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After loss of the Ionian-Terran War, the Jovian world was forced to give up its colonies, including those on Venus and Mars. The former had a clean atmosphere and a bustling population, a widespread civilization with no room for expansion. The latter on the other hand had poor air and was too windy and sun beaten, the small civilization of Ionian descendants that lived there rarely tread planet side. Instead they had intermingled with, and taken over, most of the ancient Martian civilization and their complex tunnel systems.
Mars was seen as a financial opportunity for Earth, who’s population was brimming and sought expansion, so steps were taken to terraform him into a living planet again. The Ionian Crater Missions were only successful because they used the subterranean features of the indigenous architecture, but for a healthy civilization to prosper, large portions of the surface would have to be made more tolerable.
In the mid twenty-second century, sorties of mechanisms unmanned began to launch from Earth regularly, headed for new promising territory on Mars, only to land 720 days later in a windy red desert, all but barren if not for one more robot. They laid the infrastructures that allowed a new, slowly growing culture of Earthling immigrants to thrive. After a comically tame war with the new Martian government, Earth rightfully acquired the more hospitable portion of the planet, as well as the remainder of land on Luna still possessed by Mars. From there it was only a matter of time before a mass migration, initiated by the gold rush, would make sure life flourished on it’s surface.
Sorry, you probably know all of this already, I don’t know why I didn’t before but I just looked it up on the nets. I don’t remember them ever teaching us any of this Martian history in school, but maybe I wasn’t paying attention that day. Incase that’s not so and it just wasn’t part of the curriculum back on Earth, you’ll appreciate the lesson soon enough.
For the record, I never believed Mars ever completed terraforming before it was opened to the Outward Expansion; I still maintain this desolate rock is as dead as our Earth will soon be. No matter how much we tried to make this planet into her, Mars never fully gave into his mother. And for good reason I think, Mars should not support life, let alone set a par for Solatarian society. The green patches that Martians call lawns wouldn’t last without a constantly irrigating sprinkler and/or chemical enhancement. All the palm trees, coastal scrub and xeriscaping just make up the meager façade this place puts on in visage of fertility. In some of the better watered neighborhoods, where every house on the row runs on a timer, I will attest a mild array of flora, still mostly succulent and desert flowers, but lush and surprisingly colorful.
I’ve lived a year and a half here on a street just across from the abandoned sector, a windswept borough encroached upon by rusty desert a foot deep. The fact that there is even an abandoned sector or that we’re remotely near the desert in the first place should be a sign. There are also, of course, creatures that appear in the night, or rather make their presence known invisibly. The Martians tell horror stories about the Squamata and blame for terrible things they find done when they wake up, which actually does happen more frequently then you’d like to imagine. The Martians also blamed the Old Martians for not showing any concern in their mere existence of the reptilian pest, or not teaching us how to defeat them. Instead the natives worship them in part of their rituals, incorporating the terrible sandy scratching they make in the background of their dance.
I think it goes with out saying that the uninhibited rays of the sun, the dust devils or outright dust storms, the unsettlingly frequent tectonic and meteoric activity, and abundantly apparent scarcity of any real natural resource or nutrient rich soil in which one could find foothold upon only support my case. Mars is upset we’re squeezing the remaining soul from his skin like a pimple and won’t give into our will without a fight, in all of his stubborn divinity.
