connor. Enjoy!

I remember having lunch a number of times with Quinn Dasen in a quaint little outdoor cafe in Casablanca. About a hundred years back they built a dome over the city, which made the “outdoor” quality ironic at best, but there were a couple of ISA forensics operations in Northern Africa that served as ample pretext for our meetings. Because of our departments operations in the area we were pretty confident that we knew who was bugging our conversation, if it worked: the domes had always been tricky to get bugs into–in retrospect I’m sure ISA wouldn’t have allowed the domes to be built, but we made do. I never thought when I was in med school that I’d end up spending a huge part of my career as a spy, if I had known; I’d probably have slept more.

I got to the cafe before Quinn, which wasn’t that unusual, I ordered a cup of tea and a muffin and then checked the messages on my portable while I waited. There was a cryptic message from Taban–I think, text only from Mars–that said that Kyp was in route, which I already knew, and that it looked like they were going to be able to secure immigration permits and subsides, but I wasn’t quite sure. Taban and I had developed a plaintext code for extra security on top of our standard encryptions, for this kind of messaging before they left for Mars, and I had gotten pretty good at decoding it without the cheat sheet, I wasn’t perfect.

“More messages from Mars?” Quinn said. She couldn’t have seen what I was working on, my back was to a corner of the courtyard. “It was the look on your face,” Quinn said. “I’m not a telepath, geeze Matt, I went to spy school and learned something useful, while you were busy learning about medicine and blood-spatters–when was the last time any real murderer left a bloodspatter? A hundred years ago? Two?”

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Quinn Dasen

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 24th November 2008. (commentary)

Thanks for reading. This week we’re going to continue with parts from the Knowing Mars story. This is one of the rare one-part installments on Critical Futures, and we’ll continue with the next section from Chapter 5 later this week. Please note that there won’t be stories on the Thanksgiving, so it’s a short week. I hope you enjoy.

Quinn Dasen always surprised me, and for a long time I thought that she was really a telepathy. Her insight and powers of observation were really second to none, and I always trusted her opinions and recommendations.

She often took a more moderate line with regards to the telepath issue, and though I often found myself at odds with her position or her approach, Quinn’s perspective and tireless work on the behalf of telepaths’–and really the rest of us as well–had in my estimation a much larger positive impact on the course of history in the last fifty years. Even now, looking back, I can’t quite fathom how she pulled off the security for the release of the Morgan Book, and later both kept an eye on Busby and prevented the powers that be in ISA from following his recommendations.

Though some in the telepath community have taken issue with my support for Quinn, despite all of the tragedies that happened in the early days–and indeed what ISA has become in the past few decades–I think it’s completely appropriate to recognize Quinn’s great, positive, impact.

Our meetings in North Africa were among the best part of my time with ISA, it’s weird now–given what ISA is these days–to have been so involved in the organization at one point. It was different then, I feel confident saying that, and I also think that there was a possibility for change and progress from within ISA when I was on the payroll. I don’t think this changes anything, and I was certainly happy to get out of ISA when I did, but–and I think this may be the surprising part–I am glad I got the opportunity to work in ISA when I did. Without these experiences, I would have never gotten the opportunity to meet Quinn Dasen, and I think interestingly, I would have never been involved with the telepath community, which as you might expect, has probably been one of the defining aspects of my life.

And if I had to do it all over again, I would.

Matthew Connor, MD
Mars Colony, 2596

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On Going Home, #3

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 21st November 2008. (commentary)

Installments from Knowing Mars’ Chapter 5 continue this week, which brings us to the half way point of this project. This chapter has a lot of short bits. Today we begin a short three part series from Kyp Ebner that follows this segment from our usual narrator, Matthew Connor. If you want to catch up you can visit: part one, part two, and part three. Enjoy

Besides, Taban and Kalian have more important work to do on Mars. There is always data to process it seems–with me off planet they finally can use some of my processing power to expedite the process–and they’re working on revising a handbook for telepaths. I actually have an early copy of the text with me, that they told me to look over while I’m in transit. It’s hard to get editorial help when you’re writing about something that the general public doesn’t know about.

I suppose I should get to that reading now: when I start trips like this, trips that I think are going to be important in the long run. I’m always intimidated by the way that Taban and Kalian write, with such precision and clarity: and when I read over my pitiful attempts I always sound like I slept through most of my education, which I suppose I did, but the telepathic interference was really bad when I was in school. Traveling always makes me think, “my wouldn’t it be nice to start a journal,” but always I get discouraged when I read over the nearly-incoherent text: the journal that I started during my first trip to Mars didn’t make it very far out of Earth orbit, alas.

