02 - The Last Day of Magic

December, 1775

Knox's expedition arrived at Fort George after 3 days of hard travel over the post roads and hunting trails through New York's back-country.  Nicholas Fisher and Charlotte Rose shared a single horse for the trek and after 30 hours in the saddle together they were relieved to be through with the journey.  The fort was small and the bunk house was crowded so Knox, Fischer, and Rose were all assigned a single room with a captured British lieutenant.

The lieutenant was a handsome young man by the name of John Andre.  Knox and the magician got along with the prisoner of war just fine but it was Charlotte who took the lieutenant the most.  Not only was Andre handsome but he was a man of the arts - versed in poetry, theater, music, and drawing.  The two were immediately attracted to one another.

That evening Knox laid out his plan for the first stage of the expedition.  Just a few miles north up Lake George lay Fort Ticonderoga and the cannons that Knox sought.  Knox planned to row a small fleet of boats up Lake George, disassemble the cannons, load cannons onto the boats and float the cargo back down the lake to Fort George.  He needed the lake to remain unfrozen throughout this process; that's where Nicholas Fisher's talents were required.  Temperatures were falling and winter was setting in and the magician needed to make sure that the lake didn't freeze.


With the task set before him Nicholas wasted no time in starting to shape the weather.  He concocted a magic act in which he could perhaps create a large source of heat with which he could hold back the frost.  At the same time the show of magic would impress the crew and make it easier for him to generate a pool of belief for future practical magic as the expedition wore on.  Fisher enlisted Knox and the doting lieutenant into his troupe for the trick.

The soldiers in the fort had constructed a large bonfire from fresh cut logs.  The logs were still too green to burn but Nicholas knew that he could set them ablaze.  The troupe used a cask of alcohol to guide a trail of flame that danced alongside Charlotte out of the mess hall and down to the bonfire. Andre accompanied the trick with a rousing performance on the violin.  Nicholas channeled the magic out of the growing anticipation from the crew and soldiers. As Charlotte and the trail of flame approached the bonfire Nicholas pushed the built up energy through Charlotte.  Charlotte took the energy and directed it into flames and the bonfire exploded in wave of supernatural flame.


The trick proved to be more spectacle than substance in the end.  The next day there was little heat for Nicholas to change the weather with.  He spent the next two days tirelessly working alone - holding back the frost with traditional practical magic techniques.  Meanwhile, Knox traveled up the lake with his crew. Charlotte and John Andre spent the days together in the comforts of the fort and each others company.

The retrieval of the cannon was a success in the end.  Knox returned to Fort George and began making preparations to get the cannon loaded onto sleds which could be dragged over land by teams of oxen.  However, in order to move out, the weather would need to change again.  This time Knox required snow. Again the magician would be called upon.

01 - The Last Day of Magic

November, 1775

New York city was buzzing with anticipation.  For weeks heralds had announced the coming of the next, and greatest, in spectacles from the magic act had captured the imagination of the burgeoning metropolis.  Magician Nicholas Fischer had announced that the star of his show, Charlotte Rose, was to perform an act called "The Vortex." The location of the show was secret until the day of the show when the heralds finally announced that the performance would take place on Long Island, across the East River, in a remote inlet just north of Red Hook.

People from across the city, from merchants to fishermen, seamstresses to maids, boarded ferry's and made their way across the frigid New York bay.  They shuffled into a clearing where freshly felled trees were now arranged in long benches which created an amphitheater surrounding an inlet.  The sun began to set and everyone's attention turned towards the inlet. The water of the inlet was partially frozen which created a sort of ice floe.  A warm eastward breeze accompanied by thick fog rolled in off the river.  It was through this curtain of fog that the magician and his assistant stepped onto the icy stage that was the inlet.

The performance was nothing short of spectacular.  The theatrics exceeded even the duos reputation.  Charlotte Rose was suspended aloft in a swirling vortex above an floating chuck of ice.  She seemed to dance in the air for several long seconds as if the vortex were her partner; the both of them moving as one in thin air.

After taking their bows the pair of performer took a brief rest and then returned to greet their audience in the outdoor evening festival that had sprung up around the clearing.  Just as the evening was winding down the magician was approached by a young Bostonian bookseller. His name was Henry Knox and he was on a expedition to fetch and deliver 60 pieces of artillery to Boston from the recently captured Fort Ticonderoga on the border of New York and Quebec.  Knox was impressed with the magician's performance and had read about the use of practical magic.  Knox believed that a practical magician was just the thing his expedition needed to succeed.

