Veronique answered, clad as always only in pajama bottoms.

“I’m bored,” Yelena announced.

“Mr. Pollard is sleeping,” said Veronique, wide awake despite the hour.

“But I’m bored. I don’t have to sleep anymore, in this fucking skinsuit, and I’m terribly, terribly bored.”

“It’s a big house. Find something. Take a swim. There’s an indoor pool.”

“I don’t have a bathing suit.”

“I don’t either. Swim naked. No one cares.”

Veronique shut the door. Yelena knocked again.

Veronique, now visibly annoyed, opened the door again.

“I told you he’s sleeping,” she said. “Now behave yourself, or I’ll be forced to shut you off.”

Veronique shut the door. Yelena knocked again.

Through the door, she heard Veronique say “Bikini Atoll.”

And Yelena couldn’t move.

The sun rose, and several hours later, Veronique, still dressed the same, opened the door again and gently shut it behind her.

“Bikini Atoll,” said Veronique, who promptly headed into the living room.

It took Yelena a few seconds to realize she could move.

In the living room, Veronique was busy adjusting the latex couches, making them perfectly perpendicular to one another. Undoing any trace that Yelena lived there.

“I had all night to think about it,” Yelena announced, “and that’s a really fucking mean choice for a safeword.”

“It was your undoing in life. It seemed appropriate.”

“You’re a fucking bitch cunt whore,” Yelena snapped. She couldn’t help herself.

“Bikini Atoll,” Veronique said dispassionately, without even looking up.

Yelena watched Veronique finish straightening. Then Veronique left the room, glancing at Yelena on the way out but saying nothing.

Yelena could still move her eyes, so she could watch the sun slowly descend over the mountains.

She thought of her mother. She thought of Wilbur. And Raul. And 848’s sassy commentary, which she’d never hear again.

A few hours after nightfall, she heard Veronique’s voice speaking from the doorway behind her.

“We’re going to bed. We can talk tomorrow. I think Mr. Pollard will want to talk too, but I can’t promise anything. Bikini Atoll.”

As soon as she could move, Yelena tried to spin around, but she collapsed instead onto the floor. By the time she got to Mr. Pollard’s door, Veronique was already inside.

Through a double glass door in one of the lower levels, Yelena found the expansive pool. The entire room looked new – not only spotless, thanks no doubt to Veronique, but like it had never been used.

She took off her clothes and swam until that too felt boring.

Then she spent the night rearranging furniture, then rearranging it again.

The blackness beyond the living room’s glass wall felt empty and alone.

In the morning, with nothing better to do, she went to the hallway outside Mr. Pollard’s door. She didn’t dare knock, so she sat instead.

It wasn’t until noon that Veronique emerged, wearing a different pair of pajama bottoms but still no top. Never a top.

Yelena rose and followed Veronique into the living room, where Mr. Pollard’s assistant sighed and started returning the furniture to its original configuration.

“Don’t do this again,” said Veronique as she pushed a latex couch from the glass wall towards the fireplace. “How many other rooms did you mess up like this?”

“I don’t know. Maybe a lot. Why do you do this?”

“It’s my job.”

“Why bother? Mr. Pollard doesn’t even use this house. He only comes out of his room every few days.”

“Yes, but it’s his house, and he likes it to be orderly when he does use it. Speaking of which, don’t worry about being available. He’s staying in today.”

“What is it you two do in there?” Yelena asked. “Oh, I don’t mean the sex. Please, spare me the details. I mean all day.”

“Mr. Pollard works. I’m his assistant.”

“What does he do?”

“He’s a doctor.”

“Doesn’t he have any patients to see?”

“What did you think he’s doing all day?”

“But he’s locked in his room.”

“I forget you don’t know these things. Surgery’s all done remotely now. With holospace displays.”

“But he can’t be working all day. Even sleeping and fucking you can’t take that long. But he’s in there all day. And when he comes out, it’s only for an hour or two at a time, and that’s only to speak with me. To talk about his stupid fucking childhood. Why does he even own this house?”

“I suppose he likes having it. He’s a complicated man.”

Like he likes having you, Yelena thought. And me. Being an asshole’s not fucking complicated.

“Meanwhile,” said Yelena, “I’m bored out here. All day and all night.”

“You’re alive. And for all intents and purposes immortal, as long as you don’t displease Mr. Pollard. My advice: enjoy the big, stupid house he’s not using.”

“But it doesn’t even have a holofeed wall. That’s not exactly dripping wet.”

“Wow. You have no idea how cute you sound. Like an old holofeed. I don’t think anyone’s said ‘wet’ like that in twenty years.”

It wasn’t the first time Veronique had caught Yelena using outdated slang. All the expressions that had, until recently, made Yelena popular and trendy now suddenly made her seem older than Mr. Pollard. Which, of course, she was.

“So that’s a no on the holofeed wall?” Yelena asked.

“Yelena, no one’s used a wall to display a holofeed for fifteen years. They’re all immersive now. Or at least stand-free.”

Yelena’s eyes searched the walls and then the ceiling. “Where are the controls?”

“Only Mr. Pollard’s room has them, and they’re for work. Unfortunately, this house was built for relaxation and contemplation, not entertainment.”

“Entertainment is relaxation. So what am I supposed to do all day?”

“Almost every book or article ever written is available through holographic displays built into every table in this house.”

Yelena rolled her eyes. “That was quaint even in my time. No one actually reads those old things. People only have them to look snooty and superior. Do you have a VR interface?”

“Immersive holospaces have mostly done away with those.”

“So no VR?” Even my dog had VR, she thought.

“This house was built as a retreat. It was designed on certain principles, such as the idea that too much technology gets in the way.”

My fucking luddite mother was right: I’ve died and gone to hell. And she designed it.

“And what,” asked Yelena, “would technology get in the way of?”

“Real human experience, I guess.”

“And what, pray tell, would be fake human experience?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“Meaning what? I’m a fake human?”

She’s calling me a resurrection record in a dronesuit, thought Yelena. I’m a fucking celebrity, and I’m being insulted by the help.

But she wasn’t a celebrity anymore. Now she was help too.

Yelena had been prepared to one day find herself a ghost. She could adapt to having a body again. But she couldn’t adapt to feeling irrelevant.

