Weatherman Read online

  Weatherman

  Copyright © 2019 Caldon Mull

  Published by Caldon Mull

  at Smashwords

  Smashwords Edition License Notes

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  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Weatherman

  About Caldon Mull

  Other books by Caldon Mull

  Connect with Caldon Mull

  Prologue

  It has started; from a lonely eddy unto a sweeping tide. It started from a single Homeworld sweltering under extreme climate changes and will lead to different places, under alien stars and under strange skies: The Diaspora.

  It was early in the first decades of the Twenty-Second Century that whole cities began to enclose their vulnerable population in Arcology structures, protecting them from the chaos and violent weather that swamped whole coastal areas and put paid to the economy of Earth. All the while EarthGov struggled to keep the population of Earth safe on Earth; the more industrious of the Arcology cultures had other plans for themselves.

  The physical structure of the Arcology culture leaned itself to another type of Enterprise; Travel. In the face of drowning or sinking as an only option, trapped within a ship designed to weather all nature of calamity, humanity became enamored of improving their circumstances in weighting the known and the unknown.

  The Ecliptic Emigrant Trail became viable as soon as Arcology technology developed sufficiently within a few decades to optimize the ship systems for Space Flight. Soon enough, City Arcology after City Arcology were lifting off the planet Earth and congregating at Earth LaGrange 5, planning their journey and marshaling their resources to travel the Inter-Planetary Gravity Super-highway.

  At the time of this record, ten Earth-flight Fleets have taken to the Ecliptic Trail, and two have taken the longer view to the Seeded Worlds. For the sake of Humanity in the Solar System and the Sol Senate, I have undertaken the task of tracking the experiences of the Human beings in this phase of History that I have classified as ‘The Diaspora’.

  I make no judgment of these people, I make no claim to vested interests because people are just people. Their tales and experiences are just as valid as any Sol Senator, and add to humanities experience far more reliably than the views that have been passed down through history, based on their views of a privileged few.

  As in any great endeavor such as this, ‘The Diaspora’ has to begin somewhere. I have chosen to start close to home with a place that I am familiar with: The Mars-Fleet push from the chaotic Earth. In both literal and figurative meaning, Mars-Fleet had to both establish themselves on a freeze-dried world and defend themselves from the encroaching GovSec.

  I hope that these records will be as enlightening to read as they were in compiling.

  Titus, Arktica, 2505AD

  Weatherman

  “The drone feeds are in Esteban, you’re on in 5…” Esteban nodded, switching over his feed to the news team, waiting for his cue.

  “… that was the news and now for the naked weather on Mars, with Esteban Perez…”

  Esteban grinned with his ‘special grin’ as the red light on his camera drone flashed 3, 2…

  “Thank you, Wasily.” Esteban squared his shoulders and picked up smoothly, his internal green-screen display returned his augmented-reality output, along with the other data-tethers to the Skynet satellites. “The cold-front we started tracking yesterday has intensified in the last twenty-four hours to monsoon conditions, indicating heavy sleet and dust conditions along the shores of the northern sink.” Esteban ticked off his feed items, “Wally Ramperasadh, you’ve got about three hours to batten down the hatches and jack your homestead platform up by a meter, it’s going to be a long three days before it passes you by and make sure all the stock domes are secured. The trick is to get higher than sixty centimeters, where the dust is most concentrated.

  “The rest of you in MF3-Cartagena, after Wally beats down the leading front, keep posted with his manse-com; track what is happening with Wally and the other farmers on the lowland shore. Remember this, if you like lamb chops then Wally and guys like him need to stay safe. If you haven’t already, subscribe to the MF3-Cartagena local feeds and keep up to date with the news for your area. Do it soon because you’ll probably go off-grid in a day or two.

  “On the planetary map, all seems to be just another ordinary day. It’s dry and warm out there, all the way around the equator and into the tropics. A typical Martian autumn's day lies in store for us.”

  Esteban concatenated a planetary view in his AR and spun it onto his green-screen.

