The Pedestal (33 page)

“Okay, so there it is,” he says with a weary grimace. “If you’re watching this, it’s likely that I didn’t succeed. But
you
still can, and here’s how: if my files have all made it across, you’ll find an executable named
pedestal
. Execute it from your implant, and the program will do the rest—it’ll scourge the nexus like wildfire.”

At once, his face softens, abruptly drained of the adrenaline which has been driving his monologue thus far. He looks so alone, so vulnerable. My heart breaks to see him like this; though he was alive and kicking, I know his mental state was eclipsed by the deterioration at work in his body. Man, I’m not sure how much more of this I can take.

“I know this is a lot to ask of you, Wil. Maybe it’s too much—I guess that’s for you to decide. If you don’t want to be a part of this, no one’s gonna blame you—least of all
me
. And if that’s your prerogative, the best thing you can do is delete these files. Every last one, Wil—no souvenirs.”

He looks away from his reflection now, eyes settling on his wringing hands.

“I know you must feel betrayed that I’ve kept this from you for all these years, and I’m truly sorry. It hasn’t been an easy secret to keep, believe me. There’s no one I trust more than you—”

Without warning, Arthur spins to look at the bank of stalls, gaze snapping to and fro. “Who’s there?” he barks, breathing heavily again. His behavior seems manic to me, verging on explosive; I’m flushed with unbearable guilt that he’s become so rattled, and that I never knew. “I said who’s there!” he shouts.

Suddenly, the entrance door creaks open off to his side; with blurring speed, Art swivels his head toward it. “Well, well,” an obnoxious voice intones, “I thought I smelled an old fart.”

My mouth drops open. Through Arthur’s eyes, I’m watching myself—albeit a younger, healthier, and better-dressed version—strutting into the bathroom like a miswired fool. “Guess who just got IntelliQ approved for portal testing?” I spout through a smirk. Arthur’s gaze—and therefore my field of view—snaps back to the stalls, where a door is creeping open.

“C’mon, Art. Don’t hate me because I’m efficient,” my digital self says. “And beautiful.” But Arthur’s glued to that stall door, huffing like he’s been running sprints. He takes a step toward the open stall, and when he peeks in, I nearly shout in dismay from my bed.

I recognize the neatly plucked eyebrows first, then the fat cheeks.

“So we going, or what?” I say—the recorded me, not
me
—“Gizi’s or bust, Art.”

“Sure,” Arthur replies, eyes still locked on Keith; my ex-boss lingers in the protective seclusion of his stall, wearing a lipsticked Mona Lisa smile. One look into his reptilian eyes reveals that he knew exactly what was coming—that Arthur would depart the equation soon enough; I feel like I might vomit. “Let’s get going, birthday boy,” Art says, snatching an absorbent towel from a dispenser by the sink. As he wipes the sweat from his face, the recording ends, disengaging my senses to the unlit throw of my dorm.

It was a long time ago, but I remember that day well. We had a nice lunch at Gizi’s—I had manicotti, Arthur: fettuccini alfredo; I recall that Arthur even ordered me a little cupcake with a candle in it and conned our waitress into singing Happy Birthday. Back at the office, we finished out the work day as usual, with me none the wiser to his demise. Later that evening, Art bowed out early from an impromptu poker game at my apartment because he wasn’t feeling well.

The next day he was dead.

I’m crying profusely now, hot tears cutting rivulets down gaunt cheeks. I’ve always disliked Keith, but it seems I was too morbidly fascinated with his eccentricities to discern the larger truth—that he truly was a malevolent fiend, with no moral compass and no respect for human life. If I had the means, I’d risk life and limb hitching back to Earth just for the pleasure of kicking the snot out of that androgynous pile of rotten circuit scrap. He once warned that I’d regret calling him out, that I’d wish I could take it all back.

He was wrong.

My only regret is that I let my social sensibilities keep me from doing more than smarting off to her—I mean him. It.

Breakfast is a tram wreck: Rogers is teetering on the verge of vomiting, and keeping from falling asleep in my eggs is quite a feat. Cutterly cackles as he chews, grinning broadly at the misery of his pathetic underlings;
You’ve brought this on yourselves
, his smile seems to chide. I’m relieved that he seems to have forgotten our hallway run-in last night, yet I haven’t stopped thinking about what lies in store for me once Grogan returns.

After breakfast, Rogers unpacks his proverbial luggage in the kitchen sink; he seems to feel better afterward, except that—big surprise—now he’s starved. Cutterly has little sympathy, though; the breakfast ship has sailed, so Rogers’ll just have to wait until lunch.

There’s a lot of work to do this morning—operations may be officially on hold, but the Queen hasn’t slowed down production for our sake. We pass the morning down the usual checklist of pod-picking and garden cleanup, bickering all the while. In the short time since Fiona left us we’ve already slipped into gross inefficiency. I guess we took her direction for granted—

Pick that one right there, please.

Leave that one until tomorrow; it’s not fully developed yet.

—and without it, we find ourselves taking liberties that I suspect she would never have tolerated.

No one’s interested in killing himself over the seedpods, yet they’ve been growing higher and higher up the tree with the passage of time, as if the Queen derives some pleasure from making life more hazardous for us. Incidentally, if you’ve never attempted to climb a tree in an atmospheric suit, let me assure you that it’s much more challenging than you might imagine. Nevertheless, we gather what we can; maybe we pluck some that aren’t quite ripe, and maybe we leave behind a few that are.