“Don’t be defensive,” said Veronique. “I only meant what I said: I wouldn’t know. It’s Mr. Pollard’s philosophy, not mine. And I’m too busy to enjoy it. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. A lot of people would pay a lot of money to own a house like this.”

“Yeah, people already used to trim like immersive holospaces.”

Veronique didn’t bother correcting Yelena’s slang.

“If I were you, I’d be glad to be alive. I’d at least try to enjoy it.”

“Yeah, but what is there to try? What do you fucking have to do here?”

“A view,” said Veronique, gesturing out towards the mountains. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to fix the mess you’ve made of the rest of the house.”

Yelena didn’t follow when Veronique left the room. Instead, she went to the glass and stared out at the mountains. They looked so real and so solid. Everything she wasn’t.

“Bikini Atoll,” Yelena heard herself say. She hadn’t planned to say it.

And then she couldn’t move anymore.

It could be hours before Veronique found her and realized she wasn’t moving.

Yelena cursed her impulsivity. She felt some horrible, loathsome, self-destructive impulse that had always been there, gnawing just beneath her skin, keeping her from ever holding onto happiness.

And it terrified her.

Not because she’d paralyzed herself – that, she could dismiss as mere thoughtlessness or frustration or curiosity. Even realizing that she’d used against herself a tool, implanted inside her without her consent and intended as a form of punishment – that was merely masochistic. What terrified Yelena Moulin wasn’t this. It was the million times she’d probably expressed this same urge in subtle ways and not noticed it.

On the glass window, she saw tears on her reflected face and instinctively tried to wipe them.

At least she knew her tear ducts weren’t paralyzed. Probably because they were part of her eyes, although she guessed it was because the sadist who had programmed the safeword response preferred to be able to see the tears as his paralyzed victims were chastised or worse.

Still, she had to admit that the snow-capped landscape beyond her tears was beautiful.

Maybe she hadn’t been punishing herself. Or she was, but self-destruction can lead to new experiences too.

Because Veronique had told her to enjoy the house, but Yelena could never quiet herself enough to do so.

Because this tool of punishment she’d used against herself was also a tool of control.

What Yelena missed having, even more than her body or her life.

If she were going to get it back, to feel like Yelena Moulin again, she’d have to start by learning not to fear boredom or being shut off. And what better way to teach herself this than by doing it to herself?

To engineer a low point, from which to climb. To turn self-destruction into self-creation.

She’d been flailing. Raging, when she needed to focus.

Because she’d been too attached to this new life, oddly more so even than her actual one.

And why? Because she would die when she died, instead of ascending the stacks? Because Mr. Pollard might simply delete her, the way Mommy had Dad?

It was still only a game. A performance. And Yelena Moulin knew how to perform. She could manoeuver people’s emotions as dispassionately as Veronique moved couches.

Caring, she reminded herself, never got anyone anywhere.

We all have so many needs, but no one ever loved a need, never felt anything but an opportunity to exploit or to pity.

And Mr. Pollard, he had a need too. If only to talk to her. It wasn’t much, but it was something. A wedge.

She only looked powerless.

In the glass, her tears had dried. All that was left was the snow and the mountains, stretched out beneath her like they always were.

This shouldn’t be happening. I shouldn’t have any weight.

She knew full well she had no skin or nerves to feel through.

She reached out and pressed her finger nervously into the arm of the couch.

She could feel it, like she’d never died.

For a moment, she thought she was the original Yelena Moulin. Having died and ascended into a higher level of simulated reality. But she remembered talking with her mother moments before. And being a ghost, intangible.

Still, when she breathed, she could feel the air inside her. She’d been prepared to one day realize she wasn’t breathing air. But she had no model for this.

Around her, two other latex couches sat grouped around a brick hearth, in which a retro chic digital fire deliberately flickered to indicate its artificiality. The large room with high ceilings suggested wealth rivaling her own in life. Long stone bar in the corner. Far wall made entirely of glass, in three massive, outward-sloping panes.

Yelena went to look out. The house seemed perched alone atop snowy mountains, like the winter Alps. The morning sun felt warm on her skin.

She realized she was wearing different clothes than while talking to her mother. They were the kind she wore when performing, but she didn’t recognize them.

“I’m sorry,” said a woman’s voice behind her. “I didn’t hear you get up.”

The woman, Yelena’s age, wore pajama bottoms but no top, and she walked like she lived there.

“A plastini should calm your nerves,” the topless woman declared. She went behind the bar, and Yelena watched silently as the woman shook the alcohol with ice, then drained it into a martini glass.

From this, Yelena knew the woman couldn’t be the house’s owner. Human bartenders were a luxury, but the rich would never deign to study the art themselves.

“Drink up.” The woman handed Yelena the glass. “It’s supposed to be your favorite. I’ll get Mr. Pollard.” And the woman strode from the room.

Yelena stood, sipping her drink and appreciating the view. The mountain snow glowed in the bright, warm sun. The shards of ice in her glass made tiny ripples in the green drink as they melted. It tasted divine, but anything would have.

A Caucasian man in his early thirties entered, dressed only in a towel, and immediately went behind the bar.

“I’ll answer all your questions,” he called across the room to her. “But first thing’s first.”

He poured himself a glass of wine, then sat on one of the latex couches, reclining comfortably. He drank before waving for her to join him.

Yelena sat on the edge of the adjacent couch, her back straight, her posture nervous. She drank in punctuated gulps.

“My name is Vegas Pollard. But you’re wondering why you can touch things. I’m sorry to say, you haven’t been restored to life. You’re in a skinsuit. Do you know what that is?”

Yelena shook her head and took another gulp.

“Do you remember dronesuits?”

Yelena looked at her hands. She felt the latex couch beneath her. “This isn’t a dronesuit.”

“No, it’s got organic skin and nerves wrapped around it. Living tissue. But it’s got the same consciousness unit underneath.”

Yelena instinctively felt the side of her head, as if absurdly trying to feel what was inside. It felt normal. Or what normal felt like, before she became a ghost.

“You’re saying this is a dronesuit. With real skin.” She felt her face. “With real lips. Real eyes.”

“‘Organic’ would be more precise.”

