The rickety old rocket vibrated all around him as Jack entered the final hours of his three-month journey from Mars to Earth, loud enough and shaky enough that a less confident man would have been saying his final prayers. But Jack was that kind of confident, and only grew more so when the stolen ship’s forward cameras returned the best kind of news: patches of green grass sprouting up among Earth’s mottled gray ashes, signs of life on a planet thought to be too devastated by war to ever truly recover. Even better were the blocky shapes of structures that looked like buildings: signs that Earth humans were alive, and that they were building things that Jack could take from them. There was nothing like champagne to pop these days, but Jack dug out his bottle of homemade booze and celebrated with every searing sip as the ship entered the automated sequence for landing, lifting his glass in a laughing toast to the Martian brothers who had refused to gamble on his genius plan and would never realize how much they had missed out on this amazing opportunity.
Touchdown was shaky enough to make it clear that the gamble had been a close one, the engines groaning and the ship shaking all around him, but since Jack had all his limbs intact he certainly wasn’t going to complain about the hard thump of the landing. He took one list sip of the bottle and set about assembling the weapons he had: a gun he had 3D printed on the machine in the back and that misfired half the time, as well as the hunting knife he’d been gifted when he graduated to Ranger, kept clean and sharp by his constant care. Like every Martian, Jack had been born to be a warrior. His birth was approved solely to provide his faction with one more fighting man in their unending wars for Martian territory. But Jack was tired of the endless wars, especially after- well, after everything. He was tired enough to bet his life on this venture, despite all the doubt from all his brothers, and he was about to collect his winnings.
If his brothers had agreed to join him, Jack could have staged a conquest that would have claimed the continent in less than a week. Instead, invading solo, he would have to start out a little stealthier while he assessed the shape of the situation. The sensors found his first targets easy enough. Two humans seemed to have realized there was a landing and were heading this way.
Time to hustle. Jack jogged down the gangplank, slammed his fist into the button that would shut the door behind him, and jogged across the wide circle of flattened grass that the rocket had left on landing. A tall grass filled the surrounding fields, with the occasionally scraggly tree trying to make its way up towards the sun, all of it a wide open space under a cloudy blue sky. Jack took a deep breath of the thick air, probably not the healthiest but still far heartier than Mars, and threw himself down in the grass to wait for the new arrivals.
He didn’t have to wait long.
“Whoa, it really is a rocket!” the first exclaimed, a voice high pitched with excitement and- was that a woman? Jack almost lifted his head high enough to be seen, then forced himself to flatten back down into the grass. He’d never seen an actual human woman, just the woman-shaped robots they let the men use. Every faction on Mars carefully selected the genetic traits and genetic genders for any children, and every faction needed far more warriors than child-bearers. But these two women- barely more than girls, really- seemed to have been turned loose here on Earth, excitedly circling Jack’s aircraft in an admiring way Jack’s ego couldn’t help but appreciate. Still, he had to do what he had to do. Waiting until the rocket blocked the further woman’s line of sight, Jack leaped out of the grass and grabbed the nearest woman in a full body grip.
“Shhh,” he whispered in her ear, one hand holding her mouth and the other holding the knife to her throat, trying not to focus his attention on the hostage situation and not the marvel of a soft, breathing body against his instead of a hard metal robot. “Stay quiet, and I won’t-”
She jerked her head, then cried out when the knife sliced a slim gash in the side of her neck, the sound barely audible with it muffled by his hand.
And yet, the other woman seemed to know the second he grabbed her friend. “Rose!” the other woman yelled, circling the rocket and running straight towards them, holding her own neck as if she herself had been cut.
Jack cursed as he angled his arm to put pressure on the wound and felt it slick with blood, his thoughts flying straight to Tom, to the feeling of Tom’s blood flowing under Jack’s hands as he tried desperately to stop his brother’s red blood flowing out across the red sands of Mars, too fast for Jack’s hands to hold it back, too fast for- Jack cut off those thoughts before they could go any further. Tom had been a chump, just like all the rest of their cradle cohort, Jack himself included. Leaving for Earth was the first part of not being a chump, of taking for himself all the things he should have had.