I guess we just don’t care.

In our defense, it’s not like our jobs come with any built-in gratification. Unlike Fiona, spending our waking hours in the company of killer hybrids doesn’t fulfill a lifelong dream; nor does a single one of us care about the advancement of science, particularly where these vegetative freaks are concerned. Save for survival, we have no personal stake in our activities here.

Accordingly, we make do with the bare minimum of effort, carrying out our meaningless tasks with the zeal of robots. Lazy, sloppy, grudging robots. Okay, now that I’ve said it aloud, I realize we sound more like grumbling kids at self-esteem camp, the ones who only show up at all for the free food. Blessedly, I’m too tired to feel ashamed.

The next several days flip by like carbon copies. We’ve become a quiet bunch, lost in our respective thoughts regarding the barrenness of our future. I can’t speak for the other guys, but I’m feeling very aware that Fiona was the celestial body whose gravity kept us all in the same orbit; without her around, we’ve drifted into disconnected trajectories, and who knows if we’ll ever cross paths again.

Each of us mourns Fiona’s absence in his own way—some more intensely than others— and I wonder if our indifference to busywork isn’t fallout from her leaving. I’m pretty sure that’s the case with me. If Cutterly and Rogers weren’t here to ogle me along, I’d probably sulk in bed until my limbs shriveled up like jerky.

Grogan returned this morning, and he wasn’t alone. Four PRMC “consultants” have joined us and are presently poring through the campus with a fine-toothed comb. Officially, they’re here to streamline operations, to promptly retool the facility for full-scale production. Based on what I’ve seen so far? They’ve come all this way just to throw dirt in our faces—“This doesn’t meet minimum code requirements,” and “That conflicts with Interplanetary Settlement Safety code ten sixteen point four.” Bunch of cranks, as if PRMC even bothered to put us through any training before putting us to work. Of our original group, only Fiona and Grogan have so much as laid eyes on a representative of our employer.

Until today, that is.

The worst of it is my new roommate. With all the new bodies, we’ve had to play musical rooms a little; Rogers and Cutterly are now sharing a dorm—let me tell you, that didn’t go over well—two of the new guys are bunking together in what was once Cutterly’s room, another has taken over Fiona’s old room, and I’m sardined with a mammoth, muscle-bound crank named Skelly. He snores and farts in his sleep, and that’s truly the best I can say about him. One other thing, though: sometimes if I look at him long enough? A faint, familiar bell tolls in the recesses of my memory. But then he smirks, remarking something snarky, like, “You guys have really made a mess of this place,” and whatever familiarity I felt a moment before vaporizes into childish brooding.

You’re the one poisoning the air supply, Farthead
.

On their second day here, the four stooges accompany us to the mother tree to oversee the morning harvest. I hate working with people breathing down my neck—once upon a time, Keith used to do it whenever I let a deadline get too close, and it drove me crazy, then—but these guys have it down to a meticulous science. They’re always there—even if I manage to forget it for a moment—just watching pensively, waiting for the tiniest excuse to belittle my efforts. It’s clear to me that these cranks aren’t interested in making better employees of us; they point out our shortcomings with relish, yet share no corrective wisdom. I suppose they might be building a case to have us replaced—maybe back on Earth, some NFL team’s only chance at dodging prison for a regrettable gangbang is a stint on Mars.

Stranger things have happened, right?

Nevertheless, climbing a predatory tree on Mars when you’re nervous is never a good idea. But what can I do? When the first of the Queen’s seedpods bursts, I happen to be perched precariously in her branches—only a few feet away from the explosion—something like ten feet off the ground. One of the consultants is admonishing me for this risky and ill-planned solution to plucking high-hanging fruit when a blast like gunfire sets my ears to ringing; seeds pelt off me hard enough to sting right through my suit.

I react.

Dropping to a crouch, I throw up my hands to shield my face. Alas, built for more substantial gravity, my muscles grossly overcompensate. I feel the sharp tug of a sheared branch on my sleeve as the overzealous kinetics of my body betray me.

Somewhere in my little pea-brain, I know I’m in trouble. But it’s too late to change my mind. My mass is already committed to motion; momentum has already been established. The fabric of my sleeve rips with a sound like the biting of an apple. An instant loss of pressure deflates my suit, hissing against my stinging ears.

Ten months on Mars is nothing to sneeze at, yet it can’t even begin to compete with a lifetime of primitive, earthly instinct. Adrenaline takes the reins and commands me to act. I obey—opting for flight over fight—stepping back and away from the commotion.

Into the comforting safety of thin air.

For once, I’m thankful for the diminished gravity here. My impact with the ground hurts, yet it’s mercifully understated—more like tripping over a curb than falling from a tree. That’s not to say that I’m out of mortal danger, however. Panic burns my cheeks as stark reality dawns on me: I have precious seconds to live, barring some sort of superhuman intervention.

This is it, I realize; this is my Montague moment—a single, damning mistake that will end my life. I zigged when I should’ve zagged, and there is no such thing as forgiveness.

Desperately, I struggle to plug the hole in my sleeve with a fat, gloved hand; the rush of air from my helmet reduces to an irregular hiss, but it doesn’t stop.

This really is it.

Martian winters are a six-month affair without a single redeeming quality—no snowmen or hot chocolate, for example. More to the point, it’s something like seventy below outside. With my air all but gone, I’m sucking down more freezing carbon dioxide than oxygen; my lungs are simultaneously burning and starving to death.