Corben Duke's Blog: 'The Worst Man on Mars' Opening Book Chapters
September 20, 2016
Chapter 6 of ‘The Worst Man on Mars’ by Roman & Duke
Fagin It
The large electronic eye, set high in the wall at the front of the site office watched the assorted robots crowding around the trestle table, their excited electronic chatter saturating the airwaves.
The Eye observed them bumping into one another in the cramped confines of the cabin. It watched little Timi get clattered to the ground and trampled on. Another robot rushed to Timi’s assistance, but merely ended up on top of him. And a third tripped over them both, uttering an electronic shriek as it did so.
The super-brain behind the Eye, processed what it saw and was overwhelmed by a sweeping sense of despair. I’m better than this, thought HarVard.
But, with important matters at hand, HarVard ramped up his patience circuits and calmed his teeming thought processes as the last of the robots entered the cabin. It was the gasket-fitter bot, Ero, hastily mended and newly-rebooted, but with a nasty dent in his spherical, chrome-plated head. Optics downcast and shoulders slouched, he dragged his hoof-like feet as he followed repair-bot Zilli into the office, leaving the door wide open behind him. The plastic eyelids of the Eye narrowed in annoyance, but HarVard’s primary decision-making module kicked in and concluded: What’s the point? In any case, at that moment, a powerful gust of Martian wind caused the door to slam shut with a loud bang and spurred HarVard into addressing the meeting.
“Right, let’s get started, shall we?” he broadcast in binary, his signal drowned out by the general hubbub. Even repeating the message at higher power had little effect.
“QUIET!” he blasted at multiple frequencies and at maximum energy.
A deathly radio-hush filled the room and the assortment of eclectic cyber-heads swivelled to face the front of the site office.
The supercomputer’s Eye scanned the motley mechanoids before it. It took in the splashes of paint on the shiny carapaces, the scuffs and scratches on the limbs, the plaster-smears on the control panels and the vacant looks directed towards it. They’re a very limited bunch, he told himself, but they’re all I have.
*
HarVard had a special audio-visual interface for communicating with lesser beings such as robots. Or humans. A hologram generator allowed him to project an animated, life-sized, 3D avatar from his vast library of pre-computed templates of humans, animals and other beings. The robots loved his creations and could sense one was about to be switched on in front of them. A buzz of excitement went round the cabin.
“Who’s it to be today?” wondered Dom.
“Ooh, Kryten from Red Dwarf, I hope,” transmitted Timi.
“My fave is Marvin the paranoid android,” tweeted Eve.
“The Star Wars robots!”
“No, you’re all wrong! Best by far is B9 from Lost in Space, with his concertina arms and panicky behaviour. ‘Danger, Will Robinson. Danger’,” Dom mimicked.
HarVard kept the crowd waiting in eager anticipation before displaying his latest 3D creation at the front of the site office. It was a truly realistic representation of an old man, shrivelled and villainous-looking, with long, matted red hair. He was wearing a greasy flannel gown and holding a toasting fork. None other than Dickens’s Fagin.
“It’s a human!” came the gleeful chorus of electronic signals throughout the cabin. “Long live the humans!”
The Fagin hologram gave a slight smile.
“We are very glad to see you, all-of-ya, very,” it said with a bow.
The robots stared, their silence speaking volumes. Fagin scanned the robot faces expectantly. “Get it, my dears?” he asked, smiling his mischievous smile and waggling his eyebrows.
Still the robots stared.
“Who is it?” enquired Dom. “Is it Carol Vorderman? I like him.”
Other robots gave the robotic equivalent of shrugs, or retweeted the question. “Are you a robot in disguise?” asked Timi in his high-pitched signal.
“It’s a pun,” explained the Fagin hologram. “All-of-ya – Oliver. We are very glad to see you, all-of-ya, very.”
The robot stares became, if anything, blanker.
“Fagin’s opening line. In the book.”
There was a shaking of heads and a furrowing of rubber brows. Some shoulders shrugged, and there was much baffled twittering and tweeting.
Wrong crowd, thought HarVard with a deep sigh.
Reluctantly he recomputed his holo-image. Fagin morphed into a Hollywood robot, gold from head to toe and with an annoying English accent. A casual glance might have mistaken this robot for 3-CPO from Star Wars, but HarVard’s processors had a special ‘lawyer’ chip installed, called COPOUT (Copyright Offence Prevention by Obfuscation of Unlawful Transgression); it ensured no copyrights were infringed by his holographic creations. Thus, this robot was not at all like 3-CPO, but as fundamentally different from the Star Wars superstar as chalk is from limestone. His name was three-piece-yo, or 3-PCO.
The room erupted in robotic cheering and buzzed with excited radio waves.
Plebs, thought HarVard.
*
“This is madness,” said 3-PCO with a silly body-wobble, “Complete madness.”
As HarVard waited for the cheering to subside he performed a quick head count and noted some significant absentees.
“Oh, my!” he resumed in the annoying English voice. “We seem to be missing Cassie. And the Polish builder bots!”
Tude stepped forward. He flicked his appendages to readjust his high-viz jacket and prevent it slipping from his robust shoulders.
“Cassie’s unable to be with us,” he transmitted.
“Oh? Why?”
“On account of being marooned in a ditch. Into which she fell. On the way here.”
3-PCO’s body-wobble became extreme. “And not one of you thought to rescue her?” He looked askance at the robots. A ripple of applause commenced, but instantly ceased as the bots looked around guiltily at one another.
“Oh, my!” said 3-PCO with a reproachful tilt of the head. “This is not good, not good at all. We are a family, remember? Could we have a volunteer to pull her out after the meeting?”
Silence.
“Anyone?”
Dom opened a pneumatic bucket-arm and thrust it into the air to offer his services. Dom was known to be a bit overenthusiastic at times, and now was such a time. His arm-thrust was a little too hard and a little too high, puncturing the flimsy ceiling above his head. Dom started to retract it. The ceiling panels bowed and buckled alarmingly.
“Leave it!” ordered 3-PCO. “Or you’ll bring the whole ceiling down.”
“Roger,” transmitted Dom. His head drooped as he stood, looking sheepish, with his arm stuck, half inside the portakabin and half poking through the roof and catching the sands of Mars in his bucket-hand.
“And the Polish worker bots?”
“The robotniki send their apologies. They will not be attending today,” responded Tude, jutting out his square jaw several times.
“On account of?”
“They’re working at the Other Place. As usual.”
“Oh my, oh my,” said the 3-PCO hologram waggling his head. “I do so wish they were here. We need them, we really do. A volunteer to go fetch them, please?”
Once again Dom was the first to volunteer. He thrust his other pneumatic bucket-arm into the air and managed to punch a second hole in the ceiling, next to the first. A little smoke escaped from his elbow joint as he struggled to dislodge it.
“Dom,” suggested 3-PCO’s calm, posh, English voice. “Do you think you could find an alternative way of volunteering for tasks?”
“Roger,” mumbled Dom, his head drooping even more than before.
“I’ll go,” offered Zilli.
“Why, thank you, Zilli.” The golden robot’s holographic arm jerked upwards to give the repair-bot a thumbs-up sign.
*
“Right, let’s get to business, shall we?” HarVard turned and pointed at a calendar on the wall, just visible between detailed drawings of the BioDome. The calendar was open on March 2029, its picture depicting the Robot of the Month.
“Anyone know what this is?”
Deathly hush.
“Anyone? No? Well, it’s called a calendar. It marks the passage of time in units of days. Each number corresponds to a different day.” 3-PCO gazed at the sea of baffled face-plates. “I know, it’s a difficult concept for small brains to grasp. Let’s see if my learned friend can help.” With that, the avatar morphed into an old man with tousled white hair and a bushy white moustache, wearing a grey flannel suit and tie.
The sight of a human led to further tweets of “Long live the humans!” and “I’m loving it.”
“Is it Fagin again?” asked Eve from the back of the cabin. “All humans look the same to me!”
HarVard’s ‘patience and understanding’ circuits redoubled their output, coming dangerously close to overloading. “My name is Albert Einstein. I vill explain to you a little about Time.”
“Who?” the robots twittered. “What?”
“Now, Tude,” started the famous physicist. “As site foreman, you’re responsible for keeping to deadlines. Can you explain to ze other workers what this calendar is showing?”
With a firm nod, Tude shuffled forward. He extended his right limb towards the calendar, gave it a half-turn and then retracted it. “Now, that,” he started, “is Mr MarchBot. A heroic demolition machine who can be seen here removing a bird’s nest full of new-born chicks from a derelict building. He will take them to safety, thus saving their lives, before returning to proudly swing his wrecking-ball and knock the building to the ground. It is a fine picture.”
Albert Einstein stared at him. “Ya,” he said. “But can vee, perhaps, turn our attention to the numbers below ze picture? See? Zese numbers here?”
“Ah, yes,” said Tude with a nod, seemingly confident he could deal with any question the old man might throw at him.
“One of the numbers is circled.”
“Correct!”
“It has the vords ‘COMPLETION DATE’ written in large, red letters next to it. Kindly tell us vich number it is.”
“Twenty-three!”
“Excellent. That vould make the completion date the 23rd March, 2029, wouldn’t it. And what is today’s date?”
Tude gave the German physicist a blank stare.
“Any ideas? I throw it open to the floor.”
Silence.
“I preferred 3-PCO,” transmitted Ero at a very low, despondent frequency.
Albert Einstein sighed, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hand before clearing his throat. “Ze 23rd of March, 2029 happens to be today.”
There was a hushed silence as the robots tried to assimilate the information. A few heads turned to exchange questioning glances.
“That’s good. Isn’t it?” offered Dura (Endurance), the master plasterer and Tude’s right hand robot. “If today is completion day, it means we’re finally done with building. At last we can relax!”
“Hurrah!” called out Timi.
One by one, the robots’ mouths cracked open into wide grins and they started to cheer, their radio waves reverberating round the cabin. Some even did a little robotic jig.
Albert Einstein had buried his face in his hands and was shaking his head in dismay. “Heaven help me!” he wailed. “What have I done to deserve this?”
- Jerry-built by useless robots, the first base on Mars awaits its British colonists. It’s nearly ready, too. Just lacking food, water and doors …
The large electronic eye, set high in the wall at the front of the site office watched the assorted robots crowding around the trestle table, their excited electronic chatter saturating the airwaves.
The Eye observed them bumping into one another in the cramped confines of the cabin. It watched little Timi get clattered to the ground and trampled on. Another robot rushed to Timi’s assistance, but merely ended up on top of him. And a third tripped over them both, uttering an electronic shriek as it did so.
The super-brain behind the Eye, processed what it saw and was overwhelmed by a sweeping sense of despair. I’m better than this, thought HarVard.
But, with important matters at hand, HarVard ramped up his patience circuits and calmed his teeming thought processes as the last of the robots entered the cabin. It was the gasket-fitter bot, Ero, hastily mended and newly-rebooted, but with a nasty dent in his spherical, chrome-plated head. Optics downcast and shoulders slouched, he dragged his hoof-like feet as he followed repair-bot Zilli into the office, leaving the door wide open behind him. The plastic eyelids of the Eye narrowed in annoyance, but HarVard’s primary decision-making module kicked in and concluded: What’s the point? In any case, at that moment, a powerful gust of Martian wind caused the door to slam shut with a loud bang and spurred HarVard into addressing the meeting.
“Right, let’s get started, shall we?” he broadcast in binary, his signal drowned out by the general hubbub. Even repeating the message at higher power had little effect.
“QUIET!” he blasted at multiple frequencies and at maximum energy.
A deathly radio-hush filled the room and the assortment of eclectic cyber-heads swivelled to face the front of the site office.
The supercomputer’s Eye scanned the motley mechanoids before it. It took in the splashes of paint on the shiny carapaces, the scuffs and scratches on the limbs, the plaster-smears on the control panels and the vacant looks directed towards it. They’re a very limited bunch, he told himself, but they’re all I have.
*
HarVard had a special audio-visual interface for communicating with lesser beings such as robots. Or humans. A hologram generator allowed him to project an animated, life-sized, 3D avatar from his vast library of pre-computed templates of humans, animals and other beings. The robots loved his creations and could sense one was about to be switched on in front of them. A buzz of excitement went round the cabin.
“Who’s it to be today?” wondered Dom.
“Ooh, Kryten from Red Dwarf, I hope,” transmitted Timi.
“My fave is Marvin the paranoid android,” tweeted Eve.
“The Star Wars robots!”
“No, you’re all wrong! Best by far is B9 from Lost in Space, with his concertina arms and panicky behaviour. ‘Danger, Will Robinson. Danger’,” Dom mimicked.
HarVard kept the crowd waiting in eager anticipation before displaying his latest 3D creation at the front of the site office. It was a truly realistic representation of an old man, shrivelled and villainous-looking, with long, matted red hair. He was wearing a greasy flannel gown and holding a toasting fork. None other than Dickens’s Fagin.
“It’s a human!” came the gleeful chorus of electronic signals throughout the cabin. “Long live the humans!”
The Fagin hologram gave a slight smile.
“We are very glad to see you, all-of-ya, very,” it said with a bow.
The robots stared, their silence speaking volumes. Fagin scanned the robot faces expectantly. “Get it, my dears?” he asked, smiling his mischievous smile and waggling his eyebrows.