After thinking on it for a short while Nicholas Fisher and Charlotte Rose both agreed to accompany the bookseller on his expedition for a handsome fee.  The expedition was set to leave New York in a matter of days.  If all went well the pair would be back in New York in 4 weeks time; just in time for the New Year.

03 - Rodrigo

Profile Radio:

Adrian Hildegarde is a first generation, in-situ grown Martian.  He lived in the Margaritifer Terra  Dome for 42 years and earned 14 advanced degrees in subjects ranging from Mathematics to Engineering to Politics.  At age 37 Adrian developed Alzheimer's disease.  He was relocated to the nearby Ares Vallis Dome and was treated in the Ares Vallis Hospital.  The treatment was unsuccessful and he was denied bio-cycle on the grounds that his memory was sufficiently deteriorated.

Adrian did not give up a hope for a cure.  Instead he began to work at first independently, and eventually in a small team with other like minded Martians to reverse his condition.  In a strange turn of events, Adrian's obsession and tireless work finding a cure busied his mind enough to slow, and in some cases reclaim some of his lost memories.  For three years Adrian collected data, however the results of his self-conducted and unsanctioned tests were not accepted by the medical staff at the Department of Welfare (DoW).  According to the DoW, Adrian was still mentally degenerative, albeit selectively, and he was further denied treatment.

At this point records and close friends indicate that Adrian became "unhinged" and he began a downward spiral into dementia.  He stopped his daily functions as a Citizen and secluded himself in his residence.  Two months following Adrian's seclusion he disappeared and the DoW closed his public record.

The details of Adrian's escape from the dome are mysterious however in the classified DoW database his record continues.  Adrian reappears living in the wilderness referring to himself as Radio, denying his previous identity.  Radio quickly began putting his efforts into communications monitoring and drew the attention of some of the Dome's senior officials.  Radio's ability to tap into communications systems and databases astonished the Department of Security.  Director Kahn was one of the officials who took notice of Radio's actions.  Kahn took it upon herself to monitor Radio. Kahn reverse-engineered Radio's own techniques against him, and eventually Kahn was able to cipher his advances.  Quickly Kahn took the upper hand and Radio was shut out of Dome's databases and communications.

Kahn and the the Department of Security learned from Radio's breach and tightened up their systems.  Radio was given restricted access and Kahn continued to monitor his activities to learn more about potential flaws in the system.  Seven years have passed and Radio has made little to no effort to breach the Dome's systems.  Instead he merely monitors the few channels that Kahn allows him access to.

Flash forward to the present: Radio has promised to hack a live feed between Rodrigo and Director Kahn and broadcast it to the Dome's public.  In exchange for his service he expects Rodrigo to provide him a new body by bio-cycling him into a vessel using the salvaged transfer pods from the relay station.

Radio's mental state is questionable however he does seem lucid enough to understand the implications of being able to bio-cycle himself with the help from Rodrigo.  It is unclear whether bio-cycling will reverse or cure Radio's condition.  At the same time, keeping busy mentally seems to have minimized the effects of Alzheimer's for him thus far.  Perhaps providing Radio with a clone of himself will speed his recovery, or at least provide him more manpower to find a cure.

02 - Rodrigo

Profile Rodrigo:

Rodrigo immigrated to Mars 13 years ago.  Due to an automation mistake at the relay station Rodrigo’s earth body was awakened after his consciousness was processed to his immigrant body.  Confronted with the problem of having two Rodrigos, Director of Welfare Kahn decided to exile the pair and maintain constant surveillance over them.  Over the years Director Kahn has made watching Rodrigo carve out an existence in the harsh Martian wilderness her favorite pastime.

Rodrigo lived a mostly solitary life, scraping discarded tech left behind by the drones that maintain the vast network of power grids, mines, and garbage facilities scattered around the Ares Vallis dome.  Occasionally Rodrigo would develop some new technology or create a unique program that Kahn would use to enhance the domes existence.  These developments justified Kahn’s decision to allow Rodrigo to live out his natural life on the planet rather than having killed him back on the relay station.

