A Perfect World


Chapter 9



"New Pittsburgh tower, this is civ-air flight six-nine," Ken said into the
intercom microphone in his bio suit helmet.



"What the fuck's the haps, civ-air six-nine?" answered the air traffic
controller on duty at the low altitude terminal. Ken recognized the voice as
belonging to John Callahan, a man he had gone out to intoxicant clubs with a
few times. John had once allowed Ken to fuck his wife from behind while she
fellated him from the front.



"We're clear the air-lock and on the taxiway. All systems are green. You
down with it?"



"We're down with it," he confirmed. "Got your flight plan on my screen now.
Confirm destination and load."



"Four workers and 200 kilos of tools, bound for magna-track maintenance
station 373-Buttfuck. Fuel and oxygen supplies are at maximum, transponder
is set, altimeter is calibrated."



"Fuckin' aye, six-nine. You're second in line for take-off, behind civ-air
four-four. You got a visual on it?"



Ken looked down the taxiway and saw another hummingbird 500 meters in front
of him. It was identical to the one he was now piloting, namely, it was a
civilian model that belonged to the nationalized Martian construction and
maintenance industry. The civilian models of the aircraft were all painted
fluorescent green, a color that contrasted starkly with the Martian surface
in case search and rescue was ever needed. Ken knew that Elisa McGovern, one
of his colleagues, was piloting the other aircraft on a mission to transport
consumables to yet another magna-track maintenance point. "I got a visual,"
he confirmed. "I copy I'm second in line for take-off behind her. No
incomings?"



"Fuck no," he replied. "Nothing until a flight of MPG Mosquitoes enter the
landing pattern in 15 minutes. Go ahead and get your ass in the air as soon
as four-four clears the runway. Winds are from 276 at 33 KPH. Turn left to
060 upon take-off. Your assigned altitude until clear of the perimeter is
2100 meters."



"I'm down with it," Ken told him, adding a little throttle to the aircraft.
"Talk to you when I get back."



"Fuckin' aye."



Ken picked up speed until he was rolling along the taxiway at 40 kilometers
per hour. Before him, Martian sand, blown by the constant wind across the
surface, created a gentle patter against the windshield. On Mars, blowing
sand was something every engineer for every piece of machinery or
construction had to deal with in some way. The runway and taxiways he was
driving on at the moment had to be plowed twice a day in order to keep the
painted lines visible. On the aircraft's air intake manifolds, where the
thin atmosphere was sucked in so the meager amounts of oxygen could be
utilized for the semi-rocket engines, special screens that had to be changed
after every three flight hours were in place.



"Take off in about two minutes or so," Ken said into his flight intercom for
the benefit of the four passengers he was carrying. They were sitting in the
cargo area, strapped into small seats, all of them wearing biosuits as well.
They all nodded at his words and then went back to the conversation they
were having among themselves. All were veterans of Hummingbird flights and
the least experienced of them still had nearly five times as many hours in
one than Ken himself.



He brought the aircraft to a halt at the limit line 200 meters before the
head of the runway. Ahead of him, Elisa had just turned her aircraft onto it
and was throttling up for take-off. She streaked down the runway,
accelerating rapidly and finally lifting off into the sky. She banked right
and disappeared over the set of low hills south of the airport, still
climbing.



Ken throttled up again, just a bit, moving forward once more. Using the
rudder petals he turned onto the runway and made a quick visual check for
any obstructions that might be in his path. Of course there was
nothing-sensors built into the runway itself would have detected anything
larger than a pea-but it was part of his checklist to look anyway. If there
was one thing that had been ingrained in him during his training at UME, it
was safety first, even to the point of mind-numbing redundancy.



Once aligned on the runway, he pushed the two main throttles slowly forward
to maximum thrust. A roar of power filled the aircraft, sending gentle but
insistent vibration through the fuselage as hydrogen and oxygen combusted in
the two engines and the thrust was expelled out behind them. They picked up
speed quickly, the digital speedometer on his HUD winding upward so fast the
individual numbers were unreadable. At 320 kilometers per hour he pulled
back on the control stick with his right hand. The nose of the aircraft came
up and there was a slight thump as the landing wheels left the surface of
the runway. There was no ocean to define sea-level on Mars, so the base 0
altitude, from which every other surface altitude was calculated, was the
ground floor of the Capital Building in downtown New Pittsburgh, home of the
first settlement on Mars.  The altimeter display began to wind upward, from
010 meters at ground level through 500 meters in a matter of seconds. He
pulled a lever on the panel and retracted the landing gear. At the same time
he banked to the left at thirty degrees, evening out the bank at a compass
heading of 060 degrees. He throttled down a bit and leveled the aircraft off
at an altitude of 2100 meters.



He cleared the air traffic perimeter five minutes later, then banked back to
the right a few degrees. Below him, winding back and forth between the
hills, he could see the elevated inter-city magna-track. This was the main
line that ran from New Pittsburgh to Eden, carrying both passengers and
freight at speeds of up to 500 kilometers per hour. It consisted of a single
track for much of its length although every fifteen kilometers a one
kilometer section of double-tracking was beside it to allow trains moving in
opposite directions to pass each other. Currently, no trains were visible
from horizon to horizon although that would change soon since passenger
trains left both cities every 50 minutes throughout the day.



Maintenance station 373-B was exactly 373 kilometers outside of New
Pittsburgh. It consisted of a platform connected to the tracking. A covered
structure housed a small transport vehicle the maintenance team in the cargo
area would use to make their way out to the section of the track they were
scheduled to work on. The flight out there took just under an hour. As he
got close, Ken slowly let the aircraft descend. When the platform came into
sight ahead of him he was 1000 meters above the ground. He pulled up on the
control stick, bringing the nose up, and, with his other hand, manipulated
the controls for the thrusters, spinning them slowly downward, changing the
aircraft from horizontal flight to vertical. The transition went smoothly
enough-by now he had almost three hundred hours at the stick-and he
descended slowly toward the landing circle on the edge of the platform. He
put the gear down, checked that they were all locked into place, and a
minute and a half later came to a soft landing in the middle of the circle,
the blast from the engines blowing all of the dust that had settled there
free. He went through the power-down checklist step by step, shutting
everything but the APU down. Then, and only then, did he open the rear door,
allowing the work crew to exit.



