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    The Martian Wave: 2016
    The Martian Wave: 2016
    The Martian Wave: 2016
    Ebook167 pages2 hours

    The Martian Wave: 2016

    By J Alan Erwine

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    About this ebook

    The Martian Wave: 2016 brings you stories and poems that look at humanity’s exploration and colonization of space, with a special emphasis on our solar system.
    You’ll find fiction from E. M. Eastick, Samuel Van Pelt, Lars H. Hoffmann, Francis W. Alexander, Robert N. Stephenson, Guy Stewart, GC Rosenquist, and Benjamin Cooper. You’ll also find poetry from David C. Kopaska-Merkel, Christina Sng, Shelly Bryant, Lisa Timpf, and M. C. Childs.
    Some of what you read will leave you optimistic about our futures, while other stories and poems may leave you doubting our future, but no matter what, The Martian Wave: 2016 will leave you convinced that our future lies beyond the Earth.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNomadic Delirium Press
    Release dateSep 1, 2016
    ISBN9781370349005
    The Martian Wave: 2016
    Author

    J Alan Erwine

    J Erwine was born Oct. 15, 1969 in Akron, Ohio. Early in his life he was exposed to science, and specifically astronomy. From there on, J’s passion turned to science fiction, a passion that’s never died.Due to family issues, J eventually found himself in Denver, Colorado, where he still lives (well, right outside now.)From the time he could put subject and predicate together on paper, J has been writing stories. None of those early stories exist anymore (thankfully), but that passion for writing has never waned.After several years of rejection, the story Trek for Life was eventually sold to ProMart Writing Lab editor James Baker. It wasn’t Asimov’s, but it was a start. Since that time J has sold more than forty short stories to various small press publishers. In addition ProMart also published a short story collection of J’s entitled Lowering One’s Self Before Fate, and other stories, which is still available. ProMart also published a novel from J entitled The Opium of the People, which sold a few copies before going out of print.The relevance of the novel after the events of September 11th caused J to self-publish the novel, as he felt the story had a lot to say in the new reality we now find ourselves living in. Now, this same book has been re-released by Nomadic Delirium Press.Eventually J would become an editor with ProMart. Then, after the untimely death of ProMart editor James Baker, J would move on to ProMart’s successor Sam’s Dot Publishing. J also spends most of his time working as a freelance writer and editor.J’s novel was voted a top ten finisher in the 2003 annual Preditors & Editors contest, and his short story The Galton Principle won a ProMart contest for best story over 5,000 words. In addition, a number of his stories have been voted “best of” in various issue of The Martian Wave and The Fifth DI... and have been included in Wondrous Web Worlds Vols. 2, 3, 4, and 6.In 2009, the Ephemeris Role Playing Game was released. J is the co-creator of this game, and has written numerous supplements for the game.J has now sold three novels and four short story collections, all of which are still available from various sources, including Smashwords.J currently lives with his amazing wife, three wonderful children, three cats, and a very quiet turtle.

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      Book preview

      The Martian Wave - J Alan Erwine

      THE MARTIAN WAVE

      2016

      Edited by J Alan Erwine

      Published by Nomadic Delirium Press at Smashwords

      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 person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      The Martian Wave is an annual publication of Nomadic Delirium Press. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including physical copying or recording or by any information storage and retrieval systems, without expressed written consent of the author and/or artists.

      The stories and poems in The Martian Wave are works of science fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.

      Cover: Curiosity on Mars

      Cover design by Laura Givens

      First printing September 2016

      Nomadic Delirium Press

      Aurora, Colorado

      http://www.nomadicdeliriumpress.com

      Contents

      Fiction

      MP Rules by E. M. Eastick

      Kaley’s Planet by Samuel Van Pelt

      In a Stranger Space by Lars H. Hoffmann

      Conspiracy of Silence by Francis W. Alexander

      Past Editions by Robert N. Stephenson

      Biking Mars by Guy Stewart

      Crack-Up by GC Rosenquist

      Revolution in 2412 by Benjamin Cooper

      Poetry

      Is Mars Dead? By David C. Kopaska-Merkel

      The Heart of the Sun by Christina Sng

      The Galactic Ghoul by Shelly Bryant

      The Stars May Beckon, But Sill… by Lisa Timpf

      Water Draws Man by M. C. Childs

      (untitled) by David C. Kopaska-Merkel

      Beneath the Crimson Sky by Christina Sng

      Author Bios

      MP Rules

      By E. M. Eastick

      A red dot focused on the bald scalp in front of her. Shelley imagined a matching speck playing on the shag of hair that belonged to the woman opposite, the one whose face she could see twist and stretch as she talked urgently in a broken staccato. The woman’s hand clutched the bald woman's arm. The bald woman pulled and jerked, the panic rising on her face, but she couldn’t free herself from the grip. Soundlessly, the two women crumbled to the dust-covered rock.