“Now see what you did,” he scolded the hostage that would help him get those things, keeping her body between Jack and her friend and breathing a sigh of relief when the wound wasn’t deep enough for the river of blood he had pictured. The hostage had to at least stay alive, although he wouldn’t mind if she was scared enough to spill some details on the local geography with him. “Both of you need to be a little more welcoming to your new guest here on Earth,” he said, eyeing the friend with a smirk, “and make sure I don’t need to kill either of you to get my way
Whether too brave or too foolish, the friend seemed unafraid. “Let her go,” she growled, taking her hand away from her own uninjured neck to swing her backpack over her shoulder and pull out some kind of box.
“I think you’re a little confused about the situation here, sweetheart,” Jack drawled, angling the knife in his hand on the gun on his hip so that the other woman could see them better. “I’ve got the weapons, so how about you lower your bag and show me all the things inside that you’re going to share with me today.”
“Rose?” the other woman asked, lifting the box and hesitating.
“Lilac,” Rose hesitated, then took a deep breath. “Do it,” she said, and before Jack could decide what ‘it’ was and whether it was time to shoot Rose in the foot or something, the box had made a noise and his vision had gone dark.
#
Jack was pretty sure he was out for an hour or two before he shook himself awake under the glare of a harsh overhead light. He was at the center of a cobblestone circle, where he sat in a chair with his arms and legs both bound. It took a minute for his eyes to adjust enough to realize that it was night, with a full moon bright overhead and the part of the courtyard that wasn’t covered by a spotlight marked by small, twinkling lights.
A crowd of people stood around him, all wearing the same dark jumpsuits as his intended prey, Rose, and his unexpected attacker, Lilac, both of them standing at the front and to the side. At the head of the crowd was one man and one woman, both with long, graying hair and formal headpieces that Jack was fairly sure indicated some kind of leadership. The whole crowd behind them was spooky. Not so much for the variety of ages, skin colors, and genders, which would indeed be unusual for any crowd on Mars, but very much for the way they watched him, silent and watchful, much like a Ranger troop poised for battle. Still, Jack had faced down a lot of troops in a lot of battles, and he wouldn’t let these Earthers scare him.
“Well, well, well,” he said, leaning back in his chair and ignoring the pain in his arms from the new angle. “We seem to have a whole gathering here. I’m Jack, and it’s nice to meet you all. Excited to see a Son of Mars?”
“I knew it!” said Lilac, her excitement only a little subdued by recent events. “He had to be from Mars!”
“A very good hypothesis,” Jack said, inclining his head with exaggerated admiration. “And very good aim with your weapon.”
“It’s not a weapon,” said his former hostage Rose, crossing her arms and looking down at him with that same watchful expression. “It’s a device that emits wavelengths that cause sleep in the brains of most mammals. We were using it for our research.”
“Thanks, I’ll remember that,” Jack said with a lazy smile. “Are there any other-”
“Thank you for your testimony today, Rose and Lilac,” said the older man who stood at the front of the audience. “That will be all.”
“Yes Elder Elm,” said Lilac, inclining her head in a half bow towards the older man. “Yes, Elder Willow,” she added, inclining her head in reply to the older woman’s nod of agreement. Lilac faded back among the crowd, but Rose took a single step back and stood towards the front, still watching him closely.
“So, you have joined us from Mars,” said Willow. “And your first act is to take a hostage?”
“Clearly he is like our ancestors, Willow,” said Elm, the two trading glances even as Elm’s voice remained loud enough to reach their audience. “Violence is in his nature.”
“I agree,” Willow said. “Clearly, we will need to expedite our plans for planetary defenses. In the meantime, Jack of Mars, you have two options before you. You may return to Mars in your vehicle, or you may accept our ways and join us here.”
Jack brightened, sitting up straighter in his chair. “Why, thank you kindly. I’ll certainly join you all here.”