They thanked him for the flight and began to gather the many tools they had
brought with them and carry them outside onto the platform. Ken remained in
the pilot's chair, forbidden by OSHA rules to assist them with the unloading
lest he become injured and rendered unable to fly them out of there in a
hurry if such a thing became necessary. He was also forbidden to leave the
crew out here and pick them up later. If something went wrong with a
biosuit, or if someone became critically injured on the job-both extremely
unlikely scenarios at best-he had to be able to fly them out of there in
minutes. The life of a civilian pilot on Mars was more sitting around and
waiting than anything else. Ken didn't mind. It allowed him to engage in two
of his favorite non-sexual activities-reading and browsing the Martian
Internet-during the waiting period.



Once the work crew was clear of the aircraft and loading their equipment
into the transport vehicle, Ken walked out through the back ramp onto the
platform, carrying a 30-meter length of electrical cable looped over his
left arm. He plugged one end of the cable into an outlet on the edge of the
platform. The outlet was powered by the main electrical supply of the track
itself, which, in turn, was powered by a fusion reactor back in New
Pittsburgh. He stretched out the cord and carried the other end back to the
aircraft. Inside an access panel near the number one engine was a shore line
jack. He opened the panel and plugged the cord in. It would provide enough
power to keep his engines warm and his communications equipment operating.
He climbed back into the aircraft, shut the rear ramp to keep the blowing
sand out, and then powered down the APU.



That done, he settled into his chair for the long haul, his radio tuned to
the emergency frequency in case the work crew needed him. He opened the
Internet connection on his suit computer. The home page he had programmed
appeared on the heads up display in his helmet. A mouse pad of sorts was
installed in the knee section of the suit. Using this to move the curser on
the display, he quickly navigated to a site he had been perusing the day
before. He had developed an interest lately in the Martian Supreme Court and
the various rulings it had handed down in the course of its history. He was
continuously amazed at the cases that came before this body and the means by
which they came to and explained their take on constitutional issues. Common
sense and the good of society, as opposed to an individual, were the
guidelines the court used in making their rulings and nothing else was
allowed to matter.



The case he was reading now was titled Brannigan vs. Mars and had been ruled
upon ten years after the Martian revolution. Magellan Brannigan was a man
who thought that working for a living was an activity he just did not enjoy
participating in. In the course of his adult years he had worked a variety
of jobs, usually for less than a month at a time, and always with large gaps
of unemployment between them. One day, during a period of unemployment, he
had been drunk and participating in a football game with other residents of
the public housing neighborhood in which he lived. He took a particularly
hard hit and his spinal cord snapped in his back, rendering him paralyzed
from the waist down. Ordinarily this was not a big deal. Simple accelerated
cell regeneration could restore the nerve impulses in a matter of weeks,
leaving the victim as good as new. But in the case of Mr. Brannigan, he
refused to go through with the cell regeneration, stating his religious
beliefs forbade him from undergoing advanced medical procedures.



This was all fine and dandy with the Martian government. If someone did not
wish to have their paralysis cured, it was his or her constitutional right.
The problem started when Mr. Brannigan applied for permanently disabled
status, a designation under the constitution that one was assigned when one
was no longer able to work due to a physical disability. This would have
entitled Brannigan to a monthly government pension for the rest of his life,
based on the amount of credits he had earned in previous years. Although
most people would not be willing to give up their ability to walk and have
sexual relations in exchange for a mere 103 credits per month and a lifetime
without having to work, Brannigan seemed to think this was a fine deal. The
Martian government, on the other hand, did not agree and denied him
permanently disabled status on the grounds that he was making the choice to
be permanently disabled. Brannigan appealed the case and, in the way of the
Martian bureaucracy, the Supreme Court heard the arguments two weeks later.
Brannigan argued that the Martian government was discriminating against his
religious beliefs-something that was explicitly forbidden under the
constitution. The justices however, did not quite see things this way. While
they agreed that Brannigan was entitled to refuse medical care on religious
grounds-or on any other grounds for that matter-he was not entitled to
collect a disability pension when the disability in question could easily be
cured by modern medicine. He was free to remain crippled if he wished and
could continue to not work if he wished and could continue to live in public
housing and collect his grocery and clothing allotments just like any other
citizen, but he would receive no credits from the Martian government unless
he developed a disability that could not be cured.



As was the case with Supreme Court decisions in his day, the ramifications
of Martian Supreme Court decision stretched well beyond the case in question
because of the precedent that was set. Brannigan vs. Mars was applied from
that day forward to many less extreme cases that fell along similar lines.
Until that point it had been common practice for members of society with a
similar work ethic to Brannigan's, when they became injured in some way, to
refuse the accelerated treatment offered by the Martian medical science in
order to extend the amount of time-off work to which they were entitled.
That all came to an end with the Brannigan decision. From that point onward,
if a worker refused to accept medical treatment that would allow him or her
to return quickly to productive status in society, the payment of credits
from the Martian government would stop at the point where they would have
reasonably been able to have returned had they accepted it.



Though the decree of the nine-judge Supreme Court was that majority ruled,
the decisions they handed down tended to be unanimous. Such was the case
with Brannigan vs. Mars. Ken was in the midst of reading through the actual
opinion document itself when an icon in the upper right corner of his view
suddenly appeared, indicating he had an incoming communication request-the
futuristic equivalent of being told he had a phone call. The text beneath
the icon told him his caller was Slurry Bagwell.



Slurry was a part-time worker in the cafeteria back at the civilian
Hummingbird terminal. She was twelve years old and very reclusive for a
Martian-almost as reclusive as Ken himself. Up until a few days before, Ken
had barely talked to her, had barely noticed her at all, in fact. And then
she had been assigned to the preparation area where the food orders were
actually taken instead of the cleaning section. Since then Ken had come into
increasing contact with her and his initial impression was that she was not
quite the brightest bunny in the forest. She talked to him at strange times,
both in person and on his computer link, but never seemed to have anything
important to say. This was a very un-Martian manner of communication.



"Answer," he said, just a hint of impatience in his voice. The text document
he had been reading instantly disappeared and was replaced by a
three-dimensional image of Slurry's face hovering before him. Her ancestry
seemed to be largely Hispanic and Caucasian. Her skin was somewhere between
olive and pink, her hair straight and dark brunette, her lips pouting.
Though she was not heart stoppingly attractive, she was far from what would
be considered ugly. "Hi, Slurry," he said. "What's the haps?"



