Martian fairytales the beginning
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She had Always wanted to go on an adventure, not the type of girl that could settle or rest on her laurels, a bright vibrant young soul always looking for the next thrill. So, when she overheard one of the security officers at the compound, tell of a new fantastical archeological discovery, Brownie decided she would discover it firsthand ,before anyone else could lay claim to it! |just like her parents used to tell her stories about an egyptologists called Belzoni. After all her family had relic hunting in their bones (so to speak).
Little brownie a svelte young girl with the brownest eyes, Raven hair and skin like mocha decided she would slip into her purple overcoat which was her favouritist. It was in a style unique to itself, somewhere between a poncho and a duffle coat. Nevertheless Brownie liked it as she could pretend she was something from her imagination almost as if it were a cloak of invisibility that she could hide beneath.
Ivory was the colour of her shirt, it was two sizes too big and way too long in the arms for her petite frame, but she told people that it was the fashion. She wore a pair of claret jeans that had metal studs running down the outside and a pair of Chelsea boots.
She had treasure hunting in her family, she also knew about Tragedy! Her parents were Archaeologists; they had unfortunately died in an accident when Brownie was very Young, it hurt Brownie to recall them at times, she often wondered what they’d be like now and if she looked like them. People said she was haunted; she hated that.
She lived with foster parents from time to time but never seemed to be with them for very long. She was growing older and developing it became increasingly difficult to fill the space, she tried too, but there was always a sadness which lingered, it made her feel alone in a crowd.
She had heard social workers say of her that she was developing into a problem child casually as if she had no feelings, in fact, it had made her numb at times.
it was time, time to go on an adventure and escape Town for a few hours.
get out Into the Martian wilderness, after all; now she had her implant she would be ok free breathing the Martian atmosphere for a while anyway.
She knew that at the edge of the town there was the old solar still that was hardly watched it followed a pipeline that ran to a reverse osmosis plant. If she timed it right, she could be there and back again before anyone would notice
And she could creep along the pipeline, and none of the surveillance drones would spot her if she kept tight to the pipe until she crossed the surveillance perimeter, then she’d be free to take the east canal path.
The last part of the plan was she needed a map. She had drawn a map from what she’d remembered from one of her old foster parents; she recalled a poster of Mars next to her bed, she opened the piece of paper and looked it over. It was rather basic in pencil and felt-tip pen with a heart for the settlement and a diamond for where she suspected the fantastical discovery was, it had points of interest an X where the ancient Mars lander had landed 200 years before the first Martian settlement and then there was the mars face a natural phenomenon where a hill looked like it was a human face from satellite pictures ofcourse.
Brownie packed an old book bag with fizzy food pop, some food sachets, some biscuits and lastly the homemade map. She set the timer on her watch to count down 4 hours there and back, and time to explore, she smiled to herself and said Kaloo ~callay under her breath.
Brownie set out into the Martian outdoors; it was Hard to breathe at first, the Martian air being so thin and getting used to using her lung implant was difficult. It felt a bit like drowning to begin with, then came the boiling sensation on her tongue.
She wondered who was the clever dick who had thought up this new technology? She remembered in a class called Survivalist Science the Teacher told her about how Babies breathed in the womb, they breathe liquid, but it’s called amniotic fluid. Therefore, it was practical to believe that we could do this again. Which was the same principle that her lung implant worked on?
The fluid itself was a miracle of innovation she vaguely remembers the quadratic equation written on the whiteboard at school, a string of mathematical algebra and the chemical compound formula, that was likened to be of the same importance as E=mc^2.
The liquid itself was nonconformist in its state it used synergy to block certain reactions that nature had intended for survival when humanity was still cavemen on planet earth. A chemical reaction that dissolved oxygen into the fluid which delivered more oxygen and this was enough to breathe for about 12 hours before the fluid needed to be refreshed. Even this was clever as inside the settlement the pressurized living quarters were at standard earth atmosphere and so inhaling, and exhaling helped dissolve some of the oxygen until it was needed again.
