Monday, December 28, 2015

A Short SF Vignette The Hidden Scrolls of Mars (Earth Time, 100,000 B.C.)

   

The Scrolls

“I hope, nobody finds these writings! If one does, it means someone else between Earth and Mars or some other planet has been here, and God help them if they have no way off this planet. That is to say, they’ll most likely have to face these awful solar winds and storms which you will find out are quick and intense. They have stripped away most of Mars’ atmosphere, edged rock formations, rivers. I am the last person left here, most of us left, escaped to earth a decade ago. Earth is quite primitive to our race yet it is rich with life. We look more like the Cro-Magnon, and they, well, only time will tell, I venture to say, an earlier stage of mankind.
      From my radio reports, some of our spacecraft had an emergency landing on an asteroid.  What their fate will be, time will tell.
       I am Commander Mruts, I stayed behind, voluntarily, for the simple reason—if not, then what? And someone had to man the last of Mars’ stations, and monitor what needs checking, watching, observing.  Although I get updates from Earth and the Asteroid.
       They have now been gone five years.  I am writing these scrolls out, for posterity, should anyone find them in the future. I do understand our astronauts, and those civilians on those spacecraft’s, were hurled through space, it turned out to be a nasty trip, with a comet nearly shifting the ships courses as it orbited by. The Asteroid, will not allow the Martians to live much longer I am told, their supplies are down, as is their fuel, and there appears to be no escape, or launch ability.
       We call Earth the blue planet, and Mars the red planet. At one time Mars was shrouded in thick gases which supported our presence, and we had much water on the surface, many rivers. Like Earth, at one time our presence of air, I mean its content was antiquate, our Co2 level & O/O2, level within the atmosphere was like Earth’s is today ((the oxygen within the air consisting of 21% of the atmosphere by volume) (a diatomic gas)), today on Mars that number is less than 5% of Earth’s, and our water supply on the surface is completely frozen solid. And the atmosphere is so thin, being removed from high, to higher altitudes yearly, through interactions with the sun, we have built underground abodes, which supply most of our daily survival needs.
       On the other hand, as I have been informed, Earth has a global magnetic field that continues to operate and protect the life within its climate system, but I suppose it could in time be altered in a very similar manner Mars’ has been. Should their moon be kicked off its orbit, or an asteroid half the size of Pluto tumble outside its belt, sideswipe it, and move it a foot here or there, consequently, their moon protects them quite well from the sun, and its orbit; yet at present, makes it favorable to light the night, and shade the day for Earth, how fortunate, God has been gracious to the Earthlings.  
       On another subject, we must mingle with the Neanderthal, which we call their primitive race, and what will we get in the future is any man’s guess. Perhaps we’ll all die out, and God will take a few of our DNA, and their DNA, and implant them into a new kind of man!  Who’s to say?
       Again I stress, I hear oxygen and carbon dioxide are plentiful on Earth, this is important as is water for the planet life overall, which keeps this balance between mammals and vegetation and flora.
       I must say, alas, our magnetic field is crushed, so there is no coming back to Mars other than for old time sake, and so here goes 4.5 billion years of history, to a nearly unusable, unstable, unpredictable planet, other than holding down a station for whatever purposes. I mean we are 50-million miles from Earth, and 43-million miles from the sun, kind of lost in the Gobi Desert of space.
       I hate going out to the surface, hard to breath, and the temperature is above 150c at present. But reader, do not dismay, I volunteered for this, someone had to.”
Update
  
In the year, 2050 A.D., the scrolls of Mars were found, during an exploration of the planet by none other than an old space dog and his astronaut master, Staff Sergeant Hector Hecker, of the U.S.A Independent Space Continuum, (privately owned by Donald Frump, a billionaire), whom was from St. Paul, Minnesota; the dog, weather-beaten went by the name Max III; Max’s great grandfather fought in the Afghanistan War, and thus, Max III is now in the annals of Interplanetary Space Exploration. As for the Staff Sergeant he didn’t do the finding, and well, —dogs have their rights too.

#4919/11-21-2015 (Reedited and revised slightly, 12-28-2015)
Note: The original ten SF Stories called:

‘Out of Time Warps & Space’
(‘The Huancayo Analects’) 11/2015 Copyright © By Dennis L. Siluk, Dr. H.c.

Commentary on the Ten SF Vignettes
(…Also considered: ‘The Huancayo SF Analects’)


While up in the Mountains of Huancayo, Peru, the Andes, in November of 2015, there was a few weeks I was ill, and boredom crept in; not being a SF writer per se, but interested in physics, and Quantum theories, and the cosmos, I figured I knew enough to write a few tales of SF. During my 10-week stay I had written a little over a hundred poems, and I had dog-eared myself out on poetry, and so these ten vignettes came to me night and day, for three days, between the 20th of November, and the 22ed.  Thus, they came to mind, one after the other, and for the quick and short reader, these SF Vignettes might be your cup of tea, if not, then it is better you seek a novel. Each story is a quick read, as they were meant to be. And vastly different. And I hope imaginative. Being not my genre, you may have to look over a few incidentals, like: details, and description.  But the storylines are interesting, if not entertaining.

       The Art work is done by the poet/author as well.   D.L. Siluk