"Lawrence of Arabia Terra"

Ramble Station, somewhere near the center of the Arabia Terra, Mars, year 2912.

The station had been named for John A. Ramble, an admiral for the Human Union who tragically lost his life during a fleet action not too far from the moons of Mars during The Big War several centuries ago. The Battle of Deimos - the damnest near-run thing you ever saw, per a surviving admiral - cost the Secessionists several dozen heavy carriers and granted the Union control over Martian space, ultimately turning the tide in the war. A brilliant portrait of Ramble hung from a wall in the office of technical officer Amadeus Lawrence, staring down at him.

Lawrence currently laid sprawled on his back, the stoic face of the rear admiral looking down at him. Lawrence’s chair had collapsed beneath him into several pieces, having broken the moment his posterior touched the A-Polymer material. He frowned, rolled over, and army-crawled to examine the wreckage closer. His frown grew deeper - each chair leg had snapped directly in the center, each snap a smooth line, as if somebody had cut through most of it with a space laser and waited for Lawrence’s weight to complete the prank…

Lawrence cursed. No doubt, this was the work of his fellow officer, the nefarious Stanislav Kajanas.

The Big War ended a long time ago. With humanity united once more, warfare receded into the dustbin of history, with the Union military downsized over the centuries until only a human cadre remained to guard the President and Congress, in addition to security-bots and war-bots protecting various facilities across the Solar System. With so much time and effort spent by the Union on rebuilding Earth after the War - reconstruction elsewhere in the system, along with interstellar exploration, became the domain of adventurous contractors. Lawrence and Kajanas worked for Pillow Industries, a Martian division of Pioneer Defense Contractors. "Defense" was vestigial - with no more war, construction and scientific research was the name of the game. Ramble was the twelfth terra-forming center on Mars, brand new, nothing more than a mere outpost in the start-up phase.

Lawrence was an Earthling, none too happy about being posted to a backwater facility, while Kajanas was a native Martian from the fourth terra-forming center, wanting to prove he could be just as good as any Earthling engineer sent to his planet. Both men were arrogant to the point of folly, and there was little to do in young Ramble beyond inspect the A-Polymer facilities and robots.

Their prank wars began soon after. Kajanas spent a day in the space-bathroom after eating spiked soup; Lawrence received a bucket of water to the head after entering his office. Kajanas slipped on a conveniently placed banana peel while trying to impress a Martian barmaid; Lawrence's toilet blew up when he pulled a flush cord linked up to a firecracker. Things like that. Back and forth it went, and soon other garrisoned Earthlings and Martians started to get involved, ultimately requiring Lawrence and Kajanas to be sent out on an expedition, lest they reignite The Big War over something mundane like a pie to the face.

A self-replicating A-Polymer station over a thousand miles out from Ramble Station was unresponsive. It most likely took damage from a sandstorm, and human hands were required to restart it. Lawrence and Kajanas took a freight maglev (no vacuum tubes on Mars yet) out west one morning. Sitting on the open-air flat car, it took them less than an hour to leave civilization behind - the maglev carried them across empty crimson plains, red meeting the faint blue glow at the horizon, the infinite blackness of space uncomfortably-visible behind the atmosphere.

The only other occupants on the train were labor-bots, and they weren’t much for conversation. They also didn’t seem to care much for their fallen brethren - across the dunes, millions of destroyed combat-bots from the Big War lay in thousands of craters. Hospital supposed vultures would’ve been appropriate here, but the only scavengers were recycle-bots who worked tirelessly to bring the robo-corpses to regular dumps along the rail line where they would be brought back to Ramble Station. No robot spoke, just the occasional beep, just as quiet as the deserts of Arabia Terra itself.

Dressed in billowing white robes over his fatigues, white strips of polymer ‘round his head, dark goggles over the eyes, Lawrence snickered nefariously, despite the sand-laden wind whipping at his face. This morning he had spiked Kajanas’s coffee with space tobacco capsules, Martian sleeping pills, tasteless industrial ethanol. By the time they reached the final stop, Kajanas would be knocked out cold, while Lawrence would earn a promotion by soldiering on and fixing the self-replicator himself.

Kajanas, for his part, spent the train ride looking at the endless crimson seas strewn with robo-corpses.

The train came to the final stop. One day, the tracks would stretch across the planet, reaching the next terra-forming center; up ahead, labor-bots were busy laying A-Polymer foundations within the red dust. This last station featured a depot and warehouse manned entirely by robots - a squat android produced two CAMELs for the men. Each officer slipped atop their Computer-Analysis-Mechanical-Electronic-Lift, which resembled a black rectangle with legs, and began the next phase of their journey.

“You alright, buddy?” Lawrence asked, feeling much confused about Kajanas’s ability to ride a CAMEL, let alone still be awake.

