I have begun to write a book of my own named calico, its a hard sci-fi about a mars colony in the year 2148. i dont wanna say too much about it, but most of the math in the first two chapters (which i will paste) was done by hand by me (highschooler) so some of the math might be janky, but im pretty sure most of it is right. also, it is unedited so there could very well be mistakes.. anyways, here it is.
Chapter 1: Dante
Dante woke up to a light shining in his eyes, the old-fashioned lightbulbs glowing brightly, right into his retinas. He shouted a string of curses under his breath and put the blanket over his face. He tried to think of how he got here… he couldn't remember. Why couldn't he remember the night before? Dante had to find out. He slowly lifted the blanket off of his eyes and let them adjust to the brightness, his blue irises soaking in the rays. When he could finally see, he looked around the room and saw piles of bottles, of all different colors. The room smelled of unwashed sheets, unbathed skin and a sting of alcohol that burned his nose. He’s been drinking, he can't begin to remember the past multiple days, he goes out drinking every single night and it's never hit him this hard, was he drugged last night? He flipped on his side and pushed himself vertical. He sat on the edge of his bed with his legs over the side hanging onto the ground. He looked around his small decrepit room: the cold aluminium floors; the lights hanging from ceiling; the bed hanging from the wall; the desk on the far side of the room, and the door on the south wall; on the north wall there was a small window covered in curtains; tiny sheds of light pushing through them streaking onto the floor. A digital alarm clock blinked on the desk across from him. Beer, whiskey, vodka, gin bottles lining every surface. He truly had let himself go since his wife, Cara left him 5 years ago, wasting away, doing nothing with his life. Behind the bottles, a small digital clock blared an alarm, it read “11 AM”. He shifted his bodyweight forward and his feet made contact with the freezing cold metal floor. He hissed as he finally stood himself up, his feet almost burning from the cold. He raised his hands high in the air and stretched, so hard something popped in his back that caused a surge of pain to push through his spine. He shouted a slew of profanities at the top of his lungs and heard a few gasps from behind the walls on either side of him, neighbors. Always making noise through the thin walls of the apartments. He began to walk to the window in his room clicking off the alarm sounds ringing through the room. He looked at the calendar on his wall above the desk, reading the year at the top “2148”, the month was October, the 22nd. He finally reached the window and grabbed ahold of the curtains blocking the light from coming in, he opened them up to see the sky, to his displeasure, he did not see the sun, instead he saw the tinted glass dome that covered this colony most of the light in here was artificial at this point. He looked past the glass dome to see the blowing red sands of mars, and the space station in low-mars-orbit floating just above the horizon, just barely in sight. He tried his best to admire the same beautiful sight that he's seen for the past 20 years of his life, until the stench coming from his body became far too strong for him to handle, he needed a shower.
-
Dante stepped out of the shower, towel around his waist. Feeling clean, he shuffled out of the communal bathroom and into the hallway. Walking past rooms 204, 205, 206, 207 and eventually his apartment, 213. When he stepped inside, the horrible stench hit him again, this time harder than when he woke up. He looked into the full-body mirror at himself, He hadn't eaten in a while and his body was malnourished, he barely made enough money to pay for this apartment, let alone food. His jet-black hair had begun to gray with age at the sides, letting the black remain at the top. He shuffled to the area at the foot of his bead and banged on the wall, suddenly a shelving unit pushed out of the area where he knocked on, he looked inside, only one set of clothes left, he needed to do laundry. He put the clothing on, it consisted of roughed up jeans and a white quarter-button shirt. He walked out of the apartment, grabbing his trench coat and hat on his way out. He can clean his room later, for now, food.
-
He sat in the bar, the one he had been at all of last night, trying to remember what happened to him. Steven Miller, the bartender strode across the bar and handed Dante a plate of breakfast: undercooked eggs, overcooked bacon, surprisingly properly cooked toast with butter and a black coffee.
“You look like shit, no wonder though, you were here until almost 5 AM last night”
“yeah well one of YOUR patrons drugged me” Dante snapped back at him.
“Now what leads you to believe that?”
“Oh I don't know, maybe the fact that I've been drinking almost every night for the past 5 years and I've never been hit this hard by a couple drinks?”
“It was more than a coup-”
“REGARDLESS!” Dante shouted, slamming his fist into the table, knocking his coffee over.
“Did you see anything strange”
Steven’s eyes darted to the stool beside Dante, his eyes widened
“Yes… Come to think of it, there was a man you were sitting by, who was talking to you who’s never come in here before. I didn't really think much of it though.”
“Have you cleaned the room yet?” Dante questioned.
“No”
“Perfect”
Dante took one last bite of his toast and stood up. He began to look around, recalling last night. The memories were blurry but they were slowly coming back. He came into the bar, like he usually did, sat down, and ordered a drink. And then it all got fuzzy, all he could remember was… the man, the man that sat next to him. He had a briefcase that he put next to his stool! Dante investigated the area around the stool he had sat on the night prior, grunting as he stood up, his oldening body screaming for help. 53 damn years, 20 of them spent on this red piece of crap. He didn't see a briefcase, but instead a vial of something. He lifted it into the air and into the light, it seemed to have been emptied the night before. A few drops of green liquid inside of it dripped from the side facing the ceiling. That sure is one thing that’s better on Mars, sweet sweet gravity, keeps you grounded. As he peered into it, Steven’s ambitions got the best of him, and he couldn’t help but peer as well. At that moment, a startling banging sound came from the entrance to the bar. He turned around to see a woman, tan, olive skin and shoulder length brown hair. She had a muscular build that looked as if she worked heavy things constantly. Her auburn eyes looked into Dante's “something happened Dante” she said with a soft, concerned voice. It was her, Cara.
