New Mars

In this first installment of an exclusive new serial to New Mars, Stuart Atkinson writes about the first manned mission to Mars taking place under circumstances that are more different - and darker - than we could ever imagine.

USSc Liberty, March 15th 2012

I should be smiling as I write this entry, celebrating my place in history, our grand achievement too. But instead of celebrating I’m crying, because this is wrong, it’s so wrong.

This isn’t how it should have been at all.

I’m not a vain person, I’ve never needed fancy, extravagant things to boost my ego or to reinforce my self-image, but damnit, we deserved a better send-off than that. There should have been a brilliant blue sky, and a blazing sun; fanfares, flags and cheering crowds seeing us on our way; lying on my back in my seat, I should have looked out the window and seen a million-strong, wide-eyed horde gathered around us, should have heard the faint, distant whisper of a million trembling voices reciting each figure as the countdown ticked-away. Startled birds should have launched themselves into the air as the countdown reached zero and the crowd cried-out “Godspeed!” as one… you know, like it was in the old, Glory days?

What we got instead was a silent countdown and a launch into a dark, cloudy sky, witnessed by no-one save whispering generals and majors, politicians and bureaucrats assembled in the bunkers. No crowds watched us rise towards heaven on our pillars of fire. But no-one would have come, even if they’d been allowed to, even if the Centre hadn’t been sealed-off by a ring of armed troops and tanks; long before then the world had turned its eyes away. Half of our brothers and sisters are scared to death by the prospect of our failure, the other half are ashamed of us, ashamed of us for ruining one of their last remaining and most glorious dreams.

And so we rose in a gut-twisting silence, without a word passing between us, and behind and below us, as one, 6 billion voices sighed, “This isn’t how it should have been…”

I know that because I heard them, and I swear I can hear them still. Disappointed. Accusing. Angry. And yet, looking down, it all looks so peaceful, so quiet down there: a patchwork quilt of fields, with filigree-fine silver thread rivers running through them. Anvil-like thunderheads tower over the mountains, casting long, dark shadows on them… I guess the old cliches are true: you really can’t see any boundaries, any lines. One world, a global village…

So why am I crying as I write this? Because instead of the elation and joy I expected to feel - deserved to feel! - after breaking through the clouds, all I am feeling is anger, despair, and fear.. Fear for the four of us, for terrifying the dangers we will face on our journey and at its end. Fear for myself, because I know the others resent me being here, consider me to be a distraction at best, and a liability at worst, and with them reminding me at every possible opportunity how “accidents happen” I can’t help wondering what lies ahead for me when we get there…

But the greatest fear is for everyone down there, the loved and unknown ones we’re leaving behind. What will happen down there while we’re away? What kind of a world will we come back to? For that matter, will there even be a world to come back to? Oh god, there might not be, there really might not be -

And if there isn’t, it might be our fault, because of what we’re going to do.

Unless the Others stop us… in which case I guess then all this is just self-indulgent nonsense, because these words will never be read; this journal will never come back, because we’ll be dead, and so will everyone else. The only way the Others will be able to stop us doing what we have to is by killing us, and if that happens then all hell will break loose back here, and that’ll be the end of the line. There won’t even be a world left for our ghosts to return to, to haunt the idiots who sent us away in the first place.

So what’s the point of writing this? They’ve asked me that many times already, of course; at first with genuine interest I think, but later with amusement and then, inevitably, scorn. Doesn’t matter. I’ve always given the same answer:

I began my Journal when I was 6 and haven’t missed an entry in 30 years. I don’t see why I should stop now , just because I’m on my way to Mars.

So, here I am, wedged tightly into a corner beside a tiny window (I can’t get onto the flight deck to enjoy the view out the wraparound “bay windows” because the access hatch is locked. Yes, locked! Can you believe it! Just what do Janeway - sorry, Captain Murray - and her fellow buzz-cut heads think I’m going to do up there? Steal the ship? Unbelievable. We’ve next to no room for any hard science cargo, but plenty of room for military paranoia), bathed in blue-and-white Earthlight, tapping away on a WordPad velcroed to my thigh. The others are asleep; they went out like a light, right on schedule. If I hadn’t heard them swearing I’d swear they were Borg, not human, regenerating instead of sleeping..

