Beyond the Farthest Star: Chapter 20

Amy reluctantly left Earth and traveled back to Mars. She materialized in the Martian desert, in the very same spot where she had appeared after shutting down the Wall. On her first visit to Mars she had been overwhelmed at its desolation. Amy had been hoping to find a thriving world packed with futuristic cities and busy people, but instead she found a barren wasteland filled with gritty sand and broken rocks. The biosphere she had grown up in was gone, and the planet’s once-rich atmosphere had almost entirely dissipated. Her Mars – the one that had existed before the Spanish Emperor attacked Tikal – was gone.

The desert had not changed since her last visit. It was once again early evening, and the stars were coming out. There were no buildings, or people, or plants, or living creatures anywhere in sight. Even the carcass of Lizzie was gone – a victim of the ever-shifting sands that ruthlessly swallowed up everything left behind.

It’s time for the world to change, she thought, as she looked around. These people cannot help the natives of Earth until I help them first. That means it’s time for this planet to come back to life.

As Amy studied the landscape that stretched to the horizon she thought about what had happened to her sister Amanda. Carroll Lane was not at all pleased to have his world brought back to life. He was horrified at what my sister had done, and her display of power made him deeply afraid. I am not going to make that same mistake here. I’ll restore this world, but this time there will be no witnesses. No one here will ever know what happened or who was responsible.

Amy closed her eyes and used her mind to connect to the network of nanites that saturated the planet. She used the network to evaluate the dying Martian ecosystem. She studied the planet’s terrain, its water table, its atmospheric gasses, and the meager plant and animal life that struggled to survive. Once she understood exactly what 73rd-century Mars was like, she saved that information and created a new image in her mind – the way the planet could be, once it was restored.

The new planet would not be exactly like the Mars she so fondly remembered. The land itself had changed over the past five thousand years, as time ate away at the world she once knew. In her day oceans had covered much of the planet’s surface, but those ocean basins were now dry. Over the course of centuries once-mighty rivers had changed course, shifting and reshifting and eventually drying up completely. Mountain ranges had changed, continents had moved, and many lakes were now deserts.

It was possible for her to simply force the landscape back into the pattern she remembered, but she knew that would only cause more problems. She wanted to bring the planet back to life without drawing attention to herself, and she knew there was no way to hide a dramatic change like that. If it started raining, well, perhaps that was due to an atmospheric disturbance. If seeds started to grow out of the ground, well, perhaps the planet was emerging from hibernation. But if a giant earthquake suddenly changed the planet to make it look exactly as it had five thousand years ago, then even dullest citizen of New Tikal would realize that some powerful force was at play. Then the Martians would start wondering who was behind these changes and why they had occurred, and those were questions she did not want to deal with.

So Amy accepted the new shape of her world. The geography was different from what she remembered, but when she was done the planet would be once more green and full of life. She would notice the difference, but the rest of the Martians would not. To them it would simply be home. She would fill the dry ocean basins, and restart rivers that had been dry for a millennia. She would take the lifeless sand and transform it into a rich, fertile soil – a soil laced with seeds that would grow into grasses and trees.

The tricky part would be the transition. Amy did not want the planet to suddenly spring to life overnight; that would make it far too obvious that some alien power was at work. Instead she wanted the planet to appear to come to life on its own, as if it had been asleep all this time and was finally waking up. She knew that any rational person would probably figure it out anyway, but she was counting on the apathy of the people that lived in New Tikal. After all, they’ve lived underground for two thousand years! What do they know about life on the surface? It’s not like they really care anyway. Sure, they might notice if it starts raining, but are they really going to know enough about the biosphere to know that the rain had to be artificial? I’m guessing they’ll just accept what is about to happen and will move on with their lives. Or, at least, I hope they will.

With this in mind she gave the nanites a long series of commands. The changes would start out slowly. Over the course of the next few days the atmospheric pressure would slowly return to the same level that it had held in the 19th century. Then, once the balance of atmospheric gasses had been fixed, the rains would begin. As it rained – and it would need to rain for weeks, in order to hide everything else that was happening – the nanites would refill the planet’s water table and the rivers, lakes, and oceans. The volume of water in the oceans would far exceed the amount of rainfall, but Amy was hoping that no one would notice. Hopefully, if the oceans are full by the time the rain stops, they’ll just decide that the rain was responsible. There’s no way that’s possible, of course, but I didn’t see any climate scientists in New Tikal. We’ll see how that goes.

Meanwhile, as the rain fell, the nanites would transform the gritty sand back into rich, fertile soil. After the first week or so of rain green things begin to sprout out of the ground. First there would be grasses, but later trees would start to grow. It would take years for the saplings to grow into mature trees (and she didn’t dare accelerate that process), but eventually the trees would grow into forests and the planet would become green once more.

Of course, there are also the insects – and all the animal life, she thought. This is all going to have to be done pretty carefully. It would be so much easier to simply trigger this all at once! That’s what Stewards usually do, and that’s the way my nanites are used to doing things. This staggered process is a real pain. But at least I’m doing something the nanites are used to doing. They were designed to repair broken planets – not mend broken minds.

When her plan was finally complete, Amy opened her eyes and took another look at the world around her. By now the sun had completely set and night had set in. The desert was quiet. No one was prowling around and no vehicles were rumbling across the sands. It was a still, lonely night.

This is all going to take a lot of time, she thought. I’ve set up the first phase so it will finish on the first of March. That’s when the atmosphere will be restored, the rivers and oceans will be refilled, and the ground will be green again. It will take decades after that for the forests to regrow, but that can’t be helped. Fifty years from now this planet will be a very different place – but the Martians will be faced with a decision long before then. In a few weeks they’ll decide if they’re going to do something with this new planet of theirs, or just ignore it and stay in their decaying underground den.

Amy made a small motion with her hand, and the program she had created was uploaded to the nanites. Although there were no immediate visible changes, she could feel the energy as the nanites transformed themselves, working to put her plan into action.

It has begun, she thought.