I SLEEP HEAVILY, thanks to the sedative Dr. Elvan gives me in an effort to help me adjust my cycle to base time. I tried to do that on the journey over, but it clearly didn’t work. He said nothing about my mistake at the dinner table and I didn’t raise it either. I didn’t want to invite a discussion; I just wanted to rest and be fresh the next day to pass the next physical and be signed off for my first trip outside.
There’s a message from my mother waiting when I wake, and one from Charlie too, and I realize with a jolt that I didn’t record a message for Mia. I brace myself for the guilt trip and play Charlie’s message first.
He looks tired, which is unsurprising, seeing as his last message demonstrated how little sleep he’s been getting, but he looks a bit more composed than before. He’s sitting in the living room, recording with our cam drone by the look of it, and I can hear Mia’s babble coming from off screen.
Through the window I can see that it’s raining in Manchester, which is nothing new, but I can’t pull my eyes from it. How many times have I cursed that weather, only to find myself craving it now? There’s a temptation to go back to the mersive I recorded of the storm we were caught in about a week before I left, but I resist it. Messages first. Then breakfast. Then storm.
“Hi, love,” Charlie says with a wave. “I was so relieved to get your message. Thanks. The room doesn’t look too bad. Are you going to put some pictures up? It’s a bit impersonal.” He keeps looking away from the cam, keeping an eye on Mia, I suppose. “Anna, I don’t resent you being happy. Why did you say that? I can’t stop thinking about it. Is that how you felt here, at home?” He sighs and rubs his forehead in the way he does when he’s got a headache. No doubt he’ll print something for it once he’s finished the message. I can see him shrug off the moment of self-pity, rallying himself to be the cheerful one, the counterbalance. The familiarity of it pains me. “I got a parcel from the Gabors today.” He gets up and the cam moves with him, keeping his face fully in shot as he walks. I catch glimpses of the flat. The gaps left by the missing canvases haven’t been filled. I suspect he’s glad of the space. They need to be rearranged, positioned so that the white space looks designed rather than like an aftershock of things disappearing. It irritates me. Probably because I can’t do anything about it.
Is he leaving those gaps there deliberately? Is it some sort of statement? No, Charlie isn’t that calculating.
He’s crossed to the kitchen corner of the room and I can see dust on the hob, unused since the dinner party. Mia must be in her cot; I can’t see her anywhere. On the table there’s a basket with a lid, which looks like something out of a period-drama mersive, the sort of thing that rich Edwardians used to take on picnics, if the one I played in was to be believed. I didn’t realize that they were still being made in the real world. It looks like it’s been woven out of thin sticks, and the imperfections in the weave scream out the fact that it’s been made by hand rather than printed.
“Look at this,” he says, flipping the lid open. “Champagne, caviar, chili jam—whatever that is—and this stuff.” He pulls out a package made of food-safe biopackaging containing pale brown cubes. I’ve seen something like that before but can’t place it. “This is called fudge,” he says, opening it up. “Seriously, love, this stuff is . . .” He leans closer to the cam, lowering his voice to a level outside of Mia’s hearing range. “This stuff is so fucking good. It’s made from . . . cream, butter, milk and sugar and . . . shit, is that it? I’ve never tasted anything like it. Honestly, it’s like someone made cubes of D-liite and made it taste like an orgasm.”
I chuckle. He’s never taken drugs, certainly not D-liite, which is banned pretty much everywhere, but I get the idea. He puts a chunk in his mouth and his eyes roll upward before he closes them. He gives a long, drawn-out sigh. “Seriously,” he says around the mouthful, “it’s like . . . there’s just so much stuff going on in the pleasure centers of my brain right now, that MyPhys is flagging up an alert, asking if I’ve taken an illegal substance.”
He laughs and I laugh too and then I suddenly miss him, painfully, an actual physical pain in my chest. I take a couple of deep breaths until it passes, trying to resist the tears that threaten to spill. He finishes the piece of fudge and rummages in the basket again.
“There’s chocolate in here too, but I’m saving that. I would say that I’m saving that until you come home, but I’m not that strong.” He grins at the cam. “And, you know, if this is the hamper we get when you land on Mars, imagine what we’ll get when you come back to Earth! That’s what this is called, apparently. There was a leaflet inside.” He rifles through the contents and swears beneath his breath. “I don’t know where it is, but it said something like ‘A hamper for connoisseurs of . . .’ something or other. And it had this thing about how in the twentieth century sending a hamper filled with luxury goods was something people did all the time. Weird. And get a load of this basket. Handmade from wicker, whatever that is. They’re being sold online for a small fortune, just in case we wanted to get a new sofa at some point. I thought you could keep your brushes and stuff in it, so I won’t sell it until you’ve seen it.”
