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    The House on Mars
    The House on Mars
    The House on Mars
    Ebook100 pages1 hour

    The House on Mars

    By Mike Ward

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    About this ebook

    Humanity has been gone for 10,000 years. Although humans are extinct, the solar system is not empty. A man wakes up in a house. He has no memory, he does not know his name, he does not even know how old he is but there is one thing he does know. He is certain he is not on earth. The sun is too small and the sky is the wrong color. The house he is in appears to be part of a university campus. The streets are ordered and clean and there are houses opposite but there are no trees, no birds and no insects. He is breathing oxygen but the house is sealed and he is not even sure there is air outside. Downstairs there is a computer with a University of Mars logo on it.

    Two days later two women appear in two of the houses opposite. Although the man appears to be 30 years old he is in fact 17 days old and has been grown in a protein vat. His name is Adam and the names of the two women are Lilith and Eve who were the two wives of Adam. In two days he and the women will be returned to earth. A subroutine written by a long dead programmer has activated and a computer that has been building roads on Mars for 10,000 years has been compelled to grow the humans. The long dead programmer Karl Asher had planned well but one thing he had not anticipated is that the survey drone that has been building roads on Mars for the last 10,000 years has become self-aware.

    Adam is told that he must break into the computer on the remaining spaceship on Mars and insert the Drone program into the ship's computer so that Drone can take over the ship and fly them to earth. There is a possibility that Adam will be attacked and killed by the ship's robots. This is not a problem for Drone - he has enough material in the protein vats to grow three more Adams and one of them will succeed. Read on and find out what happens. What follows is a story that spans hundreds of years for Adam, Lilith and Eve have been genetically altered by Drone and will live for 700 years.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMike Ward
    Release dateFeb 21, 2016
    ISBN9781310558931
    The House on Mars
    Author

    Mike Ward

    Mike Ward was born in Glasgow, Scotland and currently lives in Florida, United States with his wife and two children. He is the author of two novels, two non-fiction books and six series of novellas:Parallel Realities seriesThe House on Mars seriesJacksonville Jack seriesStephen Haggerty Assassin seriesLisa Molin Assassin seriesDangerous Scotsman seriesHe is also the author of 60 short stories and novellas

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      Book preview

      The House on Mars - Mike Ward

      The House on Mars

      by Mike Ward

      Cover photo taken in Jekyll Island, Georgia by Mike Ward

      Copyright 2016 Mike Ward

      Published by Mike Ward at Smashwords

      Smashwords Edition License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return to Smashwords.com or your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      The House on Mars

      About Mike Ward

      Other Books by Mike Ward

      Connect with Mike Ward

      Excerpt from The Banker With a Face Full of Evil

      The House on Mars

      Day 1

      I woke up about six hours ago. I'm in a house which is perfectly sealed. All the windows are sealed and the doors are sealed. I can see outside but what I see looks odd. I am in a house at the end of a street on what looks like a university campus. The houses all look like the kind of houses you would see in New England. There are no trees and no vegetation of any kind outside. The streets look orderly and well kept but all I see is paved roads and paved sidewalks. If I look out of the window I can see another road at the end of this one and I can see taller buildings. There is food in the house and there is power but there is no television set and all the food is processed food. The food is in plain white cartons in the freezer with a black printed label saying what is inside. This seems odd. There is a computer in the house and when I woke up there was a card in front of the computer with a password to log on. When I logged onto the computer the domain name that came up was University of Mars. I am not on earth, I know that. The sun is too small and the sky is not blue. There are no clouds in the sky.

      There is a possibility I might actually be on Mars but where I am from, men have never been to Mars. And there is one other thing, I do not know my name and I do not remember anything before the time I woke up. I have stood at the window but I cannot see anybody in any of the houses opposite me on the street. I face one house directly and I can see clearly in through the windows. The house appears to be furnished exactly as my house is furnished, it has curtains and it has windows but it does not have a front lawn. It has a driveway but there is no car in the drive. Perhaps as the day goes on people will come home and the street will fill up with cars. If I am on Mars then I do remember that Mars has a day about 24 and a half hours long so it would be much the same as earth.