“Just peachy,” Kajanas answered, no worse for the wear.

Lawrence, frowning, turned his attention back to the dunes. “We must hurry. It’s a seven-hour ride, with a sandstorm due in eight.”

“Then let’s waste no time. Hiya!” Kajanas flicked the reins, urging his CAMEL forward. Lawrence, feeling quite strange, picked up his pace.

The two men rode for hours, leaving the trains and robots behind them, even the robo-corpses. All was flat, quiet, empty, nameless. Just wind-swept dunes of existence. They traveled in silence, towards the limits of the artificial atmosphere surrounding the Arabia Terra. One day, green grass would grow here, ships would sail blue seas. The water would wash away the tracks left by the two riders, the crabs none the wiser as they skittered across the ocean floor.

Water. How the red seas of sand could make you wish for home. Parched lips. Half-empty canteens. Onward and onward.

Around seven hours, perhaps - Lawrence had lost track of time - they arrived at the quartz steps to the sultan’s palace. Helmeted eunuchs took away their CAMELs while servants escorted the men past the olive tree courtyards up to the limestone and marble inner keep. Minarets rose from the sand, while arquebusier Janissaries in watchtowers guarded the entrance, faces covered in shadow.

Inside, the men stepped across the marble floor softly in their sandals. The halls of the sultan’s palace were enormous, cavernous, rising up into golden domes, decorated by carefully-crafted frescos, murals, and miniatures depicting the conquest of Constantinople, the construction of libraries and observatories. Beyond the windows, the sandstorm raged.

Lawrence and Kajanas followed barefoot servants and visiting Safavid dignitaries into another hall. A festival was underway beneath the dim candlelights and rising nargile smoke - robes billowed as musicians regaled the crowd with their baglamas, ney flutes, kudum drums; a calligraphy tournament concluded to much applause; jugglers, sword-swallowers, and fire-eaters competed for attention; Janissaries initiated a wrestling competition; up on the walls, the shadow puppets Karagoz and Hacivat bumbled their way through Levantine villages; viziers regaled onlookers with their lyrical gazels and other poetry. Beyond it all, all the way back at the grand feast, sat the sultan atop his throne, surrounded by his favorites among the harem - the childhood friend and the glasses girl.

After shuffling through the crowds and some wacky hijinks involving carpet weaving, the harem’s resident tsundere, and a donkey, the two men finally found a quiet spot beneath long windows. The sandstorm outside hadn’t let up. Lawrence surveyed the crowd for a long while and then started laughing.

“I see, I see,” he realized. He turned to Kajanas. “You spiked my drink this morning, didn’t you?”

Kajanas chuckled. “As you did mine.”

“Did you know I was going to spike yours?”

A grin. “Did you?”

The two men put their arms around each other, laughing hard, hands perilously close to each other’s necks.

When Lawrence awoke the next morning, he found himself sprawled across an endless mesa, his uniform ripped and rendered ragged by the exposure to the sandstorm. There was no sultan, no palace, just endless sand. Below the mesa, he could see the kaleidoscope of A-Polymer growing across the desert from the broken self-replicator, a tower that stood still and quiet in the empty plains.

A waking Kajanas grumbled and spat sand out of his mouth. The two men sat for a long while.

“I meant to put you to sleep,” admitted Lawrence.

Kajanas nodded. “Same here. I guess the stuff we put in each other's morning coffee produced a different reaction than expected.” He ran his fingers along the sand. “That was dangerous. While we hallucinated, we were exposed to a sandstorm all night, a day’s trek from civilization. We could’ve died.”

“Yes,” supposed Lawrence. “A prank war, as with any war, can only escalate, spiral into destruction.”

With aching muscles, Kajanas stood. “Perhaps we must stop-”

He fell after a single step, kicking up a small cloud with his collapse. His shoelaces had been tied together.

Lawrence, who woke first, snickered.

From his spot on the ground, Kajanas, calm and resigned, said, “You know I must answer this with a prank of my own.”

“Which means I must also answer.”

“So we shall keep answering, on and on. The pranks can only escalate from here. Are we destined to do this forever? Are we destined to kill each other?”

Kajanas already knew the answer, as did Lawrence. Both men rose to their feet and shook on it.

They say all wars are civil wars, for all men are brothers. Unfortunately, neither Lawrence nor Kajanas considered each other men, for in their perspectives, their opponent came from the lesser planet.

Decades in the future, the self-replicator tower still remained, though its job had long been finished. It stood silent over the generations, watching the A-Polymer foundation spread, the conversation into dirt and soil, the growth of fresh grass. Grace Pillow would sit before it one day, begging the tower to speak to her, to tell her of the old days before Man came to name and settle Mars.

If the tower could speak, perhaps it would tell her of this strange day in 2912, when two riders were approaching, and the wind began to howl.