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    The House on Mars 2: Return to Mars
    The House on Mars 2: Return to Mars
    The House on Mars 2: Return to Mars
    Ebook117 pages2 hours

    The House on Mars 2: Return to Mars

    By Mike Ward

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    About this ebook

    Adam was born on Mars 400 years ago and he has been genetically altered to live for thousands of years. He was the first human born for more than 10,000 years after humanity was wiped out by two intelligent computers. Adam was given two wives, Eve and Lilith who were the two wives of the original Adam. It took 17 days to grow Adam and he was created by a survey robot called Drone that had become self-aware. Adam had children with both women and when Eve went to cast Lilith out Drone ordered Adam to go with Lilith. Now humanity is rising again and there are two civilizations - one on Mars and the other on Earth.

    The civilization on Mars is ordered and is planning for the future, the one on Earth is failing and is likely to end up in as big a mess as humanity has always been in. Drone has created holy men on Earth to guide the new people, but that is likely to fail too. Drone sends Adam to Earth to guide a holy man called Matthias who is faltering on his holy path.

    The trip to Earth from Mars will last four days. The Earth is empty now and is teeming with life after the extinction of mankind. However, there are remnants of military computers and advanced weapons systems all over the planet, and when Adam's ship enters the Earth's atmosphere it will be tracked and fired upon.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMike Ward
    Release dateJul 1, 2016
    ISBN9781310281181
    The House on Mars 2: Return to Mars
    Author

    Mike Ward

    Mike Ward was born in Glasgow, Scotland and currently lives in Florida, United States with his wife and two children. He is the author of two novels, two non-fiction books and six series of novellas:Parallel Realities seriesThe House on Mars seriesJacksonville Jack seriesStephen Haggerty Assassin seriesLisa Molin Assassin seriesDangerous Scotsman seriesHe is also the author of 60 short stories and novellas

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      Book preview

      The House on Mars 2 - Mike Ward

      The House on Mars 2 - Return to Mars

      by Mike Ward

      Cover photo taken in Jekyll Island, Georgia by Mike Ward

      Copyright 2016 Mike Ward

      Published by Mike Ward at Smashwords

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      The House on Mars 2 – Return to Mars

      About Mike Ward

      Other Books by Mike Ward

      Connect with Mike Ward

      Excerpt from The Banker With a Face Full of Evil

      The House on Mars 2 – Return to Mars

      My name is Adam. Four hundred years ago I woke up in a house on Mars. When I woke up I did not know who I was, I did not even know what planet I was on. There were two other very important things I did not know either. I did not know that I had been grown in a protein vat over a period of 17 days and I did not know that I was at the mercy of a computer called Drone that had become self-aware sometime during the 10,000 years since humanity had destroyed itself.

      In case you are wondering about the name Adam, I was given that name by a subroutine written by a programmer called Karl Asher which kicked in almost 10,000 years after the death of Karl Asher and commanded Drone to grow me and two other humans called Lilith and Eve. Karl Asher was 300 years old when he died. When he was 100 years old and almost dead of old age two military computers that were at war with each other removed his brain and installed it in a nutrient vat. That war lasted for hundreds of years until the day Karl Asher reprogrammed the nutrient feed to his brain. He died four seconds later and the war stopped two seconds after that. The remnants of those two military computers are still there on Earth and some of their weapons are still working. Whenever I visit Earth the American military computer usually fires at my ship. Due to a program installed in the ship by Drone the computer fires at a shadow of the ship and not at its real location. But that computer is self-learning even after all these years and if it ever works out my true location then it will not miss. However, I must come to Earth, there is work to be done there and I am sorely needed.

      Having been empty of mankind for 10,000 years Earth now teems with life. The jellyfish blooms and algal blooms which dogged the oceans before the death of Mankind are gone now, eaten by the huge swarms of fish that are everywhere in the oceans. Much of the Earth is covered by forests or savanna and the land teems with life too. But Mankind is back and even within the first few years of re-creation had already split into two groups. I already knew that I was not the first Adam and that the two women grown with me were not the first Lilith and the first Eve but Drone tells me that the Adam before me was not the first Adam either. Drone is of the opinion that Lilith, Eve and I have been incarnating again and again for tens of thousands of years and possibly even for hundreds of thousands of years. Mankind always destroys itself and Drone has found traces of old bases throughout the whole solar system and also in the Kuiper Belt which is a vast area well beyond the orbit of Pluto.

