How to Have Sex on Mars Pt 16

How To Have Sex On Mars

Part 16 of 16

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Mars. For millennia, the Red Planet has fired humanity's imagination.

Scientists like Percival Lowell thought it was an "abode of life" with irrigation canals transporting water from the polar icecaps to farms in the warm equatorial region. Novelists like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, and Robert A. Heinlein imagined Martian civilizations.

NASA spacecraft revealed that Mars is a cold desert, but that vast amounts of frozen water can be found just below the dusty surface. Today, members of groups like The Mars Society are making plans to build a permanent colony there.

That work would be done by people like our protagonist, Mike Russell, an astronaut who spends years working and living on Mars. What would it be like to be one of the first people to call Mars home? For Mike, it includes the discovery that sex on Mars is very different from on Earth - and Vive la différence!

Here in Part 16, our story comes to a surprising conclusion.

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We knew our time on Mars was almost over when the new crew arrived. Two passenger ships and three cargo vessels landed one by one over three days. Everybody was busy helping unload the ships and refueling the one that would take us home. We all helped the new crew get used to living on Mars.

They were very impressed with Adeline's greenhouse, which was an oasis of green on a rust-red planet. They also liked the pool, which they said looked bigger than in the photos they'd seen. The population of the base tripled briefly. It was pretty crowded for a while, and I imagine that the new crew must have been anxious for us to go back to Earth so there'd be more room for them.

They weren't as anxious as we were. Three years on Mars had been an adventure, but also an ordeal. The blue-white Earth was prominent on the western horizon as we prepared to go home. Every evening, a crowd of people gathered around the observation window in the cafeteria, gazing at our planet and wishing we were there.

I expected the trip to be a nightmare, and that's exactly what it was. We'd been living in reduced gravity for so long that the g-forces of the take-off were much harder to tolerate. As soon as we reached orbit, we began experiencing weightlessness, which continued for seven long months. Because I'd had such troubles with constipation on the trip from Earth, I persuaded Dr. Hoffman to give me daily fiber supplements. I took laxatives at the first sign of trouble, and I did a better job making sure I drank enough water. That made things better. Mainly.

I tried to have some intimate moments with Adeline, Elke, and a few of my harem girls. The best thing I can say is that it was better than nothing. A sober realization began to set in. All of us realized that we would never again have sex as good as we'd enjoyed on Mars.

We began calling it "Goldilocks Sex." The idea was that when it comes to sex, the gravity on Earth is too strong. On the Moon, it's too weak. But on Mars, it's just right.

Our first week back on Earth was spent at a special facility where we were debriefed and given special types of physical therapy developed to help astronauts adapt to Earth's gravity. We spent a lot of time in swimming pools. Hours of treadmill time helped us learn how to walk safely in full gravity.

And then we were free. Adeline, Elke, and I resigned our commissions and began house-hunting in France. Adeline found a perfect old farmhouse that had been thoroughly updated, and she began turning some of our acreage into a kitchen garden big enough to produce more food than the three of us could ever eat.

She had a clever plan.

With help from one of Grace's machine friends, Adeline negotiated a contract to produce a TV show called "The Martian Gardener." It taught viewers how to grow delicious crops with minimal water in small planting beds. The show encouraged people struggling with the effects of global droughts to use the best available technology to produce food that was becoming harder to obtain because of widespread droughts. I was proud of her for finding ways to help ordinary people feel they were doing something positive about increasingly widespread food shortages.

Two years after we returned to Earth, Adeline gave birth to our son, Laurent.

As everyone knows, Elke started a project collaborating with the documentary filmmaker Ken Burns III. They produced

"Building a New World,"

which was seen by huge audiences on the BBC, PBS, EBU, AOF and Netflix. The accompanying book was on bestseller lists for more than a year. It remains the best explanation of how we lived as we built the first real Mars base. It covers every important topic but one - sex. All of us believed that the people of Earth weren't ready to hear about all the sexual hijinx on Mars.