He closes up the bag of fudge and puts it back in the hamper, buckling the cover closed. “These buckles are made from real leather. I mean, it’s just . . .” He shrugs. “I don’t really know what to make of it, you know? Gabor’s real-life personal assistant probably just sent this automatically through an APA. I mean, no real thought has gone into this I reckon, but still . . . it makes me feel weird. Like . . . why are they sending me a hamper? Is it like, ‘Sorry we sent your wife to another planet. Here are some “luxury comestibles” to ease the pain’? That was it! Luxury comestibles! That leaflet said it’s ‘a hamper for connoisseurs of luxury comestibles.’” He smirks, shaking his head. “They live on another planet. Whoa. You are literally living on another planet now.”
“Ream?” Mia’s little voice sounds much closer all of a sudden, accompanied by the sound of plastic tapping on a surface.
Charlie turns around and the cam swoops round to keep his face in shot, giving me a glimpse of Mia standing beneath the food printer’s slot in the wall, tapping it with a plastic bowl from her picnic set.
“No, no ice cream, Mia. We’ve just had breakfast!”
“Ream now!”
“No, no ice cream. Hey, want to send Momma a message?” He crouches down next to her and there she is, pink cheeked and still baby plump, wearing an all-in-one fluffy suit with orange fur and black stripes. She still likes tigers, then. Charlie points at the cam. “Say hello to Momma!”
She looks past the cam, confused. “Momma?” she calls. Then she points to the wall we project her games and shows onto, and where the projector displays me when I call her from work. “Momma?”
“No, sweetling, Momma isn’t at the lab; we need to send her a message.”
Mia gives the cam drone a cursory glance, then bangs the bowl on the wall again, looking at Charlie. “Ream, Dada. Ream now!”
With a sigh he picks her up. “Sorry, love,” he says to the cam. “She just doesn’t understand recording messages yet. I’ll film her when you send your first message to her. That wasn’t a dig at you, by the way. I understand there must be tons of new stuff to come to grips with there. Just, when you have a moment, you know.”
Mia drops the bowl and starts playing with his ear and then one of the curls that have grown above it. Then she wraps her arms around his head, covering his eyes, and kisses him right on the ear. He turns and kisses her back, then blows a raspberry on her neck, making a loud, gurgling giggle erupt from her.
I smile, but the old ache returns, the bittersweet witnessing of their ease with each other. I am, once more, an observer rather than a participant. At least this time there is a more acceptable reason for feeling this way.
A flare of anger at myself chases the heels of the sadness. Why am I this way? What is missing inside me?
Charlie puts her down and as she runs off to the bedroom, he rubs his ear, his nose wrinkling at the dampness her kiss left behind. “I’d better go now; I want to get some work done before Mum comes over later.” There’s a long pause as he stares at the floor. “She sends her love, by the way,” he adds and I know he’s lying. I hate that woman and it’s entirely mutual. She probably threw a party the day I left Earth.
I have the feeling there’s something else he wants to say, but whatever it is, he isn’t ready to share it. He smiles into the cam, doing his best to make it seem natural, but it’s not the same smile I see in the mersives I recorded myself, when he was looking into my eyes. The distance between us seems insurmountable. The message ends.
I sit for a while, weighing up whether to find an old recording to see that real smile again. How far back would I have to look? How many fake smiles would I have to pan to find gold? I decide against it. I have things to do and I don’t want Principia to report to Arnolfi that I haven’t been able to get through an hour without going back into a mersive. I call up the message from my mother instead.
The message begins with a pink blur that fills the screen, along with the muffled noise of something scraping against a microphone. “Bloody thing,” my mother mutters, and then the pink blur disappears as she releases her cam drone and steps back until I can see her nose and chin. “Hello, Sprout! I think this thing is working now. It wasn’t playing nicely with my tablet but I got there in the end. Oh, why is it beeping now?” She glances over at what I assume is the tablet screen and then takes another couple of steps back until I can see her whole face. It fills the screen. She looks tired and her eyes are still a little bit puffy, but her broad smile is the same as ever. “There! I think you can see me properly now. I thought it was supposed to do all the face-distance thing automatically. They make these things without considering people who use tablets, just like every bloody thing ever I suppose. It’s discrimination, dammit. Sorry. Hello, Sprout. I am so glad you arrived safely. I remember putting you on the train to Paris when you were fifteen and staying up all night worrying about you arriving, but that was nothing compared to this!”
