What Mars Forgot

The work was robotic. The same motions day after day.

Pull the lever. Tighten the valve. Release the steam.

In the factory, I was as much of a machine as the tools I used. My hands moved on their own with little thought from me. In front of me, through the tank’s brushed metal, was my own blurry reflection. My skin was dirty and splotched with grease. My eyes hollow.  

I didn’t want to continue, but what was there but the work? I kept moving.

Tighten the valve. Release the steam. Pull the lever—

“Verity, watch out!” Constance shouted from the second floor.

I glanced up. So lost in the repetitive motions, I hadn’t noticed that a chain suspending a vat broke free and careened down towards my head. With a yelp, I leapt to the side, fast enough to avoid the heavy iron chain from colliding with me, but I couldn’t avoid the loose vat from dumping its Lixer all over my white uniform. I cursed as the black liquid dripped from my face and hands.

Constance scrambled down the ladder and rushed through clouds of smoke and steam to my side. After watching my vain attempts to rub the Lixer off my cheeks, she pulled a rag from her overalls and wiped my face clean.

“That was close.” She smiled, relieved. “Thank the gods you’re all right.”

Bitter, I answered, “The gods left us.”

The words came out without thinking. I bit my lip.

Constance’s rag stopped mid-wipe, and her usual amicable expression vanished. Quiet, she said, “Why don’t you clean up. I’ll take care of things here.” Her slight smile did a fair job of hiding her annoyance.

In acknowledgement, I bowed my head and shuffled past her, off the factory floor. As I stormed away, I berated myself for not keeping my mouth shut.

On the way to the lavatories, I was so distracted, I hadn’t noticed I left a trail of Lixer and a black footprint behind with every step. As I passed by them, curious factory workers gasped, “Oh my gods!” and “What happened?”

“Vat broke,” was my curt explanation each time.

I left a black handprint on the lavatory door as I threw it open. With a towel, I scrubbed my arms hard, as if I could somehow wash the embarrassment off along with the Lixer. Crossing the factory floor coated in goo hadn’t made me self-conscious, but rather Constance’s reaction to what I said. 

“The gods left us.”

She knew it was true! Everyone did. But it wasn’t those exact words that upset her but the part I left unsaid.

The gods left us, and they weren’t coming back. No one could admit the last part.

I dropped the soiled towel into the reclamator. With a bit more confidence, I straightened up and returned to the factory floor, thankful the rhythmic clang of metal against metal drowned out the thoughts in my head. The pungent smell of Lixer was potent after my brief stay in the lavatories. On the way back to my station, I weaved through mazes of workers and their machines. Like clockwork, people scoped up raw materials from conveyor belts and dropped them into the furnace. Diligent, everyone toiled to create the black gold.

“Much better!” Constance greeted me with a grin as I rejoined her. Hunched over, she repaired the broken chain. If she was still offended by my remark, she didn’t show it.

I wanted to say more, that these offerings of Lixer wouldn’t bring the gods back. The gods wouldn’t stop the world from dying. The gods left us to die with the world.

Assuming they ever existed.

“No one’s ever seen them,” I thought aloud.

Constance wiped her forehead with the back of her gloved hand, leaving a black smudge of Lixer behind. “What’s that?”

“The gods,” I repeated. “No one’s ever seen them.”

She rolled her eyes and, with an edge to her voice, said, “Verity. Leave it. Please.”

I folded my arms and took a step back. Fine. I’d no longer talk about her gods unless it was on the topic of manufacturing their royal Lixer.

Constance glared at me, as if she expected an apology. I just turned away. I shouldn’t feel bad for simply thinking. To give us distance, I ambled across the factory floor.

The work continued without me. A man pulled a hoist, which raised a vat of Lixer up to the third floor. Another grasped the vat and poured the liquid into a hissing pipe. A series of pipes curved and twisted along the ceiling, transporting the goo from the factory to only gods know where.

