Server Extant

Kyle went to wash off the sex-sweat and Gillian turned on the TV. When he returned she had put her shirt and panties back on and was lying on her back with her legs elevated, propped on the window sill. The title sequence for a reality show called ‘Mars Colonists’, blared and unraveled itself across the screen.

Frustrated by the slow pace and general incompetence of terrestrial governments, private enterprises had come forward to push the cause of space exploration. The first, one-way colony on Mars had been establish five years ago. To offset the cost, some bright spark had had the idea of surveiling the entire settlement with digital cameras that fed a constant stream back to Earth. Although the process had been initially described as the ‘democratization of access to an universal human enterprise’ or some such, it had quickly turned into voyeurism, spawning a globally popular reality show, a money machine that was indispensable to the project. Gillian was addicted.

Kyle looked at his woman, absorbed by the TV, in her old high school shirt and faded panties. Those things, mundane in themselves, looked great on Gillian. Everything looked great on Gillian. Kyle had often reflected that beauty might be skin deep, but attractiveness was in the bone. Skeletal structure, length of limb, facial features, the fundamental indicators of physical fitness and, therefor, reproductive value, couldn’t be faked or gained at the gym. Kyle looked at Gillian’s sexy skeleton, relaxing on the couch, and took pleasure in his possession of it.

He yawned and went to make himself a sandwich.

‘You don’t want to end up like your brother’ called Gillian, who tended to resume conversations minutes or hours after she’d left off. ‘Part of dealing with an addiction is not associating with people who trigger the behavior.’

You’d know, thought Kyle. Half of her family seemed to be addicted to something. Nothing low-class, though, like meth.

‘Knet’s not real life, Kyle!’

Kyle had been given a choice between Knet and ‘real life’. It had been made very clear to him that ‘real life’ was the place where he continued fucking his girlfriend, and nowhere else. It hadn’tbeen easy, but now that he wasclean, like an alcoholic who dries out and finds himself beginningtoappreciatefamily,rainbows and the clear air on frosty winter mornings, he was gaining perspective on his former existence.

‘You have a great AP score’ continued Gillian. ‘You’ll get into the program, easy.’

‘My brother’s the one who’s really smart’ said Kyle, rummaging in the fridge.

‘You at least finished prep.’

‘All that means is that I’m good at taking tests. He’s the one that’s actually clever. And he’s wasting it.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Gillian. She wasn’t. Gillian didn’t like Leon.

Mars Colonists had finished its lengthy preamble. The program began. Kyle sat down besides his woman and put half of his sandwich on her stomach. She took it and began to eat, her eyes on the screen. Mars Colonists was rawly edited, unsparing, the cameras ubiquitous, prying, unmerciful. They recorded every detail in digital HD, the courage and desperation, the pettiness and grandeur, the sordidness, the regrets, the sex. The colonists were worldwide names, there was nothing about them that wasn’t known. But it seemed to Kyle, in the weird way people do, in such situations, that they had forgotten about their audience and were now entirely absorbed in themselves.

Of the original sixty four colonists, fourteen had now died. One, dramatically, of murder, (the issue of what to do with his killer now a topic of discussion on both planets), the others by Mars’ indifferent malice. Over eight seasons, a further fifty-two had arrived. Of those, eight had died. A number of the colonists had cancers, of various degree of malignancy, from the glare of Mar’s unshielded skies and there was no way to get them back to Earth for treatment. But mostly, their tragedies had had an unexpected, anticlimactic feel to them.

A movie wouldn’t have staged colonist Adelaide Kylens’ death, for example, the way it actually happened. It was too real. Kyle wouldn’t have thought that atmosphere escaping through a failed seal would have such tremendous power, enough to drag a human body though such a small hole, breaking it with such thoroughness and expelling it onto the frozen plateau with the other debris, but it did. Adelaide’s life had ended so abruptly that she herself had barely had time to notice, but her death lived forever, on the internet, playing, in an endless, silent loop.

That’s the R1 for you, thought Kyle. It was fucked up.

On the plus side, amidst all the drama, with five full habitats up and the horticulture units now managing their carbon cycle properly, they were actually building a halfway decent colony. Kyle had heard the show was opening auditions for its ninth season. There were already over three million applicants.

’Raul and Cynthia, our greenhouse crew, have not been getting along..’ said the narrator. Raul, a handsome man, and Cynthia, a narrow-faced woman with a Spartan’s strict posture, was shown in the playback, looking vaguely pensive. ’But today, their rivalry will be cut short.. by tragedy!’

‘Not Raul!’ said Gillian, sitting upright. ‘Oh God, please let it be Cynthia!’

Kyle realized, surreally, that someone was about to die. ‘Somebody do something’ he thought, numbly, but the show was pre-recorded. Whomever’s number had come up, he or she was already dead. Had been for days.

On the screen, there was a flash of electrical light. All the lights in the glasshouse went dark and one of the figures sprawled across the floor.

‘Damnit!’ yelled Gillian.