The Martian sky was blue and cloudless not blue like on planet Earth but a powder blue, before she came to Mars she’d always believed that the sky would be pink, which occasionally it was but mostly clear grey or an assortment of washed out blues and grey yellows. The terrain was dusty, and shards of slate sometimes made it feel like walking on a pebbly beach. It was good to be out, and now she had made it to the solar stills, and no one had spotted her. Good, good she thought to herself.
The solar stills were almost like large rectangular greenhouses that were half buried in the Martian sand; they stuck half out of the horizon. Brownie could see condensation inside on the glass, and beyond the condensation, there were various reflective panels on either side, in the floor there was a gutter that flowed out to a pipe that ran north.
Brownie lied flat on her belly between the stills, and she waited. She could see mechanical Drones that were like mini helicopters with four rotors spinning and cameras, that recorded physical activity. The Drones operated in intervals, working a quadrant pattern surveilling northeast, then northwest. Knowing she had only had to wait for around 5 minutes before it would switch quadrant.
After 5 minutes, the Drones met up directly north and swapped quadrants, this was when Brownie began crawling on her belly, and she gauged she had around 20 seconds to reach the outlet pipe that was running north and down a steep embankment. She knew if she got caught she would be in deep trouble at school and at the unit (which was a modern way of saying orphanage).
She Pressed on anyway, at 15 seconds she was halfway up at the top of the embankment, her adrenaline was rushing, and she thought to herself, I’m not going to make it. Clenching her fists tight her knuckles went pure white as she glanced down the slope 4,3,2, jumping down the embankment was her only option.
At first, she slid down the dusty Martian ridge like she was sledding, but then her leg got trapped, and she gamboled the rest of the way. Bump, bump she went. 1, she had made it, but her boot had come off in the process, she picked herself up and found her boot quickly and climbed underneath the water pipe.
Shaken and shaking the Martian soil from her black hair and off her clothes she looked to see if the coast was still clear. She couldn’t see any signs of anything detecting her presence, so she took out her phone, it was undamaged, and the other things in her bag were also intact good she thought.
Life had been better since the Government had put the Gemini satellite into orbit around Mars it meant that Brownie, could Skype, text, and phone her friends and even boys.
Girls from her school didn’t like Brownie. They used to say horrid things about her. They would call her redskin girl and liarwatha or Pocahontas. Implying she was of Native American origin, sometimes they renamed her with stupid names like two dogs fucking, which she found distasteful and quite hurtful. In truth, Brownie had no idea if she was an America Indian or if she were just a mix of this or that since her only remaining relatives were few and far between and the few people she called auntie and uncle were not relations by blood at all? She always ticked the box on forms that read New Martian.
In truth, she got on better with the boys. She wasn’t a tomboy no Indeed. She just seemed to have a better rapport with them. Her best friend an Irish lad called Perry spent his time with her, carried her books, they would walk together, and he would say ” they only tease you cause you’re much prettier than those girls, they’re jealous,they are!” Nevertheless, Perry was not here. He had most probably gotten into trouble fighting again.
Looking at the weather app, she saw that the forecast it said it was Clement which meant that there would be no solar activity.
Good, she thought to herself as she begun the trek along the pipeline to the water processing Plant.
The journey along the pipeline to plant was a lonely one, but in no time at all, she had reached the station.
The plant was all automated and although there was a vehicle parked at the front Brownie knew it was unmanned and remotely controlled. She waited for her moment and slipped stealthily and quietly passed the vehicle even having the audacity and the nerve to hide in its blind spot and wait for the radio, that she could hear from inside. Go quietly she thought, she started to smile to herself as something had amused her for no reason, biting her lip to stop herself from giggling she then made off quickly moving beyond the perimeter fence she cleared it in 3 seconds.
She was free at last.
Now she was free
She scanned the terrain. It was hilly north, and there seemed to be a channel where perhaps 60,000 years ago there may have been a Martian canal, but it was
dry now and parched. The terrain seemed different to her map; she had the nagging suspicion that she was nowhere near where she was supposed to be. Looking on her phone it had no signal bars, Brownie thought to herself, probably her best bet was to haul ass and to get to the Viking lander memorial there would be WIFI there, Even though the guest shop would be closed.