Her face is so close to the cam I can’t see where she is exactly, but then there’s a loud yowl and I realize she’s at home, confirmed when she bends down to pick up the cat and goes out of shot. There are the rough walls of the house we all built together and she’s standing right by the bit where all of our handprints are pressed into the cob. Of course she is. She wants to remind me of what we all built together. She wants me to see four sets of handprints. To remind me of what we had before it was broken.
She doesn’t realize how that makes me feel. For her, it’s an anchor, but for me it’s like shining a spotlight on a broken vase. I suppose she still thinks it can all be mended. Optimistic to the point of stupidity, that’s my mum.
When she comes back into shot, the cat is being held up next to her face, oblivious to the expectation she’s placing upon him. “Say hello, Odin.”
It’s a testament to my mother’s physical strength that she can keep him held up like that. Odin is a Maine coon and his head looks almost as big as hers, especially with the dramatic fur. I can’t help but smile at the sight of him, looking effortlessly regal with his impressive ruff of fur. Odin, typically contrary, looks anywhere but at the cam and keeps quiet for once. Mum kisses his furry cheek, making him rub back against her jaw, his purr almost as loud as her voice. “He’s too busy looking for Frigg. She’s hiding under the bed. Can you hear the wind outside? It’s blowing a storm out there; we had some epic thunder and lightning earlier. It’s the third this week. Don’t worry about us though, Sprout—it’ll take more than the Atlantic’s moods to blow us away. Did I tell you that the house up on the other side of the loch lost its roof? Stupid buggers. We told them that design wouldn’t work. All those fancy-pants engineers and architects coming up with all these newfangled designs.” She shakes her head, unimpressed, as Odin starts to fidget. Mum tries to keep him in shot but it’s a short-lived struggle and he leaps down to continue his hunt. “She’s under the bed, silly,” Mum calls to him. “You know they laughed at our houses when they saw them. I invited them over for a drink when they started the build and when I told them how we made this place they thought I was winding them up. Now who’s laughing? Us!”
She chuckles and then frowns to herself. “I shouldn’t be mean though. Those poor sods. I drove over and brought them back here the night it happened. I shouldn’t have been on the road, really, it was fierce out there, but they only have one of those silly toy cars. I told them they needed a proper rover but they wouldn’t listen. They were in a terrible state. They went back to London yesterday. I don’t know what they’ll do about the house once they’ve finished suing the people who built it. Mud and straw and old tires—that’s all you need, and a bit of lime. But these people don’t want the old ways, do they? Do you remember when we built this place?”
With a faint smile she looks around, still proud, still drawing so much pleasure and satisfaction from what we all built together. For her, the magic of that time still surrounds her. The memories of that summer are preserved the old-fashioned way. I was too young to record a mersive, but I have footage from my bear, watched many times since then.
That bear was one of those things that my parents would have preferred us not to have, but when pretty much every child had one and society viewed them as the cornerstone of modern childhood, they couldn’t bring themselves to deprive us. From the outside it looked like any teddy bear with big friendly eyes and fur. The more expensive models could be fully customized, so some kids had unicorns or hippos or hybrid creatures that appealed to them. Mine was an average brown bear, but like every single one, it was far from just a cuddly toy.
The friendly eyes were also cameras and the rounded, fluffy ears hid microphones, giving the AI housed within a view of the world and the ability to record whatever it saw and heard. The bear was designed to be a constant companion in childhood, providing information and advice to supplement learning as well as the usual comfort any cuddly toy can provide. What set the bear apart from all of the other intelligent children’s toys was the fact that it was made using the same supporting technology as was used in neural chips. The bears were designed to record everything so that when their owners were old enough for their first neural chips, there was a wealth of data to feed them right from the start. Any learning difficulties could then be supported at the neural level; any traumatic experiences could be synced with MyPhys and used to notify health care providers where necessary. There were thousands of ways that gathered data was used to help the new neural chip better integrate with each teenager’s brain.
And for the gov-corps to harvest all the data they could ever want.
When I think back to that summer, I can’t tell what I remember because of what I saw through my own eyes and what I remember because I saw it later through the bear’s recordings, but I remember how it felt well enough.
It did feel magical. At nine years old, I was too young to fully appreciate just how unusual my parents were. I didn’t understand enough about the world to see what they did, to predict what was coming. I couldn’t grasp the magnitude of the changes taking place, driving their decisions. For me, it was just an adventure. One day we were living in a perfectly normal block of flats in London’s sprawl; the next we were living in an old caravan in Scotland, huddled in a valley with other families, helping one another to build our houses. We were together then, the four of us, Mum, Dad, Geena and me. And we were happy.