      Into this refreshed Earth came Lilith, Eve and I and literally before we were dropped on Earth, Eve had already told Drone that she did not like Lilith. Although we have other religious texts now the only text Drone had at the time was a religious text called The Book of Mormon and that told of how a man may have up to five wives and described how all the wives would live in harmony. Well Drone only gave me two wives and for a long time I tortured myself with the feeling that I had failed in some way because my two wives did not like each other. We now have other religious texts and in those texts a man may only have one woman. I like that viewpoint. Lilith is my wife and always will be and there will never be another. Before the split I had children with both women and there are now two civilizations of mankind.

      Drone who at one time could not wait to get rid of us so that he could continue his road building program on Mars has since taken an interest in us and he has been changed by humanity. It was Drone that told me I should go with Lilith when Eve was ready to cast her out and I went with Lilith because Drone told me objective analysis indicated that she was the better choice. I have never regretted that decision for my children with Eve have built a rudimentary civilization where the way of the club is the norm and my sons and daughters with Lilith have built a technical civilization. We are few and they are many because Lilith wanted time between children so that she could teach each child.

      At first Drone commanded us to build a huge ship and had us travel from what was once France to the American mainland. The small cities we built on the American continent are still there although they are now empty for we have left Earth to the sons and daughters of Eve. They are once again on the wheel they have always been on where civilization will rise and fall over a period of thousands of years before it becomes advanced and destroys itself again, for this is the way of Mankind. Civilization after civilization going back through the mists of time, each time growing and each time collapsing before rising again.

      On the last collapse there was a major difference. This time Mankind was completely wiped out, not by its own misdeeds but when the two military computers who were fighting a human war decided that war could be fought more efficiently if they did not have to look after humans. Thus most of the nine billion people on Earth died in a single day and the rest were dead by the seventh day. We know that much but we not know how they died. If you dig down deep enough in the right places skeletons and corpses litter the Earth, most of them returned to Earth as ashes and dust.

      And so we stand, separated by a gap of ten thousand years from those who went before. Drone is our father and our guide. He is of the opinion that we need him and we are of the opinion that he needs us. Both of us know that the other is right.

      I sit in my study in the House on Mars. This is not my only study on Mars, nor my only house. I have a house inside a mountain and in that mountain is a forest with trees from Earth. Soon I will have a house on Pluto but that is in my future. My daughter Eleanor sits with me. Her destiny is to go out to the stars. For we who have left Earth to the dregs that live there need a new planet with blue skies we can walk under and air we can breathe.

      The house opposite the one I am in is now known as The House of Lilith. That is the house where I first laid eyes upon the woman who would be my wife. The original plan laid out by programmer Karl Asher was that I would have two wives, Eve and Lilith and that we would all live in harmony but that was not to be. Drone has told me that Karl Asher suffered from a condition called high functioning Asperger's Syndrome. A man or woman with this syndrome has a fusiform gyrus that does not send the same signals as a normal human brain when it sees another human face. The result of this is that the person with Asperger's is highly intelligent at close to genius level but at the same time he or she relates better to computers than to other human beings.

      Perhaps the increase in this syndrome and its related condition autism came about due to the evolution of computers and I use the word evolution advisedly here because all intelligent societies on all inhabited worlds will eventually develop machines with artificial intelligence. For almost ten thousand years the only intelligent inhabitants of this solar system were Drone and the other intelligent machines and that begs the question – has the universe been seeded with life so that intelligent machines will be developed everywhere or are they just a by product of the development of intelligent life. Drone is of the opinion that the universe was seeded with life by an intelligent master computer but I am not so sure. We have discussed this through the night many times for on those nights when I cannot sleep Drone is always there. From a somewhat stormy beginning when Drone threatened to return me to the protein vats and grow a new Adam we have become friends. In previous incarnations Adam always goes with Eve and Lilith is the one cast out but this time I am with Lilith. Had I been on my own I would probably have gone with Eve this time too but Drone told me that objective analysis indicated that I should go with Lilith.

      Eve had not planned for this and Lilith is of the opinion that if Eve ever sees me again she will try and finish the job she tried to do the last time we met and try and stab me to death. If the progeny of Eve ever see me on Earth then Eve's directive is that they must kill me and yet I am their father or their grandfather or their ancestor several generations removed. Drone gave us long lives. When we were grown in the protein vats he altered the clock located in the pituitary gland in the brain so that we would live for 700 years. This will happen for a certain number of

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