      Mars Penitentiary Rule Number One: Two or more persons touching for more than two seconds will be exterminated.

      Shelley flicked her eyes over the other inmates. With only four days to go, she was anxious about the accidental knocks, the violence, and the suicides. She kept her distance from the other prisoners and continued to fossick—more from habit than necessity.

      When the Master Gatekeeper announced the end of the fifty minute exercise period, Shelley and two hundred others filed back into the corridor of Sector 14 and drifted into their individual cells. On her way to Cell 156, she glanced into the cell to her left at the sound of raised voices. A second later, the voices were silent.

      Mars Penitentiary Rule Number Two: Two or more persons sensed in a single cell will be exterminated.

      The metallic but distinctly feminine tones of Gatekeeper Four announced the lock-down. SECTOR 14 DOORS CLOSING IN THREE . . . TWO . . . ONE.

      Shelley glanced at her suprafoam mattress as she settled on the floor and watched the cloudy sheet of blue plasma fill the narrow space of the doorway. The corridor, she knew, would open to the Mars atmosphere seconds after the cell doors were activated, and any bodily fluids left out in the cold would vaporize instantly, ensuring that yet another empty prison cell was available for the next shipment of prisoners.

      She stretched out on the metal floor, her ragged fingernails clawing at an itch hiding in the mop of hair, and recalled the dour faces of the Earth Law Committee—six haughty men in black suits and six iron-faced women in black gowns—as they stood rigid before her and delivered the verdict: Guilty of Treason Against the United States of Earth.

      As a robotician for Security Robotics, consultant to the Government, Shelley accessed the information easily and planted evidence that suggested she intended to sell the design diagrams for the new Starchaser system to the Arthropians. She never intended to sell the secrets to the hostile intergalactic race, but due to careful planning, the crime was proven beyond a doubt.

      The same week, thanks to the Expediency Program, she contentedly joined the other female inmates aboard the Mars Penitentiary Intergalactic Transporter for the leisurely five-month journey. Even the magnetic constraints and repetitive voice-overs in a variety of languages couldn’t dampen her spirits. A free ride to the red planet was exactly what she had hoped for.

      Smiling, Shelley stood and walked to her personal hygiene corner to clean up after the time spent in the red dust of the Quadrangle. The cold mist enveloped her muscles like a familiar blanket, and she closed her eyes, thankful for the technology that brought the Mars polar ice caps to her cell as not only drinking water, but as the heavenly mist that kept her sane.

      The daily dose of hair removal cream oozed from the metallic wall. Baldness was the head-style of choice within Sector 14, but Shelley was one of a number of inmates who left her hair long, and she never bothered with her legs or underarms the way she used to on Earth. Instead, she carefully scraped the sticky gel off the wall and nursed it to the dry spot on the floor where an already substantial mass of goo, collected over an eternity, clumped like a stranded jellyfish.

      Shelley lay on the cool floor and stared at the pile of suprafoam that used to be her mattress. Her prison jumpsuit lay next to her like a ghostly companion, and she touched it tenderly. She had learned the importance of taking care of her only material issue during the first week of her incarceration. A large woman with tattoos on both forearms had tried to step into the corridor with her sleeves rolled up. She lasted half a step.

      Mars Penitentiary Rule Number Four: Any person not wearing full prison attire outside individual cells will be exterminated.

      Prisoners were informed of the simple MP Rules through the repetitive announcements aboard the Intergalactic Transporter long before they landed, but fatalities still occurred. Shelley pushed her fear of the insidious red dot out of her mind and surrendered to another perfect night’s sleep.

      *

      SECTOR DOORS OPENING IN THREE . . . TWO . . . ONE . . .

