New Austin

All the people are gone.

We were expecting something bad. No power, no atmosphere, we knew something had gone wrong. Nobody could survive on Mars without the artificial atmosphere.

So, where are the bodies?

The colony looked old. Abandoned. Like no one had been here for decades. The last transmission was only three days ago. What could have done this?

My crew is offloading equipment now. We’ll re-establish the atmosphere, bring the grid back online. Maybe there’s a clue in their computer system, something to tell us what happened here. Something to explain why there’s not even a trace of DNA left in any of the colonies.

It started here, according to the warning systems. The first alarm sounded right here, in New Austin. The final message came from here, as well.

“What fools we’ve been, not to have seen. What heights of arrogance we have reached, what incredible hubris. It laughs at us. We amuse it. And we deserve all that is to come.”

That message was sent by a Nobel Prize winning geneticist. She was designing a new strand of wheat that could grow in artificial soil. It would have made the colony self sufficient in forty years.

Where did everyone go?

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