Welcome Aboard

(This story contains themes which may be triggering. It mentions substance use, sex, and being detained against one's will)

Jake entered his small apartment, dumped his keys onto the desk, emptied his pockets, and walked to the refrigerator for a sparkling water. He sat at the computer. Mentally and physically exhausted, Jake pulled up YouTube and clicked on a short video. 45 minutes later he realized he had been scrolling through videos and doing nothing he wanted to do. His body ached. He felt like zoning out. He glanced at the “art table." A jumbled pile of things. Ideas for art swam through his imagination at work, but his job left him exhausted.

Jake clicked on a video. “Five ways to build wealth that every rich person knows.”

A tedious array of misinformation.

Jake clicked another: “Mines ready to go on Mars,”

“Thirty years after the first Starship launch, Musk Interstellar has completed installation of its Martian mining infrastructure. The site—located near the Cerberus Fossae fault lines—is equipped with modular drills, atmospheric processors, and solar-fed refining units. But despite the technological readiness, actual mining operations remain on hold.”

“Company officials confirm that the equipment is fully operational, but the workforce needed to begin extraction has yet to arrive. The first wave of trained personnel is expected to land within the next six months, marking the beginning of human-led resource harvesting on Mars. Until then, the rigs stand silent—waiting for boots on regolith.”

Jake let the video play and picked up his phone to check his bank balance. He was doing okay with his budget, but not managing to save much. He knew it was his own fault. He had let himself wander through his early life, smoking a lot of marijuana, making art, working at two-bit jobs, and directing most of his thought and energy into trying to get laid. He wanted a better job, a desk job, or something that wasn't so physical. He wasn't in good shape, and though he had quite smoking cigarettes and weed about 15 years earlier, his lungs were not as healthy as they should be. He was a little over weight.

Regolith? What is that? Jake asked himself. He opened the AI on his browser: “What is Regolith?”

Regolith is the term for the layer of loose, unconsolidated material that sits on top of solid bedrock. It includes things like:

Dust

Broken rock

Soil (on Earth)

Fragments from meteor impacts (on the Moon or Mars)

On Earth, regolith can be biologically active and support plant life. But on other celestial bodies—like the Moon, Mars, or asteroids—it’s typically dry, dusty, and formed by billions of years of impacts, erosion, and solar radiation.

Mars regolith contains minerals and ice that could be mined for fuel, water, or building materials.

Lunar regolith is rich in helium-3, a potential fuel for future fusion reactors.

So when you hear about mining operations on Mars or the Moon, regolith is the stuff they’re digging into.

“Well, that is interesting.” Jake spoke softly to himself.

Jake opened his email. Nothing but junk. Jake got up and walked to the kitchen to make dinner. His back and knees hurt as he did and he was tempted to sit down and do nothing, but he knew he needed to eat and go to bed before it got too late. “I need to earn more money!” Jake declared loudly, as though he had an audience, partly just to hear his own voice, and partly as a kind of prayer to the universe. Jake put some music on to listen to while he fried a hamburger.

He sat back down at the computer, and asked the AI how he could earn some extra money. Jake was reading through various tips for side hustles while he ate, and one thing caught his eye.

Restless awareness crowded into Jake's sleep. He felt discomfort. An exhaustion and weakness which longed for sleep without being able to fully sleep. Weird dreams pressed into Jake's mind and disjointed things occurred. He was split into two. His mind was in two places at once and flowing like a bridge made of water. This gave way to the sense of being immersed in water. He dreamed of things, and as often happened, his dreams had no connection to his own lived experience. He saw people and places which seemed imported from another mind. The dreams receded and he raised up toward wakefulness. That weird suspended place of bad sleep which hangs in some black hell of dissolution. Eventually, though, alertness overtook him, and Jake lingered in the bed, not wanting to get up. His mouth and nose were dry. The air felt warm and stale. Jake had to pee, and this drove him to sit up and place his feet on the floor and then open his eyes, but once he did he noticed that something was wrong. This was not his bedroom. It was dark, except for a light coming from under a gap at the bottom of a nearby door. His eyes adjusted little by little and he could make out that he was in a small room, which had a toilet, a sink, and a chair next to a desk like ledge jutting from the wall. He got up and walked to the toilet and relieved himself. Next he found a light switch and an LED light flickered to life over head. He tried the sink, and drank some water from his cupped hands. The water sputtered from the faucet like there was air in the pipes. He didn't recognize the clothes he was wearing. He appeared to be in a prison cell. He tried the door and it was locked. How did he get here? Jake fought to suppress the rising sense of panic and fear in his body.

