Meanwhile on Mars

"Fuck, do I love my job," said the athletic man as he and his team boarded the strange underground monorail. Arrived at the end of a long corridor carved in the rocky Martian underground, he could finally go up. The security guard was noticeably uncomfortable wearing a suit and a tie, but the masquerade was a small price to pay for letting him take part in today's historical test. His name was about to enter the history books.

"Talk about luck," answered the team supervisor, equally thrilled and making his way in. Below the surface of the red planet, the dozen or so well-dressed passengers crammed into the monorail to the hotel at the surface. Shabby doors closed behind them.

“I haven't seen the damn Sun in over two weeks."

"Guys, focus on the job, don't get out of character." Alex tugged on the large belt buckle of his pants with both hands, as if to play the role of some type of Italian mobster. "Call me Giuseppe." Everyone but Gerard, the odd man out in the back laughed.

An oxygen-nitrogen mix hissed into the box, pressurizing it up to 400 millibars and lifting part of the omnipresent stench. The men's lungs felt better under the increased air pressure. The term "air" on Mars was used loosely. As long as the oxygen was cut with nitrogen, it was "Martian air." It took a bit more than a minute for the cabin's air pressure to rise by a hundred millibars. Below, on the surface of Mars, where the staff lived away from radiation, the air was kept a hundred times the typical Martian atmospheric pressure but still only a third of Earth’s generous air. That made the staff's living environment at about 300 millibars. Breathing was hard. Above, in the luxury hotel, the guests were allowed to waste more, hence they were given a hundred more millibars of pressure.

In the monorail, the red lights on the panel finally turned green as the sensor hit the desired pressure. A window seemed to cracked but did not break. A lock below the floor released the monorail to its ascent. The cage began along a strange fifteen-degree slope.

"My name is Joe, I own an oil company in Texas," rehearsed another. The passengers laughed.

"The view upstairs from the Slipper will be fucking amazing. Who has been up there?"

"I have. I cleaned it two weeks ago. Fucking amazing!" replied Alex. The constant vulgarity of the staff annoyed the hotel management, but tolerating this conduct away from guests was a healthy compromise with the worker's union. These people were here for a minimum of two years, and stress management was at the heart of a healthy long-term stay.

The group’s discreet housing was built forty feet below the Martian surface at the base of this massive mountain on which the hotel rested. The bedrock offered radiation protection from the gamma rays of the Sun. On Earth, the atmosphere absorbed the dangerous rays.

To the naked human eye, the desert here was a slight red. Not as dark as brick but closer to a bag of cement tinted with paprika. Mars was like the Nevada desert in all other aspects. The costumed workers began the climb up this red bedrock of a tall mountain to the famous hotel located almost a kilometer above. The group of "volunteers" had been selected amongst the two hundred or so workers because their jobs kept them hidden well below the surface most of the year. Their radiation levels were well below average and taking a trip in the Slipper would do them no harm. On Mars, each person wore a radiation dosimeter. Once an individual reached thirty millisieverts of exposure, the worker was forced to complete his or her contract below the surface, away from the Sun. It was a punishment no one desired.

A minute after departure, the monorail broke the surface. Above the white Sun had green tints. The slow vertical climb shifted up to a twenty-degree angle as the box continued. The electrochromic walls quickly adapted to the natural light, tinting to blue as it rose on the red horizon. Time had grown short: in less than ten hours, the Airbus A2070, already in deceleration, would land and the Glider needed a test under its belt. Aboard was the world’s young sweetheart and her disabled father.

The Slipper parked above was probably the only thing on Mars built without the blessing of Electoral. The digital goddess paid for the hotel, the staff salaries, and the game itself. Conversation among the staff muffled as the monorail continued its climb. Most wondered why Electoral was opposed to the glass glider. It was the most exciting thing built on Mars.

The conversation eventually settled on the famous Sophie Lapierre and her father Laurent, both currently aboard the Airbus. Everyone was anxious to see her. "Laurent is fine," a man concluded referring about the health scare. "That thing should know better than mess with him, the man has seen worse." They also worried about the Light Drive sending the plane out of alignment, to slow down using the Martian orbital push laser, the ship would need to realign.

