The Mud Map

Standalone · its own universe

Trials

Mars, colonized — and a colony that must choose who gets to found it will discover that the choosing is the catastrophe, not the scarcity that forced it.

The colony in section

A working drawing, not the finished plate. Trials moves down rather than across, so its chart is a cutaway: safety runs deeper until the exact depth where it stops.

SURFACE dust, landing field, comms mast — you are cornered if you run here THE COLONY administration, medical, marine detachment — blood drawn on arrival Jaspers' laboratory sits at this level CONVICT CAMP orange. Malek's court. seized the armoury MINERS' CAMP grey. Formed after the collapse. collapsed shafts behind them THE LINE THE BARS — wide enough to slip through. They keep something in. THE FARMS the green glow. Sealed. Largely abandoned. oxygen source for everything above Jonah and Zoe sleep in a cleft here THE DEEP stalactites, the feeding ledge, the cocoons the grootslang DEEPER — AND SAFER, THEN NOT
Working drawing — the colony in section

The closed loop

Jillian Jaspers presents a sealed Martian ecosystem in four organisms. It genuinely closes — which is exactly what makes it horrifying.

Bioluminescent bacteria symbiotic on the leaf → green light Iron-eating algae red & green, engineered → oxygen Engineered earthworm aerates, fertilises → living soil The grootslang the worm, scaled → not controllable light feeds photosynthesis O₂ fills the cavern soil grows the plants "a few too many genes" SEALED FROM THE SURFACE the loop that feeds you is the loop that eats you
The ecosystem as presented — and as it actually ran

The crop is the light source. Bioluminescent bacteria live symbiotically on the leaves and glow; the algae has no light of its own and absorbs what the plants give off to run photosynthesis. Nothing in the cavern comes from the sun.

Mars is the feedstock. The algae is engineered to eat iron — on the one planet famous for being made of rust — and its byproduct is the oxygen pumped through sealed caverns. An engineered earthworm aerates and fertilises the soil beneath it all. A complete ecosystem, as Jaspers puts it.

And the failure is the same design, scaled. In the attempt to terraform a planet for life they experimented, in the words of the book, with a few too many genes and a few too many combinations.

Drawn from the final manuscript — the conference presentation by Jaspers, and the descent to the farms.

The cast

  • Jonah Shepherd Retired, tormented soldier. Secretly gene-enhanced. Exiled.
  • Evie Shepherd His wife, on Earth. Three children. Ends up inside a rebellion.
  • Zoe The girl Jonah protects underground. The first born of a new race.
  • Jillian Jaspers The scientist. Presents at conferences. Funded by Unicore.
  • Malek Self-crowned king of the convict camp. Collects useful minds.
  • Gov. John Wilkes Evie's ally on Earth, and her best hope of bringing Jonah home.
  • Unicore Mining and technology company. Funds the research. Asks few questions.

The book

  1. Front cover of Trials Trials Published

Art

Every book keeps its own gallery — reference plates to draw from, and reader artwork once submissions open.

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