Jake splashed water on his eyes to help him revive more, while he weighed the facts in his mind, hoping that some sensible conclusion would form. He had the feeling that his skin was wrong, like he had been hastily poured into his body. Everything just felt off. He got up and moved around, but after a little while he discovered something that was as startling as this strange place. His aches and pains were gone. His knees felt brand new. His back didn't hurt. His eyesight was better. Though this was momentarily exciting, all it did was make him panic more. He went to the door again. No window, but the gap at the bottom of the door was almost 4 inches. He got down on the floor and looked under the door but all he could see looked like another door across a hallway. He got up and sat on the bed. A deep gloom overtook him and his state of panic increased. He got up and began banging on the door with his fist and shouting. “Hey! Hello! Is anyone there? Where am I? How did I get here?”

He kept that up for about five minutes and then stopped because no one came or responded. He focused on listening to the quiet to see if any faint sounds came to him. As the enveloping silence of the place flooded back over him his mood worsened. Some primal fear that he had not even known of rose up in him, and his spirit churned in a depressive state within him. He felt leaden and his chest felt tight. His heart rate increased, and he felt on the verge of actually crying, but the release of weeping was stuck in his throat, which became sore and dry. He got up and drank some water. Splurt, sputter, splash. All of a sudden a tray was slid under the door.

Jake was startled, and once his senses returned he ran to the door shouting, “Hello, whose there? I need help! Where am I? What's going on?” Jake heard the soft click of a door down the hallway outside, and he knew that whomever was just there was now gone. He examined the tray: 4 plastic tubes filled with something the consistency of peanut butter. Jake realized that he was hungry, and he opened one. It had no real smell or flavor. Sort of bland and chalky. He ate one, and then the rest. Three of them were tan and one was green. “What is this stuff?:” Jake wondered.

His mind raced with possibilities abut his position. "If I was dead and in hell, I don't think I'd be fed,” he reasoned. “ The green one must be the vegetable course,” he wondered. “I have heard that prison food was really bad, but I didn't know it was this bad.” “How did I get here? Did I go out and get drunk, and commit a crime I can't remember?” He spoke aloud to himself. Jake never drank anymore. He had long ago given up drugs, smoking, and drinking, though his aching body sometimes tempted him toward drinking, he never did because it just made him tired and hungover the next day, and he didn't enjoy being drunk. “What did I do?”

Jake did not think he was capable of committing a crime. He was oblivious to the selfish person that he truly was. Lust and his desperation for acceptance drove him to sleep with and date women he met. Jake would always find some reason why this one wasn't working out, and he would break it off, and then suffer through throws of depressive agony over the impossibility of finding love. Jake didn't know the first thing about what love was, and he also didn't know that he didn't know. He wanted it to be easy. He wanted it to please his ego, his sexual appetite, and to not challenge him at all. He felt that not conceding to being with someone who didn't share his every interest was a way of just being honest. He was 55 and single and had been single for over ten years at this point. He had given up really looking for a relationship now, and his age had dwindled his desire. Jake thought he was generally a good person. Jake didn't know the first thing about what it really meant to be a good person.

Suddenly the door opened. Standing at the door were four men. A small man in a lab coat, a thin man in a suit, and two large men who appeared to be guards. “We see that you are awake and have eaten. That is good. We need you to come with us?” Jake stood up from the bed where he had been sitting, but as soon as he reached his feet he felt uneasy. Jake halted, and spoke. “Where am I? Who are you? Why am I here?”

The man in the lab coat spoke again, I am doctor Rasmussen, and this is administrator Smith. Yes, it is natural to have questions. We understand. Please come with us. We can explain everything.” Dr. Rasmussen smiled at Jake, and Jake felt slightly reassured, though the presence of the guards was still ringing alarm bells in his instincts. They walked out of the room into a very bland metal corridor. Smith and Rasmussen walked ahead of him, and the two guards right behind. The passage way was quite long, and there were doors all along it. It still looked very much like a prison to Jake.

