Stonebreak was fading into nothingness, the next he was gazing at the steadily approaching dirty mass of Comet 2305 FQOO.
For a moment he had thought he was dead, but no, not yet. He was in a small room. He was watching a viewing field. On the viewing field there was a picture of a comet. It looked familiar.
Then a woman moved in front of him. She looked familiar, too: a face from his past. Someone famous. Someone from the newscasts and the viewing screens. A legend.
“Katie Kirkham,” he said, “I thought you were dead.”
“Look who’s talking.”
Constantine was sitting down. He shifted a little; his body felt strange. Something moved in front of his vision. His arm? It looked odd. Blurred. His whole body looked blurred.
“What’s going on?”
“You’ll see. Personality Construct Constantine Storey, the year is now 2210; it’s ninety-one years since you were terminated. The Environmental Agency has resurrected you in order that you might complete your life’s work. You are now resident in a robot body clothed in a fractal skin. Stand up, please.”
Ninety-one years? It felt like a couple of seconds. Constantine felt numb from the suddenness of the transition. Slowly, he moved his new body, trying it out.
“Nice interface,” he said. “This feels just like my old body, except it looks so blurry. I take it that’s the effect of the fractal skin?”
He was standing in a small room, bare of everything but a chair and a black shoulder bag lying on the floor.
“See if you can pick up the bag,” said Katie.
“Okay.”
Constantine tried to do so, but the bag slipped through his fingers.
“I can’t get a grip.”
“That’s the fractal skin. It blurs the boundary between you and the rest of the universe. You can relax the effect around your hands and feet in order to interact with the world. I’ll show you how.”
It was as if Katie Kirkham was sharing his body: she reached down inside his hand and did something,
“How did you do that? Are you in this robot along with me?”
“For the moment. Both of us are Personality Constructs of long-dead people. We go where we please. Well, I do, anyway. Now, in a moment, I will open the airlock door. This body is vacuum proof. We’re going to head out to the comet to retrieve something.”
“I thought as much,” said Constantine. He was right to think the comet looked familiar. He had been here before. Sort of.
Constantine floated away from the silver needle of the stealth ship using some mysterious form of propulsion.
“I’ll guide us,” said Katie. “You won’t need to know how the motion poppers work where you’re going.”
“Motion poppers? I can see things have changed in ninety-one years,” Constantine muttered. “Nice ship, by the way. It looks very stealthy.”
“Thank you. No one else will have a ship like this for another fifty years.”
“How do you know?”
“We won’t release the technology until then.”
“And who is we?”
“The Environmental Agency.”
“You mentioned it before. What is the Environmental Agency?”
“In your day you called it the Watcher.”
At that point Constantine noticed something was missing.
“Hey, where are Red, White, and Blue? Where’s Grey?”
“We removed them. You’re working for us now.” She made a little moue. “Mind you, you always were.”
When he was younger, Constantine had gone fell-walking during a winter thaw. Walking above the tree line, he found himself in a land of snow and stone. Like the surface of the moon, someone had remarked, but Constantine didn’t think much of the analogy. The moon’s surface didn’t bend and crack like this one did, its gulleys and ridges weren’t choked with half-melted ice that had refrozen into smooth mounds that softened the world while not quite concealing the harshness that lay beneath.
What that land had really resembled was the surface of this comet. As Constantine descended to the dirty grey ball, he shivered at the bleak loneliness of the scene. This cold, fell-like comet had traveled a long way in the ninety-two years since he had last visited it.
Katie guided them toward a chunk of splintered rock that lay embedded in the dirty ice of the nucleus. Larger than the stealth ship, it rose from the ground like a dirty grey fist; the upper end of the rock bulged and cracked in the shape of a clenched hand. It was just as Constantine remembered it.
“How did you know about this?” he whispered to Katie in awe.
“We’ve always known about it,” answered Katie. “The Watcher had a handle on DIANA almost from the beginning. It was the Watcher who declared the Mars site a World Heritage Center, insisted that it remained untouched. Didn’t that ever strike you as being a bit too convenient? The Watcher appreciates the importance of the Mars project more than anyone. When 113 Berliner Sibelius captured your personality in order to discover more about the Mars project, the Watcher had to take over their corporation just to help suppress the information you carried. Just imagine that: a whole corporation bought out, all because of you.”
They touched down on the surface of the dirty ice. Katie did something to the feet of the robot, increased their traction. The comet’s gravity was weak; Constantine could feel the robot’s mysterious propulsion system holding them down against the icy surface. Constantine felt dizzy. His whole world was changing again.
“But we were
“You only thought you were. I told you, the Watcher thinks it’s essential that the Mars project succeeds. And now we’re going to do it. Everything is in place. All we need to do now is to pick up the final piece and then we can go.”
Constantine made his way to the base of the huge rocky fist. It looked exactly as he remembered it from all those years ago, viewed through the remote cameras of a stealth pod. He saw the deep crack that split the rock from top to bottom, made out the triangular space at its base. His feet held tight onto the slippery surface as he marched toward the hiding place. There was nothing to be seen but dark shadow ahead. Brilliant stars shone above the rock-littered surface.
Constantine reached into the triangular hole and felt for the smooth surface of the stealth pod, now set to matte black for maximum concealment.
“Let me,” said Katie. Somewhere in the robot’s mind she pushed the buttons that sent the unlocking signal. Constantine felt the stealth pod split apart; felt the leaking of impact gel. He reached inside the pod, took hold of the loose plastic of the C Case and pulled it clear of the pod; held it up and allowed the impact gel to drain from it and then peered through the transparent coating at what lay inside.
A two-hundred-year-old machine. A laptop computer. The seed of the Mars project.
“I hope it still works,” said Constantine.
“It will,” said Katie. “If worse comes to worst, I’m sure we can map enough of the data across to the new Martian factories for them to make a go of it.”
Katie guided them back to the stealth ship. Constantine watched carefully as they approached the seamless silver skin of the craft. They were moving closer and closer without any sign of an opening appearing. Just as Constantine thought they were going to hit, he gripped the precious C Case closer to himself…and they slid effortlessly through the silver wall. He found himself inside the airlock.
“Sorry about that,” said Katie. “We can’t risk any breaches in the ship’s integument making us visible, even for an instant. We can’t afford to be seen.”
“But by who? If we’re working for the Watcher, who else is there to hide from?”
