The God Mars Book Eight: Better Angels

By Michael Rizzo

The God Mars is a pulp-style science fiction series set in a rich world of varied cultures and colorful characters. The series plays out on a partially-terraformed Mars, a half-century after a man-made disaster cut thousands of colonists off from Earth, and the fear of a rampant nanotech plague discouraged rescue. Left to survive for generations with few resources, the various groups develop unique new cultures at different levels of technology, ranging from the primitive to the frighteningly advanced. But all are now trapped in an escalating war between an oppressive Earth that’s terrified of potentially infectious nanotechnology, and invincible superhumans who claim to have come from a nightmare future caused by that same technology.

In Book Eight: Better Angels, Earth’s orbital forces have been knocked out of the sky, and are now marooned on the surface of what they believe is a hostile and infected planet, all communications cut off. A relief fleet is incoming, seven months out, but its cargo and intent are unknown. Meanwhile, the resurrected Terina and her symbiotic Companion have seized control of the terraforming Stations, have demanded the withdrawal of all Earth forces, and are proposing the unthinkable in a desperate attempt to protect all the peoples of Mars from another sterilizing Apocalypse. Can there be peace between the worlds in the face of unreasoning fear, or must there be obliteration?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Rizzo
• Release date: May 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463818077

Michael Rizzo

In addition to writing dark speculative fiction, Michael Rizzo is a graphic artist (yes, all those covers are his), a martial scientist, a collector and frequent user of fine weaponry, and a pretty good cook. He continues his long, varied and brutal career as a mercenary social services consultant, trying to do good important work while writing about very bad things.His fiction series include Grayman and The God Mars. (The research he’s done for the Grayman series has probably earned him the attention of Homeland Security.)Check out his Facebook pages ("The Grayman Series" and "The God Mars Series") for lots of original art and updates.He causes trouble in person mostly in the Pacific Northwest.

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The God Mars

Book Eight: Better Angels

By Michael Rizzo

Copyright 2019 by Michael Rizzo

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Better Angels Table of Contents

Prologue: Earth: Meet the New Boss

Part One: When Worlds Collide

Chapter 1: Of Frying Pans and Fires

Chapter 2: The Gods Are Malign

Chapter 3: Dust Devil

Chapter 4: Blasphemous Rumors

Chapter 5: When the Levee Breaks

Chapter 6: A Trickle of Strangers

Chapter 7: The War Lord of Mars

Chapter 8: Fun Storming the Castle

Chapter 9: Buried = Alive

Chapter 10: Cast in this Unlikely Role

Interlude: Interruptus

Part Two: And If the Dam Breaks Open Many Years Too Soon…

Chapter 1: The Same Old Fears

Chapter 2: The Man I’ll Never Be

Chapter 3: Scientific Misconduct

Chapter 4: Nothing as It Seems

Chapter 5: Personal Combat

Chapter 6: Believer

Chapter 7: Losing My Religion

Chapter 8: Colonel Ram’s Folly

Chapter 9: A Walk-On Part in the War

Chapter 10: Every Battlefield and Patriot Grave

Epilogue: And Everything Under the Sun Is in Tune…

Maps of Melas and Coprates

Author’s Afterward

We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break the bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

Abraham Lincoln, 1861.

Prologue: Earth: Meet the New Boss

From the memory files of Mike Ram, relative date 19 June 2118:

If everyone is ready and remains in agreement, let’s get this done.

I give them all a good solid fifteen seconds to reconsider, to protest, to try to change the terms of our rather lopsided bargain. But none of the fifteen members (fourteen linked and one live) of the current sitting Security Council takes the pressured opportunity to speak up. I just see fifteen faces stewing in varying cocktails of helpless rage, righteous indignation, outright disgust, and—especially in the case of my live audience of one—uncertain but debilitating intimate body horror.

Good enough for government work.

Then it’s showtime, folks.

I can’t help but put a little impresario’s flourish on that, however dour and potentially world-changing the subject at hand is.

But one thing is still lacking: the star doesn’t have his face on yet.

I work from memory, which is of course digitally perfect, and let them all see it happen in realtime. And that tips most of them more into that aforementioned horror; yet another demonstration, however small, of what Things Like Me are capable of.

My live witness, having by far the best seat for the show, can’t help but actually whimper as my features shift and my hair changes color, to settle within a handful of seconds into the face of what I’m guessing is the one nightmare scarier than I am.

