Gates of Mars (The Halo Trilogy Book 1) by Kathleen McFall & Clark Hays

Author:Kathleen McFall & Clark Hays [McFall, Kathleen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pumpjack Press
Published: 2020-06-15T14:00:00+00:00

33

7:15 p.m., August 31, 2187

Multnomah Ward, DuSpoles CPU, Earth

I don’t know if it’s day or night anymore. I do know I’m hungry as hell and I need to piss. But that’s the point, isn’t it? In the militia, we called it soft torture, the only type of torture tolerated as the Five Families consolidated. That doesn’t mean other types don’t occur, only that I can be fairly confident that at least in Halo security headquarters, I probably won’t get a neural waterboarding or be plugged into a holo of a burning room.

“Crucial, what aspects of life on Mars did you find unusual?”

“Unusual?”

“Your voice transcripts, including with Sanders, and your search history indicate a certain interest in Martian history.”

“It’s a fascinating place, in a ‘never want to set foot there again’ kind of way.”

“Do you have additional questions?”

Here we go again. Halo is trying to soften me up for something. It’s okay. I only need to stall for a few more hours.

“Yeah, I do, like why are there no other life forms on Mars? And no sign of past inhabitants?”

“Evidence suggests the planet may have, in the distant past, had a hospitable environment for the evolution of single-celled life forms, given the indications of flowing water and relative proximity to the sun, the building blocks for more complex life forms, such as humans. But that was billions of years ago. No traces of life forms have ever been found.”

“Why is that?”

“Research demonstrates that chance plays a role in the evolution of life.”

“You mean it was dumb luck we had everything necessary on Earth,” I say.

“In a sense, yes.”

In other words, a bunch of factors miraculously came together in just the right measure and sequence over the course of billions of years to create all the kinds of life—from humans to giraffes to yeast—and the environment to allow us all to thrive on Earth, and then we had to go and fuck it all up in a few hundred years. The equivalent of a geologic microsecond, the blink of an eye, and then the lucky ones escaped to Mars. Or, more accurately, the uber-rich ones escaped.

Empathy for one another. That was one thing that got left out when all those chemical building blocks came together a billion years ago. Or more likely empathy was there—it made us social—but it was trampled by whatever else was incorporated into the original design—the desperate urge to win, to come out on top, the will to power, even when winning means destroying other humans, and eventually yourself.

Humans are nuts. Rich, poor, resisters, administrators, cops, parents—maybe parents most of all—it’s pretty much all of us. We’re all doomed. Give me a bottle of absinthe and a desert hologram any day.

“Your sister had unusual eyes,” Halo says.

There it is. That’s what the distraction was all about. Classic bait and switch. I feel my heart rate increasing.

Time for my own distraction. “I need to piss.”

“After seeing your sister’s eye, you concluded she was dead?” Halo says, ignoring me.

“Do you

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