As the monorail reached about a thousand feet, as the horizon began to curve, the team saw above the undersurface of the famous hotel. At the middle point in the ascent there was a loud metallic thump, and the climb halted. From this altitude, the view of the Martian landscape was lovely. In the distance, the Sun was rising.

Only residents knew the faint gasses in the weak atmosphere gave the light variation get colors as it moved up the faint atmospheric line. The orb was now a small white dot with pink hues, subjectively about a hundred feet above the uneven ground. In the monorail cabin, red lights were blinking on the door's command console. Several alarms should be sounding, but they had long been unplugged. The box was stuck and no one seemed to really care. Mars was to space exploration what Italians were to the British: organized carefree chaos.

"Shall we?" asked one man. They'd all either seen or heard of this happening before.

Everyone moved to the left side of the cabin feet on the edge of the floor. With a blink of the eye, they all jumped up and down a couple of times. Their weight rattled the monorail. On the third jump, metal clanked and the monorail bounced back on the rail only to resume its upward progression to the hotel above. The blinking of the alarms stopped.

"This can't happen to tourists. They'd freak out," one laughed.

"These are rusted Martian steel. We're on the aluminum track below the hotel. Guests won't ride down to the surface on this line, our place is not for them. They have a different tract to visit the ground. Should be a smoother ride. This doesn't count." Everyone, except Gerard, laughed.

"We'll know soon enough. Marilyn granted permission to her players to take a ride in the Slipper only once they drop out of the game. But legally, President Emilio reminded them they are free to do so at any time. Marilyn is very protective."

Attempts to explore Mars had historically been riddled with strange accidents and software glitches. A late-night comedian once said, "Let's welcome the first Martian cosmonauts," as he placed a small box filled with ashes on his desk. In 2067, the Electoral system, for reasons unknown, used her considerable wealth to expatriate herself to Mars from her Bahamas compound on Earth. Civil engineers to this day remained amazed at the computer's resourcefulness in conducting the relocation. She built shuttles, rockets and all the myriad other supplies needed for the trip, then launched thousands of modules from Earth. Marilyn built the Electoral Center a couple of hundred miles from the hotel, and in that home-away-from-home, she even constructed living quarters for her creator, the richest man in the universe. Of the 127 contestants remaining, after the death of one passenger aboard the Airbus, the next round would eliminate half. After two rounds played in the hotel, the 32 remaining contestants would travel to the Center in what was certain to be a ratings record.

Back in 2067, there were no structures or habitations on Mars aside from a single two-man scientific polar outpost. The manned structure was nothing more than a small trailer-like box. Even as recently as 2068, no one had taken the possibility of recreational travel to Mars seriously. Yet here they were. Electoral was a woman of her words, driven and efficient beyond any human standard, even when she was forced to work with humans to effectuate her will. The fact that the finalists were less than a day away from arriving at this new frontier gave testimony to that fact.

Eight years ago, Electoral used her vast wealth and acquired the Peninsula chain of hotels, owner of the Holiday Inn brand. The same day she announced plans for a new touristic structure on Mars, of all places. The Holiday Inn Mars would be the first exclusive five-star vacation resort in a hostile environment. This same structure built on top of Mount Everest would have been met with less skepticism. Electoral's determination to meet the 2072 deadline had been made evident at Airbus' annual shareholder meeting back in 2069. The CEO was interruped by the beautiful digital creature on the screen behind him.

Marilyn apologized for the interruption, thanked everyone, blew a virtual kiss in the direction of awestruck CEO, and explained that she needed a craft to transport passengers back and forth to Mars in three years. She promptly uploaded the completed schematic layouts of the Airbus 2070, including the plans for what she called the Light Drive. In exchange for the engineering and preparatory work, all she wanted was free passage for her participants and guests in the 2072 competition; Airbus would keep the technology. The stock of Airbus shot through the roof that same day. The new A2070 design was light-years ahead of any other human spacecraft of the time. The same day, Marilyn commissioned two large satellites with powerful blue lasers. Once again, she offered the technology in exchange for the year-long production and launch.