Rodrigo struggled with his identity ever since he became split between two bodies.  The Rodrigo from Earth knew he was the original incarnation of himself but he refused to believe that his clone was a different or separate person from himself.  He believes that there is only one Rodrigo - just two perspectives.  His mind is in two bodies, but it’s still the same mind, still the same identity.  Rodrigo believes that his clone makes the same decisions that he would make in the same situation.  Rodrigo believes that his two selves share the same identity, but have different experiences.  This makes for a broader understanding and wider range of experience.  Because Rodrigo believes his clone is no different from him, he accepts all actions and incorporates all thoughts his other self does and thinks as his own.

On the other hand, Rodrigo who was created on Mars believes that he is a completely new man independent from his original.  From the instant that rodrigo laid eyes on his original self he understood that he was not the original man.  From the very beginning rodrigo determined that he was less real and somehow inferior to his predecessor.  Rodrigo believes that identity is not continuous between bodies.  Bio-cycling does not extend the life of the original individual, it creates a new individual.  Because Rodrigo believes consciousness is not transferred in the bio-cycling process, he believes that identities are being terminated prematurely without the vessel understanding that they will seize to exist.  rodrigo has no proof for his theory and as a result he argues with his predecessor regarding the meaning of identity on a regular basis.

Flash forward to the present: Having access to the crashed transport and pods confirms what rodrigo has long suspected. The pods records a back-up of the consciousness during the bio-cycle process.  However, consciousness still only exists within a body; which means it is impossible to interact with the back-up that is stored digitally within the pod.  The pod records the back-up and then uploads the mind file to the new body.  The process is handled entirely by the pod.  There is no direct transfer of the mind, the mind does not leave the host, the process does not create vessels. The process of bio-cycling is not cut & paste as the Dome has stated, it is a copy & paste.  This is the key.  This is why the pods and the “vessels” are incinerated when they are taken down from the relay station.  The Dome is destroying the body, the back-up, and the technology that would allow more copies of the immigrant to be made.

When the Dome destroys the body and the pod, it puts the immigrant under the control of the Dome. Without the Dome's cooperation the immigrant cannot be cloned again.  Citizens are also bio-cycled in pods, the same way as immigrants, when a body ages to a undesirable degree.  A citizen is an investment in the future of the Martian civilization, but a citizen with the ability to create duplicates of his or herself is a liability. The Dome maintains control by keeping back-ups and pods out of the hands of the citizens and immigrants.  The Dome decides who is bio-cycled and who isn’t. 

Concerning the future: Rodrigo is responsible for the rescue of two medical technicians from the destroyed relay station. He restored life to the badly burned technicians by bio-cycling them into the earth bodies of two immigrants.  The pods from the transport ship that crashed down to the planet are storing a back-up mind file of the two immigrants who perished up on the relay station.  Essentially, the two technicians are borrowing the vessel bodies while they figure out how to restore themselves to a new body of their own, at which time the mind file stored in the pods can be used to restore the identities of the immigrants into their original Earth bodies.

At the same time Rodrigo is being accused by Director Kahn of attacking and destroying the relay station.  Kahn believes that Rodrigo attacked the station in order to steal the pods - perhaps to create more clones. Rodrigo must protect the technicians and the pods for him to survive this ordeal. If Rodrigo loses the pods or the technicians he loses the evidence that proves his theory.  Despite Rodrigo's self-sacrificing actions, and his new understanding of how bio-cycling really functions, he is still being hunted by Kahn with no clear path towards absolving himself in the eyes of the Dome

01 - Rodrigo

Two technicians floated off the space elevator into the center of the relay station in the Martian thermosphere tethered high above the Ares Vallis Dome.  One man, one woman.  The technicians busied themselves setting up one of the four wedge shaped med-bays for the incoming transport.

Outside the port holes they could see a transport approach the relay station.  The shuttle adjusted itself shooting white tufts of air from nozzles scattered around its smooth windowless fuselage.  Within minutes the transport docked with the relay  station and the technicians boarded the transport by way of a small docking arm.

The transport was small and dimly lit.  The man walked hunched over so as not to hit his head as he approached one of the two sets of pods packed together inside the transport.  The pods were just large enough to hold a person.  They were featureless besides a small glazed viewing window located above the head-end, and a read out screen in the middle, that displayed the vital signs of the immigrants inside.

