Star of Fire 火星 Mars Space People
Download 0.66 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- Redemption
- “The road not taken”
- Acknowledgements
EpilogThe road to glory in a patriot army and a free country is thus open to all. - General George Washington, Wednesday, August 7, 1782, Headquarters, Newburg. Major General Reggie Bradley was the featured speaker at the opening of the Aldrin Mars Center at MIT. The general described the plaques that he and his crew had been awarded in abstentia by the Tailhook Association for going down with their ship. Little Peng Lian had been awarded an even bigger plaque for being smart enough to bail out of the rover. The award meeting had actually been a commemoration for the anniversary of Heidi’s death before aviator dark humor took over. Reggie also described the Russian expedition to Phobos that he had commanded. Then he told how the Russians had installed improved versions of the remote sensors and communication equipment, equipment that the Russians had previously tried to install robotically on Phobos. Over the years, the general admired the community outreach at MIT, and had taken advantage of the usual MIT policy of being open to the public whenever he was in Cambridge. Reggie was appalled that the Space department had restricted the opening of the Mars Center to the MIT community and invited guests. Perhaps it was a feeling of inferiority, because the Space department could never even hope to compete with the other departments at MIT for Nobels (Nobel Laureates). The secret of life, strings and cosmology are sexier than studies on deicing and levels of automation. Reggie and his wife had been talking with graduate students from the Space Department (the t-shirts now said SPACE instead of the familiar (to Reggie) AERO of the distant past). Mrs. Hollis and her son, Freddie entered the room and joined the line at one of the two free open bars in the MIT President’s Garden. Newly commissioned Lieutenant Hollis turned to check his six and Reggie saw recognition slowly creep into his face. The general wondered (and knew) if he had aged that much. Freddie had been one of the kids running around at the base parties, but he wouldn’t have recognized the young man if he hadn’t been with his mother. “Good afternoon, son,” was Reggie’s greeting. “Can I buy you and your mother a drink?” “Reggie, you old space dog. So nice to see you. How is your family?” said Mrs. Hollis. “Fine, Andy and Sybil are in their junior year of high school. And how have you been?” said Reggie. “Just fine, but I just had to get out of Sarasota for the summer. You remember my son Fred?” “Glad to meet you formally, lieutenant,” said the general offering his hand. “Have you received an assignment yet?” Fred accepted the handshake. “Yes, sir, General Bradley, I’ve been attached to a rapid deployment wingless assault battalion as a platoon leader.” “Angels have wings, right?” said Reggie, an oblique reference to the Marine wingless assault spacecraft [extraction by land]. Commander Hollis’ grin appeared on the young lieutenant’s face. The general saw a ghost from the past, that of a fallen comrade, and felt his own mortality. Hopefully the commander had gone to Marine heaven – bugle at 5, exercise and 2 miles of running before a 5-minute breakfast, an all-day obstacle course oozing with primordial mud and cheap beer and dancing bimbos at night. Reggie ordered a Corona beer, Freddie got the same and Mrs. Hollis opted for a glass of California Chablis. RedemptionSocial obligations had to be satisfied but eventually Major General Bradley and Lieutenant Hollis were alone. Bradley let Lieutenant Hollis bide his time talking about trivial things until he worked up the courage to ask an important question from his youth. “Sir, I’ve got to know. Did you piss on my father after a fight?” asked the young officer defensively. There was a pause that covered decades. “Yes I did. We were friends and he went over the line.” Al, Jr. mulled the information over and did a head bob of acknowledgement. In a more serious note the general said, “Son, we’ve got to talk.” “Follow me,” he said as he walked towards the infinite corridor, the main hallway of MIT’s main building(s). The men just barely missed the rush [foot] traffic entering building 8 after the 4 o’clock classes. Two grinning Chinese students bobbed in and out of the approaching pedestrians to pass slower foot traffic while talking on their satellite phones. The conversation digressed to small talk about the Dibner Institute’s handling of the history of military weaponry on the walk pass the Dreyfus chemistry building to MIT’s Muddy Charles pub. “General, should we have left our weapons on Earth?” “Please call me Reggie, son. We went to Mars armed for hostiles. We did what we had to do. I don’t think about it.” The pair entered the Charles by cutting through the Walker Dining Hall. General Bradley ordered a pitcher of Boston Ale as Fred grabbed two flimsy plastic glasses off the bar. The general lead the formation of two to a large table near a window overlooking the Charles River. The window framed the Boston skyline around the Prudential Center and the Kirin Stadium. “Some of the greatest brain cells in the world have been killed here,” said the general. The general filled the two glasses with ale, swapped a silent toast with Fred and starting speaking without preamble, “Son, your family has been subjected to a great injustice and I’ve let it go on far too long.” “Ma said you helped her and us kids even before you returned from Mars…” interrupted young Fred. Fred’s application to VMI had included a recommendation from Reggie. The old general held up his hand, “Give me some space to maneuver in.” Fred seemed to slouch a little, like a young boy would, when in the presence of a master storyteller. “I can’t tell you everything, but you deserve to know more than you do. Your father died in combat, America’s first casualty on Mars. He didn’t tell me, but I’m sure his orders came from the White House, most likely the president. Your father took the political flak from the incident while the politicians covered their fat asses. That’s about all I can tell you until the cordite settles from our next skirmish. Visit me next year if you can, after the smoke clears, and I’ll give you some more details. Some are good, some are bad.” The