Chapter one.
Special agent Alexander Duncan woke up an hour earlier than the time he set his alarm clock It was twelve going on thirteen and he rolled over for the third time to open his eyes and look at the thermostat on his wall. He had not been sleeping well as of late, and neither had many of the citizens of Tholus. The city's heat traps had not been working as efficiently as normal and outside the city's domed walls it was four hundred degrees below freezing and the city's temperature was decreasing impressively.
At first, he was barely able to see his breath, but within two puffs, they came billowing out of his mouth. His teeth began chattering furiously and so he closed his mouth and could see the two skinny lines of air escaping his nostrils. He was wearing his thermal sleeping suit (zipped all the way up) his body adapting gloves and socks, and he was under three enormous blankets, and the one on top was folded over twice, and yet he still shook and quivered and waited for the city's engineers to fix the problem. He had always heard that if your were to die in the freezing cold, (if say, that the power to a city was cut off like it was in dome four, eleven years ago and 300 peoploids died) than falling asleep was the best thing to do, because you could fall into a deep hibernation and still survive amazingly cold temperatures. If that did not work and you did die, you would already be asleep and you would not know you were dead until you woke up in a world where there was no pain. Life on Mars was full of pain. A deep human longing for the home planet Earth - which Alexander had only seen through the eye of a telescope when he was on a school field trip to the first level of the Government's Underground Base (or the G.U.B) - Earth, he had always been told, was once magnificent but the fifty year plague and The War had made Earth entirely inhabitable. Mars was not only the only hospitable environment but quite suitable and in some ways better than Earth. He did not know whether Mars was better, but he did miss Earth. Man had been occupying Mars for one-hundred and fifty years, and he was thirty-three, so he had never set foot on Earth, but he had always dreamed of seeing a real tree, a real river, a mountain perhaps! or, no, perhaps a forest, a waterfall, clouds! Oh, how he as a child had longed for clouds . . .
He now worked for the government. The government was his mother and father, and he loved it as he imagined he would have loved his parents if he had unknown them, but he certainly would feel more love once the heat was turned back on. He was an agent in the D.I.A.E.A.P, or the Department of Investigations of All Engineers, and Practices, which meant tomorrow he would again have to go to the Applications Dome, the furthest outside the city, and question engineers about Sophronius, the program that controlled 95% of human life on this damned planet.
Quarter of an hour had passed and he had to remove his body adapting gloves because they need to be recharged from working to hard. The function of these contraptions was to adjust the wearer's current body temperature back to 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Now that the temperature in his house was 79 degrees, below zero the gloves quit working and so he took them off let them charge underneath his faux-sun lamp that emulated the sun but gave no heat, and waited for them to become re-energized. He began to worry when the temperature dropped below -100. His body was now stiff with cold, his jaw could no longer chatter and he could not feel any of his appendages. His bones were solid ice, and the movement of any joint sent shards of ice straight into his muscles, his nerves, his synapses, which carried the immense pain back to his ice-block of a head. The water surrounding his eyeballs began to freeze, or so it felt, and right when Alexander thought his heart would freeze and beat not one more beat, a giant hum, a roar, came from all around, from inside Tolus' walls and the temperature rose steadily for the next hour, -101, -96, -84, -75, -66, . . . .
At thirteen o’clock, the temperature inside his house was 55 degrees above zero. Once it reached a certain threshold in the temperature, it slowed down and began to rise increasingly slower. He was told that if they raised the temperature from, say, -101 degrees, to 78 degrees, the human body would begin to shut itself down due to the rapid change, and it would result in death or serious unalterable defects that none of the top doctors could fix. The human body was not built for change he was told.
He carried his fish tank into the bathroom and set it on the floor of the shower. The tank had completely frozen and all seven of his fish were frozen in mid-swim. It was said that when they designed these fish, they were hybrids of a Japanese (an ancient culture that survived on an island in one of the Earth's mass oceans) fighting fish, and Angel fish that was common in all the oceans. He turned on the shower, and let it run to get hot, he than got in the shower and has he bathed himself the hot water poured on to the block of ice which kept his fish prisoner and when it began to crack and melt he bent over and flipped the tank upside down and tried not to drop the ice onto his toes. The block came out with a incredibly sharp and loud thud!, and landed perfectly in front of his toes. He wiggled them and was thankful the ice had not crushed one of his feet or one of those tiny little digits, he had a feeling he would be on his feet all day and a limp was unbecoming of an officer. He turned off the water and the block of ice sit there, through out the day it would melt, and all seven fish would hopefully allow the current of the water to carry them down the drain.
He walked into his kitchen naked, placed some lean ground beef in a skillet, and began to cook it. They say beef came from a horrendously ugly and vicious animal called the cow, and when humans still lived on earth, the cows would attack the humans. In their defense, the humans began to use force against the predatory animals and would cook the meat from the cow out in the open. It served first as a warning to all the other cows, and than for sustenance. It was said that enough meat on your breath would scare away these animals and keep you safe. He put the fried meat in between some GenBread and his sandwich in between putting on different items of clothing. First socks (no need for the body adapting type) than his undershirt which grappled to his frame and was quite unfitting, than his green mesh overalls that came in one piece, than his uncomfortable work shoes, than his Government issued I.D. button, his Government issued tracking device (only worn by Agents, not citizens), his Government issued watch, his Government issued ear piece that was turned on as soon as he walked into his office building, and finally his chest-belt which sent back his vitals to the G.U.B. and also held his cuffs, his Blinding-Balls, than he attached in Inc-Stick on to a buckle that was on the left leg of his pants.
