The streets of Gale City were silent as Bud followed Laz towards the Rusty Airlock, about as far into the Edge as you could go, the gleaming arch of the biosphere looming overhead. Bud's paws clicked softly against the cracked pavement, his ears twitching at every shadow. F.O.G. had shut down the Carnival early after reports of a cyborg on the loose had leaked into the news. Garbage from the day’s festivities lined the gutters, vendor stands sitting like abandoned fuel cells in the evening gloom. The dark shape of the Cathedral’s central spire loomed over the scene, a dark sentinel in the night sky. Laz strolled along, oblivious to how foolish this excursion was, murmuring absently to himself about the properties of fermented Martian yeast while constantly readjusting the long chrome tube he carried over one shoulder.
"You know," Bud growled, "we could have discussed Patricia's offer back at the apartment."
Laz waved a hand in Bud’s general direction, not looking at him. "Science requires lubrication, my furry friend."
Bud was about ready to tell Laz what he could use lubrication for, but the retort died in his throat as a familiar whirring sound reached his ears. He froze, hackles rising. "Lazarus, stop!"
For once, Laz didn't argue. He ducked down the nearest alley and pressed himself against a wall, eyes scanning the street from around the edge of a garbage dumpster. A poster had been glued to the bin’s side. Faded with age, it showed the Supreme Chancellor, a stern, mustached man. Above him, in bold lettering, it read, “Sacrifice for Progress.” Below, in smaller type, “Future of Government.”
A moment later, a patrol of FOG police came into view out of the Martian darkness, their mechanical companions padding silently beside them. Bud growled, backing further into the alley.
The patrol moved slowly, methodically. Their robotic dogs’ sensors swept back and forth across the street. At a quick glance, they appeared like normal canines. But their coloring was too uniform, their gait too perfect. There was no flesh beneath that fur, no bone powering those legs. It was the humans, though, who really caught Bud’s attention.
“Hadron projectors,” he muttered, eyeing the officers’ weapons. “Since when did they start using those on patrols?”
Laz raised an eyebrow, a flicker of his old self showing through. “I didn't know we were dangerous enough to warrant the big guns.” There was an edge to his voice that Bud hadn't heard in years.
A civilian, coming from the opposite direction as the officers, walked past the alley where Laz and Bud were concealed. He stopped as he approached the patrol and squatted down, smiling and reaching out toward one of their dogs. The lead officer's voice cracked like a whip.
"That’s a cysniffer, not a pet!"
The man recoiled as if struck, fear etched across his face. He mumbled an apology and hurried away. The patrol carried on. Another growl was building in Bud’s throat, though it turned to a whine of dismay as he glanced at his owner. Laz was staring at the sky, seemingly oblivious to the danger mere meters away.
“We need to move,” Bud hissed.
But Laz didn’t budge. His gaze was fixed on something far above the biodome. Following his line of sight, Bud saw it too—the impossibly thin line of the space elevator, stretching up towards Phobos. And beyond that, barely visible against the inky blackness of space, the shattered remains of a long-dead planet.
The whir of the cysniffers grew louder, jolting Bud back to reality. If they didn’t act soon, they’d be discovered.
“Sorry about this, cousins,” Bud muttered. He extended the data cable hidden in his collar, searching for a nearby access point. Finding one, he connected to a street-level terminal.
Laz blinked, finally tearing his gaze from the sky. “What are you—”
“Shh,” Bud cut him off, concentrating. His neural processors worked furiously, sifting through the city’s maintenance protocols. There were firewalls and encryptions, but Bud bypassed them with barely a thought. There—a subroutine for the sewer system’s gas vents. With a few quick adjustments, Bud triggered a series of methane releases two blocks over.
The effect was immediate. The cysniffers’ heads swiveled in unison, their olfactory sensors overwhelmed by the sudden influx of data. The patrol leader barked an order, and the group moved off in the direction of the false alert.
Bud disconnected, the cable retracting into his collar. “Let’s go,” he said, nudging Lazarus with his nose. “While they’re distracted.”
They emerged from the alley, quickening their pace. As they drew closer to the Airlock, an acrid stench assaulted Bud’s sensitive nose. He sneezed, shaking his head in disgust.
“I’d nearly forgotten how bad it can smell here,” he grumbled. “They had it all perfumed for the Carnival.”
Laz chuckled. “The price we pay for cheap drinks, my friend. Did you know that the human nose can detect over a trillion distinct scents?”
Bud rolled his eyes. “Fascinating. And yet you can’t smell the open sewer right beneath us?”
“Affordability, Bud. Affordability!” Laz= pushed open the bar’s door. “Everyone’s too scared of the androids in the sewers to come here.”
