Standing in the large central plaza, Julia Maciel led a training of about fifty residents of New Dagreb. The trainees stood in formation doing various lifts, turns, parries, sweeps, and swings with their bodies. They, and Julia, were using bamboo sticks instead of real bos. Julia was exhilarated. Sure, picking fruit and clearing fields was all right, but this was the kind of thing she really enjoyed. She would probably have enjoyed it more but for the presence of Kenyatta. […]

Martina Maciel finished a round of 100 push-ups, rolled over, and let herself feel the excruciating pain she was pretty much always in. Yes, they had drugs for that. But she had now run through them. Some people got paralyzed and managed with bionic limbs. Sure, some people. Martina’s injury was too severe for that. For the first month of her recovery, Martina was barely permitted to see blades, nor ropes nor strings. Apparently, it’s standard procedure to assume that […]

  3:00pm, March 13th. Prime Minister Norine Maciel and Chatterjee walked around the halls of the Mars White House. As they walked past various low-level functionaries, Norine glanced at her holo-screen, at speeches meant to inspire soldiers from Churchill, Tudela, Hernandez. None of them felt right. Someone once said you don’t go to war with the army you want, but instead with the army you have. As it happened, their army wasn’t as bad as feared. Several thousand soldiers had […]

Julia Maciel jogged around the perimeter of the snow globe. She checked her ring: eight kilometers done. Two more to go. Running had become Julia’s favorite thing to do in New Dagreb. While jogging, Julia found she could simultaneously clear her head and marvel at the wonder that was a snow globe floating in the middle of the living lava bed of Olympus Mons. On the edge of the dome, where she was, a mere five-meter layer of hafnium-nitrogen-carbon-alloy stood […]

SIX MONTHS LATER From a distance, the dogfight between Mars United and the separatists looked like a thousand microbes, as seen through a microscope, exposed to increasing heat. In other words, total chaos at 5,000 meters above Mars’ surface. Bang! Smash! Whoosh! Crash! Jets roared around the sky, firing, dodging, and sometimes getting pulverized. Technically, this was the way Mars United wanted it. M.U. had no chance in a battle fought in regulated formation. M.U. had to make the A.A. […]

Prime Minister Norine Maciel looked out the window as the First Spaceship taxied around New Moscow’s Space Port. Half the passenger bay remained undamaged; the Senators viewed their needed feeds of information. Norine glanced down at stats that Chatterjee had gathered from Colonel Oltman. 3% chance of New Moscow stopping the First Spaceship before it left the bio-dome. 7% chance of New Moscow firing on the First Spaceship outside the bio-dome and claiming it was self-defense. She only had to […]

Julia Maciel rode the pneumatic tube long enough for the novelty to wear off. How long had it been? A minute? Two? Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end? Julia recalled just those words of Lewis Carroll’s. This had better not end with a cake saying “Eat me.” She hoped Kenyatta had jumped in after her. The tube was made of clear plastic alloy. All around her she saw sheet rock. If this tube broke down […]

After Azalea tossed her back into her cell, Martina waited about thirty minutes. She wanted to be sure all of her body parts were working correctly. She was exhausted and in seven kinds of pain, but she knew she could function. She used her teeth to pare down Azalea’s Wazgretco scrunchie to just its wire. After she finished, the wire was about the length of an extended paper clip. She curved the end of it, like a fish hook. She […]

Prime Minister Norine Maciel boarded the First Spaceship along with Chatterjee and Senators Samoset, Weaver, Guen-hye, Falke, Ngorongoro, and Yoshimura, as well as their bodyguards. As their ship rose, the New Jerusalem skyline shimmered in the dawn’s early light. Sure, maybe it wasn’t any prettier than Shanghai or New York from this same distance, but this was all built in defiance of Mars’ natural laws, and you could never convince Norine that that wasn’t special. From high above, the trains […]

  Wolverine meat wasn’t as bad as Julia had anticipated. Julia would not go so far as to say it tasted like chicken, but it wasn’t terrible either. Good thing bos could start fires. However, bos lacked shovels, making burying Stuart difficult: they had had to dig with their hands. Afterward, Deleuze had said a few words of eulogy. Watching him, Julia wondered if they would later need Stuart’s body’s meat. Yes, it’s a sick thought, but Julia had done […]