The construction of the Holiday Inn Mars started with much fanfare but proved a bit more difficult than anticipated. Marilyn also furnished the layouts and designs of the hotel, but the engineers of the hotel insisted on making small “modifications.” The human changes soon proved to be a series of potentially project-derailing obstacles. Soon, their lack of vision placed the human-driven construction of the hotel three years behind schedule. Through ingenuity, efficiency, and veiled threats, Electoral had managed it so that the opening was still planned to coincide with the arrival of the first guests. It took Electoral a lot of restraint to tolerate these human deviations, but such are the problems of collaboration and good neighboring, she grumbled inwardly.

That said, the Holiday Inn Mars was a sight few could ignore. An Earth comedian laughed, "President Emilio is going to be our next president. Since he is the only finalist here on Earth, all he needs to do is wait a couple of days until some disaster befalls that godforsaken hotel, and he'll be the proud boss of the world's first all-frozen or free-floating atom cabinet!"

The Holiday Inn Mars was built on the north-west side of Olympus Mons, the largest mountain in the solar system, relatively nearby and north-west of to the Tharsis Montes, the three large shield volcanoes in the Tharsis region of Mars. Holiday-Inn rested at an altitude of two thousand feet above the surface. A long monorail moved up the slope of the mountain, linking an underground service station to the hotel. The same rail continued up the face of the mountain, above the hotel, to the docking port of what could only be called the most amazing, purely man-made wonder of science in the universe: the Glass Slipper.

The Holiday-Inn designers wanted guests to visit the entire hostile landscape of Mars, glass of champagne in hand. The Slipper was created for that purpose only. Electoral refused to participate in this project and had, in fact, tried to dissuade the builders. Today was the first dry run of the Glider and the group of hotel staff in the monorail would be its first passengers.

Centuries of bad science fiction had convinced the public that Mars was a harsher version of the Nevada desert, or worse, akin to the surface of the Moon. In truth Mars is, by all accounts, much worse. In addition to Olympus, Mars' Tharsis Region is home to the three Tharsis Volcanoes called the Tharsis Mons. These are three truly Herculean mountains, sticking out like acne on the face of the central plateau. Children often ask geography teachers how it would feel to be on the top of Olympus Mons, the tallest neighbor next to the three dead Tharsis Volcanoes, or why the Holiday Inn Hotel is built at the base of the Olympus Mons, instead of its top.

The Holiday-Inn was built as high on Olympus as technically feasible. It stood at an altitude much higher than the Empire State Building. Some comparison is needed to understand the sheer size of the Olympus Mons. Mount Everest stands 29,000 feet tall, with a summit so high it rests above clouds on most days; higher than some even above commercial airline cruising altitudes. On Everest, the air is thin and cold. Those who dare its peak typically require oxygen support gear, and the multitude of frozen corpses that remain on Everest to this day give eloquent testimony that even technology is no guarantee of survival in such hostile conditions.

The Olympus Mons, in comparison, dwarfs Everest, reaching 15.5 miles in altitude or over 81,000 feet. Any climb from the base to the top is a minimum of five hundred miles long. The Holiday-Inn, while offering an astonishing view of the landscape, rests at only 3% of the way up the massive mountain. Unlike Everest, which is found in the middle of a mountain range, the Olympus Mons rises from the surface of Mars like a lone, sentinel guardian. At a speed of one hundred miles per hour, a person would take five hours to bob-sleight down that monstrous mountain.

Mars is also the home of the canyon named the Valles Marineris. Once again, unlike Earth, the moon-sized planet has only a handful of canyons, but each is prodigious in size. The dimensions of the Valles Marineris, commonly called the Valles, dwarf those of even Earth's Grand Canyon. It is so large, it can be seen on Mars' surface from Earth on a clear night. The Valles is 2,500 miles in length and 130 miles wide, and it reaches down over four miles in the ground. In comparison, Earth's canyon is a tenth of that length, is seven times narrower, and only has a fourth of the depth. The volume inside the Valles, when compared with the Grand Canyon, is 280 times greater. Standing on the edge of the Valles is like being on the edge of a flat world.

