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Better Days: Chapter 1

"Commander Taylor! Commander Taylor!" They all yelled for his attention. All of the news crews, crammed into a room too small to host such a momentous event all wanted to get the attention of the man of the century, the man who had a date with destiny among the stars.

Earth, a small blue pearl that, when compared to the rest of the universe, was miniscule in scale and yet was so important. It held life, not just microbes, like the ones found deep under the ice of IO where green oceans of algae swirled endlessly or the dead bacteria of Mars, it had intelligent life. Mankind started humble, nothing more than beasts with a bit more of a push in the right direction, a push that could have ended wrong. A small sickness, an infection of just a wild animal could have ended humanity so easily and yet it survived and prospered.

Humans had a remarkable for being at their best when they were at their worst. When the day was dark and life seemed to lose all value, humanity pushed forward. They never gave up despite the challenges they faced, whether it was from nature or their own kind.

While mankind always strived for more, they were always in conflict with each other. War was ever constant and treachery hidden at all times. Millions upon millions died at the hands of fellow men and many wondered if humanity deserved to continue if it was capable of acts such as the Holocaust or Rwanda where humans killed not enemies who threatened them, but the innocent. But, humanity pushed forward.

The world never may have found peace following the World Wars, but it rose to new heights. Life expectancy increased, nearly doubling, the middle class grew and poverty was on the fall. More and more became educated as the twenty first century went rolling by. There were hard times as the gap between the rich and the poor expanded and the world witnessed the fall of the United States into four new countries that toiled and bickered for half a century. Yet, mankind was prospering.

It was called the Golden Age, simple and sweet, it started around the year 2100 and marked a leap forward on a scale that surpassed the Industrial Revolution. It was a leap forward in almost every field. Mars, home to measly 200 researchers was turned into a full fledged colony of over 200,000 in only ten years. The moon was turned into the most successful mining site in existence. Unemployment was less than one percent globally as millions of jobs were created in factories off planet. Humanity was no longer shackled to its terrestrial existence, it stretched to the far edges of its solar system and by the time 2200 came, there were fourteen billion humans across three planets and nine moons.

The average life expectancy that teetered around sixty-nine for most of the second half of the twenty-first century rocketed to nearly one-hundred and fifty by 2125 and was still growing as medicine reached new heights. Body parts could be ordered on PlanNet, the next evolutionary step of the internet that connected all human together. Cancer was now like the cold which was extinct. Humans no longer grew sick as nanomachines, smaller than blood cells, kept a constant over watch. People could change their genes and insert desired traits that could take effect immediately. No longer like blue eyes? Why not try blood red or glow in the dark? Mankind had everything it ever could desire, but then it quickly learned, prosperity is only temporary and the high they were experiencing had to come to an end.

It started with a simply gene therapy failure. A man, in his mid sixties, still young by current standards, had begun to grow gray hair and like anyone else, he went to Gene Box that were located in every city and could be used publicly for a small fee. He stepped into the machine which was about the size of a portable toilet and let the machine quickly scan him and take a small blood sample to map his genetic code. The man didn't have to do anything as the machine correctly guessed the reason to his visit and all he had to do was use his PlanNet connection that was built into his Central Nervous System to confirm. The machine charged him the small fee that even a minimum wage worker would spend without batting an eye and then a small, sterile need, microscopically thin, came out from behind and injected a mutagen that would make the necessary changes so that his hair would remain its vibrant orange that he loved so much.

The man left satisfied. He was convinced as he should have been, that once the current gray hairs fell out, there would be nothing but orange. Instead, the gray hair continued to grow as the days went by and soon his orange hair reverted to the hair he had as a child, boring brown with a slight twirl to it. Repeated visits to the GeneBox did not fix this, instead, it seemed to accelerate it and this man made a complaint to the company, expecting a refund and a free fix which was the guarantee of the GeneBox.

The company, Mankind Genetics, had been receiving calls and complaints very similar to the orange haired man, far too many. The executives, fat off of the easy profit of mankind's love for perfection in their own eyes, panicked. They went to their doctors, their scientists for answers. The answer was simple. Humanity as a whole was stagnating genetically.

All of the constant changing of genes weeded out unwanted traits such as hypertension, high blood pressure, and hereditary obesity. It make mankind stronger as these traits, which would have dragged the race down, completely disappeared. There were no records of these traits existing, other than in books which few read anymore. This also simplified humanity, everyone was the same, everyone went for the same genetics, everyone was suddenly becoming identical.