(But not by much. Not anymore.)

Now I just need to check my work. Precise digital parameters are one thing, but I really need to see it to make sure I got it right, and preferably up close. I have to be certain that I’ve managed the morph not only accurately but realistically enough to be completely convincing for its purpose, or this entire exercise will be worse than a failure. And that means borrowing a pair of outside eyes. As in: somebody else’s.

Thankfully for that one member of my live audience, who I’m quite sure would rather not have me burrowing (however non-invasively) into her visual cortex, I happen to have a handy and effective proxy with me backstage. And she’s even tech-compatible.

I link into Tamra’s visual feed, and instantly see what she sees.

Look at me for a second.

I didn’t have to ask. She’s already got her eyes locked on me, mesmerized by the illusion, the facsimile, the imitation turning its face slowly side-to-side like her sight is my vanity mirror.

Uh-huh. And there he is: Red hair. High hairline. Villain’s Van Dyke. Strong nose. Heavy brow. Hollow cheeks. Faint pocking leftover from a youthful skin condition. Joyfully evil grin.

(The one thing I didn’t need to mimic was his pale blue eyes. I seem to be stuck with those since the download.)

Yup. It all looks right. Mostly right. Right-ish. Maybe a little bit unnatural? Or maybe that’s just me because I’m the one wearing someone else’s face, his face. But yes, I think it’s close enough for the transmission’s best resolution. I hope so, anyway. If not, this will all be popularly dismissed as more bullshit government counter-prop, and then I’ll have to figure out how to be more convincing.

(Live appearances?)

(Home Sec will shit themselves.)

(Might actually be worth it. Don’t rule it out.)

Makeup: done.

Now the costume: I shift my anachronistic business-conservative suit and tie from black-on-white to his preferred black-on-red.

What do you think? I ask Tamra, doing a little twirl so she can see the whole thing. With the possible exception of myself, she knows this face best. At least on this planet.

She doesn’t need to say anything. The vaguely-sick look on her face confirms that I’ve done a good enough job to reopen her still-fresh wounds.

She never really got a chance to mourn him. No ceremony. There wasn’t even a body to bury or burn. He was just gone, dispersed into the fabric of Yod’s subatomic playground. And I’m sorry she has to see me morphed into a hi-rez-holocam-ready approximation of him, but this is necessary. I’ve made a bargain. One that might save two worlds.

(I’ll settle for saving one. And frankly not the one I’m standing on.)

Deciding that a second opinion can’t hurt, I turn and double-check my work with my involuntarily live studio audience of petrified one, spreading my arms to her like I’ve just done a cheap magic trick.

Tah dah.

"What do you think?" I remodulate my voice into his, matching it to copious samples I’ve got on file.

Secretary General Benezir Satrapi gives me a wide-eyed breath-catching start of authentic terror, as if she’s seeing the real deal, the Demon in the flesh, standing not eight feet away from her. But then, come to think of it, she’d never seen the real deal, not in person. In fact, she and hers have gone to great lengths to make sure that anyone on this shit planet that did get this close to him (or me) was rounded up and humanely executed.

Of course, I’m sure she’s not sure that I’m really not the real deal; that my face—the one I popped up in here wearing—wasn’t the disguise, and this is me. Him. Pretending to be me. Pretending to be me pretending to be him.

Whatever. I don’t bother to try to reassure her. She doesn’t deserve that. Not that I really could anyway, since I just showed her, live and in person, that I can make myself look pretty convincingly like anyone I’ve seen in about a handful of seconds. And me being me and not him probably isn’t any comfort to speak of: She already pissed herself more than a little when I suddenly corporealized out of handy environmental compounds in the middle of her supposedly secure office. I must admit I’m quite impressed that there’s been no screaming, fainting, or attempts to jump out of her reinforced windows (especially since she can’t run for the exit, because Tamra is doing an effectively ominous job of blocking what’s left of the only door).

Terrified, obstinate, or both, she doesn’t give me an answer either.

Ah, well.

"Okay… What do you think? I address my remotely captive gathering of uber-officials, having remotely locked them in their offices and homes (depending on the local hour) with their own security protocols as I hacked myself—in all my obnoxious glory—into all of their feeds. And cut them off from all outside communication, until our business is done. No interruptions. No distractions. No Phone-a-Friend. Just us. For the moment, anyway. Good enough for government work?"

