Single Event Upset

by Cole J. Freeman

  “Let’s do that. Leave her tied up for now. We can talk privately outside the door to Crew Quarters and still keep an eye on her.”

  “Oh, no,” Parker sobbed. “I’m tied up again.”

  Dish scoffed.

  “What happened?” Parker asked.

  “You ain’t gonna sing that tune this time, sweetie,” Dish snarled. “This ain’t my first rodeo.”

  “I’m not your ‘sweetie’, Dish. Stop calling me that. Lennon?”

  Lennon looked away.

  “No, don’t do that, Lennon. Help me. Please?”

  “We need to talk,” Lennon answered. “The three of us, that is,” she motioned to Dish and Matthews. She leaned in towards Parker. “Be straight with me, Parker. Are you on drugs again?”

  Parker swallowed. Her eyes darted from person to person. She licked her lips. “I… uh, I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  “Lennon, I don’t remember waking up this morning.”

  Tears formed in Parker’s eyes, and Lennon could see an honest emotional struggle in her face.

  “Help me, Rebecca,” Parker pleaded. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”

  Lennon relaxed slightly, feeling some sympathy for Parker. If Parker were experiencing some sort of mental illness, it could be just as traumatic and confusing for her as it was for the rest of the crew. “I’ll try to do what I can,” she offered. “Will you cooperate with us?”

  “Anything,” she replied with full sincerity.

  They moved the space suits away from the airlock, leaving Parker alone in the middle of the original structure, which contained the curtained sleeping areas. Matthews latched the door shut and stared through the window at Parker with tired eyes. “What do you think, Lennon?”

  “I don’t know. I think it is psychosomatic—that is, I think that some physical problem in her body is responsible for her mental degradation. I just… I don’t know what it is.”

  “How’d she get the drugs?” Dish asked pointedly.

  “I don’t even know if she’s taking drugs, Dish.”

  “She tried to poison me with sump’n’. Where’d she get it?”

  Lennon fingered the necklace around her neck. The key still hung at the end of it, hidden under her shirt. “I don’t know. I keep it all locked up. Maybe she snuck some out somehow, when I was getting something out. Or maybe, she still had more from before and has just kept it hidden.”

  “Could there be any other cause for her behavior?” Matthews asked.

  “Yeah,” Dish interjected, “she’s possessed.”

  Lennon rubbed her forehead. “Stop it, Dish. We need to think rationally.” She looked at Matthews. “I don’t know yet what could cause this behavior. It would take an unusual and bad reaction for the medication that I stock to cause this behavior. I hate to even mention this for fear of feeding into superstition, but I don’t even know what a demon would be doing way out here and why it would bother with us.”

  “We need to get rid of it,” Dish insisted.

  “How, Dish? How do we get rid of it?” she snapped, opening a door that she wished would have remained shut.

  “We could pray over her,” suggested Matthews. Dish heartily agreed.

  “You could do it, Lennon. You’re into all that church stuff.”

  “No, Dish. First of all, I’m not that into it. I’m more of a ‘Christmas and Easter’ Christian. Second, I don’t know the first thing about how to exorcise demons. Don’t the Catholics have that specialty?”

  “My daddy did it! You gotta call it by name and tell it to leave. In Jesus’ name.”

  She clenched her teeth. “Well why don’t you do it!” She realized that she was egging him on and she backed off. “Wait. I can’t believe I’m entertaining this! Forget it. Forget I said that.” She shook her head. “Are you serious? Is this really what you think is going on?”

  His blank look gave her the answer.

  “Here’s what we are going to do. We are going to talk to her, like scientists, and get to the root of her problem. We are going to help her.”

  “And if we find a demon you’re gonna kick it out, right?”

  “Fine, Dish. If there’s a demon we’ll pray. All right?”

  He nodded in agreement and they returned to the room.

  Lennon began. “Parker, do you recall taking any medications improperly or without authorization?”

  Parker shook her head ‘no’.

  “Have you been experiencing blackouts or loss of memory?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “It’s been worse since we landed.”

  “I need you to be honest… has this happened before we launched from Earth?”

  She thought for a moment. “Only once. Before I saw the healer.”

  “The mystic healer you told me about?”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew it!” hissed Dish. “You picked up some voodoo heebie-jeebie, didn’t ya?”

  She gave Dish a long, cold look. “It can’t hurt you, you know.”

  “What can’t?” asked Lennon, trying to regain control of the conversation.

  “The demon.” She turned her gaze to Lennon. “It’s bound from actually harming you.”

  “What are you talking about?” asked Lennon, once again wishing she had not asked.

  “We talked about it, Lennon. Did you forget?”

  “Refresh my memory.”

  “It can’t harm you.”

  “That’s not true; your behavior has harmed some of us.”

  “No, those were all consequences of your own actions.”

  “You’re displacing.”

  “It takes over me sometimes…”

  She went silent for an uncomfortably long period without moving. Lennon leaned forward and Dish snapped his fingers in front of Parker’s face. Parker chuckled quietly and her eyes became distant.

  “Parker?” Lennon asked.

  “No,” she giggled.

