You're Going to Mars!

by Rob Dircks

  Aurora points at Daniels. “Where the hell were you, DanDan?”

  “Hey. There were five of you in front of me in this tiny airlock. I was behind all of you. You took your time getting out to her, by the way. And if you call me DanDan one more time…”

  Aurora laughs. “Sure. Whatever you say.” Then she looks over at me and laughs again. “You’re such a klutz.”

  And you know what? I would normally agree. I’ll admit, I have been known on rare occasions – all right, pretty frequently – to lose my footing, or grab the wrong thing at the wrong time, or snag my clothes on the most random nail in the wall – but not this time. I was extremely careful, just like Daniels told us. I watched every single step.

  I’m not sure this was me. A terrifying thought.

  Suddenly an even more terrifying thought shoots into my brain: You know who else is irrationally paranoid, right Paper? Yes, your mother. The transformation is almost complete. You’re almost your mother.

  59

  The Idea Philanderer

  Interview with Claire Soams, contestant number 21, one of five remaining contestants aboard High Heaven:

  “Ted, I can hear you but I can’t see yo- oh, that’s better. Now the best part about being up here? I don’t weigh anything! There aren’t any scales, but if there were… zero pounds! Suck it, Rebecca Donegan! She was the homecoming queen, by the way, that insufferable bitch. I could live in space just for that sweet revenge. But seriously, this space thing is growing on me, it’s like an adventure every day, even with DanDan – oh sorry, can you edit that out Ted so he doesn’t hear it? – Captain Daniels, being so tough on all of us. I think Paper mostly, I don’t know if it’s one of those things where he’s treating the one he wants to succeed the worst to make her stronger or something. Whatever. You know, between you and me Ted, don’t put this on air either, he is kind of cute, in a hard-ass way, isn’t he? Oh, don’t look at me like that, Ted. Mike Horner’s gone, taken, and Albert and Benji, well, they’re Albert and Benji, but Dan… I could do worse. After this is all over, picture it: big, strong ex-astronaut and me, with a pension and two good-looking kids, and a white picket fence and all the trimmings. I’m already imagining going back to my boss at ZippieMart and telling him to shove it. Now shush, don’t post this or stream it or whatever, this is all between just you and me. Oh, this is live? Well dammit to Hell, Ted.”

  We’re all sitting – or, more accurately, being vacuum-sucked back into chairs – in the dining area, eating. The printed food is serviceable, but I can tell we’re all imagining something a little more tasty and real. As I spread butter – yes, my just-shy-of-realistic butter – on a less-than-realistic roll, Larson regales us with another old glory-days story about creating this company or that, and – wait – is Claire making eyes at Daniels? She is! He’s either oblivious, or he’s purposely avoiding her glances, concentrating instead on making sure his meatloaf doesn’t float away from him. It’s crazy, I mean, Claire and DanDan? They’re such polar opposites. But then I stop and remember that I’m falling for a Gitano, and we’re not exactly from the same side of the tracks. So I ponder Claire and Daniels with a new set of eyes, and you know what? Why not. I decide to help her out. “Captain Daniels. Are you married?”

  “I don’t talk about personal matters, Farris.”

  Aurora flicks a pea at him. “Come on, DanDan. It’s not against the rules.”

  The pea bounces off his eyebrow and he glares at her. “It’s not DanDan, dammit. But yes. Married. Happily. With three beautiful kids. A fourth on the way. I don’t like to talk about personal matters. Next subject. Tomorrow is flight dynamics, we should review the preparation.”

  Claire sighs, then gives me the laser eyes, as if to say, Gee, thanks for helping, Paper, and ruining my little fantasy. Then she turns, in steps, to Albert, then Benji, and I might be imagining it, but she seems to be sizing them up, and coming to the conclusion that neither of them is worth the effort. I catch her eye, giving her a little “I’m sorry” look, point my chin at Larson, and mouth the words what about him?

  She actually scoffs out loud, drawing surprised looks from everyone at the table, then takes a bite of her meatloaf and chews on it, and my secret suggestion, for a few moments. “Hmm. Zach. What about you? Ever been married?”

