“To Change is Human”

A short scifi by Brendan McNamara

“Drink your enforcers!” Astrid wasn’t paying attention to her mom, standing at the threshold of her pod, yelling as usual about her genetic hygiene. Her eyes fluttered a bit at the shriller notes as they struck her inner ear, but she held her aloof gaze on the desolate Martian landscape outside. The inner walls of their 3D-printed shelter, taupe-highlighted and adorned as they were with moss planters and LED lights throughout, stood in stark contrast to the brick-red wastes on the other side of the windows.

“I won’t tell you again, it’s important and you know it.” An obstinate groan issued from the teen as Astrid turned and glared at her mother. “What?” She knew full well what her mom had said, but being aggravating might make her go away. “Your nano-enforcers, you didn’t drink them yesterday or today. You’ll get blood clots in your brain from the low gravity. Your genome will go native if you don’t.”

Astrid had always hated the watery suspensions her parents gave her daily, there wasn’t supposed to be a taste but there was always a metallic zing there and it always made her feel woozy afterward. The nanites in the water were supposed to go through her system and match her genotype to the record stored in her biofile. They corrected for epigenetic adjustments to the planet, mutations, and the natural biological effects of lower gravity on the human body. They effectively kept them all alive and healthy, while nullifying the natural processes that would allow them to evolve in ways that would adjust to the planet with time. 

In the first phases of colonization, she recalled from the history holos, settlers played with gravity-accelerated environments, hoping they could replicate Earth-like conditions mechanically with spinning habitats. Many of these ended in disaster; there was one in particular at Olympus Mons that flew off due to a maintenance error and went pinwheeling down the inner solar system’s largest extinct volcano, the others fell into disrepair as people refused to live in them and engineers looked to other means of adapting to the planet.

They succeeded, in a way that was touted by many as a “miracle”. The ESC (Earth Spacing Coalition) decided on an internal route to solving the problem; given that nanite technology had been tested safely on humans, they developed a “gravity vaccine” in the form of the suspensions. At the same time, colony ministers realized that genetic mutation and physiology changes of Martian colonists could be a social and political problem going ahead, producing a population that might lose interest in relations with Earth, so they realized that was an opportunity to nip that in the bud and regulate the population’s genome in one fell swoop. Most people, in any given historical populace, embrace the messaging of their society and go along with the status quo. Others tend to swallow the bittersweet pill of reality if for no other reason than to protect their own interests and position. Others fight silently, while others do so earnestly and outright.

Astrid hated the enforcers. She hated what they represented. She didn’t hate her parents, but she hated that they didn’t want to talk about it. They didn’t seem to want to talk about anything important, if it was one of those things that nobody seemed to want to talk about.

“I don’t want to,” the teen declared defiantly. “You can’t make me, and soon you really can’t.” She was six months to emancipation and every day in her parent’s house burned, literally in the sense that she could feel the glowing tickle of the nanites doing their work every day, leaving her always with a slight inflammation that subsided in a few minutes. Today was the first day of her life that she’d felt slightly clear. She didn’t want to go back to that other feeling. “Besides, they’re awful and they make me feel weird.”

“What are you talking about? What’s come over you? You’ve never said that before.”

“Well, you never asked and when I’ve told you, you forget or say it’s nothing or change the subject. It always makes me feel all burning-y inside. I get all dizzy. Plus I know some kids don’t even get them and they’re just fine.” It was true, their society was advanced but it was still capitalist – recently some families in the colony had fallen on hard times and couldn’t afford their enforcer ration. The kids, whispered about by the adults, would get freakishly tall and dark-skinned, with larger vivid blue or green eyes. Their parents were scolded by society in general as the kids were harassed at school.  Astrid wouldn’t admit publicly that she actually thought the Martianized boys were cuter.

“We’re people of means, we’d never let that happen to our daughter. Nobody knows if those people will survive very long, if at all. They will never be able to return home, their bodies won’t allow it.” Her mom and dad were part of the local science bureau, middle-class lawyers with status and interests to pursue. There were obvious reasons and not so obvious ones why they couldn’t be seen to be permitting their daughter to be genetically unscrupulous.

“This is our home, Mom. I’ve never even been to Earth. If we did go, you know exopods are a thing.  And what do you mean, ‘those people’? And if it’s so important, why doesn’t the colony pay for them to have it?” Her inquisitions took a sharper tone. Astrid was pretty much done at this point, and just holding on for these last few months. She’d made a plan on how she was going to move out when she turned 18 and go off-net. The enforcers were universally recommended and applied, but they weren’t mandated. She paid attention in the philosophy and government holos; the constitution still existed, at least in terms of personal body rights. If you decided to go against medical advice and quit the program, however, your life was in your hands. Astrid’s mom and dad still had legal control of her for now but the Martian underground bio-hacking scene flourished with interesting genomorphs if you wanted to opt for that lifestyle. There were federal crackdowns here and there but the government generally lacked the funds to completely squash the black gene market. Few were bold enough to attempt such a risk. The science was only just now starting to get established; certainly it was unacceptable by Astrid’s more conservative parents, and society in general.