Still the robots stared.
“Who is it?” enquired Dom. “Is it Carol Vorderman? I like him.”
Other robots gave the robotic equivalent of shrugs, or retweeted the question. “Are you a robot in disguise?” asked Timi in his high-pitched signal.
“It’s a pun,” explained the Fagin hologram. “All-of-ya – Oliver. We are very glad to see you, all-of-ya, very.”
The robot stares became, if anything, blanker.
“Fagin’s opening line. In the book.”
There was a shaking of heads and a furrowing of rubber brows. Some shoulders shrugged, and there was much baffled twittering and tweeting.
Wrong crowd, thought HarVard with a deep sigh.
Reluctantly he recomputed his holo-image. Fagin morphed into a Hollywood robot, gold from head to toe and with an annoying English accent. A casual glance might have mistaken this robot for 3-CPO from Star Wars, but HarVard’s processors had a special ‘lawyer’ chip installed, called COPOUT (Copyright Offence Prevention by Obfuscation of Unlawful Transgression); it ensured no copyrights were infringed by his holographic creations. Thus, this robot was not at all like 3-CPO, but as fundamentally different from the Star Wars superstar as chalk is from limestone. His name was three-piece-yo, or 3-PCO.
The room erupted in robotic cheering and buzzed with excited radio waves.
Plebs, thought HarVard.
*
“This is madness,” said 3-PCO with a silly body-wobble, “Complete madness.”
As HarVard waited for the cheering to subside he performed a quick head count and noted some significant absentees.
“Oh, my!” he resumed in the annoying English voice. “We seem to be missing Cassie. And the Polish builder bots!”
Tude stepped forward. He flicked his appendages to readjust his high-viz jacket and prevent it slipping from his robust shoulders.
“Cassie’s unable to be with us,” he transmitted.
“Oh? Why?”
“On account of being marooned in a ditch. Into which she fell. On the way here.”
3-PCO’s body-wobble became extreme. “And not one of you thought to rescue her?” He looked askance at the robots. A ripple of applause commenced, but instantly ceased as the bots looked around guiltily at one another.
“Oh, my!” said 3-PCO with a reproachful tilt of the head. “This is not good, not good at all. We are a family, remember? Could we have a volunteer to pull her out after the meeting?”
Silence.
“Anyone?”
Dom opened a pneumatic bucket-arm and thrust it into the air to offer his services. Dom was known to be a bit overenthusiastic at times, and now was such a time. His arm-thrust was a little too hard and a little too high, puncturing the flimsy ceiling above his head. Dom started to retract it. The ceiling panels bowed and buckled alarmingly.
“Leave it!” ordered 3-PCO. “Or you’ll bring the whole ceiling down.”
“Roger,” transmitted Dom. His head drooped as he stood, looking sheepish, with his arm stuck, half inside the portakabin and half poking through the roof and catching the sands of Mars in his bucket-hand.
“And the Polish worker bots?”
“The robotniki send their apologies. They will not be attending today,” responded Tude, jutting out his square jaw several times.
“On account of?”
“They’re working at the Other Place. As usual.”
“Oh my, oh my,” said the 3-PCO hologram waggling his head. “I do so wish they were here. We need them, we really do. A volunteer to go fetch them, please?”
Once again Dom was the first to volunteer. He thrust his other pneumatic bucket-arm into the air and managed to punch a second hole in the ceiling, next to the first. A little smoke escaped from his elbow joint as he struggled to dislodge it.
“Dom,” suggested 3-PCO’s calm, posh, English voice. “Do you think you could find an alternative way of volunteering for tasks?”
“Roger,” mumbled Dom, his head drooping even more than before.
“I’ll go,” offered Zilli.
“Why, thank you, Zilli.” The golden robot’s holographic arm jerked upwards to give the repair-bot a thumbs-up sign.
*
“Right, let’s get to business, shall we?” HarVard turned and pointed at a calendar on the wall, just visible between detailed drawings of the BioDome. The calendar was open on March 2029, its picture depicting the Robot of the Month.
“Anyone know what this is?”
Deathly hush.
“Anyone? No? Well, it’s called a calendar. It marks the passage of time in units of days. Each number corresponds to a different day.” 3-PCO gazed at the sea of baffled face-plates. “I know, it’s a difficult concept for small brains to grasp. Let’s see if my learned friend can help.” With that, the avatar morphed into an old man with tousled white hair and a bushy white moustache, wearing a grey flannel suit and tie.
The sight of a human led to further tweets of “Long live the humans!” and “I’m loving it.”
“Is it Fagin again?” asked Eve from the back of the cabin. “All humans look the same to me!”
HarVard’s ‘patience and understanding’ circuits redoubled their output, coming dangerously close to overloading. “My name is Albert Einstein. I vill explain to you a little about Time.”
“Who?” the robots twittered. “What?”
“Now, Tude,” started the famous physicist. “As site foreman, you’re responsible for keeping to deadlines. Can you explain to ze other workers what this calendar is showing?”
With a firm nod, Tude shuffled forward. He extended his right limb towards the calendar, gave it a half-turn and then retracted it. “Now, that,” he started, “is Mr MarchBot. A heroic demolition machine who can be seen here removing a bird’s nest full of new-born chicks from a derelict building. He will take them to safety, thus saving their lives, before returning to proudly swing his wrecking-ball and knock the building to the ground. It is a fine picture.”
Albert Einstein stared at him. “Ya,” he said. “But can vee, perhaps, turn our attention to the numbers below ze picture? See? Zese numbers here?”
“Ah, yes,” said Tude with a nod, seemingly confident he could deal with any question the old man might throw at him.
“One of the numbers is circled.”
“Correct!”
“It has the vords ‘COMPLETION DATE’ written in large, red letters next to it. Kindly tell us vich number it is.”
“Twenty-three!”
“Excellent. That vould make the completion date the 23rd March, 2029, wouldn’t it. And what is today’s date?”
Tude gave the German physicist a blank stare.
“Any ideas? I throw it open to the floor.”
Silence.
“I preferred 3-PCO,” transmitted Ero at a very low, despondent frequency.
Albert Einstein sighed, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hand before clearing his throat. “Ze 23rd of March, 2029 happens to be today.”
There was a hushed silence as the robots tried to assimilate the information. A few heads turned to exchange questioning glances.
“That’s good. Isn’t it?” offered Dura (Endurance), the master plasterer and Tude’s right hand robot. “If today is completion day, it means we’re finally done with building. At last we can relax!”
“Hurrah!” called out Timi.
One by one, the robots’ mouths cracked open into wide grins and they started to cheer, their radio waves reverberating round the cabin. Some even did a little robotic jig.
Albert Einstein had buried his face in his hands and was shaking his head in dismay. “Heaven help me!” he wailed. “What have I done to deserve this?”
- Jerry-built by useless robots, the first base on Mars awaits its British colonists. It’s nearly ready, too. Just lacking food, water and doors …
September 19, 2016
Chapter 5 of ‘The Worst Man on Mars’ by Roman & Duke
The Hanging Gaskets of BioDome
23rd March 2029, BioDome, Botany Base, Mars
High above the floor of the BioDome, a solitary gasket-fitting robot named Ero (short for Heroism) balanced on a rickety scaffold tower. Servo motors whirred and joints jerked as he reached a claw-hand down into a cardboard box marked ‘Rubber Pressure Seals’. From it he plucked a long, thin, cellophane packet and set about removing the wrapping. After pulling and tugging with clumpy mechanical digits, Ero finally gripped the end of the package between his jagged metal teeth and ripped it open, releasing a snake-like length of grooved rubber. He let the discarded wrapper flutter over the edge of the tower without so much as a glance at its bold warning label: ‘IMPORTANT. Gaskets must be fitted correctly. Failure to do so could result in air leakage causing respiratory failure, organ malfunction, and permanent human shutdown.’
Ero grabbed the barrier rail to steady himself while he raised the gasket, awkwardly grasped between metal fingers, high above his head. Telescopic joints extended at a snail’s pace towards the domed roof. After a long, difficult stretch, Ero pushed one end of the seal into the tiny gap between frame and polycarbonate panel. It was a delicate operation for which his stubby digits were especially unsuited. As he tried to prod the rest of the gasket home, the first end popped out and dangled down. With an electronic grunt he pushed it back into place, but this only made the middle part sag. And when he tried to prod the middle back, the two ends flopped out, making it momentarily resemble a Mexican bandit’s moustache. And then it dropped out altogether. Moving as fast as his servo-joints allowed, Ero tried to catch it, but his fumbling fingers grabbed and missed and, for the thirty-fourth time that morning, the rubbery thing fell to the BioDome floor, fifty metres below.
Ero watched it bounce, give a little death wiggle and then lie still, on top of thirty-three of its fellow gaskets.
Sh*t ... f*ck ... b*ll*cks - Sh*t ... f*ck ... b*ll*cks. Ero's emotionally evolving AI brain was overheating.
His neck joint graunched as he turned his gaze to the BioDome roof and surveyed the results of his day’s work. Just five gaskets fitted, each either sagging inadequately or completely hanging free. A pang of negativity filled him. Turning his gaze downwards, he focused on some of the other worker robots far below him. He watched them enviously as they worked at their appointed tasks; hammering, drilling, sawing. To Ero’s mind they seemed to be making good progress – successful and content in their work, each and every one. He was particularly drawn to a constructorbot bashing away at some ducting. As Ero watched, his own cyber-hand made small tapping motions, mirroring the other bot’s more vigorous actions.
Through a doorway to the right came the site foreman bot, Tude (short for Fortitude). Rocking along on his caterpillar tracks, Tude came to a halt at the base of Ero’s tower and craned his neck upwards.
"01010111011000010111001101110011011101010111000000111111" he transmitted in standard robot communications protocol. Which roughly translated as: "Report progress."
"Oh, outstanding," replied Ero in binary, although perhaps ‘out-hanging’ would have been a more accurate reply. This was the first time since his manufacture that Ero had told a lie and he was not feeling good about it. Sheepishly, he peered down at his manager far below.
"Excellent!" signalled Tude, triumphantly punching the air with a powerful mechanical fist. "For the good of the humans!"
Half-heartedly Ero copied the punch and followed it with the rote response of, "Loving it."
Tude nodded his metallo-plastic head and trundled away. Ero watched him go before throwing a wistful glance at the hammering robot, still happily clobbering away at his duct. As he returned to his own, unhappy task, a glimmer of an idea formed in his circuits. Clutching the head of a freshly unwrapped gasket in one hand, the robot activated the screwdriver attachment in the other. With a whirr, the screwdriver blade emerged. He placed the seal against the gap and poked it in with the blade. One end went in. His hopes rose. This might actually work. He fed more and more of the gasket into the gap, pushing it firmly home with the blade until he had just a few millimetres to go. But at that very moment, the whole building seemed to explode with the jarring blare of alarm bells.
Ero jerked in surprise, skewering the rubber seal with the screwdriver and knocking it free of the gap. Once again Ero found himself watching a gasket plummeting to the ground. He continued staring at it for a long time after it had finished its death dance. Yet again he had failed. The robot slumped and cradled his spherical metal head. Despair overwhelmed him. Unable to shoulder the burden of failure any longer, Ero climbed over the scaffold barrier rail, gazed down at the inviting concrete floor, and jumped.
"For the good of the humans," was his final transmission.
"Loving it," came the automatic reply from the bots in the BioDome, pausing their work to see if the alarms would stop or continue. None were aware of who had made the initial call, nor his current circumstances.
In any case, it was too late for Ero to register their response.
*
The sound of the crash, audible even above the din of the alarms, made foreman bot Tude turn back to see what had happened. At the bottom of the tower lay the crumbled carcass of Ero, resembling a modern sculpture of a break-dancing robot, head partially buried in the still-soft concrete and legs splayed in the air.
"Robot down," Tude radioed.
In a far corner of Botany Base, Zilli (short for Resilience), bleeped into life, flicked open her Swiss Army hands and set off to carry out her assignment.
*
As the alarm bells continued to ring, the knocking of hammers, sawing of wood and whine of power drills ceased. One by one, the builder robots turned and checked their nearest wall-screen. The message, in flashing red lights, read, ‘Site meeting. Site-office portakabin in 10 minutes. HarVard.’
Each robot stopped its task and set off towards the base’s front entrance. Those with jointed legs had to pick their way through rubble as they went, those on caterpillar tracks were able to trundle over it, while the most advanced models hovered clear of the debris. Inevitably, in all the haste, there were accidents. A couple of robots collided at a corridor junction, resulting in some denting of metal casings, scratching of paintwork and loosening of wires. Another put an arm through a freshly plastered partition.
Things were worse at the main entranceway. With all the bots trying to pile through the small doorway, it wasn’t long before a mass of metal bodies, swivelling heads and twisted limbs had formed a solid plug wedged firmly between the door jambs. And, as the wall-screens counted down the minutes to the site meeting, frantic bots began crawling over the top of their comrades, attempting to squeeze through the gap above their heads and becoming stuck at the top of the pile in the process.
A single camera, mounted high in the dome’s space-frame roof trusses, swung in the direction of the mêlée and seemed to droop despondently. Then a set of commands were pinged to Dom (Wisdom), a multi-purpose robot, who opened a bulldozer arm and swung into action. It took all his strength to shove the mechanical mass away from the opening and into a corner of the entrance hall. He allowed the robots to escape, one by one, until all had passed safely out of the base.
