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Dream Afar
Dream Afar
Dream Afar
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Dream Afar

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Virtual reality on Mars, sabotage aboard a colony ship, genetic transformation into monsters . . .

Come join Jess and Jaymie as they struggle against the Gaia First Foundation's efforts to send humanity back to Earth. Empathize with First Captain Djon Farwalker's struggles to keep his crew together in the face of opposition to their mission. See Lou fight his inner monster and try to come to grips with what has been done to him.

Three tales of the human spirit, challenged to move beyond what has always been known, to strive for more, to dream of what more can be done.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 7, 2012
ISBN9781301325733
Dream Afar
Author

Erin M. Hartshorn

Erin M. Hartshorn is a desert rat transplanted to a humid climate. Her ideal home has bookcases in every room. She is a moderator at Forward Motion for Writers, an online writers community. Her fiction has appeared both on-line and in print in various places, placed in the PARSEC short story contest, earned honorable mentions in the Writers of the Future contest, and been shortlisted for the UPC Award. When she's not writing, she enjoys various handicrafts, though she prefers spending time with her family.

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    Dream Afar - Erin M. Hartshorn

    Dreampunk

    One: In One Ear . . .

    Jesenia Farnham tugged at her corset. She was wearing it looser than fashion dictated, she knew, but her figure looked good enough without boning. Her gold and brown dress fit right in here at Mars Steampunk. The resurgence of steampunk here amused her -- Mars was all about creating a new future from a given past. This was only her second convention, and she took some time to look around.

    Men strolled by in vests and bowlers or top hats, alongside women dressed in everything from perfect Victorian crinoline to outfits identical to the men's. Jess had to admit that dressing up was part of the fun as people fell into character as deep as any method actor might. Next time, she would take the time to create one of the eccentric costumes of female aviators or inventors. She wasn't here today to enjoy the convention, however. She was meeting with one of the men who wanted to destroy her livelihood, and she had to convince him she agreed with his goals.

    The boulevard had several large mechanical creations that she couldn't quite see the details on because of the crowds around them. The objects smelled of gear oil and copper polish, while the crowds smelled like any pack of humans clustered together. One of many changes made to the Victorian aesthetic was the scrupulous cleanliness among the hoi polloi. Not, of course, that anyone here considered themselves anything less than the gentility of the time.

    No, not a one was anything but above average. Some things never changed, even if the world itself had.

    She glanced upward, noting again the off-color sky punctuated by the floating ozone farms, put in place to create a barrier to the ultraviolet light that flooded the planet. Beyond those, she knew, Phobos and Deimos orbited, their motion visible at a glance, but they were not above the horizon right now. Even with terraforming, Mars would never be Earth, let alone Earth of the past. Which was as it should be.

    Jess moved away from the displays in the middle of the boulevard. Her friend Margie was meeting her here -- part of Jess's cover so the Gaia First Foundation didn't become suspicious of her motives. Margie would be looking at the jewelry tables, if Jess knew her friend.

    In fact, she almost missed Margie, one more brown silk-and-leather clad person in the crowd. Jess had been expecting Margie to wear something more flamboyant, more like the red-and-black saloon girl motif she'd worn last time or something with a streak of color, perhaps an orange or purple bodice. Instead, Margie wore a tailored tunic and pants that hugged her slim hips, a bandolier festooned with clockwork scarabs slung across her chest. Her hair was pulled back in a severe bun, and her normally bejeweled ears were bare of adornment. A monocle covered her right eye. Only her voice, raised to haggle with the seller, was as Jess expected.

    Fifteen credits for a pair of goggles that could be off the shelf? I'll have to add my own enhancements. I'll give you five.

    Off the shelf? Jess couldn't tell whether the merchant was genuinely upset or playing the role. Off the shelf, you could not use the goggles to peer into the ether and see the invisible made real. Off the shelf, you could not slide these over your eyes and see through the dark. Off the shelf, indeed.

    Jess sighed and made herself as comfortable as she could off to one side of the traffic. Margie was just getting warmed up, and the seller's ridiculous claim about being able to see invisible things, as though being invisible were possible, would only make Margie more intent on getting her way.