Apparently, they’ve never heard the phrase. Or have no sense of humor. Or both. Probably both.

But since no one is telling me otherwise, I guess this will do, at least for a video performance.

Assuming I can hold it.

Going live in five, I warn my studio and remote audiences. Then I strike a pose that I think imitates his body language, link myself into everywhere, start the feed, and begin with an approximation of his best evil smile:

"Hello children."

(Okay, that was more South Park than Asmodeus, but I think he’d appreciate it.)

Going freestyle with the voice is the easy part. The hard part is keeping my face and hair from shifting back to default while I’m trying to do this show right and keep my remote avatar together in this room from nine hundred and twenty-seven miles away.

(I could have just gone with a holo-projection, but I had a point to make: a practical demonstration of physical omnipresence. With a little effort, I can be anywhere I want to be, whenever I want to be, in the corporeal sense, and that’s especially fucked up. Plus, the whole matter-hacking thing is kind of fun.)

It’s your Uncle Ange again, I address the population of Earth, pumping myself in real-time and unblockable through everything with a screen, speaker or projector on the planet. Stopping the world with my little show. Just like he would. Did. Often and regularly. But this, I’m afraid, is the last time. Probably the last time. For a while, anyway. We’ll see.

The non-committal backpedal was aimed squarely at those that I’ve bargained with, to let them know that should their agreements be broken, I will equally ignore mine, and that’s a war they have no hope of winning.

I’ve given you opportunity. I’ve given you truth. I’ve shown you what’s been hidden from you—all of it…

And that was part of my end of the deal: I won’t continue Ange’s trend of government-toppling humiliation, infowar-by-shocking-exposé. It’s more than they deserve. But if they behave, there will be no more scandal bombs, at least not from me.

(If they don’t behave… well…)

"…and you have chosen, it seems: Safety. Security. The comfort of the world that you have created, that your forebears created. Utopia, or as near as you’re likely to get without breaking your science-and-tech restrictions.

"And I understand that. I do. Your world has many fine things going for it: Peace. Civility. Respect. Order. Efficiency. And it’s clean. It’s a very clean place you have here."

Tamra rolls her eyes at me like proper teenage girl, shakes her head. She’s clearly hating my impression. I’m probably over-playing it, like a stand-up comic doing a celebrity. And I’m sure she did truly care about the man I’m poorly pretending to be.

But then, she doesn’t have to like it. This show isn’t for her. It’s for those that knew him far less well. His Audience. Which is pretty much everybody else on the planet, considering how completely pervasive (or invasive) and popular his previous broadcasts were—popular enough to instigate global protests the likes of which haven’t been seen for nearly half a century. They, the people of Earth, only have to believe that I’m not more poorly-spun government counter-prop: staged proof that the Demon and all of his miracles were really just a bizarre series of hoaxes perpetrated by some shadowy rebellion or sinister conspiracy of Godless practitioners of forbidden science trying to overthrow their benign leadership. In my favor, the official attempts to discredit his existence, words and deeds have so far been cartoonishly unconvincing, easily seen through and ridiculed in the true global court that is public opinion.

Also in my favor: Perfect morph and voice simulation aside, I knew him. Multiple versions. Plus, the bastard gave me his memories as a dying gift (along with his blue eyes, and, I expect, a few of his more charming personality algorithms). So if anyone can play him right on TV, it’s me.

I hope.

"Besides, proper revolutions are messy things. I know: I’ve seen more than a few in my time. They’re inconvenient. Uncomfortable. Destructive. They really disrupt the ol’ routine, bust up the infrastructure. Then you realize just how much work it will take to fix all the minutia you took for granted. Keeping the lights on and the water clean and the toilets flushing and food on the shelves, shit like that. Best, then, I suppose, just to fix the system you have, bit at a time. So: good choice. Quiet, polite revolution. Slow-and-steady wins the race. You break it, you bought it."

Tamra’s eyes go wide, with incredulity and a touch of panic, like she’s watching a car crash. Or a near-miss. I’m overdoing it. I need to tap the brakes, breathe…

Anyway, I’ve decided to leave you to it, to your own future. I was wrong to press my own judgement, my own values, on a world that really isn’t mine. And I can’t truly say I was offering you better. I’m certainly not the one to lead you, not to anywhere good.

