Olympus Pons

"In our grandeur, in our haste, we had forgotten what we truly were. We were children, confused youth aspiring to forge a mark of greatness in an uncaring and blind expanse. So enthralled were we with the light that had borne us that we spent centuries attempting to emulate it. Despite the futility of our task, we had managed to create something beautiful, a persistent candle flame in the endless darkness of the heavens. The dream of that light is long dead, and the tendrils of decay have spread far across our once resplendent civilization. Dead in the hearts of most, it lives on in ours, as alive as the day it was first lit. I know not if the path to destiny can be restored, but only that it is our duty to try, regardless of consequence. Are we conquering restorers of civilization, or deranged fools stoking a hopeless ember? The answer to that lies in action, and action alone. For better or worse, the end awaits us. Time to drop."

Commander Sacro speaking to the 3th Army before the Battle of Luna, 05-Feb-2778

Gallus sat lazily in his multi directional lounge chair, spinning in a gentle circle as the images on the walls of the room followed the direction of his motion. Most people found the constant spinning to be a sickening experience, but Gallus was used to it. Something about the constant physical motion set his usually turbulent mind at ease. He sighed as he flipped through the channels with his mind, bored as ever.

He knew he lived in an era that contained billions, if not trillions of hours of novel media; more than anyone could ever watch, even with extended lifespans. Despite this, he found almost all of the media available to him to be boring or contrived. He could turn the news back on, but that would only exasperate his depressive feelings. The big talk right now was about the man that had managed to climb Olympus Pons, a feat that had taken him months.

The mountain, being the size of a country, had plenty of towns and cities at its lower elevations, but at the top the air was far too thin for humans to survive. No one had climbed the mountain in decades, maybe centuries, as it had already been surmounted in the past and the endeavor was generally seen as needless. His co-workers had lamented how that supplemental oxygen could have helped supply a poor habitation or hospital for months, and Gallus had pretended to wholeheartedly agree with them.

But deep down, he found he was jealous and intrigued by the man. He had found something almost insurmountable by human efforts, and had put his heart and soul into conquering it. The mountaintop was so flat that there wasn't even a view at its summit, just a GPS location reading of your elevation. There was no sensible reason for doing it, but he had put forth a gargantuan effort to do it nonetheless. Gallus shook the thought out of his head. He had a comfortable life, and there was no reason for him to poison his mind by worshipping a fool.

As the thought vanished, a little alert flashed in the corner of his digital lens, reminding him that he had to leave for work. He sighed, annoyed that such computerized jobs still had to be performed outside of the comfort of his home. He stretched a thin jacket over his shoulders, partially to protect against heat and partially to protect against radiation. Mars was "Terraformed", and the cancer from radiation exposure rarely killed anyone these days, but he still preferred to put on the extra layer. 

He walked out into the smoothly paved suburban street, admiring its neatness and consistency. Even as the Solar Empire decayed, its roads were pristine as ever. The sky was almost purplish, redder than blue but not really red. He had heard that earlier in Martian history, before the terraforming, that the sky had been a hazy orange. That was hard to picture these days, but one never knew what the future held. 

He walked up to the tablet in front of his home and pushed a few buttons to request a shuttle. He was in a particularly perceptive mood that morning, and admired the houses in his vicinity. To call it a neighborhood was misleading; rather, it was a row of houses, stretching out into the Martian horizon. The houses were flanked on both sides by long roads. The roads were a greyish ceramic, with four metal shuttle lines on each. 

The houses themselves were one or two stories tall, but were large and almost cube like in nature. They had the sloped roofs and columns borne by many houses on more habitable worlds, but their squareness gave away their true nature. The insides of these houses were actually semi-circular domes, made to control the supply of oxygen and heat provided to its residents. The insides were sculpted to give one the impression that they lived within a normal house, but Gallus knew better; they all knew better.

Outside, the oxygen was thinner, if Mars had the atmospheric density of Earth, it would be about fifteen or sixteen percent oxygen. In better times, it had been about twenty, but each few decades saw a decline in the concentration, and many feared that the planet would eventually be unlivable. This decline was also chalked up to environmental factors or cyclic phenomena that would eventually cause the levels to bounce back, but that was dubious as well. 

Gallus considered himself quite lucky to be able to live in a domed habitation. Many had to live in houses with no or inadequate oxygen conditioning, and had to carefully manage their own exertion to avoid becoming breathless. Indeed, at higher elevations, the effects were even more pronounced, and in towns on the planet's higher southern elevations, supplemental oxygen was a necessity and not a luxury.