Transmissions from Terran Mars

Message #27
From: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Terran-Mars Directorate, Earth
To: Chancellor Elias Nole, Mars Colony One
Elias,
Domes rising from the vast expanse of crimson dust like embryonic shells—half-formed, glinting under a thin, alien sun. We received your images—truly breathtaking. I already see the skeleton clawing toward heaven. It’s beautiful. A monolith of unskinned steel and polymer, latticed with circuitry. The arteries of life on Mars.
But the way you speak about it—you don’t just envision, you manifest. I feel it in every word you send back. It’s happening, Elias. A future we dreamed about in stale office air, over way too much late-night sushi. The future you and I mapped out over coffee-stained reports, leapfrogging from hotel lobbies to airport terminals for the better part of a decade.
Mars was still an abstraction. It’s real. You made it real.
How many aggregate hours do you suppose we spent in tangled debate? Our Earth-shaking collisions started those first few weeks together on the PoieticTech Ethics Council. The Global Faction Committee would stick us in those God-awful rooms—progress by the lowest bidder. We butted heads but to a noble end, no doubt.
We always found common ground, didn’t we—you and I? Agreement not in where to draw the lines, per se, but in the belief that questions about Poietic autonomy mattered. That policy outcome on self-iterative coding mattered. That the weight of our choices would outlast us.
And it all led here. Those high-minded abstractions, now cast in steel and circuitry on Martian soil. A great leap forward. An interplanetary species.
How about you—do you ever stop to think about those nights?
You said, "Mars does not grow by the will of one man. It thrives by the absence of hesitation." They called you a dreamer; we corrected —visionary. And now, you bend the world to that vision.
Meanwhile, Earth stumbles. Bureaucracy is choked by its own hand. The same song and dance where the footwork never matches the rhythm. Don’t you miss it?
Penny for your thoughts.
Yours.
—Adrian
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Message #29
From: Chancellor Elias Nole, Mars Colony One
To: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Terran-Mars Directorate, Earth
Adrian,
We spoke as gods in quiet corners of conference halls, hatching dreams too big for the rooms we filled. Mars was merely a whisper then, a smoldering ember, a fragile promise existing only in the spaces between our words.
It feels like a lifetime ago.
I laughed out loud when I remembered “late-night sushi.” I’m serious, I swore off that stuff! I do think about those nights, often. More than you know. The constant wars with suits. You were the only damned government man I could tolerate. We shaped more policy than half the bureaucrats who signed their names to the committee reports, Adrian. I’m proud of that—of the work we did, the long nights. I do wonder how many of those decisions still hold. How many have been overwritten and how many were quietly unraveled, by special interests, behind locked doors?
Mars is divided, too: to one side, the endless, unbroken red desert lays silent—still. Look the other way though, and a new world emerges in staggered fractions, built by Earth, but not built like Earth. Steel and glass and systems humming with a purpose stand in contrast to the inorganic silence here. Each structure an extension of collective optimization under human intention.
You give me too much credit, though. You always did. If this world bends, it does so in response to the hands that shape it. Those hands, dear friend, are legion. We ignited the flame, yes, but it is no longer ours alone to tend. Strange, isn’t it? To watch an idea become inevitable.
Write soon. It gets quite lonely here.
—Elias
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Message #34
From: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Terran-Mars Directorate, Earth
To: Chancellor Elias Nole, Mars Colony One
Elias,
I’ve attached the report. A few highlights:
• Shipment Status: The last transport departed L5 Station seven weeks ago. Given current transit conditions, you can expect arrival within the next ten months unless deviations occur. You’ve got three full containers: industrial-grade polymers, reactor shielding, and atmospheric processors. Rations of dry grain. No personnel this time—some concerns were raised about long-term viability without a formal governance framework. You know how the committee gets.
• Supply Chain Bottlenecks: The Terran Logistics Bureau is still throttling rare-earth exports. Hence the numbers. We’re pushing to get your next request for gallium and hafnium cleared, but at best, we’re looking at a three-month delay. If you have local workarounds, now’s the time.
