Daleka Obala 1972 Biology Department

Inside the pod shuttle shelter on Mars, a xenobiologist with long, tied-back black hair and Balkan features stood gazing through a large red window. Her distant gaze drifted behind her glasses, observing the brewing storm outside, casting an eerie glow over the Martian landscape. A serene smile softened her face—so calming you’d run into her arms even if they were made of uranium.

The scene reminded her of home, but where home was blue, here everything was red.

“Just like in a kitchen… if I were a housewife,” she murmured, dissecting a creature known as a 'ratdog.' . She put aside a piece of white bloodied fur. Nostalgic Italian ambient music played in the background mixed with brown noise of the refrigerated ratdog corpses. 

Una terra promessa

Un mondo diverso

Eros sang. She thought to herself how convenient the algorithm is. To remind her of home, in the failed promised land of Mars. An uniformed desert with no diversity. Only half evolved rats as a base, promise of the species. Burn this flag. She finished slicing. Symmetry of the raw red heart burned her eyes, but she tried to be as clean as possible, not a drop of blood, clean cuts.

She spoke softly to the AI handler, a tall dog-like drone which transcribed her words in real time on a black-and-red Macintosh screen. 

“Ratdogs are an unusual blend of rodent and canine features, with a strangely disproportionate frontal lobe…” Lab was coated in pearl-colored metal, designed so every surface could be disinfected. Drone sprayed and sucked up the pool of blood around the sink. She started working on another ratdog body, this time the corpse was shaved. Her gloved hands moved deftly over delicate incisions, and as she worked, her vision began to blur. A flush of fever washed over her—a sensation nearly erotic, tinged with a discomfort that seemed to rise from somewhere deeper, pulling at her core with grief and longing.

In that instant, her mind wandered to Earth, to familiar warmth and sandy beaches, and the gentle lullaby of crashing waves. The memory brought with it an ache that made her yearn for that sanctuary, intensifying the loneliness within her.

A caged ratdog in the corner—six red eyes watchful, parched, blood-red tongue hanging from its mouth—stared at her intently. She addressed it, “You are a Hindu dancer, a demon. When I was young, you were nothing more than a figment of my imagination. And look at you now.”

She felt a growing connection with the creature, yet paradoxically, she noticed something primal, even savage, rising within herself. But not savage like her grandmother had been—her grandmother killed only to eat, with a depth and dignity that was far from mindless cruelty. This was something different, something Molochian, urban — a savagery born from the decay of her time, tied to an evil as cold as the cities themselves. Savage of the Western downfall.

Technological atheist celebrating nothing at all, a Piscine Jesus in the month of Saturnian Capricorn. They all lived like they chose to eat the ashes instead of the apple.

The weight of self induced sin weighed heavily upon her, as if she had trespassed a sacred boundary, abandoning her role as a scientist and embracing an unspoken transgression. A pang of regret surged through her, as she wondered if she had been so consumed by the pursuit of knowledge that she had overlooked the simple essence of life — the innate freedom for the 'ratdog' to exist - as a dog.

Her thoughts drifted to the Zrnovnica River, where she’d walked with her girls up to the old flour mill beneath Perun’s Peak. The girls had brought old Japanese umbrellas, and they swam in a small, natural pool to cool off after a long walk in the blazing sun. Water was crystal clear even though it was allegedly poisoned by a metal mine up the stream. Pool and stream glanced in soft jade green under sun, white water snake wound around her ankle in a spiral, disappearing just as quietly as it had come. So the water was clear she thought, locals lied about the metal mine pollution to keep tourists away. 

Once dried, they’d continued toward the horse stables and the quarry. Before reaching the stables, the river path led them to a concrete house with barbed wire fencing perched on a small rise just above eye level. A pit bull, thick-necked and chained, watched them pass from the ledge. She’d taken a picture of him, capturing his wary, silent presence. An old man with a golden retriever ambled by in the opposite direction and noticed the girls looking at the pit bull. In their native dialect, he smirked and commented, “See, every dog has a job. My dog isn’t a dog; he’s a pet. I work for him; he doesn’t need to work a day in his life. But that pit bull? His existence is conditioned. He’s on the job every day.”

In this solitary moment, as the storm raged outside and the caged ratdog's pleading gaze pierced her conscience, she found herself questioning the very foundation of her identity.

“Joanka you dumb woman, listening to even dumber men…” She talked herself down.

If only she had allowed the dog to be a dog, perhaps she could have unraveled the secrets of the universe without sacrificing the innocence that once resided within her. Perhaps she could have unlocked the universe’s secrets without sacrificing the purity that had once been so instinctive. Perhaps she could have unlocked the universe’s secrets… Perhaps she could have unlocked the universe’s secrets… The text on the black and red monitors kept repeating her thought, butchering it with its artificial intelligence protocols. Corrected it in various ways. 

She needed real air. Any real air. 

There was none on Mars.

