The Cage of Zeus (2 page)

“Why?”

“Because of the thin atmosphere and the sand particles flying around, the red-colored light waves are scattered, while only the blue-colored light waves reach our eyes, making the sunset look blue. Back then, people used to travel outside the canopy in sealed land rovers just so they could see the real sky. On Mars, the real sky is red during the day and turns blue at night. Tourists traveled outside the canopy because they got a kick out of seeing the sky in colors opposite of what they saw on Earth.”

“How did you go from city to city? Did you have highways like we do now?”

“Road taxes used to be very high. It cost an arm and a leg just to get anywhere. But as the planet became more prosperous, public services grew more affordable, and Mars gradually became a better place to live. That’s because the Earthian government encouraged people to relocate to attract people who could help Mars’s development. The hardships your grandfather faced in his time became just a little bit better during my time. And by the time you grow up, Mars will be an even better place to live. Maybe the atmosphere will be denser and the cities won’t need to be under canopies anymore.”

Once the space program built cities with residential districts in both Earth’s orbit and on the Moon and living off-Earth became more commonplace, human advance into space accelerated with every passing day. Even before the colonization of the Moon was complete, the program began colonizing Mars and, even before that was complete, launched the construction of Asteroid City. The farther humanity got from Earth, the greater the momentum to reach deep space grew. Just as humans had once emerged from some corner of the continent and spread across the Earth, they had begun to scatter their seed across the infinite black universe.

And now they were knocking on Jupiter’s door. A staff of a hundred researchers and engineers was stationed at each of three space stations or experimental cities built in proximity to Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto, Jupiter’s largest moons.

The staff was mainly engaged with two areas of research. One involved the environment surrounding Jupiter, including an exploratory study of the planet and landing missions on its moons. Biologists had also discovered microorganisms and crustaceans in the oceans beneath the layers of ice on Europa and Ganymede, attracting the attention of not just the scientific community but the general public. Images and reports released with each discovery spurred interest in further exploration. Scientists also confirmed the existence of a melted layer of ice beneath the surface of Callisto and were currently in the midst of conducting meticulous research on the ocean discovered under the thick ice crust. Data on the volcanic activity on Io and on the lightning discharge activity on Jupiter were also steadily being collected.

The other research area involved gathering experimental data having to do with space medicine. The biggest problems humanity encountered in space were the health impairments posed by living in environments completely different from that of Earth. Impairments from prolonged exposure to low-gravity environments and space radiation, as well as the effects of stress caused by living for extended periods in cramped residential quarters, were the primary concerns of the researchers. With an even harsher environment than that of Mars, Jupiter was an ideal planet to gather the best medical data. Researchers conducted experiments on not only animals but on human subjects too, drawing the ire of bioethics groups, but a special inspection agency stepped in to ensure no unlawful experiments were being conducted.

“What did the people that first came to Mars eat? What did they do when they got sick? Did they have TV and movies?”

As Rui continued to ask one question after the next, Hasukawa’s wearable bleeped. It was John Prescott, chief of operations.

“Sorry to bother you at home, but there’s been a development.”

“Do we have the assailant?”

“Yeah, we’re talking to him to now. But there’s another matter we need to discuss. Can you get over here?”

“Of course.”

“Sorry.”

“No—” Hasukawa stopped himself from telling Prescott that he’d been bored anyway, remembering his daughter sitting in front of him. After telling Rui to ask her mother to tell her the rest, Hasukawa got up to grab his coat.

When Hasukawa arrived at Mars Police Headquarters, the media hounds were already camped out front. The moment he got out of his car, they swarmed him, sticking their recorders in his face, but Hasukawa managed to push past them and entered the building without saying a word.

Prescott was the only one waiting for him in the division office. “I’ve got someone else on the press conference about the assailant. You and I are going to a briefing.”

“Did we receive a new terror warning?”

“There’s another terrorist group, unrelated to the assassination attempt, on the move. I don’t know the particulars, but we have to take the threat seriously considering their target.”