Astrid’s mother ignored the legitimate question about the inconsistent norms of their society and returned to her emotional appeal. “We just want you to live, honey, or at least have a chance at a normal life. What we’ve worked for all these years, for you, our only child, is that for nothing?” Her mother, on the verge of tears, approached softly, with open arms and eyes, entreating her daughter with the force of care.

“What kind of life is this, if we have to stop life from happening? How alive are you if you drink tiny machines every day to tell you who you are? Change is life, mom, at least the important part. They stopped us from evolving. It’s all just for control and you know it!” Astrid flinched minutely like she’d accidentally broken something invisible, and her eyes subconsciously darted around the room looking for some unseen monitor logging her onto some kind of genetic nativist watch list, her mother did likewise but neither mentioned it because nobody ever talked about those kinds of things out loud.

“You watch what you say! The colony has been good to our family. We have a nice house and good prospects. You are on your way to terraforming academy and I won’t let you mess up your future at the last minute!” Her mother was yelling again, feeling a mix of shock and anger, with the beginnings of some panicked animal inside her that was now barking at a spectre yet unseen. She was used to the general rebellion, but got her way the rest of the time, so genuinely surprised by the sudden hard turn she was seeing from her daughter. “And what would your great-grandmother think? She helped found this colony.”

“It’s my future, MOM! And I didn’t decide on the academy, you did! You just want me to be like you! Nobody here lets anybody be who they want!” The yelling continued as each exchanged verbal blows as old as the parental relationship itself, but this time  was different, somehow pivotal. “Besides, who is gram-gram to judge my choices, didn’t she upload her consciousness to the hospitality server when she passed? Now she’s physically 25 again, serving up lap dances as half the android strippers in the sector! She said she does it to collect the experiences…”

Her mom stammered, flustered, “sh- she paid her dues, 120 years of them, she earned what she chose! And nobody keeps their original personality for long after they transfer in there, you know that. We didn’t know she’d choose… that… but that’s neither here nor there. Now drink your enforcers, I won’t tell you again, miss.” There was an unmistakable hiss at the end of the last syllable as suddenly the mother’s voice dropped and took on a threatening but also flat tone. She held out the glass of nanite suspension once more. “You’ll obey our rules under this house.” 

“No, I’m never drinking that crap again.” Astrid was resolved, ahead of schedule apparently, to refuse. Surely her parents would set up psychotherapy appointments again, an added wrinkle but she’d delay it somehow until she was free.

“This is about that feral boy you’ve been talking to on the feeds, isn’t it?” Her mother continued, “I saw the IP on the router, it was encrypted but I’m not an idiot, I traced it to the outer rim. You’ve been chatting with biopirates and your father knows too. This Talos…”

Astrid was shocked and looked the part, like a Europan ice louse caught in a rover’s beam. She’d been found out, but she shook the feeling off and gripped her resolve again, narrowing her eyes and focus. “He pronounces it tay-lo.”  She hadn’t told anyone, let alone her parents, that she’d been meeting up with a transmartian boy from one of the remote colonies in virtual. “And I never knew you were so racist, mom. But I guess that’s not all I know now, I guess you’ve been spying on me, too”

“Look, sweetheart, me and your dad just – we just want you to –” she was cut off.

“NO, mom. I know what you’re going to say. You just want me to be safe and have a good life. You just forget, again, it’s my life!”

So the fighting continued into the evening, with Dad joining in as he came out of his virtual office interface, each parent taking turns using every form of logical and emotional appeal imaginable on their daughter, to no avail. The most common refrain she heard was “they’ll never accept this…” Astrid never did take that suspension again. The days dragged into weeks, the weeks into months, and Astrid suffered some circulatory problems from natural gravity adaptation, but she was young still, so it didn’t affect her like it would’ve if she had been older. Without the enforcers, her epigenome changed quickly and beneficial mutations mounted in number; within months her skin color and height began to change and her body lengthened as a natural response to lowered gravity. By the time she left her parents’ home, mortified as they were of their daughter’s rebellious decision, her head scraped the top of most of the hatchways in their habitat, and her feet hung off the end of the bed.

* * * 

Astrid did go on to college, where she was accepted among unique peers, and found out quickly about ethical communities that had sprung up around genetic choice. Her new friends rallied around her bravery as she told the story of her decision, and she always had something from her own experiences to talk about in class. She joined the low-gravity basketball league, winning many championships, and became a bit of a campus celebrity. She had numerous relationships, friendships, and experimental experiences of all sorts as she left the world of her upbringing – but she never strayed very far from Talos, whom she shared a special camaraderie and eventually a family with. She chose a genetic ethics minor to go with her planetary terraforming major. 