  “No, Claire, I’m afraid I haven’t met anyone as wonderful as you.”

  She blushes immediately, and fans her face. “Come on, stop kidding me like that.”

  “I’m sorry. The truth is, you are wonderful, Claire, truly, but I have always been, forgive the cliché, married to my work. An analogy: I meet an idea, I fall in love with her, and then together we have children, in the form of companies and products and services. And when I see my children grow up, I meet another idea, and fall in love, and the process starts over again.”

  Benji joins in. “So, you cheat on your idea wives. You’re like an idea philanderer.”

  “Perhaps not the best analogy.”

  “Who was the first? Idea, I mean.”

  “Oh, Benji my boy, that goes back a long way, doesn’t it? Let’s see… I had an idea, when I was quite young, that I could create an invisible suit.” He stares past us, almost wistfully.

  “And did you?”

  “I was very good with math, and the technology was nascent, I tried very hard, but it would be a number of years before I could escape via different means.”

  “Escape?”

  Larson waves his hands in the air. “Did I say escape? Forgive me. This old man must be getting space dementia. I meant to say vanish. You see, I was obsessed with magic at a young age, and of course, central to that idea is making things disappear. Eventually, I succeeded.”

  He turns off the suction from his seat and rises, floating away, down and around the hallway towards his cabin. He peeks his eyes back, just a little, and says, “See?” And disappears for the night, leaving just the echoes of his laughter in our ears.

  And it strikes me, and maybe all of us, that for all the stories, all the background we’ve gotten over the past nine-plus weeks, Zach Larson is still such an enigma, a bottomless pit. No one really knows how deep it goes or where it leads. Claire reflects my thought: “Hmm. What a mysterious man.”

  Then, of course, she adds the most Claire-like question possible: “Is it okay if I say I’m suddenly hot for Zach Larson?”

  60

  Goodnight, Martha.

  “I’ll be leaving now. Please remember to turn me back on.”

  Martha the A.I. says this with no emphasis, she always says exactly what she means and no more, but there is something undeniably un-machine-like about her statements, a certain wit and an ever-so-subtle overbearing maternal presence. Larson insists she – it? – has no personality, but it’s not just my imagination; Martha knows she is taking care of us and thinks she is our mother. As an example, my conversation with her yesterday:

  “Martha, start the treadmill, put me on the 45-minute hills course.”

  “Certainly. But you haven’t eaten.”

  “I know. It’s not mandatory though, right?”

  “Of course not. I am here only to provide advice for maximum exercise benefit and optimal health. You may choose not to follow that advice. Starting hills course in five, four, three-”

  “Stop. Forget it. Now I feel guilty. Okay Martha, I’ll eat first. What do you have?”

  “Normally I would suggest a banana, or a fruit smoothie, however if you’d like to exercise without a waiting period, perhaps just three ounces of food gel-”

  “Oh, God no.”

  “I’m sorry. Is there a problem with the ship’s food gel I should be aware of?”

  “No. It just makes me think of my mother.”

  Silence. I suppose that statement didn’t require a response, but Martha’s silence fills the gym. Awkward.

  “Ugh. Okay, Martha. Three ounces of food gel.”

  “An excellent choice, Paper.”

  “Wait, what color is it?”<
br />
  “It can be any color you wish.”

  “Good. Anything but blue.”

  As I slurp my orange food gel, I can feel Martha dying to say, “See? Now isn’t it better when you listen to your mother?”

  We’re turning off Martha temporarily to run through Emergency Measures. With an A.I. controlling virtually all systems on the ship, it’s easy to get complacent and forget that a simple electrical failure, or a fire, or God forbid a hack, could disable Martha completely and leave us drifting in space, wondering, “Okay, now what the hell do we do?”