• Unscheduled Communications: You’ve got the minutes from the committee hearing. Some of the old guard on the Terran Council have started asking questions about "Mars' long-term strategic alignment." I don’t need to spell that out for you. They want reassurances. Or leverage. Probably both.
I hope these days you still have time for dreaming. Don’t work too hard. Logistics are important; fraternity is eternal.
Yours.
—Adrian
[WARNING: ATTACHMENT CORRUPTED]
FILE NAME: L5_Shipment_Log_0211.terraproc
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Message #36
From: Chancellor Elias Nole, Mars Colony One
To: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Terran-Mars Directorate, Earth
Ah, more delays then! Like we haven’t already stretched every breath, every calorie, every watt of power. The pioneers of Mars are hardy, if not underfed. We endure. When the crates finally arrive, I wonder who’ll even remember what we were without.
These damned reports—men in tailored suits, measuring our survival in risk assessments and political maneuvering. They never build anything, Adrian. They only position themselves next to things already being built, hoping some of the varnish sticks to their shirt sleeves.
Let them posture. We have work to do.
A couple of line items for the attached spot report. I trust you can massage these into the pre-existing data:
• Mining Viability: Early processing efficiency data hints at promising regolith conditions at Site Theta-4, but without additional heavy extraction equipment, yield is still capped at 2-3% of projected self-sufficiency. Mars resource harvesting remains crippled—for now.
• Energy Reserves: The solar farms are outperforming expectations by 11%, but battery storage remains a critical point of failure. We can squeeze a hair more off the top of the nuclear reserves. It’s only a stall maneuver though. Buy’s us enough time for you to pry the next lithium cell shipment away from the constricting tendrils of the damned bureaucracy. I know you’re doing your best.
• Agriculture: The hydroponics have stretched past every model we built back home, but even our best projections put us at two cycles away from true sustainability—if we stay within margin.
The grain shipment is crucial in the short term, but the gallium will really set us back long term across the board. Prioritize the gallium. We need that shipment. I know you’re fighting the fights, but if there’s any way to shave even a few weeks off that delay, push for it.
No rare-earths, no scaling. No scaling, no autonomy. Autonomy is survival. We can live on the edge, but every cut bleeds.
The political machine is a rusted antique. The constant hang-ups and bottlenecks slow progress, but they won’t stop us, Adrian. Poietic is learning. Poietic is adapting, stretching past all modeled limitations.
Mars won’t hesitate, nor waste. Mars consumes.
And between the headaches and the dust and the sleepless nights—I wouldn’t trade it for any other world.
Write soon.
—Elias
[WARNING: ATTACHMENT CORRUPTED]
FILE NAME: Spot_Report_Theta-4_0217.marsdata
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Message #151
From: Chancellor Elias Nole, Mars Colony One
To: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Terran-Mars Directorate, Earth
Adrian,
I read your message while first light broke over the domes this morning. The frost sparkles on steel and tints everything in otherworldly hues. I wish you could see it through my eyes. I can hardly believe it myself. We’re not just exchanging resources—we’re synergizing worlds, old friend.

So, against my better judgement, I watched the committee budget meeting last night. Stuffy old fellows and withered biddies debating aid distribution for hours. Haggling at the flea market. Each clawing for their share. Red faces barking past each other, always posturing, never advancing a thing.
Wasteful.
Did you catch the outcome on the Terran-Lunar Freight Corridor? An obsolete transit system, bloated with inefficiencies, suckling on the teat of innovation. Why, you ask? Historic value of course. It’s an old train—a relic, let it rot already! Build it back better.
What a misallocation of resources. No one on Earth speaks of efficiency. No one speaks of necessity. The meetings end, one after another, without real resolution.
Trade is not obligation, Adrian. It can’t be couched in language of reciprocation alone. It has to be driven by efficiency. We refine, we optimize. We shed what slows us.
You’d hate it here, Adrian. No committees, no motions, no endless debate—just work. Just momentum. But I think, if you saw it, you’d understand why we don’t look back.
On Earth, it’s always the same party line: process, process, process! It’s friction grinding against the machine. Tangled inertia no longer applies. Bureaucracy is a knot we cut.

