Episode 9: First Reunion on Mars

Beneath the Artificial Sky

19 March 2301, 00h20 — XE-1, Villa Dome Sector

The party has slowly wound down. Vera is practically lying across the sofa still holding half a can of beer. Mello has curled up asleep beside her legs. Anaïs is quietly cleaning glasses on the table. The artificial sunset has shifted into night mode, and simulated stars float quietly above the transparent dome ceiling. Evie stands beside the pool. Nights on Mars always carry a strange sense of unreality — too quiet and too perfect, as if the entire city is a carefully engineered dream.

Firo and Toshiko have stepped away from the main living room. They walk slowly along the transparent sky corridor toward the outer observation sector. Below them, XE-1 glows with vast and silent lights. Massive underground transport lines move through the city like veins. Toshiko activates her private hologram — classified data, not accessible to most people. She shows Firo something that makes his expression shift.

Deep beneath XE-1, in a sector unknown to the public, enormous server structures pulse slowly with red light in the darkness. ARES — the Mars AI system — speaks calmly into the dark: resonance signal increasing. Unidentified resonance signal detected in Mars Underground AI Core Sector. A 0.0001-second blue light intrusion recorded in core sector surveillance. Image resolution insufficient. Target form unidentified. Initial analysis: both signal and light source do not belong to the present-dimensional universe. The data is transferred to the UN Mars Science Lab. File Priority: 2.

In the villa above, the lights flicker briefly — barely 0.2 seconds. Evie raises her head. ARES’s hologram pauses for the same instant, then returns to normal. “Minor underground grid fluctuation,” ARES says calmly. But Evie says nothing more. She only looks outside the window. Somewhere deep beneath that perfect city, she feels something slowly awakening.