  “What is your name?”

  “Wanderer.”

  “She’s developed a second personality,” Lennon said, more to herself than to anyone else.

  “It’s the demon,” insisted Dish. “Throw it out.”

  Parker’s head fell back in a full and hearty laugh. “Yes, Lennon, throw it out.”

  Lennon gaped, unsure what to do.

  “Come on, Lennon; let’s see what you can do.”

  “Ah, Wanderer,”

  “Yes?”

  “I command you to leave, Wanderer, in the name of Jesus, leave…”

  Parker’s face turned into a horrible snarl. A deep voice, unnatural and searing in volume, came from Parker’s mouth. “Do not say that name! You have no power here, hypocrite!”

  Lennon’s ears rang. That voice! It was so unlike anything that Lennon had ever heard that she had no explanation for how Parker could have generated the sound. Yet it indeed came from her.

  Parker was heaving. The tendons in her neck strained against her smooth, tan skin, threatening to burst out. Parker’s voice returned, albeit unnaturally deep. “You have no power.”

  Lennon glanced at Dish. His face was pale and his mouth hung open. She looked to Matthews for guidance but his face was ashen and stoic.

  “It’s gone,” Parker said. Her voice was normal and her eyes brimmed with tears. “I can feel it. It’s gone.”

  “That was easy,” mused Matthews.

  “You did it,” whispered Dish. He whooped. “You did it!”

  Lennon sat down, shocked. “I don’t know,” was all she could say.

  The water poured into the plant trays, went through a natural bio-filter created by the “soil”—an artificial substance designed for the weight and space limitations of the trip to Mars—and then it poured down a cylinder designed to guide the water by surface tension so that it didn’t splash as it re-entered the fish tubs at the bottom. Fans blew in the new Atrium; they no long
er cycled breathable air as they did on Seeker 3, but instead harvested and recycled the extra humidity generated by the hydroponic system.

  It was relaxing here. It felt like home. Matthews had set up a makeshift bench to sit and enjoy it, and Lennon joined him.

  “Let’s hear it, Lennon. What’s your diagnosis?”

  She took a deep breath. “She was clearly suffering from multiple personalities.”

  “You don’t think it was a demon?”

  “I can’t allow myself to believe that until there is no other explanation.”

  “How do you explain that voice?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  “So what should we do? We can’t leave her tied up forever.”

  “No, we can’t.” She ran her hand through her hair and then let it down. Her hand touched his knee, and he placed his hand over hers.

  “Do you think she’s really ok now?”

  “No. I don’t know.” She leaned her head back and felt the warmth of the plant lights on her face. She had read about the health problems caused by not receiving enough natural light. There was even a business for “light therapy,”—a person could spend fifteen to twenty minutes in front of a full-spectrum light with the hopes of raising the spirits and invigorating the body. “I wonder if Parker gets enough light,” she mused, forgetting that Matthews was not reading her thoughts. “Seasonal Affective Disorder,” she explained.

  “She’s from Alaska. It would have presented.”

  She opened her eyes when a sudden thought came to her head. “Do you know how faith healers are able to obtain results? How they can actually heal people sometimes?”

  “God?”

  “No. I mean, I’m not discounting the possibility, but psychological studies have shown that a significant contributing factor to the success of faith healers is due to the tremendous power of suggestion. The brain believes something to be true, and causes it to actually happen.”

  “Is that what you think happens with faith healers?”

  “I don’t know, Jonas. I can only explain what I have seen. What if the opposite were true? What if Parker truly believed she had a demon? Her voice—that could be a manifestation of multiple personalities. However, she has no history of mental illness, and I don’t think true mental illness would onset so suddenly, so there has to be some cause for her behavior. I don’t have the equipment to test her blood for anything more than a few anomalies—I can’t accurately test for unknown drugs. However, we found no drugs in her possession or in her belongings, other than the sedative that she gave to Dish. Her mental illness has to be psychosomatic, not from a physical defect. The cause? I doubt it’s drugs. It could be stress. Seasonal Affective Disorder—SAD—seems unlikely and the symptoms don’t match. The air and water are clean.

  She frowned. “I no longer believe that there is an outside cause for her symptoms. I think her problem could be solved by behavioral modification.”

  “So how do we help her?” Matthews asked.

  “Believing that a demon was exorcised may be enough. If she believes that the second personality has been exterminated, it may not re-appear.”

  “What if it does?”

  “We are going to have to use behavioral modification methods to guide her behavior. It will involve rewarding her for good behavior and punishing her for bad behavior. It has to be a social reward or punishment; she has to feel that her positive actions are socially rewarding and her negative actions are not worth completing. This will take careful monitoring and quick reaction to negative behavior. We have to give her some liberties, within reason, so that she will have hope and will desire to continue treatment.”

  “I don’t know if I can do that, Lennon. I am responsible for the safety of the crew.”

  “We don’t have a jail, Jonas, we have to treat her.”

  He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Do we have any weapons in the camp?”

  “Technically, anything could be a weapon. Traditionally speaking, however, we don’t have much. There are four chef’s knives—for filleting the fish and such. I think all of us have pocketknives of some sort. There are some surgical tools that I have. That’s it.”

