Sergeant Sean Glass of the Christchurch Cube-Iron team echoed within; doubts afflicting his faith, anger harrowing his soul—his voice coming to communion before the Chapel cross, “Why, must I have the memories of my Model, the faces of his wife and children clear in this corrupt vessel… I’m merely man-made, a copy, a clone, a sweating, bleeding shadow of some long gone man…”

Tears welled in his eyes as he stood in the Team Chapel, his nine men awaiting for him outside. A soft step behind him was further cushioned by the serene voice of his minister, his mentor, “Sean, we are yet made in God’s image—we have been stolen away and copied, not created. You have no augmentations. You have not been programmed to speak the words of long dead actors reciting scripts written by man.”

His chest heaved, raising his shoulders, calming himself, his men were outside. Charles, their minister, his Mentor, his father really, placed a soft sure hand on his shoulder, “Sean, Christ will take us up so long as we stay true.”

Pastor Charles could always set him at ease, “Sean, in Genesis, God made man a second time of clay. Our cloning, perhaps at the hands of these wicked men that we share this Martian exile with, was as surely God working through man as he did upon Job through the fallen angel whose name is not worthy of speaking between us.”

“Yes, Sir—Charles. But why, why am I and the other team sergeants being sent to quarantine at Ilion tonight? The men are nervous? Are they changing the rules again? Juicing up the Trojans and the Romans so my normal-range Christian men get hammered off the cage again?”

Charles Khurch moved around in front of Sean, not blocking the view of the Cross, made of actual ceder imported from Earth, not printed from the Martian dearth. Charles’s face, ever young, serene, clean shaven above a plain blue shirt, emitted trust: “Sean, Earth needs a Captain as did the Ark.”

“What, it’s going to be brushed by a comet next year—the day after the Finals, so I can watch it from a gurney.”

“Sean,” soothed his Mentor, “the vote was unanimous, only because I agreed, on the condition that you, the clone of a good Christian, with real Earth memories, not some copy of an action movie actor or athlete, lead the rest into exile.”

“What? I don’t understand,” Sean stammered.

“Captain Sean Glass, the evildoers that rule this planet and the scattered few spinning about the sun, have grown angry with the Cube-Iron Sergeants—people are calling you men ‘stars.’ Half of the twelve Caesars have discovered that their wives—and one degenerate husband—have been committing adultery with their sergeants—Meek is in a rage.”

“Why, Charles, why?”

“Brother, to make examples, to put a brake on celebrity culture rising again. Also, to send back human probes, you, the rest, implanted with intrinsic communications. They are bored, angry, curious, afraid… all of them wanting the first and best fief of what’s left after The Passage.”

“And, you, why did you agree, Sir?”

He could see Charles wince at the ‘Sir,’ and he faded a measure inside.

“Faith, My Captain—OUR Captain, that if God shined a light on Noah, Jonah too, that he might forgive us for abandoning our assigned portion of Creation. Sean, you know there are hundreds, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people, some of them Christian, marooned on Earth, awaiting the awful Passage. You, SON,” and Sean melted and hung his head at that, “You! You, deserve better than to be battling freaks, brutes and designer sinners in a geometric cage.”

Sean shook a bit, afraid to leave the world of his birth, damnation planet that it seemed to be, to abandon the artifices of life designed to house them in their exiled plight. Yet the soul of his model, the burning desire of the original man he was a copy of, to hear leaves rustle, smell grass grow, to breath air made by God rather than man, rose in him.

He saluted his pastor, as if he were Caesar himself, nodded in understanding, and turned to go, without a word—eyes dry, but red, chin set, determination overcoming the thrill of dread that swelled up from some wicked well dug in his brain to poison his faith.

His men stood all around, in their uniforms, broken noses, scared faces, eyes full of focus on him. He could not speak, but one by one, shook his hand, hugged his shoulders and walked past them down that hall to everywhere. Afraid to turn and look around, angry at what lurked ahead, determined to keep a light burning inside to keep off those shadows of doubt and conduct the mission without falling into sin and pride, he walked.