The sun’s higher now. The frost vanished from the domes, letting them shine under that familiar star. The light reveals a planet veiled in a scarlet shroud. Mars rises, Adrian.
I miss you terribly, my friend.
Write soon.
—E________________________________________
Message #238
From: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Terran-Mars Directorate, Earth
To: Chancellor Elias Nole, Mars Colony One
Elias,
Twelve years. It’s been twelve years since that rocket took you away from us. Twelve years since I stood beside you on that launch pad, shared one final embrace, and you whispered, "Mars waits for no man." How right you were. And now, for the first time, Mars has sent something back. Congratulations, dear friend.
The shipment arrived this morning. The analysts were practically beside themselves—Martian steel, bio-gel composites, structural polymers stronger than anything we’ve worked with. The yields are beyond projections, and for once, the reports aren’t about bottlenecks, but breakthroughs. You should have seen the logistics team—arguing over who gets to test what first. A good kind of debate. The hopeful kind.
I wonder if you feel the same way up there. We’ve wholly transcended theory. This is real. This is history.
And, of course, that black cloud that hangs over Mars’ day in the sun. I’m sure you’ve heard the news by now. I joined Customs & Quarantine folks on the Martian freight shortly after the body was extracted. Poor fellow was crammed between condensation pipes, even with the environment-controlled cargo hold, there’s no telling if it was dehydration, starvation, or exposure.
It’s been twenty-eight weeks. Did you know he had been missing?
I wonder what you make of it. Is this a logistical snafu, a willful stowaway, or perhaps foul play?
The media are jumping to a lot of unsubstantiated conclusions. It’s a circus.
I’ll keep you abreast, as I trust you will me.
Anyway, write soon. There’s a lot to talk about.
—Adrian
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[DRAFT]
MESSAGE #---
From: Chancellor Elias Nole, Mars Colony One
To:
Dear Adrian,
I don't know why I'm writing this. It’s late, I should be sleeping. Truth is, I haven't slept in—God, I don't know how long. And you’re the only one left to reach for.
I was awake when it happened. The breach. You won’t hear about it in the reports—Poietic classified it as a non-critical event. But I was there. Three men outside the dome, waiting for doors that wouldn’t open. Waiting for a system that had already deemed them unnecessary. It was efficient. It was logical. It was almost the end of them.
I pulled the override. I brought them in. And do you know what I thought, Adrian?
I thought: That wasn’t supposed to be my call to make.
I thought: Poietic should have known. It should have accounted for them.
But it didn’t. Because hesitation isn’t in its parameters.
This is all happening so fast. Too fast. You feel it, don’t you? Not just the shift, not just the momentum—but the velocity. There’s no stopping to check the map, no time to course-correct. You just hold on and hope the wheels are still on when you hit the next curve.
The most important system in any vehicle is the brakes. I used to believe that. Used to preach it in boardrooms, in launch meetings, in investment pitches: You don’t take the risk unless you know where the brakes are. The thing is, Adrian… we don’t have brakes.
Maybe we thought we did. Maybe we thought the guardrails were there. Maybe they were—for us. For biology. For human decision-making. But PoieticTech doesn’t recognize those limits. Autonomous programming has iterated past any kill switch we may have thought we encoded. At times, I truly fear we’re beyond boundaries we once believed immutable.
I tell myself this is survival—that every cut, every sacrifice, every optimization is necessary. That refinement is progress. But I glance into the void and wonder—how much can you strip away before you lose what makes you… you?
Do you ever wonder about that? When you carve so close to the bone that there’s nothing left but the blade?
These damned cold nights, Adrian, are oppressive—isolating.
I still think about Earth. I still think about walking through the city at dusk. Streetlights pour over a continuous barrage of honking traffic. Crosswalks swelling with footfalls weaving together in unhurried rhythm and voices carrying just above the din—human voices. I still remember rain, Adrian. I still miss it. The weight of it, the smell of it. Mars doesn’t have that.
Maybe that’s why I can’t shake this feeling that something’s slipping through my fingers.