Drone washed the red blood off her white body in a soft room. All the edges were oval in the bathrooms, she liked that. Naked and wet. Her unshaved legs and armpits spiraled ling hairs as she was a black balkan donkey, she laughed making joke at the bath drone. It smiled “Ha-ha-ha” back at her. In the next room there was an eggshell sauna, she dialed a prompt command for a massage and full body shave. Round drone fingers enveloped her, driving up and down on a massage table and vibrating her temples, her neck, pushing her body deeper into the silicone surface as a dough in a factory. She cried as the mechanic broke down her sore knotted calves, and waved as she fell asleep twenty two minutes into the operation. 

Rat dog with the tag M.M. 0072 was usually sleeping at this hour, but tonight he sniffed around in his cage, pacing from corner to corner pissed at the bright light. Joanka nicknamed him Marin Marsovac and was so fond of him as a baby that she let him live longer, ignoring the kill protocol. Mario was a teenage full grown ratdog with thousands of small sharp teeth and red blood tongue salivating. He had no nose because he didn’t depend on oxygen anymore. His nose fell off leaving a flat deformed snout. Marin liked Joanka a lot, he was in fact obsessed, in love. He watched her kill his comrades one by one, dissecting them in front of his six eyes. Marin encouraged her by wagging his tail every time she’d charity a glance at his plexi window. Goddess, Joanka. His morning star. He wanted to smell her hair but his snout fell off. He prayed she’d come closer one day. She told the drone she was afraid of him. He learned later that night what fear means. “Where is the Goddess? Why is she not turning off the bright light and kissing him good night? Marin did not like it. Did not like it.” Mad dog in him started pounding the glass, thick skinned rat tail. “Faster and faster I need Godess, my good Godess!” mad alien dog with his long claws. Rat tail pounded and pounded, breaking the cage he overgrew a long time ago. Glass left scars over the tattooed number sequence, JMBG, on his tail. M.M. 007 405 7321972.

Dog stepped onto the fiberglass floor. Paws rasped across the surface, scraping past the corpses and organ-filled jars. “I smell the Goddess’s hair. I smell her everywhere!” The air itself was saturated with her moist scent, every molecule steeped in it, pregnant as Jasmine flowers in Summer. Marin followed the trail to the steam baths, connected to the lab through a long air tunnel. A skinny long dog cut through the steam pool with the speed of a tiger, leaping to the other side where her scent was thickest. Through the oval glass window, he saw her lying in the center of the room.

She was bound to a contraption. Body stretched upwards, twisted into a cruel convex curve, each vertebra standing sharply against her skin under mechanical strain. Her breasts were hooked up with sharp chrome needles. Marin’s large, rounded ears caught the sound of slicing metal, thousands of razor-sharp edges working her flesh. His tongue salivated, and all the wish to embrace everything that is his goddess ached in his muscles, leaving the traces of fluid as he silently approached the throne of blades. "Closer my Godess will finally love me closer". But than the dog realized Her eyes rolled back, blank and white, as a needle from the machine stabbed her left eye, pulling it out. Joanka’s mouth opened wide in a silent scream, half-sedated, delirious from the ketamine infusion. She still felt pain.

Marin howled in agony, barking and barking, “My Goddess is unhappy! She’s not a rat dog! No cut! What is this machine doing? I smell, I lick.”

The dog burst into the dissection chamber where his ruler lay tortured, whipping his long tail to shatter the knives as the largest, clawed silver blade turned toward him. Marin dodged the blades, slapping down the smaller machines. Drones carved into his ribs as he bit through the silicon restraints until her body fell, free, to the ground. The master drone was too slow—its attempt to cut Marin’s tail failed, and he crushed its chrome skeleton with his jaws.

Joanka lay naked on the floor, half-dissected, her arm butchered. Marin pulled her away from the butcher’s table, trying to wake her. “I don’t like, I don’t like... goddess pain, machine hurts Marin, machine hurts Goddess.” Fearful she would never look at him again, the dog licked her face. Her hollow eye socket, her arm—he cleaned the blood from her soft skin and wrapped his long tail around her, carefully carrying his wounded Goddess to safety. “Where I go, we go. Away from bad room.” The ratdog, three times her size, balanced her in the air as he charged aimlessly through the tunnels.

At last, they returned to the lab, where Romero—a tall, red drone made by Porsche Corporation—lay dormant in the corner. At precisely 7 a.m., it activated, signaling an alert: Suspicious commotion. Scientist health level low. In moments, five Romerobots surrounded Marin, quickly overpowering him and reclaiming his Goddess. Chained, with the snout on the ground and neck tied, the ratdog panicked, barking frantically, until Romero began rehabilitating Joanka. Dog cried and worried. Romero printed new skin for the arm and generated a left eye, red like Martian stone. 

Marin waited by her side whaling and licking the hub she slept in, for seven days, and one evening, at sunset, she finally woke. Both with jasper eyes, Marin and Joanka looked at each other through the window hub. She remembered nothing, but she wanted to smell him and feel his soft short fur on her body. Howling at the Phobos and Deimos in the cruel red sky.

• S.M.Genesis