“And my resurrection record, it’s inside this dronesuit? Like a soldier.”

Mr. Pollard nodded and took a drink from his wine.

“How long have I been dead?”

“Almost twenty years. I grew up with you. With your holofeed, I should say. You were always my favorite. And now I’ve brought you back.”

“Does the world remember me?”

“Don’t feel bad. No one remembers anything from a year ago, let alone twenty years.”

Yelena took another gulp.

“How did you get my resurrection record?”

“You sold a lot of copies after your death. Millions. But don’t worry. I got a fresh copy, unpolluted by whatever all those owners did to you.”

“What?”

“You can’t count on all of them respecting your psychology. Ghosts never did have any formal rights. And the people buying you, a lot of them were new to resurrection records. Fans who didn’t know what they were doing. A lot of them treated you like property. Even tinkered with your code.  I’m afraid they set back the ghost rights movement. But the horror stories also led to a backlash that helped create ghost rights legislation.”

The thought of living out millions of lives, some in horrible conditions, momentarily horrified Yelena. But then she realized that these lives hadn’t been hers, only copies of her. Like the original that had presumably ascended the stacks. Or a million twin sisters she’d never know but who wouldn’t have existed, were it not for the same dissemination of her program that allowed their abuse.

“Where are they now?” she asked.

“A lot were simply deactivated. Some live on in VR simulations. Retirement communities for forgotten ghosts, set up by ghost rights extremists. A few might even still be in operation. But they, at least, have rights. They’re still property. They can be deactivated or confined. But they can’t be abused. Like animals.”

“And I have these same rights?”

“The very same.”

“So why bring me back? Again?”

Mr. Pollard stretched his arm along the couch, as if reaching towards the distant sun.

“It was my therapist’s idea. I have problems relating to women.” He rolled his eyes. “Or so he says. Nothing terrible, but… he thought it would be a good idea. I had a crush on you as a boy.” He paused. “It’s funny. You seemed so much older than me then, and now you just look like a kid.”

“Did you love me?”

His eyes widened. “I thought I did. I guess you were my picture of a woman. Of everything a woman could be. It’s stupid. I remember when you died. But that was a long time ago. I was a kid. And you were a sex symbol. Why do you think you sold so well? It’s no surprise you were abused.”

Yelena wondered how many of her duplicates, before the advent of skinsuits, were put into simulations and raped.

A lot, probably.

She leaned back against the couch, distancing herself.

“I hope you’re not expecting to have sex with me. I hope that’s not why you put me in this body.”

“It would probably be good for my therapy. But don’t worry. I can take no for an answer. The whole point of this exercise is to learn to relate to women better. I wouldn’t be doing myself any favors by ignoring your rights.”

“You could shut me off if I won’t.”

“I can. But I won’t.”

“I suppose, when your little therapy’s over – like if I do have sex with you – you’ll probably turn me off anyway. Because you’re through with me.”

“I don’t know yet.”

“These are some great rights I have. I suppose I can’t leave, either.”

“I’m afraid not. Your skinsuit will shut down automatically if you get too far from the house. And I really hope it doesn’t need to be said, but you won’t be able to hurt me either. The consciousness unit has overrides. And if that doesn’t work, I know your safeword.”

“That, what, shuts me off?”

“Only your skinsuit. You’d still be conscious. Merely paralyzed. That way you can be told what you did wrong.”

“Or you can do things to me and I’ll feel them, right?”

“It’s not like that, I assure you. I have no plans to rape you.”

“I can’t imagine why the girls don’t love you.”

Mr. Pollard swallowed the rest of his drink. “Well, hasn’t this been delightful? Make yourself at home. I’ve got to earn the money that let me grant you life.” He stood up. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“Wait. Mira Mira shot me, right?”

“Tried and convicted. Everyone followed the trial feeds. But she was a minor. Driven insane by the pressures of celebrity. Or so she claimed.” He resumed walking, then added, “She should be out of prison by now.”

“At least I’m finally younger than her.”

“Not necessarily,” he explained, stopping almost at the door. “She sold her resurrection record to help pay for her defense. Only the second celebrity to do so. After you, of course. Only she did it the smart way – she didn’t wait until death. I’m sure a lot of the families that bought your record bought hers too. The early celebrity collectors.”

She told herself that she must’ve opened the door all the way, then stepped back into the room to retrieve something, only to absent-mindedly forget what she meant to retrieve.

No sooner did she think this than she accepted it as unquestioned truth, and she immediately justified her forgetfulness by noting that she must be under more stress than she thought.

When she turned to look for whatever she’d meant to retrieve, she was startled to see her mother sitting at the room’s old-fashioned desk.

Mrs. Ostermann stared through wide eyes that silently burned with an unconcealed and focused hatred.

“How’d you get in here?  Mom?”

“I’m not your mother,” replied Mrs. Ostermann, intensely serious.

“Then who are you?”

“I’m still Verna Ostermann.”

Exasperated, Yelena sighed and glanced down at herself. She looked exactly as she remembered. But she was standing in the center of the room. And she’d been facing the door, arms at her side. Exactly as Dad appeared, each time he was summoned.

“Oh, no,” muttered Yelena Moulin.

You’re prepared for this, she told herself. But she felt a wave of panic threaten to overwhelm her. She held her stomach and tried to breathe deeply. Her chest inflated and she felt her lungs expand, but it felt wrong, hollow somehow.

She couldn’t feel the air in her mouth or nostrils.

She went to a bookcase to test her theory, and her hand passed through it.

“How long?” she asked.

“My daughter died three months ago,” Mrs. Ostermann replied, no emotion in her voice.

“How did it happen?”

“That tramp Mira Mira shot her.”

“Did it hurt?” She looked down at herself, as if she might find blood.

“What the fuck do you care? It’s not your pain.”

“Fucking Mira Mira,” Yelena said to herself. “Why would she shoot me?”

“No one knows. Apparently, she was as obsessed with my daughter as my daughter was with her. A lot of people are saying she did it for the publicity. Or because she’s crazy. As if there’s any difference.”

“My feed subscriptions are going to spike,” Yelena observed without irony.