"Oh, hi... uh, Ken," she said, giving a nervous giggle. "What's down with
you? Are you flying?"



"Uh... no," he said slowly. "If I were flying right now, I really wouldn't
have been able to answer your com."



"Oh... fuckin' aye," she said, blushing. "I guess that makes sense, doesn't
it?" She shook her head. "I act like such an Earthling sometimes." Her face
became alarmed and she blushed deeper. "Uh... that is... not an Earthling
like you... but... you know... an Earthling like..."



"It's okay, Slurry," he reassured her. "I know what you meant."



"I'm sorry," she said, seemingly near tears now. "I'll just leave you alone.
Talk to you later."



"Slurry," he said patiently, "did you com me for some reason?"



"Reason?"



"Yeah," he said. "You know, to convey or request some information? That's
usually why someone coms someone else."



She shook her head again and then took a deep breath. "I just wanted to know
if you'd be back for lunch or not," she finally said. "You know, so I could
take the lunch order for you and your crew?"



He took a moment to gather his thoughts before he replied. This was a
perfect example of unnecessary communication from her. Instead of calling
him up to ask him if he and his crew would be back for lunch, she could have
simply asked the operations computer-where an itinerary of his daily
schedule had been downloaded-and learned the answer to her enquiry in a
quarter of the time. "Uh... no Slurry," he said. "We won't be back for
lunch. They're inspecting rivets on a one-kilometer stretch of line today.
That'll take 'em about six hours. Looks like we're eating the protein gel
for lunch."



"Awww, that's an ass-fuck with a sandpaper dildo," she said sympathetically.
She had probably never eaten the protein gel herself since she was not an
outside worker, but its reputation was notorious. Ken himself actually
didn't think it was all that bad. It came in a variety of flavors ranging
from sirloin steak to crab soufflé and did a good job of filling the hole in
your belly. To the native Martian pallet, which was, after all, accustomed
to a high degree of quality even in the cheapest fast food, the consistency
of the gel was an abomination before Laura.



"Well, that's the life we have to live when we choose to put on the biosuit,
isn't it?" Ken asked.



"Fuckin' aye," Slurry replied, a tinge of awe in her voice. "Where would
Mars be without people like you, Ken?"



Ken couldn't quite decide if she was serious or not. Even after a year of
living in their society, he still didn't quite understand the Martian sense
of humor. He suspected that she wasn't joking. Slurry was not much of a
comedian. "Right in the shitter, I guess," he said. "Anyway, thanks for
asking."



"It's too bad you won't be back," she said. "We're making meat loaf today,
double sauced, with mac and cheese casserole on the side."



"Uh... yeah, it is too bad," he said, with real regret. The cafeteria's
specialty was good old white trash style meals and the workers who prepared
them displayed typical Martian pride in their work. Their meatloaf was the
best he had ever tasted.



"I'd save you some for when you got back," she said, "but you know how fast
the meatloaf goes."



"That's all right, Slurry," he said. "Maybe..."



"We're having bratwurst and potato salad too," she cut in. "Maybe there'll
be a little of that left over. Usually that gets all eaten up too, but I
think enough people will have the meatloaf or the stroganoff that there
might be..."



"Uh, Slurry," he said, swallowing thickly.



"Yeah?"



"Could we stop talking about food? You're making my protein gel lunch sound
less and less appetizing by the second here."



She giggled again. "I'm sorry, Ken," she told him. "I'm torturing you, ain't
I? Will you forgive me?"



"I forgive you," he assured her.



A silence developed, during which time they both simply stared at each
other's image. Finally, Slurry said, "So... how are things going out there?
You keeping busy?"



"Just, uh... doing some reading," he said. "That's how I occupy myself
during the waiting periods."



She smiled whimsically. "You struck me as a reader," she said. "There's just
something about you. I love to read too, you know?"



"Uh... no, I didn't know that."



"Oh, fuckin' aye. Mostly I read stuff for school. I'm a student at Whiting.
But when I do get to read for pleasure I like to read historical fiction.
You ever read any of that?"



"Uh... well, in a manner of speaking, yes, I've read lots of historical
fiction. Most of it more historical than what you're probably used to."



"Like what?" she asked, her eyebrows perking up.



He hadn't really expected her to ask this. He phrased his reply carefully.
"Oh, writers from the twentieth century mostly," he said. "You've probably
never heard of them."



She gave him an amused grin. "I'll bet you I have," she said.



"Oh really?"



"Really," she said, her demeanor more confident now than he'd ever seen it.
"You wanna bet on it?"



"No, that's not really necessary," he said, trying to keep the exasperation
out of his voice. Why was she still talking to him? Just what was the point
of this conversation? Here he was, sitting almost 400 kilometers out in the
Martian wastelands having a non-productive conversation over an Internet
link with a ditsy cafeteria worker.



"Come on," she challenged again. "At least tell me who your favorite is. You
tell me yours and I'll tell you mine."



Figuring it was the best way to get rid of her, so he could go back to
reading, he decided he might as well answer her. Then she could say she'd
never heard of him and they could terminate the connection. "Okay," he said.
"I have lots of favorites, but the author I like best from that... uh... era
is a guy named James Michener."



She smiled. "Michener is pretty fucking good," she said.



"You're saying you've heard of him?" he asked with unmasked disbelief.



"Fuckin' aye," she confirmed. "He wrote Hawaii, Poland, Centennial, The
Covenant, just to name a few. The quality of his research was impressive for
the time period, as was the honesty of his narrative, particularly the books
he wrote after the corporations began to rise in power. I think Space is my
favorite by him. It's a good look at the history of orbital flight."



Ken blinked, staring at her image. "You've read his works?"



"All of them," she said. "My favorite author from the era is Herman Wouk
though. Have you read him?"



"Yes," he said numbly. "Most of his work anyway."



"For entertainment value, The Caine Mutiny is undoubtedly the best. But for
sheer historical value, the Winds of War and War and Remembrance series
gives an eerily accurate picture of World War II on all fronts. What's
unique about this series is that it does not merely utilize the allied point
of view, as most World War II literature of the day did. One also gets the
Russian, German, and even the Japanese view of the war as well."



