Life on Mars

Chapter Two

The deep blackness of this jungle night would be dispatched into the light of day at a breathtaking pace. The sun's towering tangerine and red searchlights fanned out across the sky like a shell. The rivers swirling eddies fractured the golden light whilst the dense jungle obscured all land beneath a blanket of green. Tall branches swayed in the breeze, reaching out across the river to shake hands with their counterparts on the other side. The gleaming sunlight turned the canopy from deep green to autumn gold in seconds. The explosion of light cast long shadows through the treetops. The jungle came alive in response, providing a relaxing dawn chorus of tropical birds, excited to begin the day.

The air warmed and quickly became muggy as flies buzzed around the lifeless bundle of fur that lay on a sandy riverbank. The blanket stirred, and an arm reached out from underneath, followed by a mop of greasy hair. 

Doctor Touchreik rolled away from the breaking dawn light, hitching himself up on one elbow. He had slipped no deeper than a light doze throughout the entire night. A troubled man whose nightmares tormented his sleep and his waking hours, his one consolation was that today might be an opportunity to resolve those troubles for better or for worse.

He kept his eyes closed and allowed the warm sunrays to cast across his face, interrupted every few seconds by a cool breeze. He enjoyed the moment without stirring, smelling the moisture in the air and hearing the familiar soft rumble of thunder in the distance. That sound signalled the 120 seconds he had before the storm and the tropical rain arrived. Stretching, he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands.

"Close, please," he said in a loud, clear voice. The forest, riverbank and storm-ridden dawn sky faded to nothing, replaced by his own bedroom. Duke, his sage, shut down the holographic imaging program and lit the room to 40%. The bare, silver walls were visible for a moment until the internal decor rearranged itself to morning mode.

As Duke reset the room, the walls decorated themselves in elaborate coverings depicting nature and plant life images. Pictures and ornaments appeared in holographic form to enhance the decoration, and the lighting shifted colour to accommodate tired eyes. The division between some physical items, hologram and decor was impossibly vague and judging the physical space was an arduous task for the naked eye. One of the tall shrubs sat in a pot to the left of the window but its outstretched branches moulded into the wall covering with no visible join in any dimension.

Algeria rolled into a sitting position on the edge of a huge circular bed layered in luxurious fur coverings. Gigantic artworks filled the walls on either side of him as the dimensions expanded in front of his eyes. A biblical burst of sunlight entered through a two-storey window at the bottom end of the room. Augmented or not, he still felt the warm glow on the side of his face.

Drake always said it confused him to use a random wake up program, but Touchreik liked the variety. Some days it might be a tropical beach, a jungle scene or even an interstellar sunrise observed from Jupiter. The jungle river was a particular favourite. His wake-up program might be random, but one morning ritual wasn't. That was the sound of one of his most prized and well-used physical possessions. His ancient caffeine generator was an expensive museum piece that Ramona had given him as a gift to celebrate the millennia in 2499. 

He'd paid for it, but still, it was a nice gesture. However, he'd noted to close financial access after that. It was a copy, but it ran well and professed to give caffeine in a way utilised by organic coffee beans, at least that's what the designers claimed. In honesty, it didn't taste much better than a 4D version, but he loved the ritual, the noise and the aroma it produced. Unlike caffeine fabricated by Duke or any other 4D machine, its taste was random, impossible to get an identical flavour on every occasion but that was its magic.