  “Goodnight, Martha.” Larson flips up his button cover, turns to Daniels, and nods. Daniels flips up his button cover. “Three, two, one.” And they simultaneously press the two manual override buttons to Martha’s controls. Immediately the ship goes dim, and red backup lights throb. A speaker – not Martha’s voice – announces, “A.I. not responding. Life Support and Term Sleep systems not monitored. Propulsion systems not monitored. Solar Array systems not monitored. Refrigeration systems not monitored. Navigation systems-”

  “All right, all right. We heard you.” Larson cuts the audio, leaves his captain’s chair and hands out plastic cards to each of us. “As we’ve reviewed folks. Without Martha, the ship still functions, but more like the involuntary functions of a human body: breathing, digestion, baseline computing. The rest is manual. Here are your tasks. Contestants, as always you’ll be receiving points for correct and positive actions, and negative points for mistakes. Which, I might point out at this stage of our journey, could prove fatal. So please,” he grins as if it could never ever possibly happen, “no mistakes.”

  Aurora immediately grabs my arm and pushes me toward the fuel tank area. “You heard him klutz. Don’t kill us all.”

  We’re working in pairs for redundancy, and Larson has specifically paired me with Aurora for a little extra drama. As we check all the propellant systems and make small manual adjustments to this and that, I look up at the camera near our post. “Hey Aurora, I’ve gotten so used to the cameras, I forget that there are more or less a billion people watching us right now. Everything we do.”

  “Even more incentive not to kill us all, Farris.”

  “Come on, that’s not fair.”

  “I know. But it bumps my Likes up every time I give you shit.”

  “What if there were no Likes, nobody watching even. What would you do then?”

  “I’d still probably give you shit.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  She points at the various virtual gauges on the wall of this tiny corridor. “So, tell me what we’re doing here, boss.”

  “Well, from what I understand, Martha is constantly keeping track of the propellant tanks for levels, mix, stability, pressure, and calculating the ship’s trajectory and distance, and life support, based on all those variables. Without her, one of the other crew would have a full-time job back here. Like we’re doing right now.”

  “Life support? I thought DanDan and Benji were doing that.”

  “They’re monitoring that system, yes. But the fuel is the key. The primary system. The solar array will provide power during the interplanetary stage, but the fuel gets us up, over, down, and back to Earth. Without fuel, nothing else works.”

  “So we’re the most important two people on the ship right now.”

  “That goes without saying. Twenty points for us.”

  “Oh, so you’re handing out points now?”

  “From one most important person on this ship to another, I hereby grant you twenty points.”

  “And I, Aurora, grant you, Paper Farris, nineteen points.”

  “Nineteen. Of course.”

  “Of course.”

  Suddenly, a crash.

  Shouting.

  “Uh, oh.”

  61

  Don’t You Trust Me?

  We rush back, as fast as we can float and push ourselves along with railings, to the main cabin, expecting to find life support offline or a gash in the ship’s hull.

  Instead we find Larson and Drew between Daniels and Benji, keeping them apart.

  “You little weasel!” Daniels is swinging. “Let me at him!”

  Benji’s hands are in the air. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Daniels? I touched one knob!”

  “And almost got us killed!”

  Benji pleads. “Mister Larson, Zach. I don’t know what Daniels is talking about. Life Support is fine. I didn’t even touch anything there! I was running the Term Sleep system through a test. That’s it.”

  Daniels turns even more red. “Exactly! Sir, he’s twiddling with a system that shouldn’t be touched. One malfunction in Term Sleep and we could be sleeping forever. Idiot!” He takes another swing at Benji, and accidentally clips Larson’s jaw.

  Everyone freezes, floating silently in place.

  Larson grabs Daniels’ collar, calmly but firmly. “Stand down, Captain Daniels.” Daniels lowers his gaze, floating backward. “I apologize, sir. To you, not to him.”

  Larson’s glare softens. “Dan, what’s wrong? This is not like you.”

  He shakes his head. “Sir. With all due respect, you’ve known since Day One that I didn’t like this… contest thing… letting unskilled civilians get anywhere near proprietary and dangerous equipment like Term Sleep. It’s idio–” He stops himself. Silence.

  “Say it, Dan.”

  “It’s idiotic.”

  “Dan, you’ve been working for me for five years. That’s a lot of flights, a lot of tests. We’ve been through much together. Don’t you trust me?”