Again, he looked at her in sheer surprise, almost unable to believe he was
talking to the same person. The ditzy cafeteria worker had suddenly turned
into an authority on twentieth century historical literature. How in the
hell had that happened? She even used the proper terms for the
ethnicities-Russian, German, Japanese. Every other Martian he'd discussed
history with in any way simply used the term "Earthling" to describe anyone
from the mother planet, no matter what their geographic location or time
period. "I've uh... read that series several times," he said. "You're right.
It is a comprehensive novel on the war."



"I told you I'd know who you were talking about," she said, somewhat
huffily. "I have a bit of a fascination with that particular time period. It
was the height of the moralistic hypocrisy period, the beginnings of the
corporate take-over of the government. The naiveté and the passion of the
people of the time is an interesting historical contrast. Virtually the only
place you can see it honestly portrayed is in certain fictional works of the
time."



"Uh... yeah," Ken agreed slowly. That did make actually make sense.



"For instance, in Michener's Hawaii, you get a basic step-by-step microcosm
of the way big business comes to dominate and eventually control a culture.
And this was written nearly twenty Earth years before the super corporations
actually began their rise on the mainland. He was very insightful for an
Earthling. I'm inclined to believe he was the ancestor of a future Martian.
The Martian style of common sense and honesty is reflected in his work."



"I uh... never thought of it that way," Ken said weakly. In just the space
of a few minutes he had gone from thinking that Slurry was mentally slow
despite Martian medical science to feeling like a complete dumb-ass before
her.



She shared more of her insights on twentieth century literature, covering
authors from John Irving to Tom Clancy to Stephen King and explaining how
each one's style reflected the attitudes and contradictions of the time. Ken
found himself fascinated by what she was saying and before long was adding
insights of his own and discussing the symbolism and themes in the stories
he had read. Before he even realized it, more than an hour had gone by and
it was time for Slurry to start working on the lunch menu.



"Its been rankin' bullshitting with you about all of this," she told him.
"There aren't many people on Mars who give an asswipe about Earthling
literary works. Not even the first generation Earthlings care. They're
usually just happy to have escaped from the place."



"I've been accused of being more than a little different than the average
Earthling at times," Ken admitted, smiling.



Her eyes twinkled. "Fuckin' aye. You are that. But that's rankin', cause
I've been accused of being a little different than the average Martian."



"You are that, Slurry," he told her. "I'd love to talk to you about this
again sometime. Feel free to com me again if you get bored."



"I probably won't get much of a chance today," she said. "But I'm off work
at 1500. You get off at 1700, don't you?"



"Assuming I'm back from the last flight," he said.



"Maybe we can get together for a drink or something after you get off," she
suggested.



"How about dinner and a drink?" he countered, realizing, as the words came
out of his mouth, that he was asking a woman out on a date for the first
time since he'd asked Annie in his previous life. He'd had plenty of sex on
Mars, but no dates. He'd never met anyone he cared to do more than fuck
until now.



"You talked me into it," she said. "I'll upload my ID number to you and you
can put it in your PC when you get back. Com me when you get off work."



"Right," he said. "I'll do that."



The shy smile was back on her face. It looked happier now than it had
earlier. "Bye, Ken," she said. "Have wet dreams."



"Wet dreams," he said, returning the standard Martian farewell statement. A
moment later she clicked off and the text of the Martian Supreme Court
opinion returned to his vision. It was only then that he realized he did not
have the slightest idea just how Martians went about dating.



+++++



Slurry's housing building was about two kilometers from Whiting
University-the place where Ken had been reawakened. He rode the tram to the
nearest station, arriving at 1835 and then walking four blocks from there.
Her building had no name, just an address: 4300 East Bradford Avenue. He
entered the lobby and walked past the various commercial businesses, finally
coming to the bank of elevators. He pushed the call button and a minute
later the doors opened. He spoke to the computer, telling it to take him to
the 68th floor.



After realizing that he actually had a date with a woman, Ken had commed
Karen at her office to get a crash course in Martian dating etiquette. She
filled him in on the basics which-as he'd suspected-had changed considerably
since his previous dating days. For instance, there were no longer any
automobiles or personal transportation. So how did one go about meeting
one's date? He wasn't sure if he was supposed to ride the tram over and pick
her up, have her come over to his place, or meet her at the intended
destination. The answer to this question, Karen told him, depended on just
what the circumstances of the date happened to be.



"Who asked who out?" she wanted to know.



"Uh... well, it was kind of a mutual thing," he said. "She suggested drinks
and then I suggested drinks and dinner."



"I see, so it was you who modified the initial plan, so that means you were
the one who asked her out. If that is the case, you should go pick her up at
her place, but first, you let her pick her favorite restaurant. If your
intentions toward her are more than just fucking her-and that is usually why
we go on dates on Mars-the last thing you want is to have her go to a
restaurant in or near your own building. That's suggestive that you want
quick sex and is considered rude."



"So I don't want quick sex?" he asked.



"Laura no," she said. "The purpose of dating is to see if you like someone
enough to establish a relationship with them. You don't want to have sex
right away with a potential mate. The more you like each other, the longer
you wait until you fuck the first time."



"You're putting me on," he said.



"Not at all. Manny and I didn't fuck until we'd been dating for almost two
months."



"You went two months without sex?" he asked in disbelief. On Mars, among the
non-religious population, that had to be near a record.



"No, I went two months without fucking Manny," she corrected. "I still had
all the normal sex."



"Let me get this straight," he said. "If I like this woman, I can't fuck
her, but it's still okay to fuck other people while we're waiting."



"Of course," she said. "Remember, love and sex aren't mutual in Martian
society. There's no need to curtail your physical urges during the initial
aspects of the relationship, in fact, most people would go insane if they
did."



"I see," he said slowly.



"So remember, if you go out with someone and they fuck you on the first
date, that means they do not wish to have a second date with you. That is
also what you should do if you decide you don't want to go out with her
again-start trying to initiate sexual activity with her."



All day long he had been pondering this bizarre concept. If he got laid
tonight, that meant he had been shot down in flames. If he left Slurry at
the door to her apartment and received no more than a handshake or a peck on
the cheek, that meant she liked him and wanted to go out with him again.
Leave it to the Martians to come up with a set of rules like that.



"Hi, Ken," Slurry's voice said now in response to his ringing of her
doorbell. "Come on in. I'll be there in a second."