“What are they targeting? Some sort of government residence?”

“Jupiter. Seems they’re after the space station.”

“All three of them?”

“Just one. Jupiter-I. The special district to be exact.”

“Where did the intel come from?”

“Central Intelligence.”

“Do they have somebody on the inside?”

“Probably, seeing how they gave us a name. The Vessel of Life,” Prescott said.

Hasukawa grimaced. The Vessel of Life was an extremist group espousing a rigid bioethical ideology that had perpetrated countless acts of terror in the past. They frequently targeted bioscience corporations, research facilities, and hospitals and opposed the use of scientific technology to manipulate the human body and other species.

With regard to matters of bioethics, an organization called the Planetary Bioethics Association kept a close watch over the settlements between Earth and Jupiter. It was a legitimate organization, an international agency with the goal of advocating a “happy marriage” between human life and the technologies of genetic engineering. Denouncing the association’s policies as soft, an antigovernment group emerged to form the Vessel of Life.

But their continued acts of extremism made Hasukawa question whether the group really wanted to protect bioethical principles at all. In addition to engaging in demonstrations, public denouncements, and harassment, they even resorted to bombing the facilities of organizations whose activities they wanted to stop. For this reason, the true goal of the Vessel of Life was rumored to be the incitement of political and economic turmoil from behind the cover of ideology.

On the other hand, Vessel members were also active in respectable endeavors such as publishing scholarly books on bioethics and exposing medical malpractice in gene therapy, winning them praise as champions of human rights. Thus, the Vessel of Life was not so much a monolithic organization as a global network of people and factions with disparate motives. Which complicated matters all the more. It was for this reason that many people believed the Vessel of Life was created to take up the mantle for bioethics in ways the Planetary Bioethics Association could not.

“Their aim is to stop the experiments on Jupiter-I,” said Prescott. “The doctors there are conducting some cutting-edge space medicine and reproductive technology experiments.”

“But the Planetary Bioethics Association approved those experiments on Jupiter-I. Why now?”

“The group was against these experiments from the start. They must’ve been waiting to act until they could get together the necessary funds and manpower,” Prescott said. “But to think they’d actually go to Jupiter. It’s hard to believe they’ll stir up much publicity worth their trouble. I hope to hell it all turns out to be a hoax.”

“If they’re prepared to go to Jupiter to carry out their plan, they must think they’ve got a pretty good shot at succeeding. If they haven’t at least come up with a way to penetrate Jupiter-I’s omnidirectional warning system, they wouldn’t even bother to devise a plan of attack.”

“Sorry to cut your vacation short,” Prescott said.

“Please,” said Hasukawa. “You’re going to be holed up here at headquarters for a while yourself, Chief.”

“Better that than the pain of being at home. My niece is having a wedding party I just can’t bring myself to go to. I used the job to beg out of going.”

“Something the matter with the groom?”

“That’s just it. My niece isn’t marrying a man.”

So it was a lesbian wedding. “That’s allowed just about anywhere you go nowadays.”

“Yeah, but here’s where it gets complicated. The woman she’s marrying is also a transgender.”

“She used to be a man?”

“Yeah. She had gender reassignment—became a woman. Yet, she wanted to marry another woman instead of a man and chose my niece as her partner. My niece is fine with it. In fact, she said that if her partner even wanted to go back to being a man, she’d be fine with that too. She even said that she might want to try being a man herself one day.”

“She was joking, right? I know artificial organ transplants have come a long way, but switching sexes on a whim…”

“I hear people change their gender like they change their clothes lately. They go from being a woman to a man and back again and again over a lifetime. Fluid transgenders, they’re called. I don’t know what the kids these days are thinking,” Prescott said. “Are humans starting to choose their sex depending on their circumstances the way clownfish do? If that’s what’s happening, I don’t know if I can handle it.”

“Is that why you decided not to go to the wedding?” Hasukawa said.