I positioned myself to a spot out of everyone’s way and sat on the concrete to think. Frustrated, I pondered what happened to all this Lixer we created. Of course, we were told it was an offering, a supplication for the gods’ return, but they were gone. And in their absence, who took their offerings?

Two men, carrying a sheet of iron, shouted at me to move over. I cleared their path as they passed by.

Looking up, my eyes followed the path of pipes, winding along the ceiling. From my post on the first level, I never had access to them. But a nagging feeling in my chest was desperate to find out where they’d go.

I jogged to a rusty ladder in the factory’s corner that connected all three floors. Too busy with their own tasks, no one noticed as I climbed to level three. Once I hopped off the ladder onto the metal grating, I felt anxious, realizing that I lacked pretense for being there. When no one was watching, I snatched a tool belt from a workbench and fastened it around my waist.

Ahead of me, a foreman studied a clipboard. In my best attempt to be casual, I approached him and said, “I’m here to repair the pipes.”

Squinting, he turned his attention from me to his clipboard and back again. “Isn’t Providence taking care of the pipes? In thirty minutes?”

I glanced over the balcony while considering my response. Below, on the first floor, workers made a racket hammering with the iron mallets.

“He’s in maintenance,” I answered, “so I’m filling in for him.”

The foreman grumbled. He was about to answer me when something on the second level got his attention. He leaned over the railing and barked at workers, “Be careful hoisting up that Lixer. We’ve already had one mishap today.”

“Sir?” I tapped my foot.

I could tell with all the chaos he just wanted to get rid of me. He pointed to the wall behind him. “There’s an access point right through the door.”

I thanked him, ducked under the weaves of piping, and rushed to the area he pointed. The door was a sheet of rusted metal that opened with a loud creak. I braced myself for someone to ask what I was doing, but everyone was too focused on completing their tasks with mechanical precision to worry about what I was up to. I edged the door closed behind me.

Alone behind the wall, the raucous noise from the factory reduced to a murmur. This space was dark and narrow, allowing just enough room to maneuver on my hands and knees. The metallic floor was cold against my palms. This service tunnel led deeper than my eyes could see.

Embedded in the walls were small indicator screens that illuminated the area with a green glow. The screens displayed readings on the status of the pipes, all operating within normal parameters, and below the screens were knobs that controlled the rate of flow. I crawled further in the tunnel and stopped at a small terminal that showed a map of our facility. On it, red lines marked the piping. With my finger, I traced the pipes’ path from the factory floor, through ducts that ran parallel to me. It appeared that they continued straight for about four hundred meters before terminating. However, where the pipes ended, I couldn’t determine. The map just stopped. It was strange. Every other area of the facility was recorded with high detail, except for the end point of the pipes. The blueprint made it seem as if they simply vanished.

I folded my knees into my chest and considered this. It didn’t make sense. The pipes didn’t transport the Lixer into some void of nothingness. The map was incomplete, which meant whoever created it wanted the destination of the Lixer to be unknown from the factory workers.

That reminded me. I checked my watch. I nearly forgot that the actual technician was supposed to be in this service tunnel in twenty minutes, according to the foreman, and I needed to be gone by then.

My fingers tapped the silver floor, thinking. If I were to learn more about the true nature of our work, I needed more than just this map. Apprehension crept over me as I considered following the service tunnel to its end to see where the map cut off. But I wasn’t supposed to be here at all, and if I got caught, I risked termination to satisfy my curiosity.

That was, if I got caught.

Tense, I turned around and checked the rusted door behind me. A chance like this might not come again. The clock was ticking. I had to decide.

On hands and knees, I crawled forward as fast as I could.

#

Minutes passed by, and I couldn’t tell how long I’d been inside. I couldn’t stop to check. I just kept moving. The pipes that ran parallel to the tunnel grumbled and gurgled as they transported Lixer. After what felt like an hour of being alone in that dark, cramped space, I reached a dead end.

This confused me. Was the map correct? Did the path of the pipes just stop? But around me, I could still hear the whoosh of Lixer flowing.