“I miss you, Sprout.” She blows her nose. “And Geena too. I haven’t heard from her, but I know where she is and . . .” Her voice breaks. “She’s safe,” she manages, fresh tears falling. I can’t tell if it’s her usual policy of not talking about anything sensitive on a digital medium, or her inability to talk about it without breaking down. I struggle to manage my frustration. Her behavior is perfectly understandable. “I think you need to put some art in your room,” she says after blowing her nose again. “Make yourself feel a bit more at home. I spoke to Charlie and he’s fine. I’m going to visit them soon. He might bring Mia up in the summer. I hope so. She needs to know what it’s like to be somewhere normal. We just have to wait for the weather to calm down a bit. We told them it’s getting worse here—those architects, I mean—but they didn’t listen. Averages aren’t good enough when it comes to critical data. As you well know, eh, Sprout? Well, I’d better go. The cats need feeding and I have some vases to fire. I’ll show them to you when they’re done. Don’t let anyone tell you how to paint Mars either. And don’t be too hard on yourself if you take a while to get started. Get a feel for the place. With all that expectation upon you, don’t be surprised if you feel a bit blocked at first. Talk to me if you have any problems, all right? Oh, Annabelly! I am so proud of you!”
Her face crinkles up when she smiles, and I can’t help but smile back.
“Oh, and when you get a minute . . . could you . . . would you record a message for your dad? I think he would like it, very much.”
All the feelings of warmth and connection evaporate. She waves good-bye, blows kisses, and after another pink blur as she goes to the cam drone itself to stop the recording, the message ends. I watch it all with a scowl on my face, left with the weight of obligation. Why can’t she understand how I feel about him?
Because I’ve never talked to her about it, comes the immediate reply. Not properly. And being on another planet, literally, is not conducive to deep and difficult conversations.
The day stretches ahead. There’s time to record all the replies I need to, but I have no desire to smile and make out that all is brilliant here. At least I feel less dizzy, and stronger than I did yesterday. I’m tired, but that’s to be expected. Just moving around here is like a gentle workout compared to the trip over. It’s not as bad as I was told it could be though. Surely I’ll be able to go outside tomorrow?
There are things to do: safety protocols to review for when I can go outside, a full tour of the base and a trip to the lab to test the paper that note was painted on. And another physical, but I’m less worried about that. Then the icon flashes to indicate an incoming call. It’s Arnolfi.
Minutes later I am sitting in her office again. There’s a different view on the screen this time, and a different atmosphere. She still smiles and makes out that everything is fine, but there’s a tension here that I know too well to be fooled.
“We need to talk about what happened at dinner last night.”
At least she’s direct. “I made a mistake, a silly one. It won’t happen again.”
“This isn’t a disciplinary review,” she says. That smile again. She’ll be telling me she’s not a therapist any moment now. “This isn’t anything other than a discussion about how we move forward over the next few days.”
I have to keep positive and not let her see how irritated this is making me. “I’m feeling stronger today. And less dizzy. I’m confident I’ll pass the physical, and then tomorrow, when I can go outside, I’ll be busy again. More . . . connected. That’s all it was yesterday.”
“I can’t approve a trip outside if I have any doubts about your mental well-being.”
“Oh, come on. It was one lapse of concentration. In a totally harmless situation. There’s no need to talk about mental well-being here.” I sound annoyed. I am annoyed! I try to paste over it with a smile.
“Isn’t there? I’m concerned you’ll have another lapse of concentration but not in a harmless situation. There’s no need to be defensive about this. I’m not attacking you. I’m just trying to help you understand how serious this is, so we can work together to ensure your integration here goes as smoothly as possible.”
I’ve folded my arms again. Crossed my legs. Adopted the textbook pose of someone being so defensive she’s one step away from walking out.
“I’m not your therapist,” she says and I suppress a laugh, “but I am one of the registered health care providers on this base and you are exhibiting the early signs of immersion psychosis and we need to address it, now. It’s perfectly understandable, given the circumstances, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.” When I remain silent—playing her at her own game—she adds, “I need your understanding and your cooperation. We both want you to be fit enough to go outside and do the job you’ve been sent here to do.”
