The God Mars Book Two: Lost Worlds by Michael Rizzo Read Free Book Online Page B

engraved with thousands of names. Zooming out, it’s a low
flat-topped pyramid that fills an acre of what I recognize as the
old Kennedy Space Center, derelict launch gantries rusting in the
distance. The entire base of it is piled with flowers. Thousands of
people stand solemnly around it, looking at the names, leaving
tokens, touching the names on the stone.
    Back to the urban crowd scenes, huge holo-displays
hovering above the cheering masses show old file-shots of myself,
Matthew, Lisa, Anton, Tru, Rick, Kastl, Rios, Halley, Ryder—our
faces hundreds of feet tall. I see clips of the videos we’ve sent,
which makes for a shocking juxtaposition simply in the fact that
the old file photos of us still resemble our faces now fifty years
later; I assume the effect is not lost on the crowds.
    But I’m looking behind what we’re being shown:
The skies are blue and clear. The people still look like people;
though, like many of those we’ve talked to, the racial
characteristics have continued to blur. Most are dressed in plain,
functional clothing, but it still shows the touches of individual
and cultural styles, so I don’t imagine some totalitarian dystopia.
What I don’t see is a lot of what look like faddy trends,
corporate logos… Even in the big city scenes, I don’t see the once
ever-present glaring product placements. That alone makes me think
the scenes are fictionalized. Or something unbelievably extreme has
happened to global culture.
    “I hope this helps,” Richards’ voice comes back over
the constantly changing video feed. “But I also need to put this
all in perspective. You’ve given us quite a shock. The public cheer
you see is huge—don’t mistake that—but it is far from all of it.
You have also hit us with a great deal of guilt and shame for
leaving you all behind. What this should do in a perfect world is
motivate the powers that be into lifting the quarantine and sending
every resource to your aid, but things are more complicated than
that.”
    He pauses to gather himself.
    “I’m sending you some files we’ve put together for
you. I’m not a historian or sociologist, and only passable as a
speaker, so bear with me please. When the disaster in 2065
happened, it happened on both planets. Even before the Discs killed
our incoming ships and crippled our orbital resources, we were
reeling as a planet from what had happened on Mars. It destroyed us. Personally, socially, politically,
economically… The impact was beyond anything we could imagine. The
grief, the horror, the rage… We had watched what we thought to be
tens of thousands of people wiped out by our own machinations. And
once we finished blaming the Discs and the Shield and the
politicians and the activist groups and the corporations, it all
came back to all of us : our desires for longer life and
better toys had created this monster that turned on us. And we all changed in those years.
    “You won’t recognize us now, just as we may not
interface well with you anymore. You are from are different world,
a different time. We purged so much… Maybe foolishly, blindly… But
we are now what we are because of that. You will see in the
reports… We turned on the corporations, the material culture… You
once fought a war against religious extremists who wanted the world
made simpler, purer. We are now perhaps more like those former
enemies than you would like.”
    He stops the images, lets us focus on him. He looks
like he’s struggling to find direction, words.
    “It isn’t at all bad, Colonel. I can say this because
I was close with my grandfather Thomas—I feel as if I know you,
what you went through to try to keep this world from killing itself
over ideals. You didn’t lose—this isn’t a Muslim theocracy,
or a Christian one… isn’t a theocracy at all… but there is less
separation now because we turned to the spiritual, looked to our
better natures, to forgive and let go of what had poisoned us…
    “We’re not