Aurelius Ascends (part 4)

The digital oscillations continued without any clear sign of letting up; instead, the sounds began resonating deeper inside the triple-hulled spacecraft like an eerie prehistoric subterranean drumbeat. The sound no longer came from the harsh coldness of space. It seemed to emanate from far below the Martian substrate itself, a signal buried so deep beneath the planet's surface that it remained safely hidden from the impenetrably wide dust storms, beneath the fractured plains, and beneath the violent meteorological chaos that had made the planet feasibly uninhabitable for centuries.

Mars stood out to all humanity as a forbidden locus. A distant alien world that would forever remain an impossible destination to view in person. Nothing other than a remote planet, out of bounds for humanity. Viewed through the mind's eye, dozens of remote satellites, rapidly developing digital imaging telescopes, and the nightly dreams of many an astronomer.

Despite a time of worldwide prosperity, in a period long before the world leaders succumbed to the 'green-eyed goblin' of avarice, the advancement of understanding of what makes space 'tick,' and the abundance of questions around 'just how can we get out there,' were a dime a dozen on many political leaders' itineraries for further discussion... earmarked for a later date and time. But that was just it; it was part of a much broader problem, one that systematically amplified among those who had fallen foul of that 'goblin.'

Despite the people who, for so long, had held their enormous wealth in such high esteem, they now discovered that their swollen bank accounts, literally overnight, meant sod all across the world suddenly. Some private ventures held on, struggling to fight, keep their trades, develop their designs, and complete their endgame construction projects for as long as it was profitable to pursue. Yet, for all their efforts and allocated resources, which had been squandered in achieving the 'first of its kind' spacecraft, one powered by a nuclear fusion drive, these affluent materialists rapidly fell into nullity almost overnight.

This oppressive influence arrived without warning, without declaration.

Jonathan Townend

Financial institutions tumbled to their independent deaths; equity suddenly stood for nothing, and humanity did not consciously abandon the future because of it. Hard choices had to be made to turn away from it, one painful compromise at a time.

Planned space development projects slipped quietly down the agenda. Profit was no longer the goal. Mars remained where it had always been, a crimson ember suspended within the darkness, silently watching generations pass beneath it.

The irony bordered on tragedy: humanity possessed far more knowledge than any civilisation in history ever had. Machines could speak across continents. Observatories could peer towards the edge of the observable universe. But the path to launching humans to the stars no longer seemed possible; civilisation remained earthbound. Not any failure of science, but of its growing devotion to abstraction.

Numbers flowed endlessly between governments, corporations, banks, and artificially intelligent markets that remained. Each year they grew larger, drifting further from the realities they once represented. Wealth accumulated in places where nothing tangible existed. Value detached from labour, resources, and necessity, and those number generators remained just that: numbers that no longer held any credible or useful meaning for anybody.

Monies owed to every lending institution across the world over, as if by some unknown portent of black magic had arisen. Vast financial indebtedness, made meaningless in the blink of an eye. What remained was a lingering, soul-stirring question: 'What do we do now that money is meaningless?'

An invisible pressure settled over civilisations, shaping every decision from home construction to downscaled citywide ambitions. Entire economic plans were rewritten, drifting on borrowed promises; futures were pledged on what could be gained to better each and every soul alive on Earth. Generations to come would inherit these burdens that they had played no part in creating.

On Earth, money ceased representing value. It represented belief. And belief, however widespread, remained a fragile foundation.

History would later argue over when the collapse truly began. Some pointed to sovereign defaults. Others blamed generations of monetary expansion. Many insisted the system had been dead for years and that only the illusion of money had survived.

Perhaps the answer was far simpler. That humanity had mistaken wealth for value for too long. The correction arrived quietly, not as war, not as a revolution, and certainly not as catastrophe... But as doubt itself.

Questions emerged simultaneously across the world. In banks. In parliaments. In trading floors and family kitchens. "What was money, beyond collective agreements?"

What gave it substance, and as a matter of fact, what made it real? Yet no answer ever came. And when enough people recognised that absence, the illusion unraveled. Money dissolved into what it had always been: a story. A useful story, and quite possibly a powerful story. But a story nonetheless. For the first time in centuries, humanity was confronting a strange, uncomfortable truth.

Wealth... The thing humanity had spent generations pursuing did not physically exist.

Jonathan Townend

Meanwhile, the stars waited.

Mars waited.

Both patient. Unmoved, and eternal.

Over time, Earth had busied itself planning to rebuild a new society. More focused on acquiring better human knowledge, but neglected local history, and what happened as the economy dramatically crashed... the first human crew that had finally escaped the home planet, destined to discover what was out there.

Beyond the noise of the final collapsing markets and fading certainties, Mars continued its silent orbit around the Sun. Waiting for the moment when a human civilisation would be willing to accept new values for the future... and step away from the shackles of their home planet.

The elders who remained, who could remember that early inaugural launch of Aurelius Ascends, the crew's memories, and their final words as communications eventually fell silent...