The door slid open before him and he stepped into a small, very neat
apartment living room. Slurry was nowhere to be seen but a genetically
engineered grizzly bear came hobbling over to him, standing on its hind legs
when it reached him. It was a little more than a meter tall fully stretched
out, and maybe twenty kilos in weight. Ken reached down and petted it
absently-by now he was quite used to the strange pets Martians kept-and it
nuzzled his wrist, rubbing its wet nose back and forth across him.



Slurry walked out of the bedroom a moment later. She was dressed in a pair
of yellow shorts and a matching half shirt, both of which were somewhat
conservative by Martian standards. Her dark hair was flowing loosely around
her shoulders, framing her face in a manner that made it look prettier than
it usually did at work when the hair was pinned up. "I see you met Ben," she
told him. "Isn't he pussy?"



"Very pussy," Ken agreed. "The pussiest bear I've ever seen."



Hearing his name, Ben went over and nuzzled his owner's hand, licking it
with a long, pink tongue. "I like to think so," she said. "He's named after
a character in an old media show from the twentieth century. It was about a
man who lived up in the mountains of the western United States. He had this
pet bear he'd raised from a cub, and..."



"Grizzly Adams," Ken said, smiling.



Her face turned to shocked delight. "You've heard of Grizzly Adams too? I
thought I was the only one willing to dig deep enough into the Earthling
Internet to find propaganda like that."



"I've been pretty deep into the Earthling propaganda in my time," he told
her. "Very deep."



"You fuckin' aye must have," she said, her eyes twinkling in an affectionate
way. "I knew there was something about you. Somehow, I just knew we'd have
similar interests."



"Did you?"



She nodded. "Maybe it was your accent. I've always been a slut-whore for a
thick Earthling accent, and I've never heard one as thick as yours. Or maybe
it was the way you keep to yourself all the time. You've probably noticed,
I'm somewhat the same way."



"Yes," he said. "I did notice that. It's kind of pussy actually, now that I
think about it."



She blushed. "Thank you," she said shyly. "I've never uh... well... uh..."
She shook her head. "I guess we'd better get our dildos in the orifice,
shouldn't we? Are you ready to go?"



"I'm ready to go," he said, already feeling the strong tug of affection at
her un-Martian-like awkwardness.



They left Ben to guard the apartment and headed downstairs. They went out
through the lobby and crossed the street, entering another housing complex,
this one a bit more upscale. There, in the lobby, was a business
establishment called Jean's Buzz and Gorge. As far as Martian restaurants
went, it was about middle-of-the-road in classiness. It was a combination of
a bar and grille and the theme of the food seemed to be beef. Since it was
evening they had to wait to be seated but the wait was short. They were led
to a table near the back, walking through a haze of cigarette and marijuana
smoke.



"The bonghits are pretty good here," Slurry told him. "Gets your appetite up
for the steak."



"Sounds like a plan," he said, bringing up the intoxicant menu on the table
screen. "I don't have to fly tomorrow."



They ordered two bonghits apiece and a bottle of chardonnay. While waiting
for the waiter to bring them over they sipped from glasses of water and
looked at each other, neither able to think of anything to say. Finally Ken
broke the silence by bringing up the topic that had engaged them the
longest. "How did you end up developing such an interest in twentieth
century literature?"



"Well actually," she said, "it's more than just literature, it's everything
about the time period. I'm a historian."



"A historian?" he asked, again trying to equate the cafeteria worker with
what he was being told.



She nodded. "I have a master's degree in Human History. Right now I'm
working on my PhD. That's what I do at Whiting U, research and work on my
doctoral."



"No shit?" he said, amazed, and suddenly more than a little intimidated.
Though among Martians-the most highly educated people in human history-a
Master's degree was as common among the regular folk as a bachelor's degree
had been in his day, actual doctoral degrees were still at about the same
very low ratio. They were advanced specialty degrees-far more advanced and
difficult to complete now-reserved for the very brightest and most focused
members of society.



"No shit," she confirmed. "My specialty area is the twentieth century, as
you can probably tell. My doctoral is on the rise of the conglomerates in
the late twentieth and early twenty-first and how they came to control the
government during this time period, eventually to the point where they
effectively became the government, as they are now."



"That's uh... a very interesting topic," he said.



"It's actually quite fascinating how they did it," she said. "Industry by
industry, service by service, product by product, small companies and
providers of service were forged together, bit by bit, both voluntarily and
involuntarily, until they became huge, multi-national, obscenely rich and
powerful entities with lives of their own but with absolutely no souls or
compassion. They squeezed out or bought out any independents that offered
any kind of competition to them. It was where all of the contradictions of
capitalism finally became apparent-at least to those of us with hindsight,
huh?"



"Fuckin' aye," he said, with sincerity this time. After all, he had the
unique perspective of having lived in those times and of having experienced
them in hindsight.



"I don't know where my interest in this subject came from," she told him.
"I'm a fourth generation Martian. My great-great-grandparents came here
during the Agricultural Rush. I've never even been to Earth-although I'd
love to visit it some day. But even when I was a little girl, I always loved
reading about ancient history, about what life was like on Earth during
those dark times."



"Here's your shit," a voice said on their right. It was the waitress,
bringing their intoxicant orders. She set an electric water bong, a small
plate of Eden greenbud, and a bottle of white wine before them.



"Thank you," Ken said.



"It ain't no skin off my ass," she replied politely, giving a standard
Martian version of "you're welcome".



They each sipped out of their wine. It was excellent, as were most of the
wines imported to Mars from Earth. The Martians would accept nothing less in
their vices. Slurry then did the honor of loading up the bong with a healthy
pinch of the bud. Since she was the hostess of the date, she passed it to
Ken for the first hit. He took it with enthusiasm. He had developed quite a
taste for marijuana since being awakened. The smoke filled his lungs and the
effects of the drug within rushed through his bloodstream and went
immediately to his head. He smiled as he felt the familiar intoxication.



"So," Slurry said after taking her own hit and another sip of wine to chase
it, "I've told you why I know so much about the twentieth century. How about
you? Did you major in history as well?"



"Well... no, not in a manner of speaking," he said.



"What do you mean?"



