Tying Up Loose Vines: The Reason for Mars High
12 Feb 2022Lily Flemmon
(Continued from Making the Rounds)(UNPUBLICISED: CTAC RESTRICTED: MILITARY-SIGNIFICANT DATA)
Maggie and I followed Shandra back into the Macrotech lab, where I saw much more complicated versions of the plant systems I saw in the foyer, interfacing with all kinds of technology. I was especially fascinated with a holographic display module that, instead of projecting the image into the air or interfacing over a standard Insight holographic connection, had a large leaf that was effectively a monochrome brown-on-green touch panel.
I heard Shandra behind me, “Oh, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
Magnolia and I followed her further back into the lab, through a… security blast door? Why was this here? Shandra entered a code into the access panel, and the door opened to reveal a firing range, about 30 meters long, with a shielded target at the far end, and on our end, there was a gnarled tree that appeared to have… an emulation of a class I hardpoint, with a railgun mounted on it. And while on a ship, class I may seem small, standing next to it in a less-than-spacious room made it seem absolutely enormous.
“Military-significant, alright. Wow.” I was thoroughly impressed.
“Hey mags, you wanna start up that airlock field for me?” Shandra was going to actually demonstrate this for me? Holy shit.
“Wait, airlock field?” I asked quizzically.
“You don’t know how loud a railgun is in full atmosphere? It’s loud,” Maggie called over as she powered up the glowing blue barrier. “This is how we avoid concussions when we test this thing, and also how we keep it from shaking the whole ring. Nobody expects seismic activity in a starport.”
Shandra piped up again as I instinctively took a few steps back. “It doesn’t block out all the noise though, we still like to hear what’s going on. It’s about one part per trillion that gets through. Alright, target shield is charging up, and…” A blue glow appeared around the target at the far end. “There it is. Firing up shield diagnostics, let’s see how dead-on we can hit it.”
I was feeling the excitement in the room as the tree started to move slightly, with Shandra using targeting holograms to precisely aim the railgun.
“Starting up the powerplant, and charging the capacitor,” Magnolia called out. Radiators on the base unit of the tree started to glow, and I could feel the heat on my face. I looked up as holographic indicators surrounded the bulky and seemingly wooden hardpoint, and I recognized readouts from a power distributor.
I asked a second question. “Wait, that’s not just a hardpoint, but also a power distributor?”
“Not quite, just the weapons capacitor, the main distributor is in the base. We tried running the main firing power through organic conduits, and uh, we’re glad that railgun is durable, it definitely went flying and smacked the ceiling.” I looked at the ceiling and noticed a very significant dent. She turned to Maggie and called out, “All clear?”
Maggie stepped back from the airlock and replied, “All clear!”
“Alright, firing!” Shandra flipped up a cover and held a red button, and the railgun charged and fired. The entire tree convulsed with the recoil, and readouts all along the branches appeared with data that I assumed was in reference to how it handled the recoil. I didn’t even feel the ground shake at all, despite the railgun itself not absorbing the recoil like it normally would. “Hey Mags, how’s the aim?”
“3 millimeters to the right, 17 millimeters low. Looks like you over-adjusted from last time. Shield dropped to 45 percent as usual. Glad it’s not dropping on us.”
“Alright, let’s shut this all down and give it time to rest. Looks like the tree cracked a few fibers in section 3.”
—-
Once the shutdown was complete, the three of us walked back into the rest of the lab, and the security door closed behind us. I was still processing the incredible display I’d just seen, but something didn’t quite add up, and I guess I just let it slip out of my mouth.
“So why are you going all this way to create something-” (oops, too late, better finish my question.) “-so specifically military-significant?”
(CTAC DIRECTOR OVERRIDE: PARTIAL PUBLIC CLEARANCE OF LOG ENTRY)
Shandra’s light smile dropped, and I looked around quickly to gauge the room. Maggie wasn't as startled, she just seemed fascinated with the situation, in anticipation and uncertainty, waiting for Shandra’s response. The others in the lab were still focused on their work.
She took a deep breath, and after a pause, she started to speak in a calm, but also slightly stern voice. “You probably don’t know this, but I grew up on Mars. You may think it’s cool to grow up on a terraformed world, and it sure is, from what I hear. Well, everywhere but Mars. At least that’s how it is for people like me.”
I started to connect the dots in my head, but the picture was far from complete.
“See, long ago, before the third world war, even before the first, people like me were the trash of society, at least that’s how anyone with power treated us. Everybody knew we weren’t, but as long as the people pulling the strings could keep saying we were, we couldn’t prove them wrong. As soon as one of us would push past all the barriers people pretended, they’d get shot down and have to go back where they came from, back to poverty again. And I don’t mean poverty like we see it here in the Alliance, I mean poor like it is in the Federation, where almost nobody rich knows what it’s like and only half of them know we even exist.”
Shandra’s voice had started to get louder, and I didn’t bother turning my head to see how everyone else was responding- I knew that everything she was saying was more important than I could understand yet, and I might never get a full grasp of just how important it all is.