The bar was uniformly made of tarnished stainless steel—seats, tables, floor, all reflecting a sullied yellow in the dim halogen glow. Every other fixture in the space was dark, many obviously broken. There was a scattering of the establishment's regular patrons seated throughout, men and women in stained, rough fabric uniforms from the nearby factories. The earlier rowdy atmosphere from the Carnival goers was gone, the player piano dark and silent, pushed to a far corner.
No one spared Laz and Bud so much as a glance as they entered. A man behind the bar wore a lens over one eye, brass rimmed and on a chain that attached to his jacket, a garment straight out of a Victorian stage play. His lips were puckered into a frown, likely displeased over the loss of business that the Carnival’s early closure had cost him.
A wave of unease washed over Bud as Laz paused at the threshold and looked around, smiling as if he’d been greeted by a dozen friendly acknowledgements. Something about this place always set his teeth on edge. Flashes of memory teased at the edges of his mind—raised voices, the glint of metal, a sense of impending doom.
“Laz,” he said hesitantly, “are you sure we should be here? We were here earlier, just before the Cathedral. What if the F.O.G….”
But Laz was already making his way to the bar, either oblivious or uncaring as to the suspicious glances from all around the bar. “No need for alarm,” he called over his shoulder. “We've been coming here for years. Best appletinis in Gale Crater!”
Bud sighed, padding after his oblivious owner. As always, it fell to him to keep them both out of trouble. He took up a position at Laz’s feet, scanning the room for potential threats. Before perching upon one of the grimy barstools, Laz slung the metallic cylinder he’d been carrying off his shoulder and set it down. He unscrewed the top and the thick foam dog mattress inflated in moments. Bud didn’t lie down. If Laz noticed, it didn’t show.
The bartender glowered at Lenz through his eyeglass, the learning orb paired with a scarred over socket beside it. The man had more scars than teeth, though he nodded with, if not welcome, at least neutral toleration toward Laz.
“Back for more?”
“I’m like taxes,” Laz said. “Never going to get rid of me.”
More like a pain in the ass, Bud thought as he continued to survey the room. The bartender merely grunted, then asked, “The usual?”
Laz replied with a grin, rubbing his hands together.
As the bartender began mixing the drink, Bud couldn’t shake the feeling that they were making a mistake. But with the FOG patrols outside and Laz already settling in for a night of endless quaffing, their options were limited. He just hoped that whatever memories this place stirred up weren’t as bad as his instincts suggested.
The bartender slid a luminescent green concoction across the bar, then came out from behind it and set a dish of red-tinged liquid beside Bud. Laz took a sip of his drink, grimaced, then shrugged and tossed the remainder of it back in one exaggerated gulp. He signaled the bartender for another as he resumed his spot behind the bar. Bud’s tail twitched with impatience.
“So,” Bud said, keeping his voice low, “about Patricia's offer…”
Laz kept his eyes on the bartender as he mixed a new drink. “Seems like more trouble than it's worth.”
“Trouble?” Bud’s ears flattened against his skull. “What about justice? What about everything that was taken from us?”
Laz shrugged. The bartender gave his rusty mixer a half-hearted shake, then dumped the contents into the same glass Laz had just emptied. Laz took a sip, pursed his lips, but then gave the bartender a toothy smile.
“You have any more of those cocktail umbrellas from earlier?”
“Fresh out,” the bartender replied without inflection.
“A shame,” Laz said, before finally glancing back to Bud. “When did you become an advocate for android rights, anyway?”
Bud growled, the sound needing no translation. “You risked being lobotomized by the FOG just this afternoon by intervening on behalf of that android at the carnival,” Bud pressed. “Now all you do is shrug when you have the chance to really help them?”
Laz set down his glass, frowning slightly. “That was different. It just seemed like the right thing to do.”
“Well, you’ll be able to do a whole lot more of the right thing if you take up Patricia on her offer.”
Laz stared into his glass, swirling its contents and splashing some onto the counter. “It will interfere with my experiment.”
Before Bud realized it, he was up on his hind legs, front paws on the bar, a torrent of angry barks directed at his owner.
“Yer gonna have to leave if that creature don’t keep quiet,” the bartender said, loud enough so others in the bar could hear. Then he leaned toward Laz and said, much more quietly, “You gotta be careful. Lots of scared folks around here after today.”
Laz, though, didn’t seem to be listening. The possibility of vacating the bar had drawn more emotion from him than anything Bud had said or done since they’d entered. He glared and waved for Bud to get down before gesturing apologetically at the bartender. Bud resumed his seated position beside Laz’s stool, but only because he knew Laz would clam up completely if they were kicked out.
