Five Years
by Roger Ley
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In September 2212, the artificial intelligence running the Near Earth Object Observation Program at Big Pine announced impassively that it had discovered a new asteroid that would impact the Earth in about five years’ time. It estimated the size of the rock to be similar to that of Australia. I’ve always wondered who it told first, and how they reacted.
‘Ragnarok’ was a world killer and no mistake. So, time to leave, no other choice, the Earth was going to be largely uninhabitable from the 20th October 2217 and we had five years to prepare.
Mars would be on the other side of the Sun when the impact happened, so we started shipping stuff there. The Earth space elevator at Kisumu, in Kenya, had been in operation for about ten years and our Mars robots had just finished spinning the first cable from synchronous orbit down to Pavonis Mons, so we had a rudimentary space elevator on Mars.
At first, the Government tried to keep Ragnarok quiet but it was soon leaked to the press. They began building vast underground shelters to give people something to focus on, but the truth was that we had to leave. When I say ‘we,’ I mean the human race, but there were far too many of us to all get a seat on the last train to Pavonis Mons.
And then the Government announced The Mars Lottery. Everybody stood the same chance, people would be entered automatically, although there were restrictions. Nobody over the age of fifty or under the age of fifteen was eligible for a seat. There were tears, there was anger, there were riots, but in the end things quietened down. It was easier to live with a little hope than none at all, and there were always the underground shelters.
To their credit, most of the people around me just got on with their jobs. Kids went to school, bakers baked, the police policed. I carried on working as a movements clerk at the Kisumu elevator shipping terminal and hoped for the best as the months and years went by. We got container after container up the cable to the Synchronous Earth Orbit Satellite and then rail-launched them off on the slow trajectory to Mars. We sent de-activated mechanoid workers and artificial people, stacked and packed like sardines. We sent thousands of universal manufacturing machines and vast quantities of feed stocks. Money was no object, anything left behind was going to be destroyed on ‘Collision Day.’ If we could just get things into Mars equatorial orbit, we’d worry about getting them down to Pavonis later. There was no need to send humans yet, not until the pioneers had built the first dome habitat for them.
Ragnarok was visible in the night sky for about a year before its arrival, twinkling as it rotated in reflected sunlight, slowly growing larger. The Government announced that, for the sake of efficiency, men and women would be shipped to Mars separately. At first there was a lot of protest from families about being split up, but the politicians were persuasive, time was of the essence and hundreds of thousands of people had to be sent.
***
The last carriage of women had set off up the cable when the President came on screen to explain the arrangements for the male lottery winners. She had set up an interim government in MarsDomeOne at Pavonis Base. She sat, looking directly into the camera, grey and groomed, not a hair out of place. She leaned forward slightly and her expression hardened.
‘There are no male lottery winners, your sex is redundant. We don’t need you anymore,’ she said.
She explained that the mechanoids and artificals would build the new Martian city domes, and the women would populate them. The women didn’t need our help, all they needed were a few test tubes full of sperm. As the babies were born, there would be men on Mars, but what sort of men? Men who’d been brought up in a matriarchy, men educated by women. Would they have equal rights? Would the women even want them? Already, many preferred to cohabit with ‘male’ artificals. It struck me as ironic, men were supposed to come from Mars but women had stolen it.
***
So many unanswered questions, and here it is at last, Collision Day. I’ve refused the tablets and sit here alone, waiting by myself, on a high point in the Ngong Hills. It won’t be long now. My timer beeps, I raise a glass of single malt, there’s a bright flash in the East and……….
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