Six years. That was all it took to change the world.
From a war-torn planet to a thriving civilization now touching another world.
Mars.
It still didn't feel real.
In Habitat Dome 2, George Reyes sat by the small window and stared at the red plains outside. The sky was tinted a hazy orange, filtered through reinforced glass and a layer of artificial atmosphere. Massive construction bots moved like clockwork across the landscape, carving roads and laying down material for new structures.
He sipped his morning coffee, still bitter, still synthetic, but somehow, it felt better on Mars.
"Can you believe it's only been six years?" George said, speaking to no one in particular.
His bunkmate, Manuel, groaned from the bed. "Six years ago, I was ducking under tables every time the sirens wailed. Now I'm in space… drinking fake coffee… watching machines build a city."
"And with working toilets," George added. "Luxury."
The room was small but warm, lined with pale lights and humming gently from the recycled air system. The walls were thin, but no one complained anymore. They were on another planet. That alone made everything else seem trivial.
Out on the construction field, young workers and engineers, some barely out of their teens, moved in coordinated groups, operating machines that had only existed on paper a few years ago. The tools they used were lighter, smarter, and faster. Powered by an endless stream of energy from what the scientists called the Tesseract Cube, a crystal said to hold infinite energy, created in the early moments of the universe, long before stars even existed.
Its power had allowed the Emperor to leap technology forward by centuries. There were no whispers, no danger. Just clean, efficient, limitless energy.
In Research Dome Theta, a young scientist named Mira adjusted her thin-frame glasses and pointed at the floating hologram of a new Martian structure.
"I still can't wrap my head around it," she said. "Six years ago, we didn't even have calculators in every house. Now I'm designing hover freight systems and quantum cooling reactors."
"You think that's wild?" her lab partner chuckled. "My mom still tries to iron shirts. We don't even wear collars anymore!"
Laughter filled the lab. They were all riding the wave of a new age, driven by one man, the Emperor.
He didn't make speeches every day. He didn't walk among them often. But his presence was felt. His will echoed through every corridor, every device, every plan. His face was carved into statues, painted on murals, etched into the steel of Mars' first spaceport.
Outside, a line of new miners approached one of the processing stations. Among them was Jun, barely twenty, sweat glistening on his brow under the thin helmet. He looked up and caught a glimpse of the Earth high above, small and distant.
"I used to stare at the stars and think we'd never get here," he said to a fellow miner. "Now I'm standing on one."
"And getting paid for it," the other replied with a smirk.
The city was still small by Earth standards, but it grew daily. New modules arrived from Earth every week, delivered by ships powered by the Emperor's energy reactors. Factories operated without smoke. Farms grew plants in oxygen-rich towers. AI systems directed traffic and maintenance. Even the air in some domes was safe to breathe without masks.
And yet, with all this progress, people remained human.
There were moments of homesickness. Of missing oceans. Of craving real sunlight. People still argued over bedsheets, still laughed at old jokes, still shared stories around synthetic campfires.
And still, every day, new things arrived. New tools. New machines. New blueprints.
And in the quiet corners of Mars, where the Emperor's teams had started work on early space-capable ships, whispers began again, not of fear or war, but of expansion.
Not just Mars.
Not just the Solar System.
But the stars.
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