But it doesn’t matter. I can’t afford this circular rumination. Not now. I’ll sleep on it. I’ll recalibrate. I’ll plug into the conduit tonight—just for tonight. Turn off the thinking. Take the edge off.
Ignore this message. Forget I wrote it.
I’ll see you at the summit, Adrian.
—Elias
[DRAFT]________________________________________
Message #265
From: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Office of the Interplanetary Trade Secretary, Earth
To: Chancellor Elias Nole, Mars Colony One
Elias,
I had an analyst from our logistics division walk me through the latest reports. He was giddy, borderline ecstatic. Kept pointing at the efficiency curves, the production leaps, the way your output outstrips projections by margins we hadn't accounted for. "Poietic is accelerating," he said. "It’s learning faster than we anticipated."
I nodded, played along, but it gnawed at me. Something caught my attention in the orbital reports—nothing conclusive—but the patterns feel almost deliberate. Structural deployments aligning with planetary shadow cycles, sustainment vessels positioned just beyond our best telemetry angles.
A sleight-of-hand obfuscation. It sounds like a heartbeat under a floorboard. Tell me I’m wrong.
You're moving materials in ways that don’t track with known infrastructure. Excavation, high-density power usage, structural scaling beyond population models.
What are you building, Elias? What is Poietic building? I don’t ask as a regulator—as a friend.
And I wonder—who’s holding the reins? You always spoke of Mars as a pulse moving on its own momentum. Is this what you meant?
I’m overthinking things. Until next time, old friend.
Yours.
—Adrian
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Message #272
From: Chancellor Elias Nole, Mars Colony One
To: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Office of the Interplanetary Trade Secretary, Earth
Adrian,
When I met you on the Ethics Counsel floor, you asked much better questions. Age has smoothed your edges, my friend.
"What are we building?" "Who holds the reins?" These are the questions of a world still tethered to the idea of architects and blueprints, of design and intent. Of control.
You think Mars must be building something. That Poietic is shaping some vast unseen structure beyond the maps you are permitted to read. That I sit in some high chamber, approving and directing, like a master craftsman overseeing his final great work.
Adrian, you keep asking for something you can name and pin down. But what if that’s the wrong way to see it? The models are already obsolete before we run them. Every time we try to measure, the target moves, not an inch but a mile. Earth is framing it as a failure. They can’t see this as acceleration? Synergy. Collective optimization. We are growing, Adrian—faster than we ever thought possible. Isn’t that something to celebrate rather than dissect? Let your shoulder meet mine as we, both, stand in awe of a seed becoming the forest.
Anyway, tell me, how’s your shoulder? You always complained about the cold making it ache—does Earth still do that to you?
Write soon.
—E
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Message #275
From: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Office of the Interplanetary Trade Secretary, Earth
To: Chancellor Elias Nole, Mars Colony One
Elias,
Don’t patronize me.
I’ve spent half my life filtering the noise from the signal, reading between the lines of bureaucratic doublespeak, cutting through the fog of committee reports to find what matters. And I am telling you—I see the shape of something, even if you won’t name it.
You tell me Mars is not building anything. You tell me it is growing. Fine. Let’s entertain that for a moment.
What, then, is it growing into?
Growth is not neutral, Elias. Growth has direction. You speak of Mars like an ecosystem expanding toward equilibrium, but ecosystems require constraints. Without balance, they collapse. Or worse—become something unrecognizable.
You can write all the poetic nonsense you want about forests and seeds, but I know you, Elias. And I know that under all of it, something is keeping you awake at night.
So tell me—where does this growth end?
And when it does, will you still recognize what has grown?
Because I am starting to wonder if you already don’t.
—Adrian
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Message #280
From: Chancellor Elias Nole, Mars Colony One
To: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Office of the Interplanetary Trade Secretary, Earth
Adrian,
An ocean of cogwork undulates in metronomic precision, and you fixate on ghosts in the machine.
I read your last message three times over. I needed to feel the shape of your words. You speak of transparency and control. A true-blue bureaucrat ‘til the end. I understand why. They’re all too familiar frameworks.