“Wait until you’ve heard the conditions,” Elm said with a wintry smile. “As you may have heard, the people of Earth do not have the best history when it comes to stewardship of our planet or ourselves. It was only three generations ago that the planet was devastated by the Final War. We call it the Final War, because we are committed to ensuring it never takes place again.”
“That’s why we have all agreed to a solution,” Willow explained, picking up her part of their smooth speech. “We have agreed that harm done to one will be treated as harm done to all. And to live up to our agreement, we have created implants to harmonize our minds, sharing pain from one as pain for all.”
“What was that again?” Jack asked, suddenly wondering if the radiation had made them all a little crazy.
“Of course, I’m sure you don’t have as complete an education on Mars,” Willow said with a small, superior smile that made Jack want to punch her in the teeth. “We inject a series of implant through your nose,” she gestured, as if Jack had missed the part where a needle went up your nose, “and the brain stem,” she turned her head to indicate the back of her head, “And use those entry points to spread the implants across all the critical neurological junctions. The implants receive your pain, and transmit it amongst us all. Similarly, your implants will receive the pain of others, which they provide to you as well.”
“That’s…” Jack trailed off, unable to think of a word horrible enough for it.
“Marvelous?” Elm smiled. “Yes, it is. We feel when others hurt, and they feel for us. We never cause physical fights, and we work through our interpersonal differences of opinion to come to the best possible outcome for us all. It can be time consuming, complicated, and painful. But it allows us to overcome the aggressive traits that our species has been cursed with, and lets us live together in harmony.”
“It is a great blessing science and community have bestowed upon us,” Willow agreed. “A small price to pay for peace. And we freely offer it to you, Jack of Mars.”
Jack sat for a moment in stupefied silence. They offered torment, the complete loss of self, as if it was a favor? He tried to imagine sharing his mind with his Martian brothers, and shied away from the very idea of letting them see straight inside to his smallest and weakest parts, the ones that felt pain and felt the fear that came with it. He tried to imagine feeling the pain of his brothers, all at once, and could not imagine being able to live through that agony.
“I’m afraid,” he said slowly, “that I cannot refuse emphatically enough. You’re a planet full of crazy people and now I’m trapped among you. You can’t just change my mind, my self that way!” he exclaimed, his voice rising to a shout. “It’s barbaric, worse than torture! I can’t imagine the pain you must all feel.” His voice cracked. “Feeling all the pain, all at once.”
“It’s not like that!” Rose exclaimed from her place at the front of the crowd. “Sharing our pain helps to lessen it. It brings us together, gives us-”
“I won’t, and you can’t!” Jack shouted, his breaths going uneven and frantic at the thought of all those minds, interfering with his own. “You can’t do that to me.”
“Fine,” Elm snapped. “We are not monsters, and we don’t alter anyone without their consent. You have made your position clear, so you will be sent back to Mars in your vehicle.”
“We have been focused on making our planet livable again, so we have no aircraft capable of interplanetary travel,” Willow added dryly. “Yours will have to do.”
Jack let out a wild laugh. “Might as well sentence me to death right there. That rocket will never make it back. And even if it does-” he cut himself off with a shake of his head, unwilling to explain the punishment for his theft, and even more for the betrayal in leaving his brothers behind.
“And yet, this is the path you chose,” Elm said. “We are old enough to remember the worst of the aftermath of Earth’s last war. We will not return to violence again.”
“Will you accept the implant, or return to Mars?” Willow asked.
Jack closed his eyes against the bright lights and the judgmental eyes. Maybe he should have just died with Tom. Better to go out with his brother than endure the slow torture to come, spending each day waiting for the oxygen leak, the engine failure, or the slow and painful execution that would finally end his sorry life.
But he’d never go out as a coward. “I guess I’m going home one way or another,” he said, opening his eyes to smirk at the Elders. “Go ahead. Send me home to my Makers.”
#
They kept his hands bound, but freed his legs to frog march him across the courtyard and into one of the buildings he had seen on the cameras, a small wooden structure that at least had a gentle mattress filled with straw. Jack tried to stay awake and search for exits, but one of the Earthers brought out their sleep machine and knocked him out again.