From my utility belt, I unpinned a small flashlight and turned it on. The light’s beam illuminated a small door, which I sat on, about two feet in length and height. That was it! The pipes traveled downward from here.

My foot bumped against a hatch that I hoped would open the door below me. Resistance met my first attempt to pull it. I braced my foot against the wall opposite of me and used the leverage to tug harder. With a high-pitched screech, the hatch slid until finally it was all the way up.

The door flung open. I yelped in surprise and dropped my flashlight through the gap. I managed to catch myself before I fell into the opening. The flashlight clattered against the floor ten feet below and rolled away out of sight; however, I could still see its white beam, so it wasn’t too far.

I lifted my upper body from the gap and listened. If someone were down there, he would’ve heard the racket from my fallen flashlight and come to investigate, but there were no footsteps, so I assumed the room was empty.

It occurred to me that if I jumped down there, I might not have a way back up. A jolt of panic rushed through me at the thought of being trapped in an unknown location. But if I turned back around now, all that I risked so far would be for nothing. Could I go back to work, day after day, knowing that a mysterious, adjacent room might hold all the answers I was looking for?

I pushed doubt of out my mind and jumped through the gap.

The ground, ten feet below, hit me hard, and I braced myself on both hands. The flashlight lay right across from me. I snatched it and stood up straight.

What I saw before me made me drop it again. My eyes flared wide.

Giant cylinders, each about nine feet high and four feet wide, extended from floor to ceiling. Made of glass, they stood in neat rows, in groups of three. There had to be at least a hundred in my line of sight, but who knew if there were more, deeper into the building. Rows of piping weaved from the ceiling and connected with each of the massive tubes. I shined my flashlight on them. Through the glass, black liquid bubbled, rolled, and flowed.

“Lixer,” I whispered. Lixer pumped from the factory into each of these cylinders. My eyes narrowed as I watched the black liquid churn in the containers. I approached one. A control panel was to its right. With trepidation, I tapped its screen. It flickered on with a soft green light and text that read:

Name: Wosa

Life Support: Online
              The flashlight trembled in my hand. Something wasn’t right. Why would there be names on these pods if they were just storage containers for the Lixer?

I checked two of the other chambers. Like the first, the panels displayed a similar status, but the names associated with these were “Edo” and “Cato.” The status of the final cylinder, closest to my left, read as “offline,” and this tube had no Lixer flowing through it. The glass was transparent and empty.

I doubled back to the chamber named “Cato.” I kept my flashlight pointed at the chamber and watched the gurgling black liquid flow through the tube. My eyes met with its control panel. Beneath the status readout, there was a button that read, Initiate decompression sequence.

My finger hovered over the button a moment before I pressed it.

The cylinder roared with a booming whoosh. Startled, I tripped backwards and fell off my feet. From the ground, I watched the Lixer recede inside the cylinder as the overhead pipes sucked the liquid back up. As the level black in goo lowered, I could make out something else inside, a figure of a man. A person was trapped in there!

Stumbling, I rushed to stand and slammed on the glass with my palm. The man appeared in fair condition but unaware with his eyes closed.

I searched the sides of the chamber but was unable to find a handle or hinge to open it. On the display panel, two new buttons read, Reinitialize and Open Stasis Pod Doors.

I opened the pod. As its door hissed open, the remaining black liquid spilled all over the metallic floor. The man was still unaware. He wore shorts made of light, thin fabric soaked with Lixer. It was difficult to grip his wet skin, but I managed to pull him of the pod.

Kneeling beside his prostrate body, I took in the man’s strangeness. Tiny brown fibers weaved into the top of his head and chin. His face was heavily textured, with wrinkles along his forehead and eyes. I pulled his eyelid open. His eyes were brown, an eye color I’d never seen before.

I turned his head to the side and checked behind his ear. His serial number was absent. Odd. Something I hadn’t noticed at first—it was almost imperceptible—his chest rose and fell with small intervals. I’d never seen anyone’s chest do this, but my best guess was that it was a sign his central processing unit failed and required an urgent manual restart.