I’m meant to be asleep too, of course - Mission Planning (and Security) insists we all sleep at the same time, but unlike the other robots onboard there was no way I could miss these last glimpses of Earth from orbit. Last? Already? Yes. In the morning we’ll light the main boosters and kick-off for Mars, leaving all this behind, and by the time I’m writing my next entry, probably here at this same window, cos it’s a nice spot, Earth will be just a blue fingernail-thin crescent in the blackness, the Moon a curled sliver of bone beside it. Both of them falling away behind us, shrinking a little more with each silent tick of the Mission Elapsed Time clock.

You know, I don’t even think the others will miss Earth. But I will. The thought of leaving it behind is sickening me already. Where are we flying over now, I wonder? I’ll just check.

[ Time gap here ]

Well, looks like the east coast of the US, again: night-time down there, obviously, but the outline of the coast is picked-out by the firefly-orange glows and glints of the streetlights of New York and its surrounding district. I wonder if there are many people on top of the New Trade Centre tower, staring up at us as we glide through their light-polluted sky? Perhaps they’re waving up at us? Wishing us well?

Then again, perhaps not. Anyone tracking us across the sky is either telling themselves we’re dead and just don’t know it yet, or are cursing us for what we’ve done already, and have yet to do. So I sit here, alone, writing my Journal, grasping onto my last remaining link with Earth for dear, dear life.

Funny, I can remember starting this Journal like it was yesterday. If I shut my eyes I can see myself - a shy little girl with a comet tail of wild red hair blowing out behind her in the fierce wind, sitting with her knees hunched-up against her chin, sitting on the top of her favourite cliffs, looking out over the ocean as waves crashed below and gulls wheeled and cried above.

That girl is all grown up now, battered and beaten by the world, just as she swore she would never let herself be.

In those heady days I wanted to be a vet, I remember, wanted nothing more than to spend my days kneeling on straw, or in mud, curing sick animals. That didn’t happen. The only animals I come across are the ones I peer at through a microscope; bacteria, germs, viruses. But that’s what biologists do. One more way in which this isn’t how things should have been…

But I was so happy then, a little girl, painfully, blindly in love with her island home: Mull, a jagged-edged heaven of sandy bays, towering cliffs, heather-covered mountains and gurgling, dancing streams off the Scottish coast. Lit by a blazing Sun through the day, and often by the beautiful Northern Lights at night. When the sky wasn’t covered with storm clouds, of course. But a stormy sky has its own torn-open beauty too, I remember. Oh yes, I remember -

But that was Then. Now, as the song says, here I am, sitting in my tin can, far above the world… and planet Earth really is blue… and there really is nothing I can do. About anything. Anything at all.

… which leads to more tears, floating away from me now as tiny quivering globes of salt water, which will be sucked out of the air and recycled, along with our sweat and urine, for later use. And unlike past generations of space travellers who reported feeling elated, or even humble, I feel nothing right now.

No, that’s not true. I feel alone. And afraid. Very afraid.

As I said, this isn’t how it was supposed to be.

So how was it supposed to be? What are we cheating the world out of?

Well, I don’t have a crystal ball, but I don’t need one to know that if things had turned out differently, if the world hadn’t gone crazy like it did two years ago, we would have been living The Dream. We would have been Ambassadors, proud representatives of Earth setting-off on the greatest adventure of all Time. Earth’s finest and fittest, Flash Gordons and Dale Ardens all, blasting off into the void for a date with destiny! We’d have trained for years, learning every square inch of our lovingly-crafted Mars Direct ship and Mars itself, and would be going there eager and impatient to explore and investigate, safe in the knowledge that once we got there there’d be food waiting for us to eat, and fuel waiting for us to bring us back home again after our stay. We’d be media stars, world-famous celebrities flying to conquer a completely New World, in a state-of-the-art artificial-gravity spacecraft covered with company logos, advertising slogans and the national flags of a dozen different countries! The people of Earth, rich or poor, would be clustered around their holo-v screens right now, impatient to hear the latest Mission Update, desperate to catch a glimpse of their own personal favourite crew member waving to the webcam, thinking they were smiling at them personally…

And yes, if things had been different, this would be just the first step on an endless journey out into the universe, a journey which might even have seen the troubled, impulsive, lonely mess of beings that is mankind fulfilling its incredible potential. After our landing, the long-awaited First Landing, there’d have been another, then another, and another, until we had built a colony on the Red Planet, just as we had dreamed of doing for so long. Others would have followed, and as years became centuries, and the population grew and spread-out over its surface, Mars would have come to life. Eventually, somehow, science would have found a way, we might have terraformed it, turned the pink sky blue and the vast orange plains into lake beds once more, drowning them and their dust-blasted boulders beneath churning depths of comet-water and melted ice-cap…

