This page, Chapter 4 — The Mars Rager, belongs to Bubble Observers Season 1, a co-created sci-fi series by magipop DAO. Read Story and BONUS QUIZ for 1200USDT per week!

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AUTHOR: MELITO TRANSLATOR: JUNYI QU REVIEWER: ANNIE TIANYU HUANG, AMBER DROLMA FINAL CHECK: STANLEY QUIFAN CHEN ILLUSTRATION: HAIYI XU

A warrior on his way, as then, as at death.

I am no Truman on Mars, but a galactic wanderer who chants in solitude.

One, or two hundred and eighteen calendar days? It does not matter — Mars is not a colony.

I hailed from afar. I will breathe and burn with the red land as the first-ever rangers.

On the last day, Daso fulfilled his dream of the Burning Man Festival.

In the VR headset, Daso saw his statue standing grand and sublime, gazing forward as if he were a native Indian on the red expanse of the Acidalia Planitias. The land underfoot is an area of former alluvial fans, evidence that large areas of water once existed here. Rather than a plain, it is more of an undulating area of low hills. The road is rugged and littered with large, coarse rocks. And not far to the left, in the murky reddish-brown air, the half craters of the meteoric strike plateau block the sky to the south.

But at the moment, the place is packed: cartoon men and women in fancy dress, the Hulk jumping up and down among the rocks, Star Wars white soldiers looking around with lightsabers in hand, Hatsune Miku and the Kagamine Lens mingling and chatting, and, not far away, Slimes chasing and writhing all over.

They were gathered around the huge statue of Daso, waiting for a grand ceremony to begin. Others were around Daso’s landing bin, gazing curiously or standing silently.

The virtual Mars space is called “Daso’s home” and is built to look like the actual place where Daso is, not a 100% recreation but still amazingly realistic.

Having not eaten for almost three days, Daso took off his headset, ate the last of his liquid food, then put on his suit, opened the landing bin, and walked about fifty meters straight ahead — exactly where the statue standing. He stood there for a long, long time. He had long ago written a speech for this moment, for his beloved, for the Earth, for himself. He had long known the contents by heart, but he could not say anything at this point.

This was Mars, the real Mars. There are no other people, no images in strange costumes, no statues of him tall and majestic. There was just the rust-red Gobi, the soil where he had trodden almost every inch, the sun dimmer than the earth, the whole fantasy of man’s interstellar expansion, and his deep awe and gratitude for the land as the first wanderer.

There was just him alone in his solitude.

The huge statue in the virtual Mars online was set alight, the blazing flames blotting out the sun’s light, where oxygen is not a necessity. Daso also opened his oxygen mask and stretched his arms to enjoy his last moments of consciousness. It was cold outside, the air pressure was low, and the air smelled like poor quality liquor, but he could no longer breathe it himself. Whether such a death is as graceful as the Burning Man or not, it is graceful when a warrior faces his destiny. At least it was better than dying of starvation in a cramped landing bin. Besides, the red earth had given him meaning — his mother Mars, his stern mother.

The burning statue of the Daso was surrounded by a cascade of people, heads bowed, no one making a single sound.

In “Daso’s Home”, his follower watched him take his flight to the land of the immortal.

It’s like a remake of The Martian story, only no one is as lucky.

Daso and his fellows were expected to land on Mars in 2024, as one of the first one-way ticket explorers to Mars. Six of the ten on the team were top industry experts with a serious scientific mission, while four were simply tourists. This selection was decided by a lottery — the odds of winning were extremely low, and the ticket was not prohibitively expensive, making Daso the lucky boy.

However, the landing went awry, all nine others were killed, followed by all Martian capsule silos (for habitation) previously built by the automated machines being damaged.

Daso accidentally survived being dropped far from the intended landing mark and found that the life support system of the capsule itself was still functional. So, he made minor modifications to it, and the tiny 3 square meters became his usual home for survival. Even so, his landing site was far from the intended area and all his spare supplies were nowhere to be found.

He messed around a bit and found that the communication stayed uninterrupted. Prior to the manned capsule landing, 120 low-cost micro-satellites were launched as planned, and 69 are now in place and operational, essentially meeting their regions’ day and night communications need with decent bandwidth. Although there were delays of upwards of three minutes, special algorithms and applications quickly made basic information communications available.

Treeda, a Mars commercial spaceflight company, has decided to launch a rescue operation. But given the Mars-Earth orbital cycle, a new resupply launch would have to be at least six months away. Add five to seven months for transport and it would take a year to arrive at the earliest.

Under the guidance of Treeda’s professionals, combined with the knowledge he had gained at the Mars simulation base on Earth six months prior to departure, he successfully built the oxygen generation unit, modified and connected the entire water generation & circulation system. The only thing that was not available for long was food. The small amount of spare liquid food stored in the landing bin would only last him two months, and no amount of frugality would last him more than three months.