      The plasma door twinkled to nothing, and Shelley filed into the corridor with her fellow prisoners. The Quadrangle opened in front of them, and the solemn line of women flowered over the dusty expanse. Shelley scratched her skull and walked slowly between the bodies, intuitively avoiding anyone who looked crazy. She kept her head down and scanned the basalt for any specks of solid iron oxide, specifically magnetite, which she may have missed over the last year. She had collected more than enough, but the routine stayed with her like a safety net.

      She glanced up at the massive plasma walls, one at each end of the Quadrangle, which separated the regulated confines of the MP from the deadly Martian environment. She tried to picture the egg-heads who designed the enclosure, a group of geeks giggling over the irony of their construct.

      Mars Penitentiary Rule Number Five: Remember, the plasma walls of your cell and the Quadrangle are for your protection and are NOT impenetrable—you are free to leave whenever you like. Enjoy your stay!

      From the files Shelley had studied on Earth, she knew the absurd statement was true. The plasma walls could be easily penetrated and were designed to reform back to an airtight barrier instantly, maintaining the atmospheric integrity of the overall facility. Regrettably, any prisoner tempted to venture to the outside without appropriate protection would succumb to the low pressure of the Martian environment in a matter of seconds. The highly efficient automated cleansing detail would take care of the rest.

      Shelley learned that luring prisoners to their demise was exactly what the Earth Law Council intended, as it served as a convenient means of controlling population. In fact, the Government’s official documents went so far as to state that presenting the Rules to impending inmates and acknowledging the human right to freedom satisfied the Earth’s collective duty of care. She dropped her eyes and smiled at the final MP rule. She was free to leave, so that was exactly what she planned to do.

      For the next three days, Shelley checked her preparations, recalculated her figures, and replayed the escape plan over and over in her head. She was ready.

      *

      SECTOR 14 DOORS OPENING IN THREE . . . TWO . . . ONE . . .

      Shelley feigned a farewell salute to the invisible Gatekeeper as she walked to the Quadrangle. With secretive eyes, she scanned the crowd for unfamiliar faces and detected the frightened expressions and shaking hands of the new arrivals. Most of them wouldn’t survive a week.

      The process of assimilating new prisoners into the MP system was not complicated, but it was lengthy, as new arrivals were released into the Quadrangle in accordance with sector vacancies. As each of the twenty-four sectors cycled through the Quadrangle each day—allowing approximately 50 minutes of 'outdoor' time, four minutes each side for movement to and from cells, and another 160 seconds to cleanse the area—it took a full solar day to empty the incoming fleet of Intergalactic Transporters. Shuttles ferried the prisoners from the Central Planetary Landing Dock to the various penal facilities scattered around the more stable equatorial regions of the planet. Shelley marveled at the logistical challenges the Government had overcome to make MP an elaborate death camp, with a perfect record of no escapes—a record she planned to break.

      She faced the northern plasma wall and pictured what she couldn’t see, but what she knew lay beyond. An open space containing pipes and cables separated the Quadrangle from the Environment Control Center, the cell devoted entirely to maintaining the internal atmosphere. Beyond the southern plasma wall, a similar open space and building housed the automated gatekeepers, catering and laundry robots, hygiene maintenance programs, and other artificial intelligence, which controlled and performed less-savory services like facility cleansing and hostility avoidance. Landing and Unloading Ports were located at the far extents of both buildings.

      Shelley wasn’t as concerned with the new prisoners as she was with the two Maintenance Engineers, who were in the process of checking the external components contained in the open space on the opposite side of the shimmering plasma wall. The ME’s, two per facility, arrived aboard the Intergalactic Transporters and returned to Earth three months later as sole occupants of the great vessels. Besides the prisoners themselves, the ME’s were the only humans on the planet, the difference being that an ME's stay was temporary.

      Having memorized the maintenance schedule, Shelley knew her exercise time for that day coincided with the outdoor checks. Necessary, if she were to borrow the space suits needed to tackle the Martian environment, but risky. She couldn’t see out through the plasma barrier, but she knew the ME’s could see in.

      The suprafoam padding under Shelley’s jumpsuit began to chaff under her arms and between her thighs. She moved slowly and deliberately back toward the open corridor and wiped a film of sweat

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