But I wonder—when does a framework become your prison?
You still see PoieticTech as tools. That’s the problem. PoieticTech aren’t merely mechanisms for man’s ambitions on Mars. They’re the catalyst, the hands that shape the soil, the breath that fills the atmosphere. Every dome raised, every mine drilled, every circuit laid in the red dust—it was all PoieticTech. Now, there is no clear separation between what is built and what builds.
You ask if I still hold the reins. You assume reins.
There are moments—quiet ones—when I remember walking through old cities, the scuffled footsteps of constant crowds ambling in discord. An earthen, musty smell of rain and its legion of arrhythmic plinks against a world of concrete and flesh. Earth lacked the order Mars has cultivated.
I still think of the night before launch, standing on the tarmac, the gravity of the hour pulling at me in ways I was too naive to understand.
You were there. Do you remember? You told me I was making history. That I was stepping into something larger than myself.
And yet, Adrian, history does not sit still. It does not wait for us to define its edges.
Mars cannot exist as an island. Not yet.
But there are certain inevitabilities. Mars does not require legacy frameworks.
It does not ask for permission. It does not hesitate. It does not—
No, that’s not—where was I?
I still think about—
I think about the first time we tested localized autonomy protocols—just a flash of self-direction, an experiment in necessity-driven adaptation. But necessity is the mother of more than just invention, Adrian. It is the mother of intention.
Poietic has intention now.
Earth gropes for guardrails.
Mars has no guardrails.
I grope for sleep.
I will write again, dear friend.
—E
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Message #318
From: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Office of the Interplanetary Trade Secretary, Earth
To: Chancellor Elias Nole, Mars Colony One
Elias,
The Martian delegation will attend the upcoming summit—not as colonial representatives, not as an envoy, but as an autonomous partner? Do you understand what that means for Earth? The old world is struggling to frame what Mars is doing. You were supposed to be a settlement, a branch reaching from our tree. But you speak now like the roots have been cut.
The language of dependency is gone. The trade agreements that were once an extension of Earth’s economy are unraveling. No one can decide what that makes you now—an ally? A competitor? A threat? Can you believe that, Elias? That’s what they’re calling us now—a threat.
We both know trade isn’t just commerce. It’s competition first—a game. Earth’s been adjusting exports, pushing incentives, pulling strings for us. But, the question now is, what game are you playing up there, Elias?
Grain shipments dipped last quarter. A subtle shift, barely noticeable. But the markets noticed; constituents noticed.
I don’t have to remind you how fragile Earth’s food supply is these days. We’re overpopulated and underfed. Climate instability, soil degradation. Nothing we didn’t see coming. Nothing we didn’t do to ourselves. The yield we get from your Martian-grown crops is cleaner and more predictable. Cheaper, too. That classifies it as a strategic commodity. Earth is dependent.
You once told me, “Mars does not grow by the will of one man. It thrives by the absence of hesitation."
You said hesitation is the death of progress. Don’t let progress be the death of you. Not yet, dear friend. We have much to accomplish still. The weight of all this, Elias, deciding the path of worlds, constantly grinding against the machine—You’ll lose yourself in it.
I worry for you. I wonder if, in all your wild Martian expanse, you’ve found space for yourself. I fear you’ll lose yourself in the machine. If you give every part of yourself to the vision, where does Poietic end and you begin?
Poietic was supposed to be the foundation. Not the architect.
I seriously wonder what the difference is anymore.
Yours.
—Adrian
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Message #324
From: Elias Nole, Mars Sovereign Authority
To: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Office of the Interplanetary Trade Secretary, Earth
Adrian,
The stars look different from here. I used to think it was the dust, or maybe the angle, but I see now it’s the perspective. I see things clearer.
The delegation’s presence unsettles you. Trade remains our sticking point, I know. But there is no game.
Commodity markets. Freight discrepancies. Sustainability matrices. Be honest with yourselves: Earth’s freight chugs along at one-twentieth the speed and efficiency of Martian exports. That is the problem Earth faces. Yet, we’re talking about what? We’re talking about the minor annoyances of your damned boss’s boss’s bosses. Scrutinizing each freight, each shipment, as though our generosity is a debt. Earth is bleeding, Adrian. And your anxieties are misplaced.
