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of magical thinking that I’ve ever witnessed–looks quite futuristic, but I suspect that in a few years, it will look as out of date and old as the boxy brick like Mars Colony looks today.

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

Almost before she had begun it seemed, Julia unplugged her gear, and replaced the panel. She stood up, “There, done. With the hardware stuff at least.” She brushed a renegade strand of hair behind her ear, exposing the contact points for a node interface.

David would have mistaken the contact points for jewelry, if not for their number and placement, well, in a way, despite their function, they were jewelry in a certain sense.

“Most of the reinforcement process happens in an algorithm script, actually. But you still have to get the hardware ready for the process. You’ll be up and running by the end of this shift, if that’s ok.”

“That’s certainly fine. We’re not opening till next weekend. You’ll be there I trust?”

“Of course, wouldn’t miss it, particularly not with a reinforced drop like this.” She smiled, wondering why she had said something so silly; everyone knew that she had the best connection on the station. “I guess they don’t call them pleasantries for nothing,” she thought. “Well if you need anything, you know where to reach me.” Then she was gone, almost as quickly as she had come.

Marc stood up and walked toward the door, to meet David who was toggling the lights beside the door. “What did I say?”

“You’re right she is good.” David conceded. “Who else is like that on the crew that you haven’t told me about.”

“Well you could come to staff meetings and find out.” Marc said: he didn’t try to stifle the grin.

David laughed. “Maybe then I could prove your wrong about my doodles.”

“We’ll call it your ‘Post-Late Period: A Revival.”

“Don’t you dare.” David chuckled and playfully elbowed Marc in the ribs as they started to stroll toward their quarters.

“Sorry I’m late,” Julia said as she walked quickly and abruptly into the bar. The lights weren’t on, but the door was unlocked, and David had told her to just walk in incase he was in his office or the store room. “Network drop reinforced, you said?” She asked, not wasting any time on pleasantries.

“Yes. That was the plan.” David said. ” You’re…”

“…Julia, we talked earlier,” she said quickly, unable to come up with a more witty response sooner.

“The tech systems administrator?”

“Aye, Sir.” she said goofily, showing the badge. on her shirt.

It was the first time that anyone on Hanm Centre had called him “sir,” in a situation that didn’t make his skin crawl. realized that she might not realized that he had been Navy. “Aren’t you a bit young for that. There must be 15 people on your staff or something.”

“Well, I have 20, right now, but I’m still looking for a few more. You know any Enhancers that want to clean up?” Julia retorted.

“Not yet, but I’ll keep you out here. Is it big out here? Enhancers, that is.”

“Bigger on Grish, they say, but I haven’t been there in the flesh for,” she paused and thought for a moment obviously counting in her head, “Well lets not try and count that one out. But yeah, there’s some on Hanm, but not enough. The node here is pretty big for the rim, and I just need more people to keep it working well,” Julia said. “I’ll get started?”

“Please do,” he said. He looked at Marc, who had a sly and pleasant grin. The good doctor still looked weary, but at least weary and entertained. Julia immediately found the access panel and plugged in her equipment with

David remained mazed with the speed, authority, and detail in Julia’s speech and behavior: not to mention her deft ability to deflect the conversation away from a topic that she didn’t want to talk about. He realized that despite her appearance, her subjective experience of age, that her chronological age might be a lot less. Relativity and interstellar did strange things to this society.

David found that his hands had gone back to dusting, and Marc had somehow produced a portable computer terminal and looked to be making some sort of notes, although they were both just trying to appear busy to decrease the awkwardness of not really having anything to do while the technology guru worked.

Marc walked into David’s bar, “Another Round,” as the sign now read. He had just gotten done with a tiring but ultimately uneventful shift and was ready to change into more comfortable clothing. “It looks like you’re almost done here, you’re opening next friday?” Marc hadn’t been by the bar in a week or so, David knew what he was doing, or at least pretended well, and didn’t much need his input. Despite his worldly academic credentials and lengthly service record he was really mostly a homebody.

“Yeah. It’ll be good to have this weekend off, and I’d rather not have to deal with the opening and finishing up all at once.”

“You ready to head home?” He asked pointedly.

“Yeah, I’m done; but I agreed to hang around to let the tech admin come in to reinforce the network connection here, I suspect we’ll need a lot of pull when this place is full.” So mostly I’m just biding my time. He picked up the rag he was dusting with. “You have a good shift?”