Daso felt the irony: he thought he was the lucky winner of the jackpot when he was chosen, but never imagined that the prize would be eternal exile. He was destined to fend for himself in this barren land, the same color as hell.

He huddled in the tiny landing bin, cried his head off, and spent two desperate days in a daze. A day on Mars is about 24 hours and 37 minutes on Earth, but it was as if he had already lived out his life on this lost land.

Until he remembered that he still had his full VR set, which was given to astronauts to dispel loneliness during the long journey from Earth to Mars. He put the headset on, with a twinge of hope in his mind.

The news section in the VR headset blew up, almost entirely about Daso.

It was only then that he realized that as the first manned expedition to Mars in human history, they had been highly expected and had been warriors and intrepid explorers in people’s minds. The accident was heartbreaking; many of those killed were awarded medals by the local government. Daso, as a survivor of the accident, was expected to be more than that. Apparently, his despair had not yet been felt by the people of Earth. But it doesn’t matter;

“Survival in Danger: He Showed Us the Courage of the People of Earth.” A front-page headline on Global News early yesterday morning read.

“Daso: The Lone Ranger on Mars.” Hot Tracker devoted an entire, very lengthy section of the interactive experience to Daso’s plight and praised his optimism.

He waded through the numerous jumbled messages, his ears buzzing, and for a moment,

Am I still me, Daso? Shall I be happy for myself, or shall I lament? Am I a warrior, or am I a coward? A sequence of questions flashed through Daso’s mind.

Suddenly, he saw a private message and clicked on it to discover that it was a dynamic message combining 3D video and text.

“Hello Daso, it’s an honor to talk to you.” A pre-recorded 3D image began to play, and it was an exaggerated female “memoji” cartoon figure speaking to him.

“We are the ‘Marsea DAO’, we want to build an entire galaxy in a virtual world, and Mars is exactly where we will start. We will be using simulation engines to build a set of interlocking, fully simulated virtual galaxies. Perhaps, after all, very few people will actually set foot on the red earth beneath your feet, but we expect that one-day people will be able to use their virtual bodies to explore, make friends, play, and live in the world we create.” The cartoon character spoke, with anticipation in her voice.

“We want to build this world from this land beneath your feet, from your landing bin. Besides, you are resourceful and brave, and I admire you for that, but you may feel lonely at times on this strange planet all by yourself. Well, Marsea DAO will bridge your physical and virtual worlds, meaning you will have countless people to accompany you on your quest along the way. I hope you will join us and support us.”

After that, the cartoon figure showed the time plan of Marsea DAO, their team members, the background of their investors, the number of fanatics they already had in the community, and all the various aspects. With the development of blockchain technology, the chain was actually able to take on distributed simulation computing on such a large scale. The underlying technology of the simulation world originates from a game company called Black Humor, a company whose core competitive advantage is cutting-edge algorithms and advanced sensory experiences. Big Search once met their collaborator, Black Humor, while he was on Earth. Black Humor is rightfully an investor in this project.

But Daso didn’t care about these things. He just felt that she had hit his loneliness. Not only was he alone, but he was helpless. As for whether he is a warrior, who knows？

He agreed to the request and became the face of the Marsea project. The overall ranking of the Marsea DAO immediately jumped, gathering over a million active members in just one week. Development also proceeded in an orderly fashion, and soon their Alpha version of the contract was deployed online, followed by a beta version, and a month later, the full version appeared.

Daso watched as his world was rebuilt on the blue dots in the night sky on the distant horizon, and it became more and more realistic as the version changed. He spent his days just doing basic inspection work on Mars, occasionally donning a spacesuit and wandering around a bit. More often than not, he immerses himself in the virtual world of Marsea — another Mars, where it was lively, with all sorts of figures bustling around in front of him. Although Daso had no way to interact with them in real-time, due to a few minutes of optical communication delay, he was deeply grateful for these people around him with colorful lives.

Daso was just an ordinary tourist, and even if he was a scientist, he couldn’t do anything serious under such harsh living conditions. As a result, the media’s attention to Daso quickly decayed. The name Daso was permanently remembered, and it appeared in various advertising slogans, buzzwords, and Internet emojis, but few people really cared what he was doing now. Only Trita’s correspondent continued to ask him routinely, as he did on any given day, about how much food was left and whether the oxygen and water circulation systems were functioning properly and intact. Sometimes Daso wondered if the Trita didn’t ask, maybe he would have forgotten how many days of food he had left — maybe still a long time, maybe only by tomorrow.

The virtual world of Marsea still managed to give him some comfort, if it counted as any comfort at all. Until one day, word got out in Marsea that Daso had very little food left. Even if Daso thought it was common knowledge, such a distrust caused unprecedented tension in the Marsea DAO. The people had believed that the warrior Daso would always be on Mars, exploring and opening up new frontiers for mankind, until they suddenly realized that in less than a month’s time, Daso would probably be sacrificed like cannon fodder on that distant red planet.

