Sapped of the green of their youth, the desiccated grass-like blades of soya had given the last of their energy to nurture the seeds in their pods. Tired under the pinkish glow of LED lights, they had reached the end of their useful life and were ready for the reaper.
Swarms of farm workers on Alex’s shift had descended on their quiet field to rob the mature plants of their beans. The crisp, dried-out stems would then be salvaged for their valuable fibers and, in the afterlife of the plant, would become unrecognizable as textiles and packaging.
Almost the entire field had succumbed to the harvest. Leaving behind stacks of dark brown soil trays primed to receive the next crop rotation.
Like the empty shelves of a food warehouse.
Only one unharvested stack remained. A towering swish of yellowed foliage at the back of the field, waiting for the forklift robot.
The machine reached up high with its prongs to pluck the top layer. Lifting it free, the robot reversed and turned to face the production line of workers near the end of the field. It lowered the tray to chest height as if holding out an offering to the humans and trundled down the aisle. With each imperfection of the path, the tray juddered and the heavy pods of soya nodded their way to the harvesting machine.
Alex’s job was to guide the tray onto the conveyor belt that fed the harvester. He suspected Kurt had put in a quiet word to ensure he was paired with Yule. Not as if working at the conveyor provided much scope for matchmaking. Goggles protected their eyes from flying stalks and dust, while masks over their mouths and noses covered up most of the rest of their faces.
Alex’s feet ached from having stood there all day. His goggles kept steaming up and it was unpleasant to breathe in the humid atmosphere created by his own breath and sweat inside the mask. But it was energizing to be there, only three months since he had been in that same field planting the seed. With all the talk of food shortages, to be playing a role in harvesting a successful crop gave him a sense of achievement he had never experienced before.
The robot delivered its gift onto the conveyor. The belt sensed its weight and attempted to move the tray forward. But it was stuck on the prongs. Through the un-steamy portion of Alex’s goggles, he exchanged unspoken communication with Yule. Together, they tugged at the tray, it was freed from the robot and propelled along the conveyor into the waiting mouth of the harvester.
Turning blades swiped at the soya stems and liberated them from their roots. The plants tumbled into the belly of the machine where unseen processes extracted the beans and salvaged the straw.
At the rear of the harvester, Kurt waited for the beans to drop into a hopper which he would guide onto another robot for onward transport. The fiber-rich bundles of leftovers fell into another bin to be taken away for processing. The rest of the workers ensured the soil was sieved of roots before entering a sterilizer. From there, it was enriched with fertilizer before being restored to the tray, offered back to the waiting forklift robot and returned to the stacks.
When the last tray had been fed into the harvester, Alex stepped out of the field into the walkway and relieved himself of the goggles and mask. Drawing in a lungful of clean air, he wiped his eyes with his sleeve to clear the sweat. Out ahead of him, at the end of the tunnel coupled into the airlock, was the delivery vehicle. Heading towards it was another forklift robot, this one carrying a silvery, cast titanium, sealed hopper of soya beans.
Alex jogged to catch up with it, then ran round the front so its sensors detected him and it jerked to a halt. He grinned. He loved the power he had over the automaton, even though it was childish. He put his hand in front of the sensor to make sure it remained immobile while he jumped up on the hopper and sat on it. When he removed his hand, the machine detected nothing was in the way and continued trundling, apparently ignorant that it had a passenger on board.
At the end of the walkway, Alex hopped off and watched the robot carry out its final delivery of the day. It maneuvered onto the liftgate at the back of the vehicle and was raised into a cargo hold already full of neatly stacked, cast metal, sealed hoppers.
As he watched the robot add its delivery to the stacks, he heard the voices of two men talking inside. “Is that the last hopper?” one of them was saying.
“That’s it,” said the second, an older man with a gruff voice.
Alex couldn’t see them, partly because they were standing behind the hoppers and also because it was dark in there compared to the lights of the walkway.
“It’s a shame,” said the first one in what could have been an Earth accent. “This could feed a lot of people.”
“Not seven million,” said the one with the gruff voice. “That’s barely a bean each.”