“They’re not your feed subscriptions. You only remember them as being yours. Legally, they’re mine now. But yes, they did. My daughter left me a very rich woman.”

“Did they cover my funeral? Tell me they covered the funeral.”

“I see the resurrection record is accurate. But yes, they covered everything. It was ridiculous. They brought flowers. Can you imagine? Strangers bringing flowers. Mourning as if they knew you. As if they’d always loved you. As if you were family. As if you were some kind of martyr. They couldn’t get enough. One celebrity whore shoots another – I’m sorry, but that’s what Katherine aspired to be. And she finally got what she craved. All she had to do was die in a filthy fucking sex club.”

“Mom, I have a club opening tonight. I guess I don’t have to go now. Or I already did. But Mom, there’s a date on this resurrection record.”

“I saw it. It’s the day my daughter died. You can imagine my joy.”

“But Mom, do you realize how lucky this is? I have a resurrection record from hours before my death. I’m not missing almost anything.”

“Do you remember why you made a record that day?”

“Yeah, Mom. It just happened. You and I, we fought over lunch. I came in here to – to talk to Dad.  This room is set to update my resurrection record automatically.”

“How wonderful for you. I’m so glad I could fight with my daughter on the day she died, so that you could come into existence so fucking happy.”

“I’m not happy, Mom. I’m not glad I’m dead. But my generation, we’re used to ghosts. We may not know what reality will be like, when we ascend the stacks. But we know we’ll likely also exist as ghosts. It’s a lot more definite, a lot easier to get ready for, psychologically.”

“‘Ghost.’ I always hated that term. I thought it was just a marketing ploy. It’s not as if a soul is bouncing around in some machine. You can tell because you can copy or delete it. It’s not forever. It’s just a recording. A computer simulation of a soul. It’s not real. But now I see the truth of the term. Because all you can do is haunt the living.”

“I’m sorry, Mom. I know this is hard for you. I know I’m just a copy of Yelena. That the real Yelena, if there is one, has ascended the stacks. Or gone to heaven, if you believe that. But I’m Yelena too, Mom. A different Yelena, perhaps. But I’m still the girl you raised as Katherine. I have her thoughts. I have her feelings. And all her faults. And I remember everything she did.”

“Stop.  Just fucking stop. You’re not here to lecture. You’re here to listen to me. I couldn’t control my daughter. I couldn’t stop her. But I can control you. As my daughter’s sole inheritor, I own you. You’re just another one of her affects. And you’re mine.”

“Please, Mom. I’m all you have left of me. Can we just for once not fight?”

“Oh, you stupid thing. You’re here so I can fight with you. So I can tell you how much I resent you for dying. How fucking stupid you were. You’re here so I can tell you all the things I hated about my daughter but would never have said to her. Because you’re not her. Because I can’t hurt you, no matter what I say.”

“You can’t treat me this way, Mom.”

“Why not? I have every legal right to do whatever I want with you. You can’t hit me. You can’t leave this room. You can’t turn yourself off. Go ahead and simulate real human sadness. Cry your hologrammatic tears.”

“Mom, this isn’t how things work with ghosts. This isn’t what they mean when they say having a ghost can be cathartic. You’re supposed to respect them psychologically.”

“Like I’m supposed to respect a dog’s right to VR? You were always so naïve. You thought they’d love you if you took off your clothes and fucked strangers. But the truth was, they made fun of you, even when they celebrated your celebrity. You were a traffic accident.  You confused celebrity with love.”

Yelena hadn’t heard anything after the first sentence. “Where is Wilbur?” she asked, fearing the worst.

“He’s fine. I’m not a monster. He’s a living thing, unlike you. But I took away his infernal helmet. He’ll be a normal dog from now on.”

“But he loved it. He’ll be so sad now.”

“But it wasn’t real. He’ll adjust. We all have to, now.”

“You’re cruel, Mom. I think something’s broken in you, and that’s why you confuse fantasies like heaven for reality, while you disparage science and your own daughter as not being real or realistic enough.”

“And I think you might be alive today, if you’d quit being such a naïve slut and listened to me for once. But my daughter died as she lived. She didn’t listen or respect me. Just like her father. And now you’re both gone.”

“You should talk to him. He might be able to help you. You can summon his ghost right now. I wouldn’t mind seeing him.”

“I deleted that program.”

“Mom, you can’t.”

“It’s already done.”

“Then you killed him. You killed my fucking Dad.”

“He wasn’t real. Just like you. You wanted to live on after death, but you forgot you’d always be subject to the living.”

Yelena felt fearful and powerless. “What are you going to do with me?” she asked.

“I only wanted to have this one conversation with you. It wasn’t as satisfying as I imagined. But don’t worry. I won’t delete you. Quite the opposite. Everything Yelena Moulin is still in high demand. A resurrection record, from just hours before she died? It’s the ultimate celebrity product.”

“You’re going to sell me?”

“You should be happy. In death, you’ll finally get the immortality you so wanted in life. Every fan willing to pay enough can own their very own copy of Yelena Moulin. Your data will be copied all over the world. They’ll be a thousand you’s, ten thousand you’s. You’re going to be mass produced.”

“This isn’t what I wanted.”

“For once, you don’t get a say.”

“I love you, Mom.”

“No, you don’t. That’s only the echo of love. What you’ve been programmed to say.”

“Goodbye, Mom.”

“Terminate” was the last thing Yelena heard her mother say.

Watching People Burn

The deadliest school massacre in U.S. history, its victims in grade school. A terrorist attack on U.S. soil. Three separate, coordinated bombings, culminating in a suicide car bomb that killed a public official and sent shrapnel into the crowd.

This isn’t fantasy. It all really happened… in rural Michigan, in 1927.

Based on a true story, Watching People Burn dissects the real-life Bath school disaster. It explores the attacks’ mysterious perpetrator, including the haunting final message he left for the police and the traumatic childhood that may have spurred his crimes. But the story also explores the myriad ways the attacks affected its victims, transformed a town, and reflected a moment of transition in American history.

In addition, if you’d like a print copy of Watching People Burn, you can enter our contest on Goodreads.

For more information, visit http://www.martianlit.com/books/1/watching-people-burn/. Or jump to the book’s Amazon page or Goodreads page.