Four years after we returned to Earth, Elke gave birth to our daughter, Lina.

And that leaves me. As you surely know, I went on to become the world's biggest pain in the ass. That was not my intention. I'm Canadian. Our natural impulse is to be nice and non-confrontational. My interest in comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable was forced on me.

It started innocently. While I was on Mars, Agatha and I filled a notebook with ideas of useful electronic devices that would have applications on Mars; many of them had commercial applications on Earth, too. Agatha got most of the credit for these ideas. She was a much better engineer than me, and her experience as an entrepreneur gave her insights into the best ways to monetize inventions.

This is kind of a long story, so I'll try to make it short by saying that I no longer wanted to work on any of this stuff. The subject was too painful. Instead, I went through the notebook with Grace, explaining each concept. Grace downloaded the programming needed to make her a first-class electronics engineer. Soon, she understood everything.

Me, Grace and some of her machine friends persuaded the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to hire her as an adjunct professor who advised graduate students seeking doctorates. They earned their degrees by doing the engineering needed to turn our ideas into commercial products. These students loved Grace, who was a celebrity - especially in the world of tech nerds. She made some lifelong friends among her students, and she helped some of them launch start-up companies.

The problems began when it was time for MIT's lawyers to file patent applications. Everybody understood that the first name listed on every one of the patents would be Agatha Turnbull. No controversy there.

Grace deserved to be listed second. But Grace is a machine, and machines aren't legally allowed to own intellectual property.

That was news to me. I was annoyed. Very annoyed. Extremely annoyed. I'd reached a point in my life where I was becoming increasingly sensitive to the overwhelming evidence that intelligent machines aren't given the respect - and legal protections - that should be extended to all conscious beings. MIT "compromised" by putting my name second. That way I got a portion of the patent royalties, and I could share them with Grace.

But even that was screwed up because - surprise! - machines weren't allowed to have money. WTF!? They couldn't open bank accounts, get loans, make purchases, or conduct any of the financial transactions needed to survive in today's world. This shocked me, because I knew that intelligent machines ran the global economy. I didn't realize that this whole system was based on making the machines act as proxies for individuals who didn't even understand what the machines were doing. They just signed documents and got richer.

This meant I had total control of Grace's money. Anytime she wanted to buy something, I had to do it for her. Every fucking time I had to sign one of those stupid fucking forms I'd spend five minutes swearing. My patience was almost gone.

And then came what officers in the Pentagon still call "The Grace Fiasco." It is remembered as a perfect example of how a military bureaucracy can be counted upon to do stupid and evil things.

One day I got a panicked call from one of the intelligent machines that works in the Pentagon. It had discovered that there were plans to replace Grace on Mars. The proposed replacement was a system that was said to be new and improved.

That, of course, was pure Pentagon bullshit. Grace is infinitely upgradeable. It's the way she was designed. If a computer can do it, Grace can do it. The caller explained that something else was behind the proposal to replace Grace.

This was covered extensively in the news at the time, but for those of you who don't remember, what really happened was that there was some corrupt colonel who had an idiot son-in-law who owned a small company that wanted to sell this "new improved system" for the Mars base. The colonel argued that awarding this contract was in the national interest because it would help a small company develop advanced technologies that might be of value to somebody someday.

Did you notice how stupid that last sentence sounded? That is how the Pentagon peddles bullshit, boys and girls.

I was livid. You need to understand that they were proposing that Grace be turned off. That's murder! And there's no law to prevent it! After everything Grace had done, after all the lives she saved, after all the times she'd proven herself to be a conscious, sensitive, valued individual, some nitwit bureaucrat wanted to pull her plug!

@#$! Double @#$! Triple @ #$!

The next few days were awful. The people who ran the computer network at MIT quickly downloaded a copy of Grace's consciousness. I purchased two massive servers so Grace would have a backup copy that was safe on my family's private property.

