MARS GATE (The Gate Trilogy Book II)
—Mars is the Slack Tide of Memory—
The wind sweeping across the russet plains takes millions of years just to carry a single grain of dust.
This is no whimsical trajectory carved by nature.
Just as the silver moon once locked past and future away in its silence, perhaps Mars, too, was another "station" designed for those who linger in the interstitial spaces of time.
PREFACE
In the spring of 2027, I had just finished compiling Luna Gate into a book, intending to finally distance myself from that "story." The visions granted to me by that brass emblem had altered my life far too fundamentally.
Then, one day, an unmarked parcel arrived at my laboratory. Inside was a fragment of a russet, iron-heavy meteorite about the size of a fist, accompanied by a single note. It stated only that the piece had been found among the samples brought back by a Martian rover.
On its surface lay a molecular-level crest, etched with the exact same stroke—no, the same intent—as the one on the lunar brass. The words inscribed there read:
"Let us meet on Mars. Because there is a wind, it is a place where I can touch you."
The message from the Moon had been "Even without air." The one from Mars was "Because there is a wind." They formed a perfect dyad. It felt as though someone had handed me the continuation of a single, grand tapestry.
Once again, I powered on the analytical equipment.
CHAPTER I: THE HALF-VACUUM
Unlike the complete vacuum within the Moon’s interior, Mars possessed something else. An atmosphere less than one percent of Earth’s—far too thin to serve as a proper "runway" for leaping across spacetime.
Yet, the scientists of the future found a distinct utility in this very "imperfection." Travelers who leaped through spacetime in a total vacuum harbored an unimaginable velocity differential upon re-entering the atmosphere of their destination era. Immediately after exiting the lunar void, their subjective perception of time was profoundly detached from the world they were entering.
The thin Martian air functioned as a buffer, gradually smoothing out that temporal jarring. Moving from a place with no air at all to a place teeming with it—Mars allowed them to pass through a realm with just a sliver of atmosphere in between. It was much like a diver ascending from the deep ocean, pausing at intermediate depths to decompress.
If the Moon was the "departure gate," then Mars was the "waiting room."
CHAPTER II: THE YEAR 3200, THE SECOND GATE
How many orbital cycles had passed since Ren and Luna first reunited in the lunar void? The nexus of the Moon had ruthlessly pried their subjective times apart. Three years for Ren meant fifty years for Luna—with every meeting, the law governing their existence widened the temporal gulf between them to the breadth of a galaxy.
For the Spacetime Administration, this "temporal drift" was not a crisis unique to the two of them. Every observer and engineer routing through the lunar void shared the same affliction.
Thus, a new transit hub on Mars was proposed—coined "Mars Gate." Utilizing the vast lava tubes stretching beneath the Martian crust, this facility would slightly "even out" the flow of time under the thin atmosphere. Theoretically, those who routed through this hub would see the accumulation of their subjective time drift significantly mitigated compared to using the Moon alone.
Ren received the project proposal during his hundreds-of-turns return.
CHAPTER III: OBSERVER REN’S FIRST "TODAY"
"I am recommending you as the primary resident engineer for Mars Gate."
The thought-wave of his superior echoed quietly in Ren’s consciousness.
Resident. It was a word Ren had never heard applied to himself. Until now, his existence had been a relentless cycle of "departure" and "return." Go to an era, observe, return to the Moon. His life lacked the continuity of a "today."
But to become a resident engineer meant he would no longer leap through spacetime. He would remain anchored in a single, solitary "now" on Mars, aging day by single day.
Ren did not hesitate.
"I accept. On one condition. That Engineer Luna be assigned to this station as well."
CHAPTER IV: ENGINEER LUNA’S FIFTY YEARS
Luna stared at the star charts in the cramped cabin of the mothership.
Since that day she had departed for Karuizawa in 1979, nearly fifty years had slipped away in her subjective timeline. She had crossed hundreds of eras, witnessing the nostalgia, joy, and farewells of hundreds of "primitive subjects."