  “I want all weapons and medicine locked up. You are in charge. From now on, we will check out and log everything through you, and return it to you immediately after use. I will task Dish to track all of the potentially dangerous tools.

  “We will release Parker,” he continued, “but she will be accompanied at all times. Overnight, we will lock her in Crew Quarters, since—strangely enough— it is the only room that we can lock someone into. Granted, she could go out the airlock, but she would go without a suit. Before we release her, I want you to brief Dish and me on behavioral modification. Sound good?”

  Lennon agreed.

  “How much sedative is left?”

  “We used a lot on her the other times that she acted up. When the ship was initially stocked, no one ever expected this much sedative would be needed for our trip. I only have about four cc of liquid left. That would fill two syringes of the size that I have.”

  “How many doses is that? Is each full syringe a dose?”

  “Normally, no, but at the strength it’s mixed, what we have will make two doses—if each dose is intended to put someone unconscious. For normal medical use, the amount we have should last longer.”

  “I want that sedative to be ready to use at any moment. Keep it safe—I don’t want anyone to get it but you—but I want it ready.”

  Lennon nodded.

  “Let’s go talk to Dish.”

  Dish protested at first, but admitted that the idea of keeping Parker tied up for the rest of the year was not technically feasible. He relaxed slightly after Lennon explained methods of social behavioral modification. The three of them gathered and secured all of the weapons, medicine, and dangerous tools and then met Parker in Crew Quarters. There, they explained to her the rules of her release. They purposefully omitted the fact that Lennon would have sedative ready to use. Parker took the news well, apologizing profusely for her behavior and promising to be better. Dish unceremoniously released the straps and helped Parker stand up. She hugged him vigorously and wept.

  Day Two Hundred and Twenty

  “Do you remember that time you flirted with me?” Matthews asked, lowering his cards. He and Lennon had been spending a lot of time together, and now they were sitting together around a small crate that was in the corner and away from the others. They were playing rummy, and the number of wins was lopsided in Lennon’s favor.

  “What do you mean?” she asked. She did not flirt, at least not intentionally.

  “It’s just been on my mind. It was so unlike you, you know. I was just curious why you did that.”

  “I don’t flirt.”

  He chuckled. “I’m serious, Lennon. What was going through your head? You didn’t even know… Well, it just seemed unusually reckless.”

  She was getting annoyed. “Why don’t you just tell me what you are talking about?”

  “Whoa, easy.” He held his hands up with the palms out. I’m not accusing you of anything. I was just curious, that’s all. I’ve never seen you flirt—and that one time was so much beyond flirting. It was just unusual, and I’ve never had the guts to ask about it until now.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Why don’t you tell me exactly what you are talking about?”

  His face darkened with a look of irritation. “Day fifty-nine. I know the exact day because I wrote it in my personal journal. You snuck into my bunk in the Men’s Quarters.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  He sighed and pushed his cards away. “I just wanted to know what was going through your mind. I don’t hold it against you for doing it, I was just curious. That’s all.”

  She set her cards down on the crate. “Well stop wondering, because it wasn’t me. Maybe it was Parker, or it was a dream.”

  “Parker has brown hair. She looks nothing like you. Why are you de
nying this?”

  “Let it go,” she urged. “It had to be a dream. I would never do something like that.”

  It was obvious that he wanted to say more, but he held his tongue. They finished the current game, and then stopped, both in a darker mood than before.

  Day Two Hundred and Twenty-Four

  Lennon’s bare feet made no sound as she moved from the Medical room to the Atrium. She had woken with a chill, and since it was still dark, she dragged her right hand—the hand that had not been broken—on the wall to help guide her as she moved in the low light. By default, one small LED light in each area stayed on unless the battery dropped below a certain level, in which case it would become so dark that no one could see at all. Even with that small light, however, it was much darker than it would be outside on Earth under a full Moon.

  Her injured arm was healing well. She no longer needed the splint, although she still wore it as a protective measure. She was often clumsy, enough so that it was common for her to bump her arm accidentally on objects as she passed by. It only took one such incident to create enough pain to cause her to be overly protective. The splint was not inhibitive, fortunately, as it only covered her forearm from the wrist to just before the elbow. This still allowed her full motion while protecting her from careless bumps.

  She passed by Crew Quarters, and peered through the window on the closed door that locked Parker inside for the night. Parker, apparently awake as well, stood in the center of the room. She wore nothing but underclothes, and faced the empty wall opposite Lennon. Lennon watched her for several minutes, and during that time, Parker never moved. Lennon was unable to see her eyes, and wondered if they were even open.

  Lennon looked down at the latch of the door, and was surprised to see that although she had assumed that someone had locked the door shut, the latching mechanism was clearly open. She turned it with a click and then looked back through the window for another glance at Parker.

  Parker had turned around and was staring straight at her with expressionless eyes. She showed no reaction or recognition. After a long moment, Lennon became uncomfortable and moved from the door. She shivered. Parker was obviously sleepwalking, but it still gave Lennon the creeps. She continued to her original destination.