Left Alone

By Shingo Fujisaki
First Published: 2012
It is 2071, and Mars is being slowly terraformed by many nations often cooperating in an uneasy truce that reflects tensions back on Earth. The water of the polar ice cap, the most important resource for all the Mars colonies, is jointly controlled by the US, China, Japan and Russia, and doled out to the second-tier colonizing groups (Europe, Canada, Australia, India) only grudgingly. A military build-up is under way as different groups jockey for control of this all-important resource.

This prequel to novel Crystal Silence introduces the setting and some of the characters, centering on the life—and death—of the cyborg named Jirō.

He wasn’t always a cyborg; he began life as a pretty normal kid who just loved playing games at the arcade… until he met someone who pointed him at Mars!