She played with her genes a little, hybridizing her local microflora with native microbial DNA to adapt her skin, heart, lungs, bones and gut, but not too much – she liked to keep things “natural”. She got a little risque and injected personalized dinoflagellate symbiote skin implants (like corals have), deepening the reddish hue, to get a little extra spring in her step from photosynthesis. Her body lengthened to 7, 9, eventually 11 feet tall; her skin grew progressively more dark-reddish-brown with every year as the symbiotes propagated and her body allocated ever-greater amounts of pigment to synthesize sugar and vitamins from the Martian sunlight. Her eye color blossomed into not a blue or green but a vivid purple as the nanostructures on the surface of her irises finally adjusted to ideally reflect the unique combination of Martian sunlight and LEDs.  Soon, she graduated from school alongside Talos, whom she proposed to as she gave an honorary speech. She continued her post-grad work as the first female transmartian woman to earn her Ph.D. and eventually chaired the Terraforming Bureau.

With time, the population of biohacked or nativized Martian humans had expanded to such a level that, as predicted and despite controls, Earth lost more and more contact and more and more control to the colonies. Astrid’s parents and those like them held on with the regimen of genetic control, but they had a harder time adapting economically to the changing times. It turned out the early colony planners underestimated biology greatly, and evolution brought to those who allowed or encouraged it the ability to survive in low-gravity and lowered oxygen with ease. This meant they competed better in the labor market, and soon the Earthlings as they were chidingly referred to lost political, social and market control. Horizontal gene transfer with native microbes, as well as deliberate bio-hacks, enabled greater thresholds of adaptation and exalted the Martians in their new home. Evolution was happening much faster than anyone had anticipated.

Relatively soon, the population of Martian meta-humanoids, now physically unable and unwilling to procreate with “enforced” humans, was thus different enough to be declared a new species, Homo martiensis. Shortly after this scientific announcement, they declared political and economic sovereignty, and rejected remote rule from Earth. For a brief and harrowing time, the worlds considered war, but after having seen the ravages of WWIII and WWIV on the Earth, witnessing what genetic and space warfare could do to society, ecology, the economy and the human spirit, few wanted this and great pains were taken to strike a deal diplomatically. Though it took labor organization of Martian miners and moisture farmers threatening to cut production off to the few remaining “pure” colonists, as well as numerous social movements featuring seemingly endless liberation protests, Mars eventually got recognition of its freedom in a way that reminded many of Mohandas K. Gandhi in India, centuries before. Astrid and Talos, as well as their children and grandchildren, were leaders in this movement, and Astrid was nominated as the first president of the new Martian Federalist Republic in 2333, at the distinguished age of 165.

Astrid’s great-great-grandchildren grew up on a Martian surface still red, but instead of being barren it was lush with red-shifted vegetation adapted to lower light from Earth life, transformed at first by engineering and then further by the nature of its new planetary home. Somewhere along the line it was discovered that Mars was missing a satellite, of which the potato-shaped demi-moons that remained were remnants, the rest scattered through the asteroid belt eons ago. This was the smoking gun of the catastrophe that must have ruined the biosphere so long before, the issue was hotly debated and arrangements were made to correct the issue. The Martians sent fleets of probes that used plasma thrusters and electromagnetism to assemble a new and growing satellite from Phobos, Demos and thousands of pieces of the asteroid belt, shipped automatically back to a Martian orbit. The planet was beginning to have some active volcanism and plate tectonics again due to tidal forces, new changes to be sure but nothing that couldn’t be adapted to. Eventually and deliberately, ecotypes of Earth flora and fauna emerged or were introduced to this new world as rampant plant growth tamped down the dust storms and oxygen concentrations increased enough to live without domes or shelters. There was talk on the horizon about a colony on Ceres, now that the belt was clearing – of course, enforcers wouldn’t be involved.

Hundreds of years have passed. Martian oceans, liberated from the permafrost and polar caps by tidal heating and atmospheric warming, now teem with their own versions of everything from tiny crustaceans to kilometer-long filter-feeding behemoths. Giant flying fish glide for miles between patches of sea. Mountains running up to the coasts, rimmed as they are by burgundy kelp forests and dotted nearby with sailboats, feature unbelievably huge trees made possible by the low gravity, re-engineered genetically from Earth’s giant redwood to mimic nano-scanned fossil samples of petrified forests from the planet’s ancient past. Astrid’s Choice is the name of a red-and-purple-lichen-covered memorial statue of Astrid proposing to Talos at their graduation centuries before, in the center of one of these Martian Redwood stands of 1500-foot trees called Freedom Grove.

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