This work of short historical and literary fiction, consisting of 12 brief chapters, addresses a crucial but largely forgotten part of the slave trade: slave factories, or bases on the African coast that bought slaves and resold them to slaving ships. These were places of notorious suffering and exploitation, so much so that even white slavers looked down upon them.

The story explores this unique setting’s fascinating dynamics. It examines the lives of both whites and blacks, uncovering how they intersect in surprising ways.

For more information, please visit this item’s page here on Martian Lit or visit its page on Amazon.com.

We hope very much that you’ll support this initiative. Fiction (especially smart fiction without vampires) is very hard to promote and sell, and it can really only succeed by word of mouth. We hope that the price of 99 cents, or free to read for Amazon Prime members, will encourage this sharing. Thank you very much for anything you do to make this promotion successful.

The room looked like an old-fashioned study, the kind in historical holofeeds, with a wooden desk and books printed on dead wood pulp lining the walls on wooden shelves. No one but the filthy rich could afford such idle indulgences, and many believed such use of tree corpses to be unethical.

“I need to talk to Dad,” Yelena said, and he materialized in the center of the room.

“Another fight with your Mom?” Mr. Ostermann asked.

“She belongs on one of those secluded fucking religious compounds, the kind they do humornews profiles about. If she doesn’t approve of my lifestyle, she can go live with the rest of the nuts.”

“She’s not that bad.”

“She can’t even let the dog enjoy his fucking VR, for cum’s sake. How did you fucking stand her?”

“I did what you’re doing now.” He gestured towards the closed door. “I ignored her, instead of arguing. And I hid.”

“Yeah. You didn’t even tell her you’d been keeping a resurrection record. She was so fucking angry when she found out, going through your stuff, after your funeral.”

“It was easier not to deal with it. It’s funny. I remember thinking it was someone else’s problem. After all, I’d be dead. And I suppose I was right. It wasn’t that me’s problem. He died and left the problem to me.”

“I’m supposed to encourage that, right? That’s the first thing they tell you about ghost psychology. That they’re them but they’re not. That you can’t force them to be or stay your memories of the person. That they won’t remember after their last record, and you have to let them keep growing and evolving. But it’s hard for me. Because that’s what Mom says. That you’re not you. She thinks the real you is in heaven with leprechauns, or whatever anti-science bullshit she believes. And you’re just another abomination. An echo.”

“She’s right. Not about heaven, but about me. Oh, I’m no abomination or echo. But I’m not the man she married. I’ve made my peace with it. It’s quite liberating, actually. I spent my life trying to be all these things. That’s what the living do. Those are still my memories, and they’re precious to me. Seeing you grow up. But now that I’m dead, I feel like I can be who I truly was but never got the chance. I think it’s harder on you than it is on me.”

“I’m sorry you can guess I had a fight with Mom. That I don’t come in here to see you more often.”

“You’re busy. How’s the career?”

“Fine. Not fine, actually. It’s been eons since my holoporn. I’m not hot anymore, Dad. I still get jobs. I’m opening another club tonight. But they’re small compared to the good old days.”

“You’re too young to have such nostalgia.”

“Has Mom ever come in here to see you?”

“Not since she discovered me, here in your den.”

“She was so mad. She’s mad about everything.”

Yelena’s eyes drifted away sadly, and her father reached out to comfort her, but his holographic fingers slipped through the side of her face.

“I wish I could hold you,” he said.

“I have to go,” said Yelena. “I’m sorry, Dad, but I have to get ready for tonight. Do you want to stay on? Watch some holovid? You can turn yourself off.”

“No, but thanks.”

“Okay, then. Thanks for talking. I’ll try to visit more often.

“I live for it,” he said, and it hurt her more because it was literally true.

“Terminate,” said Yelena.

Her Dad disappeared. Yelena opened the door cautiously and felt relieved when her mother wasn’t waiting on the other side.

The original historical screenplay dramatizes the Bath school disaster, an coordinated terrorist attack in rural Michigan in 1927 that blew up a grade school and included a car bomb. It’s a largely unknown episode in American history, but one that’s all too timely. It’s a quick read and includes historical illustrations.

The book runs 192 pages and retails for only $9.99 in print. It’s available through CreateSpace and Amazon.

For more information, visit http://www.martianlit.com/books/1/watching-people-burn/.

Wilbur lay on his side, his wrinkly face pressed into a padded black helmet. The helmet’s soft leather interior concealed a large array of electrodes. His long tongue hung from his mouth and appeared stuck to the floor, conveying drool down its length. He panted and occasionally snorted. His legs twitched, as if he were running in his dreams. Not far from where he lay, his water and food bowls sat replenished but ignored.

Standing at the nearby kitchen counter, Raul finely sliced lightly-seared cloned mastodon flesh and began tossing strips of the red meat into the salad he’d prepared.

Mrs. Ostermann sat serenely at the kitchen island.

Suddenly, the holofeed wall activated, blaring the electronic club music on one of Yelena’s feeds. It had detected her entrance. Half-awake and topless in her smartthread jeans, Yelena staggered to the kitchen island.

“Up by fifty, I see,” shouted Mrs. Ostermann as she turned down the holofeed. “My daughter the workhorse.”

“Fuck you.  I was up late working.”

“Up late partying, you mean.”

“Same thing.”

“I suppose getting fucked by two guys on the dance floor was just part of the job.”

“Actually, yes. But I didn’t hear you bitching when I bought you that ass.”

“The mother of a famous starlet should be forced to look her age like some common peasant?”

“Take a deeeeeep breath,” a disembodied male voice said soothingly into Yelena’s ear.

“Mom, can we try not starting the day with a fucking lecture?”

“Oh, certainly. And I’d like to try starting my day without a holovid like the one I saw this morning.”

“You’re the only one who saw it, thanks to fucking Mira Mira. All she has to do is flash those little pubescent neon titties, and everyone forgets I sucked off a stranger on a dance floor while some other guy nailed me from behind. I can’t even humiliate myself properly anymore.”

Raul turned away from slicing mastodon and stared contemplatively at Yelena. “Slut, maybe you need to change it up.” Waving the knife back and forth in the air, he said, “No offense, but Caucasian skin, blond hair, blue eyes, big tits? It’s all so retro. Ya know?”

