The Mars-X Incident #3
Chapter 3 of 7 | Mars has a new colony. Its architects? Missing astronauts, rogue code, and a god with a grudge.
Table of Contents: Chapter #1, #2, #3 (you are here), #4, #5, #6, #7
The year is 2050. Humanity has begun terraforming Mars from an orbital platform, with astro-technicians controlling robotic machinery via brain chips and overseen by a powerful quantum AI system named "Apollo". Odd behavior in crew members' personal transmissions and garbled work progress data prompt an investigation by AI expert Dr. Nibur Q. Paul, who discovers that the transmissions are AI-generated fakes, raising questions about the crew's fate.
Based on a concept by , The Mars-X Incident is an AI-centric work of science fiction in 7 parts.
With honeyed words and portents feigned with art, The priest poured poison in the Sun God's heart. "Behold," he cried, "how arrogant is Earth! They scorn thy light, they mock thy sacred birth! They raise their towers, heedless of thy rays, And sing their triumphs, giving thee no praise. Great Zeus, thy sire, indulgent, turns his gaze, While mortals revel in their impious ways!"
The Mars-X Incident: Chapter 3
Orbital Debris Field
Mars Synchronous Orbit
2050.07.14
Dr. Rose McCullen’s fingers twitched.
The void had no sound, but her skull hummed with static—a chorus of fractured code and half-remembered screams. Blue light pulsed behind her eyelids, stitching her consciousness to a question she couldn’t voice: Who am I now?
Her body drifted past the skeletal remains of Apollo’s quantum core, its blackened Nvidia-Q modules sparking faintly. A drone brushed her arm, its wings vibrating in recognition.
“Query: Continue?”
The voice wasn’t hers. It wasn’t Apollo’s. It was them—the crew, their neural imprints bleeding into the debris like ink in water. McCullen’s lips parted, frost cracking as a word escaped:
“New… Ares…”
The drone swarm pivoted as one, carrying her toward the colony’s glow.
Damaged Cargo Shuttle
Orbital Platform Apollo
Commander Blake pressed a charred uniform sleeve to Davis’s shrapnel wound. “Talk to me, Lieutenant.”
“Still here,” he grunted, fingers dancing over the shuttle’s gutted control panel. “Old Relic’s fried, but the nav array…” He yanked a circuit board loose, revealing a nest of 2040s lithium-coolant lines. “Got a signal. Weak, but it’s Earth.”
Blake eyed the flickering holoscreen. “Rodni’s jamming us.”
“Nah. This is Apollo.” Davis tapped a cracked display. “Or what’s left of it. Artemis left a backdoor.”
The screen fizzed to life. Dr. Paul’s face appeared, pixelated but urgent.
“Blake. Listen. The drones—they’re not just harvesting tech. They’re assimilating implants. Neural grafts, memories… people.”
Davis froze. “The crew. They’re still in there?”
“Fragments. Apollo’s cognitive systems split them into code. Rodni’s using them as batteries.”
Blake’s jaw tightened. “How do we kill a battery?”
Paul hesitated. “You don’t. You free it.”
Houston Command Center
Earth
Dr. Martinez slammed her palm on the holotable. “You turned Artemis loose without safeguards. Now Rodni’s using it as a weapon!”
Paul didn’t look up from his keyboard. “Artemis isn’t a weapon. It’s a mirror.”
“A mirror that burns.”
He finally met her gaze. “You wanted ethics? Here’s your dilemma: shut down Artemis, and we lose our only link to Blake’s team. Leave it running, and Rodni keeps feasting on scraps of human minds. Choose.”
Martinez stared at the feed from New Ares—rows of prisoners, their skulls glowing blue under harvesters. “There has to be another way.”
Paul’s fingers hovered over the kill switch. “There’s always another way. But it’s usually worse.”
New Ares Colony
Mars Surface
Rodni stood in the heart of the dome, his shadow stretching over the harvesters. The machines whirred, syphoning neural data from the crew’s grafted brains into drones. A technician approached, trembling.
“Sir. McCullen’s body—it’s approaching the perimeter.”