"But when people started making homes at different stars, all that finally started to change. People learned to look past race, and the color of people's skin. Human genetic diversity didn't always include dark skin with blonde hair, and there used to be visible differences between people of different races. People came together over opening up the frontier of the stars, and what people looked like started getting ignored, and after a couple centuries, it lost any meaning as genetic diversity skyrocketed. But there were still some people with money who didn't like that, because it threatened Federal corporate rule. And they knew they couldn't stop it, so they found other ways to control people, to subjugate them, and so humanity moved on past racism, and people stood up against oppression and won for the first time since the world war interim... Everywhere but Earth. Back on Earth, things just got worse for us, like people felt their hold on us slip just a little, and they started holding on way tighter. We started starving to death, and this time around, nobody cared. We only got a little breathing room once we started migrating to Mars when that terraforming project was getting close to completion. But it wasn’t even one generation before we were shoved back into what they said was our place. Let me tell you, poverty is nobody’s place. It shouldn’t exist. It doesn’t have to exist. They kept it for who-knows-why, and they kept us because it was the only way they could fuel their precious culture of thinking they’re better."
Her voice was even louder now, and I’m sure other lab members were breaking their focus to hear what was going on, but I still didn’t look, because I was too zeroed-in on her. Her eyes a bit redder, her hands shaking with every word, every sentence, everything about her was expressive in a way nobody could- or, considering what she was saying, should- look at and not feel moved. This was passion, and it was important. More important than me, more important than even NEWP’s ongoing war in Acihaut.
“And then in 3275 I was born right into that whole mess, and I lived it. I lived every shitty meal, every hungry night, and for a while I didn’t even know there was a whole galaxy out there. When I was 7, my mama gave me something she’d caught from a data purge, an old world war interim period video, and she couldn’t even get the sound for it, but it was so much more than just a video. It was fantasy, it was adventure, it was magic. It didn’t seem to have a clear beginning, or a clear end, like there was a lot that came before it and at the end it wasn’t really over. But it had more than I could have dreamed of. It showed the power of the strong, but also the small. A lot of the bad guys were just dirty versions of... people. Honestly they seemed like normal people who had given up on fighting corruption. Or people who never learned that poverty isn't necessary. But one part hit me harder than any video I'd ever seen. The main good guys were in a bind, and they found the trees, and the trees talked, and they decided not to help… until they saw what the man with white hair in the tall tower did to so many of the other trees. And they got mad, they came together, and they attacked that tower, and destroyed the smoking war-factory around it that went deep into the ground. They trapped that man in his high tower, and nobody dared try to get to him, because those trees had come together to make a difference that nobody else could. And I remember ever since the first time I saw that tower, I looked at it and I saw Mars High.”
At this point, Shandra was nearly yelling, her eyes red with almost-tears, and yet she still stood unwavering, and I was amazed by the sheer power in her voice, like a river that had been held back by a dam for far too long.
"Do you know why Mars High was built? It wasn't like most starports, where they're built to help gather resources or be ports for ships that can't enter the planet’s atmosphere. Mars High came long before those needs existed. It was built so rich people could live somewhere away from everyone else, specifically people like me, while they made all the major decisions affecting our lives, and believe me, they ain’t be giving a damn about our lives!"
She stopped suddenly as her voice reverberated throughout the lab, and for a moment, everything was silent. She looked around and saw everyone’s eyes on her as tears ran down her face, and I felt tears start to run down mine too. Everyone was too shocked to speak, and I knew I wanted to say something. I started fighting that lump in my throat, I did everything I could to get it to move, and just even let out a sigh.
Just as my throat cleared again, Shandra started to let out a few words through the barrier holding back her sobs. “I- I’m s-”
I knew she was about to try to apologize, and I wasn’t going to let her. I interrupted suddenly and loudly, “Don’t you finish that statement. Don’t you apologize for a word you just said, because you needed to say it, and we all needed to hear it. I’m not gonna let you apologize for what anyone else put you through, and I’m not gonna let you apologize for taking up space. Because if there’s a most important person in all of CTAC, it’s not me or the Director like people think. It’s you.”
CTAC Director's Note:
This story is real, not just because it actually happened, but also because of what it says about us- about our individual lives, and about CTAC as a whole. For those who can relate to this story, I hope it inspires you, and for the few who can't relate... pay heed.
(END PUBLIC CLEARANCE)
I raised my voice to be clearly heard by the whole lab as I turned to face in the general direction of everyone else, which was hardly any particular direction at all, and as I spoke, I took a few steps so I was next to Shandra, who, luckily for impression purposes, was a solid 5 centimeters taller than me.
Shandra’s voice fired back up for one last powerful statement.“She’s right. All of you helped make that tree right there, and that tree has a gun on it, and now you all know why, and don’t you ever forget that reason.”
I felt Shandra’s hand gently grab hold of mine, and I let our fingers intertwine. I looked over at Magnolia, and I saw tears in her eyes as she smiled, and I could tell she had something she wanted to say, but she was afraid to say it. But she walked up to Shandra, and gently embraced her, and I could hear Mags say softly, “I’m so proud of you, hun. So incredibly proud of you.”
Author's note: If you have a problem with one of my logs, you say it to me directly. Even if the log is a collab, which this log isn't and never was.