They didn't give it a name, a name meant that it existed and no one wanted to believe that mankind was now inbreeding itself into a state of genetic stagnation without the usual bouts of in family romping. No, through the use of technology, everyone was now part of a pseudo family tree and it came with its own bad apples and a lot of them.

Genetic defects came quickly. The mortality rate of infants grew as suddenly babies were born with their hearts on the outside of their bodies, or with no limbs, the result of a quickly rampant and epidemic of genetic mutation took hold of the entire species. It didn't matter if someone was on Mars or Titan, horrible mutations were occurring everywhere.

Mankind was on a decline, a rapid one that threatened to unhinge and destroy everything, even threatening extinction if it continued.

Even as it became clear that there was an issue, the governments shied away from it all and it was up to the public sector to find a solution. The brightest and most intelligent minds that humanity had to offer came together to find a solution and they already had one in mind.

Earth had once been home to not only man, but a wide swath of other interesting and ever changing array of animals with all kinds of abilities and traits. Most were extinct now, but a movement in the early 21st century saved many and Earth was more of a nature reserve than the center of human existence. All of South America, Canada, South Africa, Indonesia, Siberia and many other locations were turned into safe zones to ensure the survival of Earth's other children and there they prospered.

In these reserves was a very healthy population of animals ranging from the Siberian Tiger which had been on its last legs with only one hundred left in 2021 and was now in the tens of thousands or the White Rhino which had been a favorite target for poaching was now under no threat of being shot into extinction. These accomplishments were a source of much pride for much of human space and now it was time to reap the benefits.

While animal genetics weren't supposed to be compatible with humans or really any other species, a lot of practice in the past had given scientists the knowledge necessary to extract and integrate millions of traits into humanity. To stop the babies with external hearts, a gene for a wider and more barrel like chest from canines that allowed the heart to grow inside saved its first life on August 15, 2235. This was only one of the many miracles that occurred as mankind's troubles disappeared and life went on as usual.

The effects of the mandatory gene therapy that the government, untrusted by the public, enforced and was only complied with due to the stamps of approvals from their saviors, the corporations. People looked slightly different, small and subtle changes ranging from height or musculature. There was variety again.

Now the year was 2267 and mankind was ready for its next step forward. No longer was the "Sol System" enough, everyone wanted to go further and farther. They wanted to see other stars.

Commander James Taylor was a renowned hero. Although there hadn't been a major war in over a century, James Taylor was well known for his heroic actions during the Great Rupture of Mons. The largest volcano in the Solar System, Olympus Mons was supposed to be dead. Supposed to be dead. It erupted suddenly and with no warming and the entire world, along with its one billion inhabitants were in dire straits. The military, a token force, was sent in to help and that was where James Taylor, a lowly Lieutenant at the time, made his name known.

A pyroclastic flow had hit the small port city of New Athens, leaving it a fiery mess that left the few survivors there hopelessly trapped under mountains of superheated ash. They managed to survive by hiding in airtight basements and now they would suffocated slowly over the course of many days as the rescue teams regarded their case as hopeless.

James wouldn't have none of it.

"We can't leave them, sir." James cried out as he pointed at the heart rate monitors that were lining the wall of a half destroyed structure that looked like it would have been a nice home at one point. It was made of real wood, a commodity since trees didn't like growing anywhere other than Earth. The furniture was melted and scorched as the plastic material that made up most things nowadays didn't hold up well under intense heat. The monitors had been set up, using an advanced type of listening device so sensitive and efficient, it could hear heartbeats under the three hundred feet of ash while filtering out the rest of the chaos.

There were twelve heartbeats still going strong and fast with fear. Their beats ranging from being on the verge of a heart attack to quick and alarmingly erratic. Three had gone out in the last hour, three whose ceiling collapsed under the weight. James along with many others hoped they died fast and painlessly. The last twelve were all together in the basement of a school. It was the weekend so there were no children. The people were teachers and other staff who would come in to finish up paperwork from the week or other small chores that needed doing before the beginning of the next academic day.

"Lieutenant." The Captain Helsing, a large and burly African American with thick black curls and a gorgeous case of heterochromia iridium with one eye being green and the other blue, though it didn't end there. One eye was also cat like with a vertical slit that went up the center and would dilate rapidly to adjust to the ever changing light in the hellish landscape around them.

"Don't 'Lieutenant' me." James knew that he was being grossly unsat by arguing with a superior, but he just couldn't follow the orders he had just been given. "When have we ever left people behind?" He growled and stared straight into the Captain's eye that were cloudy with thought. Was the man going to listen or enforce the order to pull out.