  Daniels’ hesitation seems to go on forever. Then he whispers, “Yes.”

  “Well, in any case, I stand as accused, somewhat of an idiot. I accept that. But I didn’t expect to have five contestants on board with us, the timing, I think you’ll agree, was out of my hands. I will ask you to continue to trust me, for just one more day, until all but one contestant is left on board, the other four returning to Earth on the lifeboats. If you can’t stomach that, working with one contestant for our journey to Mars, I’ll have to ask you to leave with the four tomorrow.”

  Daniels looks as if he’s been slapped, Larson questioning his dedication to the mission like that. He almost looks sad. I feel bad for him. But my pity stops as soon as he opens his mouth: “I’m in. But Greenberg and Aurora, if it’s one of you two, this is going to be a loooong trip. You’re going to wish you lost.”

  Aurora snaps, “Huh? What the hell did I do, DanDan?”

  “Other than disrespect me every time you open your filthy mouth? And flip your ridiculous, empty head around-”

  “How dare you!” And she launches off the wall at him.

  I try to hold her ankle back, but I get a smack in the face, and that gets my blood boiling, so I’m off to tackle her. Benji joins Larson and Drew in holding back Daniels, and before you know it, multiple faces are getting punched, including poor Claire, and she’s crying now, and the cabin looks like a bar room brawl, and Larson finally has to shout at the top of his lungs, “ENOUGH!!” and he sends us all to our cabins without dinner and locks our doors.

  A few minutes later, the lights return to their normal brightness.

  “Do you require any first aid, Paper?”

  “No, Martha.”

  “I would offer to review the High Heaven flight manual with you, but there is no section on physical fighting. It was deemed such a remote possibility it wasn’t even included in the manual. I think we can agree, however, that physical fighting on board this ship is both unproductive and potentially dangerous, and should be immediately discontinued.”

  “Yes, mother. I assume you’re giving everyone the same lecture?”

  “Yes. And my name is Martha.”

  62

  The Grand Finale

  “Welcome, citizens of Earth, to the grand finale of You’re Going to Mars! And here they are…”

  It’s like a perp lineup on one of those old cop shows. All of us guilty as hell, p
araded in front of the cameras, Benji sporting a black eye and Claire a swollen lip. DanDan, off-camera to the right, is looking at turns disgusted and repentant, and while Larson chats it up happily with the worldwide audience at home, as if the entire crew hadn’t just broken every rule of civility aboard High Heaven, Aurora and I are whisper-shouting at each other.

  “You smacked me!”

  “You were trying to stop me!”

  “Yes! From punching Daniels in the face! Of course I was trying to stop you! You’re welcome!”

  “You should have been defending me! How many times do I have to save your life to get a little respect?”

  “That’s totally unfair. And I’ve saved your life too.”

  “Whatever. Okay, yes. True. But still.”

  “So, no apology?”

  “What? I’m the one that deserves an apology! You distracted me, and look what happened!” Aurora turns her head, revealing a patch of hair that’s a little thinner than the rest, where Daniels tore out a clump in his rage.

  “Eww. I’m sorry.”

  “Wow. That was easy.” She smooths the hair over the thin part. “I’m… sorry too.” She puts her hand out. “Friends?”

  “Sure. Not for long, though. You’re about to go home. I’ll call you when I get back from Mars.”

  “Not so fast, Rocket Girl.” She pushes me out of formation, and Benji has to grab me to keep me from floating off camera.

  Larson glances back at us, not missing a beat. “…the contestants, and you at home, haven’t seen their compiled scores yet. Martha’s been tabulating them from the crew’s awarded points as well as successful tasks and, ah, deductions for mistakes.” He looks back again, and I’m expecting strike five, or whatever strike we’re up to, but he truly seems to have forgiven and forgotten, and winks at us, but he also seems a bit sad to say goodbye to some of the people he’s forged friendships with over the past ten weeks. What’s missing from his face is any trace of fear, any hint to the people at home that as we approach the closest point to Earth on our way around, there is the very real possibility that something sent by the government with blow us out of the sky. Or into teeny little pieces shooting outward forever.