general reached for one of the single-sheet daily Muddy Charles’ menus and placed it, printed side down, on the table. He wrote silently on the menu for about five minutes. Then he shoved the sheet across the table. Freddie read the words in silence. July 23, 2033 Gentlepeople of Earth, I am writing this letter in an attempt to ameliorate the injustices that the family of Colonel Elton “Al” Hollis has endured, caused by the actions and inaction of the bureaucrats of the government of the United States of America following the incident at the Mars I landing site on April 20, 2010. I swear that Colonel Hollis was killed by hostile action while on a mission authorized at the highest level of our government. Commander Hollis’ family should be given all the privileges and benefits due the family members of a fallen soldier, regardless of the political sensitivity of the incident, an incident that has been denied by the military and political bureaucrats. Any shadow over the reputation of my former commander and friend should be removed from his personnel file and the public record. The first step should be a speedy resolution of his survivors’ five-year old petition for Commander Hollis to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery instead of the Fort Bliss National Cemetery in Texas. I beg for forgiveness from the Hollis family for my complicity and tardiness in setting the record straight. Yours truly, Major General Reginald M. Bradley, retired Space Command “Thank you, General,” replied the young officer as he folded the sheet and placed it in his shirt pocket. “Do you know that Dad’s mission was authorized by the president?” asked young Fred. “No, but nobody except you and I know that I don’t know,” answered the general. “And they know where to find me.” Mrs. Hollis and Mrs. Bradley found the two men, an hour later, after a frantic call to the campus police. The two men were engaged in an animated discussion about space rations. They had been joined in their discussion by two postdocs from the Space Department, a Sloan School of Management graduate student and 5 cadets – three female, from the MIT Army Reserve Officers Training Corps. Commander Hollis received his proper military burial at Arlington within six months. Commander Hollis was awarded the Medal of Honor retroactive to 2010, the third Medal of Honor recipient buried at the Fort Bliss National Cemetery. Commander Hollis had been buried close to three Germans from Roswell, New Mexico and five Chinese Air Force cadets. An arbitration committee consisting of flag level officers from all of the military branches convened in closed session to determine monetary compensation, if any, to the Hollis family. The files on the incident at Mars Base I remained classified at the time of Major General Bradley’s death. The first permanent American settlement on Mars near the Olympus Mons borax mine was named after Commander Hollis. Hollis later become the first capitol of Mars. The Chinese colony near the Yellowstone Caverns was called Mong after the first human to leave her footprints and blood on Mars. The first teahouse on Mars, the Shangri-La, had a prominent oil painting of Mong with the title “First in Our Hearts, First on Mars” in Chinese. Smaller portraits of Admiral Cheng Ho, Tsien Tsue-shen, General Zhou, Yang Liwei and Charon flanked Mong’s painting. Had Mars been worth it? Was the Earth any better off? Had Apollo been worth it? Would the time, effort, blood and money have been spent better on Earth? “The road not taken”It was a damn weather balloon. – Mr. Edwards at the Cowboy Restaurant in Roswell, October 2004. Ken Zhou Xim awoke from a deep sleep. The knocking on the door was persistent. “Wake up you bone head. We’re going to miss the best waves.” It was his best friend Ken Hing Ching. What a vivid dream. And those lovely yellow/golden girls with the reptilian alien eyes. The warm Hawaiian sun warmed his face. Zhou was as satisfied as he imagined that a person could be. He had everything that he needed on the Big Island of Hawaii. He thought about his acceptance at the University of Hawaii in the physics department. Why bother? Most likely he would inherit the coffee plantation. Neither of the young men went to Honolulu to attend the University of Hawaii on Oahu. Ken Hing Ching gave up his interest in law, preferring to write poetry about waves and volcanoes. During the various coffee crises, Zhou refused to grow genetically modified coffee and got premium money from the independent coffee houses on the mainland. Zhou married his high school girl friend, Luann, who was a native Hawaiian dancer. He steadily increased the size of the family plantation to sixty acres as Luann’s administrative and business skills helped the Zhou family coffee become the best-known brand on the Kona Coast. The Hawaiian dancer featured on the label of his coffee bags had golden alien eyes that reminded some people of Zhou’s wife when she weighed ninety pounds. Luann blessed Zhou with seven children. Later in life he worried most about Brian, his youngest boy. Brian was a practical joker and the class clown. More worrisome than his classroom antics was the fact that Brian would spend long hours alone in the dark, looking up at the stars. The Earth return vehicle launched by the Japanese for the American space program lost radio contact with Mission Control during insertion into orbit around Mars. NASA’s budget was cut to a maintenance level because of the mounting costs of the conflict in South Asia. The future isn’t what it used to be. Pisces had his time; long live the Age of Aquarius. AcknowledgementsMartin Andrews, Australia Arnie Pederson, Wilmington, Massachusetts Author BiographyDennis Kenney went to high school in Mexico, a small paper town in the western mountains of Maine. Como ‘sta? He received a B.A. in Psychology with a minor in Pre-Med and a B.S. in Engineering Physics with minors in Chemistry and Electrical Engineering from the University of Maine in Orono. He served for seven years in the National Guard and reserve after receiving his draft notification before volunteering for the army in order to visit Germany as a German linguist. He is presently pursuing his interest in biotech, embedded systems, energy management and astronomy and is designing a homebuilt aircraft. Download 0.66 Mb. Share with your friends:
|