Captain Helsing knew why his subordinate was angry. Hell, he was angry himself, but orders were orders. Another pyroclastic flow was imminent and would hit them minutes after beginning. The Captain looked towards the mountain that normal would have dominated the eastern horizon with its 25km high peak. Now there was only red ash and dust that swirled around them as the turbulent air created a sandstorm that was currently engulfing half of the planet. He had been ordered to evacuate everyone he had managed to dig up which was sadly a very small number, only forty in a city of over twelve thousand.

He sighed and rubbed his fat fingers, a side effects of his canine genes, across his brow, leaving red streaks where his sweat mixed with the iron heavy dust. "We can't stay." He finally said it and looked at the Lieutenant who had been one of the most active participants of the rescue since he had actually been born on Mars.

"Hell we can't." James turned around and began to stomp off towards the location of the last survivors despite the shouts of his commanding officer for him to come back. He could hear the Captain, he didn't sound angry, none of that rough and gruff voice that he used to out shout anyone, he sounded scared for him. It was touching that the man who enjoyed a reputation for being a tough guy and the biggest, strongest of the bunch to show some emotion, but it was too little too late now.

James didn't bother to even look back to see if anyone was sent after him. The Captain would most likely give him some time, but would be forced to leave him behind in order to save the rest of the company of soldiers and their precious survivors were most likely huddled together near a makeshift landing pad, awaiting extraction by Thunderheads.

The man marched through the hot dust that had been registered at over one hundred degrees C, five hours after being laid down by the first flow. He was sweating heavily and James had already drunk all of his hydration pouches. He should have grabbed more before charging off, but it was too late now.

It wasn't long before the strong man who sported enough muscles to impress most, but not so much that he seemed overly large, came to the digger that sat abandoned in the middle of what would have been a street if the buildings were still visible. It was collecting a nice layer of dust now that the team of engineers who had been using it were gone.

James walked towards it, raising an unloved hand that was turning a shade of red as he used it to stop the blowing dust from hitting his face and blinding him. He also should have grabbed a mask since he had set his down. He had forgotten a lot, letting his emotions get the better of him.

He stopped in front of the drill. It was an older model used for mining on volcanic planets and moons, so there was going to be no worry about it failing in the dust. The problem was getting it work in the few short minutes he had.

The ground rumbled and a loud rumbling shook James right down to the bone. The mountain was getting ready to let loose another flow at any time now. He quickly got to work.

Luckily, one thing that James didn't forget was his PlanNet connection which was a headpiece that sat on the top of a person's head like a headband with small nodes that scanned brainwaves to help the user find what they needed.

"Let's see how you work." James connected to PlanNet with a single thought about the machine that stood at about twenty feet with a large. It was a bulky machine that stood on three sturdy legs that held the central drill, a series of lasers actually. It had a small port sticking off one of the legs with a screen and a physical keyboard which was relatively unheard of these days.

PlanNet was fast, instantly connecting to the network despite the harsh weather conditions. Images, more like thoughts, came into James' head and suddenly he had everything he needed to get the machine to work. He quickly found the power switch and the screen flickered on, displaying some logo that James didn't recognize.

"C'mon." His fingers trembled centimeters above the keyboard as he waited from the ancient program to boot up and load all of the necessary information to run. It must have been relying on SSD for data storage for it to be taking this long. Everything worth buying used SRM or Static Ready Memory that used quantum physics to store an infinite amount of memory in the subatomic matrices of specially constructed synthetic crystals. Data could be accessed almost instantly, but this was taking seconds when it should have taken nanoseconds.

The screen finally flickered to a command screen where hundreds of different options and adjustable settings were. The drill was already set to mine in soft ash which was what it was standing on and James' PlanNet connection verified that it was already in optimal settings to drill down to the survivors. The previous users, a combination of civilian contractors and Army Engineers must have been ready to begin drilling towards the survivor's right before the evacuation order was given since the drill was also orientated correctly to get James to them.

He initialized the drill and stood back as it began to hum, warming up and preparing the laser itself. A red glow emanated from the mirrored tip meant to focused the beam.

A red flash blinded James as the laser shot out and began to do its work. The way it worked was simple. The laser melted down the ash, turning it to a soft glass that was then pushed out of the way by various forces the laser emitted which then cooled, creating a glass tunnel that could be climbed out of.

James watched impatiently, his foot tapping the ground, lifting small clouds of dust. The hole was being formed, quite fast, but James was getting antsy as another tremor, this one large enough to nearly make him lose his balance shook the world. These tremors would have been large enough to be felt thousands of miles away. If anyone didn't know what was happening, which was unlikely, they surely did now.