“I did, but it was long, the usual run of the mill complaints mostly,” Marc said taking a seat at the bar and holding his head up with his arm. “Which is for the better, I’m afraid of what this closed system will do once we have anything more virulent than a flu, or some such,” he continued, pausing for a moment to remember anything else from the shift.” I’m never quite sure what Doctor Reese is going to do, but she’s effective and people seem to like her. Anyway, I only had one meeting today, and got a chance to work on some research: so not a bad shift just long.” Marc rambled on, for a while and then paused. He checked his time piece, “When did she say she was coming by to do the work?” he asked finally.

“About twenty minutes ago, I think. She said she’d been busy…”

“She’s always busy. The woman doesn’t sleep, it seems to me. You’d like her she’s got ‘personality,’ or something,” Marc said and laughed. “Actually you should see her doodling from our staff meetings, they rival your ‘early period,’” he said, starting to perk up a bit.

“Oh, come on, my later doodles were better, I was just in charge of the meetings during my ‘late period,’ I think I deserve some slack.” David retorted, grinning by now: of all their “canned arguments,” this one might just have been his favorite.

“I don’t know, if it weren’t serious I don’t think Gus would have called.” Kalian reasoned.

“Yeah, that’s true, but he’s probably right about the extra security problems, and having him in shambles isn’t a good thing either, even if he’s alright at the core.”

“Do you think Irena can handle it without him?” Kalian asked.

“Irena?” Taban’s voice echoed slightly, likely the product of a little telepathic “gain boost.”

“Gus’ new hacking partner,” Kyp and Kalian answered in unison.

“Ah, what do we do?” Taban asked,

Kalian and Kyp looked at each other for a moment before responding at the same time:

“I guess we wait and see,” Kalian said.

“I think I’m going back to Earth,” Kyp said.

“Oh dear,” Kalian said.

“Everything ok?” Taban had apparently missed most of the message, and nearly all Kalian and Kyp’s reaction.

Kyp opened his mouth to explain, but couldn’t find the words. Kalian started instead, “Gus sent a message, seems a run didn’t go as well as he thought at first, and he’s worried about his security, and some data.” Kyp put the portable back in his bag and went over to the chair he’d been sitting in, and sort of collapsed into it. Perhaps he was more hungry than he thought.

“Is he ok? What about the data?” Taban asked, sounding concern. Taban appeared at the doorway of what passed for a kitchen. There was a smudge of something food related across Taban’s cheek, Kalian looked at it quizzically, and decided not to ask, but Taban rubbed the food away, having probably felt the thought anyway.

“Gus’ ok, and the data’s safe where it is, but I think he’s worried about the transmission. I suspect there’s a lot of it, and there haven’t been as many developments in transmission bandwidth in the last six months as we had predicted.”

“Well that’s good. Still, should we be worried?” Taban asked

A moment later Gus continued, “Encryption on what we got is really thick too, but we weren’t being really careful when we extracted the information, because that wasn’t our objective. Irena’s good by the way, you’d like her, I think; also, I’m turning into you, which is scary.” Gus laughed.

“I’m calling off schedule, because I’m pretty sure that Busby got a sniff on me, again not sure, and the postmortem isn’t done. In a way it’s because we were so successful, they were completely unprepared for another assault, even though some of our folks had been nibbling at their door for… Well probably since our last run on them.

“Also, Busby still had scripts out looking for you, so even if he has a sniff on you, he doesn’t know you’re on Mars. If that’s comforting to you, there you are. After this, I’ve been thinking about coming to Mars sooner than we’d planned. Irena, she’s really good, and I don’t want to hang on here more than I need to or should. I’m not sure. I’m also not sure if we should have made the run against ISA, I mean, yeah, Busby’s people have been sniffing around a lot, but the more I think about the the mission, the more wrong it seems to feel, The more I feel like it just shouldn’t have happened that way.”

Gus took a deep breath. From even a planet away, Kyp felt his own anxiety rise in sympathy with Gus’, he passed the portable to the other and took a breath before Gus started talking again. Kyp looked up at Kalian who was standing by one of the chairs, looking quite concerned. Taban was still cooking, and hadn’t heard the portable ring, though he could probably feel Kyp and Kalian’s concern.

Gus continued: “I suppose on the upside, the data is pretty mucked up right now, I don’t suspect they’ll be able to recover more than whatever files they had withdrawn, when we attacked. This is a bit old, but also tell the Taban and Kalian, we’ve managed to finally track down all the people on the list from last year, but only a few people that we didn’t know about. We’ve been giving out materials, and they’ve been sending data back, so I suspect we’ll have a couple of big data packets compiled soon, though I’m still concerned about sending the data if I’ve been made, too much risk, and I’m thinking about getting someone to courier; though Irena isn’t worried about it. When did I become this neurotic?”

“The day you were born,” Kyp answered softly, even though this was only a recording. Kalian almost choked on a laugh.

