The First Mann on Mars - Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven of the hilarious new science fiction novel, The First Mann on Mars by best selling, multi-award-winning author Mark Watson...

November 18, 2024

The First Mann on Mars

©Copyright 2024 by Mark Watson

THE STORY SO FAR…

Moronic Billionaut Derek Mann, along with his snarky, silver AI sidekick Barry Wilkinson, have been rescued from an ugly, dangerous spaceship and have now landed on Mars. Back on Earth, things have gone predictably wrong—most of Northern Europe has been obliterated after Derek’s genius friend Noel decided to crank the Large Hadron Collider up to eleven. The rest of the planet is now enjoying the charming chaos of a post-apocalyptic era. Meanwhile, Derek and Barry have discovered that Mars is far from a barren dustbowl…

Chapter Seven: Customs

The queue shuffled forward, everyone else in line was being waved through by the customs officer with all the enthusiasm of someone clocking out in fifteen minutes.

Then it was Derek Mann and Barry Wilkinson’s turn.

The customs officer, a stern woman with a complexion that could’ve been carved from Martian basalt, glanced at them with suspicion. She asked in a Glaswegian accent so thick it could butter toast, “Wher ah youse two frae?”

"Earth," Derek and Barry said in unison, like a pair of students who’d accidentally learned the right answer for once. Barry, however, couldn’t help himself. Turning to Doreen, he whispered, "Why does she have a Glaswegian accent? Did Scotland colonize Mars when no one was looking?"

Doreen sighed and muttered with the patience of someone explaining to a toddler why they couldn’t eat crayons. "It’s actually the other way around. Glaswegians have a Zurpsplurgian accent. We’ve never worked out how you picked it up, but here we are."

Before Barry could delve deeper into this revelation, the customs officer stamped her foot and barked, "Sorry, youse two. Ye need tae go through there first." She jabbed a finger at a nondescript door to the side, the kind of door that suggested you wouldn’t come back out until every personal secret, embarrassing hobby, and questionable purchase from late-night shopping channels had been thoroughly examined.

Doreen opened the door for them and followed them in, the Zurpsplurgian Glaswegian shouted a cheerful "Good luck!" that didn’t sound entirely convincing.

Inside, they found a desk designed specifically for emptying suitcases of clothes, drugs and dignity. Behind it stood a man who was somehow even redder than the typical Martian, as though he'd been baked in an oven set to "bureaucracy." His smile was surprisingly friendly, which was immediately suspicious.

"Welcome," he said in a chipper tone that made them feel like they’d accidentally wandered into a seminar on door-to-door sales techniques. "Don’t worry, we’re aware of your… situation down on Earth. We’re going to let you in and even help you fix that mess with your Large Hadron Collider."

"Really? That’s fantastic!" Derek exclaimed, his arms flying up in celebration. He turned to Barry, who reluctantly participated in a stiff high-five.

"Is that even possible?" Barry asked, his silver head tilting in skepticism.

"Oh, absolutely," the customs officer replied, waving off the question as though it were the easiest thing in the universe. "We’ll sort you out with a Large Hadron Un-Collider. Got a bunch of them lying around, if I’m honest. But…"

Derek froze mid-victory fist pump. "But?"

The officer leaned forward conspiratorially. "We’ll need a favor in return. Bit of quid pro quo, Martian style."

Barry’s silver face didn’t move, but you could practically hear it frowning. "What kind of favor?"

"Just a little housekeeping job in Fake Mars," the officer said nonchalantly, as though this were a phrase that made any sense at all.

"Fake Mars?" Barry repeated, his processors struggling to unscramble the concept.

"Yes," the officer continued brightly. "It’s a specially maintained section of Mars that we keep dusty, red, and utterly desolate for when you Earthlings send your little probes and rovers and whatnot. We’ve been running it for years. Doreen will take you there, and we’ll need you to tidy up a bit. You know—appear on camera, wave, pick up some rocks, act like Mars is the barren wasteland you all expect it to be. The err survivors back on Earth will love it. Keeps the narrative going."

Derek blinked. "So, let me get this straight, all the photos and footage we’ve seen have been staged?"

The officer smiled with the kind of smirk that made you feel you were the last person in the room to get the joke. "Of course not. Those photos are entirely genuine… of Fake Mars. It’s all very authentic."

Derek looked at Barry, who looked back at Doreen, who looked entirely too cheerful about all of this.

"Right," Barry said finally. "Let’s get this over with." "Oh, just one or two more little things," said the customs officer with the kind of casualness usually reserved for adding fries to a burger order.