Another minute passed as the drill continued to do its work. James watched its progress as it went deeper, piecing through meter after meter of dust and ash.

A message crossed James' mind, from the Captain. He must have been too busy getting out with the rest of the company that he only just had time to send him a message. James let it through.

*The flow is coming your way!*

It was short, but panicked which was something that could be expressed in PlanNet. A person could send not only words to others, they could send emotions as well and Captain Helsing was on the verge of panic and so was James.

The flow would reach him at a hundreds of kilometers a seconds and hot enough to boil his blood before he died. He looked at the display on the drill, there was still another twenty meters to go, but PlanNet told him there was no time. The flow was right there, even if he couldn't see it or even hear it through the dust storm, he needed to act now.

James killed the drill, the laser quickly fading as power was cut and he ran at the hole and jumped.

"Commander Taylor!" The news crews continued to vie for his attention and that snapped James out of his day dream. There wasn't a day that he didn't think about Mars and what he did there. While he had not been able to personally rescue the survivors, he was responsible for guilting the higher ups into action. They couldn't let news of them abandoning not only civilians, but a soldier who heroically stayed behind. James was stuck in that hole for hours with both of his legs fractured in multiple places due to the fall. It should have killed him, if he was normal, but so few were "normal" anymore.

James looked around the room from behind the podium that had been set up for him. He saw the result of mankind's fiddling with genetics. Ears that swiveled, partial tails that poked out from holes in pants, the beginnings of digitigrade legs or the small sprouting of fur or scales. Everyone had something changed about them. There was nothing so drastic, only hints here and there. James was different, almost all of his genetic modifications were on the inside. His bones were more dense and flexible, his muscles efficient and mind a little faster thanks to a cocktail of genetic modifications that were carefully picked out by his parents months before they even had sex. They wanted the perfect person without too much change, they also wanted a child who looked more human and that was what they got. It wasn't cheap, and his parents weren't rich, but they did it anyways and he supposed it paid off now that he was here.

*They're talking to you, you know.* A voice crawled into his head and once again, James realized that he had been caught thinking too hard when he was supposed to be feeding the media. *They may wait, but you need to talk to them.* It was Ray, James' manager who did everything for him, such as set up media conferences when he didn't particularly wanted to go to one.

*This is the fifth one this month.* James sent a reply while he pointed at the closest and most enthusiastic reporter. She was pretty, with red hair that was tied back professionally. She wore glasses, though James knew that she didn't need them, no one did, it was just for appearance. She held out a microphone, something else that was unnecessary since there were floating drones everywhere catching his every word, but it was, again, for appearance.

"Commander Taylor." She began to speak, but James quickly silenced her with a raised hand.

"Call me James." He insisted. He was tired of being called Commander Taylor when he was no longer in the military. He had left a while ago, in the year 2250, ten years after his actions on Mars.

The woman gave a coy smile and began again. "James." The words were unfamiliar in her mouth, being used to using more formal titles, but if the hero wanted to be called by his first name, she wouldn't argue. "What made you decide to go ahead with this daring mission?"

Easy.

"Well, Ms..." There was only the slightest pause as his PlanNet quickly got her name for him from her company's site. "Fletcher." She blushed. "When I heard that there was a single volunteer to go out and expand human horizons. I couldn't resist." He smiled, it felt disgusting on his face that he lied, but it was a practiced answer since he had been asked so many times before.

"It must be scary to know that you'll be gone for potentially hundreds of years, leaving everything behind." The woman was insistent. Most would be happy with just one answer.

"There is fear." That wasn't a lie. "But how can there be courage without it?" He asked and a few heads nodded. "I know the risks, but I do this to push the limits of humanity to new horizons. How long have we looked at the stars and wondered if we are truly alone? Now we are given the opportunity to explore this and test out ability to find the answer."

There was a light applause. James rolled his eyes mentally, they ate this stuff up.

"So, you do this for exploration?" She tried to clarify before anyone else could ask another question.

"Yes." James nodded. "Exploration, discovery, everything."

The woman seemed satisfied enough and James continued to answer questions for another hour until the conference was finally called to an end. James wobbled off the stage, his legs sore from standing for so long and his mind a jumbled mess from being asked so many questions. He was also on the verge of a breakdown because he had lied to everyone of them. He wasn't doing this for humanity, he was doing this for himself. He was tired of the world he lived in, sick of it. No matter how good his life may have been on the outside, it was a wreck on the inside and it had been wrecked by one individual, Ryan.