Jake was used to judging people based on their appearance. He had a true bias for attractive and fit people. He was neither of those things, which is one of the reasons he didn't really like himself all that much. Though he was not consciously aware that he made these judgments. Dr. Rasmussen was a short slightly pudgy man with that kind of thick black five o'clock shadow whiskers, that always make a person look slovenly no matter how well dressed they are. Smith was thin and almost ascetic looking. He did not look like someone who would at all sympathize with human passions. All four of the men were very pale.

They went through a series of doors and different spaces until they came to a large open warehouse area which had lots of heavy machinery. It reminded Jake of his warehouse job, though everything here was new and clean.

They continued past this area into another hallway, and eventually they came to a small room with a plain table and a few chairs. It reminded Jake of an interrogation room from police dramas on TV. Jake sat down, and Dr. Rasmussen and Administrator Smith sat opposite from him. The other two man remained standing. Dr. Rasmussen began.

“Now Jake, I have to fill you in on a lot of things. They are interesting things. We know a lot about you. We know that you are an artist. We know that you don't like your job very much. We know that you are a broadly curious person who is interested in many things, and so we know that you will be very interested to know some detailed information about the Musk International mining operation that is all set to begin work on the planet Mars.”

Jake sat and listened, somewhat awestruck, and reassured by Dr. Rasmussen's friendly tone, and the fact that he knew so much about him.

“The thing of it is Jake, the mining operation on Mars is going to be hard work, and getting people back and forth between Mars and Earth is going to be expensive. Musk International is willing to pay a premium for people willing to do the job. Maybe you have heard of those remote Alaskan fishing jobs, where people live there for almost a year, and make good money. The Mars mining is going to be like that, only far more remote and demanding. Tell me, does this information interest you, so far?”

Jake replied. “Yes. Yes, it is interesting. Though I don't know what it has to do with me, and...”

“We will get to that.” Dr. Rasmussen interrupted. “Jake, what we want to know is would you like to earn some extra money?” Dr. Rasmussen's eyes focused on Jake and his eyebrows went up, while a friendly smile spread across his lips.

“Well, yes. Sure I would. Though I don't think I am up for a remote mining job on Mars, if that is what you are offering.” Jake responded.

“Great. Fine. No Jake, we know that you do not want to personally go to Mars. We would not ask you such a thing. But Jake, my friend, we have a proposition for you. What has not been leaked into the general public is that certain technology and medical fields have made some amazing breakthroughs the past few years. What we can do Jake is take a sample of your DNA and grow an adult clone copy of you. If you agree to let us do that, and sign all the paperwork, you can start receiving a monthly stipend. Essentially we will pay you, and from what I understand it is a wage almost twice as much as what you earn now. You could quit your job and work on your art full time. What do you think Jake?”

This offer swept through Jake's imagination and his entire body reacted with a sense of excitement, as he tried to process what it means.

“Wait, are you telling me...” Jake had put the pieces together, “Are you telling me that you want to make a copy of me, and send that copy to Mars to be a miner, and you will pay me every month? For how long?”

“Yes. That is the idea. You catch on quick.” Dr. Rasmussen replied. “For how long, you ask. Well, for the rest of your life, of course.”

“And what happens to the copy of me?” Jake asked.

Dr. Rasmussen gathered himself for a moment before responding. “I am not going to lie to you Jake. The copy of you will be on Mars working the mines, and it will be, essentially, a slave. It will be well feed and well looked after, as a vital piece of equipment, and there will be some things to enrich its life, but we just don't have the budget to allow for people to continually be traveling back and forth between Mars and Earth, so the copies will just have to stay on Mars. But you will get paid very well for this. Tell me Jake, is this something you are willing to do?”

Jake found himself immediately imagining what he would be able to do with that money. He could quit his job, and spend all his free time painting. He thought about his job and about how much it left him exhausted every day, and about how much he longed to be able to make art and do the things that he really wanted to do. With absolute conviction, and almost a sense of glee about him, he looked back at Dr. Rasmussen and said, “Yes. Yes sir. That is something I would do. Is that what you are offering me.”

Dr. Rasmussen and Administrator Smith both smiled. Smith stood up from his chair, and opened a panel in the wall. He pushed a button and the ceiling began to slide over. As it did it revealed a glass skylight roof. It was night out, and the stars were shinning, filling the sky.

“Jake, we already now that you would make such a deal. You have already made the deal. You are the copy. We are already on Mars. You will begin working tomorrow. Rest assured that the real you is on the Earth pursuing his dreams. You will grow to become accustomed to this place and the work. Welcome aboard.”