Alan clung to Kaylee’s arm as they entered the back offices of the First Martian Theater. The young woman holding the door gave the couple a tight, reassuring smile hinting that she understood their trepidation. The décor was all new, with plasticized steel walls molded to look like old stonework and red velvet drapes from a top-end cloth-o-matic piled in rolled bundles ready to be installed as a stage curtain. Their escort led them down a brightly lit corridor that still managed to feel foreboding despite the smell of fresh paint.
They passed through an old-fashioned swinging door labeled “cast break room” and found themselves attending a gathering that looked halfway between a poker game and the cliché Human Era cartoons of cigar-smoking old men who ran corrupt political campaigns.
A thin-faced man with a welcoming smile beckoned them over. “Kaylee, Alan, glad you could make it. Mars is always in need of citizens looking to help their community. Sit down. Let me introduce everyone.”
Kaylee separated herself from her husband and shook hands with Bob Volkov, Nancy Davis, Abel McCovey, Candice Medina, and Annabel Santos, plus Andy Wilkes, their host. She tried to remember all the names, but she’d always been better with numbers than faces. Alan was the people person, meeting the same neighbors with the same handshakes and likely having permanently associated all those new names with their owners already. For him, they were just another class of students to learn.
“You probably have a lot of questions,” Andy said as Kaylee and Alan joined the group around the table. “We’re willing to answer any you might have.”
“Is all this… committee-approved?” Alan asked, glancing nervously around the room as if to check for hidden cameras or microphones.
Andy chuckled at perfect ease. “Tacitly. Most of the robots know something is going on over here, and they don’t want to get involved. They like it that way. Mars is their little pet porcupine. They like having us, but every time they get too close they end up regretting it. The Colonist Fitness Screenings, regulation of Truman-Effect technology, local schooling certification, independent emancipation boards; every time they try to help, the worse they make things. I think they’re banking their drone credits on the Unity Keepers holding Mars together.”
Unity Keepers. It sounded so stuffy and formal, like a Solar Age reincarnation of the Knights Templar or a twentieth century cult. If their referral hadn’t come from one of Alan’s teaching colleagues, Kaylee might have walked out then and there.
But how sinister could an organization be if a kindergarten teacher was their leading recruiter?
“That’s why we’re here,” Kaylee said. “It’s the nightly news feeds. Our kids are still in school on Earth, and we watch the terrestrial news rather than embarrass them every night with a comm. But Mars is our home now, and night after night the stories get worse. Alan and I talked about it, and we realized we were waiting for someone to do something about it. We wanted the news feeds to come on one night with President Francoeur dusting his hands and telling us that the separatists and instigators had all been set straight, that everything was fine.”
Alan leaned forward. “We realized we needed to be part of the solution.”
Andy smiled patronizingly. “There’s no solution here. We have no end game. The Mars First Party, the Humans First Party, the private Solarwide channels where secessionists and anti-mechanical bigots gather… none of that is going away in our lifetimes. We just push back, hinder, keep them from spreading. Education helps, but they’ve cut off Martian education from the Oxford curriculum now.”
That had been a key factor in leaving Athena and Stephen at school on Earth. Whatever anyone said about robots, Nora109 had kept the standards at Oxford consistently excellent since it opened. The same couldn’t be said of the Martian Colonial School System. The organization had seen eight different chief administrators during its seventeen years of operation and eight different curriculum standards. No chief administrator had yet to win reelection.
“We just want to do the right thing,” Kaylee said. Alan nodded in agreement.
Andy shook his head. “I don’t peddle easy answers here. That’s for the other guys. But I can tell you this much. History doesn’t look kindly on extremist groups, nor does it look kindly on colonial subjugation by distant governments.”
Kaylee furrowed her brow. “But…”
Alan snickered. History was his forte. “You’re saying that whosever viewpoint prevails writes the history.”
“The Unity Keepers are offering a particularly tricky bit of history to write. It comes rife with villains who have families to worry about, jobs to safeguard, and self-esteem to shelter. We’ve got a rough outline to work from, but I’m mainly offering the two of you a blank text field to fill in. This isn’t for everyone.”
Feeling small in her chair, Kaylee nodded. Maybe they’d made a mistake coming here. Andy Wilkes was no visionary, no charismatic leader. He was just the director of a local theater group that didn’t even perform original plays. Everything they did was a retread from Earth, from Hamlet to Rent to First Girl on Earth. Even the politics were recycled, it seemed.
Kaylee leaned forward to push her chair back. “Thank you for—”
Alan reached across the table in unison with Kaylee’s lean. “For the opportunity. We’re committed to making Mars a place where we can build a home for ourselves.”
Kaylee hesitated. They’d often spoken about settling on Mars permanently, maybe having one or two more children once they’d gotten used to the relocation—Martian, born and raised. Their son, Stephen, had a different career in mind every time Kaylee asked, but every one of them involved space. His sister, Athena, was already talking internships at Kanto—no thoughts of Mars on that one’s mind. Kaylee knew, deep down, that her kids were going to build their own lives, not follow her and Alan around the solar system.
Never fully formed, Kaylee’s thoughts passed in a mushy blur of emotional footprints left by months of conversations with her husband. She found herself shaking Andy’s hand in turn. “Mars is our home now. We’re willing to do what it takes to keep the partnership with Earth intact.”