He looked at her, coming to a decision in his mind, a decision he would have
made differently the previous year, no matter how close to someone he was.
He had no desire to have his past history known by most people-had once
lived in fear of it, in fact. But as he had come to know the Martian way of
thinking and acting he had gradually realized that Karen had been telling
the truth back in those early days when she said that Martians tended to
mind their own business and to take confidential information very seriously.
Even though he didn't know Slurry all that well yet, he knew she would keep
his secret to herself if he wished her to. That was just what Martians did.
"Have you heard of Dr. Karen Valentine?" he asked her.



"Oh, fuckin' aye," Slurry told him. "Everyone at Whiting U has heard of her,
especially in the history department. I actually interviewed one of the
people she awakened as part of my research."



"Really?" Ken asked, surprised. He knew that Karen had awakened others
before him-and three others since him-but he had never met any of these
people and knew little about them.



Slurry made a sour face. "He was a very unpleasant person-not very happy
with the way things operate here on Mars. He had been the richest man on
Earth in his day-the head of one of the earliest conglomerates in the
computer industry. That was why he was able to afford to be put into
cryogenic storage in the first place. You'd of thought he would've been glad
just to be alive and healthy again-after all, he'd been just about to die of
multiple cancers when they froze him-but not him. He just seemed to think it
was his destiny to be pulled from death. He was rankin' pissed off to find
out that all of his wealth and power were gone and he couldn't recover it.
He actually thought they were going to make him head of his corporation
again."



"So his company is still there?"



"Oh yes," Slurry said. "It's still there all right. It goes under a
different name now, but its still one of the most powerful corporations in
the technology industry of WestHem. He actually had it put into his will
that once he was revived he would resume as head of the corporation." She
chuckled a little. "As if he really thought they would allow that. When he
tried to assume control they simply refused to acknowledge him. When he
tried to travel to Earth his visa was denied. When he tried to file a legal
challenge over the Internet it was dismissed by the first judge to hear it."



"Pretty ironic, isn't it?" Ken asked, quite amused with her tale, especially
since he had a strong suspicion about who they were talking about, although
he knew Slurry would never break the confidence and confirm or deny the
identity if he asked.



"Ironic indeed," she said. "But he was quite the little capitalist here all
the same. He charged the University 500 credits for the interview with me
and I didn't get a fucking thing of interest out of it. He was so far
removed from the common people in his day that I knew more about what life
had been like in those days than he did. I hear he's in prison now in Libby.
He managed to get a successful business going and made a fair amount of
money but it apparently wasn't enough for him. He tried to bribe a
government official into introducing a bill that gave him an exception to
the anti-corporate law so he could open a second business." She shook her
head in amazement. "Isn't that that most insane thing you've ever heard of?
Trying to bribe a legislative member?"



"In this here and now, yes," Ken agreed. "Back in his day, it was as routine
as taking a piss."



"True," she said. "That was how he got so powerful in the first place, but
you would also think he was smart enough to realize things don't work that
way here."



"They had a saying back then," Ken said. "They used to say 'everyone has
their price.' I imagine that is the angle he was going for."



"I'm sure it was," she agreed. "And it may be true that everyone has their
price, it's just that on Mars, no one can afford to pay anyone else's price
for something like that."



"That too is true," he said.



"But anyway," she said, "you mentioned Dr. Valentine. Do you know her?"



"I do," he said. He took a deep breath. "She's my granddaughter."



Slurry looked at him, puzzled, not getting what he was saying. "Your
granddaughter?"



"My granddaughter," he said. "Specifically, my fifth generation
granddaughter."



"Your fifth..." Understanding dawned in her eyes. "You mean... are you
saying... you are one of the people she... she... woke up?"



He nodded. "I was born in 1969," he said. "In 2003 I was a police department
helicopter pilot in San Jose, California. I was shot in the stomach with a
rifle and my liver was destroyed. My wife arranged to have me cryogenically
frozen using a technique that was quite advanced for the time. The drive to
wake me up was passed down through the generations until Karen, with the
help of the rest of the medical staff at Whiting U, was able to actually do
it."



"Oh Laura," she said, obviously stunned. "You're not fucking with me, are
you?"



"I'm not fucking with you," he assured her. "The reason I know so much about
the twentieth century is because I was born and lived most of my life
there."



"A real twentieth century inhabitant," she said in wonder. "But you're so...
so nice!"



He chuckled. "We weren't all a bunch of capitalist pigs," he said.



"No, that's not what I meant... I mean... well..."



"It's okay, Slurry," he told her. "I'm down with you." His expression turned
serious. "So, knowing that... do you still want to... you know... go out
with me?"



"Huh? Are you shitting out your asshole? Of course I do. Laura, this is so
static! An actual twentieth! I knew there was something about you."



"Oh yes, there's something about me all right."



"And you were a common person too," she said. "I mean... well... weren't
you?"



"Well, I wouldn't exactly say common maybe, but I was middle class, both in
upbringing and profession. I wasn't a mover or a shaker, which I imagine
most of the others Karen woke up were. I had a mortgage that I had to work
full-time to pay. I had credit card debt that I probably wasn't ever going
to get out from under. I drove a car to work on freeways choked with other
cars. I downloaded primitive Internet porn and hoped my employer never found
out about it."



"You witnessed the rise of the corporations," she said, her excitement
barely contained. "You were right there in the early days of their
consolidation."



"Well... that's more your area of expertise than mine. I was just a man
trying to live in a society that was more unfair than I ever believed
possible."



"But you were there," she insisted. "You would've seen the most visible
aspects of it, when the consolidation really started to take place. And you,
as a common person, were one of the people it affected the most."



He thought about this for a moment and realized she was right. He had
witnessed the beginnings of what was known as the rise of the corporations.
"It was happening so gradually," he told her, "that none of us living
through it at the time really noticed what was going on. It's only when you
look back on it as a whole do you realize what was done."



"That's by design," she said. "It started slow, probably without even a
coherent plan. Tell me about it. What kind of things did you notice?"



He sipped at his wine again, strangely pleased that his previous life and
what he had witnessed would be so fascinating to someone. Though he didn't
discuss his past with most Martians, those he had discussed it with-Karen,
Jacob and Belung, Marjorie, Dale, Marcella-had never really cared to hear
about any details of that time period. Instinctively, he knew most other
Martians would feel the same. Martians looked at people from that age as
barbaric, rude, self-centered, and delusional. "Grocery stores are the thing
that comes immediately to mind," he told her.