And beyond that? Surely voyages further out into the Solar System, first to the blackboard-dark dustbowls of the asteroids, then on, on to the frozen-coffee ice plains of Europa and the hidden landscapes of Titan… then a Geronimo leap off the Solar System’s edge to fall headfirst and screaming into the glittering abyss of the Galaxy and roam the stars themselves, seeking and finding new worlds, new Earths, virgin blue-and-white marbles shining out in the Great Dark.

Ever the optimist, looking out this window now at the frothy star clouds of Sagittarius, I can fast-forward the clocks and the calendars in my mind even further, and imagine the different star systems gradually linking together, working together as one, a Commonwealth of worlds spread across dozens of light years..! A golden time, a wondrous time, worthy perhaps of Roddenbury’s beloved Federation itself…

Or maybe we wouldn’t have got that far. Maybe there’d have been a Foundation-like collapse at some point, a retreat from the alien stars back to the familiar green fields and blue oceans of Earth. But that wouldn’t have mattered - that’s not the point! We’d still have done it, once, would still have taken that leap of faith into the dark, that chance to test ourselves and triumph or fail… and could have tried again.

But things didn’t turn out differently, the world did go crazy, and now there’ll be no bootprints on Europa, no tearful boundary-crossings of extra-solar planetary systems. There’ll be no glorious Commonwealth, no Alpha Quadrant-spanning Federation. Instead of living The Dream we’re caught in this godawful nightmare. We’re no Flash Gordons or Dale Ardens, we’re just hastily-selected, frantically- and poorly-trained human beings, crammed into this bootstrapped, boiler-plate, camouflaged flying military junk-yard of a ship, cannibalised from pieces of Space Shuttle orbiter, Titan rocket, ISS modules and dust-covered factory spares. I tell you, Baxter would have been proud. And when we get to Mars - assuming this Salvage One of a crate holds together and that we haven’t killed each other by then either - there’ll be no food waiting on the surface for us, no fuel either. We’ll be on our own, and our mission objective will be simple: hold on to the Oasis, at all costs, and survive until supplies reach us. And hope that they parachute down to Mars before the Others do.

The Others… I still have trouble remembering calling them that, but I’m trying to overcome that problem, because every time I forget the official military terminology and absently - but accurately - refer to them as “The Alliance” or “The Chinese and the Russians” I feel the Captain’s laser-hot eyes staring at me, burning through me disapprovingly, and I have to bow my head in apology. My neck is getting sore with it. So, “The Others” it is.

More craziness, arguing over nouns. Sitting here at this window you know, I can’t help but wonder if we deserved to even get this far, Humanity I mean. Maybe we should have stopped at the Moon, left all our prejudices and hatred and anger there instead of exporting them to Mars and beyond. I sometimes think that it might have been better for everyone, and for future history, if Armstrong and Aldrin had only just made it off the Moon, and experienced such a close brush with death that Apollo stalled and we turned our attention inwards, to ourselves, instead of to the stars. Maybe if the Dream had died there, on the dusty plains of Tranquillity, we’d have knuckled-down and sorted out our problems properly, matured. Cos honestly, I don’t see how we can ever hope to colonise Mars, let alone the Galaxy, unless we find a way to live together on our own planet.

But you can never go back, so future historians - if there are any, if we don’t start a war on Mars that reaches out its skeletal fingers to Earth, consuming it too - will look back on this time with disbelief and sadness, scratching their heads in wonder at how the world went so insane so quickly. I can imagine the history lectures now, the grumpy professor asking his virtual class how we went from the Camelot-like “New World Order” of 2002 to the so-called New Dark Age of 2015..?

But it’s perfectly, and ridiculously, simple.

Bugs.

Not just any bugs, of course, alien bugs. Martian bugs.