  “Warm fronts around the equator and satellite maintenance above the Hellas lake here in MF1-Cadiz, and in the south polar region are the only change in our twenty-four hour sample and, aside from the monsoon warning, rough weather outside of the domes are in-fit-tes-imal.” Esteban smiled his ‘reassuring smile’, “Here are the projections for temperatures and conditions over Mars for the next rotation and for the next week… This is Esteban Perez with the weather for today and for the next week we’ll have updates routed through our news team with Babs. I have to go into the shop for maintenance, but I’m back live on the Mars Channel Network in a few days.” Esteban smiled his ‘special smile’ again holding it as his private feed announced “3… 2… 1… and cut! That’s a wrap, people.”

  “Who else noticed that cell over the Northern sink was going to get so hard, so quickly.” Esteban grumbled as he cut his feeds and stomped off his presenter platform. “I thought we had the prediction algorithms down pat. While it’s not very deep in the North sink what little water there is, is all going to dump on those homesteads.” He growled over at the news platform, Wasily and Babs rolled their eyes in the ‘not-this-again’ and unclipped their coms.

  Lin-ho, the production boss looked over and shook her head “Esteban, it’s just the weather… it’s not like it’s a precise science or anything. Go and put some clothes on, go out and have a beer or something.”

  “Sure, I’ll do that.” Esteban grumbled while he headed for his change room, “… just the fucking weather! Right!”

  “Chill a bit, the Senatorial parliament feed is back on for the rest of the day, and then Pele Starmind has the rest of the block booked up with his ‘Titania – the new Siberia?’ documentary. She shrugged, “You’ve got a whole week before you’re on again. Good show… It was a great idea feeding from the homestead’s house- mind for the triangulation. We certainly will keep using that, bringing a human face to our viewers.”

  “Thanks, Boss.” Esteban nodded to her as he left the set. “I’m going to get dressed.”

  Esteban had just tugged on his shirt when there was a tap on his change room door. “Yeah, come in.” he muttered, it’s not like he was indecent or anything. Martian ‘naked weather’ was exactly that, and along with his copyright ‘special smile’ was the fact that he spent his entire working day in the nude. ‘What you see is what you get…’ as the Mars channel was fond of advertising.

  The whole set spent their working hours staring at his junk. Esteban didn’t care, and after all this time neither did the rest of the crew. His network contract ‘morality clause’ didn’t prohibit his conduct to any extent as long as he didn’t miss a broadcast slot. That was the only thing that mattered to the station, the regular reassurance of the weatherman.

>   It was Barbara checking in, the channel den mother. “Honey, you okay?” she poked her head past the jam, “I got a weird vibe from you.”

  “Nah, nothing wrong.” Esteban tugged his belt around his hips and shrugged. “Just… y’know… I did all of this stuff so that I could be important, but now it seems like I’m just… jewelry… or something. I don’t know Babs… I’m fine.”

  “The next shift is up; we’re all going to Yun’s in a few minutes. The franchise still has three days to run for the team. You coming?”

  “Sure, of course.” Esteban shrugged. “As usual, I’m there. We can’t have our sponsors disappointed whoever they are. Why not.”

  “See you there… Just don’t order the shrimp again, if you can’t eat it… not like last week. You are important to those people out there, Esteban. They could lose everything in a matter of hours if you didn’t warn them.” Babs’ face disappeared and the door clicked shut before Esteban could remind her he didn’t know he was allergic to Yun’s Martian neo-shrimp.

  How could he know? Nobody had eaten them before Friday. Not ever. He had wrecked that shitter at Yun’s; he only left the place after they had closed up. Yun himself had waited for him to limp out the door and begin his trip home. Esteban had burnt those pants as soon as the flux had abated and he finally had the strength to crawl out of his fouled bathtub.

  Esteban tugged at his sneaker and his lace snapped. He sighed as he stared at it. ‘Recyclable-fashionable-trendy… fucking junk…’

  He scrolled his in-board browser and ordered another to be delivered to his room and it noted that he would be six minutes behind the others arriving at Yun’s.