*
Outside, the freed robots bowed their hard-hatted heads into the gusting wind. The small, stocky ones, with rugged undercarriages, made the best progress through the rocky, sandy soil of Mars, whereas the tall, thin, androids struggled a little. A squat floor-polishing bot resembling an upturned pram, called Cassie (Perspicacity), hit a stone that jammed her wheels and caused her to run off the path into a ditch. There she lay, struggling to get out, her wheels spinning in the fine dust of the Martian surface. The other robots ploughed on, ignoring her feeble beeps for assistance.
Up the narrow ramp leading to the ramshackle wooden portakabin they went, digitally chitter-chattering to each other and speculating about the possible reason for this unscheduled meeting. Their progress towards the portakabin door was observed by wall-mounted CCTV cameras. The prospect of a second pile-up occurring at this entrance seemed inevitable, so emergency measures were required. With lightning speed, HarVard transmitted and uploaded a ‘politeness app’ to each of the bots’ positronic brains.
The effect was immediate. The first to reach the site office entrance was a small flue-sweeping bot called Timi (Optimism) who appeared to be built from metal flower pots. He stopped in front of the door, knocked on it and waited for a response. The second robot to arrive, Eve (Achievement), halted right behind him. The next arrival jammed on its brakes and stopped behind her. In no time there was a long, orderly queue from the site office door, down the ramp and stretching into the Martian landscape.
“Come in!” called a voice from within the Portakabin. “Just come straight in!”
But, with the new app installed, Timi turned to Eve and, with a polite bow, transmitted, "After you."
"No, no, Timi, I insist. After you,"
"Ladybots first."
"But you were here before me."
The lens of the external camera zoomed in and out in disbelief, and the voice from inside blared out, “Abort the app and get in the site office, now!”
With the new order overriding their politeness modules, the bots obeyed. Timi shoved Eve out of the way and marched into the site office. Behind, an unseemly scramble ensued as robots fought to pile in.
The site office was empty apart from a rickety trestle table in the centre of the room. With much pushing and barging the robots shuffled around to fill the limited space available. Most removed their safety helmets and their luminous-yellow, high-viz jackets as they entered, hanging them on the hooks provided.
As they jostled their way in, their cyber minds wondered why HarVard had summoned them like this? What could be so important that he needed to address them personally? Surely there was nothing wrong?
- Jerry-built by useless robots, the first base on Mars awaits its British colonists. It’s nearly ready, too. Just lacking food, water and doors …
23rd March 2029, BioDome, Botany Base, Mars
High above the floor of the BioDome, a solitary gasket-fitting robot named Ero (short for Heroism) balanced on a rickety scaffold tower. Servo motors whirred and joints jerked as he reached a claw-hand down into a cardboard box marked ‘Rubber Pressure Seals’. From it he plucked a long, thin, cellophane packet and set about removing the wrapping. After pulling and tugging with clumpy mechanical digits, Ero finally gripped the end of the package between his jagged metal teeth and ripped it open, releasing a snake-like length of grooved rubber. He let the discarded wrapper flutter over the edge of the tower without so much as a glance at its bold warning label: ‘IMPORTANT. Gaskets must be fitted correctly. Failure to do so could result in air leakage causing respiratory failure, organ malfunction, and permanent human shutdown.’
Ero grabbed the barrier rail to steady himself while he raised the gasket, awkwardly grasped between metal fingers, high above his head. Telescopic joints extended at a snail’s pace towards the domed roof. After a long, difficult stretch, Ero pushed one end of the seal into the tiny gap between frame and polycarbonate panel. It was a delicate operation for which his stubby digits were especially unsuited. As he tried to prod the rest of the gasket home, the first end popped out and dangled down. With an electronic grunt he pushed it back into place, but this only made the middle part sag. And when he tried to prod the middle back, the two ends flopped out, making it momentarily resemble a Mexican bandit’s moustache. And then it dropped out altogether. Moving as fast as his servo-joints allowed, Ero tried to catch it, but his fumbling fingers grabbed and missed and, for the thirty-fourth time that morning, the rubbery thing fell to the BioDome floor, fifty metres below.
Ero watched it bounce, give a little death wiggle and then lie still, on top of thirty-three of its fellow gaskets.
Sh*t ... f*ck ... b*ll*cks - Sh*t ... f*ck ... b*ll*cks. Ero's emotionally evolving AI brain was overheating.
His neck joint graunched as he turned his gaze to the BioDome roof and surveyed the results of his day’s work. Just five gaskets fitted, each either sagging inadequately or completely hanging free. A pang of negativity filled him. Turning his gaze downwards, he focused on some of the other worker robots far below him. He watched them enviously as they worked at their appointed tasks; hammering, drilling, sawing. To Ero’s mind they seemed to be making good progress – successful and content in their work, each and every one. He was particularly drawn to a constructorbot bashing away at some ducting. As Ero watched, his own cyber-hand made small tapping motions, mirroring the other bot’s more vigorous actions.
Through a doorway to the right came the site foreman bot, Tude (short for Fortitude). Rocking along on his caterpillar tracks, Tude came to a halt at the base of Ero’s tower and craned his neck upwards.
"01010111011000010111001101110011011101010111000000111111" he transmitted in standard robot communications protocol. Which roughly translated as: "Report progress."
"Oh, outstanding," replied Ero in binary, although perhaps ‘out-hanging’ would have been a more accurate reply. This was the first time since his manufacture that Ero had told a lie and he was not feeling good about it. Sheepishly, he peered down at his manager far below.
"Excellent!" signalled Tude, triumphantly punching the air with a powerful mechanical fist. "For the good of the humans!"
Half-heartedly Ero copied the punch and followed it with the rote response of, "Loving it."
Tude nodded his metallo-plastic head and trundled away. Ero watched him go before throwing a wistful glance at the hammering robot, still happily clobbering away at his duct. As he returned to his own, unhappy task, a glimmer of an idea formed in his circuits. Clutching the head of a freshly unwrapped gasket in one hand, the robot activated the screwdriver attachment in the other. With a whirr, the screwdriver blade emerged. He placed the seal against the gap and poked it in with the blade. One end went in. His hopes rose. This might actually work. He fed more and more of the gasket into the gap, pushing it firmly home with the blade until he had just a few millimetres to go. But at that very moment, the whole building seemed to explode with the jarring blare of alarm bells.
Ero jerked in surprise, skewering the rubber seal with the screwdriver and knocking it free of the gap. Once again Ero found himself watching a gasket plummeting to the ground. He continued staring at it for a long time after it had finished its death dance. Yet again he had failed. The robot slumped and cradled his spherical metal head. Despair overwhelmed him. Unable to shoulder the burden of failure any longer, Ero climbed over the scaffold barrier rail, gazed down at the inviting concrete floor, and jumped.
"For the good of the humans," was his final transmission.
"Loving it," came the automatic reply from the bots in the BioDome, pausing their work to see if the alarms would stop or continue. None were aware of who had made the initial call, nor his current circumstances.
In any case, it was too late for Ero to register their response.
*
The sound of the crash, audible even above the din of the alarms, made foreman bot Tude turn back to see what had happened. At the bottom of the tower lay the crumbled carcass of Ero, resembling a modern sculpture of a break-dancing robot, head partially buried in the still-soft concrete and legs splayed in the air.
"Robot down," Tude radioed.
In a far corner of Botany Base, Zilli (short for Resilience), bleeped into life, flicked open her Swiss Army hands and set off to carry out her assignment.
*
As the alarm bells continued to ring, the knocking of hammers, sawing of wood and whine of power drills ceased. One by one, the builder robots turned and checked their nearest wall-screen. The message, in flashing red lights, read, ‘Site meeting. Site-office portakabin in 10 minutes. HarVard.’
Each robot stopped its task and set off towards the base’s front entrance. Those with jointed legs had to pick their way through rubble as they went, those on caterpillar tracks were able to trundle over it, while the most advanced models hovered clear of the debris. Inevitably, in all the haste, there were accidents. A couple of robots collided at a corridor junction, resulting in some denting of metal casings, scratching of paintwork and loosening of wires. Another put an arm through a freshly plastered partition.
Things were worse at the main entranceway. With all the bots trying to pile through the small doorway, it wasn’t long before a mass of metal bodies, swivelling heads and twisted limbs had formed a solid plug wedged firmly between the door jambs. And, as the wall-screens counted down the minutes to the site meeting, frantic bots began crawling over the top of their comrades, attempting to squeeze through the gap above their heads and becoming stuck at the top of the pile in the process.
A single camera, mounted high in the dome’s space-frame roof trusses, swung in the direction of the mêlée and seemed to droop despondently. Then a set of commands were pinged to Dom (Wisdom), a multi-purpose robot, who opened a bulldozer arm and swung into action. It took all his strength to shove the mechanical mass away from the opening and into a corner of the entrance hall. He allowed the robots to escape, one by one, until all had passed safely out of the base.
*
Outside, the freed robots bowed their hard-hatted heads into the gusting wind. The small, stocky ones, with rugged undercarriages, made the best progress through the rocky, sandy soil of Mars, whereas the tall, thin, androids struggled a little. A squat floor-polishing bot resembling an upturned pram, called Cassie (Perspicacity), hit a stone that jammed her wheels and caused her to run off the path into a ditch. There she lay, struggling to get out, her wheels spinning in the fine dust of the Martian surface. The other robots ploughed on, ignoring her feeble beeps for assistance.
Up the narrow ramp leading to the ramshackle wooden portakabin they went, digitally chitter-chattering to each other and speculating about the possible reason for this unscheduled meeting. Their progress towards the portakabin door was observed by wall-mounted CCTV cameras. The prospect of a second pile-up occurring at this entrance seemed inevitable, so emergency measures were required. With lightning speed, HarVard transmitted and uploaded a ‘politeness app’ to each of the bots’ positronic brains.
The effect was immediate. The first to reach the site office entrance was a small flue-sweeping bot called Timi (Optimism) who appeared to be built from metal flower pots. He stopped in front of the door, knocked on it and waited for a response. The second robot to arrive, Eve (Achievement), halted right behind him. The next arrival jammed on its brakes and stopped behind her. In no time there was a long, orderly queue from the site office door, down the ramp and stretching into the Martian landscape.
“Come in!” called a voice from within the Portakabin. “Just come straight in!”
But, with the new app installed, Timi turned to Eve and, with a polite bow, transmitted, "After you."
"No, no, Timi, I insist. After you,"
"Ladybots first."
"But you were here before me."
The lens of the external camera zoomed in and out in disbelief, and the voice from inside blared out, “Abort the app and get in the site office, now!”
With the new order overriding their politeness modules, the bots obeyed. Timi shoved Eve out of the way and marched into the site office. Behind, an unseemly scramble ensued as robots fought to pile in.
The site office was empty apart from a rickety trestle table in the centre of the room. With much pushing and barging the robots shuffled around to fill the limited space available. Most removed their safety helmets and their luminous-yellow, high-viz jackets as they entered, hanging them on the hooks provided.
As they jostled their way in, their cyber minds wondered why HarVard had summoned them like this? What could be so important that he needed to address them personally? Surely there was nothing wrong?
- Jerry-built by useless robots, the first base on Mars awaits its British colonists. It’s nearly ready, too. Just lacking food, water and doors …
September 18, 2016
Chapter 4 of ‘The Worst Man on Mars’ – SF Comedy by Roman & Duke
Permission Impossible
Lieutenant Willie Warner’s excitement escalated as he adjusted the sensitivity and resolution of the scanners.
“Whoa! These are seriously big buggers, William. Must be 12 feet tall,” he muttered punching the air, a huge grin on his face. “Real aliens. Real proper aliens. Things with ... limbs ... tentacles ... whatever. Bodies. Eyes. Brains.” This would make him famous the world over. Dugdale might be the first to walk on Mars, but Willie would be the first to make contact with extra-terrestrials. He sat trying to picture what they might look like. All sorts of weird images of blobby things with claws and spines and clusters of eyes on stalks assailed him. Some armed with axes, others with laser guns. He tried to backtrack and imagined them picking flowers and singing songs.
Just then, the sound of the door opening signified someone’s arrival. Instantly, Willie hunched over the screen, like a classroom swot shielding his exam paper from prying eyes.
Zak floated into the cockpit. “What you hidin’ there, pardner? Unscreen the detection machine, man.”
“Not hiding anything,” said Willie with an air of innocence, moving more of himself in the way.
“That’s an order, space-bud.”
“Hah! You can’t order me.”
“Senior lieutenant, dude.”
“Since when?”
“I’m older and bolder than you, space-trooper. And whose Pa’s runnin’ this mish to Mars?”
“How could I forget? Zak Johnston, son of Mission Control Director Montgomery Johnston achieves the totally believable score of 110% in the final Space Cadet Academy exam, despite never having been to any of the lectures.”
“Surprised myself there. But here I am, beamin’ amaze-rays wherever I go. Now show, bro.”
“Nope.”
Zak launched himself across the room and tried to peer round his crewmate, first one way, then another. “Remind me, space-geek, what exactamundo does this machine display onscreen?”
“Ha! I’d have thought Mr 110-percent would know that.”
Zak ground his teeth. “Missed that class. Dodgy grass.”
Willie snorted.