Unsure of how to help him, I wrung my hands. I knew nothing about how to reactivate him. I’d have to take my best guess with what worked for most people.

From my tool belt, I ripped out a small knife and plunged it into his chest.

He activated. Deep and guttural, he howled and lurched from the floor. Panicking, I pulled the knife from him and dropped it. It clattered against the floor, leaving streaks of red behind. Apologies flooded from my mouth. Had I damaged him?! I was only trying to reach his central processing unit, but he was so different, unlike anyone else in the factory.

Red liquid poured from the gape in his chest. My hands floated in the air, searching for a way to help. What was happening! Why was his internal lubricant red instead of white?

 He rolled from his back onto his hands and knees. Gritting his teeth, he pressed his hand to his chest and cursed. Again and again, I asked if he was alright. Each time, he ignored me. His wild eyes searched the floor, and his chest heaved in and out and faster. The red lubricant seeped from his grip on his chest and rolled down his arm.

In a voice raw and husky, he asked, “How long has it been?”

In search of an answer, I stammered. “I don’t know,” I managed to say.

He winced and with my help raised himself to his feet. His gaze, through the drenched fibers on his head, made me uncomfortable. Such disdain was in his eyes. “You don’t know how long it’s been?” he accused me, “And you’re responsible for maintenance here, Droid.”

That was slur I had never heard before. “What did you just call me?”

Contempt left his face, and for a moment, he appeared confused. He hesitated before answering, “Android.”

My face blanked. Perhaps he wasn’t insulting me. “I’m unfamiliar with that word.”

Condescending, as if I were just activated yesterday, he said, “Android, as in robot. Machine.”

Now it was my turn to scoff. He didn’t think I was a person?

The man rolled his eyes and, struggling with each step, stumbled away from me. “Computer,” he ordered, angry, frustrated. A low, blue lighting flickered on throughout the room to his command. “What the hell went wrong? Why doesn’t it know that it’s a machine?”

In that instant, it was as if a light switched on inside me. A flood of knowledge came to me about this man’s physiology and his inner workings. Everything about him that puzzled me before, I understood now. Hair, breathing, blood—

The computer answered his question in a cool, feminine voice. “Cato, I have updated this android’s software. Much transpired since you were put into stasis.”

Cato shouted, “And how long ago was that?”

The voice paused a beat before it responded, “One thousand, seven hundred and fifty-five years.”

His legs gave out. I rushed to his side and caught him before he hit the ground. I eased him back to a seat on the floor. His entire body trembled. “One thousand,” he whispered. He covered his eyes with his blood-soaked palm. His voice broke as he said, “All that time and they never came back. No one…” He whimpered, lost in tears.

I watched his chest rise and fall with his crying. Something was familiar in what he said. “They never came back,” I repeated. “You mean the gods?”

He didn’t answer.

I gazed at the pods that surrounded us, bubbling with Lixer. “Is that what you were doing? Waiting for the gods to return inside those chambers?”

My words distracted him from his own misery. Irritated again, he said, “Computer, what is it babbling about? What happened to the damned droids?!”

While he was agitated, the computer’s voice remained steady. “The duration of stasis was longer than anticipated. After three hundred years of service, the androids concluded humanity would never return. They lost interest in maintaining the stasis pods. That necessitated the nature of work to change from a directive to a faith.”

These fractured facts formed a picture in my mind I didn’t want to see. The computer’s words, what Cato said, none of it made sense on his own, but when taken together—

“You are the gods,” I gasped. Cato gazed at me without understanding. “The Lixer we make for you,” I continued, “they told us it was an offering, but…” My eyes searched the ground, not wanting to speak that truth that became apparent to me.

“It was necessary,” the computer stated. “The directive had to change for the androids to continue the work. The work had no meaning.”

It was too much to process. If this man on the floor was the god I didn’t believe in, what did that make me? Our form was similar. We both were bipedal with hands and the same number of fingers. But while my skin was a glass shell, his was soft and pliable. He had hair and blood. I didn’t. Even now, I could hear the repetitious beat of his heart thud, different from the gentle ticking of my own central processor. We were similar but not the same.