Tamra’s eye-roll turns to icy glare. Now I’m just pissing her off, treading on the grave of her mentor, the first father-figure she had—however briefly—that didn’t unspeakably and unforgivably abuse her. The one that set her free, that made her more powerful than her monsters, that made her at least physically invincible. As far as she’s concerned, I have no right to deprecate him (even though self-deprecation is absolutely in character), no matter how noble my reason.

But she understands why I need to say these things, enough to keep silent and out of camera shot, to tolerate this necessary desecration.

Still…

Still, I think I owe you one final truth… A small correction to the history you learned in school. And a few details that I hope will help you all move forward in a positive direction, especially given what relationships must develop between Earth and Mars.

And this is my price for keeping my end of the agreement: Correcting at least one Great Lie.

You have been taught that, back in 2065, Mars catastrophically fell to a virulent outbreak of lethal intelligent self-replicating nanotechnology, concocted by the folly of greedy corporations and apocalyptically short-sighted scientists. You have been told that the orbital failsafe system—the Ares Shield—had to be deployed to stop that plague from spreading, even at the terrible cost of tens of thousands of lives on the surface. You were told that this sacrifice was insufficient: That the unstoppable technological monster managed to reach Mars orbit anyway, slaughtering more than three thousand more brave souls, before secretly infecting the few shuttles that thought they’d gotten clear, using them to bring the End of the World back to Earth, just right up there, barely a few thousand kilometers over your heads… I point to the sky. "…and it cost another two-thousand-plus lives—brave men and women who sacrificed everything without hesitation—to finally stop it before it could make landfall and ravage this planet. God’s Green Earth.

But that is not what happened.

I give my audience a moment to process, soften my tone, and access the pre-selected files so I can splice them into the feed on cue.

"The corporate labs on Mars were on the brink of producing functioning smart bio-hybrid nanotechnology, realizing the dream of transhumanism, of merging man with machine, daring to improve upon God’s work. In another version of history, they were successful, and the results were catastrophic…"

I flash random images of my memories of that reality: A population starkly divided between those who had given in to the seductions of fully-integrated virtual existence at the expense of physical stagnation and atrophy; and those that chose to radically re-craft their world and themselves just to stay engaged in the face of numbing invincibility and immortality.

Humanity: Handed endless possibilities and freed from all mortal consequence. Handed the power of what you had once called ‘gods’. For real. And what did humanity do with such power?

I show them a world stripped and remade as a nightmare theme park of random impulsive creation, destruction and re-creation. Nature erased. Species extinct. All without care.

Our planet: It had become less to us than the virtual construct in a child’s game. Not that we held any higher esteem for ourselves.

I show them humanity as a cartoon, all-powerful and indestructible, immortal, and soul-crushingly bored. Hopeless. Helpless. Endless.

It only took a few decades, folks.

The collage I’ve made of those memories, seen through the lens of distance, of other realities, looks like ten billion extreme VR games playing simultaneously. It is manic, terrible, despondent chaos. I can only imagine what it must look like to these people, programmed to be so terrified of such technology, so God-fearing. Ultimate visceral horror meets ultimate blasphemy.

"We could not undo what we’d done. We’d made sure of that. But we might be able to prevent it from happening."

I shift back to the history of this reality: Footage of the Disc attacks on the colony labs and fabs more than half a century ago.

Some of us found a way back, found a way to send copies of us back. To rewrite history.

I show what fragments I have of the events of January 2, 2065. The Martian Apocalypse.

"The nanotech didn’t breach the labs. We did. Well, he did…"

I show stills and clips of Syan Chang, the walking void, a black silhouette cut in reality.

A monster. Though not quite as impressive like this…

And I show him uncloaked, as Adam Chang, a slight unassuming figure with mismatched eyes. He looks like he should be toiling in a lab, or teaching university science, not waging real war on human progress.

Then I go back to the destruction.

"Desperate to stop the future I’ve just shown you, he wrecked it all. Or as much as he could. Then he triggered the Shield, dropped the nukes, while his drones shredded everything in orbit. He killed tens of thousands of people in less than an hour. Then he set drones on the hulls of the shuttles that made it out, and they destroyed everything in orbit on this end. He had to be sure it was done, that our world would never happen. And he had to make sure you were scared enough as a species never to go down that path again.

"Mostly, he succeeded. But it turns out you’re a resilient lot, stubborn when it comes to matters of certain death. You were told that most of the men, women and sweet innocent little children on Mars died by nuclear fire, leaving only a very few miserable unlucky survivors to succumb to the far more horrible fates of radiation, deprivation, or that killer plague you were so sure had ravaged the whole planet. Over fifty-three thousand people, all dead, every last one. And honored for all time as cost of humanity’s survival.