Zak clamped himself to his crewmate’s back, hooking his goatee-bearded chin over the other’s shoulder. Willie squirmed at the close contact with an unwashed man; worse still, a man with food particles lodged in his rancid beard. But he was determined to protect his discovery at all costs and grasped the screen even more firmly.
“Did you have any reason for coming to see me, or was it just to give me a hug?”
“Nearly slipped my mind,” said Zak, releasing his grip on Willie. “The Zakster brings news of an urgent job for mankind. From the Big Guy. Uncle Duggers. Seems InspectaBot’s been neglectin’ his inspectin’.”
“What?”
“Stranded not landed.”
“Come again?”
“The robosurveyor ain’t budgin’. The crazy dude’s just trudgin’ outside the ship. Like a trash can waitin’ for bin day. Flinto wants his top guy on the case.”
“Really?”
“No man, not really. The top guy’s on a cake-break. So you gotta sort it.”
“Great,” said Willie. Still covering the scanner with an elbow he turned to the observation screen and switched between external cameras until he found one showing the slowly cart-wheeling robot outside. He let out a sigh of exasperation and tapped the microphone on the comms console. “Calling InspectaBot. Come in, InspectaBot. Do you read me? Over.”
“Identify yourself!” came the brusque, metallic response.
“This is Lieutenant William Hilda Warner of Mayflower III respectfully calling InspectaBot 360. Over.”
Zak sniggered. “So that’s what the ‘H’ stands for! Suits you, dude.”
“It’s a family name, not a girl’s name.”
“No, dude, that’s a girl’s name.”
The metallic voice boomed out of the speakers, “Please enter your 16-digit PIN code followed by the hash key.”
Willie turned to Zak. “What’s the PIN code?”
Zak shrugged.
“I don’t have a PIN code,” Willie said into the microphone.
“Very well, you will need to answer a security question.”
“Go on.”
“What was the name of the first girl you kissed?”
Zak sniggered again.
Willie turned to him. “You can go now. I can take it from here.”
“Sure man. Understood. Private info.”
Willie drummed his fingers, waiting for the other lieutenant to leave. “Bet it was Mandy Minger, Space Cadet School swinger,” said Zak as he edged towards the door.
Zak reached the door but then floated back into the room. “I’m taking this with me,” he said, grabbing the PredictoHarness and floating out of the door with it.
“What was the name of the first girl you kissed?” repeated InspectaBot.
Willie looked around to make sure Zak had gone and whispered into the microphone, “None. I’ve never kissed a girl.”
“Nun?”
“Yes, none.”
“Answer mismatch. Identification failure. A new security PIN code will be issued.”
“When?”
“Two weeks.”
“This is ridiculous. Ask me another security question.”
“What is your mother’s bra size?”
“Easy. 40DD,” responded Willie without hesitation.
“Caller identified. How can I help you today, Lieutenant William Hilda Warner?”
“InspectaBot 360, could you please report your status?”
“Roger. Current status: stalled. Awaiting new instructions.”
“The new instructions are the same as the old ones, InspectaBot. Your mission is to perform a full building inspection of Botany Base to certify it as habitable. Do you understand?”
“Affirmative.”
“Off you go, then.”
“Inspection of base not possible.”
“Why?”
“Not within visual range.”
“No, obviously. You’re still in orbit.”
“Current altitude 57,842 feet.”
“Exactly. So you need to address that issue first. Have a good day.”
“Please advise.”
Willie sighed. “Look, land down on the planet, tootle across to the base and start inspecting. Couldn’t be simpler.”
“Landing permission refused.”
This stumped Willie. “What? That’s Mars down there, not Heathrow Terminal 3. Who refused you?” Even as he asked the question a cold shiver ran down his spine. Was it possible the aliens down there had already made contact with InspectaBot? Had they forbidden him to land? How had they done it? What had they said? With threats, or without?
“HarVard,” answered the robot.
“You mean the base’s supercomputer?”
“Affirmative.”
The tension in Willie’s muscles relaxed. “Phew. Please ignore HarVard. He has no right to refuse you permission. Although the fact that he’s trying to sounds suspicious. What reason did he give?”
“Transmitting message.”
Willie saw HarVard’s message appear on a screen to his right. He leaned over to read it. “My dear InspectaBot 360. What an inordinate pleasure to hear from you. We are greatly looking forward to meeting you in person and having the honour of hosting you when you come to carry out your important mission. We trust you will find everything in order. In the meantime, may I request a teensie, weensie little favour? Would you mind awfully delaying your landing for a bit as the base isn’t quite ready for inspection.”
Willie let out an involuntary laugh. “They’ve only been working on it for the past five years!”
He continued reading. “You see, it’s the builder bots. They’re such perfectionists. They want everything to be just right for the humans. Premature inspection would break their little clockwork hearts. There isn’t much to do, really, just a few last-minute soft furnishings that need arranging, but even so they’d rather you didn’t see it until it is all finished.”
Willie cleared his throat. “Technically, that’s not a refusal to land.”
“There’s a postscript,” said InspectaBot.
Willie scrolled down the screen. “PS I will reopen the landing pad when we’re all ready for you. Perhaps you could pop back in, let’s say, a month?”
Lieutenant Warner shook his head. “Now look here, 360. I am ordering you to ignore HarVard and go down there and carry out your duty. That’s an order, OK?”
“Landing pad unavailable.”
“OK, let’s think this through, shall we? We have a large planet down there. So you can actually land anywhere you like. Just pick your spot. Got that?”
A pause. “Risk assessment: terrain sandy, uneven, rock-strewn, pot-holed. Poses a 37.4% possibility of impact damage.”
“Just Do It ... That Is An Order.”
“Received and understood.”
As Willie glared at the image of InspectaBot on the screen he noticed a puff of gas emit from the robot’s behind and its metallic body start to drift towards the planet.
“Well, that was immensely rewarding,” Willie said to himself. But then he looked back at the peculiar message from HarVard. Why was the supercomputer stalling and seemingly denying InspectaBot the chance to land? Did he, perhaps, have something to hide? Was it anything to do with the aliens?
Chapter 5 posted
- Jerry-built by useless robots, the first base on Mars awaits its British colonists. It’s nearly ready, too. Just lacking food, water and doors …
Lieutenant Willie Warner’s excitement escalated as he adjusted the sensitivity and resolution of the scanners.
“Whoa! These are seriously big buggers, William. Must be 12 feet tall,” he muttered punching the air, a huge grin on his face. “Real aliens. Real proper aliens. Things with ... limbs ... tentacles ... whatever. Bodies. Eyes. Brains.” This would make him famous the world over. Dugdale might be the first to walk on Mars, but Willie would be the first to make contact with extra-terrestrials. He sat trying to picture what they might look like. All sorts of weird images of blobby things with claws and spines and clusters of eyes on stalks assailed him. Some armed with axes, others with laser guns. He tried to backtrack and imagined them picking flowers and singing songs.
Just then, the sound of the door opening signified someone’s arrival. Instantly, Willie hunched over the screen, like a classroom swot shielding his exam paper from prying eyes.
Zak floated into the cockpit. “What you hidin’ there, pardner? Unscreen the detection machine, man.”
“Not hiding anything,” said Willie with an air of innocence, moving more of himself in the way.
“That’s an order, space-bud.”
“Hah! You can’t order me.”
“Senior lieutenant, dude.”
“Since when?”
“I’m older and bolder than you, space-trooper. And whose Pa’s runnin’ this mish to Mars?”
“How could I forget? Zak Johnston, son of Mission Control Director Montgomery Johnston achieves the totally believable score of 110% in the final Space Cadet Academy exam, despite never having been to any of the lectures.”
“Surprised myself there. But here I am, beamin’ amaze-rays wherever I go. Now show, bro.”
“Nope.”
Zak launched himself across the room and tried to peer round his crewmate, first one way, then another. “Remind me, space-geek, what exactamundo does this machine display onscreen?”
“Ha! I’d have thought Mr 110-percent would know that.”
Zak ground his teeth. “Missed that class. Dodgy grass.”
Willie snorted.
Zak clamped himself to his crewmate’s back, hooking his goatee-bearded chin over the other’s shoulder. Willie squirmed at the close contact with an unwashed man; worse still, a man with food particles lodged in his rancid beard. But he was determined to protect his discovery at all costs and grasped the screen even more firmly.
“Did you have any reason for coming to see me, or was it just to give me a hug?”
“Nearly slipped my mind,” said Zak, releasing his grip on Willie. “The Zakster brings news of an urgent job for mankind. From the Big Guy. Uncle Duggers. Seems InspectaBot’s been neglectin’ his inspectin’.”
“What?”
“Stranded not landed.”
“Come again?”
“The robosurveyor ain’t budgin’. The crazy dude’s just trudgin’ outside the ship. Like a trash can waitin’ for bin day. Flinto wants his top guy on the case.”
“Really?”
“No man, not really. The top guy’s on a cake-break. So you gotta sort it.”
“Great,” said Willie. Still covering the scanner with an elbow he turned to the observation screen and switched between external cameras until he found one showing the slowly cart-wheeling robot outside. He let out a sigh of exasperation and tapped the microphone on the comms console. “Calling InspectaBot. Come in, InspectaBot. Do you read me? Over.”
“Identify yourself!” came the brusque, metallic response.
“This is Lieutenant William Hilda Warner of Mayflower III respectfully calling InspectaBot 360. Over.”
Zak sniggered. “So that’s what the ‘H’ stands for! Suits you, dude.”
“It’s a family name, not a girl’s name.”
“No, dude, that’s a girl’s name.”
The metallic voice boomed out of the speakers, “Please enter your 16-digit PIN code followed by the hash key.”
Willie turned to Zak. “What’s the PIN code?”
Zak shrugged.
“I don’t have a PIN code,” Willie said into the microphone.
“Very well, you will need to answer a security question.”
“Go on.”
“What was the name of the first girl you kissed?”
Zak sniggered again.
Willie turned to him. “You can go now. I can take it from here.”
“Sure man. Understood. Private info.”
Willie drummed his fingers, waiting for the other lieutenant to leave. “Bet it was Mandy Minger, Space Cadet School swinger,” said Zak as he edged towards the door.
Zak reached the door but then floated back into the room. “I’m taking this with me,” he said, grabbing the PredictoHarness and floating out of the door with it.
“What was the name of the first girl you kissed?” repeated InspectaBot.
Willie looked around to make sure Zak had gone and whispered into the microphone, “None. I’ve never kissed a girl.”
“Nun?”
“Yes, none.”
“Answer mismatch. Identification failure. A new security PIN code will be issued.”
“When?”
“Two weeks.”
“This is ridiculous. Ask me another security question.”
“What is your mother’s bra size?”
“Easy. 40DD,” responded Willie without hesitation.
“Caller identified. How can I help you today, Lieutenant William Hilda Warner?”
“InspectaBot 360, could you please report your status?”
“Roger. Current status: stalled. Awaiting new instructions.”
“The new instructions are the same as the old ones, InspectaBot. Your mission is to perform a full building inspection of Botany Base to certify it as habitable. Do you understand?”
“Affirmative.”
“Off you go, then.”
“Inspection of base not possible.”
“Why?”
“Not within visual range.”
“No, obviously. You’re still in orbit.”
“Current altitude 57,842 feet.”
“Exactly. So you need to address that issue first. Have a good day.”
“Please advise.”
Willie sighed. “Look, land down on the planet, tootle across to the base and start inspecting. Couldn’t be simpler.”
“Landing permission refused.”
This stumped Willie. “What? That’s Mars down there, not Heathrow Terminal 3. Who refused you?” Even as he asked the question a cold shiver ran down his spine. Was it possible the aliens down there had already made contact with InspectaBot? Had they forbidden him to land? How had they done it? What had they said? With threats, or without?
“HarVard,” answered the robot.
“You mean the base’s supercomputer?”
“Affirmative.”
The tension in Willie’s muscles relaxed. “Phew. Please ignore HarVard. He has no right to refuse you permission. Although the fact that he’s trying to sounds suspicious. What reason did he give?”
“Transmitting message.”
Willie saw HarVard’s message appear on a screen to his right. He leaned over to read it. “My dear InspectaBot 360. What an inordinate pleasure to hear from you. We are greatly looking forward to meeting you in person and having the honour of hosting you when you come to carry out your important mission. We trust you will find everything in order. In the meantime, may I request a teensie, weensie little favour? Would you mind awfully delaying your landing for a bit as the base isn’t quite ready for inspection.”
Willie let out an involuntary laugh. “They’ve only been working on it for the past five years!”
He continued reading. “You see, it’s the builder bots. They’re such perfectionists. They want everything to be just right for the humans. Premature inspection would break their little clockwork hearts. There isn’t much to do, really, just a few last-minute soft furnishings that need arranging, but even so they’d rather you didn’t see it until it is all finished.”
Willie cleared his throat. “Technically, that’s not a refusal to land.”
“There’s a postscript,” said InspectaBot.
Willie scrolled down the screen. “PS I will reopen the landing pad when we’re all ready for you. Perhaps you could pop back in, let’s say, a month?”
Lieutenant Warner shook his head. “Now look here, 360. I am ordering you to ignore HarVard and go down there and carry out your duty. That’s an order, OK?”
“Landing pad unavailable.”
