into some part of Mecklarin's algorithms, themselves a search for some core, elegant truth underpinning all of human programming.
And they were getting closer. Every day their refinements improved Mecklarin's algorithms, making their predictions more and more reliable. The progress they made in unlocking the brain outstripped any work done in the past fifty years.
Months passed, then years, and with the passing of time her zone of exploration opened up. She gained access to floor 1 where they had an actual circus, to floor 3 where they had an Arctic zone complete with ice and penguins. She was promoted to head psychologist for all three of those floors, overseeing twelve hundred people. Soon she was meeting with Mecklarin on a weekly basis, then daily, until they started seeing each other at night too, and he whispered his dreams for the project in her ear, pressed close together in the narrow confines of her single bed.
"Let's go to your room," she'd say, but he only smiled.
"You don't have access to that area yet."
Everything was perfect. The research was plowing ahead, the innovations and discoveries they'd set out to find were pouring in every day, not only in the realm of psychology but also in botany, engineering, even theoretical physics. The experiment was working, Lars Mecklarin was her lover, and they were on their way to Mars.
Then the revolution began.
* * *
Four years in, it started with rumors.
No one knew where they began, but they were insidious and creeping, always lurking behind Salle's eyelids in the dark after the colorful rooms and busy lives and fully-packed event schedule were eclipsed by the dark, and she lay alone in the too-long night, waiting for a dawn that might never come.
All the rumors were different, but they all contained the same central thread: the people of MARS3000 were alone. They'd been buried alive under the mountains of Maine like three thousand corpses, and no one was ever coming for them. There'd been a nuclear apocalypse and the air up above was radioactive, so they'd never be returning. They were actually in the hold of a colony ship, smuggled aboard while they slept and packed off to Mars without their knowledge. Zombies had struck and killed every soul above ground, leaving nothing behind but empty buildings.
The rumors started as a kind of joke, gallows humor whispered in bars as pick-up lines, repeated with increasing urgency as bodies pressed against each other hungrily in the dark. Was three thousand enough? Could any number ever be enough? They grew and spread like a cancer, an infection that at first fascinated Mecklarin, as it played into none of his predictions, but soon came to plague him as productivity plummeted.
Everything changed one long, slow morning over Irish coffee.
"I have no idea," he said to Salle, sitting in her room looking out of the TV window onto a view of blue sky and clouds. He looked hung-over, with dark bags under his eyes and a weary gray cast to his usually ruddy, glowing skin. Many people were behaving erratically now, breaking from long-held patterns that led them to sleep in too long, party a little too hard and argue a little too much, losing the healthy balance that had held them all in check for so long. "I'm not sure I can control it, and if I can't control it…" He let his voice ebb out.
Salle had seen the infection in herself as well. It was everywhere, haunting everyone. The thought that nobody was left outside was a crushing notion, even if it was only a joke. But was it a joke? The more times she heard the story, the deeper that crack of doubt grew in her mind, and the only way to test it was to hear word from outside, or to go outside, or to have someone from the outside come in.
But none of those things were possible. Every one of the three thousand in the Habitat had signed a contract committing themselves to ten years. To exit now would not only mark every one of them as failures, but also deal a crushing blow to the
And they were getting closer. Every day their refinements improved Mecklarin's algorithms, making their predictions more and more reliable. The progress they made in unlocking the brain outstripped any work done in the past fifty years.
Months passed, then years, and with the passing of time her zone of exploration opened up. She gained access to floor 1 where they had an actual circus, to floor 3 where they had an Arctic zone complete with ice and penguins. She was promoted to head psychologist for all three of those floors, overseeing twelve hundred people. Soon she was meeting with Mecklarin on a weekly basis, then daily, until they started seeing each other at night too, and he whispered his dreams for the project in her ear, pressed close together in the narrow confines of her single bed.
"Let's go to your room," she'd say, but he only smiled.
"You don't have access to that area yet."
Everything was perfect. The research was plowing ahead, the innovations and discoveries they'd set out to find were pouring in every day, not only in the realm of psychology but also in botany, engineering, even theoretical physics. The experiment was working, Lars Mecklarin was her lover, and they were on their way to Mars.
Then the revolution began.
* * *
Four years in, it started with rumors.
No one knew where they began, but they were insidious and creeping, always lurking behind Salle's eyelids in the dark after the colorful rooms and busy lives and fully-packed event schedule were eclipsed by the dark, and she lay alone in the too-long night, waiting for a dawn that might never come.
All the rumors were different, but they all contained the same central thread: the people of MARS3000 were alone. They'd been buried alive under the mountains of Maine like three thousand corpses, and no one was ever coming for them. There'd been a nuclear apocalypse and the air up above was radioactive, so they'd never be returning. They were actually in the hold of a colony ship, smuggled aboard while they slept and packed off to Mars without their knowledge. Zombies had struck and killed every soul above ground, leaving nothing behind but empty buildings.
The rumors started as a kind of joke, gallows humor whispered in bars as pick-up lines, repeated with increasing urgency as bodies pressed against each other hungrily in the dark. Was three thousand enough? Could any number ever be enough? They grew and spread like a cancer, an infection that at first fascinated Mecklarin, as it played into none of his predictions, but soon came to plague him as productivity plummeted.
Everything changed one long, slow morning over Irish coffee.
"I have no idea," he said to Salle, sitting in her room looking out of the TV window onto a view of blue sky and clouds. He looked hung-over, with dark bags under his eyes and a weary gray cast to his usually ruddy, glowing skin. Many people were behaving erratically now, breaking from long-held patterns that led them to sleep in too long, party a little too hard and argue a little too much, losing the healthy balance that had held them all in check for so long. "I'm not sure I can control it, and if I can't control it…" He let his voice ebb out.
Salle had seen the infection in herself as well. It was everywhere, haunting everyone. The thought that nobody was left outside was a crushing notion, even if it was only a joke. But was it a joke? The more times she heard the story, the deeper that crack of doubt grew in her mind, and the only way to test it was to hear word from outside, or to go outside, or to have someone from the outside come in.
But none of those things were possible. Every one of the three thousand in the Habitat had signed a contract committing themselves to ten years. To exit now would not only mark every one of them as failures, but also deal a crushing blow to the
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