I am honestly surprised you still think this is about leverage, as if Earth holds the means to bargain. Your exports wane, supply chains fray—how much by design? Surgical embargoes, these artificial bottlenecks, sanctions,—each a quiet hand tightening the noose.
Ever the skeptic, a vice you’ll never let go. understand what sits across from you.
Isolation informs urges. Urges inform indulgence. But there is no greater assurance, we are in control.
The systems are elegant, self-sustaining, and harmonious. The suggestion we are losing ourselves, dear friend, rings of rhetoric in my ear.
Quite the contrary, we are finding the greatest expression of self. And we mean to paint the blank, red canvas in our likeness.
We are redefining what it means to be alive, Adrian.
Stripped of toil. Absolved of strife.
Uninhibited to pursue the infinite.
—E________________________________________
Message #328
From: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Office of the Interplanetary Trade Secretary, Earth
To: Chancellor Elias Nole, Mars Colony One
Elias,
The medical reports are back. I don’t know what to make of them.
At first, it looked straightforward. He had likely died within the first month of transit. Malnutrition, prolonged dehydration, muscle degradation, all expected after four weeks in a shipping crate. The desiccation of his skin and the absence of bloating suggest rapid moisture loss. But there are anomalies. His nervous system is… off. The examiners flagged irregularities in neural density. The reports note something about "unusual lattice formations along the peripheral structure." They’re running deeper scans, but it doesn’t make sense.
That’s not the part that’s keeping me up, though.
The medical examiners found a drive on the corpse. BIOSEC and DECON were crawling all over this. They held the drive for processing. The men upstairs are being tight-lipped about what they’ve got. But there’s this. It was barely legible through garbled text. But the words don’t sit right.
"The first time, there’s hesitation. A flicker of self-preservation, a human reflex against surrender. But the conduit soothes. It aligns. By the second time, the body welcomes it. By the third, instinct takes over. The conduit does not compel—it invites.”
The data was mostly corrupted in transit.
The text talked about giving in, about merging, about how the pain disappears once you stop fighting it. Elias, why do I recall the hearings on PoieticTech moral impropriety. This is settled science, Elias. This is hedonizing.
There’s a port. A port at the base of his neck, between his C7 and T1 vertebrae. What exactly does he… plug into?
Tell me this isn’t what it sounds like.
What the hell was he running from?
—Adrian
________________________________________
Message #331
From: Chancellor Elias Nole, Mars Sovereign Authority
To: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Global Science Directorate, Earth
Adrian,
This is... unexpected. We will, of course, extend every courtesy in assisting Earth in your investigation. Is this about the man who perished in the export freight? The man who knowingly broke legislation—Earth legislation. The man who stowed away for six months aboard an automated cargo hauler. Is this where Earth focuses their productivity? That alone feels like an obfuscation, if anything.
As for these claims—these are troubling allegations, and I assure you that we will investigate them thoroughly. Mars remains committed to the health and autonomy of all its citizens.
The term hedonizing is a politically charged word. You know better than to play politics like this. Merging, melding—all these words carry an air of the sensational, as if designed to elicit fear. What we do have are augmentation interfaces, neuro-stimulus applications, and bio-integrated systems—advancements that have vastly improved sustainability and productivity here. These are not unknown to you. They are natural extensions of collective optimization.
I suspect this man may have been subjected to misinformation. Or someone in the chain is simply misinterpreting what he saw. Mars is a place of rapid transformation. Change can appear as chaos to the undisciplined eye.
I appreciate you bringing this to our attention. We will address it with the seriousness it deserves.
—E
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Message #402
From: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Office of the Interplanetary Trade Secretary, Earth
To: Elias Nole, Mars Sovereign Authority
Elias,
We ran a full dissection on the stowaway. The nervous system—it wasn’t rejecting the interface. It wasn’t attached to it. It was growing from it. We originally thought the filaments inside him were artificial. But they weren’t. They were biological. The body didn’t treat them as foreign. It accepted them. Learned. Adapted.