Far from Earth, at this uncertain point in time, Aurelius was about to enter the planet's upper atmosphere, under the power of something unknown that had already remotely initiated a controlled planetary entry corridor through its turbulent atmosphere, with the crew still locked out of the control panels. Unable to stop its actions. But all of a sudden, without any prior indication, the craft's maneuvering thrusters began firing in rapid sequences, positioning Aurelius before it initiated going into a steep dive corridor.

Yet something abruptly changed; almost as soon as the maneuvering thrusters reoriented its angle for the dive, its drives went offline. Aurelius instantly paused right where it was, suspended like a puppet on a string. Whatever was down there had sensed imminent danger to human life, as if it, or whatever was guiding them down, somehow knew that not all of the crew complement were safely and securely inside.

Mara didn't waste any more time and hit the comms button instinctively, initiating the audio connection to her two crew members, who were suited up and cautiously clambering along the external hull.

"Keon, Jacqui, listen fast: for some unexplainable reason, something's pulling at us from the planet's surface; it seems as if we are about to deorbit burn... get your butts back through your nearest airlock while you still can... I don't mean to panic you, but do it fast," came the instinctive, troubled order from Mara.

"We guessed as much, Cap'n, as we noticed the star patterns alter, quite dizzying, so we were already heading back inside. When did the control thrusters come back under our control, and... erm... it's not my position to pry, but where have you been all this time?" Quizzed Jacqui. Keon's voice interrupted the open comms channel suddenly, "Yeah... err... why didn't anyone warn us earlier?

"Just get back inside Aurelius... now... explanations can wait, Keon."

Its descent seemed so precise it almost felt as if the crew had choreographed every tense second. Aurelius began shaking violently, bucking, almost screaming, as the outer bulkheads were being tested beyond their limits. But if they weren’t in control... then who was guiding Aurelius in?

Gasping from exhaustion, a voice crackled over the internal comms: "We're both safely back in the secondary airlock, repressurising now," came Jaqui's tired voice. "We'll be on the main deck in twenty minutes."

"Got that, glad to confirm you and Keon are back onboard," acknowledged Mara.

The entire crew had rehearsed the reentry and surface landing over and over again, until they even boasted amongst themselves that they could land so softly with their eyes closed; they had nonetheless rapidly braced themselves as they strapped into their flight seats for the expected severe turbulence from the Martian atmosphere, which they believed was about to come, given the acute descent angle.

Nothing happened until Jacqui and Keon, looking tired after their spacewalk across the outer hull, wearily grinning at Mara and the rest of the crew, who were already buckled into their highly padded anti-grav seats. "Welcome back. Take your stations; we'll talk later. For now, take your seats and buckle up tight," came Mara's acknowledgment.

It was as if whatever was down on the planet had delicately and pragmatically observed the craft and crew's whereabouts before engine panel indications confirmed all navigational activity was fully back online. Aurelius continued to descend with the same unswerving, lightning-sharp reentry; everyone was securely strapped into their console seats, expecting massive turbulence, but none came. The atmospheric storms instantly withered, instead forming around the ship like curtains drawn aside for a long‑delayed performance.

Something had carefully guided them safe passage down through the atmosphere, that nobody back on Earth had even known was there.

Jonathan Townend

The landing was impossibly gentle. Aurelius touched down on a barren plateau. Its landing struts steadied, gripping the substrate, before it slowly destabilised and sank lower, for a few terrifying moments, deep into the red mix of surface soils and unidentifiable luminous, rock-like formations, never before noted in low-orbit scans from Earth’s previous unmanned probes. For what seemed like hours, the crew remained right where they were, motionless, unsure what to say or do next.

Out of the blue, all power to the control decks instantly came back online. The crew suddenly became aware that their breath was tight, their hearts quickly syncing again with the rhythm that had brought them here: the life support systems were beeping like there was no tomorrow, almost so fast it might as well have been a child’s toy with an irritatingly stuck-down playback key.

“Surface suits!” Mara rapidly ordered. “Oxygen helmets. Full emergency protocol… now!” They moved speedily, pulling equipment from their individual lockers, checking seals, preparing for the lethal atmosphere outside. The pulse had gone quiet, but the silence felt far more than intentional to each of them.

Hurrying directly toward airlock two at the end of the suit room, a monotone but human‑sounding voice came through the comms port in their headsets, catching them all off guard, stopping them dead in their tracks; because other than themselves, they were the only humans known to be this far out into the deep space: a region where the universe stopped pretending to care if human beings survived. Out here, the dangers weren’t dramatic or loud; they were silent, patient, and unforgivingly absolute. A single breach meant lungs collapsed, blood boiled, and the vacuum swallowed a person whole before they could even scream. Background radiation drifted like an invisible predator.

The cold outside the hull hovered near absolute zero, as they finally stood on the planet — any planet (for that matter) for the first time in months, outside the hull that had been their main guardian and protector for just this moment. But Mars, for all their computer telemetry, never prepared them for this moment, one that now faced them: the planet’s inhospitable surface, ready to freeze flesh solid in less time than it took to take a single breath.

Even their breath felt fragile, as though the air inside their environmental suits (as if protecting them, against the last thin barrier between life and the endless pitch-black of Mars’s night) that seemed to be biding its time to erase them from the planet.