“OK, let’s think this through, shall we? We have a large planet down there. So you can actually land anywhere you like. Just pick your spot. Got that?”
A pause. “Risk assessment: terrain sandy, uneven, rock-strewn, pot-holed. Poses a 37.4% possibility of impact damage.”
“Just Do It ... That Is An Order.”
“Received and understood.”
As Willie glared at the image of InspectaBot on the screen he noticed a puff of gas emit from the robot’s behind and its metallic body start to drift towards the planet.
“Well, that was immensely rewarding,” Willie said to himself. But then he looked back at the peculiar message from HarVard. Why was the supercomputer stalling and seemingly denying InspectaBot the chance to land? Did he, perhaps, have something to hide? Was it anything to do with the aliens?
Chapter 5 posted
- Jerry-built by useless robots, the first base on Mars awaits its British colonists. It’s nearly ready, too. Just lacking food, water and doors …
September 17, 2016
Chapter 3 of ‘The Worst Man on Mars’ by Roman & Duke
The Impotence of Being Harnessed
Throughout history, the men and women selected by Fate to make truly remarkable, epoch-making discoveries have not always been the most brilliant of their day: occasionally they have been individuals who might be considered a ‘surprise choice’.
Lucy Ugg, for example, a rather formidable, bad-tempered and lice-infested Ethiopian hominid who lived three million years ago. Her ape peers would certainly have considered her a ‘surprise choice’ for her discovery, had they had the wit to ponder such things. It was she who realized that fire was not just something to run away from but that it had other uses. Such as scorching the furry backsides of her errant offspring, or torching the leafy love-nests of her philandering mate, Toby Ugg. Her greatest discovery, though, had come within the ashes of Toby’s final, fatal infidelity. The severe scorching had given her husband a rather delicious crispy crunchy coating. And so, from that simple observation, had been born the barbeque.
Aboard the spaceship Mayflower III Fate was about to select Lieutenant Willie Warner as the next ‘surprise choice’ for a monumental human discovery. As he sat wearing a PredictoHarness in the spaceship’s cockpit he hardly looked the part of a great discoverer – an Archimedes, a Kepler, or an Einstein. His was more the look of a man caught up in the webbing of a very uncomfortable high-tech truss. The PredictoHarness, a state-of-the-art exoskeleton, with built-in predictive artificial intelligence, strove to foresee its wearer’s every move and ‘enhance’ it in zero-G. Its principal drawback was that its predictions tended to be wide of the mark and its ‘assistance’ quite often more of a hindrance than a help. Once inside, it was almost impossible to escape from its clutches as it never occurred to the PredictoHarness that you might want to.
Willie had not donned the harness by choice; his mistake had been to relax and lean back in the cockpit seat, at which point the harness had latched onto its prey and prepared to take over and assist his every move. He wondered what to do. Should he call his crewmate Lieutenant Zak Johnston for assistance, as on all previous occasions? The prospect of the inevitable ridicule did not appeal.
Yet he had to do something; it was dinner time and he was hungry. There was a lunchbox in the refrigerated trunk beneath the cockpit flight desk, but how to get to it without alerting PredictoHarness? He decided to try to outwit it by stealth. Slowly, millimetre by shaky millimetre, he reached his hand towards the lid of the trunk. But the AI exoskeleton was not so easily fooled. In an instant it was aware of his movement and computing probabilities. Within a microsecond it had concluded, with 89% confidence, that Willie wanted to pull up his socks; so, to help, it rammed his arm down towards his ankles.
Locked in this position, Willie considered his options. Call Zak Johnston, or come up with a cunning plan? Still not liking the idea of the former, he focused his mind on the latter. After a few seconds thought, he had it.
With exaggerated movements he pulled up his socks, as though that indeed had been his original intention. PredictoHarness eagerly assisted and then returned him to his starting position. Step 1 successful.
With his other hand he reached towards the flight desk to retrieve a pen. Again, PredictoHarness was only too happy to help. Step 2 done. Then he, accidentally-on-purpose, fumbled the magnetic pen and prodded it towards the cover of the metallic refrigerated trunk. His aim was a little off-target and, for a tense moment, Willie feared it wasn’t magnetic enough to latch on to lid of the trunk and would drift off to the far end of the cockpit. But luckily it veered just in time and clamped itself to the lid. Step 3 complete. He casually reached to retrieve it. As PredictoHarness helped him do so, he flicked his wrist at the last second and flipped open the trunk lid. Hey presto, plan achieved.
“Gotcha!” he said as he peered into the trunk, arm still extended. Floating weightlessly inside was a solitary, ultra-slim Tupperware box – the last of the eight-month supply of lunchboxes his mother had lovingly prepared for the journey. He reached for it and, with PredictoHarness’s eager help, pulled it out; the exoskeleton even helped him crack open the lid. The aroma that assailed his senses sent him into ecstasy. Not for him the space-junk-food that the other personnel had to endure. This was the business!
He teased out a cheese and piccalilli sandwich and a mini Curly Wurly – his favourite confection, a chocolate-covered caramel ladder. Behind the latter was a little surprise: a photograph of his dog, Boo-Boo. His mum must have slipped it in so that, on the eve of the first human Mars landing, he would be reminded of home.
Holding the picture in one hand, Willie bit into the sandwich, sending a stream of piccalilli into the zero-G atmosphere where it joined a spiralling galaxy of empty crisp packets, crushed beer cans, a banana skin, and thousands of tiny globules of congealed gravy; the detritus left by Mission Commander Flint Dugdale from the previous watch.
Willie stroked the image of Boo-Boo, his only friend, and a powerful wave of homesickness hit him in the gut. A tear beaded in one eye. Mechanically, he reached to wipe the tear away but, for reasons known only to PredictoHarness’s unfathomable algorithm, his movement was interpreted as a punch to his own face. Helpfully, the metal clamp around Willie’s wrist directed a perfectly placed uppercut to his chin, rendering him instantly unconscious.
*
The warning chime, heralding Willie’s imminent epoch-making discovery, cut through the general hum of his dazed brain. Little did he realize that this annoying noise was signalling a profound change in the way humans viewed their place in the Cosmos.
He forced his eyelids open and focused on the fist he had punched himself with. Crushed inside it were the soggy, sticky remains of his half-eaten sandwich. The Curly Wurly and photo of Boo-Boo had drifted away from him, now too far to reach. Indeed, the former was no longer worth reaching having lodged in the outlet of the central heating system where the warm air had reduced it to a flaccid bag of melted chocolate and caramel. Willie felt like crying.
Somewhere in the forest of instrumentation before him and around him, the bleeping continued its incessant call. It had progressed from merely irritating to totally infuriating. He looked about, fuming, searching for the source, ready to smash the device responsible. Having spotted an instrument with a winking light to his left, he then searched for a suitable weapon with which to destroy it. With nothing readily to hand he leaned down and removed the standard-issue space-clog from his right foot. The exoskeleton monitored his movement, calculating probabilities. Eyes fiery red, mouth hissing with rage, Willie raised the clog high, ready to beat the noisy instrument into silence. But that was as far as PredictoHarness let him go. Based on its comprehensive database of human actions it was 73% certain that Willie had removed the space-clog because a small pebble was lodged inside it. Of course, there was always some uncertainty when it came to humans, but 73% was a pretty good bet, so the harness helped Willie vigorously shake the clog to clear it of any foreign matter.
Willie grunted with frustration as the beeping went on and he let the clog float free from his hand. Another idea came to him. With all the guile of his boyhood hero, Batman, he reached into his utility belt and pulled out a pair of nail scissors. PredictoHarness perked up, switching to a state of high alertness, ready to monitor the lieutenant’s every move. What’s he playing at now? it wondered, scanning the cockpit eagerly for clues. The human intends to cut something. But what? It watched Willie flip the lid of its own central processing unit, grab a bundle of multi-coloured wires and smile cruelly as he held them between the scissor blades. Got it, thought the harness and happily helped to squeeze the fingers of its own execution.
As Willie floated gently free of the harness’s suddenly limp restraints, he at last became awa
re of the significance of the irritating bleeping noise. It was coming from the infra-violet detector. A gob of piccalilli, ejected from his sandwich when he had punched himself, had squirted onto the detector’s touchscreen, refocusing it on a new section of the Martian surface.
“Blimey O’Reilly,” he said, letting out a low whistle. He doggy-paddled through the air to reach the detector, wiped the pickle off the equipment and prodded a button to silence the alarm. His eyes grew wider and wider as he read the results displayed on the screen. The scans of the Martian surface, some 58,000 feet below, had detected something of great significance. “Positive identification at 99% confidence level,” was the on-screen message. “Multiple strong, highly-localized, energy-expending anomalies of a non-geological origin, consistent with metabolizing, thermodynamically open chemical systems, highly suggestive of underlying organic mechanisms”.
Willie blinked several times. From his astronaut training he knew exactly what that meant. It meant that the infra-violet scanners had detected living creatures on the planet below. More importantly, it meant that the piccalilli from Lieutenant Willie Warner’s sandwich had brought about a truly remarkable discovery: he had become the first person to discover Life on Mars.
The question was: what kind of life had Willie just discovered and would it be pleased to see them?
Chapter 4 posted
- Jerry-built by useless robots, the first base on Mars awaits its British colonists. It’s nearly ready, too. Just lacking food, water and doors …
Throughout history, the men and women selected by Fate to make truly remarkable, epoch-making discoveries have not always been the most brilliant of their day: occasionally they have been individuals who might be considered a ‘surprise choice’.
Lucy Ugg, for example, a rather formidable, bad-tempered and lice-infested Ethiopian hominid who lived three million years ago. Her ape peers would certainly have considered her a ‘surprise choice’ for her discovery, had they had the wit to ponder such things. It was she who realized that fire was not just something to run away from but that it had other uses. Such as scorching the furry backsides of her errant offspring, or torching the leafy love-nests of her philandering mate, Toby Ugg. Her greatest discovery, though, had come within the ashes of Toby’s final, fatal infidelity. The severe scorching had given her husband a rather delicious crispy crunchy coating. And so, from that simple observation, had been born the barbeque.
Aboard the spaceship Mayflower III Fate was about to select Lieutenant Willie Warner as the next ‘surprise choice’ for a monumental human discovery. As he sat wearing a PredictoHarness in the spaceship’s cockpit he hardly looked the part of a great discoverer – an Archimedes, a Kepler, or an Einstein. His was more the look of a man caught up in the webbing of a very uncomfortable high-tech truss. The PredictoHarness, a state-of-the-art exoskeleton, with built-in predictive artificial intelligence, strove to foresee its wearer’s every move and ‘enhance’ it in zero-G. Its principal drawback was that its predictions tended to be wide of the mark and its ‘assistance’ quite often more of a hindrance than a help. Once inside, it was almost impossible to escape from its clutches as it never occurred to the PredictoHarness that you might want to.
Willie had not donned the harness by choice; his mistake had been to relax and lean back in the cockpit seat, at which point the harness had latched onto its prey and prepared to take over and assist his every move. He wondered what to do. Should he call his crewmate Lieutenant Zak Johnston for assistance, as on all previous occasions? The prospect of the inevitable ridicule did not appeal.
Yet he had to do something; it was dinner time and he was hungry. There was a lunchbox in the refrigerated trunk beneath the cockpit flight desk, but how to get to it without alerting PredictoHarness? He decided to try to outwit it by stealth. Slowly, millimetre by shaky millimetre, he reached his hand towards the lid of the trunk. But the AI exoskeleton was not so easily fooled. In an instant it was aware of his movement and computing probabilities. Within a microsecond it had concluded, with 89% confidence, that Willie wanted to pull up his socks; so, to help, it rammed his arm down towards his ankles.
Locked in this position, Willie considered his options. Call Zak Johnston, or come up with a cunning plan? Still not liking the idea of the former, he focused his mind on the latter. After a few seconds thought, he had it.
With exaggerated movements he pulled up his socks, as though that indeed had been his original intention. PredictoHarness eagerly assisted and then returned him to his starting position. Step 1 successful.
With his other hand he reached towards the flight desk to retrieve a pen. Again, PredictoHarness was only too happy to help. Step 2 done. Then he, accidentally-on-purpose, fumbled the magnetic pen and prodded it towards the cover of the metallic refrigerated trunk. His aim was a little off-target and, for a tense moment, Willie feared it wasn’t magnetic enough to latch on to lid of the trunk and would drift off to the far end of the cockpit. But luckily it veered just in time and clamped itself to the lid. Step 3 complete. He casually reached to retrieve it. As PredictoHarness helped him do so, he flicked his wrist at the last second and flipped open the trunk lid. Hey presto, plan achieved.
“Gotcha!” he said as he peered into the trunk, arm still extended. Floating weightlessly inside was a solitary, ultra-slim Tupperware box – the last of the eight-month supply of lunchboxes his mother had lovingly prepared for the journey. He reached for it and, with PredictoHarness’s eager help, pulled it out; the exoskeleton even helped him crack open the lid. The aroma that assailed his senses sent him into ecstasy. Not for him the space-junk-food that the other personnel had to endure. This was the business!
He teased out a cheese and piccalilli sandwich and a mini Curly Wurly – his favourite confection, a chocolate-covered caramel ladder. Behind the latter was a little surprise: a photograph of his dog, Boo-Boo. His mum must have slipped it in so that, on the eve of the first human Mars landing, he would be reminded of home.