"But then my old friend Mike Ram managed to get a call out from that graveyard, a call that your governments couldn’t ignore, and kind of ruined that legacy. He told you there was no rampant plague. He told you it was sabotage, an attack. And most of all, he told you—showed you—that not everybody died."

Now I show clips of the various survivor descendants, starting with the Nomads, the Zodanga, the Cast, the Pax and Forge and Katar.

"Let’s see if we can correct the books for you:

"There were thirty-two-hundred-odd lost in Mars orbit when it got hit. Add to that maybe ninety brave pilots and crews from the surface that attempted rescue. Pretty sure they all died. Pretty sure. Not much hope there, space being so unforgiving. There were another eleven-hundred-and-fifty on the transfer shuttles. They either died trying to get home or got killed by the drones they were carrying when they got here. That’s confirmed. Also confirmed are the nine-hundred-and-fifty personnel in Earth orbit."

I give them a moment to re-process the historic trauma, even though it happened before most of the current population was born. Or when they were very, very young. (But that trauma has since shaped every aspect of their world.)

"After that, it gets fuzzy. The census on Mars was running around forty-three thousand colonists, three thousand military plus seven-hundred support personnel, and twelve hundred corporate terraformers. So, how many of those died? I really don’t know. Nobody does. We don’t even have good numbers on the current survivors yet, maybe never will. Though I suppose they don’t consider themselves ‘survivors,’ not for a long time now. Residents. ‘Martians,’ being most of them were born there. Native Martians."

I show them a map of Marineris as we’ve come to know it. And then I give them a whirlwind visual tour.

"Here are the living peoples on Mars by current rough count:

Besides the confirmed eleven-hundred and ninety-seven souls who slept through at Melas Base Two, there are several hundred free-range Nomads wandering the deserts of Melas Chasma, descendants of Uqba and Baraka colonies, colonies that didn’t make it through the Bang intact enough to be habitable. I show them Abbas and his people, Barak Hassim and his group. All in better days. "Honorable, resilient, spiritual folk, and cleaner than they look. They’ve managed to stay alive, scrape a living out of pretty much nothing in nowhere, and fight off the local competition. Some of them have been looking for greener—and less radioactive—pastures since your military impulsively dropped a nuke in the middle of their real estate and bled the air thin."

Bringing up the appropriate map, I draw the elongated stain across Melas of the hot zone caused by the 450 kiloton warhead that Jackson rode down from orbit like that redneck shithead at the end of Dr. Strangelove.

"They’re not very happy about that. But moving on…

"Speaking of the competition: Industry, Pioneer and Frontier colonies in the north were home to probably a thousand or two survivors under the military regime of their former Peace Keepers—more on them later. There was also a similar enclave at Eureka colony way out east in Coprates—more on them later, too.

To the west: Those sneaky buggers over at Shinkyo. I’m not being racist—they actually decided to be friggin’ gangster ninjas, keeping the corporate dream alive at any cost. I show the attacks on Melas Two and the Stations, but also their service in the attacks on Chang’s Stormcloud carrier. Bushido-honorable when they want to be, but definitely not to be trusted, and that’s saying something coming from me.

I actually get a flash of a smile from Tamra—I guess I hit better on that with my impersonation, enough to perhaps trigger a fonder memory.

Current numbers: Unknown. Though there were a few hundred ‘refugees’ at Melas Two. I show the camp of shelters at Melas Two, under UNMAC guns. "And then I was naughty. Anyway…

To the north: Actual Air Pirates… I show the glory of their Dutchman-class airships. Ingenious. Vicious. But such is natural selection in that desperate land. Numbers…vastly reduced, I’m afraid.

Then I give a quick virtual tour of Tranquility.

"Here we have about eight hundred folks split into two distinct groups. One gets the relative comfort of the surviving domes—though when shit starts crashing, they start killing the less-essentials—while the rougher-looking group does just fine mostly outside. And just look at that garden! These guys have almost single-handedly greened Coprates, providing a renewable source of food for most everybody. You’d like these folks. But they have guns. And knives. And spears. And worse: GMOs."

I show them what few images I have of the Forge in their armor.

