Elysius

In the end, Uranius Mons didn't put up much of a fight.  Everything went according to procedure. No accidents were reported in the 3 weeks it took to demolish it. According to all corporate standards, it was a financial success. All 15,922 ft of Uranius Mons were completely flattened.

The event was messy. Metric tons of dirt, debris, carbon, and granite were flung wildly into the air. The sun disappeared behind the clouds of ashen smog. A great, dark canvas would slowly settle throughout the land as Mars would heal itself. It was a wonder that the construction crew was even able to operate in near-total darkness. 

One such worker was then climbing down from the cockpit of the massive machine that made it all possible. Elysius descended through a great fog, dirt particles tapping wildly at his suit. Every rung of the ladder would only appear to him as he clung down onto the next. Blind faith in the resources and durability of Daintree Space Corp. was what kept him in motion. His job was done. 

Eventually, he ran out of rungs to climb down and his feet landed upon something solid. A piece of rock stung at his company issue debris helmet, leaving a scratch upon his visor. If he’d been wearing less protection, a little projectile like that could have lobotomized him. He tried not to think about it as he lowered himself down the next three flights of stairs and four sets of ladders. 

A solid thirty minutes of treacherous maneuvering passed before he planted his feet upon the Martian soil. He imagined the crunch of dust beneath his feet like the Astronaut explorers of old. With his helmet on and the remaining roar of the winds, he couldn’t hear himself think. His journey was far from over. He didn’t dare take a vehicle the rest of the way as no rail would have been clear enough for a train or gondola, and no road would be visible enough to traverse. Instead, Elysius walked along in the dirt, his compass pointing him the right direction. There were to have been tethers placed into the soil for him to follow, but even those had been flung away by colossal winds and debris. 

Typical, he thought to himself as his HUD’s GPS led him back to base. He looked around for his coworkers, not really expecting to see any of them silhouetted against the red grain. If the tethers had been gone, then he wondered if they were already back at the Hab, cleaning up and marking down another tally on their list of successful missions. 

He lost track of time, his breath calmly puffing in and out of his respirator. His visor began to fog after a while, but by that point, he’d already fallen into a thoughtful trance. He’d always been a very clean child, heavily focused on neatness. His father had only once had to yell at him for the state of his room, only dirty because he had been reorganizing. Never in his dreams had his job been to deconstruct. He was born to create. His path had led him from crayons to colored pencils, colored pencils to graphite, and from graphite to stylus. He’d been an architect at heart his whole life. 

And yet here he was, alone in the dirt. 

In the darkness there wasn't much to look at aside from the barely visible martian floor. He looked instead at his gauntlets, thick and heavy around his once delicate hands. How years passed, he thought to himself.

A glint of movement in the torrent of earth caught his attention. It was a glitch in his HUD, repeating every thirty seconds or so. In his daze, he must have missed it, only noticing after God-knows how long. His compass had been rotating, slightly to the right before glitching back to where it ought to be pointing him. His helmet may have sustained damage at some point and lost connection from the Hab’s GPS signal. In a situation like this, it was important not to panic. Uranius Mons was a volcanic mountain, now flattened. That being said, he would need to watch his step as volcanic rock could easily waste away his Environ-suit and burn him into vapor. 

His steps grew slower as the panic set in and frequently, he raised his hand to his comm link in his helmet. The signal was weak, he could tell by the unsteady warbling of the static. 

He tried again to think of his childhood. His Hab-style home. Douglas, his first pet parakeet. But every memory just didn't feel strong enough. He couldn’t think his way back to peace. He was damn scared. The fog on his visor dampened further as he began to sweat. Elysius lifted his gauntlet to his visor, trying in vain to wipe the sweat from his brow. His life support tallies on the left side of his HUD showed his heart rate increasing, which only furthered his anxiety. Elysius forgot how to take long, steady breaths. The wind outside his suit even seemed to be coming along stronger, blasting at him in intervals with extreme force.

 He began to hyperventilate. 

Elysius found that despite all the corporate training and research that went into keeping him calm, his legs had a mind of their own. He breathing sped up so his legs pumped faster. It was the only thing that made sense to him as he forgot what he was doing entirely. 