Derek raised an eyebrow. “Go on…”

“Are you in touch with your spaceship’s computer through an implant?” the officer asked, tapping his own temple to illustrate.

“Ah, good point,” said Derek, scratching his chin as if he’d just remembered where he left his car keys. “We’re supposed to be, but it hasn’t been working since we arrived.”

“Yes, about that,” the customs officer said, leaning forward with a conspiratorial air. “We’ve been blocking the signal. Standard procedure, you see. We can’t have your ship’s AI spying on us. Bit of a nuisance, really.”

Barry’s silver head tilted ever so slightly. “Spying on you? The only thing our computer spies on is Derek’s pudding consumption.”

The officer ignored him. “Anyway, as you’ve likely gathered, you’ve been kept in a state of... shall we say... enforced ignorance about how the galaxy really works. To fix that, we’d like you to hand over the keys to your ship. We’ll go in, perform some upgrades, and get everything running at the same technological standard we enjoy here. Don’t worry, we won’t break anything. Quite the opposite, in fact—we’ll make everything better.”

Derek blinked, then reached into his pocket with the enthusiasm of someone handing over the keys to a rental car he’d already scratched. “Right-o,” he said brightly, tossing the keys into the officer’s outstretched hand.

Barry, however, was less convinced. “Just to clarify, by ‘improve,’ you don’t mean turn it into something unrecognizable and impossible to operate, do you?”

The customs officer’s grin widened in a way that would’ve unsettled a lesser man. "Of course not! It'll still be your ship. Just... shinier. And smarter. And we’ll even add a few pudding recipes to the replicator."

“DO IT!”

Meanwhile, on Venus, in the gaudily adorned presidential palace of President Buff—universally referred to as The Great Buffoon—a meeting of galactic significance was underway. The Great Buffoon, a huge, green Venusian slug clad in a robe that could only be described as a collision of gold lamé and ego, squinted at a hazy black-and-white image projected on the wall.

“These two clowns,” he began, pointing an unnecessarily fat, green, and jewel-encrusted finger at the image of Derek and Barry. “Who are they?”

“They’re Earthlings, Your Sublime Buffoonery,” said his Security Advisor, a creature who looked like a mollusc crossed with a tax accountant. “The shorter one is an Artificial Intelligence. The taller one is a Natural Moron.”

The Great Buffoon stroked one of his voluminous chins. “Are they dangerous?”

“Well,” the Security Advisor mused, his slimy features oozing contemplation, “who’s to say, Majesty? The moron is unlikely to mastermind anything. But our spies report that the Martians are recruiting them for... something.”

“Something?” The Great Buffoon’s eyes narrowed—or at least one of them did. The other seemed to have become distracted by a speck on the ceiling. “I don’t like something. ‘Something’ usually turns out to be bad for me.”

“Precisely, Your Omnipotent Buffoonishness, which is why I recommend preemptive extermination.”

“Yes,” the Great Buffoon agreed, his voice swelling with the kind of self-importance only achievable by someone truly devoid of self-awareness. “Exterminate them! Exterminate them BIGLY! Exterminate them in a way so magnificent, so final, that even the concept of extermination will feel inadequate afterward!”

“As you wish,” the mollusc said slimily, and slithered away.

As the mollusc-slash-advisor slithered away, leaving behind a faint trail of bureaucratic slime that would soon become a health and safety hazard, The Great Buffoon swiveled his oversized throne. The throne, an architectural crime against good taste, featured gold-plated cherubs who seemed to be weeping not only over their life choices but also at having to support his ample posterior.

The panoramic windows of the Presidential Palace overlooked the lush, verdant jungles of Venus, a scene so picturesque it could have been painted on the side of a luxury caravan. Outside, flocks of fluorescent flamingos flapped their triple wings with all the grace of malfunctioning drones. Occasionally, one would drop something meteorite-like onto the hover-cars parked below, much to the chagrin of the valets.

The Great Buffoon squinted at the panoramic view, his multiple chins quivering like a stack of sentient jelly molds, and muttered to himself in a tone that suggested he’d been agreeing with his own opinions for quite some time.

“Everyone says Venus is the most beautiful planet in the galaxy. Everyone. And they’re right. But you know why?” He waved a massive green arm, his comically tiny hand at the end of it performing a delicate flutter as if attempting to waft away an unpleasant smell.

He paused, his tiny hand making a triumphant little fist, as though clenching an imaginary award for self-congratulation. “And now we’ve got Derek and Barry. From Earth. I mean, Earth! What a shithole! Honestly, the galaxy should thank me. Regularly. With parades…”

“…nobody does Venus better than me!”