Holding the picture in one hand, Willie bit into the sandwich, sending a stream of piccalilli into the zero-G atmosphere where it joined a spiralling galaxy of empty crisp packets, crushed beer cans, a banana skin, and thousands of tiny globules of congealed gravy; the detritus left by Mission Commander Flint Dugdale from the previous watch.
Willie stroked the image of Boo-Boo, his only friend, and a powerful wave of homesickness hit him in the gut. A tear beaded in one eye. Mechanically, he reached to wipe the tear away but, for reasons known only to PredictoHarness’s unfathomable algorithm, his movement was interpreted as a punch to his own face. Helpfully, the metal clamp around Willie’s wrist directed a perfectly placed uppercut to his chin, rendering him instantly unconscious.
*
The warning chime, heralding Willie’s imminent epoch-making discovery, cut through the general hum of his dazed brain. Little did he realize that this annoying noise was signalling a profound change in the way humans viewed their place in the Cosmos.
He forced his eyelids open and focused on the fist he had punched himself with. Crushed inside it were the soggy, sticky remains of his half-eaten sandwich. The Curly Wurly and photo of Boo-Boo had drifted away from him, now too far to reach. Indeed, the former was no longer worth reaching having lodged in the outlet of the central heating system where the warm air had reduced it to a flaccid bag of melted chocolate and caramel. Willie felt like crying.
Somewhere in the forest of instrumentation before him and around him, the bleeping continued its incessant call. It had progressed from merely irritating to totally infuriating. He looked about, fuming, searching for the source, ready to smash the device responsible. Having spotted an instrument with a winking light to his left, he then searched for a suitable weapon with which to destroy it. With nothing readily to hand he leaned down and removed the standard-issue space-clog from his right foot. The exoskeleton monitored his movement, calculating probabilities. Eyes fiery red, mouth hissing with rage, Willie raised the clog high, ready to beat the noisy instrument into silence. But that was as far as PredictoHarness let him go. Based on its comprehensive database of human actions it was 73% certain that Willie had removed the space-clog because a small pebble was lodged inside it. Of course, there was always some uncertainty when it came to humans, but 73% was a pretty good bet, so the harness helped Willie vigorously shake the clog to clear it of any foreign matter.
Willie grunted with frustration as the beeping went on and he let the clog float free from his hand. Another idea came to him. With all the guile of his boyhood hero, Batman, he reached into his utility belt and pulled out a pair of nail scissors. PredictoHarness perked up, switching to a state of high alertness, ready to monitor the lieutenant’s every move. What’s he playing at now? it wondered, scanning the cockpit eagerly for clues. The human intends to cut something. But what? It watched Willie flip the lid of its own central processing unit, grab a bundle of multi-coloured wires and smile cruelly as he held them between the scissor blades. Got it, thought the harness and happily helped to squeeze the fingers of its own execution.
As Willie floated gently free of the harness’s suddenly limp restraints, he at last became awa
re of the significance of the irritating bleeping noise. It was coming from the infra-violet detector. A gob of piccalilli, ejected from his sandwich when he had punched himself, had squirted onto the detector’s touchscreen, refocusing it on a new section of the Martian surface.
“Blimey O’Reilly,” he said, letting out a low whistle. He doggy-paddled through the air to reach the detector, wiped the pickle off the equipment and prodded a button to silence the alarm. His eyes grew wider and wider as he read the results displayed on the screen. The scans of the Martian surface, some 58,000 feet below, had detected something of great significance. “Positive identification at 99% confidence level,” was the on-screen message. “Multiple strong, highly-localized, energy-expending anomalies of a non-geological origin, consistent with metabolizing, thermodynamically open chemical systems, highly suggestive of underlying organic mechanisms”.
Willie blinked several times. From his astronaut training he knew exactly what that meant. It meant that the infra-violet scanners had detected living creatures on the planet below. More importantly, it meant that the piccalilli from Lieutenant Willie Warner’s sandwich had brought about a truly remarkable discovery: he had become the first person to discover Life on Mars.
The question was: what kind of life had Willie just discovered and would it be pleased to see them?
Chapter 4 posted
- Jerry-built by useless robots, the first base on Mars awaits its British colonists. It’s nearly ready, too. Just lacking food, water and doors …
September 16, 2016
Chapter 2 of ‘The Worst Man on Mars’ by Roman & Duke
The King’s Peach
20:21 The previous day – Mayflower III
The spaceship’s Assembly Room was unusually packed. Mission Commander Flint Dugdale was seated directly in front of the vast TV screen, his greasy hand wrapped around the remote control and his legs spread wide apart. Normally his predilection for darts, snooker and monster-truck racing drove the other personnel away, but right now they were strapped into the cinema-style seating and buzzing with anticipation. The forthcoming programme was a special broadcast, direct from Buckingham Palace. The King himself was to deliver a personal message to the prospective Mars colonists in a programme titled ‘A Very British Mission’.
As yet another lager advert commenced, Dugdale shook a fist at the screen and roared in his broad Yorkshire accent, “Gerron wi’ it!” He sat, his bloated belly pointing upwards, in the middle of the three front-row seats reserved for crew. On the back of his seat the gold embossed name of ‘Mission Commander Chad Lionheart’ had been crossed through with a thick marker pen and ‘Commandur Dugdale’ scrawled in its place. Rows two to four were for the Mars colonists.
Dugdale scratched between his legs with one hand and twirled a fat finger in his ear with the other as crewmember Lieutenant Zak Johnston floated in zero-G into the Assembly Room and made for the front row.
“Aye, aye, Cap’n. Permish to land?” asked Zak, indicating one of the empty seats.
Flint reached under his chair and pulled out a four-pack of Stallion extra-strong lager and a jumbo bag of Cheesy Watnots. He placed them in the middle of the empty seat Zak was pointing to and snapped the seatbelt into its clip to stop his booty drifting away. “Seat’s taken. Chuff off,” he growled.
Zak glided around the front, keeping out of range of his commanding officer, and made for the seat on the opposite side. Flint lifted his left leg over the armrest so that his steel toe-capped Doc Marten boot rested across the other empty place.
“No probleemo, Captain Nemo. I’ll just float here, shall I?” said Zak.
Dugdale didn’t react, so Zak belted himself into one of the empty seats in row 2. Po-faced, tight-lipped Harry Fortune in row 3 now found himself directly behind a bush of free-floating and widely spread dreadlocks. Harry, former stand-up comedian-turned-poet, and the mission’s token celebrity, leaned forward and tapped the Medusa-haired lieutenant on the shoulder. “You do realize I can’t see a thing because of your hair.”
Zak, having turned with a jolt, studied the comedian’s thin mouth as he spoke. Although not clinically deaf he had great difficulty hearing much of what went on around him. The ear wax in his auditory canals, together with his earphones, meant that he only registered the very loudest sounds above the steady beat of his personal music directory. He had come to rely on very poor lip-reading skills to understand what was being said. “You want me to sing Love is in the Air?” he enquired.
Sitting next to Harry was Miss Emily Leach, daughter of zillionaire nonagenarian mining tycoon Sir Geoffrey Leach. The heavily perfumed middle-aged lady butted in. “Oh, I love that song. Please sing it, Mr Zak!”
“Soz, Lady Em, that song is alien to this mammalian.”
“Surely not!” she exclaimed. And then, as if to mete out punishment for such ignorance of a classic, she let rip with a shrill, ear-jarring voice that, to her tin ear, perfectly matched the song in her head. All eyes stared at her. A single backward glare from the commander cut her off in mid-note and made her face redden. Meekly she resumed sipping Earl Grey from a dainty bone china cup. The cup had been ‘adapted’ for zero-G by the addition of a cheap plastic lid and a vivid-green curly straw. Just as attention was drifting away from her, and her face was returning to its former paleness, she made an embarrassing cup-draining slurp as she sucked up the last dregs, causing her face to flush once more.
Sitting behind Emily was the diminutive Tarquin Brush, only ten years old but already smarter than most of the others. On his knee was ‘Mr Snuggles’, the robot he had assembled during the journey using wiring and circuits pilfered from around the ship. Tarquin’s smiling mother, Delphinia Brush, gave his hand a warm squeeze, proud that her little soldier could have built such a clever robot. Around her shoulders lay the comforting arm of husband Brian Brush, a man rarely far from her side. Both had the nerdy look and spectacles of planetary scientists, which is what they were.
“About friggin’ time!” exclaimed Dugdale as the programme’s opening titles finally appeared on the screen.
Hardly anyone batted an eyelid at the commander’s bad language. Only Delphinia Brush reacted by placing her protective hands over Tarquin’s innocent little ears.
On screen, the credits cleared and a panning shot showed what appeared to be a dense rain forest. An elderly gentleman emerged from behind the leaves of a large banana tree wearing a three-piece tweed suit and matching flat cap. Looking somewhat incongruous in the jungle terrain, he sported a brass plant-sprayer in one hand and a fine walking cane in the other. As he stepped out of the tree’s shadow he was instantly recognizable by his drooping elephantine ears, anteater nose and deep-set pebble eyes. He removed his hat to reveal a scabrous scalp long since deserted by its mutinous hair.
Commander Dugdale fumbled to unclip his seat belt, all the time gazing reverently up at the screen. He stood to attention.
“Ayeup, you lot. Gerr’off yer fat bums ‘n show some respect for t’friggin’ King!” Having stood up too aggressively he found himself drifting, head-first, for the ceiling.
“That’s just great,” mumbled Harry Fortune, “Now I can’t see the screen at all.”
“Shhh!” beseeched Emily Leach.
Meanwhile, King Charles III was gesturing up at the huge glass roof above his head. “Simply splendid, isn’t it,” he was saying, letting the words escape through tightly clenched jaws. “A replica of Decimus Burton’s Temperate House. The original is in Kew Gardens, of course, but one had this exact copy built in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.” He paused to swat a tiny fly away. “During the past eight months, while Mayflower III and its valiant personnel, have been racing towards the Red Planet, I have found myself drawn here more and more. A place to meditate and consider the Universe above. Indeed, I often find my mind drifting across interplanetary space to Mars, and the vast BioDome of Botany Base where, very soon, the first Martian colonists will be standing. I imagine it looking something like this.” The king swept his arm in a wide arc to indicate the lush vegetation surrounding him.
“Botany Base,” he mused. “Built not by humans, but by a small army of fiendishly clever British robots sent ahead by the National Astronomical Flight Agency. Five years they have toiled, and the result is a tribute to British engineering, British technology and British knowhow.”
Dugdale had managed to push himself back down from the ceiling and was stretching the seat strap across his oversized belly. “British know ‘ow!” he scoffed.
“Yeah, what could possibly go wrong?” added teenager Gavin from the back row. His sister Tracey sniggered. Brian Brush removed his arm from around his wife’s shoulders and held up a shushing finger to the pursed lips of one of his sternest facial expressions. As usual, the teenagers ignored their father.
King Charles cast a solemn frown at the camera. “Our thoughts, of course, go to those three brave souls who have so far perished on this dangerous mission.”
Dugdale snorted. “Brave souls, my arse!”
“And yet, one can’t help but feel that the successful completion of this two-year mission, there and back, will form a lasting tribute to their memory and their courage.”
“Cobblers.”
Charles went on to make a feeble joke about Little Green Men, at which most of the colonists, apart from the teenagers, chuckled politely. “And finally, one would like to relay a special message to the colonists themselves. The boffins at NAFA Mission Control tell one that those valiant pioneers, currently in orbit around Mars, will, through some unfathomable wizardry, be watching this broadcast in about six minutes when the transmission reaches their ship.” The camera zoomed in on Charles’s craggy features. “Good luck, intrepid colonists. Remember, the whole world is watching you. The whole world will see Britain at her best. You are ambassadors for the first nation to land humans on Mars. We are proud of you all.”
Plucking a peach from an overhanging branch, the King took a bite out of it and smiled. The edges of the smile twitched at the bitterness of the unripe fruit in his mouth as he turned, parted several tree leaves with his walking cane, and slipped back into the jungle.
Emily wiped a tear from her eye. A few others could be heard making efforts to swallow the lumps in their throats. The teenagers at the back jeered, and the hand-built robot, Mr Snuggles, was trying out some new vocabulary it had just picked up. “Cobblers,” it said in a cute chipmunk-like voice. “Friggin’ cobblers.”
As the credits rolled, Dugdale gave a noisy sniff. “Load of ol’ bollocks,” he muttered, pointing the remote control at the TV and starting to flip channels, oblivious to the howls of protest that filled the room.
“One hundred and eighty!” boomed a voice from the TV, and Dugdale stopped flipping.
“Magic!” he said, making himself more comfortable in his seat. “Darts.”
*
Within seconds the Assembly Room began to empty. First out of their seats were the Faerydaes. Adorabella Faerydae – the mission doctor, holistic healer, spiritual reader and homeopath – floated towards the door. Chiffon, crystal beads and long auburn hair trailed behind her. Husband, Brokk, and their son, Oberon, drifted to her side and like a family of synchronised mer-people they glided over the heads of their colleagues and into the corridor.
Ex-comedian Harry Fortune unclipped his seat belt and launched himself towards the exit, staring miserably down at his Fliptab on which were jotted just a few random rhymes: ‘Dugdale – thug fail’, ‘disaster – plaster’, ‘doom – gloom’. In his capacity as Poet in Residence he hadn’t written a single poem during the entire journey, save for a few feeble love poems for the prettiest passenger, Penny Smith.