Strange now, to think back to 2010, to the almost-giddy world-wide celebrations which followed the European “Darwin” probe’s discovery of real, honest-to-god live Martians. Nothing much to look at, I know, just a grey-green sheen, coating the inside of a cavity a foot or so beneath the lander, but there it was, unmistakably alive, and the Greatest Question had finally been answered. No, we weren’t alone. It couldn’t build canals, three-legged war machines or crystal cities, didn’t have golden eyes and couldn’t play a harp, but there was life on Mars. Every scientist on Earth - not just we biologists - held their breath as grainy video pictures showed the probe gently depositing its precious samples into the Sample Return Rocket, and then we cheered as the rocket blasted-off, bringing the first aliens back to us. My god, the parties that night! We’d done it! We’d found life on Mars! Now all we had to do was wait to get our hands on it…

Eight long months later we gathered in front of our TV screens again, eyes glued to the live CNN coverage of the capsule’s return. Remote cameras pointed up into the shimmering air above the quarantined heart of Death Valley showed just endless, flat blue sky, and yet again we held our breaths, waiting for the red-and-white parachutes to appear, heralding the safe arrival of the pod and its precious cargo. Then there they were, three blossoms of toothpaste-striped colour in the sky! A camera zoomed-in - there it was, dangling beneath the chute, glinting and flashing in the brutal sunlight, the pod! We cheered -

- and then gasped as CNN’s cameras showed a small, dark shape approaching from the right at ridiculous speed. It was all over in a moment. The unmanned drone snatched the pod right out of the air, like an eagle grabbing a sparrow, and then went ballistic, vanishing out of sight overhead as the snapped-bone crack of a sonic boom echoed across the baked valley.

The parachutes fluttered to the ground in slow motion, and by the time they were crumpling over the rocks and cacti with a mournful sigh bio-suit clad techs were already racing across the desert floor towards them. Ducking under the candy-striped fabric they searched frantically for something they - and we - already knew wasn’t there to be found.

They reappeared empty handed. The pod had gone. Something - someone - had stolen it, snatched it right from under our noses.

And it didn’t take a genius to work out who.

Outrage followed, and was expressed in “the strongest possible terms” of course, but it was all just bluster, angry words without action; even if it was the most important discovery in the history of the world, no-one was going to declare war on the Chinese and Russian Alliance over a few bugs, not when we’d already let them get away with so much in Taiwan, Korea and other Asian hotspots already.

I know most people who read this will probably know the story of how the Others first originated, maybe even those who are born in my far future, in a better, brighter time when this humble journal is a portal back to the New Dark Age. Assuming there’s anyone left to read it, of course.

[ Time gap here ]

So, the Others. Yes, hindsight is always 20/20 of course, but really, we should have seen it coming. It all began back in the early 2000s, when China suddenly started stuffing basketfuls of crisp Yuan into the gaping mouth of Russia’s starving space program. In return they were able to jump-start their own manned space program, first with their Soyuz-derived three Shenzou man capsule, then with their modestly-sized but versatile “Dragon” space station. Western space journalists and military analysts scoffed, pointing-out that it was little more than a hab module with huge solar panels and a few instrument platforms and pallets, but, well, sticks and stones, you know? That wasn’t the point. The point was they had a permanent military presence in space a generation earlier than expected.

And of course they learned fast. Obviously it’s easy to advance when money is no object and your bosses are willing to cut corners - and risk lives - in order to make up ground on NASA and ESA and everyone else. And so as Russia spent less and less time, and money, on its ISS commitments and more and more time on its collaborative efforts with its new best friend, it gradually became clear - to us in the West, if not the Russians - that the Chinese were basically buying the Russian space program, and merging the two nations’ efforts into one…

Soon that technological partnership became a political one too, and in a bombshell address to the world the Russian Premier announced live on TV that, sick of being treated like a defeated enemy by the west for more than two decades, the Russian people had finally “seen the light” and were turning away from the broken promises and excesses of the west and back to their core values and principles, by forming a partnership with their “Chinese comrades”. It was portrayed as some sort of grand “reunification”, like the Romulans and Klingons hugging and making-up or something like that, but in truth it was nothing less than a peaceful take-over by the Chinese, the assimilation of Russia by its old enemy without even a shot being fired.