“You made us in your image.”

#

I curled up in corner of the room with my back against the wall. With my fist against my chin, I glared at him.

I resented this man.

If I’d ever dreamt of meeting a god before today, it wouldn’t have been like this. I’d expected my creator to greet me with joy. Instead, he met me with indifference, as if I were no different from the wrench in my tool belt. In the hour since I met him, Cato shattered my perception of myself even though nothing about me physically changed.

As if I weren’t there, Cato grumbled to the computer. He asked about the conditions of the other pods. Two-thirds no longer functioned, the computer said, due to neglect from the androids before the institution of the Faith. Next, Cato wanted to know if any communications came from the third planet from the sun. The computer responded that it hadn’t received signals after the evacuation. Finally, he asked if the remaining pods could be activated. No, the computer answered. It wasn’t safe. The surface above ground was toxic, and there wouldn’t be a place for those humans to go.

I listened to all of this from my corner with my arms folded. The word “evacuation” got my attention. Humans had fled from here, the fourth planet from the sun, to the third. However, we were taught that the gods would someday return to save us from this dying world if we just continued to make the Lixer. Although I doubted that part would ever come true, Cato seemed to want the other humans to return for him.

“I need to go to the surface.” Cato’s words broke my train of thought. He stood over me, demanding, impatient. His skin had grown darker and more discolored. From the facts on human physiology the computer transferred to me, he didn’t look well.

Monotone, the computer responded to his request before I could. “That would be ill-advised. Returning to the surface will expose you to high degrees of radiation and cold temperatures. The surface can no longer sustain life. It would be fatal.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and tears rolled down his cheeks. The veins in his forehead bulged, as he shouted, “I need to see it!” Quieter, he repeated, “I have to see it.” The computer didn’t respond. To me, he asked, “Will you take me there?”

I froze. I had never been to the surface and didn’t know what to expect. My existence had been underground in the factory. As my creator implored me, with strained face and labored breathing, I struggled with how to feel. The awe of a myth manifesting itself as truth before me dampened the anger I had toward him. And although I couldn’t understand why, I felt duty, loyalty to him, as if it were intrinsic to myself. I knew I had to help him achieve his goal.

I rose from the floor. Cato struggled to walk from the injury I inflicted, and I supported him by looping his arm over my shoulders. He pointed ahead and asked me to take us between the rows of stasis chambers to the very back of the hall. We ambled together with slow, steady steps until we reached the door. With my free hand, I opened it. The dark passage led us to a winding metal staircase that ascended several stories high.

Cato explained, “We built this refuge underground to protect the pods from the radiation.”

The door slammed behind us with a loud thud, and I wondered if Cato would be able to ascend all the steps in his condition. We took them, one deliberate step at a time. His breathing became more ragged and his grip on his wound tightened. I asked if he was alright.

He caught his breath before he answered me. “I just need to see it.”

We continued up the narrow iron staircase. After an hour, we reached the top. Another metal door lay before us. After a degree of resistance, I managed to push it open.

We stepped from the dark stairwell into the light of the sun in the ochre sky. Dust, thick and red, swirled around us and brushed against our skin. Cato tore himself from my grip and staggered forward upon the auburn ground. His brown, wide eyes gazed at rust-colored rocks and craters. In a voice so low that I almost couldn’t hear, he whispered, "Everything’s gone.” Wailing, he clutched his heart and fell to his knees.

I knelt beside him and grasped his shoulders.

He waved his hand across the barren landscape. He sounded manic. “Those were green mountains. Luscious forests. Glimmering oceans, stretching as far as the eye could see.” His voice broke, and his eyes clamped shut. “I can still see it like it was yesterday.” When he opened his eyes again, he shouted, “Everything—our cities—completely wiped out!”