The tourism season had finished as the planets were out of alignment, Earth the hub of humanity was at its furthest distance from Mars. Brownie could see the huge Ariel in the distance, poking through the light blue skyline the only man-made structure that was visible from where she was standing. She gauged it was about 20 mins on foot.She reached into her bag and grabbed a can of Dr Pepper it hissed as she opened it, it felt good on her tongue, refreshing but different it wasn’t quite the same drinking it outside as it was inside the living quarter’s something to do with the composition of the atmosphere.
She started walking towards the memorial.
At the memorial, it was all closed down, all the shutters were pulled down on the fast food kiosks, the tea shop, and the gift shops were neatly shut she could see through the roll shutter chairs inside neatly stacked on top of one another.
She Stood for a moment looking at the Viking lander memorial; it wasn’t much to look at a bit like a huge coffee table with a couple of strange robotic appendages hanging out.
And some solar panels that made it look a bit insectoid looking
. It had a plaque that said, ” we choose to do these things, not because they’re easy, but because they are hard!” And J.F.K written after the quote.
Brownie opened a small packet of biscuits digestives, her second favorite cookie her first being Jamie Dodgers. The wrapper had an American flag, so she put on the plinth stone of the monument next to the electronic candles that the gift store sold some folk even wrote names on small bits of sticky paper and made a wish. She read Jayne Kyle & Toby; there was a picture of a star afterward, more slips of paper one read I miss you everyday Dad. N X, another just said ” we made it baby, and had R+J and a big heart. Brownie decided to sit for a while some as benches had not been put inside she sat for the moment.
Switching her phone to WIFI she picked up Viking gift shop, on google mars, she found her position she was a tiny cursor and could see it said Viking lander memorial, but all the landmarks were somehow different she said aloud “What??!”
She figured though that the hill with the face should be west so if she walked 40 degrees towards the distant hills she may be in the correct vicinity. It was worth a shot, checking the time it said 3 hours 5 minutes remaining.
After walking past what seemed to be the same rock for the third time. Brownie had the horrible suspicion that she may indeed be lost, “oh my gosh!” she said to herself since there were so many hills about she decided it would be wise to get up high. Climbing up the highest hill she put her hand above her eyes to cut out any glare from the sun it was then she saw something glimmering in the sun a bit like how you see cars shimmer when you see them from far away, it disappeared for a while but there it was again.
She headed toward it, and it seemed to have a more distinct way almost like it had a path with slate stones hexagonal paving blocks leading to somewhere?
Finally, she came to an arch it was dilapidated, but she could tell it wasn’t a random occurrence of nature. The hills subsided, and she found herself standing before some ancient ruins of a village that was at least 15000 years old.
She clapped her hands in excitement.
The stone arch loomed over Brownie and was both inviting and terrifying at the same time. At the highest apex, it had a strange depiction of a face in a mask; the face looked like the old Renaissance art that she had seen in photos of churches & cathedrals on earth. It was, she guessed to be some sort of bird type guardian, but she couldn’t really know for sure, and she wondered about the significance of the bird in the culture that had built this.
After thinking for a while
She decided she would go through the arch and take a good look around, she thought to herself I’ve come this far, why not?
Inside there were many columns and pillars old buildings mostly ravaged by time, many of the living structures were just the skeletal remains of great buildings, open roofs, and holes that let the Martian sunshine through and in the pavements, there were cracks as if the ground itself had opened its veins.
Brownie looked around she could see up ahead what looked like an amphitheater, there was also a dead river that ran parallel to the promenade that was filled halfway with Martian sand
She walked down the biggest street along the promenade; occasionally she’d feel a chill as if she were walking around a giant tomb, which she actually was, the only comparison Brownie could make was to Pompeii, which she remembered studying in history class. She recalled the two bodies entwined in a loving embrace turned to magma and preserved for history to remember their final moment recorded in time.
Strolling toward the Amphitheatre, It wasn’t like the Ones on earth, but it was similar enough to know that it was for assemblies of the masses.
She sat on one of the stone steps, and there was inscription possibly in their language, it was swirly and wavy and impossible to read, but attractive nonetheless. She stroked the inscription and wondered what it meant, and decided that there was no earthly way of knowing.
She sat for a while looking up towards the sun it was central in the sky and was blazing without a care in the world, this was indeed a moment that she would put into a perfect photograph.