This is going to be a long trip…

Kyp Ebner
February, 2543
Burroughs, Mars-Earth Liner

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On Going Home, #2

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 20th November 2008. (commentary)

Installments from Knowing Mars’ Chapter 5 continue this week, which brings us to the half way point of this project. This chapter has a lot of short bits. Today we begin a short three part series from Kyp Ebner that follows this segment from our usual narrator, Matthew Connor. If you want to catch up you can visit: part one. Enjoy

Earth? I’m still sort of numb to the whole idea of going back, I think I’ve gotten too used to Mars and the sense of serenity–as clichéd as that sounds–that I’ve absorbed from my tenure on the planet. I’m worried about adjusting back to Earth, not simply the gravity–but it will be interesting to see how I’ve faired–but also the culture and the people. I hope I’m still good at blocking out all of that noise, and that I can still work on networks of respectable size. I remember missing all of these things, except perhaps the gravity, when I came to Mars, and now Mars feels more like home than I can ever remember earth feeling.

To make matters worse, I’m still divided about this ambassador thing. It makes sense, and I’m the most practical person to send back to Earth, but I don’t know how the folks on earth are going to take me. I always felt aloof and distant, and now I need them to trust me, or at least listen to me, and I don’t know that the little recording I have of Taban and Kalian will be enough, to get people to listen.

I wanted to make them go, but Matt told us that they couldn’t get back to Earth, that Busby was trying to put flags on the Morgans’ papers, which struck me a weird, but apparently Busby’s department doesn’t have jurisdiction on Mars, or any contacts there, which I find hard to believe, but Matt has always proven himself to be trustworthy, so god only knows. On the whole though, I’ve never trusted ISA internal regs to protect anyone from scrutiny, so I’m traveling under falsified papers, and my Taban is reluctantly helping “me” generate a little digital record of noise while I’m away. I suppose the upside to having a slow Earth-Mars uplink, is that I’ve gotten really good at hacking into the Colonial Authority’s systems. The last few years haven’t been in vane.

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On Going Home, #1

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 19th November 2008. (commentary)

Installments from Knowing Mars’ Chapter 5 continue this week, which brings us to the half way point of this project. This chapter has a lot of short bits. Today we begin a short three part series from Kyp Ebner that follows this segment from our usual narrator, Matthew Connor. Enjoy!

Earth? Who could have seen that one coming. Though it makes perfect sense, it is perhaps the one place in the Solar System that I never quite expected to be headed to. And yet, here I am.

When I was a kid and they were just starting the Mars Colony I remember wondering why they kept ignoring the topic of Earth-Mars transit. When you you asked teachers in school they’d say something about how round-trip travel was generally unfeasible, but that the data uplink relays were really impressively fast. But we all knew that the data transit was really slow beyond all reason, particularly with the data that we all cared about; and we really didn’t have a clue why why transit was so “unfeasible.”

While we’re better at speeding data transit time, it’s still frustrating even in in the 40s! I have to imagine that the transit technology has changed a bit in the intervening few years, though I tend to glaze over when people talk about interplanetary engines. Having said that, the picture of the ship on the wall in my cabin–that description of this room is perhaps the best example of magical thinking that I’ve ever witnessed–looks quite futuristic, but I suspect that in a few years, it will look as out of date and old as the boxy brick like Mars Colony looks today.

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Of Earth

A Knowing Mars story, by tycho garen
on 18th November 2008. (commentary)

The following story is a one-episode installment from the beginning of the 5th Chapter of Knowing Mars. We’ll continue from Chapter 5 later this week. Thanks for reading!

In Early 2543, Kyp Ebner returned to Earth after two and a half years away, to attend to some business that was long overdue for attention. Though the primary/given reason for the visit was to help Gus Rosell and Irena Trem with a hacking project and then courier some data for the Morgans back to Mars, it had also become clear to all of us that by moving to Mars they left the larger telepath community on earth without a real leadership or organization. While Gus and Irena, and a few others had taken up the charge as best they could, it wasn’t their project, and they had other more pressing commitments.

With the confirmation that Kyp Ebner was not, at least formally connected to the theft of ISA data, Kyp seemed to be a natural choice to serve as an emissary to Earth for the Morgans. While Kyp was on Earth, Taban and Kalian and I were working on securing transportation permits for as many Earth telepathy as we could manage, it was a stressful couple of months.

Thankfully, however, I was able to recover a journal entry written by Kyp Ebner during his trip back to Earth, that communicates the spirit of the times more clearly than I could ever hope to lo these fifty years later. Additionally, I should note that I have been somewhat unsure of how to address this portion of the narrative given my own involvement in the original sequence of events, but after some reflection, and sage advice I have decided to just “get on with it,” though I must confess that I have been unable to restrain myself from commenting directly at a couple of points.

Matthew Connor, MD
Mars Colony, 2596

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