In all that time, she had met Ren only a handful of times. Short transmissions in the lunar void that felt like brief, minutes-long embraces—that was the entirety of what had sustained her through those fifty years.
The reassignment order reached her a mere few hours before her next scheduled deployment.
"Assignment to Mars Gate: Approved."
Luna gazed at the tiny russet dot on the star chart for a long time. If she went there, perhaps she would no longer have to measure their separations in units of "fifty years." A quiet premonition kindled deep within her chest.
CHAPTER V: REUNION AT the BLUE DUSK
Twilight on Mars is blue.
Fine dust settled across the russet earth scatters the sunlight, creating the exact inverse of an Earth sunset. A deep, clear cerulean light bleeds slowly across the horizon.
Ren stood at the mouth of the lava tube, watching that light. Beyond the thin glass dome, a small shuttle drifted downward.
The hatch hissed open.
On the Moon, their voices could never have reached each other without aligning their helmets. But here—however faint—there was air.
"Ren."
Luna’s voice reached Ren’s ears, vibrating through the atmosphere for the very first time. It was not a thought-wave mediated by synthetic resonance. It was her own voice, heard for the first time in his life.
"...So that is what your voice sounds like."
They pressed their fingertips together through the thin material of their environmental suits. On the Moon, direct contact meant instant death. The Martian atmosphere was thin enough to require protection, yet substantial enough to make the act of "touching" a reality.
Beneath their feet, the russet sand danced faintly on the wind.
CHAPTER VI: A GIFT CALLED WEATHERING
There is no weathering in the lunar void. The crystalline structures of memory left behind by Ren and Luna would shine forever, unaltered, even after thousands of years.
But on Mars, there is wind. And wind, paired with time, erodes all things. Rocks grind down to sand; footprints vanish in a matter of days.
"What we leave behind here might eventually be erased by the wind," Ren murmured, casting his eyes down to the russet earth.
Luna gently tightened her grip on his hand.
"That's exactly how it should be. On the Moon, we are frozen forever in 'that day.' But here—here, we can simply grow old. The 'me' of tomorrow and the 'me' of today will inhabit the same stream of time. You have no idea what a luxury that is, Ren."
For the first time, Ren understood. To be eternal is to stop time. But to "grow old together" meant there was an end—and that very "end" was the one luxury, the one future, they had never been allowed to possess until now.
CHAPTER VII: THE YEAR 2150, THE COLONISTS' DISCOVERY
The year 2150. Decades had already passed since humanity established its first permanent settlements on Mars.
A member of a geological survey team discovered a strange metallic fragment deep within a subterranean lava tube. On the surface of the iron-rich shard, a completely unknown crest was engraved, its molecular structure perfectly aligned.
"Let us meet on Mars. Because there is a wind, it is a place where I can touch you."
The surveyors concluded it was a fragment from an archaic probe and dispatched it to Earth as a sample.
That was the true identity of the parcel that arrived at my laboratory in 2027.
EPILOGUE: THE TWO MOONS
In Earth’s night sky, the silver moon still hangs unchanged. On its far side, the memories of the pulse Ren and Luna once shared sleep in perpetual, unaltered stillness.
And when all the other stars have dipped below the horizon, another light can be seen—gleaming with a faint, russet hue. Mars.
There, their "now" is moving forward, slowly but with absolute certainty. Exposed to the wind, upon a russet earth that changes color bit by bit, Ren and Luna are living out a concept entirely new to them: tomorrow.
The Moon is the symbol of the immutable. Mars is the symbol of the mutable.
Both were forms of the "love" they had finally claimed as their own.
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AFTERWORD
The night I finished writing this manuscript, I opened my window and looked up at the sky.
The moon was floating there, just as it always does. But tonight, just beneath it, I could see a tiny, russet light.
The two fragments remain in my possession. One is a cold, immutable piece of brass. The other is a coarse, russet shard of iron.
If those two people named Ren and Luna truly existed, and if they truly moved their sanctuary from the Moon to Mars—I wonder if they are looking at their very first "sunset" together right now.
With that thought, the night sky felt just a fraction closer than it did before.
