The Artificial Sun

Fiction Sci-fi/thriller fiction, short story JC Milan January 21, 2025 0 Comments

The Sandstorm

The sandstorm ripped through the martian settlement like an enraged beast clawing at its prey. Dr. Mara Kessler slammed the reinforced lab door shut behind her as the howling winds outside carried grains of rust-red dust that scoured everything in their path. Her sleek silver environmental suit — an interweaving of high-grade graphene fibers — shimmered under the dim emergency lights as she struggled for breath, the filters in her oxygen mask struggling to keep up with the encroaching dust.

Mara leaned against the door, her heart thundering in her chest. The settlement's automated voice cracked through the intercomm. "Critical systems compromised. Evacuation protocols engaged."

Evacuation. The word drilled through her skull. There was no going back to Earth for her, not without resolving the anomaly that had plagued her team’s artificial fusion reactor — the daring attempt to create the first fully operational "artificial sun" on Mars.

Mara yanked off her mask, revealing bright green eyes glinting with determination and exhaustion. Her cropped auburn hair was damp with sweat, sticking to her angular face. She couldn’t leave now. The project was her life’s work, the culmination of years spent toiling on Earth before the exodus to this forsaken planet. She had promised a future — not just to the board of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, who had funded the mission, but to herself. A world without fossil fuels. A world lit by humanity's own starlight.

Slamming her gloved hand onto the control panel, she barked a command at the flickering screen. “Where’s Hamilton?”

“Dr. Hamilton Graves is located three blocks west in the Reactor Core Facility,” the AI’s voice responded laconically, entirely unbothered by the chaos.

Mara’s jaw tightened. Hamilton, her estranged partner, had been stationed to oversee the AI pattern analysis in the plasma containment system. He was the closest thing to a genius she'd ever met — and the closest thing to a disaster when it came to personal relationships. But she needed him now, or all their dreams of sustainable energy would drown in Martian dust.

She bolted down the dim corridor, the emergency tube lights pulsing a maddening alarm-red. Outside the dome’s reinforced windows, she could see the sandstorm swirling in massive vortexes, the terrain a hellscape of shifting dunes. The settlement was dying — and maybe them with it.

Three Years Earlier

Three years earlier, fresh off the shuttle from Earth, Mara had arrived on Mars like a flame in isolation, ready to ignite the planet. She wore a simple sky-blue jumpsuit back then, designed for newcomers, her clothes innocent of the scars and burns they would later bear. Working alongside Hamilton felt almost poetic at first — two visionaries chasing a sun.

“We’re gods, Mara,” Hamilton had whispered at her the first time their prototype fusion reaction emitted plasma. His voice was full of awe, but there’d been an edge — a dangerous edge.

The fusion project evolved at an unspeakable speed, powered by AI so advanced that Mara sometimes wondered whether it dreamed of stars the way she did. But all progress came at a cost. Personal bonds unravelled as easily as the simulations failed. A careless word became a storm; a lingering gaze became an argument. Now, here she was again looking for Hamilton, running from the storm outside and the storms she had never managed to elude inside herself.

The Reactor Core Facility

She burst into the Reactor Core Facility, heaving under the weight of adrenaline. There he was, leaning over one of the glowing plasma containment monitors, backlit by the pulsing light of unstable energy that might as well have been alive.

Hamilton’s disheveled black mane and rumpled olive jumpsuit set him apart from the pristine, controlled image Mara still tried to convey even in chaos. He looked up at her, brown eyes hidden behind tinted goggles, his smirk that familiar expression she detested as much as she needed.

“Mara—just in time for the apocalypse,” he quipped, motioning to the reactor chamber, where arcs of lightning danced like captive gods desperate to escape. “System’s falling apart faster than my last marriage.”

“Save the jokes, Hamilton,” she snapped, striding forward. “Did the AI predict destabilization?”

“It did. But somebody,” he emphasized, jabbing his finger toward the transparent plexiglass wall separating them from the reactor, “ignored my warnings about ramping up containment field intensity.”

Mara glared at him. “We didn’t have a choice. The storm fried our auxiliary power, and unless we stabilize the reactor, we’re all dead.”

“I’m already risking enough being here with you,” he said sharply. "This place could go nova any second." A nerve in his jaw twitched, possibly from suppressed fear, possibly something deeper.

She grabbed a tablet off the console. The equations scrolling across it made her head ache. Fusion containment fields, turbulent plasma flows, AI predictive metrics—they were almost impenetrable, even to a mind like hers. Almost. She pointed to a cascading failure log. “The AI’s corrections aren’t keeping up.”

“They will.” Hamilton’s lips pressed into a thin line. “If we buy them enough time.”

“Define 'buy.'” She wasn’t sure she liked where this was going.

His eyes softened, an emotion flickering for just a moment. He dragged a stool closer and sat down, his voice quiet. “There's only one way the AI can synchronize containment to this level of instability. Someone needs to manually guide its algorithms while inside the nexus chamber.”