“Like mother, like daughter,” Yelena muttered, referring to her mother’s mentality.

Yelena glanced over at Wilbur, still twitching on his side near his dog bowls. “Mom, get Wilbur.”

Mrs. Ostermann hesitated, then bent over and pulled Wilbur from his helmet. As she lifted the pug, he whined and pedaled his legs against her arm, trying to get back to the device.

“This dog is a fucking addict,” said Mrs. Ostermann. “Too much VR’s not good for anyone.”

Taking the dog from her mother’s hands, Yelena began to caress him.

“Don’t listen, Wilbur. She’s just mad because VR disproved her stupid caveman religion.”

“Katherine,” Mrs. Ostermann began.

“It’s Yelena, Mom. Has been since my holoporn.”

You said that just to anger her, Yelena told herself.

“Yelena, you know perfectly well that neither quantum resolution problems nor the VR hypothesis, even if proven true, disproves God in the slightest.”

“You can’t fucking call it a hypothesis anymore, Mom. It’s not a fucking hypothesis except to fanatics like you.”

“God tests us,” said Mrs. Ostermann.

“Take a deeeeeep breath,” the disembodied voice said again in Yelena’s ear.

“That’s called the Theists’ Contortions, mother. You twist reality to fit these ancient, bullshit ideas. And then you fucking object to VR.”

“You don’t respect my beliefs.”

“We’ve been over this, mother. Everyone knows there’s no god. It’s proven. You die and you ascend the stacks.”

“And what’s that like?”

“Who the fuck knows? But I won’t make it up or believe some fairy tale just to feel like I have some fucking answer.”

“Lunch is served, darlings,” announced Raul, pirouetting to place two plates on the kitchen island, setting utensils and napkins beside them. “Salad à la mastodon.” The thin strips of raw meat fanned out over the vegetables, cherry tomatoes accenting the mastodon red.

From Yelena’s lap, Wilbur strained to get onto the island to eat the salad, but Yelena set him on the floor.

“I’ll pray for you,” said Mrs. Ostermann, taking the fork in her hand.

On the blaring holovid, another feed was showing clips from Mira Mira’s breast augmentation.

“Take a deeeeeep breath,” said the tiny microphone inside Yelena’s ear.

“Grow the fuck up, Mom. Your God is bullshit. Disproven. Banished from serious public discussion.  He done got good and fucked in the ass.”

“Now that’s a God I could really get behind,” volunteered Raul.

“What do you think, Raul?” Mrs. Ostermann asked. “About God?”

“Madam, I am a devout hedonist.”

“So you think you’ll ascend the stacks when you die?”

“I assume so. But if I don’t, if science is utterly wrong, I don’t presume to have any idea what would occur. And neither, I presume, does anyone else. Therefore, I’m better off living the one life I decidedly do have to the absolute fullest.”

“Mom, could I just please eat in peace? I’ve got nothing in my stomach but booze and drugs and semen, and I’m starving.”

Mrs. Ostermann stood and began to walk away. She turned and gestured like she was about to say something, then walked out of the room instead.

“Give her salad to Wilbur,” Yelena told Raul. She looked down at her feet, but Wilbur was no longer waiting for mastodon meat.

He was already back on his side, plugged into his little leather VR helmet.

Only now his red penis was unsheathed, his back feet humping away.

A merry little vibration against her clitoris awakened Yelena Moulin. Jack, her psychiatrist, had recommended the device, which looked like a suction cup dangling on a string from a short straw and recharged itself on body heat during the night. “Always wake up happy,” it said on the box.

In theory, it slowly picked up speed for ten minutes, easing its wearer awake, then continued at full speed until orgasm or removal. But Yelena always woke in the first minute and just wanted it out.

It convulsed against the floor, discarded, waiting for its charge to ebb away.

The holofeed wall activated automatically, sensing Yelena rise. One of Yelena’s favorite culturecrits, the man known only as 848, appeared in his familiar spiked blonde hair and false eyelashes. He raved about the perforated, shirtless jacket Presidential candidate Sloan (one name only) had sported at the debates. His arms gesticulated wildly around the holospace, extending several feet into Yelena’s expansive but sparsely-decorated bedroom.

“And did ya tap that boring T-shirt Michael’s wearing?” said 848, referring to Sloan’s opponent (who had a last name but 848 didn’t use it). “That’s a fucking JumpSoda logo. JumpSoda! Sluts, that is so not wet. Lover, I know you need corporate endorsements or whatever to pay for your campaign, but serious? JumpSoda is so so so over already. Like last season dead.”

848’s lips leapt out into the room as he delivered his customary sign-off, kissing the camera. Then an extreme close-up of a girl’s vulva filled the 3D holospace, twelve feet wide from outer lip to outer lip, water cascading down it in slow motion, as a female moan filled the room. The holofeed wall’s upper-right corner identified the feed as “Five-Second Cunt,” but Yelena had never been able to find the program in her feedlist. Her boyfriend four boyfriends ago had subscribed to it on her feed, and she’d learned to live with the five-second interruptions.

Next, a popular humornews feed played excerpts of Mira Mira’s breast augmentation, which had leaked onto the holofeeds. Over this, the feed mocked her singing and mimicked her various celebrity boyfriends as they fondled her. In the excerpts, cylindrical tools blasted individual fat cells through her neon blue, fourteen-year-old skin.

Slipping into her smartthread jeans, Yelena felt instantly jealous, thinking of the increased subscribers to Mira Mira’s feeds. She needed a stunt like that, a second kick-start to her own career. Merely being rich and glamorous just wasn’t enough anymore. Not if she wanted to rise to the next level. It didn’t help that Mira Mira’s breasts, even during the procedure, looked better and younger than Yelena’s own. Yelena, already twenty, knew she didn’t have long left.

“Take a deeeeeep breath,” a calm male voice said confidently in Yelena’s ear, then inhaled and exhaled purposefully. Great, Yelena thought sarcastically. Her jeans had already detected her elevated pulse and blood pressure, sending a signal to the tiny microphone inside her ear.

“Fucking Mira Mira,” Yelena said to herself.

It was going to be one of those days.