“Lets not answer that, actually,” Gus said, apparently anticipating Kyp’s response. There was laughter in the background that Kyp assumed was Irena. “Anyway, We’re going to sit tight for the present and restrict our net activities for a while, at least until I feel more calm about this whole thing. I wanted to get your input though. I’m worried about sending the data, I’m not sure how to proceed, and I thought you should hear this from me before you hear it from Matt or someone. Be well, and I’ll here from you soon.” The message concluded with a burst of encoded signals, to ensure authenticity. Kyp thumbed the device off: he could run the code later.

The portable took a second to load the feed as the system back in his quarters–crunched through the encryption. Kyp expected to see Gus’ boyish face on his portable, but there was no image, just audio. Audio which, particularly with the flex-compressions used to send data to mars, never quite sounded like it should:

“Kyp, I hope you can get this soon. Irena and I have been working on a way to get a bug into the ISA database in Busby’s department; you know the one that we were after a year ago for those contacts. We finally got an independent system to run on for the hack, which kept them off our tails and we were even able to run dialed up for while. It was successful, we think, and Irena reports that there hasn’t been any buzz about it so either nothing happened, or Busby is keeping this under wraps. I put a call out to Matt, but I haven’t heard from him yet.

“Irena seems to think that things are still safe–we were offline for a good fifteen hours, and she’s still crunching through the postmortem and the steal. I think she did a telepathic once over of me after I passed out–which was weird, the passing out that is, I’ll tell you about that later when I’m more together–but she’s not telling me, and I suspect if something is really wrong, you’ll hear about it before I will,” Gus said, there was a hushed conversation that the recording didn’t capture, Irena was probably in the room. While the ’scan the partner while they’re asleep after a run,’ thing wasn’t strictly speaking cooth telepathic behavior, Kyp could remember a dozen or so times that he and his hacking partners had done the same thing.

Kyp and Kalian both felt Taban think something along the lines of “grumble snipe” from the kitchen. They laughed harder, but a moment later a faint chime interrupted them.

“That’s not the door, is it?” Kalian asked regaining some composure and looking around for the source of the noise.

“No, I think it’s my portable,” Kyp said, checking his pockets for the device. “I put it in my bag when we were prepping, is it in the office?” Kyp stood and moved toward the office door.

“No, I think it’s by the door,” Kalian suggested.

“Right, thanks,” Kyp said, reaching his bag only after the chime had stopped. He doubted the call was real-time anyway: the people he knew on Mars–save Taban and Kalian–so rarely used the system, Earth was too far away, and he couldn’t fathom why anyone in orbit of the planet would be placing a call.

Sure enough, it was a message. “It’s from Gus calling from Earth.” Kyp reported, still standing over his bag while he drilled through a couple of menus to unlock the device and access the message. “And he cut the transmission time way down. That’s pretty impressive.”

“What’s he got to say? He’s well, right?” Kalian remembered that Kyp and Gus had a pretty complex communication schedule worked out to minimize the lag, and make sure that any data transmissions could make it effectively between them and two planets.

“I think so, at least as of last week he was fine, but give me a second,” Kyp said. He was a little concerned, this was an odd time for a call, and this seemed almost of out of character for Gus “Here goes,” Kyp said, activating the message.

“Aside from that, the governments should really subsidize some more relocations, and we’re nearing an optimum transfer point series again, right?” Kyp said.

“We are? This soon?” Kalian said, in surprise.

“I think so, in the next couple of weeks. You could check.”

“I believe you. I think the government subsides that paid most of our way are still around, and have been for a long time, but the people who know about it don’t want to leave their posh circumstances to live in the colony, and the people who don’t know about them wouldn’t think to ask.” Taban said.

“Typical.” Kyp said.

“Unfortunately. Speaking of untypical things, I was thinking about making dinner? I trust you’ll stay.”

“Only if you promise not to poison us.” Kyp said.

Kalian laughed, remembering a particularly bad meal that Taban had “cooked” back on earth, probably two years ago. After that, Kalian became the designated cook most of the time, much to Taban’s embarrassment and shame. Kyp chuckled as well, his own memory triggered by the feeling of Kalian’s memory.

“Hey you two, cool it, and be thankful that you’re not cooking.” Taban tried to stifle a laugh, but was largely unsuccessful. “Besides, welcome to Martian cuisine, as you know the term ‘cooking’ isn’t quite the right word for this.” Unfortunately he was right: the food on Mars, particularly in the early days was not what one could call gourmet, but preparation was quick and it nourished.

“We relent,” Kalian said, still smiling. “Thanks for ‘cooking’ dearest!” Kalian called out, laughing again.