“What conversation could I have that doesn’t end with me insulting my niece’s partner? My head hurts just thinking about it. Of course, her friends are going to be there. Look, I understand in theory. This isn’t the twentieth century. The law guarantees the rights of those who call themselves sexual minorities and queer. Discrimination is wrong. Absolutely, positively wrong, I tell you. And anyone that openly shows their disgust, no matter what they may be thinking, is just being a jackass. But actually interacting with one of them is exhausting to people like me who were raised on traditional values. You must think I’m a coward.”

“Of course not.”

“Tell me, how old is your daughter now?”

“She’s six,” Hasukawa said.

“Then brace yourself. Your little girl won’t necessarily stay a girl forever.”

Hasukawa lost his first wife to illness. The Planetary Bioethics Association had informed him then that since he had no children, Hasukawa had the right to inseminate synthetic eggs containing his dead wife’s DNA with his own sperm, have an artificial womb carry the child to term, and register that child as his own.

Hasukawa had declined.

He couldn’t imagine raising the child himself and continuing to work at the same time. He could have hired a babysitter, but what would have been the point if he’d simply let the sitter raise the child? That would have been the same as having a convenient pet. If that were the case, he would have been much better off remaining a widower and throwing himself into his work.

Even so, he ended up remarrying in his forties, having succumbed to loneliness.

Rui was born to Hasukawa and his second wife, Kyoko. By the time his daughter would be old enough to marry, Hasukawa would be over sixty. When that time came, there was no guarantee that she would still be a woman, according to Prescott.

As much as such a thing would sadden him as a father, Hasukawa was also resigned to the fact that children grew up. He wanted Rui to go on being a girl, of course, but if she were to declare herself a fluid transsexual, Hasukawa didn’t have the right to reject her even if he might protest. The Planetary Bioethics Association had done away with such restrictive sociopolitical paradigms and established laws to guarantee one’s gender and sexual identities. The individual’s choice to change one’s gender however many times and to marry someone of any gender was now protected by law.

There was only one choice forbidden on Earth and Mars, and that was the bioengineering of an intersex human having both male and female reproductive organs and then actually registering that person as
intersex
.

Of course not everyone chose to live as a fluid transgender, even while that right was guaranteed by law. Fluids were a minority, and an overwhelming majority still held prejudices and bigoted views on such a lifestyle.

“When I was a kid,” Prescott continued, “I imagined the future and going to space to be something more—you know, spectacular. Sure, we succeeded in making many dreams come true: the lunar cities have grown, the Martian cities are more accessible, the mysteries surrounding Jupiter were solved, our life expectancy is longer thanks to advances in space medicine, and we can even prevent senile dementia. Humanity is on the verge of sweeping across the entire solar system. And yet, we haven’t been able to eliminate the fighting and killing and terrorism on Earth, or the Moon or on Mars. I used to believe that the farther we got from Earth, the more enlightened we would become about how small we are in relation to the universe and therefore become more humble, more peaceful. But the reality was different. We’re still burdened by the intrinsic parts of ourselves that kept us earthbound. And why is that? We refuse to change our Earthian ways no matter how far we’ve come. As long as we insist on clinging to our bodies, we’ll have to go on changing the space environment rather than adapt to it. We’ve yet to become ‘Martians’ or ‘Jovians’ even now. We’re all still ‘Earthians’ living on Mars and Jupiter. We’re imprisoned by this body. This body hinders our psychological growth, like a cage.”

“By that logic, that would mean humans are capable of changing their psyches by altering their physical bodies.”

“And that’s exactly what they’re researching on Jupiter. The experiments are beyond what I’m personally able to tolerate, but they’re working on ways to improve human nature—that much I know. That’s why we have to protect Jupiter-I. For the future of humanity. If anyone has a problem with the experiments, they can ask to discuss it or negotiate the issues. There are any number of peaceful ways to get it done. But if any fringe elements would rather solve this with guns and bombs, we have to stop them with deadly force.”