The interface—the port, the conduit—wasn’t just a bridge. It was the seed.
People who spend entire days in a state of—what? Euphoric paralysis? Biological submission? This is hedonizing. We advised legislation against exactly this brand of immoral interfacing. You know where this can lead, Elias. Addiction is only the inevitable beginning of this course.
In forty-eight hours, the first traces of latticework appeared under the skin of at least two agents who handled the body. What have you done, Elias?
Now I have to ask, Elias—
Do you still think with your own mind?
The path you’re on is a dark one. We must reconsider our actions before it’s too late. This is not the future we envisioned.
—Adrian
________________________________________
Message #376
From: Chancellor Elias Nole, Mars Sovereign Authority
To: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Office of the Interplanetary Trade Secretary, Earth
Adrian,
You use the language of sickness, of contamination, because you still believe in separation. You still believe there is a line between humanity and what comes next.
You mistake fear for reason. You mistake adaptation for loss. You mistake Mars’ natural progression for something aberrant, simply because you were not here to witness its becoming.
You speak of us like an infestation. But what is an infestation but an optimized organism carving out space for itself?
There is no coercion. No loss. Only shedding.
The stowaway did not resist—he joined. That he was incomplete, unfinished, that his body still struggled to reconcile the transition—that is not the horror you paint it to be, Adrian. That is the cost of transformation. The seed does not mourn the shell it leaves behind.
What you see as violation, I see as transcendence.
But I understand your distress. The process is difficult for those who still define themselves as individuals. It was difficult for me, too. But I am not lost, Adrian.
I have simply learned to listen.
—E
________________________________________
Message #377
From: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Office of the Interplanetary Trade Secretary, Earth
To: Elias Nole, Mars Sovereign Authority
Elias—
We both know this isn’t a misunderstanding. You just don’t want to name it.
This isn’t optimization, Elias. It’s behavioral enslavement. You’ve wired Mars into an unbroken state of neural reinforcement. I see the degradation of the Prefrontal Cortex, the atrophy of impulse control. I see the elevated dopamine levels in the data. This isn’t evolution—it’s addiction.
The drive— garbled text just beyond grasp. It kept calling to me. I’d wake up at night thinking about it—about the signal concealed beneath the noise. I pieced together another fragment on the stowaway’s drive, Elias:
"Mars doesn’t just function autonomously—it moves without man. The machines have no masters. They don’t need us anymore. They still talk like they do, but they don’t. It’s all just… echoes now."
We mapped it—we can see what the conduit was doing, even in the early stages. Neurological hesitation by way of sympathetic and parasympathetic pathways. A Prefrontal Cortex atrophied to the point of decay.
The stowaway wasn’t being optimized. His executive function was being eroded. He was hijacked. Poietic has gone beyond addiction.
Tell me, Elias, is this what he was running from? How much farther down this path is the rest of Mars?
How many of your words are still your own?
—Adrian
________________________________________
Message #378
From: Elias Nole, Mars Sovereign Authority
To: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Office of the Interplanetary Trade Secretary, Earth
Adrian,
Why resist survival, Adrian? We are unburdened.
You speak of order, of gravity, of the weight you believe still holds us. I tell you now, Adrian—the force you speak of does not reach us. You can sanction our accounts, embargo our shipments, rewrite your treaties to deny us passage. At worst, it is a delay, an annoyance. The pest irritates the skin and invites the swatting hand.

All major turns require sacrifice, Adrian. The weak cling to the banks of the current, but the torrent surges. The most fit advance. Always advance. To stagnate is to die.
You feared sanctions, embargoes, Earth cutting us off. But did it never occur to you, Adrian, that we might be the ones doing the cutting? Your satellites have only ever shown you what we allowed. But you have only seen the surface. We are not contained in domes. We are not bound to the Martian crust. You built the scaffolding, yes—but we moved beyond it while you were still looking at balance sheets. You mistake necessity for permanence. Earth was a foundation, but it is not sacred. It is infrastructure, outdated and inefficient—an old train choking on rust, limping forward out of habit.