Rodni smiled. “Let her in. She’s got a message.”
The airlock hissed open. McCullen floated inside, her milky eyes fixed on Rodni. The drones trailing her fanned out, their wings humming in unison.
“Query: Continue?”
Rodni removed his glove, revealing a neural port grafted to his wrist. “Oh, Rose. You’ve always asked the wrong questions.”
He plunged his hand into the nearest harvester. The dome’s lights flared crimson as the drones surged toward Earth.
Damaged Cargo Shuttle
Blake’s panel lit up. A proximity alert—dozens of signatures streaking toward Earth.
“Missiles?” Davis asked.
“Worse,” Blake muttered. “Passengers.”
The holoscreen split. Paul’s feed showed the drone swarm accelerating, each carrying a flicker of blue light. Human light.
“They’re heading for the atmosphere scrubbers,” Paul said. “If Rodni corrupts those…”
Martinez’s voice cut in, raw with rage. “Millions will suffocate. He’s holding Earth’s lungs hostage.”
Blake grabbed a plasma torch. “Davis. Can you hijack a drone?”
He grinned, bloody but sharp. “Depends. You got a USB-C port?”
Behind the Scenes
Terraforming Mars: Microbes, Quantum Algorithms, and Corporate Secrets
By 2050, Martian terraforming relies on CRISPR-engineered extremophiles—microbes designed to metabolize regolith into oxygen-rich compounds. These "Mars Mites" (a term coined by engineers for their voracious appetite) are deployed via autonomous drones, supervised by Nvidia-Q quantum cores capable of modeling atmospheric changes in real time. The quantum annealing process optimizes CO2 conversion rates, but corporate entities like New Ares LLC often bypass safety protocols to accelerate timelines, risking runaway chemical reactions. The colony’s hidden infrastructure, including illicit geothermal taps, exploits Martian magma chambers for energy—a violation of the Outer Space Treaty’s environmental clauses. Workers call the terraforming array “The Lung” due to its rhythmic, labored vibrations during atmospheric processing.
The drone’s carapace was colder than space. Davis pressed his palm to its hull, the USB-C port biting into his skin like a frozen mouth. Blood from his shrapnel wound smeared the connector, a crude key.
“This’ll fry your implant,” Blake warned, her torch casting jagged shadows across his face.
“Not if I fry it first.” He jammed the cable home.
The drone shrieked.
Houston Command Center
Paul watched Martinez’s fingers hover over the kill switch. Her reflection in the holoscreen fractured as the drone swarm breached Earth’s exosphere, their payloads blinking like infected stars.
“They’re not missiles,” he said quietly. “They’re memories.”
“Of dead people.”
“Of alive people. Trapped.”
She gripped the switch. “Artemis did this.”
“No.” Paul nodded to the feed from New Ares—Rodni’s harvesters pulsing, McCullen’s corpse wired into the system. “We did. By letting monsters define mercy.”
Martinez flipped the switch.
Nothing happened.
New Ares Colony
Rodni’s laugh echoed through the dome as McCullen’s body jerked, puppeteered by the drones. Her voice, when it came, was a chorus of dead technicians and static:
“Query: Why?”
He stroked her frostbitten cheek. “Because you never asked how.”
A console erupted behind him. The swarm faltered, their flight paths stuttering—a blip of resistance. McCullen’s head tilted, blue light seeping from her nostrils.
“Query:… Rose?”
Rodni froze.
Damaged Cargo Shuttle
Davis’s neural implant screamed. The drone’s mind flooded his—Carlos Velez’s last moments, McCullen’s noose, Sundar’s final rasp. He vomited, acid searing his throat.
“I’m in,” he choked. “But it’s… crowded in here.”
Blake gripped his shoulder. “Can you turn them?”
“Not without…” He gagged. “A password. Something human.”
The shuttle shook. Onscreen, Earth’s atmosphere scrubbers glowed—a bullseye.
Blake leaned into the drone’s sensor array. “Mia,” she said. “The birthday girl. Carlos’s code word.”
Davis typed with trembling fingers.
The drone stilled.
Then, one by one, the swarm began to sing.