Penny Smith, alas, was not in the Assembly Room. Nor was she anywhere on board. For Penny was one of the three who had died on the mission so far.
*
In no time the room was left with just two occupants: Dugdale, eyes glued to the sweaty, beer-fuelled throwing action of the All-Yorkshire Darts Championship, and Lieutenant Zak Johnston whose attention had been caught by something outside the spaceship. Zak launched himself off a wall and drifted across to the huge panoramic observation window. He peered out, shading his eyes with his hands to cut the glare of the room’s fluorescent lights. There was a metal object drifting in space, about two hundred metres from the ship. It was about the size and shape of a large man.
“The Zak-detector’s detectin’ an inspector,” he declared, nose now pressed against the glass.
Dugdale reluctantly shifted his gaze away from the darts and peered past Zak’s dreadlocks out of the window. “What the ‘ell’s that?”
“InspectaBot, that’s what.”
“Well, what’s that mechanical twerk doin’ there? ‘E should be on t’planet by now, doin’ his friggin’ job! I launched ‘im two hour since.”
“Looks lost, dude,” said Zak. He raised an arm and waved to the distant robot, but the robot didn’t wave back. “Could be inspectin’ the view.”
“I’ll give ‘im ‘inspectin’ t’view’! That robot better get down there an’ issue Certificate of Habitability for t’base pronto. If I ‘ave to spend much longer cooped up on this crock of crap wi’ a bunch of lemons, I’ll end up batterin’ the lot of yer.”
“Shoo!” Zak was saying, flapping his arms at the robot to persuade him to go. “Go down to the planet. Start inspecting. Shoo.”
Dugdale huffed and puffed as he struggled with his seat belt, but then glimpsed a dart on the screen hitting double-top. His attention returned to the contest. The crowd oohed and aahed as another dart hit its target but the third missed. Flint settled back into his seat. “Get ‘im on t’radio and order ‘im to get goin’,” he said, his eyes firmly back on the screen.
Zak looked affronted. “No-can-do, skipperoo. Rest-break. Been promised a cupcake by Lady Emily.”
Dugdale grunted. “Well get Lieutenant Willie Walnut to sort out t’mechanical monkey. Tell ‘im to order it to gerron with its friggin’ job! And another thing ...” His voice trailed off as Big Joe “Lard Belly” McGrath stepped up to the oche.
“Sure thing, boss,” said Zak. “I’ll break my break for the good of the mission. But I ain’t missin’ the uptake of a cupcake.”
Chapter 3 posted
- Jerry-built by useless robots, the first base on Mars awaits its British colonists. It’s nearly ready, too. Just lacking food, water and doors …
20:21 The previous day – Mayflower III
The spaceship’s Assembly Room was unusually packed. Mission Commander Flint Dugdale was seated directly in front of the vast TV screen, his greasy hand wrapped around the remote control and his legs spread wide apart. Normally his predilection for darts, snooker and monster-truck racing drove the other personnel away, but right now they were strapped into the cinema-style seating and buzzing with anticipation. The forthcoming programme was a special broadcast, direct from Buckingham Palace. The King himself was to deliver a personal message to the prospective Mars colonists in a programme titled ‘A Very British Mission’.
As yet another lager advert commenced, Dugdale shook a fist at the screen and roared in his broad Yorkshire accent, “Gerron wi’ it!” He sat, his bloated belly pointing upwards, in the middle of the three front-row seats reserved for crew. On the back of his seat the gold embossed name of ‘Mission Commander Chad Lionheart’ had been crossed through with a thick marker pen and ‘Commandur Dugdale’ scrawled in its place. Rows two to four were for the Mars colonists.
Dugdale scratched between his legs with one hand and twirled a fat finger in his ear with the other as crewmember Lieutenant Zak Johnston floated in zero-G into the Assembly Room and made for the front row.
“Aye, aye, Cap’n. Permish to land?” asked Zak, indicating one of the empty seats.
Flint reached under his chair and pulled out a four-pack of Stallion extra-strong lager and a jumbo bag of Cheesy Watnots. He placed them in the middle of the empty seat Zak was pointing to and snapped the seatbelt into its clip to stop his booty drifting away. “Seat’s taken. Chuff off,” he growled.
Zak glided around the front, keeping out of range of his commanding officer, and made for the seat on the opposite side. Flint lifted his left leg over the armrest so that his steel toe-capped Doc Marten boot rested across the other empty place.
“No probleemo, Captain Nemo. I’ll just float here, shall I?” said Zak.
Dugdale didn’t react, so Zak belted himself into one of the empty seats in row 2. Po-faced, tight-lipped Harry Fortune in row 3 now found himself directly behind a bush of free-floating and widely spread dreadlocks. Harry, former stand-up comedian-turned-poet, and the mission’s token celebrity, leaned forward and tapped the Medusa-haired lieutenant on the shoulder. “You do realize I can’t see a thing because of your hair.”
Zak, having turned with a jolt, studied the comedian’s thin mouth as he spoke. Although not clinically deaf he had great difficulty hearing much of what went on around him. The ear wax in his auditory canals, together with his earphones, meant that he only registered the very loudest sounds above the steady beat of his personal music directory. He had come to rely on very poor lip-reading skills to understand what was being said. “You want me to sing Love is in the Air?” he enquired.
Sitting next to Harry was Miss Emily Leach, daughter of zillionaire nonagenarian mining tycoon Sir Geoffrey Leach. The heavily perfumed middle-aged lady butted in. “Oh, I love that song. Please sing it, Mr Zak!”
“Soz, Lady Em, that song is alien to this mammalian.”
“Surely not!” she exclaimed. And then, as if to mete out punishment for such ignorance of a classic, she let rip with a shrill, ear-jarring voice that, to her tin ear, perfectly matched the song in her head. All eyes stared at her. A single backward glare from the commander cut her off in mid-note and made her face redden. Meekly she resumed sipping Earl Grey from a dainty bone china cup. The cup had been ‘adapted’ for zero-G by the addition of a cheap plastic lid and a vivid-green curly straw. Just as attention was drifting away from her, and her face was returning to its former paleness, she made an embarrassing cup-draining slurp as she sucked up the last dregs, causing her face to flush once more.
Sitting behind Emily was the diminutive Tarquin Brush, only ten years old but already smarter than most of the others. On his knee was ‘Mr Snuggles’, the robot he had assembled during the journey using wiring and circuits pilfered from around the ship. Tarquin’s smiling mother, Delphinia Brush, gave his hand a warm squeeze, proud that her little soldier could have built such a clever robot. Around her shoulders lay the comforting arm of husband Brian Brush, a man rarely far from her side. Both had the nerdy look and spectacles of planetary scientists, which is what they were.
“About friggin’ time!” exclaimed Dugdale as the programme’s opening titles finally appeared on the screen.
Hardly anyone batted an eyelid at the commander’s bad language. Only Delphinia Brush reacted by placing her protective hands over Tarquin’s innocent little ears.
On screen, the credits cleared and a panning shot showed what appeared to be a dense rain forest. An elderly gentleman emerged from behind the leaves of a large banana tree wearing a three-piece tweed suit and matching flat cap. Looking somewhat incongruous in the jungle terrain, he sported a brass plant-sprayer in one hand and a fine walking cane in the other. As he stepped out of the tree’s shadow he was instantly recognizable by his drooping elephantine ears, anteater nose and deep-set pebble eyes. He removed his hat to reveal a scabrous scalp long since deserted by its mutinous hair.
Commander Dugdale fumbled to unclip his seat belt, all the time gazing reverently up at the screen. He stood to attention.
“Ayeup, you lot. Gerr’off yer fat bums ‘n show some respect for t’friggin’ King!” Having stood up too aggressively he found himself drifting, head-first, for the ceiling.
“That’s just great,” mumbled Harry Fortune, “Now I can’t see the screen at all.”
“Shhh!” beseeched Emily Leach.
Meanwhile, King Charles III was gesturing up at the huge glass roof above his head. “Simply splendid, isn’t it,” he was saying, letting the words escape through tightly clenched jaws. “A replica of Decimus Burton’s Temperate House. The original is in Kew Gardens, of course, but one had this exact copy built in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.” He paused to swat a tiny fly away. “During the past eight months, while Mayflower III and its valiant personnel, have been racing towards the Red Planet, I have found myself drawn here more and more. A place to meditate and consider the Universe above. Indeed, I often find my mind drifting across interplanetary space to Mars, and the vast BioDome of Botany Base where, very soon, the first Martian colonists will be standing. I imagine it looking something like this.” The king swept his arm in a wide arc to indicate the lush vegetation surrounding him.
“Botany Base,” he mused. “Built not by humans, but by a small army of fiendishly clever British robots sent ahead by the National Astronomical Flight Agency. Five years they have toiled, and the result is a tribute to British engineering, British technology and British knowhow.”
Dugdale had managed to push himself back down from the ceiling and was stretching the seat strap across his oversized belly. “British know ‘ow!” he scoffed.
“Yeah, what could possibly go wrong?” added teenager Gavin from the back row. His sister Tracey sniggered. Brian Brush removed his arm from around his wife’s shoulders and held up a shushing finger to the pursed lips of one of his sternest facial expressions. As usual, the teenagers ignored their father.
King Charles cast a solemn frown at the camera. “Our thoughts, of course, go to those three brave souls who have so far perished on this dangerous mission.”
Dugdale snorted. “Brave souls, my arse!”
“And yet, one can’t help but feel that the successful completion of this two-year mission, there and back, will form a lasting tribute to their memory and their courage.”
“Cobblers.”
Charles went on to make a feeble joke about Little Green Men, at which most of the colonists, apart from the teenagers, chuckled politely. “And finally, one would like to relay a special message to the colonists themselves. The boffins at NAFA Mission Control tell one that those valiant pioneers, currently in orbit around Mars, will, through some unfathomable wizardry, be watching this broadcast in about six minutes when the transmission reaches their ship.” The camera zoomed in on Charles’s craggy features. “Good luck, intrepid colonists. Remember, the whole world is watching you. The whole world will see Britain at her best. You are ambassadors for the first nation to land humans on Mars. We are proud of you all.”
Plucking a peach from an overhanging branch, the King took a bite out of it and smiled. The edges of the smile twitched at the bitterness of the unripe fruit in his mouth as he turned, parted several tree leaves with his walking cane, and slipped back into the jungle.
Emily wiped a tear from her eye. A few others could be heard making efforts to swallow the lumps in their throats. The teenagers at the back jeered, and the hand-built robot, Mr Snuggles, was trying out some new vocabulary it had just picked up. “Cobblers,” it said in a cute chipmunk-like voice. “Friggin’ cobblers.”
As the credits rolled, Dugdale gave a noisy sniff. “Load of ol’ bollocks,” he muttered, pointing the remote control at the TV and starting to flip channels, oblivious to the howls of protest that filled the room.
“One hundred and eighty!” boomed a voice from the TV, and Dugdale stopped flipping.
“Magic!” he said, making himself more comfortable in his seat. “Darts.”
*
Within seconds the Assembly Room began to empty. First out of their seats were the Faerydaes. Adorabella Faerydae – the mission doctor, holistic healer, spiritual reader and homeopath – floated towards the door. Chiffon, crystal beads and long auburn hair trailed behind her. Husband, Brokk, and their son, Oberon, drifted to her side and like a family of synchronised mer-people they glided over the heads of their colleagues and into the corridor.
Ex-comedian Harry Fortune unclipped his seat belt and launched himself towards the exit, staring miserably down at his Fliptab on which were jotted just a few random rhymes: ‘Dugdale – thug fail’, ‘disaster – plaster’, ‘doom – gloom’. In his capacity as Poet in Residence he hadn’t written a single poem during the entire journey, save for a few feeble love poems for the prettiest passenger, Penny Smith.
Penny Smith, alas, was not in the Assembly Room. Nor was she anywhere on board. For Penny was one of the three who had died on the mission so far.
*
In no time the room was left with just two occupants: Dugdale, eyes glued to the sweaty, beer-fuelled throwing action of the All-Yorkshire Darts Championship, and Lieutenant Zak Johnston whose attention had been caught by something outside the spaceship. Zak launched himself off a wall and drifted across to the huge panoramic observation window. He peered out, shading his eyes with his hands to cut the glare of the room’s fluorescent lights. There was a metal object drifting in space, about two hundred metres from the ship. It was about the size and shape of a large man.
“The Zak-detector’s detectin’ an inspector,” he declared, nose now pressed against the glass.
Dugdale reluctantly shifted his gaze away from the darts and peered past Zak’s dreadlocks out of the window. “What the ‘ell’s that?”
“InspectaBot, that’s what.”
“Well, what’s that mechanical twerk doin’ there? ‘E should be on t’planet by now, doin’ his friggin’ job! I launched ‘im two hour since.”
“Looks lost, dude,” said Zak. He raised an arm and waved to the distant robot, but the robot didn’t wave back. “Could be inspectin’ the view.”
“I’ll give ‘im ‘inspectin’ t’view’! That robot better get down there an’ issue Certificate of Habitability for t’base pronto. If I ‘ave to spend much longer cooped up on this crock of crap wi’ a bunch of lemons, I’ll end up batterin’ the lot of yer.”