He woke to the sound of a quiet argument, with two increasingly familiar voices.
“All that the Elders have done with their decision is prove that they don’t follow our principles unless their implants force them to,” Rose was arguing, speaking softly as she crept across the creaking wooden floor. “They avoid violence when they’d feel the pain, but they don’t care if they hurt anyone whose pain they don’t feel in their implants.”
“They’re also like, worried he’s going to try to hurt someone,” Lilac pointed out, also speaking quietly as she trailed behind. “Like he did you.”
“Yes, but just because he was violent doesn’t mean we should be violent back!” Rose exclaimed, her hushed voice turning heated. “Harm done to one is harm done to all. That’s the law we all agreed to, and just because he hadn’t been modified doesn’t mean he doesn’t count! He’s still a person, even if he’s a person without empathy himself.”
“Hey, I can have empathy,” Jack said, opening his eyes and no longer pretending to sleep. “I just reserve it for friends.”
Lilac audibly scoffed, but Rose nodded in agreement. “He hasn’t learned yet,” she told her friend. “We can’t let them send him to his death just because he hasn’t learned.”
In the interests of getting these chumps to set him free, Jack swallowed his rage at this indignity and nodded along with a tense smile.
“I have a compromise that will work for all of us,” Rose explained, taking Jack’s elbow and helping him to his feet. “I’ll just take you to another part of the planet. It’s isolated, with no human inhabitants so far, and no agriculture specialists to help with recovery. It hasn’t come as far in recovering from the war, but it’s still survivable. You’ll stay there, and we’ll stay here, and our paths need never cross again.”
“Sounds good to me,” Jack said, already imagining his trip back, and how he’d avoid the sleep machine next time.
“And I’ll check your location on this tracking chip,” Lilac provided, apparently less trusting than Rose. She held up a needle in demonstration.
“What, going to sneak your mind control in?” Jack asked, giving up on his trusting cover and sending the needle a distrustful glare.
“No, it’s a tracker,” Lilac repeated patiently. “It goes into your arm, and it will warn us if you come back.”
“But I don’t want- you can’t-” he sputtered, frustrated that these two weren’t as quite as gullible as he had thought they were. Still, they were gullible enough to get him out of here, and he needed that a lot more than they needed him. “Fine!” he gave up, shrugging up his sleeve. He would just remove it later.
Lilac raised the syringe, then hesitated. “We can tell when it’s been removed,” she warned him.
“Fine, what do I care?” he hissed. “I can survive in any wilderness with animals I can hunt.” He’d just have to come up with a new plan, or learn to survive on his own just like he’d planned in the first place. “And your Elders will be okay with this?” he asked, taking probably too much pleasure in the pointed look that Lilac sent Rose. “Will you be punished?” he asked, reluctant to know the answer if it might force him to “empathize” with her after all.
“Nothing painful,” Rose said with a small smile, “for that would only hurt us all. I’ll probably be asked to minister to the ill and the dying. It’s the most challenging of our tasks, since we feel even more of their pain by proximity, but it’s a price I’ll willingly pay.”
Unbelievable, and yet she seemed committed to it. Jack kept quiet as they led the way, sneaking around the small wooden buildings and out to an air strip, stretching off towards the sunrise on the horizon. They might not be ready for interplanetary travel, but the Earthers could still manage an airplane. Rose led the way to a little one with long, solar powered panels, that took off swiftly and silently in the early morning light.
“What, your hive mind can’t tell that you’re leaving?” Jack asked, joking but entirely serious as he looked out the window to see if anyone was following them.
No planes appeared, so he looked up in time to see Lilac rolling her eyes from the copilot seat. “No, we told you. We still have our individuality, and we don’t share our thoughts or any other feelings. We only share pain.”
“So, psychological torture,” Jack said.
“We share emotional pain too,” Rose agreed, studying the map on the dashboard.
“Emotional manipulation, more like,” Jack scoffed, picturing the ways that shared pain could force a man into a corner.
