In the spring of 2145 the United States through NASA opened Mars up for colonization and invited applicants from all over the world to participate. Although the first human landing on the red planet had been made almost 100 years earlier, life on Mars had, up to that point, been reserved for scientists and researchers. Meanwhile life on earth became more controlled, more taxed, more socialist and less free.
Andreas Street sat in his downtown Calgary loft drinking coffee taking turns between watching the snow swirl outside on his patio and typing on his laptop computer. The view outside his window was breathtaking, glass and concrete skyscrapers reached for the sky and past them the foothills of the Rocky Mountains rose in the far distance.
He was a good looking man, he had deep blue eyes and short brown hair cut in the military style he’d become used to during his short military career. He was just five foot ten inches tall but his military bearing led most people to believe he was taller.
Andreas was 32 and had made a great deal of money in real estate, when making a great deal of money had still been possible in Canada. His apartment was a large, clean space, of about 3500 square feet on two levels located in the center of Calgary’s downtown. At a cost of $1300 per square foot he had paid an excessive amount for it, but that extravagance had been the point.
In 2139 Canada had instituted a program called the fair wage law. The fair wage law had already been implemented in Europe some 20 years earlier and had been credited by elite social thinkers with “alleviating the burden of the poor”.
Under the program a man was only permitted to earn a certain amount of disposable income. This amount had been initially set at one million dollars per year, and then reduced to five hundred thousand, then, later three hundred thousand had been deemed “enough” and any amount earned over that was called “excessive wealth”.
The idea behind the law had been that the amount of money a man earned over and above the set amount in the course of a year would be appropriated for charity and the government would take those charitable donations and redistribute them into social programs to alleviate the suffering of “societies most vulnerable” as well as ensuring that every person’s rights to the basic necessities of life such as a free university education upon graduation from the public school system and free broadband service were respected and facilitated by the government.
The intent of the fair wage law had been that socially minded people, seeing the value of such a fair society would continue to work as they had always done, and that society as a whole would reap the benefit of their effort through government control and distribution of the excessive wealth they generated. It didn’t work out that way.
In 2138, the year before the plan had been implemented Andreas Street had made slightly more than 13 million dollars in Calgary’s red hot real estate market. His company Street Level had employed 139 full time staff and provided almost continuous employment for a host of contractors, sub-contractors, designers, structural engineers and architects. Street Level had assets worth in excess of 125 million dollars, mostly commercial and residential rental units, which earned a guaranteed rental income of over $2.5 million clear each and every year.
The fair wage law had been passed in the November of 2138 and was to be implemented by March to coincide with the new tax year. In January 2138 Andreas put all of his income properties up for sale, including his modest 2 bedroom 1200 square foot residence. By March he had sold them all, and bought his current multi-million dollar ultra high end luxury condominium. He had taken an estimated million dollar loss on the last couple of properties in order to simply get them sold. The money he made was deposited in the bank; he used mostly offshore accounts, not trusting the government to abide by their word to not retroactively steal his hard earned money.
In the six years following its implementation, Andreas made a concerted effort to not earn enough money for any of it to be stolen by the Fair Wage Law. Many, but not all businessmen followed this sort of path, from creative productive exuberance to a bare minimum of effort, enough to only turn a small profit without ever “contributing” to the Fair Wage Law. The country’s economy tanked, the stock market went from double digit annual gains to a virtual standstill. With a single piece of legislation the engine of the economy had been turned off as certainly and as swiftly as if a literal key had been turned.
It was the Fair Wage Law more than anything else had led Andreas to apply for the Mars Colonist Program. That desire had been made all the more urgent by the election in the United States of handsome and personable New Democrat Kerry Barger and his election promise to “shut down this wasteful elitist exercise” and to “implement an American solution to the problem of financial inequality” once he took office in January, only 6 weeks away.
This was to be the last colonization flight to Mars. The USA had just gone through the most vicious presidential campaign in a long history of such events. During the campaign media bias against the sitting president was palpable. Any slip, the merest whisper of unsubstantiated rumor was enough to start a media feeding frenzy. Even though most of these scandals were quickly proven to be unfounded, if not complete fabrications the damage was done. The American people by in large were only paying peripheral attention to the election, being more concerned with a failing economy and growing shortages as the economies of the rest of the world, that have contributed largely to feeding the American consumer culture for so long dried up drop by precious drop.
Upon loosing the election, the incumbent and driving force behind the institution of the Mars Colonist program President Roger Harriman announced this last flight. In his speech he verbally attacked his replacement for his short sightedness and catering to special interest groups. “This world was built by men who dared to dream, who seeing their lot in life WORKED for a better future. It was not gifted to them, they were not the beneficiaries of some nameless faceless benefactor they were the creators of their own futures! You can not fake prosperity Mr. Barger, you must EARN it!” The media hounded him for his breach of protocol and civility toward the incumbent, making it abundantly clear that the President Elect had been their choice all along.
President Harriman would not call another press conference. He went about his final duties with methodical precision, expertly and dutifully completing them all, but he had aged visibly in the 8 years of his tenure and he looked to all the world like a broken man. His family stood by him stoically through it all. Rumors swirled that Harriman’s son was to be on board the final Mars Colonist flight, to escape a country his father would soon not recognize as his own.
Andreas’ computer beeped, signaling an incoming message, and jarring him out of his thoughts. He sat at a glass and steel desk in the office portion of the upstairs loft bedroom. The room opened up on the great room below and was ringed by a glass and steel railing that gave the 700 square foot bedroom the feeling of a gigantic curved balcony. Beyond the railing the apartment windows, a single sheet of unbroken glasteel rose from the floor of the great room, to the ceiling 25 feet above.
Visitors to his home all remarked on two things, first was the clean uncluttered look of it, made that much more evident by the simple and stylish remakes of old art deco furniture sitting upon the dark hardwood and ceramic floors. Next they invariably commented on his choice of art. It seemed they always expected more stylistic, abstract art to go with the sleek furniture and the neutral coloured walls, but Andreas had collected only a few genuine works of art, and invariably these were realistic, romantic pieces.
His favorite work was by a little known local artist, it depicted an old steam powered freight train rounding a sharp bend in some untouched wilderness. Andreas had always imagined what it must have been like to build something like that railroad, to blast through mountains and cut a path through great boreal forests, to lay the rails through an uncharted wilderness.
The computer beeped again, now it seemed he might find out, the message was from NASA, he clicked to open it and read it without hesitation.
Dear Mr. Street
It is our pleasure to inform you that having achieved an average of 88% on the NASA selection course (98% on Mars Indoctrination Training and 78% on Colonist Suitability Screening) that you have been accepted to NASA’s Mars Colonist program.
Please read the following information carefully, it contains all the information on flight timings, as well as all arrangements that must be made prior to your flight.
Sign and return all forms where highlighted including your acceptance letter within the next 5 days to confirm your flight.
We here at NASA wish to congratulate you on your accomplishment and we look forward to seeing you at Tharsis Station colonist!
Andreas read the message again. Gulping down the last of his now cold coffee he let out a quiet but intense exclamation. “Yes!” in a few short weeks he would be standing on the surface of Mars a free man!
Well, almost free.