    Blend in. Be part of the crowd, Sara, her contact on the train had told her. Dusty will recognize you, but he won't come near you if it's going to attract attention.

    A trio of men walked down the middle of the pedestrian area, shoulder to shoulder and swaggering with the assurance that everyone would know who they were. Or maybe they just knew how good-looking they were -- one black, one brown, one white, each would have looked handsome on his own, clad in the mustard brocade and brown velvet they affected. Together, they drew all eyes.

    They stopped and looked around as though to assess their audience. The one in the middle, the tallest of the bunch, nodded at the other two, and reached inside his vest. He pulled out a harmonica and put it to his lips. The other two began to dance.

    Jess frowned, tilting her head to one side. There was no music, even over her ear implants, yet those nearest to the trio nodded, tapped their feet, or clapped in time to something. Perhaps it was too faint for her ears. She stepped out of the shadow of the table, moving closer.

    She had only taken three steps when someone caught her sleeve. She whirled, and the man jumped back, hands raised.

    A mask composed entirely of discarded gears and washers covered his face, shading his eyes to the point their color was indistinguishable. A scar ran down the left side of his throat. His face so captivated her attention, Jess barely registered that his clothes were black, with a duster coat that was surely too warm for the day. This must be Dusty.

    Yes? she asked.

    Wordlessly, he held out his hand as though to take hers. However, in his palm sat two ear buds, stylized with gears and etched with aviator wings. Looking at the crowd around her, Jess realized that most of them had similar buds, though she couldn't tell with those wearing aviator caps. The others presumably didn't care to listen to the music.

    It made sense; no reason to clutter up the public wavenet with all the various bands that must be playing. She wanted to hear this music, too. The trio seemed quite popular. Presumably, these buds also held her instructions -- what the GFF wanted her to do, how she could prove she was one of them.

    How much?

    The man waved his empty hand as though brushing her question aside, then grasped her hand and placed the ear buds into her palm. He folded her fingers over them, smiled at her with metal-inlaid teeth, bowed, and walked away. She stared after him, puzzled. All of that fuss about her not standing out, and then Dusty looked like he'd singled her out for no reason? Maybe they really didn't believe her good intentions.

    Dusty vanished into the crowds in the middle of the display area, next to a sign that read Doctor Emshilling's Amazing Steam-Powered Velocycle! -- a normal hoverbike decorated to look as though it had a boiler. Or maybe it had a boiler that was non-functional. At any rate, it wasn't very interesting, and Jess turned away, placing the buds in her ears and facing the musicians.

    A voice spoke in her ear. Accept overlay programming as part of interface?

    Overlay? No one outside Bioengineering was supposed to know that was possible, and only Bioengineering Two had the details on how it was done. From internal memos, she knew that overlays allowed the coder to interact with her city implants, creating a secondary neural interface with other sensory systems. Useful for military applications, and very worrisome if GFF had it.

    This would be how her instructions came. She tapped her chin with her finger to speak into her implant. Agreed.

    For a moment, nothing appeared to happen, but then music flooded through her. The trio was good.

    At first, she didn't notice the visual changes. Everyone still wore the same clothes, the brass shone, the boilers steamed. As she looked past the boulevard, however, she saw traceries of gears and Art Deco styling on the buildings. A hoverbike swooped past, but her eyes insisted that it was a bat-wing glider.

    The overlay made the steampunk more real. She didn't know what that had to do with GFF's plans, but she'd worry about that later. First, she planned to enjoy the show.

    ~O~

    Jaymie watched the man in the duster -- Scott Williams, known agitator and suspected member of the terrorist group GFF -- make contact. Jaymie had been tracking this opposition cell for months, and it hadn't been easy to convince the department that he should stake out the convention. Far easier had been getting the Woodson Trio registered as performers and assigned a band on the convention ear waves. Easiest of all had been convincing Brian and Andy to take the time off -- they'd been trying to get him to public performances for a while now.

    They were not going to be happy with him if he took off after the suspect, leaving them without his instrument. He'd have to stay put and focus on the new contact, the woman Williams had passed his cargo to.