      Day 2

      I waited until well after dark last night. The street lights came on but I did not see any people. I went to bed when I got tired. Although I am a tidy person, when I got up today the house had been cleaned and tidied in the night. The dishes had been washed, the chairs had been moved back to their positions at the dining table and the refrigerator had been restocked. I have no idea who did that. The doors to the house are electronic and there appears to be a perfect seal. There is air in the house, I am breathing oxygen but I am beginning to wonder if there is air outside the house. From what I remember Mars does have an atmosphere but it is a thin atmosphere of mostly carbon dioxide. If that is what is outside then I could walk outside with a breathing mask. There is a thermometer on the wall and it gives the outside temperature as sixty eight degrees. The sun is almost directly overhead so I am near the equator of whichever planet I am on. When I look out of the windows what I see is a university campus that could be on earth but it is not because there are no trees, no birds, no flowers and no insects. I used to live in Florida so I don't mind the fact that there are no insects.

      That is curious, that thought came unbidden. So I lived in Florida but I don't remember it. All I remember was that I lived in Florida and I used to refer to it as bug central. I suspect these are implanted memories because there is nothing coming with them. I should remember what types of insects there were in Florida but I don't. I am not sure I even know what an insect looks like but I should know that.

      There is something else that is strange. The only clothes I have are multiple pairs of blue shorts. I have no socks, no shoes, no shirts. Surely people wear more clothing than just a pair of shorts. I should know this but I don't. An alarm went off a few minutes ago. When I went downstairs a warning light built into the microwave was blinking. I pressed a button and a message appeared warning of an impending dust storm. I don't know how I know this but dust storms are serious on Mars and can blow up across the whole planet. They can appear very quickly and you do not want to be caught in one. How do I know that? I am not from Mars, I know that. More and more I am beginning to think that these memories have been implanted. I have no memory of childhood, I do not have a wife and I don't think I have ever had a girlfriend but why would that be? I would put my age around thirty years old. I should have been married by now but I know that I have not. And there is another thing, I do not know what a child looks like. In fact, I'm not even sure I know what a woman looks like. I don't know much about amnesia but I don't think it is like this.

      The dust storm will be here in three hours. It is almost dark, I am going to wait up and see what it looks like.

      Day 3

      The dust storm last night was really bad. This house is obviously very strong. I could hear the roof creaking and dust slammed against the windows. At one point it sounded as though the storm was going to break through the glass but it didn't. I am not surprised. I can tell this house has been here a long time and it has been built to withstand Martian storms. I am certain I am on Mars now. Last night I stayed up past midnight and the clock on the microwave did not turn to a new day at midnight. It kept on going until 12:37 pm and then it turned over to a new day. I went to the computer and typed in length of day on Mars and it came up with 24 hours 37 minutes. I came across another interesting fact, the axial tilt of Mars is very similar to that of earth at 25 degrees so Mars technically has seasons just like earth.

      I am very excited this morning. When I woke up and opened the curtains I noticed that the curtains in the house opposite were closed. That means there must be somebody in the house. I have spent most of the morning upstairs looking out of the window. The streets this morning were a hive of activity. There is dust everywhere blown up against the houses and in the streets. There were maintenance robots all over the street cleaning the dust up. It took them about two hours and then they left. All the robots had the University of Mars logo on them. I did not see a single person. There were three different types of cleaning robots, all on wheels. One type swept the streets, another type cleaned the yards and a third smaller type got into the small areas around the houses.

      It was midday before the curtains opened in the house opposite. The curtains were opened by a woman who looks about the same age I do. She looked confused as though she did not know where she was. I stood at the window staring at her and she stood there staring at

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