The Meat Quarter

Rico’s lungs burned with each breath of the thin, recycled air that barely reached the Meat Quarter. Down here, thirty meters below the pristine halls of Olympus Base, the enhanced didn’t bother optimizing the atmosphere. Why waste resources on obsolete models?

“Fucking augments,” Vera spat, literally—her saliva sizzling against the hot pipes that ran through their cramped district. “Won’t even look at us anymore.”

Rico knew she was wrong. The Upgraded looked at them constantly—through sensors, monitors, predictive algorithms. They were data points in some vast calculation, their movements tracked and analyzed for... what? Threats? Inefficiencies? Or just morbid curiosity about how the unenhanced still managed to exist?

The Meat Quarter housed two hundred souls who’d refused the integration. Some for religious reasons. Some for fear. Some, like Rico, simply because they couldn’t afford it.

“Integration’s free,” the Upgraded kept transmitting, their thoughts bleeding through even the Quarter’s shielding. But Rico knew better. The surgery was free. The nanobots were free. But the price—your thoughts belonging to the collective, your body reprogrammed for someone else’s definition of optimal—that cost everything.

He welded another patch onto the ancient water recycler, his hands shaking from malnutrition. The Upgraded had optimized their caloric intake to perfection. Down here, they made do with protein paste and whatever grew in the fungal farms.

A presence filled the corridor—not physical, but the oppressive weight of an enhanced mind scanning their domain. Rico felt it rifling through the electromagnetic signatures, reading their primitive tech like an open book.

Vera grabbed a wrench, as if steel could defend against something that existed mostly in quantum states.

The presence coalesced into something almost human. Dr. Chen, though Rico barely recognized her. Her body had been optimized down to essential components—unnecessary organs removed, skin replaced with efficient heat-dissipating mesh, eyes that saw across twelve spectrums.

“Your water recycler efficiency has dropped to 43%,” she transmitted directly into their minds, bypassing their ears entirely. “Integration would solve this.”

“Fix it yourself then,” Vera snarled. “Oh wait—you optimized away your hands.”

Chen’s facial mesh attempted an expression. “Hands are tools. We have better tools now.”

“We’re not broken machines,” Rico said, standing despite his exhaustion. “We’re humans.”

“So were we.” Chen’s response came with data packets—memories of who she used to be, before the optimization. “Now we’re better.”

“Better at what?” Rico asked. “You don’t eat, you don’t sleep, you don’t fuck, you don’t laugh. You just... process.”

“We survive. Earth dies in its pleasure dreams. You die in your stubborn biology. We alone adapt.”

The water recycler gave a dying wheeze. Rico looked at the ancient machinery, then at his scarred, human hands. “Maybe. But when you’ve optimized away everything that made you human, what exactly are you surviving for?”

Chen’s presence wavered, processing his question through countless optimization matrices. Finally: “That query requires further analysis.”

She dissipated, leaving only the stench of ozone and the bitter taste of their recycled air.

Vera threw her wrench at the space where Chen had been. “Least we still know how to hate properly.”

Rico wasn’t sure that was something to be proud of. But as he returned to his repairs, using his inefficient human hands to keep their inefficient human bodies alive, he thought maybe it was better than feeling nothing at all.

Above them, the Upgraded continued their ceaseless optimization, preparing for a future that might not need anything recognizably human.

Below, the Meat Quarter persisted, a stubborn reminder of what Mars was trying to leave behind—or perhaps, what it was afraid to keep.