And that was that, the birth of the largest and most powerful military alliance for almost a century. Soon Chinese warplanes were flying into and out of Russian airfields, and their sleek, shining warships were dropping anchor alongside the decrepit and rusting Soviet hulks huddled in their derelict bases along the northern coast. Russian TV showed Chinese Generals strolling through the corridors of the Kremlin, smiling broadly and looking for all the world like the proud new owners of a house they had always thought they could never afford. And what did we do? We watched, and worried, and watched some more, so when the Russian leader was suddenly taken ill a couple of months later, and died without any explanation, all we could do was keep watching. Suspicious? Oh no, not suspicious at all, nor was the subsequent election of a new Premier even more welcoming to the Chinese. Oh no, the word “puppet” doesn’t spring to mind at all…

Whatever, suddenly the world was a VERY different place. All the old, hard-won treaties meant nothing, absolutely nothing, and Western leaders started going to bed later and later at night as worry became fear, and fear slid quickly into paranoia.

The last straw came when the Alliance, without warning, despatched a manned mission to the Moon.

All Western leaders could do was watch helplessly as the Alliance lander set down less than a hundred feet from the descent stage of the Apollo 11 lunar module, Eagle. Soon after, TV screens around the world showed its crew of three - including one woman - bounding in front of Eagle, kicking up clouds of dust, before planting a Chinese/Russian flag into the lunar soil, Iwo-Jima like. Definitely one of those “Where were you when..?” moments…

And then the killer blow. As the trio of explorers stood stiffly to attention, their jubilant Alliance leaders, deliberately echoing Kennedy’s historic words of the past, announced their intention to reach further into space: within ten years, they declared grandly, their brave Alliance astronauts leave Earth far behind, and fulfil one of mankind’s oldest and dearest dreams…

As the soaring Alliance anthem played in the background, a computer simulation showed the watching billions the future: less than a decade after - literally - scuffing-over Armstrong’s footprints, the Hammer and Sickle of Russia would fly alongside the red, star-splashed flag of China.

Ah, dangerous, but exciting, days, I remember them well. I was a post-grad student, working with a team in Antarctica gathering lichen and bacterial samples from the Dry Valleys as part of a NASA-funded study into extreme life environments. Every night my colleagues and I would retreat to our cabin and huddle around our fluttering gas stove, sipping soup and watching the latest gushing reports from CNN’s Mars Mission team, wondering how much of it was real and how much was disinformation aimed at fooling the Others. And mourning, also, the fact that scientists had lost the chance to go to Mars. Under NASA’s plans the crew would have been almost half scientists, picked and trained especially to explore the planet’s surface and look for life. Now it seemed that the first crew would be entirely military, buzz-cutted and saluting heroes and heroines from Uncle Sam’s finest. There was no place for Beakers like us. Not this time. And perhaps never.

Then came that discovery by Darwin, and it seemed that we’d have the edge in the Race, might just sneak our noses in front; with a real sample of Martian rock, and life to study, we’d be able to make our ship better and more likely to survive on the harsh surface. Foolishly we let ourselves hope that maybe, just maybe, luck’s pendulum had swung back towards us -

- a hope dashed less than a year later by the daring and shameless theft of the Darwin sample return pod in full view of the watching world.

The Alliance now had pieces of Mars, and samples of Martian life too. They were ahead. They were going to beat us to Mars. And everyone knew that, like the superpower street gang they were, once there, they surely wouldn’t let anyone else come onto their turf…

No superpower leader is going to let that kind of slap across the face go unanswered.

There was no announcement of course, no Kennedy-esque speech to the nation announcing a bold new national goal, it was all kept secret. But records show that that very night, in the White House, a decision was taken to go to Mars as soon as possible. There were to be no more delays, no more reviews or re-designs, the Order was Go, just Go, in whatever way possible, and at the first opportunity. The mission profile drawn-up a week later was simple: Mars 1 would attempt no science, would conduct no exploration or attempt any discoveries, it would just be, in essence, a Special Forces mission to Mars, to and secure “Oasis”, the site of Darwin’s incredible. A special Presidential Order requisitioned all the facilities, engineers and supplies needed to build the ship, and a frantic trawl through all the Armed Forces for a suitable crew began, ending with my three travelling companions, Murray, Beauhanson and Clarke being plucked off their ships or out of their planes or submarines and helicoptered to Johnson Space Centre to begin training.

I know what you’re thinking. If it’s a military mission then why am I here, a civilian scientist, sat by this tiny round window, high above the Atlantic, looking down on the faerie lights of ships and boats, writing these words?

Because I’m a bug expert, especially an expert on underground bugs. I know more about them than anyone else, probably.

So I was chosen to go and study the Sheen.