    He glanced at her. Other than the look of surprise on her face as she listened to the Woodson Trio, nothing about her stood out. Her costume looked almost identical to a dozen others that he could see, despite the ethos of individuality the organizers had assured him was the point of the convention.

    She was reasonably young, mid-twenties, old enough to be working somewhere even if she'd gone for extra schooling, but young enough to believe the lies and idealism of GFF. He'd never caught them recruiting at the uni, but that just meant their operatives were good. They recruited everywhere.

    Jaymie tapped his fingers on top of the harmonica -- a natural action, and not one that would make anyone suspicious. The woman had no idea that her picture had just been taken and sent to HQ for identification. Whoever she was, she would have a file after today, and he would see to it that she regretted joining the GFF.

    None of his thoughts touched his face; he knew that. He'd always had a good poker face, even before he'd signed up for the Army -- and wound up on Mars in the Force instead. His willingness to follow orders had gotten him some extra advanced training, and he'd been allowed to choose his own assignments, within reason. So now he thought through how he was going to impress this girl and make her turn over her secrets while he ran through the riffs and melodies that would segue into Brian and Andy pulling out their own instruments, a ukulele and a tambourine. Not an expected combo, not even here at the convention, but one that worked, especially with their voices.

    The data came back from the department on his implant: Jesenia Farnham, age twenty-four, bioengineer working on Mars hybrid plants. No wonder she'd been recruited; she could take down the whole division if her clearance was high enough, and that would set back the terraforming significantly -- perhaps enough so to send some people back home to Earth, as GFF wanted.

    After the third number, he gave the signal, and the trio ended with a flourish. The crowd applauded, and most of them turned away, including Farnham. He could just have her monitored. It would be easy enough to call it in, get taps on her calls, see what project she had underway at work. Most of that had been put into play automatically already, but he wanted the human contact. He had to talk to her himself.

    I'll be right back, guys, he told his friends.

    Who are you chasing now? Andy hooked his tambourine to his waistband, not looking at Jaymie, but the long-suffering note in his voice was obvious.

    It's not like that, Jaymie lied. I saw this girl . . .

    Brian gave him a push. Then get going. It's about time you had a normal preoccupation. Tammy's talking about trying to fix you up again.

    Normal. Right. But Jaymie let himself be pushed in the direction he wanted to go. He caught up with Farnham just before she reached the vendors on the side of the boulevard.

    I saw you watching us, he said.

    She glanced at him sideways, and he saw that she had hazel eyes, which always seemed a little off to him under the orange sky. They looked great with her dress, though. He shook himself mentally. This was a suspect.

    So were lots of other people. Her voice was amused.

    I only noticed you.

    She stopped and turned to face him. Look, I'm flattered, but I'm really not in the market right now. Why don't you go find someone a little closer to your own age?

    Ouch. I'm not that much older than you. Only thirty-three. Which was another lie, but she'd never find out.

    Still the wrong side of thirty. She took the edge off with a smile and motioned to someone at one of the tables. My friend's waiting for me. Maybe I'll see you again later.

    I'll look for you. That, at least, was no lie.

    He looked over at her friend, who was wearing a rather more severe outfit that still managed to highlight all of her curves, and wished he could send her picture to the department for identification as well. I can probably interest Andy in a double-date, even. He nodded back at his friends. The tambourine player.

    We'll see. She walked off without saying good-bye.

    What would his dad have done in a case like this? Or his granddad? Dad might have followed her anyway; he never was much for subtle. Granddad, though, would say to trust that he'd see her again. Leads always came up more than once if they meant something.

    Sighing, Jaymie headed back to his friends to tell them he struck out.

    Two: Garden of Delight

    Jess had no idea what she was supposed to do about the overlay in her system. Everything looked different, but so what? If she hadn't been a bioengineer, she might have been amazed at the change and wandered around as though in a dream, trying to figure out what was going on. However, she was a scientist, and she had read about the overlay.

    Maybe she'd made a mistake not taking the harmonica player up on his offer of a date. He might be the one who was supposed to explain what Dusty hadn't. That could even be why Dusty had approached her there. Damn, she was stupid. Had she blown her chance?