There was nothing I could say, so I just listened. He told me of his home near the capital. From this point millennia ago, you could see the spires from the towering buildings touching the sky. Enjoying the fresh night air, he and his wife visited the marketplace to enjoy music and eat freshly baked cakes under the two moons. Through his stories, he relived his memories.

As the sun set, transforming the sky from crimson to sapphire, his anecdotes stopped. He rocked back and forth and repeated, “I didn’t want to believe it,” only stopping when he ran out of breath. With every minute passing, Cato struggled more to breathe.

Gently, I asked him, “What didn’t you want to believe?”

Rather than answering at first, he listened to the icy wind. Fine grit whipped against his exposed skin. “Our scientist warned us we were losing our atmosphere. If humanity were to continue, we’d have to leave. For centuries, we prepared to evacuate.” He pointed to the sky. “The third planet closest to the sun is the only other capable of supporting life, the only one with water. So—”

“So, you left,” I finished.

“They left, yes. Others like me…” He trailed off. His arms rested on his knees, and he gazed at the rocky, red ground in disbelief. “This was our home, and I couldn’t just abandon it. Planets go through cycles, transitions. A few of us thought we would just stay in stasis until conditions improved—” He wheezed and coughed, choking on his own blood. I reminded him of what the computer said. The surface was poison. He brushed my concerns away with a wave of his hand.

The blue-tinted sun retreated behind the rugged canyons. The sky grew darker.

“You don’t look well,” I said. “The computer warned it wasn’t safe above ground. If we go back, maybe it can teach me to repair your injuries.”

“And what would you heal me for, Droid?” Cato grasped a fistful of red sand. “There’s nothing left.”

#

Cato’s brown eyes, pooled with tears, never left the stars. As it grew later, more shining points of light filled the sky. I couldn’t distinguish the third planet from the other stars, but I was sure he could.

Now his breaths were short and shallow and his face groggy. He could no longer sit up on own. He lay against my lap with a grip on my hand. Quiet and soft, he said, “I have so much regret for that day, Droid.”

“Verity,” I corrected. He looked up from my lap into my purple eyes. “That’s my name.”

“Verity,” he repeated and returned his gaze to the stars. “We agreed to evacuate together, my wife and me,” he said between deep breaths. “We argued at first. I didn’t want to leave. I let her convince me, or at least, I told myself she had.” He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand. “She boarded the ship but when my time came, I couldn’t. She was certain staying here would be a death sentence.” He clenched his jaw. “But this was my home!”

I glanced at my hand. His grip on it loosened. Cato’s strength was leaving him.

“But that was over a thousand years ago,” he whispered before breaking into a coughing fit. When he recovered, he asked me, “Do you think she, they, were able to make a life out there on the third planet?”

There was no way for me to know, but the beating of his heart slowed. His last moments should be happy. “They made it to safety. I’m sure they did.”

An almost imperceptible smile crept on his face before his body went limp. His lifeless eyes held their place gazing at the stars.

#

There was no place to go. For any of us.

For the humans trapped in stasis, this underground shelter maintained by us machines remained the final refuge on a dead world. If humans emerged to the surface, the thin atmosphere and radiation would kill them.

As for me?

When I returned to the factory floor, nothing had changed. Like clockwork, the work continued as the hundred androids remained focused but ignorant on the part they played in keeping the dormant humans alive. Out of habit, my body returned to me to my station.

Constance greeted me with her usual smile and slapped my back. “You were gone a long time. Glad you’re back,” she said. “We could use an extra set of hands.”

I nodded as she caught me up on the status of the work. The factory was back on schedule after the mishap. Constance returned to her place behind the conveyor belt. I slipped on my gloves, positioned myself behind my workstation, and gripped the iron wheel.

Instead of working, I froze.

I listened to the grinding of gears and the clanging of metal against metal that surrounded me.

“Verity!” Constance shouted, waking me to attention. She glared at me, waiting.

My eyelids drifted shut.

Pull the lever. Tighten the valve. Release the steam.

Pull the lever. Tighten the valve. Release the steam.

Pull the lever.