"Grocery stores?" she said, her expression encouraging him to elaborate.



"Well, when I was a kid, we had neighborhood grocery stores, even out in the
suburbs where I grew up. They were named things like Mike's Market or Joe's
Groceries, or something like that. Each of them were privately owned and not
connected to any other store-pretty much like the way grocery stores are
here."



"Fuckin' aye," she said, nearly drooling as she listened to him.



"My mom used to shop at Mike's Market around the corner. It was a small
store but it had everything we would need for the week. The clerks were all
friendly and they all knew the regular customers. They would call my mom by
name when she came in and chat with her about her family. They would cash a
check without checking her identification. They would even give her credit
if we needed to buy something before my dad's payday. Mike, the owner of the
store, would work there every day, stocking shelves or running the
register."



"The way a business should be," Slurry said.



"Right," he said, although, until arriving on Mars, he had never really
thought about it that way. "And then, sometime around when I was twelve or
so, I think, another grocery store was built about two miles-sorry, about
three kilometers-further down the main road. It was a place called
Allanson's."



"Allanson's," she said in amazement. "The first name of what would
eventually become Agricorp."



"Really?" he asked. He hadn't known that part.



"Started in Los Angeles, California, in 1971, by Rick Allanson, Jeff
Peterson, and Robert Callahan. Allanson was a multi-millionaire by then,
having built a grocery empire from one store to nine in the LA area.
Peterson and Callahan were his competitors, with three and four stores
apiece, respectively. They merged their assets and changed the names of
Callahan's and Peterson's stores to Allanson's since it was the most
recognizable. They grew quickly in the Southern California region, buying
out those independent stores that were in favorable locations, strangling
those that weren't to avoid the competition. In 1973 they began to move to
other regions of California, including the San Francisco Bay Area."



"Yes, I guess it was about then," he said, amazed at the wealth of knowledge
she was able to pull off the top of her head like that. "My mom held out
from shopping at them for a few months because she really liked going to
Mike's, but eventually she simply couldn't ignore how much cheaper
everything was at Allanson's. I mean, they used to put out ads in the
newspaper and she would read them and she couldn't help but make the
comparison."



"That's the primary tool of the corporate entity in the early stages,"
Slurry said. "Undercutting the competition. It's quite easy for them to do
for many reasons. In the first place, their wholesale cost is much less than
the independent store's since they buy in volumes that are hundreds of times
greater. They also don't need to maintain a profit margin per individual
store as great as what an independent does since the sum of their total
profits comes from the sum of all the stores, not just one."



"Yep," Ken agreed. "That's pretty much what happened. Before long, mom was
doing the majority of her shopping at Allanson's because she saved so much
money that way. The only time she would go to Mike's would be to pick up
something small. When we would go there it would usually be almost empty.
Within a year, they went bankrupt and closed. Not long after that, there
were other big grocery stores going up. Malibu's was the next one, I think."



"Started in the Northern California region," Slurry recited. "Eventually
merged with Brannigan's from Arizona. Eventually, long after you went into
storage, this corporation was merged as well with what would become
Agricorp."



"All I know is that by the time I was able to drive a car, there weren't any
independent grocery stores left. If you wanted to go shopping, you went to
Allanson's or Malibu's or Brannigan's because that was all there was. The
same thing happened with drug stores. I remember my mom filling our
prescriptions at a neighborhood pharmacy. By the time I was an adult they
were all gone too, replaced by Med Aid and Short's Drug Stores. Hardware
stores were another thing. There used to be neighborhood hardware stores
when I was kid where you could go get nails or tools or plumbing stuff. And
then along came Household Warehouse-an impossibly huge place with everything
from nails to lumber to washing machines and dishwashers, all of which you
could buy cheaper than at the neighborhood hardware store. Pretty soon,
there were no more neighborhood hardware stores. It all happened so
gradually, you didn't notice it."



"Exactly," Slurry said. "And as these corporations acquired assets and
squeezed out the competition, they grew larger, richer, and more powerful.
Soon they got to the point where they could influence politicians, both on
the local level and the federal level. Once that process began, the
government was effectively taken completely out of the hands of the common
people. This process was pretty much complete by the time you were shot. My
question to you is, did you realize that?"



"Did I realize that I, as a common person, was not represented in any way by
my elected officials?"



"Yes," she said. "That's always been a burning question for me as a
historian of the time. Did the common people realize what was going on in
the beginnings?"



"In a way I did," he said. "I knew that my local politicians were controlled
by real estate developers and other special interests. I knew that the
president of the United States was controlled by big business and other
special interests. I knew that most of congress was the same. I think quite
a few people of intelligence realized this back then, at least on some
level. The big question is: why was nothing ever done about it? That one I
can't really answer."



She seemed pleased by his answer. "Eventually, someone did do something
about it," she told him. "At least here on Mars we did."



"Yes, you certainly did, didn't you? Any my descendents helped do it."



"That's something to be proud of," she assured him. "Something to be proud
of indeed."



They continued to talk, exchanging knowledge about Ken's age for more than
an hour before they even got around to ordering their dinner from the
computer screen on the table. Slurry asked him questions about day-to-day
life on Earth, concentrating on little details instead of broad
observations. She wanted to know things about how one got one's automobile
repaired and how corrupt was that industry, about how one attended a
professional sports game, about the industry of prostitution and how it was
managed, about purchasing various household items like furniture or
carpeting. She listened to his answers eagerly and, in return, offered
observations of her own about his time, telling him things he certainly
hadn't known about when he'd been living in the midst of them. She told him
about pharmaceutical industry and how they had blocked research into what
should have been an easy cure for common diseases like the cold, influenza,
and arthritis because they made so much money selling over-the-counter
symptom relievers for these ailments. She told him of the timber and beer
industries and how they had conspired for years to block any serious attempt
to legalize marijuana.



"The timber and beer industry?" he asked incredulously. "Why did they care
about marijuana?"



"Well, the beer industry angle should be quite obvious," she replied. "They
sell intoxicants. Marijuana is a competing intoxicant. They were afraid if
people were allowed to buy marijuana legally it would cut into beer sales.
This turned out not to be the case when they finally did legalize it during
World War III, certainly not to the extent of what they feared. They spent
probably a thousand times more money bribing politicians and paying
lobbyists to keep it illegal than they ever would have lost in sales had
they just allowed it to be legalized. But, such is capitalism, right?"