    On the other hand, if he wasn't her next contact, this left her free to figure out what was going on and to find out who knew something. And how she could use that information to break GFF into little splinters for threatening her work.

    She was a child of Mars. Not born here, of course, but young enough when she came that she'd grown up used to the gravity and the dust. She liked living on a new planet, and she loved being part of creating it. This was her world, with a culture and life unlike any that had been before. Just like steampunk -- common past, new future, take what they wanted and grow the rest.

    Gaia First Foundation, though, didn't like that. They didn't like her adding genes from Martian bacteria to Earth species. They didn't like the clothes adapted to the new environment. And most of all, they didn't like humans living here instead of Earth.

    Tough for them. She lived here, and she wasn't giving up Mars for anybody. Even if she had to teach them first-hand what some of those bioengineered species were capable of. Or engineered retroviruses.

    Wow, fierce look, Margie said. He didn't look that bad to talk to!

    Sorry, I was thinking about work. No, he looks pretty good, I suppose.

    If you're not interested, mind if I ask him out? Margie stared after him. I mean, you sound rather uncommitted.

    He said he had a friend if you wanted to double-date. I think that means he's not interested in you. Jess's voice was sharper than she'd intended.

    Meow. Margie lifted one eyebrow. I was just asking. I got the goggles -- She held up her handbag, indicating that they were inside. --but I won't get them modified in time for the masquerade tomorrow. Not if we're really going to enjoy this convention. What's first?

    Jess smiled and linked her arm through Margie's, drawing her away from the musicians. I think first Ladies Jesenia and Marguerite should attend the fashion show, don't you? I understand that some of the garments will be available for purchase.

    Certainly. I'm always up for shopping.

    As they moved through the crowds toward the pavilion, Jess noticed the overlay settling more firmly into place. The sky softened to a hazy yellow-green, and other colors started to shift as well. Blues popped out here and there, startling her. Inside buildings, under fluorescent lights, they had the full spectrum of colors, but she was used to not seeing the cooler colors outside. After almost two decades, they looked out of place.

    A memory of a butterfly on green grass flickered in her mind, and she felt tears prick her eyes. This nostalgia must be part of what GFF was after -- increasing her sympathy to their cause by reminding her of what she'd left behind. If she had been older when she came here, this ploy might be more effective, but Mars was what was normal now.

    She brushed the tears away discreetly, as if she'd gotten a bit of unexpected dust in her eye, a not-uncommon experience. On Mars, dust was everywhere, in all the shades of red and orange, tracked by foot, floating in the sky, obscuring rough edges.

    When they reached the pavilion, Jess hesitated. Inside, she wouldn't be as aware of the overlay function, and she wanted to know exactly how far the GFF had gone with it. On second thought, Lady Jesenia cannot be bothered with such a crush of people, she said in a lofty tone. I think perhaps I shall stroll over to the fountain to rest my feet for a spell. Then perhaps take a tour about the gardens.

    Suit yourself, Margie replied. Lady Marguerite is all about the shopping. I might find the perfect hat to go with my new goggles. Or perhaps a slip that I'll wear as a dress.

    Hardly an innovative idea, but Jess was sure her friend would manage to make the look her own. Nodding, she said, I may change my mind. If not, I'll be around.

    The fountain had been a popular gathering spot ten years before, when they had been teenagers. Then, the concept of using something so artistic as part of the water recycling process had been new and unusual, as had the idea that it was okay for some of the water to evaporate. Early privation had given rise to a conservative streak, but as more of the terraforming took hold, new advances followed.

    Now, the fountain was just part of the scenery, as unremarkable as the trees with their almost-black leaves that shaded the boulevard. Almost-black without the overlay, anyway. Now they shone a glossy green, like the trees she remembered from home, from Earth. Jess sat on the edge of the fountain and trailed her fingers in the water, marveling at how blue it looked, how pale the water lilies were. The images were at once foreign and familiar, things she had seen in all of her texts, but little that she had experienced herself.

    You can see how right it is, can't you? The voice spoke in her ear as though someone stood behind her, whispering sweet-nothings, but she didn't turn to look. Voices in her implant were commonplace. She should have realized this would be how the instructions would come -- no more contacts,

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