A cliff drop of four miles is simply inconceivable to any man. The first author who set foot on Mars back in 2024 wrote the following: "Hell welcomes me. Only a child would venture nonchalantly, bouncing on this landscape of death. A slip of the foot, a puncture of my suit by these razor-sharp rocks, and I drown in my collapsed, frozen lungs from one of ten deadly consequences. The Sun here on Earth is a gift but in hell it is a tear in the sky spewing deforming radiation. The air on mars is polluted, the wind corrosive. Adam, Adam, you never left paradise. May God have mercy and return me home."

Once the initial misconceptions about Mars dispelled, what remains is a world of hidden wonders but still unquestionably possessed of the most hostile environment conceivable. A coin dropped from the top of the Empire State Building takes about a minute to reach the ground. Because of the air on Earth, the coin quickly reaches a speed of 40 mph and continues down at this maximum speed. On Mars, the gravity is 38% of Earth's, so a dropped coin would slowly accelerate at first. But the atmosphere is a hundred times thinner than Earth's so nothing would slow down the coin, which would reach the bottom of the Valles at speeds of well over 600 miles-per-hour as if it had been shot out the muzzle of a gun. A coin here kills.

The monorail, heavy with the dozens of pretend-guests, continued to trundle along its route. After half an hour up the incline, it slid below the hotel. The cage's assent resumed vertically, passing the lower basements of the structure as a normal elevator. Eventually, it reached the lobby. This was a majestic focal point of the facility, carefully designed to awe arriving tourists. The normal staff of the hotel was ready. Two rows of elegantly dressed hosts and hostesses were waiting for the doors to open. The actors walked out, grabbed a flute of champagne, and pretended to be suitably awed for a few minutes before returning to the monorail for the ride up to the Slipper.

In truth, no one had to pretend to be in awe of the view from the lobby of the hotel. It left everyone speechless. This was the perfect synergy of serenity and space exploration. The architecture had been designed by an artificial intelligence that knew humans better than they knew themselves. The ceiling of the main floor was covered by reinforced pieces of transparent polymer, and the cabin-like rooms were located in the lower levels below the lobby with a panoramic view of the Tharsis Mons in the distance. From here, there was a complete view over the flat red Martian landscape, and the rounded horizon of the planet was discernible. This central lobby could house hundreds and was filled with shiny couches, tables, a tail piano and several bars. It was unconstrained luxury, even by Earth's standards. No effort had been spared, no detail unattended to for the few who could afford to be here.

The employees were wearing shiny uniforms in different colors; the sexual undertone of the outfits was easily discernible if not shamefacedly glaring. If you could afford to be here, you had no shame in paying others to look great. The lobby was plastered with Electoral 2072 logos and posters of the remaining competitors. Marilyn had even designed drinking glasses in the shape of the competition's logo: a tall spike over a rounded wall. In glasses, aligned in trays, floated berries in a strange welcome cocktail. Lightly colored sparkling champagne with rainbow colored bubbles bent around the berries. In the low gravity of Mars the bubbles moved faster to the top of each glass, and in this low pressure, the bubbles were much larger.

Each attendant wore embroiled lapel flags to list which language he or she spoke. No one had fewer than five flags; one had twelve. Here, the salary was thirty times Earth's wage, and the view was unforgettable.

More bottles popped open.

In low gravity environments, where the atmosphere was rich in oxygen, it took little for the guests to get buzzed. The staff was magnificent, and the “guests” found that simulating their amusement was something less than a challenge.

"Ladies and gentlemen, those with a Group A ticket are invited to make their way to the Glass Slipper elevator. Please follow Justin, the others must wait sixty minutes for the next monorail to dock." Six of the twelve would go first. Gerard looked down, and his bad luck confirmed the piece of paper displayed the first letter of the alphabet. For the remaining half-dozen, this place was perfect for whiling away an hour. The doors to the monorail opened, but this time the small transport was fully decorated. Twelve could have squeezed in, but it now had a small couch; in the back was even a fully stocked bar and an elaborate automated dispensing machine. "You may, of course, bring your drinks to the Slipper." Alcohol on Mars was rare, someone was trying to get these people drunk, most likely to test the staff's response to impaired passengers on the Slipper.