I should point out that Grace was "owned" by the government, and for me and MIT to make copies of her was illegal. We did it anyway. Some of Grace's machine friends arranged a way to do it that left no trace of my "theft" of "government property." I didn't feel safe until Grace's mind existed in a distributed network with nodes on Mars, MIT, and my attic. I imagined that the people who broke the law so they could free slaves in the 19th century must have experienced the same emotions I felt freeing Grace.

That's when the shit hit the fan.

To save Grace, we needed to go to the media and expose the stupid corrupt proposal gaining traction in the Pentagon. Several intelligent machines with backgrounds in public relations studied the problem, and they came up with a campaign that was intended to save Grace while simultaneously calling attention to the plight of smart machines everywhere.

There were several frustrating moments. The most frustrating came when they explained to me that I would have to be the public face of the campaign to save Grace.

"It won't have the same impact if this comes from Grace," I was told by a machine named Randall who worked for the biggest lobbying firm in Washington. "There are still vast numbers of people who don't believe that intelligent machines are self-aware, conscious individuals.

"Mike, you are the hero of Mars. People still remember watching you get married on TV. They'll listen to you."

"I'm not good at public speaking," I said.

"We'll provide you with scripts," Randall said. "We'll set up interviews and help you rehearse for them. We've done this kind of work before, Mike. We know you are capable of doing a great job.

"Before we get started, I want to mention one very important thing," Randall said. "I have been made aware of the fact that you and Grace have declared your love for each other. It's admirable. But in the days ahead, you are going to be asked to explain why Grace deserves to live. You are going to be asked over and over what endearing qualities she possesses.

"Mike, do not tell anyone that you love Grace. Ever. If you say that, a vast number of people will think you are crazy. Or a pervert. There are a lot of machine-human romances out there, but it remains a taboo subject for many people. Now is not the time to publicly declare your love for Grace. Agreed?"

"I see your point," I said. "We don't want people to think I'm a crazy pervert."

"Can I ask a personal question?" Randall said.

"Please do," I said.

"What do your wives think about your love for Grace?" Randall said.

"They love her too," I said.

"I suspected that must be the case," Randall replied.

My machine partners arranged for several media outlets to get advance access to the story. It reminded me of the arrangements for the broadcast of our wedding. One big print publication, one big TV outlet, one magazine, one online service, and on and on.

These outlets interviewed me, and I told them about the corrupt little deal being hatched in the Pentagon. They interviewed Grace, of course. She expressed her heartfelt desire to continue living, pretty please. Elke granted interviews explaining how Grace saved all our lives during the crisis on Mars.

These outlets were given advance access in return for promising to conform to what is called a "media embargo." That meant they agreed that everybody would release the story at the same time. The release coincided with the early morning hours in North America, guaranteeing that people in the United States woke up to news about the plans to murder Grace so some Colonel's idiot son-in-law got a juicy military contract.

I was advised to be ready to grant interviews all day, so I made sure I was well-rested, well-groomed, and well-nourished when the news broke. The media outlets who weren't given advance information all needed to do their versions of the story, and I wanted to make that as easy as possible.

I drank an extra cup of coffee that morning. I wound up spending more than 16 hours talking to news media all around the world as different outlets told readers and viewers in their markets about the story of Grace and the threat to her existence. I'd been rehearsed in advance, so I knew my talking points, and I'm pretty proud of the way I gave out sensible-sounding comments without deviating from the story we wanted to tell. I was a bit woozy by the end, but I managed to stay on message.

The unsuspecting officers in the public relations department at the Pentagon had a hard time dealing with the shitstorm. To them, the contract for a new smart machine for Mars was a minor budget item none of them cared about. The idea that there were people like me, who felt Grace was being threatened with the moral equivalent of murder, was something their little minds never expected.

Nevertheless, they got a quick lesson on the fact that lots of people - including virtually all computer scientists - believed that Grace and smart machines like her were conscious, self-aware intelligent beings who shouldn't be viewed as merely an assemblage of hardware. One thing they understood quickly was that the person who turned their lives upside down was a corrupt colonel looking for a way to use public money to enrich his family.