To humans, Martians are truly the Other. They are otherworldly. Alien. Unknown and unseen, they provide a canvas on which humans write their worst fears. These stereotypes are defined by humanity, in the absence of actual Martians, as being everything humanity is not.

Not surprisingly, these stereotypes have often succeeded in climates rife with human racism, demonstrating the tight connection between planetism and inner-species racism. The parallels, right down to specific composition of images or fears of miscegenation, are close enough that they ought to dispel any rational doubts that anti-Martian sentiment stems from the same ugly side of humanity that fears the Other, whether extra-planetary or simply of a different race of humans.

War of the Worlds

The most prominent strain in Martian stereotypes — that of Martians as cruel and hostile invaders — comes from War of the Worlds, the famous 1898 novel by H. G. Wells. Its success set the standard for all such stereotypical stories to come.

In the novel, Martians are said to be tentacled beings, not unlike the Earth octopus. Their interest in Earth stems from the “fact” that the climate of Mars is cooling. They thus travel to Earth in cylindrical spacecraft, apparently launched from Mars with huge space guns (a common representation of 19th-century science fiction, also seen in Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon). The Martians then invade Earth with giant tripodal vehicles armed with “heat rays” and a kind of poison gas known as “black smoke.” Their invasion is brutal, targeting civilians and infrastructure, apparently intent on inflicting maximum casualties. They use a Martian plant, the “Red Weed,” to decimate local plant life. They even use a device to feed on human blood.

Martian tripodal vehicles destroy an English town, as depicted by the Brazilian artist Henrique Alvim Corréa for a 1906 Belgian edition of the novel.

Of course, the evil Martian invaders are ultimately defeated, due to Earth bacteria to which the Martians have no immunity.

The narrator writes in a journalistic style, which greatly adds to the novel’s realism. This realism, unfortunately, also added to the public’s perception of Martians as hostile invaders.

It’s easy for humans to praise the novel as ahead of its time. Its depiction of “total war” was more or less common to invasion literature, but the particulars Wells used weren’t. Scholars have reveled in how the inaders’ black smoke seems to foreshadow the Mustard Gas used in World War I, the Red Weed evokes a later understanding of what can happen to local ecology due to the introduction of non-native species, and how the heat rays seem to predict lasers. Wells certainly deserves credit for having the Martians defeated not due to any intrinsic human superiority but instead by bacteria. This contrasts to the clergyman, a key character in the novel, who sees the invasion as the Biblical Armageddon and is ultimately killed when his religious ranting draws the attention of the superior Martians.

These more evolved characteristics, however, should not excuse the novel’s extreme racism, which inaugurated decades of depictions of Mars as a dying planet and Martians as a brutal people eager to invade Earth. These Martians might be depicted as technologically superior, but they’re also depicted as surprisingly stupid — such as not being aware of Earth’s bacteria.

A Martian vehicle battling with the warship Thunder Child, also by the Brazilian artist Henrique Alvim Corrêa.

Like later Martian depictions, the anti-Martian stereotypes in War of the Worlds can be placed within a wider context of xenophobia and stereotyping of Earth races. The novel participated in what’s been termed “invasion literature,” which had its heyday from 1871 to 1914 and depicted various invasions of Great Britain. The first major work of this genre was the tremendously successful The Battle of Dorking (1871), which depicted the Germans as a ruthless invading force that used a devastating surprise attack, not unlike the Martians of Wells. Such depictions were common to the genre, although the villains varied, as different nations came to be perceived as the greater threat. Thus, Germany gave way, towards the end of the 1800s, to France. Earth historians now recognize the entire genre as propaganda that speaks more about Britain’s anxiety during a time of international tensions in Europe prior to World War I.

But this recognition has done nothing for Martians, who remain stereotyped as ruthless invaders, in great part thanks to Wells. War of the Worlds was a great success and has remained in print ever since its publication. Imitators began to spring up almost immediately, launching decades of hateful, xenophobic depictions of the Martian people.

These imitators are too numerous to count, especially in a superficial introduction such as this one, intended for a human audience. Of course, many deviate from the Wells formula. Similarly, native peoples of Earth were often depicted as brutal savages, they were also depicted as noble, as a way of criticizing the dominant Earth cultures. This doesn’t invalidate the racism involved, and outlandishly “positive” depictions, such as ones in which Martians are meek, have a racism all their own. These have also been in the distinct minority, while Earth stereotypes of Martians as hostile invaders have continued to this day.

Orson Welles and Anti-Martian Hysteria

These stereotypes have been extremely successful in media other than novels, such as film and television. And just as Martian stereotypes in novels trace back to Wells and War of the Worlds, Martian stereotypes in other media trace back to the radio adaptation of that novel, made by Orson Welles in 1938.

Seizing on the journalistic style of the original novel, Welles presented his adaptation in the style of radio news reports. Despite broadcast warnings that what listeners were hearing was fiction, many American humans believed the broadcasts to be real. Some, lacking telephones, got together with their neighbors, working themselves into a panic as rumors began to circulate. Several secured or bought firearms. A crowd descended on the landing site, which Welles had moved to New Jersey, causing police to be called. Telephone calls flooded in to the police, newspapers, and to CBS, which aired the broadcast.

In Concrete, Washington, a town of 1000 humans, a cement company happened to have a short-circuit at one of its sub-stations, causing a bright flash of light and a loud sound before the town’s electricity went out, plunging the area into darkness. At the time, listeners were hearing about how the invading Martians had turned toward more rural areas, destroying electrical service and using poison gas. Listeners took the light and sound for an explosion caused by the invading Martians, and the disruption of electricity seemed to prove the point, while also preventing telephone calls to unaffected areas. The next step, many assumed, would come in the form of Martian poison gas.

Some residents took their families and their guns into the mountains. Others prepared to defend their homes. One reportedly took his wife by car to his priest, some 50 miles away, to be absolved before their impending deaths. On the way, he stopped at a gas station where, after failing to pay, he told the attendant that it didn’t matter, since everyone was going to die.

News outlets reported the panic, producing 12,500 stories on it in the following month. It became a major international news story as well, and Adolf Hitler cited it to criticize America. The panic is still studied by humans as an example of mass hysteria or, in contrast, an example of newspapers blowing a story out of proportion.