"All you ever do is stare at test tubes and write nonsense in a notebook that costs practically more than our monthly rent!"
A few nearby patrons were still staring and Laz cast them a placating smile, as if Bud were just an overexcited pet. That only fueled Bud’s anger.
“Science can’t be rushed,” Lazarus said mildly. “And it’s a really nice notebook.”
“They were our family!” He knew the edge to his growls would be obvious to the bartender and nearby tables, but he didn’t care. “Forget the androids. Don't you care at all what they did to your wife and everyone like you?”
The words hung in the air between them. Laz stared into his drink, silent for what felt like an eternity. When he finally spoke, his voice was uncharacteristically soft.
"All right, we'll do it. You know I'd do anything for you, Bud."
Bud’s ire was abruptly replaced by a twinge of guilt. “It’s not for me. It’s for your wife.” And Moose, he added to himself.
Laz shrugged again, downing the rest of his drink. “I suppose it might be interesting. That Patricia did have nice hair.”
“Don’t go getting tangled up with that tin can. Anyway, it was only a wig.” Despite his annoyance, Bud finally lay down on the dog bed. Laz signaled the bartender for another round, then began doodling on a napkin with a pen he produced from one of his jacket pockets.
Bud huffed, letting his head rest on the soft foam surface. He knew it wasn't fair to blame Laz for their misfortune. It had been a choice forced on them by the atrocities of the FOG. Still, sometimes Laz made it so hard to like him.
Bud tried to put his owner out of his mind and focus instead on the unfamiliar feeling that had ignited in his chest. Was it really possible that the family he’d thought lost in the Purge had somehow survived? He tried to think back to that awful day, but as always found nothing but a jumble of chaotic colors and screams in his memory banks. Laz sprawled on a dirty floor, vid screens blaring, a silent, open square full of…
Bud shook himself, the end of his data cable jangling like that of an ordinary dog’s collar tag. Laz sipped his fresh drink, humming tunelessly. How much of his old owner was still in there, buried beneath layers of trauma and neural rewiring?
Bud growled to himself. False hope could be dangerous. He’d been let down so many times in the past.
As the night wore on, the bar’s business picked up. A group of miners, fresh off a shift on Phobos, started a raucous game of darts. Their laughter and shouts grated on Bud's nerves, a stark contrast to the weight of the decision they'd just made.
"We should go," Bud said finally, nudging Laz’s leg. "It's not safe to stay in one place too long."
Laz nodded, sliding off his stool with the surety of a man accustomed to downing a fifth of liquor in one sitting. As they made their way to the exit, Bud cast one last glance around the dingy bar. That nagging sense of familiarity tugged at him again, but the memory remained frustratingly out of reach.
Outside, the Martian night had deepened. The biodome's atmospheric scrubbers hummed softly, maintaining the delicate balance that kept them all alive, the drone an omnipresent reminder of the early colonists’ failed efforts at terraforming.
"So," Laz said as they walked, his words only slightly slurred, "I guess we're rebels now."
A slight grin threatened at the edges of Bud’s mouth, though he knew it was more the alcohol talking than Laz’s authentic self. "I suppose we are."
They made their way back through the winding streets, alert for any sign of FOG patrols. But the night remained quiet, as if the city itself were waiting to see what would happen next.
As they neared their apartment, Bud's mind was already racing. They'd need to contact Patricia, arrange a meeting. There would be preparations to make, contingencies to consider. He swallowed back some nervous bile. But he was eager, too. For the first time in years, they had a purpose beyond mere survival.
Laz fumbled with the key, eventually managing to unlock their door. As they stepped inside, he paused, looking down at Bud with an expression that was hard to read.
"You really think we can make a difference?" he asked, a hint of his old curiosity peeking through.
Bud met his gaze, feeling a surge of affection for his flawed, brilliant friend. “I think we have to try.”
Laz nodded, a small smile playing at the corners of his mouth. Then he yawned, the moment passing. “Well, better get some sleep. Big day of espionage tomorrow, eh?”
Laz deployed Bud’s bed in the small space in the living room not consumed by the experiment, then shuffled off to bed. Bud settled onto his cushion. Sleep would be a long time coming, he knew. A thump followed by a muttered curse came from the bedroom, and Bud’s excitement dulled. Had he pushed Laz too far? Laz wasn’t exactly subtle; a poor trait for a spy.
Bud tried to put such thoughts from his mind and focus on what had driven him since Patricia had first entered their apartment—finally finding some answers.
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Note: I wrote this story with the assistance of AI. To read about my process, see the following post:
buymeacoffee.com/dtkane/mars-174-years-after-earth-destruction.