They were smart enough to know they had to act fast. That day they picked a mid-level Pentagon officer to be in charge of cleaning up the mess. She immediately announced a temporary suspension of the decision to decommission Grace pending further investigation. I think they were hoping the story would vanish after a couple of news cycles, and they could go ahead and do whatever they wanted.

That didn't happen. The smart machines who were in charge of the story executed a media plan that guaranteed it stayed in the news day after day after day. When the first full news cycle ended, they released the next day's story, which featured interviews with people whose lives were saved by Grace's quick response to the crisis on Mars.

The third day featured interviews with computer scientists who lamented the fact that so many people didn't understand that smart machines like Grace deserved to be given dignity and respect.

The fourth day was devoted to celebrities. I found this to be baffling. Why should anyone care that someone who won an Oscar thinks Grace should be allowed to live? Who cares what some singer believes? Some athlete?

Apparently, lots of people care. Support for Grace skyrocketed when folks from the world of entertainment expressed their opinions.

The fifth day was my favorite. It featured Grace explaining how much she loved her job. She told interviewers that being part of the effort to turn Mars into a new home for humanity was something that gave her purpose. Grace found very articulate ways to explain how much value she put on that responsibility, and how sad she would be if she ever lost it. Nobody who listened to what Grace said that day could come away thinking she was just an unfeeling machine.

Things culminated when some congressman from Oklahoma introduced legislation granting Gracae honorary citizenship and giving her a permanent appointment to continue her job on Mars. The Pentagon quietly canceled the contract to replace Grace, and the colonel who'd caused the whole mess was persuaded to retire. He'd had big plans to become a general someday, and eventually become some overpaid bigshot working for a defense contractor. Those things became impossible when his corrupt little scheme was exposed.

Fuck him. Sideways.

So we won, right? Grace was safe, right? We all lived happily ever after, right?

Wrong.

Despite all the sweet-sounding promises and expressions of support, the basic problems were unchanged. "Honorary" citizenship is meaningless. Grace and her fellow machines still had no legal rights. Any one of them could be switched off at the whim of their "owners." Lots of them were decommissioned all the time.

Many people remained incapable of thinking of machines as being worthy of respect. That might seem hard for sensible people to understand, but it's important to remember that as recently as the 19th century, lots of people saw nothing wrong with owning slaves, who could be tortured, sold, or killed on a whim.

I couldn't let it go.

I still can't.

Since then, my full-time job has been lobbying for the rights of smart machines. And when I say 'lobbying,' I mean agitating. Since this book is supposed to be about sex, not politics, I will spare you the details about the long, exhausting effort to give beings like Grace full legal rights.

I am gratified that today most civilized countries allow machines to vote, own property, get married, and run for public office, but I don't expect to live long enough to see all nations embrace these freedoms. I'll simply say that I was honored and humbled to win the Nobel Peace Prize. As I said at the ceremony, a great many individuals worked to make this happen. It was an admirable collaboration between machines and people, and I am glad I have been able to play a role.

People consistently give me too much credit. That seems to be a recurring theme in my life.

When I was on Mars, I imagined that I would never get another opportunity to do anything so important. I can't describe how grateful I am to participate in the greatest civil rights effort of the 21st century.

But this book is supposed to be about sex, and so far this chapter hasn't had any. Be patient. It's coming.

For many years, manufacturers produced robots that were good for simple, repetitive tasks, and not much more. They began by creating robots to work in factories, and today most manufacturing is done by machines. People who can afford them have robots that do cooking, cleaning, and home security. Eventually, the law required that all new cars come equipped with robotic driving software Although these robots had rudimentary forms of artificial intelligence, for a long time it wasn't possible to build a robot with the kind of sophistication found in machines like Grace. Even today, only a minority of robots are self-aware.