Chapter 2: Cara
Cara woke up at 6:00 AM, long before Dante woke up. She felt a sense of warm security, she was under a large pile of blankets, to the point where it was hard for her to move. An alarm rang out on a hologram displayed above a dresser full of clothes, stuffed into them messily. She turned to see the culprit of the messy-clothes crime, Luca. Sleeping peacefully next to her, unbothered by the alarm was him, her husband of 4 years, she married him after Dante. He had a darker, tan skin complexion and a head of curls, his facial features soft and round. Reluctantly, Cara stood up out of her bed and looked through the curtains, out past the dome, to the red blowing sands of mars. She admired the beautiful desert, she whispered to herself “how could a place so beautiful be so hostile towards life?”
Luca grumbled tiredly “where are you going so early?”
still looking out the window, she replied to him “work”
“come back to bed sweetie…”
“Cant, work.”
And with that he fell back into unconsciousness. She turned away from the window to put on her slippers and a house coat. A voice rang out from the hologram-screen on her wall nearest to the window that was now displaying a cute smiley face.
“Good morning Cara” Said the robotic voice
“Good morning to you too C.A.S.S.I.E, how’d you sleep?”
“Unfortunately ma'am, I cannot sleep, it's more of a… power down”
“Ok well then how’d you… power down?”
“Excellently Ma’am, thank you, there's a somewhat emergent thing I'd like to bring your attention to, your telescope in the east wing of the building, it caught something slightly disturbing.”
“Ok, ill head there and take a look, thank you”
“Would you like to hear the news for today?”
“Sure, go ahead”
“The temperature outside the dome is a chilly -50 degrees Celsius today and it looks like clear skies, no storms on the schedule, in the news today, Ares Corp CEO: Axel Lorde has officially announced his newest mission, Project: Dreadnaught, the exact parameters of the project are unknown, except for the fact it launches a whole new fleet of ships that will land on one of Mars' moons, Phobos.”
“Thank you very much CASSIE, see you later.”
Cara thought about this “project dreadnought” for a moment, wondering what Phobos had to offer for Ares Corp. but then again, Axel had always been quite the “eccentric” type.
“It’s my pleasure Ma’am”
Cara walked out of the room after taking one last glance at Luca. She descended down the staircases to the bottom, her house certainly is a lot more glamorous than the dump that Dante lives in right now, she almost feels bad for him. She walked to the kitchen at the bottom of the stairs and reached for the coffee, and began to speed walk down the hallway of her house into a circular room with a staircase going up the center. She finally made it to the east wing of her house and looked around: Tons of science instruments lining the walls. She picked a lab coat off of the hanger at the entrance to the and swung it around herself, slipping her arms into it and donning the pin on the lab coat that says “CARA DANIELS, ASTROPHYSISCIST”. She strode up the spiral staircase in the east wing of her house, she had begun working here around 10 years ago, just after the divorce with Dante. She needed some way to escape. So she put her nose in the books and got a work-from-home job as an astronomer.
-
She sat as still as she could at her desk staring at the pictures the telescope took. She had programmed it to auto-take pictures if it detected movement. The picture it took this time was the Ares space station. its long circular structure as a base, with three other tubes jutting out from the base, two from the top and 1 from the bottom. She could see every detail of the floating habitat, the glass dome on the bottom tube looking down at mars’ surface, the solar panels, even though they’re farther from the sun, they still bring in huge amounts of energy for the station. It reminded her of the ISS back home. She was only four when her dad first showed her pictures of the station, he was a kind gentle man, never yelled, as far as she could remember. The first time she ever saw him yell was when she was five years old, when the incident happened, the reason why she moved to mars… her thoughts were cut off when she looked at the altitude indicator on the image, was it lower than normal? And why was the image all blurry? Was it travelling faster than normal? Significantly faster than normal! She clicked the images folder on her computer labelled "satellites and stations” right next to the “planets and systems” which was empty, and right above the folder that said “Earth”. Inside the folder were hundreds of pictures of satellites that orbit mars and a few dozen photos of the Ares space station. She clicked on the latest one. It was a clear image, normally the station moves at breakneck speeds, but with telescope tracking, she could get a clear image. The only way the image would come out blurry is, if the station was travelling significantly faster than normal and the telescope systems weren't able to capture a good enough photo. The old photo had an altitude indicator as well, it read “300km” from the surface of mars: low mars orbit, this was normal. She looked at the new photo, the altitude indicator read: “250km”. The orbit of the Ares space station was elliptical, which means its non-circular and at one point in the orbit it could be close to mars (periapsis), and at another part it could be very far from mars(apoapsis). Cara knew that at Mars' usual periapsis, the station is at an altitude of 300 kilometers from the surface of Mars, like in the photo. so when she looked and saw that it was lower than usual, she knew something was wrong. Why would the station be lower than usual? “The only way something like this would happen was if-” she was very rudely interrupted by a loud bang at her front door. She stood from her desk, and rushed down the stairs, checking her digital watch on her way down: 7:00 AM it read. She opened the front door, as a burst of warm air pushed from outside, those scientists really outta get this air they're pumping in here cooler. There was no one there, those stupid kids playing ding dong ditch, she couldn't believe that stupid game survived all these years. As she turned around to close the door and go back to work she heard a whisper “Cara…”. She turned back around and looked towards the ground in front of the door. Holy shit… a man, laying down on her front porch, laying in a puddle of blood, unresponsive.