Descendants of the survivors of the Coprates colonies. Shiny, when they’re not covered in dirt. That armor they wear would be the equivalent of a few hundred kilos on this planet—each one’s like a little medieval tank. They live underground, mining and manufacturing, growing food hydroponically. No idea how many, or how big their facilities are, or how far their territory stretches. Let’s say they haven’t been very social.

And the Pax:

These guys I’ve shown you before: They live in the green down in Coprates, farm and raise engineered livestock. So yes: they eat meat. It’s what’s for dinner. And bugs. Giant bugs. But they don’t eat those. The bugs help tend the forest. Circle of life.

And the Katar.

"I’ve shown you these guys, too. They eat the bugs. And farm. And do art and science and architecture. They’re all Barbie-looking because they’ve let their bodies adapt to the one-third-gravity. And they’re not really Oompa-Loompa orange: That’s a topical shield for the UV and cosmic radiation that gets through the electromagnetic net that keeps the air in."

I zoom out, big-picture, population centers and known territories marked on the map:

"So we’re talking somewhere between nine and twelve thousand folks, rough guess. Plus maybe that twelve-hundred terraformers still running the ETE Stations, and a few thousand of you tourists. Or at least there were."

I show clips of the battles, the bombs dropped, the bombardments…

"I figure we’re down a few thousand since you all showed up and started doing epically stupid shit. The PK and the Pirates got hit particularly hard—not many of those folks are left, not many at all. From promising civilization to a few small groups of cowering fugitives. Sad.

"Okay, I admit: Maybe half of that was my fault. Okay, two-thirds. Well… Three qua… No! No… I am a shit, but I am not taking responsibility for dropping that nuke on a few hundred scrappy individualists at Liberty colony, even though I sort-of wound ‘em up so they’d shoot at anything UNMAC like an old Taliban wedding."

I show the orbital video of that blast, turning night into horrible dawn. And the few hundred faint heat blips at zero right before the blast that were people.

"Nor did I shell the shit out of Industry."

And that shock-and-awe atrocity, hacked from the nose-cams of the ships that did the bombing.

"That was all you. And I really had nothing to do with what happened at Eureka… But I am a very bad man. Zodanga and the Melas PK and a few hundred Pax and Katar and you eager idiots were all me. Yeah, I killed a lot of people. I tend to do that when I want to make a point. Or when I’m just being a dick. Which is one more good reason for me to leave you."

The proxy confession really makes Tamra bristle, but I know it’s not new information. I know he told her, and she hacked into his memories to confirm it. But she also only knew the version of him that was wired with a conscience, with empathy, and she saw him try to do good.

I keep rolling while I’ve probably got my larger audience appropriately horrified.

"But there are others like me. Well, physically like me. From my world. And you should meet them."

I show myself, first as old-man UNMAC Colonel Ram, then as long-haired fantasy-boy Lord Ragnarok.

"You know this guy. He’s a good guy. He’s a dick, and he sulks way too much to be good company, but he means well. He’ll do the right thing. Usually."

That gets a welcome snicker out of Tamra, lightening her mood.

Then I reveal Lisa: Old, then young. Still in her UNMAC uniform.

She’s in, too. But she’s all duty, all Company. She’ll do what’s right. Right now she’s helping hold it together in her old job, helping keep your ‘brave volunteers’ on-planet alive, even though that usually means trying to keep them from killing themselves or each other or any other poor random schmucks they meet, which is no easy feat.

I’ve got my new ward’s attention now: Tamra hasn’t met the others like her, just me and Ange, and we’re a poor sample.

Next is Bel: Black-armored androgyny with horns in his hairdo.

"He’s a fun one. Fancies himself a ‘reality critic’. Super smart. Tends to set himself on fire when he’s angry… I show him scaring off Aziz’ Nomads at the Battle of Melas Three. …but the Devil-thing is all show. Sweet guy, really. Mostly harmless."

And Azazel, in his heavy armor.

This guy’s a big teddy bear. Good pilot, brave warrior; can tinker up pretty much anything you need, assuming it’s dangerous.

And Lux. Gleaming armor. As both sexes.

"Now this one is the champion of all you fluid-gender folks out there. Literally trans-gender. Trans-morphic-gender, to be precise: She can be a he can be a she at will, in the biological sense. Genitally speaking, if you follow me. Takes about two minutes. Never actually seen the critical bits swap out myself. Don’t really want to. Still: Pretty cool. And a total badass."