…

“Captain Glass,” greeted Dennis, his transporter, [0] “Pastor Khurch has directed me to rove you to Ilion. He does not trust the tubes today.”

Sean stopped and patiently complied with the fitting of his habit. [1] They stood at the airlock while his habit was gassed up. Sean had an idea. Earth was heavy gravity. They trained vigorously to set a strength standard that would hold up for a return. He had never thought he would be returning, rather his successor, trained to match his own standard.

The airlock opened. They stepped through to the outer hatch, and he enjoyed the rainbow sky of this fake-ass world as his men called it. [2] Looking up at the iridescent rainbow sky, and east at Big Rock Candy Mountain, [3] Sean decided to act like a Captain. “Let’s run, Dennis.. In these habits we can beat the rover, I know it.”

Dennis, who had a grin creasing his silicon face, asked, “Captain, do you wish to win, or eat my dust.”

Captain Glass lead off, not for long, as the robot easily took the lead. Infuriated him by mimicking a flagging runner, then tearing off, Dennis capered as only a robot can. The worst was when Dennis spotted rough footing ahead, sprinted to it at 40 MPH, then smoothed it over so his human would not turn a delicate ankle or knee.

An hour in, while the rest of the Cube-Iron sergeants were probably still getting tricked out in their uniforms and tubed in, Glass was topping the saddle of Big Rock Candy Mountain. Up ahead Dennis began waving frantically as he ran, his pale silicon arms heralding some great thing, then did a back-flip and danced a jig, waiting for his human.

Topping the ridge, the lichen undulating in rainbow shades and singing softly at his feet, Captain Sean Glass, promoted an hour ago by the only man on this planet that gave a d—… a darn, looked down upon the nearest and largest of the Mars towns, and snarled in disgust at the great dark cloud over-topping the uselessly spired, peaked and gargoyle-topped pods of Ilion. Meek’s taste ever ran to the eccentric. But this, darkening the sky over his habitat where the Council Sat, with the hubris to waste potentially teraforming means to reflect his mood, made Sean wish, for a moment that he wasn’t a Christian.

His mind darkened and his soul howled. An iron bound door in his guts creaked open and he began to pray. Then, Dennis, his mechanical mouth agape in human imitation, surprised him, “I understand, Captain, you wish you had a battering ram, a sword, an army…” Then Dennis turned and smiled, “I would surely blow the trumpet on your behalf—But Pastor Khurch said, ‘No.’

Sean’s stomach sank, “Dennis, you were only made with the understanding of Genesis, Exodus and the Gospels—I was there at your inception.”

Dennis grinned, “I can read, even when recharging, Captain. This is as far as I go. Without me nanny sitting you, as you run up under that dark cloud, even Meek will see a hero.”

The robot then stood and saluted him, “Go with God, Sir.”

He saluted Dennis, who scaled only 5’ 8”, and winked before tearing off at twice the speed that any man had ever run.

“Bleak Canaan, here I come,” hissed Captain Glass as he ran down the shoulder of this decorated shard of a shattered world back into Secular Podland, content now that he was headed to Earth.

…

Notes

-0. Transporters are robotic attendants. Those fabricated for the Church are versed in the Genesis, Exodus and the Gospels. These were as much of the Bible that Meek would permit to be imprinted on robots.

-1. The Solar Church of Christ equated their exile on Mars with a monastic earth experience and equated their habitat suits with the ancient habit.

-2. The Gods of Mars, as they were called by their loyalists, The Counsel as they knew themselves, with the exception of Mister Khurch, who named himself the Dissenter, suffered generally, and severely from depression, anxiety and neurosis. The clones, cyborgs and breeders had adjusted much better to Martian life. With a hundred years to go before a safe return to Earth to rule its seven continents could be made, The Gods of Mars had devoted more time to coloring the sky in scheduled hues to alleviate their emotional dysfunction, then they had to terraforming.

-3. Permanently adjusted with ocularly and musically empathetic lichen.