“And this is the guy we’re going out of our way to help?” Lilac pointed out, her sidelong glare at Rose making it clear who she blamed for Jack’s failures. “Someone who can’t even be bothered to listen to why we might make a different choice from him? You know they aren’t going to let us do any survey missions for ages after this, and it’s going to set me way behind on my training for a leadership position.”
“I know, and I feel your pain,” Rose said, reaching out to briefly touch Lilac’s shoulder. “Do you want to go back? I can’t take you all the way, but we could make a landing so that you can go back and tell them I tricked you into this.”
“No, I made this decision too. I’ll turn my broadcasting down,” Lilac sighed, and Jack’s ears perked up at those words. “I felt your pain at the thought of sending someone to his death, and I can’t do that to you. That’s how it works in a civilized society,” she continued, raising her voice to make sure Jack heard. “Someone’s going to hurt and someone’s going to be happy, and since we’re all going to feel all of it, we work together to make it as pain free as possible.”
“Still creepy,” Jack grunted, but he shut up for the rest of the flight, pointedly ignoring the easy chatter between pilot and co-pilot. It was a long trip at this plane’s measly atmospheric speeds, soaring across dusty gray terrain and iron gray ocean. He frowned out the window at all these pieces of the original home planet, damaged but still healthier than anything they’d made on Mars. Why had the people of Mars ever left this home behind? They might have dreamed of building something new, but a fat lot of good that had done them. At least they had missed that Final War, he reminded himself, turning to watching the crater they passed over as the plane began its slow decline. Now he just needed to figure out how to dodge this implant-enforced Final Peace.
They were barely past the crater when they floated down in a gentle landing, leaving Jack furious as he stormed out of the airplane to the desolation that awaited. “What, you’re going to leave me in the blast zone?”
“Near one,” Rose said. “But far enough out that there’s life again. Look,” she pointed down at the hoofprints in the charcoal dust. “Deer have been here recently, so there’s plenty for you to hunt.”
“Oh great,” Jack said sarcastically, staring at the bleak landscape, barely cheered by the sprigs of grass and struggling sprouts that might one day be trees. All of it the new home he would forage alone.
“I’d say it’s a lot better than you deserved, but agree to disagree,” Lilac countered. “Remember, we’ll be watching, and if you try to take from us again, we will intervene.”
“Oh yeah?” he sneered, more confident here where he could make a break for it if they got out of their sleep machine. “And what if I manage to get in touch with my Martian brothers? What if they come back and join me once I tell them that you’re here and have so many nice things to share?”
“If they’re starving on Mars, we would try to share our supplies anyway,” Lilac reluctantly allowed. “Tell them we would be happy to help, but also that we have our defenses ready if they try to take.”
“Oh, so you will do violence,” Jack said with a strange twist of glee at the thought of these holier-than-thou bastards demolishing the ragtag Martian fleet.
“Defenses that disable your equipment, not defenses that destroy,” Rose pointed out with all the easy certainty of youth. “We know the mistakes our ancestors made, and we won’t be like them again.”
“Oh, you’ve got it all figured out then,” Jack said, pacing angrily across the ashy gray earth. “You’re a chump, you’re all chumps,” he concluded, turning back from their path to jab his finger at her collarbone. “You’re the ones getting scammed here, and you even know about it, all of you taking advantage of each other, and you’re just letting it happen!”
“How is it bad if we all get that advantage?” Lilac muttered, throwing up her hands and heading back towards the plane, clearly done with this conversation, but Rose stared coolly back.
“I do know, and I choose to let it happen,” she said. “I choose to live our values to the fullest extent, not abandon them when it’s inconvenient. Harm to one is harm to all. I will live to that principle.”
“Your loss,” Jack shrugged, forcing his face into a rictus of his cocky smile.
“And yours,” said Rose with a small smile. “Good luck out here, Jack of Mars.”
Jack watched her go, waiting for the moment she’d turn around.
“What, you aren’t going to keep trying to con me into joining your cult?” he joked to her back, ignoring the surge of relief in his stomach when she turned back around to give him a nonplussed glare.
“It’s just hard for me to believe,” he continued when she didn’t answer. “I mean, I just don’t get it. You didn’t want anything from me? Like, anything at all?”