And Kali, blue and otherwise (but clothed, for this audience). Claws and blades and fangs.

This one… Well… Just don’t get on her bad side. Believe it or not, she used to be married to Ram in my fucked-up future world, but I think she was a little much for him. She’s taken to protecting Tranquility, so don’t fuck with Tranquility. Or she’ll fuck you. Probably literally. Probably to death. Literally.

Tamra’s eyebrows go up. I shrug. I realize I’m dwelling too long on my personal baggage. I breathe and move on.

To more baggage: Astarte.

Another former lady-friend of the Good Colonel. And Yours Truly, in better days. Now a bona-fide sex goddess, just like her namesake. Hard to say what side she’s on sometimes, which is how she plays it, but she’s usually all about the Greater Good, no matter how dark things get. She’ll always come through in the end.

And I realize that’s probably the truest thing I could say about her.

"Then we have some newcomers. These guys didn’t come from our fucked-up circus, they came from here, this reality, but got our tech one way or the other…"

Thompson Bly. Not as the Shadowknight. As what he is now.

"Former leader of those Air Pirates. Upgraded, just a little too late to save his peeps. So: sad sexy man. He will defend the people of Mars with everything he’s got. Has more honor in his pinky finger than anyone I’ve ever met, and I’ve met some proper heroes."

Jak Straker:

Former PK. Tried to properly surrender to you lot and, of course, got screwed. Isn’t holding a grudge that I know of, which is good news for you. Damn good soldier.

Erickson and Elias:

"The Brothers Carter. Former terraformers, with a little something extra. Pretty much the embodiments of bravery and loyalty. Good guys. Complete dorks, but good guys. All these are good guys. Even Scary Blue Chick. Even this guy…"

Jon, in his full Onryo armor. Then I show him sans skull-faced samurai helmet, still boyish despite everything he’s been through.

He was born to one of those secret illegal UNCORT missions you’ve been hearing so much about lately. Lost his whole family ugly. Found something else. Good kid, though. Brave kid. And her…

Lyra. Modded. Right before I left her.

"…also a child of one of those top-secret atrocities. Chang killed her family when he found out what they’d been doing to people under orders. So: Another orphan of this shit-show you’ve got going between the worlds. Another good soul wearing your scars.

And then there’s this one…

I show them Terina: First as she was naturally, Mars-adapted. Then Modified.

"Honest-to-God royalty of the Katar. I’m afraid my own assholery drove her to make a deal with a technological Devil. Then there was this whole head-injury thing, so she’s not quite herself. You’ll probably be hearing a lot about her. Right now she’s got those terraformers you used to be so scared of by the actual shiny balls. And she’s squeezing. Making demands. Biggest demand: She wants you out.

"And she’s not alone in that. A lot of folks over there want you out. Off their planet. They don’t want your controls, your lifestyle, your ‘help’, and they damn straight don’t want you burning and killing them to protect yourselves from something that would be no fucking threat to you if you stayed on your own side of the solar system. But because you didn’t, because you didn’t stop ‘helping’ no matter how much unspeakable fucking harm you did, the Time-Science-Gods sent me to pay you a little visit, to shake your blind and totally misplaced faith with a little truth. Gospel of Saint Ange."

Rant almost done.

"But now I’m gonna back off and let you make your own decisions, given a slightly better look at the Big Picture: what’s happened and what could happen depending on what you all do with the Knowledge I’ve puked all over you. So the next steps are all yours. I’m out.

"But here’s my hope, as a really bad man with delusions of redemption: that you’ll figure out a way to live up to your great ideals, love thy neighbor and do unto others. And no nukes. Or mass drivers. Or whatever else you invent to slaughter and destroy with, because you’re still good at that shit.

"Get along. Find a way. You are all God’s children."

Believe me. I know.

Peace out. Namaste.

And I unplug.

So… Fair enough? I ask my esteemed captive witnesses as I let my avatar snap back to my default self (taking significant strain off the bandwidth or whatever one would call the subatomic interface that lets me move freely through reality and fuck around with it). Despite having seen the first morph, Satrapi watches this one in fresh abject terror, like it will be her face melting next, any second now. Maybe she’s thinking now that the show’s over, I’ll just eat her or infect her or whatever she’s so sure Things Like Me do to meat like her. Or maybe she’s thinking that the longer I’m here, the more black-science-magic shit I do in her presence, the more fucked she is, like there’s some kind of five second rule for nano-exposure. (And here I’d thought I’d given her the scare to beat all scares when two uninvited guests literally grew out of the walls and furniture of her safe space.)