Shale, dust, and other things ripped at his suit, scratching his helmet more and more. Tiny cracks began to surface along its edges, where the supports had already put more pressure into the glass. A pebble permanently embedded itself on the right side of the visor. 

Another gust hit, toppling him over.

He lay there, breathing hard and fighting back tears. It wasn’t fair. He didn’t even want to be there. The cold, early morning air was now seeping in through his Terramask. The dust poured in, encrusting the air filters. His own respirator began to choke him. 

He scrambled and clawed at his face, his gauntlets rubbing feebly on mask locks. He screamed, or tried to, at least. His fingers began to numb and his grip faltered. A vignette encased his peripherals as his vision waned. 

At last, his index finger caught the locking mechanism on the right side of his helmet. He dislodged it from his head and took a deep breath. He felt his lungs puff full, but there was no reprieve. With what little air he had, Elysius coughed out blood-red dirt. 

Though his eyes were open, his vision left him. Numbness overcame him, save for the tickling across his face. He reached into a pack on his right leg and pulled out a kerchief. Placing it to his mouth, he finally pulled in a fraction of his breath. 

Elysius stood there, in the storm, slowly feeling his nerves return to him. The strange tickling sensation across his face blossomed into pain. Without the protection of his helmet, pebbles slashed across his skin, opening deep gashes along his face.

Elysius covered his head with his arms, waiting in painful silence for something to happen. There was nothing in the world to do but wait. He could walk, but with no HUD or compass to direct him, he could end up in a pool of open magma. 

He was lucky, he thought. If he had been born just four decades ago, the atmosphere would have killed him the moment he’d taken off his respirator. But the terraforming process had been under way long enough to keep a human breathing for at least two hours before significant damage harmed them. 

As he stood there covering his face holding his gauntleted arms before him his thoughts Trace back to his parents and childhood. Mars was an ever-changing Frontier. From one generation to the next there was so much change. There was a time when people couldn't breathe on Mars. There was a time before trees or Flora or fauna had been introduced. In Elysius’s life alone, entire ecosystems had been created.

Suddenly it stopped. The storm quieted. 

Elysius found the strength to stand up. He did his best to ignore his bloodied gauntlets as he peeled them from his face. The storm, at least for the time being, drifted away, a great wall of red dust off to rage somewhere else. 

Elysius Stood in silence. The wisping and withering of the wind was the only sound. It was a long and quiet moment as he stood there. Droplets of blood rolled down his Terrasuit. Somewhere off in the distance, the Terradozer stood as the only landmark. Uranius Mons was gone.

 Elysius stared in awe. Where there once was 15,922 ft of mountain, now there was nothing. Mars had yet to have been completely terraformed. no ecosystem would mourn the mountains lost. No family would remember hiking up the mountain's trails or staying in a cabin on its surface. This is why Daintree Space Corp chose this location for its geothermal power source.

And yet… Elysius felt a pang  of sadness. While this may have been the first time he had ever been to Uranius Mons, he was in essence its destroyer. It was his job after all. But now he was dying, and had much to contemplate. His impact on this planet was but a tiny scratch. He was the son of a miner for a father and a criminal for a mother. Inmates on Mars didn't go to prison, they went to work. Conveniently enough, his father had been mining too when he met his mother.

 Elysius wondered how long this would go on for. How many mountains would they destroy? How much change would Mars endure? Did any of it even matter if there was no one left to mourn it?

Elysius thought it all over as the recovery team picked him up… as they dressed him with bandages, as they paid him with workers compensation… as they threatened him to come back to work as soon as his physician deemed him fit or else be terminated. 

The error with the tethers went reported but was deemed merely an occupational hazard. The Terradozer fulfilled its purpose. If the safety tethers happened to have been sucked up, it wasn’t worth fretting over. This wasn’t Earth. Accidents were prone to happen. 

Elysius made a full recovery. Scar tissue lined the parts of his face from the debris, but with a little makeup and a full beard, he looked good as new. 

In twelve weeks’ time, he went back to work, piloting the Terradozer over mountains and ravines, creating optimal, flattened landscapes. One after another, monuments and natural wonders made way for mines, resorts, factories, dome cities, and space ports. 