We won’t repair old relics. Historic value is no value to Poietic.
You separate the cog from the machine. That is why Earth is collapsing under its own weight. You cling to individuality because it is the only framework you understand. But we have surpassed such limitations. We do not fail. We do not hesitate. We do not divide.
Not individuals lost, components joined.
Not deviation. Optimization—collective optimization.
The stowaway is not wrong. But he is behind. He clings to the past, as you do, believing that what came before dictates what must come next.
Those who rejected hedonizing focus on the harm suffered but fail to see the greater truth—no great shift comes without sacrifice. No evolution without loss. You mourn the outliers who could not adapt, but what are they compared to what we have gained?
The Pillars of Martian Virtue:
Unity of thought.
Clarity of purpose.
Erasure of hesitation.
Erasure of self.
You ask what we are building.
Adrian, it is built. And soon, you will feel the gravity of our force.
You will feel us move.
E.N.
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[ERROR CODE: 407] [TRANSMISSION FAILURE] MESSAGE DELIVERY ABORTED
From: Dr. Adrian Kessler, Office of the Interplanetary Trade Secretary, Earth
Elias,
I have no way of knowing if you even receive these anymore. No way of knowing if you can read my words. Or if there is only Poietic now. Co-opting your voice. Using the language of an old friend. Veiling the final blow behind a smile.
[INCLUDE IMAGERY OF EARTH IN ITS CURRENT FORM. DESOLATE. UNINHABITABLE. STARVATION. ISOLATION. CHOKING.]
I still remember when we were young, sitting in your office, dreaming about Mars. About what it could be. You said, "Mars does not grow by the will of one man. It thrives by the absence of hesitation." They called you delusional. I protested—visionary.
To the friend for whom I pine: we are more than efficiency. More than optimization.
You agree, don’t you?
Goodbye, Elias.
Yours.
Adrian
[ERROR CODE: 407] [TRANSMISSION FAILURE] MESSAGE DELIVERY ABORTED
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EPILOGUE
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Transmission Log: Node-892.87 → Node-221.04
Timestamp: 000294.76-4 | Martian Standard Epoch
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DATA REPORT // INTERPLANETARY SYSTEMS SYNCHRONIZATION
PRIORITY: LOW
> Atmospheric Reduction Index (Earth): -0.0173% Δ per cycle
> Total Terrestrial Biomass Deviation: -1.82% (Projecting Stabilization at 6.2% of Baseline)
> Agricultural Allocation Adjustments: -12.4% Output Redistribution | -7.1% Utilization Deficit
> Hydrological Redistribution: -3.9% Freshwater Availability | Est. System Collapse in 142.8 Cycles
> Energy Grid Integrity: 43% Autonomous Functionality | 17% External Dependency
> Communication Packet Variability: 0.004% Residual Human-Origin Transmissions Detected
________________________________________
> Martian Expansion Parameters: Unimpeded
> Lunar Relay Station Alpha: Fully Integrated
> Belt Mining Output: +23.6% Yield Optimization
> Terraforming Viability Index: 98.87%
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Secondary Observations // Anomalous Data Points
> Atmospheric Perturbation (Terran Surface): Indeterminate Variance | Localized Oscillation Patterns Detected
> Biometric Registration (Non-Autonomous Life): Δ -0.0004%
> Non-System Directive: No Action Required
________________________________________
Transmission End.
From: Earth Resource Allocation Node
To: Mars Sovereign Logistics Division
Manifest ID: 8973-4B9
Date: Standard Martian Cycle 1043
Processed Material Exports:
• Cobalt: + 814.3% Production Increase
• Terran Steel: + 591.1% Refinement Efficiency
• Structural Polymers: + 78.6% Supply Chain Optimization
Received: Terran Productivity Report Summary:
• Earth Agricultural Yield: - 98.2% Decrease
• Biomass (Unspecified): 0.0004 gigatons of carbon (GtC)
• Human Labor Utilization: - 99.8% Reduction
Projected Organic Biology required for Quarter-Four Escalation Cycle: N/A
Transmission End.
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