“I wanted to give you an option other than death or the surgery you refused to consent to. Does that count?”
“Yeah, but that was for me. What’s in it for you?”
“Not a thing,” Rose said, holding his gaze until Jack got uncomfortable and turned away. “But that’s the point of our society, for how we treat each other every day. We just help each other, and do our best to ease each other’s pain.”
“I don’t understand,” Jack said, his voice strangely childlike. He thought of Tom again, his heart aching all over again at the loss of his brother and the complete indifference of his faction. Ask anyone on Mars, and they would say that Tom had died because he wasn’t strong enough to survive. It was always the weak who suffered, the strong who thrived. That was the way of the world, and Jack had never questioned it until he had seen Tom’s empty face staring up at him.
“I don’t understand!” he said again. He’d seen Tom dead and decided to take up a new way of living, not caring about anyone or anything so that he, Jack of Mars, would never hurt like that again. And yet, these people seemed to be running straight into more hurt, choosing pain, day after day after day. “Why do you choose this?”
“I don’t know how to explain it any better,” Rose said, looking almost as frustrated as Lilac. “If you’d only let us-” she stopped, took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Look, I get it. You’re afraid of feeling everyone else’s pain. I could explain the mechanisms that keep it from impairing us- upper bounds on pain signals, filtering the signals by proximity- but I don’t think the mechanics aren’t as important. All I can tell you is that it doesn’t hurt worse when we share our pain. It means that I always know others will care when I’m hurt, and that they’ll do their best to help, and I know that I’ll do the same in return for them. Not everyone on Earth is able to do that on their own,” she admitted, looking pained at the thought. “That’s why we need the implants. But sharing our pain doesn’t make it worse. We ease other people’s pain, and our own, by knowing that we aren’t alone in feeling it. If you can’t understand that,” Rose sighed and shook her head. “I can’t help you any more than this.”
“And you just live like that?” Jack asked. His face was wet. Maybe it was raining? He’d heard that water fell from the sky, on Earth. “Every day, knowing that other people won’t hurt you and you won’t hurt them! Every day, every one of you lives like that?”
“We aren’t perfect,” Rose said, hesitating at the sight of his damp face. “We can still cause pain, inadvertently or otherwise. But we do our best, every day, because we truly share the best outcomes or the worst.”
“Oh, it sounds great when you put it that way,” Jack laughed, aiming for sarcasm and well aware he had missed his mark. He hesitated, knowing he was on the precipice and unsure whether or not to make the leap. “When you were talking earlier, your friend said she could turn it down? Does that mean you can turn off the feeling?”
“We get first level control over our own implants,” Rose said, speaking slowly as if trying not to scare off prey. “If there were allegations that it was being misused to allow someone to do harm to others, it would be presented before a jury, and they would decide whether that control needs to be revoked. But that only happens in the worst of circumstances,” she hurried to add, studying his face as if doubting what she was seeing. “There’s been nothing like that in my lifetime.”
Her lifetime hadn’t been all that long, but that seemed like a good sign. “So if I took on the implant,” Jack asked again, his heart beating faster as hope warred with doubt, “I could turn it off if it became too much?”
“If you were to agree, I would make sure everyone understood that was required,” Rose assured him, eyes wide at this very specific hypothetical. “Especially while you adjusted.”
“Right, okay,” Jack said, swiping at his damp face. “I don’t know how this will go, but- fine! I agree! Put your crazy implant thing in my brain! I want to feel that too. Feel that I’m safe. Know how to not hurt other people. How to keep other people from being hurt.”
“Oh, well- I’m- are sure?” asked Lilac, who had returned from the plane and looked very alarmed at the turn the conversation had taken. “Because I’m sure living in the wilderness would be great, once you get used to it.”
But Rose ignored her. “We can’t keep everyone from being hurt, but we always try,” she told him, with the kind of firm faith that left Jack both envious and comforted. “And when the worst happens, we can help each other bear the pain. Welcome home, Jack of Earth,” Rose said, holding out her hand, and Jack shook on it.