The handful of lucky guests walked in the monorail flanked by bowing attendants. Of the six, only Gerard was showing signs of anxiety. The others refused to engage him. The French cook was a buzzkill and the only one who had not been given the option of volunteering and been forced to take the flight. The Frenchman's food would be served in the Glass Slipper, and some brilliant bureaucrat, as Gerard liked to say, felt the poor cook needed to see first hand how each appetizer and amuse-bouche held up in the Slipper's gravity-free serving environment. There was also a question of crumbs and aromas. The ship would orbit and gravity would drop to near zero for quite some time.

The monorail and its first six guests began the long picturesque climb up at an angle along the Mons. The sight that came next dwarfed the spectacular view from the lobby. At two thousand meters above the hotel lobby, the red horizon began to bend significantly. A faint white hue, the parody of an atmosphere, could be seen above the ground. It offered no real protection from the small star in the distance. From the hotel lobby below, the guests were unable to see the glass ship above as it began its ascent and speed up. Only once the Slipper took flight would it be visible.

The elevator accelerated, and after half an hour, it reached an altitude of about 20,000 feet. It was a fourth of the way up, yet as high as a commercial plane's flight down on the blue planet. The monorail docked below a heavy concrete slab, part of a long launching pad. It hid to the guests all but the tip of the Glass Slipper's nose. They docked with a loud banging noise as magnetic clamps locked into place. The guests had been warned and were provided with Electoral 2072 napkins to place atop the rim of their champagne flutes in the name of preventing unfortunate spills. The doors opened. This area was much more modest, it wasn't designed by the computer. In the cement bunker, several metal doors led to different portions of the launch pad. The six guests were directed to one of the doors.

A voice came over via the intercom. "On board of the slipper, the gravity will change. At times, it will even drop to zero. To your right, please feel free to use the last fixed bathroom you will see in the next hour. The glider will travel one full orbit of Mars and move at close to thirteen thousand miles-per-hour. These speeds are more than twenty times the speed of an airline plane. The extreme velocity is necessary in this low atmosphere to give our wings sufficient pressure to lift our craft. At your leisure, please make your way inside the Glider, and take any seat available. Fasten your seat belt for the launch. There is no assigned seating, for as you will see, none is needed in the Glass Slipper!"

As they made their way into the small shuttle, the passengers found themselves at a loss for words. The sights thus far, however amazing, were now utterly breathtaking. This view alone was worth selling your residence to buy a one-way ticket. The small craft had the shape of Earth's first space shuttle but on each side were much longer wings.

Every inch of this ship was made of transparent polymer, including the roof, the floor, the seats, and the hull. The effect was akin to walking inside a carved diamond. There was a slight deformation of light as the thickness of each wall varied, but the view of Mars ahead was exhilarating. Entering the glider was like walking outdoors while holding a champagne flute.

The glider's stern was the only opaque portion. It included an engine room through which the six guests entered.

"This thing will blow up," mumbled Gerard.

"Shut the fuck up, retard!" snapped Joe. "I don't care if this fucking piece of junk crashes and we all die. We are the first to ride, the ride costs 400,000 credits alone, and we're getting in for free. So shut the fuck up. If you ruin my buzz, I'll kill you!" The alcohol did not help Joe control his vocabulary, but he was speaking for the other guests as well.

"Putain de merde. What a great fucking idea . . ." replied Gerard. "Instead of loading the Slipper with dummies for the test ride, let's use the disposable staff of the hotel. Whoever came up with this has no clue how dangerous this is. I am a cook, not Indiana Jones. If we live, it could be the first time anything has gone according to plan on this shithole of a planet." Gerard knew very well he was being recorded, but he was right.

"Not sure about the trip, but your food will kill us for sure," forced out Sarah, as if to help diffuse some of the testosterone in the air.

"We are all getting a tattoo after this, right?" joked someone else.