The two technicians wordlessly assigned themselves each to a pair of pods.  The man peered inside his pods and saw a male immigrant lying in stasis.  Just beside the immigrant, in an identical pod was the immigrants duplicate.  With a few quick key strokes to the read out screen the man began transferring the consciousness of the immigrant who had been born on Earth to the duplicate that had been grown in transit to Mars.  Two minutes later the old Earth-born body of the immigrant was nothing but an empty vessel and the new transport-grown body sat up carrying with it the consciousness of the immigrant.

The man ushered his immigrant back to the med-bay, as did his female counterpart.  Routine tests were conducted as robotic arms, connected to endless tracks that cross-crossed the stations walls, floors, and ceilings, delivered tools and supplies to the technicians.  As the tests were being concluded the stations automated systems spoke in a calm and even tone: "Warning, air pressure drop detected." The man swung around and looked out the port window over his shoulder.  Blue flames were creeping around the edges of the window.

Without warning the one of the walls of the med-bays across the station collapsed on itself as if a huge invisible fist had punched a hole in the wall from the inside out.  The immigrant on the table in front of the man slammed into him sending him into a wild zero gravity spin.  At the same time, all of the air was sucked out of the station through the hole in the wall.  The man hit one of the stations walls and was able to stabilize himself.  Looking around he watched as everything rushed towards the hole in the stations walls.  Both immigrants were tumbling end over end. He watched helplessly as they flew through the opening and were lost.

It only took the station 7 seconds to raise the walls to the damaged med-bay and seal off the hole.  15 more seconds and oxygen was resupplied to the remaining med-bays allowing the man to fill his lungs with air again.  Along with the air came sound.  The automated systems were still speaking, saying "...air-pressure restored. Warning, hull breach detected.  Warning, fire detected.  Attention, proceed to the exit..."

The man looked around the station.  Floating debris cluttered his line of sight, but he could make out a body floating about on the other side of the station.  It was the woman technician.  The man dodged debris and crossed the station, pausing briefly to peer down through the space elevator shaft at the center of the station.  Blue flame coated everything below him.  The fire swirled slowly as it expanded and burned.  The man reached the woman and found her to be knocked out.  He called for an automated arm to retrieve her body and bring it back to the transport.  With the elevator drowning in a pool of flames, the transport was the only escape route available.

The automated arm dragged the woman along the edge of the station back to the transport.  The man held onto the woman and was pulled along too.  As they glided towards the transport the man ordered the station to open a communication channel to the dome below.  The station spoke again, but this time it was the voice of someone back on the surface.  The man explained what had happened and asked for help, but there was nothing anyone back on the dome could do to help him.  The transport would provide temporary protection if the station burned up, but the transport wasn't designed to survive reentering the Martian atmosphere.  The recommendation from the dome was to board the transport and use it to fly to another relay station and get back to the planet through another dome.

The man guided the woman onto the transport and sealed the hatch behind him.  He punched the button labeled 'detach' on the center console.  The transport didn't move or make any sound.  From inside the windowless chamber he couldn't tell if anything had happened.  Before he could wonder any further a muffled explosion went off and the transport was sent into a sickening spin.  The man struggled to grab hold of the woman as their bodies were thrown around inside the tight quarters.  Once he had her, he held her tight against himself and tried to stabilize them both as the transport whipped around and around.

The man put his hand out to brace himself against one of the walls, but he had to pull his hand away quick.  The walls were hot.  It was then that he realized that the walls were beginning to turn a shade of dark orange.  A couple seconds passed and the walls grew brighter orange and he could feel the heat radiating off of them.  The station had pushed them away in the blast he had heard and they were now tumbling back towards the planet, burning up in the Martian atmosphere.

The man did his best to keep himself wrapped tight around the woman and stay away from the walls, but the heat was becoming intense and the ship was rotating in a wild pattern.  Just before the heat overwhelmed the man and he lost consciousness he caught a glimpse of something strange through the view window of one of the pods within the transport.  An immigrant's earth-born body was still inside, though now it was empty vessel.  The immigrant's consciousness had been transferred to another body - the same body that had been swept out into space back on the relay station, yet its eyes were opened and it was staring back at the man through the view window.

*     *     *

Rodrigo stopped his salvage hauler just outside the Ares Vallis wind farm as soon as he saw the fireball in the sky.  The relay station was on fire.  He watched as the whole station was swallowed by the smooth blue glow of a zero-gravity fire.  Suddenly the station seemed to crack in half and the perfectly formed fireball was pushed out in every direction.  It was frightening yet beautiful.