Various discussions, questions, and referendum proposals came out one after another. Although mostNone of the said proposals passed, yet they grew to shake people’s confidence. After news spread that Daso was running out of time on Mars, the price of $MSN first saw a sharp uptick, then a dive, before a sustained depression. That was until someone in the community suddenly cried out that the founding team of Marsea had run away.

Marsea’s virtual space is still in place. Computation occurs on the chain, and distributed nodes provide the computing power. The entire Mars is not done building, the Asidaria Plain is almost finished, but the new update and construction areas have been quiet. In the virtual world, there are still endless streams of tourists visiting Dasuo’s landing bin every day, but no one calls him a warrior anymore.

He had thought that the angry people would turn to attack him; however, everyone just became more indifferent to him.

Warrior or coward, why does it matter to Daso?

Until once at dawn, when he went around again for a routine check, the suit’s oxygen tube suddenly collapsed, and the entire suit went into an uncontrollable pressure release. Daso almost rolled right back to the front of the landing bin, where he used his last bit of strength to open the hatch and pull himself back inside. It was in the process, however, that he vividly remembered the first rays of rising sunlight spilling over the bare rock and sand, sweeping all the way from the distance, caressing the skin of the weightless red planet, and eventually enveloping himself as he rolled across the floor and stretching a long shadow across the other side of his body.

The lack of oxygen seems to have slowed down his thinking speed —

so slow that he can enjoy the beauty brought by this land for the first time,

so slow that he can finally forget who he was,

so slow that he can feel that he is the baby in swaddle nurtured by this land.

He had never truly experienced such a sunrise, even on Earth.

In the days that followed, Daso put away his VR holographic device. He changed into another spacesuit and made the trek to the nearest alternative crash site, where the Treeda comms guy had earlier told him there was another auxiliary module attached to his landing bin. It should have been damaged, but perhaps there were some tools that could be used in an emergency. Sure enough, he found new oxygen tubing and nano-plasticized cotton here and used these to repair his damaged suit.

He counted the food he still had left — 48 packets. He usually eats3 packets a day, and if he tightens his belt maybe he can eat only 2 or even 1.5 packets.

He had thought it through — his life was up to him, and he was destined to wander the Martian plains. Whether virtual or real, eventually he would be led to commit himself to this red land.

He announced his plan in the Marsea. He wanted to leave as many footprints as possible on the skin of the Acidalia Planitia like those Mars rovers sent on earlier missions. He wanted to enjoy every sunrise and sunset, to caress the coarse Martian rocks, to walk in long sandstorms, to cross gullies and ditches. This was the former Delta and the fertile ground of his heart where his faith took root. While exploring, he recorded his explorations with various devices, from the most primitive texts to the most fashionable full-sensory signal recordings; he cast each piece into NFT and sold it openly online. He placed all the proceeds of his transactions into a decentralized address via the corresponding smart contract. The private keys to these addresses are hidden by him in various corners of the Acidalia Planitia, a gift for the warriors who will later head for Mars.

Daso saved the Marsea DAO, as people later said, because from then on, the Marsea truly became Daso’s Martian Sea and Daso’s home. He treated every visitor to Mars with care and made everyone feel at home. More so, his NFTs are sought after by crowds and valued more than any NFTs in history.

His believers are now truly born. And he himself was, in turn, a believer of this red planet. “Mother Mars” — so he called it.

Then he found that the day he ran out of food, not far from the annual Fireman’s Day on Earth, perhaps he could try to save some food to make it possible for him to make it. So, he contacted the organizers of the festival, which was already another DAO. Their director was honored to have him and was even willing to create a virtual Burning Man Space for him.

Mars is not a colony.

I hailed from afar. I will breathe and burn with the red land as the first-ever rangers.

These two words of Daso will be passed on forever between Earth and Mars, along with his spirit.

Alongside, he left a “treasure map” of the Acidalia Planitia to the Earth for its future warriors.

“At the time, people saw the ‘Matrixers’ and the ‘Extenders’ as two opposing directions of technological development: the former led people to look inward, creating emotional resonances through virtual experiences, while the latter guided people to explore outward, shining hope into the vast universe through interstellar roaming. But these two seemingly opposite paths of development are actually going in the very same way, and such opposition can show a true unity,” said Radon, who made its own summary after telling its story, “Outward and inward, both of which are essential aspirations engraved in the genes of man.” “I quite agree. Now that we’re talking about such essential demands, let me tell you another exciting little story next, one that revolves around one word, and that is ‘desire’.”

So, Bubble Cesium told its story.

This page, Chapter 4 — The Mars Rager, belongs to Bubble Observers Season 1, a co-created sci-fi series by magipop DAO.
Read Story and BONUS QUIZ for 1200USDT per week!

🔗 Official website
🔗 Discord community
🔗 Bubble Observers Twitter
🔗 magipop DAO Twitter
🔗 All creators & contributors