He finished the last bite of his sandwich, checked on the block of ice on his shower floor, turned the lights off, than on, than off, unlocked his four locks, and stepped out into the corridor. As we walked down the stairs and got closer outside he began to taste the dust, he began to taste Mars and he grew more and more unsettled with every step.
At first, he was barely able to see his breath, but within two puffs, they came billowing out of his mouth. His teeth began chattering furiously and so he closed his mouth and could see the two skinny lines of air escaping his nostrils. He was wearing his thermal sleeping suit (zipped all the way up) his body adapting gloves and socks, and he was under three enormous blankets, and the one on top was folded over twice, and yet he still shook and quivered and waited for the city's engineers to fix the problem. He had always heard that if your were to die in the freezing cold, (if say, that the power to a city was cut off like it was in dome four, eleven years ago and 300 peoploids died) than falling asleep was the best thing to do, because you could fall into a deep hibernation and still survive amazingly cold temperatures. If that did not work and you did die, you would already be asleep and you would not know you were dead until you woke up in a world where there was no pain. Life on Mars was full of pain. A deep human longing for the home planet Earth - which Alexander had only seen through the eye of a telescope when he was on a school field trip to the first level of the Government's Underground Base (or the G.U.B) - Earth, he had always been told, was once magnificent but the fifty year plague and The War had made Earth entirely inhabitable. Mars was not only the only hospitable environment but quite suitable and in some ways better than Earth. He did not know whether Mars was better, but he did miss Earth. Man had been occupying Mars for one-hundred and fifty years, and he was thirty-three, so he had never set foot on Earth, but he had always dreamed of seeing a real tree, a real river, a mountain perhaps! or, no, perhaps a forest, a waterfall, clouds! Oh, how he as a child had longed for clouds . . .
He now worked for the government. The government was his mother and father, and he loved it as he imagined he would have loved his parents if he had unknown them, but he certainly would feel more love once the heat was turned back on. He was an agent in the D.I.A.E.A.P, or the Department of Investigations of All Engineers, and Practices, which meant tomorrow he would again have to go to the Applications Dome, the furthest outside the city, and question engineers about Sophronius, the program that controlled 95% of human life on this damned planet.
Quarter of an hour had passed and he had to remove his body adapting gloves because they need to be recharged from working to hard. The function of these contraptions was to adjust the wearer's current body temperature back to 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. Now that the temperature in his house was 79 degrees, below zero the gloves quit working and so he took them off let them charge underneath his faux-sun lamp that emulated the sun but gave no heat, and waited for them to become re-energized. He began to worry when the temperature dropped below -100. His body was now stiff with cold, his jaw could no longer chatter and he could not feel any of his appendages. His bones were solid ice, and the movement of any joint sent shards of ice straight into his muscles, his nerves, his synapses, which carried the immense pain back to his ice-block of a head. The water surrounding his eyeballs began to freeze, or so it felt, and right when Alexander thought his heart would freeze and beat not one more beat, a giant hum, a roar, came from all around, from inside Tolus' walls and the temperature rose steadily for the next hour, -101, -96, -84, -75, -66, . . . .
At thirteen o’clock, the temperature inside his house was 55 degrees above zero. Once it reached a certain threshold in the temperature, it slowed down and began to rise increasingly slower. He was told that if they raised the temperature from, say, -101 degrees, to 78 degrees, the human body would begin to shut itself down due to the rapid change, and it would result in death or serious unalterable defects that none of the top doctors could fix. The human body was not built for change he was told.
He carried his fish tank into the bathroom and set it on the floor of the shower. The tank had completely frozen and all seven of his fish were frozen in mid-swim. It was said that when they designed these fish, they were hybrids of a Japanese (an ancient culture that survived on an island in one of the Earth's mass oceans) fighting fish, and Angel fish that was common in all the oceans. He turned on the shower, and let it run to get hot, he than got in the shower and has he bathed himself the hot water poured on to the block of ice which kept his fish prisoner and when it began to crack and melt he bent over and flipped the tank upside down and tried not to drop the ice onto his toes. The block came out with a incredibly sharp and loud thud!, and landed perfectly in front of his toes. He wiggled them and was thankful the ice had not crushed one of his feet or one of those tiny little digits, he had a feeling he would be on his feet all day and a limp was unbecoming of an officer. He turned off the water and the block of ice sit there, through out the day it would melt, and all seven fish would hopefully allow the current of the water to carry them down the drain.
He walked into his kitchen naked, placed some lean ground beef in a skillet, and began to cook it. They say beef came from a horrendously ugly and vicious animal called the cow, and when humans still lived on earth, the cows would attack the humans. In their defense, the humans began to use force against the predatory animals and would cook the meat from the cow out in the open. It served first as a warning to all the other cows, and than for sustenance. It was said that enough meat on your breath would scare away these animals and keep you safe. He put the fried meat in between some GenBread and his sandwich in between putting on different items of clothing. First socks (no need for the body adapting type) than his undershirt which grappled to his frame and was quite unfitting, than his green mesh overalls that came in one piece, than his uncomfortable work shoes, than his Government issued I.D. button, his Government issued tracking device (only worn by Agents, not citizens), his Government issued watch, his Government issued ear piece that was turned on as soon as he walked into his office building, and finally his chest-belt which sent back his vitals to the G.U.B. and also held his cuffs, his Blinding-Balls, than he attached in Inc-Stick on to a buckle that was on the left leg of his pants.
He finished the last bite of his sandwich, checked on the block of ice on his shower floor, turned the lights off, than on, than off, unlocked his four locks, and stepped out into the corridor. As we walked down the stairs and got closer outside he began to taste the dust, he began to taste Mars and he grew more and more unsettled with every step.