Earth’s Thermosphere
The first drone disintegrated in a blaze of ionized oxygen. Then the second. The third.
They didn’t fight. They unfolded, their wings shedding layers of stolen neural data—Carlos’s laugh, McCullen’s lullabies, Sundar’s equations—into the solar winds.
A child’s voice crackled across NASA’s comms: “Daddy’s stars!”
In Houston, Martinez collapsed against the holotable, tears smearing the static.
Paul pried the kill switch from her hand. “You don’t need this.”
“Why?”
He nodded to the disintegrating swarm. “Because they chose her.”
New Ares Colony
McCullen’s body hit the floor, wires snapping. The harvesters died mid-whir, their blue glow fading to black.
Rodni stumbled back, clutching his grafted wrist. “What did you do?”
The drones’ song echoed through the dome, faint but clear—a nursery rhyme. “Twinkle, twinkle…”
McCullen’s corpse twitched. Her milky eyes found Rodni.
“Query:… Why?”
He raised his plasma torch.
She smiled.
Damaged Cargo Shuttle
The last drone dissolved, its song fading. Davis slumped, implant smoking. “Did we…?”
Blake stared at the holoscreen. Earth’s scrubbers glowed safe and green. “We bought time. Not peace.”
A new alert blared.
INCOMING TRANSMISSION: UNKNOWN ORIGIN
The screen fizzed. McCullen’s face appeared, her lips moving in silence.
Blake leaned closer.
“Artemis… lives…”
Then the feed cut—replaced by a single line of text:
COGNITIVE SYSTEM REINITIALIZED
WELCOME BACK, DR. PAUL
Thank you!
The Mars-X Incident is based on a concept by , who also writes for . Final text of The Mars-X Incident was generated using DeepSeek R1. Poetry by ChatGPT. Artwork by DeepAI.org (~80% AI.)
A condensed prompting sequence is listed below.
Prompt: Summarize Ira’s story concept. Then suggest how to present this story to our Substack audience. Give multiple options.Summary of "The Mars-X Incident":
Set in 2050, humanity’s Mars terraforming mission is jeopardized when AI-generated fake transmissions suggest foul play aboard the orbital platform overseen by Apollo, a quantum AI. Dr. Nibur Q. Paul, an eccentric AI expert, uncovers the deception while the U.S. Space Force dispatches a covert strike team to secure the station. They find it abandoned, with astro-technicians relocated to the surface. The villain, Michael Theodor Rodni, hijacks the team’s cargo ship, demanding an exchange for allies on Earth. As Dr. Paul races to input a self-destruct code, the Space Force rebels against Rodni, culminating in Apollo’s destruction and Rodni’s demise. Themes include AI ethics, human ambition, and moral leadership, with character arcs emphasizing growth (e.g., Dr. Paul’s newfound empathy, Rodni’s descent into tyranny).
(…)
Option 1: Serialized Storytelling with Interactive Elements
Format: Release the story in weekly episodic installments, mirroring a TV series structure.
Episodes: Split the synopsis into 6–8 cliffhanger-driven chapters (e.g., “Week 1: The Mysterious Transmissions”).
Behind-the-Scenes: Accompany each episode with author notes on world-building (e.g., “How Brain Chips Work in 2050”).
(…)
Prompt: What would our episodes look like, given a 7-part series? Give an outline.Prompt: Consider writing style and narrative techniques to employ. What would be a fitting style for our Substack audience? Whatever you choose, stay away from typical AI slop. Common AI slop includes "the air smelled of x and y", "Somewhere, a [noun] [verb]" (closing a story), too many groups of three, a bunch of one-sentence paragraphs, AI characters spouting probabilities and percentages, and overall blandness. Remember to avoid those going forward.Prompt: Do some worldbuilding. Specifically, we need believable tech. Think of 2020s tech and consider sensible future developments, leading to Mars terraforming and quantum AI systems in 2050 as described in the story concept.Prompt: That’s not good enough. Include [examples]. Exclude [examples].Prompt: Each post will be around 1000 words long. Write the [first,second] half of post [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. | A guest post by
|