IN THESE TIMES
OCTOBER 19, 2085
The inhumane “climate-change remediation program” Red Care is unraveling at the seams, at long last. The brutality of this experiment has finally been exposed with the violent and tragic death of resident Henry Konishi. We hope this is the straw that will break the back of the Eric Brandt empire.
Mars Security Forces claim Konishi was being held hostage by the fugitive AI known as Peregrine, and that “reasonable force had been deployed” to “protect” the elderly resident. They claim his loss was an avoidable tragedy, and the one who could have avoided it was Konishi, the victim.
The events of that day are muddled and confusing, and the passive tense used by MSF painfully predictable, but one thing has been clear since the beginning. Konishi died while protecting Peregrine, his supposed captor, which does not add up.
Then, just this week, In These Times received a strange anonymous email in its general inbox. The email was a poem, detailing an alleged eyewitness account of what happened that day. We realize an anonymous poem is highly unconventional but insist it should still be considered evidence.
The poet reports that Peregrine had arrived on Mars pregnant with a human child, and that she had been betrayed and sent off Earth by a man she once trusted, to die alone. That Konishi believed the miracle of her story and was trying to help her escape when he died.
The poet also believed the story. They acted quickly and hid Peregrine with Konishi in his coffin, which was loaded on a ship and transported back to Earth. We don’t know if the poem was written by a comrade hidden in the MSF or another Red Care worker, or even a resident.
But if true, this means Peregrine lives. “Capital-L Life goes on,” in Konishi’s words. We hope she will do the right thing and step forward to corroborate this story and bring down Red Care, which would go a long way toward proving to humanity that she is on our side.
In These Times has attempted multiple times to submit the poem as evidence, but up until publication has received no confirmation from authorities.