“Shoo!” Zak was saying, flapping his arms at the robot to persuade him to go. “Go down to the planet. Start inspecting. Shoo.”
Dugdale huffed and puffed as he struggled with his seat belt, but then glimpsed a dart on the screen hitting double-top. His attention returned to the contest. The crowd oohed and aahed as another dart hit its target but the third missed. Flint settled back into his seat. “Get ‘im on t’radio and order ‘im to get goin’,” he said, his eyes firmly back on the screen.
Zak looked affronted. “No-can-do, skipperoo. Rest-break. Been promised a cupcake by Lady Emily.”
Dugdale grunted. “Well get Lieutenant Willie Walnut to sort out t’mechanical monkey. Tell ‘im to order it to gerron with its friggin’ job! And another thing ...” His voice trailed off as Big Joe “Lard Belly” McGrath stepped up to the oche.
“Sure thing, boss,” said Zak. “I’ll break my break for the good of the mission. But I ain’t missin’ the uptake of a cupcake.”
Chapter 3 posted
- Jerry-built by useless robots, the first base on Mars awaits its British colonists. It’s nearly ready, too. Just lacking food, water and doors …
September 15, 2016
Chapter 1 of ‘The Worst Man on Mars’ by Roman & Duke
The Back Seat Kids
08:30, 24th March 2029 – 46, Culpepper Drive, Huddersfield, Yorkshire
Whenever retired science teacher Malcolm Brimble got a ‘bad feeling in his water’ it was usually a pretty accurate portent of doom. For eight months, in spite of some powerful antibiotics, the feeling had been worsening.
“It’s going to be a disaster, Barb,” he moaned through the open door of their en suite bathroom.
“They’re saying it’s looking good,” Barbara countered. She was perched on the end of the bed, nursing two freshly made mugs of tea and staring at the TV. The pictures from Mayflower III, in orbit above Mars, showed the crew of Britain’s first manned mission to the Red Planet high-fiving one another.
Malcolm looked up from his ablutions and caught sight of the shaven-headed Mission Commander Flint Dugdale. “No, I can’t look at him!” He nudged the bathroom door shut to block the offending view of Dugdale spraying the contents of a can of Stallion lager into the zero-G atmosphere.
“People change,” his wife called through the door.
“Not that one. Not him. Five years I had him. Bottom of the bottom science set.”
“Come on, he was a teenager. The mission’s so close now; what could possibly go wrong?”
Malcolm cracked the door open. “I think you’re forgetting the Beagle 2 disaster.”
“You don’t know for sure he was responsible.”
Malcolm snorted. Flushing the toilet, he strode out of the bathroom and across the bedroom, pausing only to grab a pair of oily overalls as he took himself off to the garage.
“Don’t forget your tea,” Barbara shouted after him. Too late, he had already made it downstairs and out the front door.
As she followed her husband with his mug, the TV transmission cut to a commercial break. An astronaut holding a can of lager was perched on the back of a rearing horse, set against the backdrop of a red desert. “Stallion, sponsors of Who Wants to go to Mars,” said the voiceover. The handsome space-cowboy lifted his visor and took a gulp from his can before thrusting the label towards the camera. “Stallion extra-strength lager. Putting men on Mars.”
In the garage, Barbara found Malcolm in familiar pose: on his back with his Hush-Puppied feet poking out from under the jacked-up MG Midget Mk III sports car that was his pride and joy.
“No use hiding under there, you silly old goat,” she said, heading for the business end of the car.
The sound of his wife’s approaching flip-flops made Malcolm retreat even further under the protective mass of the vehicle.
She toe-poked his protruding feet. “Listen. You should be proud of yourself. In a few hours’ time, one of your former pupils will be the first man on Mars. You’re a neighbourhood celebrity. I’d milk it if I were you.”
“Celebrity, my foot! What happens when the mission goes pear-shaped because Dugdale doesn’t know one end of an Ion Drive from the other? What will they say about his science teacher then?”
Barbara sighed. Peering through the open bonnet, past the high tension leads, spark plugs and coolant hoses, she could just make out the oily scowl on his face.
“That school trip to Stevenage in 2002 still haunts me, Barb.”
“That was twenty-seven years ago, dear.”
“Single-handedly, he destroyed Beagle 2. I know it.”
Malcolm’s mind drifted back to the Airbus, Defence and Space Establishment in Stevenage. The trip to see the construction of the Beagle 2 Mars lander had seemed to go off smoothly, despite the continual misbehaviour of the thirteen-year-old hoodies in his charge. Back then, before cynicism had set in, Malcolm believed he could turn even the roughest of Grimley Comprehensive’s pupils into potential scientists. In particular, he’d regarded Flint Dugdale as something of a Challenge.
On the way back to Huddersfield, the coach had been stopped by the police following a display of mooning from the back seat. A weary-looking Malcolm had stood alongside the police officers as they searched the gang of undersized thugs for drugs, weapons and stolen goods. He barely batted an eyelid at the stash of contraband emerging from their pockets. But there was no hiding his shock at the small collection of space-age locknuts that had been discovered on the young Dugdale, hidden inside a packet of cigarettes tucked into his left sock. Malcolm had been too stunned to say anything, wondering how – and from where – Dugdale had obtained those fixings.
The bad feelings in his water had started soon after and quickly turned into a guilty obsession with the Beagle 2 mission. He found himself following every update, every newsflash, dreading the worst. And, sure enough, on Christmas Day 2003, contact with the lander had been lost during its descent to Mars.
For years Malcolm had been plagued by nightmares, convinced the young hooligan had removed some vital fixings. And then, one cold January morning in 2015, he awoke to hear his radio alarm announce that the lonely little lander had been spotted on Mars, its petal-like solar panel still closed due to failed, or missing, fixings. Solid evidence, as far as he was concerned, that Dugdale had sabotaged the mission.
And now, by some monstrous twist of fate, that same boy had grown into the man in charge of the spaceship carrying the first group of colonists to Mars. How could that be? Malcolm asked himself, not for the first time. How had they allowed Dugdale to take over after the unfortunate death of Commander Lionheart? Malcolm could only think that the brute had somehow bullied his way into command.
Barbara tutted at the distant stare in her husband’s eyes and searched for a conveniently flat surface on which to deposit his morning cuppa. Malcolm snapped out of his trance and shook his head as he became aware of her plans. “No, not on there!” he cried.
Too late. She had plonked the mug on top of the car battery, sloshing hot tea over the terminals and causing sparks of electricity to snap, crackle and pop.
Malcolm groaned and laid his head back on the cold, hard concrete as he gazed past the drips to watch his wife flip-flopping her way through the open garage doors and across the lawn. Next door, he could see the lovey-dovey couple making last minute adjustments to their Union Jack bunting. A street party had been scheduled to coincide with the descent to Mars. Malcolm heard the woman call out from the top of a stepladder being steadied by her husband. “Hiya, Babs. Not long now. Malcolm must be so proud to think he taught the first man on Mars!”
“Oh, yes,” answered Barbara with a cheerful wave. “Chuffed to bits.”
Under the MG Midget Mk III Malcolm grimaced. “First man on Mars? Worst man on Mars, more like!”
Chapter 2 posted
- Jerry-built by useless robots, the first base on Mars awaits its British colonists. It’s nearly ready, too. Just lacking food, water and doors …
08:30, 24th March 2029 – 46, Culpepper Drive, Huddersfield, Yorkshire
Whenever retired science teacher Malcolm Brimble got a ‘bad feeling in his water’ it was usually a pretty accurate portent of doom. For eight months, in spite of some powerful antibiotics, the feeling had been worsening.
“It’s going to be a disaster, Barb,” he moaned through the open door of their en suite bathroom.
“They’re saying it’s looking good,” Barbara countered. She was perched on the end of the bed, nursing two freshly made mugs of tea and staring at the TV. The pictures from Mayflower III, in orbit above Mars, showed the crew of Britain’s first manned mission to the Red Planet high-fiving one another.
Malcolm looked up from his ablutions and caught sight of the shaven-headed Mission Commander Flint Dugdale. “No, I can’t look at him!” He nudged the bathroom door shut to block the offending view of Dugdale spraying the contents of a can of Stallion lager into the zero-G atmosphere.
“People change,” his wife called through the door.
“Not that one. Not him. Five years I had him. Bottom of the bottom science set.”
“Come on, he was a teenager. The mission’s so close now; what could possibly go wrong?”
Malcolm cracked the door open. “I think you’re forgetting the Beagle 2 disaster.”
“You don’t know for sure he was responsible.”
Malcolm snorted. Flushing the toilet, he strode out of the bathroom and across the bedroom, pausing only to grab a pair of oily overalls as he took himself off to the garage.
“Don’t forget your tea,” Barbara shouted after him. Too late, he had already made it downstairs and out the front door.
As she followed her husband with his mug, the TV transmission cut to a commercial break. An astronaut holding a can of lager was perched on the back of a rearing horse, set against the backdrop of a red desert. “Stallion, sponsors of Who Wants to go to Mars,” said the voiceover. The handsome space-cowboy lifted his visor and took a gulp from his can before thrusting the label towards the camera. “Stallion extra-strength lager. Putting men on Mars.”
In the garage, Barbara found Malcolm in familiar pose: on his back with his Hush-Puppied feet poking out from under the jacked-up MG Midget Mk III sports car that was his pride and joy.
“No use hiding under there, you silly old goat,” she said, heading for the business end of the car.
The sound of his wife’s approaching flip-flops made Malcolm retreat even further under the protective mass of the vehicle.
She toe-poked his protruding feet. “Listen. You should be proud of yourself. In a few hours’ time, one of your former pupils will be the first man on Mars. You’re a neighbourhood celebrity. I’d milk it if I were you.”
“Celebrity, my foot! What happens when the mission goes pear-shaped because Dugdale doesn’t know one end of an Ion Drive from the other? What will they say about his science teacher then?”
Barbara sighed. Peering through the open bonnet, past the high tension leads, spark plugs and coolant hoses, she could just make out the oily scowl on his face.
“That school trip to Stevenage in 2002 still haunts me, Barb.”
“That was twenty-seven years ago, dear.”
“Single-handedly, he destroyed Beagle 2. I know it.”
Malcolm’s mind drifted back to the Airbus, Defence and Space Establishment in Stevenage. The trip to see the construction of the Beagle 2 Mars lander had seemed to go off smoothly, despite the continual misbehaviour of the thirteen-year-old hoodies in his charge. Back then, before cynicism had set in, Malcolm believed he could turn even the roughest of Grimley Comprehensive’s pupils into potential scientists. In particular, he’d regarded Flint Dugdale as something of a Challenge.
On the way back to Huddersfield, the coach had been stopped by the police following a display of mooning from the back seat. A weary-looking Malcolm had stood alongside the police officers as they searched the gang of undersized thugs for drugs, weapons and stolen goods. He barely batted an eyelid at the stash of contraband emerging from their pockets. But there was no hiding his shock at the small collection of space-age locknuts that had been discovered on the young Dugdale, hidden inside a packet of cigarettes tucked into his left sock. Malcolm had been too stunned to say anything, wondering how – and from where – Dugdale had obtained those fixings.
The bad feelings in his water had started soon after and quickly turned into a guilty obsession with the Beagle 2 mission. He found himself following every update, every newsflash, dreading the worst. And, sure enough, on Christmas Day 2003, contact with the lander had been lost during its descent to Mars.
For years Malcolm had been plagued by nightmares, convinced the young hooligan had removed some vital fixings. And then, one cold January morning in 2015, he awoke to hear his radio alarm announce that the lonely little lander had been spotted on Mars, its petal-like solar panel still closed due to failed, or missing, fixings. Solid evidence, as far as he was concerned, that Dugdale had sabotaged the mission.
And now, by some monstrous twist of fate, that same boy had grown into the man in charge of the spaceship carrying the first group of colonists to Mars. How could that be? Malcolm asked himself, not for the first time. How had they allowed Dugdale to take over after the unfortunate death of Commander Lionheart? Malcolm could only think that the brute had somehow bullied his way into command.
Barbara tutted at the distant stare in her husband’s eyes and searched for a conveniently flat surface on which to deposit his morning cuppa. Malcolm snapped out of his trance and shook his head as he became aware of her plans. “No, not on there!” he cried.
Too late. She had plonked the mug on top of the car battery, sloshing hot tea over the terminals and causing sparks of electricity to snap, crackle and pop.
Malcolm groaned and laid his head back on the cold, hard concrete as he gazed past the drips to watch his wife flip-flopping her way through the open garage doors and across the lawn. Next door, he could see the lovey-dovey couple making last minute adjustments to their Union Jack bunting. A street party had been scheduled to coincide with the descent to Mars. Malcolm heard the woman call out from the top of a stepladder being steadied by her husband. “Hiya, Babs. Not long now. Malcolm must be so proud to think he taught the first man on Mars!”
“Oh, yes,” answered Barbara with a cheerful wave. “Chuffed to bits.”
Under the MG Midget Mk III Malcolm grimaced. “First man on Mars? Worst man on Mars, more like!”
Chapter 2 posted
- Jerry-built by useless robots, the first base on Mars awaits its British colonists. It’s nearly ready, too. Just lacking food, water and doors …
'The Worst Man on Mars' Opening Book Chapters
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