Elysius watched with envy as architects from Earth constructed cities and environments he had only dreamed of. On more than one occasion, he had seen buildings straight out of his sketchbook constructed in eerie coincidence. But he was Elysius, the destroyer, not the architect. 

And eventually he had enough. 

Daintree Corp had hired him to destroy just about every mountain save for Olympus Mons itself. He had complied, fulfilling his duties, paying his rent, living the life cut out for him. 

And one day the assignment came in. He was to destroy a behemoth. Elysium Mons itself. The very mountain he’d been named after. 

A plan developed in those weeks in advance. He studied the Terradozer’s manual fervently; absorbing more information than any pilot would be expected to know. He told no one. 

As the crisp morning air stirred, Elysius sipped his steaming mug of coffee. The foreman, a man named Thrascian, shouted it was show time. Elysius poured out the rest of his drink and began the steep climb into the cockpit. He watched as the dawn swept over Elysium. Pausing on the rungs of the ladder, twelve stories up, he remembered his father had mined under Elysium where he met his mother. His parents had met in that mountain. His mother had painted that mountain. His father had named him after that mountain. And now he was destined to destroy it. 

A dome city, they said. That was what was to replace it. The mountain itself was too damn large to demolish entirely. Instead, they would cut it in half, following the designs another architect firm had drawn up on Earth. 

Marketers. That’s all they were down there. Marketing Elysius’s home world. 

Well, he’d give them something to talk about. As he reached the cockpit and took a breath, he factored in the settings he’d learned. Elysius altered the trajectory of the blades, having them curve inward in an arrowhead point. 

When the radio buzzed to life and ordered Elysius to start, he did. At full speed. 

The Terradozer rammed into the side of the mountain, shale bouncing off of its armor. The whirring blades cut right into the crust of the mountain and the dozer pushed forward. Somewhere in all the chaos and the noise, he heard the foreman on the radio; first asking questions, then shouting orders. 

Elysius knew he didn’t have time. They would shut off the Terradozer’s power remotely and his hijinks would be over. He amped the dozer’s mining speed up to maximum. 

The sunlight disappeared altogether.The sleet was pounding on the deck of the dozer. Elysius knew he’d entered the mountain. Part one of the plan was complete.

The power to the dozer shut off. 

Elysius sighed. He’d thought he’d have more time before they’d caught on to something being wrong. It was still early enough that he could reverse the dozer and take the reprimanding. But they would cut his pay. They would force him through more training. A psychiatric evaluation and discussions with HR would ensue. 

So he followed through with his contingency plan. He turned on the back up power to the dozer. It roared back to life and continued digging through the mountain. 

He carved out a hole until he was sure there was no sunlight above him. He drove the dozer into the core of the mountain, ignoring Thrascian’s angry demands. It actually made him chuckle. 

Once he’d carved far enough in, he directed the blades upward and rotated the dozer. This part would be dangerous, but it was the only way to ensure the dozer would never see sunlight again. Elysius said one final goodbye to the World Dozer and slid down the ladder. 

The blades turned automatically, slicing away the ceiling in the freshly dug tunnel. Elysius dodged stray rocks and other debris as he scrambled down. This time, he’d ensured his Terrasuit could take a beating, paying extra to have it reforged. 

It payed off as stones plinked off of its surface.

Once he landed on the ground floor, Elysius took to a dead sprint through the tunnel. Despite the storm, this time there would be no getting lost– it was a straight shot and there hadn’t been any volcanic activity in this region of the mountain in centuries. 

Or so he thought until the dozer broke through a vein of magma. 

Elysius glanced back at the machine one final time before it was engulfed in liquid lava. If burying the infernal device wasn’t enough, completely encasing it in magma did the trick

There was no ceremony on Elysius’s end. It was his last act of destruction and that was that. He ran for his life. 

* * *

When they asked Elysius what the hell happened, he answered Daintree’s two favorite words, “occupational hazard.”

The Daintree Mars Construction Operation was dealing with a massive setback. Daintree’s investors were furious. When fresh colonists, already in transit from Earth, learned of the Terradozer’s demise on Elysium, lawsuits engulfed the corporation. 

Of course, Elysius didn’t evade his punishment. As was the case of his mother, he didn’t go to prison. He went to work.

Once again Elysius was reunited with his family. In the mines of Elysium Mons. 

The end.