Gen was tall and pale and a certified third-generation Martian citizen, a self-absorbed and privileged member of an almost-immortal society and a master of the virtual gaming fields. Gen and her best friend, Tish, loved to tease the freshly-arrived Earth boys stumbling around in the lighter Mars gravity, and nothing pleased them both more than a ride up the skyhook for some duty-free shopping on the Platform, and afterwards a drink on the Ceiling in their favorite café.
But Gen was sick and tired of gleaning in the agriculture domes and bored to death with Lessons. In a few months, she would turn ten Martian years old—almost nineteen on Earth—and would be called to Service. At last she’d be able go on rotations to tend the high firs or maybe farm the meltwater. Too few went Outside on purpose anymore, but Gen couldn’t wait to shiver against the icy cold and feel the pressure in the slowly thickening air.
Her dreams of Outside are soon swept aside, though. Unknown to Gen, a far-away society of lost humans was speeding through space-time to save Mars from an unforeseen fate. Ice comets from the outer reaches of the Solar System, nudged towards the inner planets hundreds of years ago in a forgotten attempt at mass terraforming, were fast approaching, and only she had the genetic makeup that allowed her to hear and understand the Travelers.
Now it was up to Gen, her best friend, Tish, and Gen’s implant Echo—endowed with the memories of a real human from long-ago Earth—to let people know of the coming disaster. But first, Gen must contend with the evil and mysterious First Representative of Mars, a long-time enemy of Gen’s family, and time was running out, and worlds were at stake.
THE CITY OF MIE is a sometimes fun, sometimes frightening coming-of-age story set 200 years from now in an underground habitat on a terraforming Mars so real you’d think you’d lived there forever, and is book 4 in the Water Worlds™ sci-fi adventure series.