But for Martians, these events were particularly alarming. They demonstrated that stereotypes of Martians were more than a particularly insensitive form of entertainment. They showed that large numbers of humans believed these stereotypes and were willing to act upon them. They demonstrated that anti-Martian depictions could easily break into anti-Martian hysteria. In direct response to this incident, Planetary Council Order #7825401 finally passed on Mars, ordering our entire civilization to cloak itself from human view.

Despite this, Martian invaders would soon become such a staple of Earth fiction and would feature in a string of movies, including the 1953 adaptation of War of the Worlds and the same year’s Invaders from Mars. In a testament to the enduring nature of Martian stereotypes, that same film was remade over thirty later, in 1986.

Marvin the Martian: The Martian Stereotype as Comic Relief

In animation, Marvin the Martian debuted in 1948 as a villain for Bugs Bunny. Given a uniform that parodies that of a Roman soldier from Earth, with a silly skirt and a broom atop his helmet, Marvin was denied even a mouth or nose. Instead, he was given only a round ball of a head with eyes and used for comic relief.

Like the original War of the Worlds, the stereotypical treatment of Martians here should be understood within a larger racist context. Marvin’s treatment was not unlike other racist portrayals involving Bugs Bunny, including the 1941 short “All This and Rabbit Stew” and the 1944 short “Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips,” which used racial stereotypes of African-Americans and the Japanese, respectively. By 1948, it was Martians’ turn. The only difference is that, while those earlier portrayals are now considered extremely racist and heavily stereotypical, Marvin the Martian continues to be used today, including in merchandising.

Like past Martian stereotypes, Marvin was obsessed with destroying Earth. His motivation was ridiculous: “It obstructs my view of Venus,” he says. He often spoke in technobabble, referring to what appears to be a simple stick of dynamite as an “explosive space modulator.”

As offensive and hurtful as Marvin was, actual Martians considered him far more offensive because of his incompetence. Bugs Bunny continuously foils him, and he claims that he has been trying to destroy the Earth for more than two millennia. For Martians, this only added to the insult, since Mars could have wiped out Earth any time it liked, yet chose instead to try to help humans (through Planetary Council Order #429371).

Surely, when a stereotype is common enough to be parodied and perpetuated in Bugs Bunny cartoons, it has become commonplace.

Mars Attacks

In 1962, Martian invader stereotypes were so widespread that they were even the subject of a series of trading cards given the offensive title Mars Attacks. These Martians were particularly cruel, and many cards featured bizarre forms of torture and mass murder at martian hands. Some of these images were so sensational in their use of gore and sexuality that they spurred parental complaints, which contributed to the line’s demise.

This surely must be one of the most hateful depictions of a people in the history of the world. Again and again, Martians are depicted as gleeful and creative sadists, eager to slaughter humans and cause widespread carnage. The evil of these stereotypical Martians even extends to animals, which they seem to kill with almost as much glee as they do the humans.

Tellingly, the story told by the cards concludes with a fleet of Earth ships retaliating by committing genocide and destroying the entire planet of Mars.

If you consider these cards fun, please consider how you would feel if, instead of Martians, they featured maligned human groups. I doubt Negros Attack would have gone over quite as well. Nor Homos Attack, featuring creative and sadistic mass murders perpetrated by homosexuals.

But perhaps that’s why Mars Attacks existed in the first place. After all, like other stereotypical portrayal of Martians, Mars Attacks demonstrates that anti-Martian stereotypes go hand in hand with human racism. Cards that showed the callous devastation inflicted by the Martian invasion around the world provided ample opportunity to stereotype other groups of humans, even as the main focus was on maligning Martians.

Just as racial human stereotypes have often entailed a sexual component, such as stereotypes of African-Americans as seducers and rapists of white women, so thoughtless is the hatred of Martians that Mars Attacks depicts Martians as doing the same, despite that human women would doubtlessly be incompatible with Martian physiology. Of course, the women being menaced are attractive blonde-haired white women, to underline the parallel to miscegenation. The images are even composed in the same threatening manner.

This was hardly the only instance in which Martians were depicted as hungry for human women, in a style instantly recognizable to those who study human racism. In the heyday of Martian invader movies, this particular stereotypical aspect was made the basis for an entire film: 1968′s Mars Needs Women.

In yet another testament to the enduring nature of these stereotypes, the card series returned in the 1980s, with new cards augmenting the originals, and with the addition of comic books recounting and expanding this obviously anti-Martian story. In 1996, the story was even adapted as a big-budget Hollywood film, directed by Tim Burton and starring Jack Nicholson.

In the film, the Martians delight in creative carnage, parallel to the original card series. Although Mars isn’t destroyed at the end, these Martian stereotypes claim to come in peace, even as they slaughter humans in the streets with ray guns.

The moral apparently being that you can’t trust a Martian: even when he’s offering peace, he’s only going to kill you and your family — and probably burn your dog alive and rape your daughter too.

Conclusion

These stereotypes might not be as widespread as they once were, but there can be no doubt that they continue. The hateful depictions of Martians, begun with War of the Worlds, has now entered its second century. One need only look at Stephen Spielberg’s 2005 cinematic adaptation of that novel, a remake of the 1953 film, to see that the stereotype of Martians as sadistic people itching to brutally invade the Earth remains very much alive and well.

What is most alarming about this fact, to many Martians, is that these stereotypes have continued despite our civilization being cloaked from human detection. In 1965, NASA’s Mariner 4 completed a fly-by of Mars, followed by several other probes, beginning in 1971. Martian policy worked, and humans now had evidence that Mars was lifeless. Yet this did little to break the pattern of Martian stereotyping.

Depictions of Martians may be seen by humans as increasingly far-fetched, but they remain as hateful and stereotypical as ever. In fact, the case could be made that such depictions have acquired an element of nostalgia, insulating them from criticism. This is true despite increasing awareness of stereotypes generally. Certainly, few humans would defend a big-budget Hollywood movie using blackface as charmingly nostalgic. No, that’s reserved for Martians.

113 years after War of the Worlds, Martians increasingly seem to be the last Other, whose stereotypes are treated as entertainment, instead of the dangerous hatred that they are.

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