"I've come to learn that," he told her. "What about the timber industry?"



"Their thinking was a bit more justified, strangely enough, although their
solution to the problem was pure genius as it turned out. The timber
industry of the time did not just provide lumber for building things. By far
the biggest use of timber was the manufacture of paper products. Paper
products can be made much easier and much cheaper by using hemp instead of
wood. Hemp is the natural byproduct of marijuana production. By legalizing
marijuana the demand for timber for paper was virtually wiped out, just as
they'd always feared. But the timber industry certainly didn't fold up
because of this. They simply got into the marijuana business instead, an
easy solution. Soon they found their profits nearly tripled since hemp grows
in much higher quantities per acre-not to mention about ten thousand times
faster-than trees."



Other insights she had to share with him were even more startling, seeming
to justify the rampant paranoia that some of the fringe members of society
had spouted back then. They talked of the practical cold fusion conspiracy
he'd discovered early in his reawakening, and the Ebola epidemic that
eventually killed his wife and her new husband. They also talked of old
conspiracy theories and what the historical perspective on them now was.



"The Apollo moon landings were not faked," she said. "American astronauts
really did land on the surface in 1969 and on all the historical dates
after. There is absolutely no doubt about that now. And the September 11,
2001 terrorist attacks were not faked either, although there were many who
came to believe they were in the years that followed since the government
took horrible advantage of them in order to justify wars and to increase
surveillance of private citizens. One conspiracy theory that was correct,
however, was the John F. Kennedy assassination."



"Really?" he asked, fascinated. "There is proof?"



"No actual smoking gun," she said, using a twentieth century expression not
common on Mars. "But there's enough circumstantial evidence that a jury
would be convinced if it were presented. The culprit behind the
assassination was the American government itself-a very clumsy effort, I
might add, but they were new at that sort of thing then. JFK was the last of
the executive leaders who actually was able to exert any sort of control
separate from what the corporations and big business wanted. In a way, his
assassination was the turning point in American history. By this point most
of congress was owned by big business and Kennedy, as powerful and rich as
he was, was actually known to use his own common sense and judgment. The
Cuban missile crisis was a perfect example. If he had actually done what his
advisors suggested during that particular moment in history, it is likely
there would have been no further history. We historians look back on that
age with horror these days. Those of you living in the time had no idea how
close you really came to having those nuclear missiles fly. Your
powers-that-be of the time, equipped with nuclear arms, were the equivalent
of letting a two year old child play with a hand grenade in a crowded room.
It's only by sheer luck the pin was never pulled.



"In any case, Kennedy was a huge annoyance to the emerging corporate powers
that were just starting to get a handle on the reins of government. He
crossed them one too many times and they arranged for his death. It very
nearly backfired on them, but they were ultimately successful. Every
president after that was nothing more than a tool of big business-a puppet
on a string. By the time of your shooting, it was pretty much impossible to
get elected to any sort of political office higher than the school board
without being approved of by the corporate entities. The collusion of the
media was what made this process of control both possible and undetectable
by most of the common people of the time."



"The collusion of the media?" he asked.



"Again, this is something that happened in your time but the implications of
it weren't considered. It started when the American government began to
allow the various media formats to merge under a single owner. Before long,
every television news service, every newspaper, every Internet news service,
every publishing house, every radio station was owned in one way or another
by a handful of powerful corporations. The independent news sources were
swallowed up, destroyed, or discredited as a reliable source of information.
Once this point was reached, the only source of information for the public
to base their very opinions upon was controlled by big business. No book was
published, no newspaper story was printed, no news story was aired that they
did not approve of. It was exactly for this reason that this sort of merging
of media was forbidden in the first place."



Their food arrived as he was pondering this rather unsavory thought. As he
chewed his steak and sipped from a glass of red wine, he was forced to admit
to himself that he, along with most of the rest of the common people of his
age, had been little more than sheep in a certain sense, their political and
sociological opinions spoon-fed to them by a corporate owned media.



"Coming here, to this planet," he told Slurry, "has been like having
blinders removed from my eyes. I've had to change my entire manner of
thinking about so many things."



"And has it been for the better?" she asked.



"Yes," he said, without hesitation. "It has been for the better."



After finishing dinner, having dessert, and then engaging in one last round
of drinks and a bonghit apiece, Ken was shocked to find it was nearly 2300
hours. They had been talking for almost four hours straight. And still he
craved more. For the first time since his awakening, since being told his
wife was long dead and he would live the rest of a long life without her, he
found himself feeling something a bit more than infatuation for a woman. Nor
was this feeling his alone. Slurry seemed quite taken with him as
well-especially after being told his background.



He escorted her back to the lobby of her apartment building, all the way to
the elevators. They stood there for a moment, awaiting the descent of a car
to the lobby.



"I had a rankin' time tonight, Ken," she told him. "I'm glad we went out."



"Me too," he told her. "You can't imagine how nice it is to talk to someone
who can actually relate to where I came from, what life was like back then."



"Actually," she said with a slight giggle, "I can imagine it. Remember, I'm
in the same boat. I'm considered somewhat of an odd person, you know. I'm
shy and I don't open up to people very easily. Historians who study Earth
life are considered kind of... oh... what is the word you would have used?"
She thought for a second and then seemed to come up with it. "Nerdy," she
said. "I'm considered a nerd among Martians. If you know what I mean."



He smiled. "I've always had a fondness for nerds," he said. "And I think
you're quite fascinating."



The elevator doors suddenly slid open, the empty car waiting for a rider.
They both looked at it for a moment and then back at each other. Ken held
out his hand to her. She looked at it nervously for a moment and then took
it in hers. They shook gently, with great affection.



"Good night, Ken," she told him, still holding onto his hand.



"Good night, Slurry," he said. "Can I com you tomorrow? Maybe we can go out
again."



"I'll be looking forward to it," she said.



They let their hands remain in contact for a few more seconds and then
reluctantly disengaged. Slurry stepped into the elevator car alone and gave
him one last wave as the doors slid shut. Ken watched the closed doors for a
moment and then turned away. He walked out of the lobby and back to the tram
station alone and not the least bit saddened about it. He was starting to
think that the strange Martian dating rituals actually made sense after all.