  He broadcast an update and waited for the delivery drone to deliver his sponsor’s specially crafted size-23 prototype replacement shoelace. “Just great…” Esteban muttered under his breath.

  Yun’s was pumping as his transport-service dropped him off at the entrance. Inside the establishment he could see Wasily and Babs, Lin-ho and Robert, Natalie from make-up and Roddy from sound engineering, all busy bubbling with the appropriate response to the ‘fun’ the sponsor wished to project.

  They were drawing a crowd and, as Esteban squeezed through the door, they cheered and the waitron-drones flitted above the pack dispensing the house booze as he squeezed through the throng. Esteban smiled his ‘special smile’ at them and throbbing music started in the background, the lighting changed subtly and a secure-privacy shield shimmer ran up around the space, the after-party was on, baby…

  Esteban nursed a water-bottle as the lights flashed and the music throbbed. His augmented metabolism required a relatively enormous amount to stay hydrated. “Mute environment background noise- seventy percent.” He instructed his internal browser.

  “Ack.” It responded as the lights and the noise faded and filtered to his specification.

  “Thanks.” Esteban sighed.

  “Ack” His internal browser responded. It might not have been the best around when he had his modifications done, but it did learn from him, no matter how slowly.

  “Hey, big ‘un… dat you?” A virtual probe landed at his communications internal staging queue, Esteban immediately recognized the token.

  “Hey, hello Pele. Yeah, it’s me. What you doing here… aren’t you on?”

  “Dat de ‘ting…” Pele responded in the latest, most fashionable patois, “Mah gonta user ta bestes’ ting being virtu-aal… manni place one ‘time, yu rule?”

  “Sure, I guess.” Esteban sighed and steadily sipped his way through his bottle. “I thought you were all the serious newsman now. You know, the ‘Martian Canal Network’. MCN this, MCN that… Fuck! You are all over the news… still are… info-tainment…”

  Esteban blinked as the data packets streamed into his staging zone, “Fuck it, you don’t travel light, do you… ?” he dialed up his caching to allow the session more space.

  “Yu got da sense of it, but yu gonna ‘tink me be un-to-ward by sayin’ sumtink gonna be ser-i-yuss downtime, dig?”

  “Yeah, me too.” Esteban grinned as the famous and fabulous Avatar of the Mars Starmind settled in his internal private virtual forum, “I’ll set my private lobby Veep-queue for you, come and join me.”

  “Mucho ‘tanks, mun.” Starmind hovered briefly, and then settled with his host, like water on Earth running down a drain. “Yu be still hit da num-bas.”

  “Yeah, buddy… number two, always number two… to you.”

  “Big mun, nu-ting wrong wi dat?”

  “No, there isn’t.” Esteban gulped the bottle dry and tossed it into a chute. “I love what I do… it’s just that… I don’t think they’re taking me seriously.”

  “Wut… you messin’?”

  “C’mon even you see just another weatherman.”

  “Truly. Bes’ in buz-i-nuss.” The Starmind shell smirked, “Marriwe, you cy-ba not sof’ an’ ah no Know-path to maek it gold fo’ yu.”

  “Even if you did, that’s not why I’m down.” Esteban folded his arms over his chest, the booth seat groaned in protest. “You know me; we’ve been friends for at least ten years. I wish I had your media credibility. If you were any kind of physical, I’d spread my ass cheeks and beg you to plough me, hoping that some of your inspiration would rub off. But you’re not… you’re just a collection of data packets visiting my private virtual forum, a ghost in my Veep-queue.”

  “Heh, Esteban… yu spicy brat-boy.” Pele pixilated and pulsed, “I ‘spect I could download into a clock an’ get you your pan on… metal or flesh, you like?”

  “You know I don’t care about that shit, Starmind. It is what it is since my frame mods… regular people just can’t handle it. I’m getting frustrated with the hand-rubs.”