Not that I’ll have much time for that. SpySats have shown the various Alliance ships arriving at their orbital launch centre, so when we land at Oasis there’s a good chance that the Others will be just a few months behind us. Before they land it’s important that we learn as much about the Martian life forms as we can before the Others come and, in all probability, blast us to pieces. That’s a pessimistic view, I know, especially as the Net-networks are all faithfully reporting how the President is “confident that the Alliance will respect international law join with us in the peaceful exploration of Mars, and the study of its native life,” but Murray and her band of space marines say different: the Others won’t be interested in talking. They’ll just want the Oasis, and we’ll be in their way. But they won’t just be able to grab it, like they did the pod, because my snoring friends back there are packing some pretty evil-looking firepower, and if the Others try to take the Oasis there’ll be a firefight that George Lucas or James Cameron would have been proud of, believe me.

And what am I supposed to do while the bullets and beams are flying? Grab a gun and pick-off the enemy from behind a wagon wheel, like a good old-fashioned pioneer wife? I don’t think so.

No. My role in the event of “a Confrontational Situation” developing is to take steps to ensure that if we are overcome, the Others will be “unable to exploit further the resources of the area.”

Translation? I have to kill the Sheen.

Yes, I’m going to Mars to meet aliens, and study them, just so I can kill them to stop them being stolen. Back to the “If I can’t have it, no-one can!” natural law of the playground. Imagine my pride.

I won’t be able to do it, of course. I’m a scientist, not a butcher. And the Sheen has just as much right to life as we do - more so, as it’s native to Mars. So when the time comes I’ll protect it, not destroy it, and hope that the Others are feeling merciful and decide it makes more sense to keep me around, and use my work, than despatch me as they surely will the others. I’m pretty sure they won’t, but what can I do? I have to try. I have to at least try.

Which brings me right back to my fear. Can I keep this pretence up? Can I make the others believe I’m on-side, and will do my duty on Mars? I have to try. But I’m really not sure if I’ll make it that far, or be around long on Mars if I do make it there. They’ve made it perfectly clear I’m an unwanted and unwelcome passenger, and although Captain Murray talks to me and tells me, gruffly, that everything will be okay, I’m just to “knuckle down and do my work” and leave Beauhanson and Clarke to her, I know what’s going on. I overheard the two Navy guys talking before we launched, heard them saying how they didn’t see the need for me on the mission; if it becomes necessary they could just destroy the Sheen, why did a science “chick” have to be there at all?

Because, I wanted to tell them, whatever happens once the Others arrive, the Sheen has to be studied and investigated properly. It could hold secrets that might revolutionise our understanding of biology, of Life itself. It could be a treasure chest of genetic information, a Rosetta Stone for 21st century biology. And besides, we have to study it so we can catch-up with the Alliance, make-up the ground we lost when they stole the first samples. I’m going because the Sheen needs me, even if my crew members don’t -

I definitely just heard someone stirring back there, I have to stop writing now. Will try and add more soon -

Oh look…! There, beneath us, through the clouds… that looks like the north-west of Scotland. My home is down there somewhere. I’m going to try and find it through the binoculars…

[ Time gap here ]

Yes, I found it. There was a gap in the clouds just big enough to let me make-out the outline of Mull through one of the heavy pairs of 20×80s we brought along with us. Only saw it for a moment, maybe two, but it was Mull alright, I’m positive. I could almost convince myself I could see Tobermory as a tiny grey smudge at the north end of the island. Almost.

But gone now, already behind us as Liberty chases the sunrise, heading east, towards the - if you would believe what Beau and CC say - Mordor-like lands of the Alliance. They won’t shoot us down, that would be going too far, even for them, but Murray (sorry, Captain Murray) said we may get painted with lasers, from the ground below or one of their orbital platforms above, so I’d better get away from the window; if I let myself get blinded I’ll be so useless the others will space me for sure.

So, time to close this first entry of my Mars mission diary. Don’t know when I’ll get a chance to write more, but as soon as I can, I will. To whoever’s reading this right now… well, whatever happens - happened, for you, this will all be history to you - please don’t judge me, or what I do… did… too harshly.

I did my best.

- Mairi Dimond, USSc Liberty, March 15th 2012

[ Entry encrypted by xPGP15.2a, 4096 bit Class Alpha biometric identification protection guaranteed PrivacyCorp International ]

Filed under: Fiction on October 12th, 2001