She looks so upset that I check myself in Tamra’s vision once more, just in case I’ve failed to reassemble my face properly. Nope: Me is me again, stupid hair and all. Though I’ve still—still—got Ange’s pale blues. Apparently they are indeed a lasting keepsake, even in default-mode, no matter how many resets I run.

In any case, the Secretary General of the United Nations apparently has no immediate words for me, critical or otherwise, and neither do any of her still-linked-in fellow chief diplomats. So I turn to Tamra.

Did I suck?

It was a little long.

It was.

And now? Satrapi finally dares ask, making herself sit up more authoritatively behind her plain utilitarian desk, where she’s been keeping (cowering) out of the video stream.

I wonder how long it’s going to take her to realize that while I’ve carefully kept her out of camera shot, assuming she doesn’t run screaming for Home Sec and/or a Silkwood shower (or just offs herself to be safe), her Government’s intelligence services will pretty quickly analyze my performance and recognize the background as this room, her office at the New York UN, and then there’ll be some uncomfortable questions. And even more uncomfortable exams, to try to find whatever I may have infected her with. At least my mandate will spare her from humane execution. Probably.

I reach out into the connected world, and start fulfilling another part of my bargain.

Your Eyes will all be back online within twenty-four hours, I promise them. Maybe thirty-six. I’ll even make it look like it was your own techs that fixed it. Your world is yours again.

"Is it?" the American Secretary of State doesn’t believe. (Her perfect helmet of silver-blonde hair really never moves, does it?)

The others seem equally doubtful. And I get it. But

I really do have better things to do than micro-manage your global bureaucracy. I have a whole world to get re-acquainted with. And I promised someone that we’d have a lot of sex at first opportunity.

Tamra squirms at the thought, and that gets Satrapi’s eyes wide in fresh moral horror.

"Not her, I insist. I’m not that kind of a pervert." Though I am apparently the kind that will give a go at fucking an anatomically-realistic gynoid that won’t take no for an answer just to give the experience a fair shake, hence Tamra’s perfectly understandable gross-out reaction.

And you’re certain Asmodeus is gone? the British Minister asks. Again. (What she’s really asking for is some kind of proof that I’m not him, or some variation thereof, which she knows I can’t really give her. Or anybody. And I suppose having his eyes looking out from my face is less than reassuring. Not that anything about me is.)

Whatever. The question is essentially pointless. They won’t believe anything I tell them. So

Mostly, I torment them. Then realize I’m also tormenting Tamra in the deal. It’s more than that she truly misses Ange. She still at least partially blames me for his non-existence, despite my entire involvement in the matter being that I was simply present, a handy device in the form of a hero to appear to slay the villain, rather than the villain simply letting go and dissolving his physical substance into elemental nothing while I was still mostly disabled by an anti-relativistic neural splice across the fucking solar system. Leaving me his memories and his eyes and (maybe) a few of his more charming personality algorithms.

(Or maybe the bits of him in me are just my own homage. He did do a few honestly good deeds there at the end. Not enough for redemption, certainly. But perhaps just enough to keep me from being stuck in a toxic state of denied revenge for all functional eternity. I guess I should be grateful for that.)

"Asmodeus is gone, I lay it out for Satrapi and her fellow power-players, and through them, the variously elected or appointed masters of this world (for what little that now means because of me). I’m me. I’m here. And I’m what I am. I’m sure at least two of those things are no comfort. But my deal with you all is my bond, if it is yours: You stop your ‘safety’ killings of those who’ve had contact with us. You punish the crimes against humanity that Asmodeus revealed as per your own justice system’s demands, and do so publicly. And no more WMDs outbound to Mars. If you fail to abide by any of those terms… Well, you got a sample of that at Cape Canaveral."

How do we know you can do what you say you can? the American challenges, despite what every agency she’s got has certainly already assured her of.

That pretty greenish rock on your desk, I target. Gift from your daughter. She found it in a creek, thought it was pretty, thought her mommy would like it. You keep it to humor her, to show her you care and think of her when you’re at work even though you always choose said work over spending time with her.

I make the rock dissolve. Re-form into a bust of the little girl’s face. Go back to its original structure.

As she recoils in shock, I’m sure that rock will be