Rodrigo stayed and watched the fire grow and spread across the sky.  Soon debris could be seen streaming across the sky as it burned up in the atmosphere.  Suddenly something large came flying out of the sky and crashed a few miles away off in the middle of the wind turbines.  Rodrigo emptied his trailer of the miscellaneous scraps he had been collecting all morning, jumped back into the hauler, and speed off in the direction of the crash. Today, he thought, is going to be a good salvage day.

When Rodrigo located the wreck it was still smoking.  Right when he saw it he knew what it was.  The transport was embedded in the ground at the bottom of a four foot deep crater.  With heat gloves on he tore a whole in the hull of the transport with his cutting tool.  A sickening smell was coming out of the whole he had cut.  As he cautiously lowered himself into the dark and steaming hull he was overwhelmed by the smell of burnt flesh and hair.

Inside where two people intertwined tight together that were burnt beyond identification.  Rodrigo checked the bodies to see if they were still alive.  To his disbelief they both were still breathing.  He knew he had precious few minutes to stabilize both people before they succumbed to their injuries.

He wiped his gloved hand across the view window of one of the pods in the transport and found it to be empty.  With his other hand he wiped the connected pod's window and saw an immigrant still inside.  Immediately he knew what he was going to do.  He went back to the two blacked bodies and pried them apart.  He could now see that one was a male and the other a female.  From the look of things it appeared as though the man had wrapped himself around the woman to protect her during the crash.  As a result the man was in much worse shape and needed attention first.

Rodrigo dragged the body to the empty pod and sealed the man inside.  He wiped off the read out screen of the pod and prayed that the pod was still functional.  The screen was light up and began displaying the vitals of the man inside the pod.  He was in worse shape than Rodrigo had thought.  Stabilizing him in the pod would be impossible. If the man was to live Rodrigo would have to do something more drastic.

Rodrigo queued up the bio-cycle procedure on the linked pods, setting the pod that contained the burned man as the host.  With a heavy heart he took one last look down through the view window into the immigrant’s pod and punched the start key.

With one burn victim sorted he turned his attention to the other.  However, just as he loaded the woman into the last vacant pod he heard a noise outside.  The read out screen showed him that the woman was stable within the pod. He knew had time to think about what he would do with her  but first he had to find out how close the snooper drone had gotten.

He half crawled out of the transport's hull and found the pentaped drone surveying his hauler from a few paces away.  Rodrigo hefted his cutting tool in his hand and walked over to the drone.  The drone watched him intently as he raised the tool over his head and crushed its metal body in one blow.  I'm all in now, he thought to himself.  Other drones were sure to arrive soon.  Rodrigo had to get moving.  He had done all he could for the two crash victims, now all he could hope for was that his gamble on them would be worth the sacrifice he had made for them.

Rodrigo started up the hauler once again and began to drive himself, the transport shuttle, and the three bodies out of the wind farm and away from the mangled drone.  Rodrigo's comm device chirped loudly over the rumble of the hauler.  Rodrigo's partner spoke from the device, "I'm getting a lot of chatter out of the dome channels, what have I gotten myself into?"

"I've collected some valuable scrap, and I smashed  a drone.  I'll explain when we meet up, where are you?" Rodrigo replied.

Pitch Session - Rodrigo

Mars Immigrations Program - Earth Advertisement

The new frontier.  Start over on Mars.  Mars has everything you need and more.  Consider this:  Mars has no disease, no hunger, no wars, no pollution, and no over-crowding.

What does Mars have?  Mars has unlimited resources, planned communities, a planned economy, a unified government, and bio-cyclical healthcare with the promise continual health and prosperity.

Immigrate to Mars and live the perfect life.  Live forever.

Mars Immigrations Program - Martian Slogan

Exceptional minds: Earth's last export


Background

Every 25 months immigrants are launched when the planets are closest together.  The transport carries immigrants, along with their new body, to the red planet in approximately160 days.  The transports are received at one of a handful of relay stations where their consciousness is transferred from their Earth body to their new Martian body, referred to as bio-cycling.  Once the technicians at the relay complete the bio-cycle the immigrants are brought down to the surface of the planet via space elevator to begin their new life on Mars.

Each immigrant is specifically selected and approved prior to departure from Earth to be integrated into Martian society which ensures the fulfillment of each individuals socioeconomic potential in their new life.