“This lot should be contributing to the ration, that’s all I’m saying.”
“Don’t be naive. You’ll be saying next the Terraforming Committee runs the planet.”
“Well, officially, it does.”
The gruff man grunted.
The forklift raised the hopper it was carrying and placed it on top of a stack of two others at the rear of the vehicle. As it withdrew, two men – presumably the ones whose conversation he had overheard – appeared from between the rows.
Alex could see the first man had a closely trimmed beard that had turned almost entirely gray. Following him, the younger man wore his long dark hair gathered up into a bun on the top of his head.
The gruff one stopped as he saw Alex standing, clearly illuminated, in the middle of the walkway and staring up at them. “Is there a problem?”
“I’ve come to get the robot,” Alex lied.
“It’s a robot,” said the gruff one. “It can get itself.”
The robot, having deposited its cargo, returned to the platform and was lowered down to Alex’s level.
“What did you mean, ‘it’s a shame’?” said Alex, still thinking about the men’s conversation.
The younger one threw a glance across to his older friend and the way they seemed to tense at the unspoken communication suggested they were self-conscious at being overheard. “Nothing.”
The forklift trundled away from the vehicle, but stopped when it sensed Alex in the walkway. Alex deliberately didn’t move. “What did you mean, this isn’t going to the ration? It’s food. It’s grown to feed people.”
“All I meant was, there are ‘people’ and there are people,” said the gruff one.
“Jake!” his friend reprimanded him.
Alex looked from one to another as his mind began to piece things together. “You mean corporations,” he said. “It’s the corporations who run the planet.”
“I think the kid’s got it,” said the gruff one whose name, evidently, was Jake.
“And we’ve got to get going,” said the young one, jumping down out of the vehicle. He glared at Alex. “Take your robot and get out of the airlock.”
Alex stood his ground and looked up at Jake, who was still waiting beside the hoppers of soya beans. “What about the corporations?”
“They’re rich, they’re powerful and they’re just as scared at the thought of starving to death as the rest of us. If you were them, what would you do?”
Alex contemplated, in silence, what the young man had said. He remembered his mother stuffing a month’s worth of food into a cupboard which she had rushed to buy in the hours before rationing took hold. It had been understandable, it had been instinctive, it had been human. He imagined what that reaction might look like when scaled up to the size of a corporation.
“If I was rich and powerful,” said Alex. “I would make sure I didn’t starve to death.”
Jake smiled and the gray hairs of his beard bristled with the movement of his lips.
The younger one strode up to Alex with such purpose that he thought he was going to hit him. Instead, he grabbed hold of his arm and yanked him sideways. “I said, get out of the way! I don’t want to be taking this load back to the depot when it’s dark.”
The forklift, no longer sensing a human in its path, begun trundling back down the walkway.
The man deposited Alex on the other side of the airlock. “If I were you,” he advised him as he let go of his arm, “I would forget the ramblings of a cynical old man.”
Alex just stood watching as the younger one also retreated and jumped back up into the vehicle.
“Who are you calling old?” Jake said when his colleague joined him.
“You don’t deny you’re cynical, then?”
“I’m realistic, there’s a difference. I’ve made more deliveries to corporation warehouses these last weeks than ever before.”
“Get up into the driver’s cab. I’ll join you when I’ve sorted the airlock.” The young one slammed his palm against a button on the inside of the vehicle and lights whirled red to warn that the door was closing.
“They tell me I’m transporting machine parts or construction materials, but I know–”
The rear shutter of the vehicle closed and the end of the man’s sentence was cut off as the hermetic seals operated to ensure it was air tight. But Alex didn’t need to hear it to understand what the men were talking about. The airlock door in front of him began to close in preparation for the atmosphere to be sucked out and the vehicle to depart, allowing the thin, unbreathable atmosphere of Mars to enter the embarkation space.
Alex turned and ran down the walkway to catch up with the returning robot. He didn’t want to ride the slow, trundling machine on the way back and kept running. He had to get back to the bus as soon as possible and return to Deimos City to tell Ivan.