“Speaking of, are we expecting new folks anytime soon?” Kalian asked Kyp. While Kalian and Taban had been on Earth more recently, Kyp maintained contact with a number of people on Earth, while Taban and Kalian limited their correspondence to Matt Connor. Despite their great advancements and insights, and leadership role in the community, the Morgans often fit the age-old stereotype of telepaths as hermits and recluses.

“I hope so, but it would be hard to keep any sort of mass immigration under cover, and life here has been pretty good, I have to say, I don’t know if I want to ruin it.”

“That’s not what we’re about, I can certainly respect the feeling, but I think it’d probably be worthwhile to get more of the community to move over here.” Kalian said, sounding like the trip from Earth to Mars was quick and effortless.

“Well, getting people to move, is always hard, you know. And it’s so expensive,” Kyp said.

“And the dust doesn’t wash away for months,” Kalian said, eliciting laughter. They had discovered that the never ending dust was a product of the loading and unloading techniques. Since the storage cartons were vacuum hardened, they didn’t keep the cartons inside during loading and unloading: ergo dust. Unfortunately discovering this mystery didn’t prevent them from the weeks and weeks of dusting.

“You know Kalian, we should see if we can talk with the government here to get more transport permits for ‘our’ people,” Taban suggested.

“We have people now?” Kalian asked. “Yeah, I guess we do, that’s probably a good idea.”

“So am I still alive?” Kyp asked, when Taban finally started to disconnect all of the various leads and sensors that connected his body and torso to Taban’s diagnostic equipment. Kyp had expected to be a little more worn after so much telepathic contact, but as always, Taban and Kalian were gentle and calm minded, and he barely noticed.

“I think you’ll live, and god it’ll be interesting. You have a lot going on up there,” Taban said.

Kyp laughed. “You’re one to talk, mister. Anything interesting?”

“Well you know, we won’t have anything really conclusive, for a few days, unless you want to help us build a supercomputer,” Kalian trailed off and smiled.

“I think I’ll pass on clogging my gear up with your numbers. It’s actually kind of nice to have a system, albeit slightly underpowered, all to myself.”

“Fair enough.” Taban said.

Kalian started to say something, but stopped and just grinned.

“From what I can tell though, you’re in good shape, and nothing physiological is in a lot of trouble,” Taban said.

“Great. I didn’t think anything was wrong, but you two are too good to me.”

“Well enlightened self interest and all. We’re low on people to work with here, and you’re always great to have in the chair,” Taban said. “Lets sit in the living room: we’ll all be more comfortable.” They had all remained in the office, which doubled as a research and testing space, when the occasion called for it, but the quarters were cramped.

“That sounds good, actually.” Kyp was still lying down. “It’s a bit disconcerting to be looking up to you, actually,” he said. He smiled.

“Fair enough, get some more of your friends to come to Mars and you might be safe from our research table in the future,” Kalian said.

“…as a result of these events–which I will endeavor to keep you informed of as I learn more–the crew and I have decided that in light of these events we will redirect to Europa, where we will be the first residents of that Colony structure.” Perr said. When she realized that her next act as “liaison” would involve speaking before people her first thought was “maybe I should change,” but managed to banish her vanity.

“Because this is clearly unscheduled, we will need to begin rationing food and other supplies so that we have enough,” Perr said. The crowd grew restless, and the truth was that she didn’t have answers to such specific issues yet. No one did. “We’ll learn more in the coming weeks, and though I have absolutely no clue what to make of any of this, I think its important that we start working for the future.” Perr wasn’t sure what had changed in her: She had started the day tired of the trip and disdainful of all the people she was “stuck with,” and after a brush with total shock her mind was clear, and she was business.

Maybe it was too much time cleaning things up for her brother, dealing with politicians, with upset people, and speaking in front of people. Edwin had called it her “secret reserve,” after she had talked one of Salimia’s bosses in the Marrakesh Dome government into providing relief supplies to the people left in the London and Paris Domes. Edwin, ever the optimist hadn’t thought that they’d be able to do it, but after the second twelve hour day Perr stood up turned it on, and twenty minutes later they had an agreement from the Dome’s administrative council. It took considerably longer to scrape Salimia’s jaw off the floor.

“I would love to be able to answer your question, to sort out the details of how we’re going to make it through the next few months, but the truth is that I don’t know much more than what I’ve already told you.” Perr said, and a murmur swept the crowd. “I’d like to stay and talk with you more personally so we–all–can start figuring out what happens next. And lets meet again here tomorrow and for as long as it takes to figure out what comes next, and what comes after that.” Perr took a deep breath. “Hell, by the time we get to Europa, we’ll be sick and tired of talking about what comes next. Thank you all.”

The crowd laughed at Perr’s last words, and the room was covered by the roar of everyone talking at once.