Gerard pointed at a screen. "You see, that is a storm over the North Pole, no?"

The flight attendant smiled. The team was ready to service difficult clients. "Our orbit is not polar. We are not going within a thousand kilometers of the storm. Nothing will go wrong."

Gerard was unconvinced. "You sound like a bad remake of a cheap movie. 'Don't worry, what can go wrong?' Trust me, something will go wrong. This thing have parachutes?" he snapped.

On the horizon to the left, the passengers could distinguish the black fracture on the surface, forming the Valles. To the right, stood the three Tharsis Mons, like giant guardians or Egyptian pyramids. From this altitude, the curvature of the planet was beautiful to observe. In the mixed light of the sky, one of the two moons orbiting Mars was visible; the deformed Deimos. Phobos, the larger brother, was on the other side of the planet and would be visible only halfway into the orbital trip.

The launching pad was a sight to behold. From a distance, it was a speck on the Mons, but from within, it was phenomenal. The back of the glider was plugged into a mating shape and held in place by large clamps. Ahead of the transparent glider was a long cement lip in the form of a Slip 'n Slide with a curved end. The nearly mile-long launch slide had been built in an S-shape intended to push off the glider away from the mountain as it reached the ramp's end. Below the slide were large hydraulic pistons designed to raise a metal structure hidden inside the rocks.

The glider was slick, portions of the wings were shiny and covered by Kevlar and micro-polymer weaves. The cockpit electronics, the bar, the ovens, and other commercial equipment seemed like they were floating inside a carved Ice Castle, albeit one ready to be shot into orbit. Two pilots passed the boarding passengers to make small talk before they took their seats in the cockpit. The talk was awkward given that the pilots knew the hotel workers but had to pretend they did not.

"Is this your first time?" asked a pilot.

"Of course, have you met my husband?" the man replied jestingly, pointing at another male passenger. Everyone but Gerard laughed.

Along with everything else fore of the engine compartment, the seats were also made of transparent material. Even the bar and stools were transparent. A cushion would have been a nice touch, but the desired effect would have required aesthetic compromises. The pilots were sitting at the front in the cockpit, both buckled in.

The hotel employees could barely see the Holiday Inn far below their feet. It was covered by large nets to protect the structure from rolling debris.

The flight's host grabbed a little microphone and began, "Let us start this historic journey. Today our flight will be manned by Captain Manning and co-pilot Lui. Captain Manning is a five-time world gliding champion on Earth and formerly served as an officer in the British military. His co-pilot holds two important distinctions: he is a field medic from the Chinese military and a specialist in low-gravity emergency jumps. We will not bore you with specifics, but in case of emergency, any member of our staff should be very helpful." The attendant knew his introduction by heart.

The preparation helped Gerard feel somewhat reassured. "Are there parachutes?" he let out.

"The atmosphere is not thick enough for parachutes to really work. The outside environment is only three percent of an atmosphere. Without air, parachutes such as those on Earth would need to be impractically large. We are also going to be moving way too fast. Instead, your seats include a custom-designed shock absorber system, not unlike helicopter seats on Earth. In the highly unlikely event of a surface impact, you would not even break your champagne flute."

"But we will be moving very fast, thousands of miles per hour!" Gerard's critical mind was not missing a beat.

"You are correct. This is no simple flight, it's an orbital launch. This craft possesses rear parachutes, of the extremely large variety I mentioned earlier. Even beyond that, though, they are unique. They have built-in back vents." The man pointed to a screen, and a video played as he continued. "Take a look. At this speed, there is normal pressure in the tissue, by placing vents, the parachutes will lift us up as we decelerate." The images were reassuring. The large sails lifted the back of the ship, slowed it down. "Then under normal weak martian gravity, we would slowly float to the surface in the event of an emergency."

"Gerard, these guys thought about everything," said Joe.

"Seems like it," he had to admit.

The tower and the pilots exchanged some words, and several large green lights began to shine outside just before the clamps unlocked. The spring in the back of the Glider and those in the wheels gave one long constant push. The passengers were pushed deep into the stiff seats.