  “Yu macho, cathilico, metal-boi… den cy-ba al da ways…”

  “You know better than that. Why don’t you just call me ‘just another stain’ and be done with it.

  “Esteban…”

  “Well, fuck you too, Pele-fucking-Starmind.” Esteban blinked, and then growled as his mood swung and the buzz kicked in, “The world isn’t like what you present to the public. There are still places on Mars where you can’t influence. Not many granted… but there are still places. There’s got to be. Some places. Somewhere on Mars... That you can’t [hiccup] influence.”

  “Esteban… [override_Pele-Starmind-shell with Pele-Starmind-core] I’m sorry I appeared offhand with you.”

  “You aren’t speaking newlang V43.2 anymore.”

  “It’s a different Pele_Starmind. You know how I can shell, right Esteban? I know we are more like corridor acquaintances than good friends or anything, but I need your help with something. I’d rather Pele made the contact, I wasn’t sure you’d respond to this core persona, the boring Starmind.”

  “I guess we’re all media persona, here. So what’s new…? Some personas are real, some are only virtual and most are fake… I’m real, I’m also virtual… I might even be fake. [hiccup] Take Wasily, there… He’s a GEN3 from OutSystems. The Mars network has his subscription for two hundred years, he is the ‘face of news’ until 2430, at least. Him… or any number of identical synthetic human models.”

  “You’re deflecting; Wasily is not what’s bothering you.” Virtual Pele_Starmind settled into a relaxed pose “What is?”

  “No, Wasily is not bothering me. His subscription is not bothering me, that we’re the second largest syndicate in the system is not bothering me… Pele… I’m bothering me [hiccup] I’m not feeling it anymore. I’ve got all the feeds running for coronal activity from the sunspots, I know the quotients, I know what to expect with planetary systems… what to report on… except I don’t know what happens with the weather on Luna anymore, I don’t know or understand what it does while they’re doing [hic] terraforming… it. I mean I do… [hiccup] the physics… but I don’t, what it means beyond the Inner system, where they’ll [hic] hit [hic] next.

  “You’re high, aren’t you?

  “Yup. My sponsor clause is
for nine [hic] doses a week. Non-addictive, purely natural high… fresh from the oceans of… [hic] I forget, somewhere off Jupiter. ‘Make Mars [hiccup] fun again… with Doctor Indigo…’

  “The only side-ef[hic]fect for me is the [hic], is the [hic]…” Esteban grabbed another water bulb and sucked at it, breathing heavily through his nose as he did so.

  “Esteban, I can’t talk to you like this. I need you to do something for me, and I can’t stay long.”

  “It’s my private Veep-queue; it’s only open while you’re here, Starmind. What do you want exactly? [hiccup] It can’t be to hook up, though… if you could get a doll with the right dimensions and attachments [hiccup] download Pele into it, I’m so there…”

  “Duly noted. I can’t discuss it here.” The Starmind pulsed, “The real reason for this veep is that I’ve got this source and he says there’s something in the wind. That it’s something you could do. That only you should do it. There’re no other Pondsmith-05 models on Mars that are available, and I need you.”

  “I’m bored now Starmind, [hic] make an appointment in my calendar. I’m in for maintenance tomorrow, so I have a few days off for rotation. Talk to me then. I don’t think I’d remember anything tomorrow. It’s been a long week and I’m cooked right now.”

  “Sure, Esteban. I’ll do that. Starmind out.”

  Esteban sipped his water while his high peaked and the hiccups faded. Outside the privacy shields’ shimmer, Yun’s was pumping… lights were flashing with psychedelic intensity beyond his sensory mute settings, people were milling around, jostling, rubbing…

  Esteban’s erection throbbed and he rubbed it absently. He had a MCN-sanctioned social maintenance appointment and his e-calendar had scheduled his tumescence. Inwardly he groaned as he snapped his phallus free of the constraining fabric, needing something a minimum of once a week was not the same as wanting it.