I need to stop being an arsehole about this, or she’ll block me from leaving the base. But it’s so hard to just sit here and take this after the countless hours I’ve spent in offices like this, talking to people like her. Then it occurs to me that all that tedious experience gives me an advantage here. I fall back on old techniques refined years ago on Earth. “You’re right,” I say, softening my voice. “I’m sorry. I just . . . I just don’t want everyone to think I’m not good enough to be here.” I add just enough of a quiver to my voice to make it sound like I’m confessing something genuine. “I don’t want to be any bother either.”
Arnolfi leans across the gap between us, squeezes my arm in what I’m sure she believes is a reassuring gesture and leans back again. “I won’t discuss this with anyone else. We need to fully embed you in the present, and we need to wean you off your dependency on fully immersive personal recordings. My recommendation is that we limit your use of personally recorded mersives, and any featuring this base, to a total of one hour per day. I also recommend regular physical exercise throughout the day, along with time spent in the company of one or more of the crew here. There’s lots to bring you up to speed on, so that won’t be a problem. Do you agree with this plan?”
I nod. I have to. “It sounds very sensible,” I say.
“Good, just give me a moment to file the restriction request with Principia and—”
“What do you mean?”
“The restriction on your mersive consumption will be imposed by Principia’s AI. To take the pressure off you.”
To take the control from me, more like. “To remove temptation,” I say with a nod. “Of course. I understand.” Fuck you, I think.
“This is a form of addiction,” she says. “You can’t be expected to simply stop overconsuming. That would be unfair. And I do appreciate that you have a family you miss and totally cutting you off from those memories of home could be more harmful. We’ll see how you get on over the next twenty-four hours. Don’t be afraid to call on me, or Dr. Elvan, if you find yourself feeling disoriented or uncertain about anything. We’re here to help.”
“Thanks,” I say. “Can I use the lab while we’re . . . doing this?”
“Of course. Principia will supervise and may restrict access to anything that could be harmful, just because you haven’t been signed off as fully fit yet.”
“Oh, I won’t need anything like that. I’m just . . . keen to find my feet in there, that’s all.” I stand. “I’ll go and check it out now. Keep busy, you know?”
She nods as she stands too. “This is a really difficult time for all new arrivals, even without the isolation of a solo journey over. It will get better.” She’s gracefully walking the fine line between being professionally reassuring and being patronizing as hell, and yet I still want to yell at her to stay out of my business. This is within her remit. She’s not the one being unreasonable here.
I leave before I say something stupid. It’s only when I’m out of that office, away from her, that I realize how hostile I was in there. She’s just trying to help and do her job. She’s not like the ones from before. I need to give her a chance.
But why the note warning me about her? I go back to my room, find it and take it to the lab. I’m hoping it’s a fake as I prepare the sample for examination, that someone here somehow accessed my private data, found examples of my art, painted it in my style and thought it would be . . . funny?
Feeling nauseous, I put the scrap of paper under the microscope and zoom in, double-checking what I saw with my own lens. The paper is definitely from one of my sketchbooks. I can see the fibers of the traditionally made paper, all the hallmarks that my grandparents taught me about. The deckle edge proves that it was crafted using a frame and not made here with a 3-D printer. The sketch pads I use come from old stock, left over from when they closed their art supplies shop, after even the wealthiest stopped wanting their products. They saw it as my inheritance; my grandmother said that seeing me use the sketch pads and canvases gave them more happiness than any money they could earn from them ever would.
Chemical analysis of the paint only increases my certainty that the words were painted with the oils I have brought from Earth. It has the telltale high carbon content of the ivory black oil that I use for shadow detailing in the last stages of a painting. I love the intensity of the color. The proportion of calcium phosphate to synthetic carbon is exactly the same as used by the specialist oils manufacturer my grandparents stocked.
There’s no way this could have been printed. And even if someone did steal the paper from the cargo crate between unloading it from the ship and taking it to my room, how could they have found an example of my art style to copy? Do any of them know how to hack into private data? But the biggest stumbling block for me is the motive. If it was a genuine warning, why hide it? The sort of people who do this kind of thing as a prank are not likely to make it through the selection process to come here. It simply doesn’t make any sense for anyone else to have done it.
I clean the microscope plate and put the scrap in my pocket, shaking. Everything suggests I painted this myself, a warning against a person I hadn’t even met yet, an act of defiance that I have no recollection of. Did I paint this yesterday and then somehow forget?
Sitting heavily on one of the lab stools, I rest my head in my hands. All this time I’ve been running away from it and it finally catches me up on Mars of all places. I am my father’s daughter, and if that’s true, then I could destroy everything here. Just like he did all those years ago.