Single Event Upset
Page 21
She had been cold lately, and it had been getting worse. Finally, the temperature had dropped to a point where she decided that she needed to ask about it or she would not be able to sleep. Since Dish had taken over most of Abrams’ duties, she thought she would talk to him about it.
Dish had set up his cot in the Atrium, explaining that the sound of the water helped him sleep. No one really minded, and most of the crewmembers had tried it themselves. Because the crew locked Parker in Crew Quarters at night, Lennon had claimed the Medical room, Dish the Atrium, and Matthews the Wellness area.
A dim light illuminated the Atrium and silhouetted the leaves of the plants, without being bright enough to reveal details of color or texture. The result was the eerie sensation of walking through a silent jungle at night. She moved quietly through the rows of plants, looking for where Dish had placed his cot. She began to have second thoughts about waking him up when she stumbled upon his cot. It was empty.
“Dish?” she called in a whisper. There was no answer. She called again, a little louder.
There was a loud clank in the other room. Lennon gasped. It was the unmistakable sound of the door to Crew Quarters opening. Hadn’t she just locked it? Who would open it?
She fell to her hands and knees and crawled to the other side of the cot, trying to hide. She heard slow footsteps coming into the Atrium and realized how thankful she was that she was barefoot when she had left her room.
She heard the footsteps walking among the plants and wished that there were some way to increase the lighting so that she could see without anyone else seeing her.
The footsteps stopped. “Lennon?” called a soft voice.
Lennon held her breath. Parker was out of the locked room, and she was calling her. Some unknown sense told her not to answer. It told her to find someone else to join her before confronting Parker. Lennon slowly crawled away, hoping to circle the room and exit without Parker noticing her. She passed another row of plants and came to a corner of the room, illuminated brighter than the rest of the room by a sole LED light in the ceiling. On the floor was the body of Dish, face down.
“She hides,” Parker said in a deep voice.
As noiselessly as possible, Lennon scrambled on all fours to Dish, using her weaker arm as little as possible. She checked his pulse, and was relieved to find it. She quickly scanned the area around his body, and was shocked to see two syringes. The syringes that she had prepared and locked up. How did Parker get them? Lennon struggled to think. How could she have forgotten to lock them up? It didn’t make sense. She was obsessive about accounting for the sedative. She examined the syringes. One was empty, with the plunger depressed and the needle bent to one side. The other was quite a bit away and Lennon deduced that Parker must have dropped it in a struggle with Dish. She had drugged him. What was Parker up to?
“Together we wander,” sang Parker, “together we roam.”
Lennon snatched up the full syringe and began crawling for the door. She stopped when she saw the dark outline of Parker, just one row over.
She could hear Parker breathing, slowly and deeply, as if asleep. Both women stayed, unmoving, for a period of tenseness unlike any Lennon had ever known. Hoping that Parker could not see her, she was able to identify the clear outline of the small woman as she stood, relaxed, with empty hands hanging limply to her side. Afraid to breathe, Lennon squatted silently and listened to her own pulse as the blood pounded in her neck. At least she doesn’t have a weapon.
“Why does she hide?” Parker asked.
Lennon did not answer. Parker turned and slowly strolled down the aisle. Recognizing her chance, Lennon bolted. Her feet pounded on the floor, and the sound exploded across the room. Lennon did not attempt to hide the sound. Instead, she focused her energy on the speed necessary to escape the room and make it to safety. Behind her, she heard Parker shout and begin pursuit.
She screamed for Matthews as she fought her way through the narrow sections on the way to the Wellness area. Repeatedly she called his name, hoping that he would wake up by the time she got there. Finally, she smiled with relief as she saw a light up ahead. If the lights were on, he was awake. As she struggled to make the last few steps to the doorway, someone caught her from behind and threw her against the wall.
She immediately fought, bringing her knee up in a solid abdomen strike. The resulting grunt told her that she had made a crushing blow—and that the recipient was Major Matthews. Even so, he pushed her into a dark corner and covered her mouth.
“Stay quiet,” he said in a pained whisper. “She might still be following.” They stood together silently, but heard nothing. “We need to work together,” he said. “We have to get her in a controlled situation.”
“She got out of the room,” Lennon explained. “She drugged Dish with this.” She held up the syringe. “I don’t know how she got it.”
He looked at the syringe and gave it a funny look. “She drugged him with that?”
“Well, no, with the other one.”
“How did she get the drugs on it?”
Lennon was frustrated. “On it? In it. It’s not that hard. Besides, I prepared it ahead of time, remember?”
“No.” he said simply. He looked confused but he did not waste time discussing it further. “Keep it with you, we may need it.” He moved in front of her and led her back towards the Atrium. They proceeded slowly, moving together and taking their time. They made it to Crew Quarters without incident, and found Parker standing in the middle of the room once again. Matthews slowly closed the door and locked it, using the door to separate Lennon and himself from Parker.
Parker screamed and ran towards the door, hitting her head against the window. Thankfully, the window was made of acrylic instead of real glass, and this kept it from shattering. Parker continued to hit her head against the window until a patch of blood transferred from her head and remained smeared on the surface. She spoke, but her words were unintelligible and full of rage. She stopped hitting her head on the window and stood still, her head shaking and spit falling from her lips. “You can’t stop me, religious man,” she screamed at Matthews. “It’s not your business. Stay out of my business! You have no right! Don’t you know I will kill you?”
“Why is she mad at you?” Lennon asked.
“I was just praying for her,” he replied simply. “I think there is a demon in her and it knows what I have been doing.” Matthews backed away and closed his eyes, giving no response to Parker.
“What are you doing now?” Lennon asked.
“Shh,” he said. “I’m praying.”
“You have no authority!” screamed Parker, and spit on the window. “Let her go!”
“Parker,” said Lennon, trying to calm her down.
“Silence, you self-righteous hypocrite,” Parker screamed. “You don’t even know your name.” She whirled around and ran to the other side of the room.
Matthews opened his eyes. “We need to go in,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because she’s about to kill us all.” He motioned to the window.
Lennon looked past the dripping mess on the window and saw Parker on the other side of the room. Parker grinned at her and then lifted her right arm up into the air. In it was a large knife with a stainless steel handle. Four such knives existed, all of them locked by the key that was around Lennon’s neck. Lennon reached up and felt for the necklace. She saw the glint of the chain around Parker’s neck just as she realized that it was missing from her own.
Parker laughed, and then turned and plunged the knife into the air-filled wall of the structure.
“It’s only the inner wall,” said Matthews as he opened the door. “It’s structural. It can be repaired, as long as she doesn’t pierce the outer wall.”
Parker turned to face him as he walked toward her. The second half of the room began to collapse behind her as the air left the walls. “How do you like me now,” she smiled.
“Give me the knife.”
The lights began to flicker as the ceiling collapsed. Lennon rushed to help Matthews but her ability to focus left her. She saw Parker leaning over Matthews, the syringe in one hand and the knife in the other, while he struggled to fight her off. Lennon gasped. How did she get the syringe? She rushed at Parker and took hold of her wrist with her right arm. Parker fought back, slashing at Lennon’s face with the knife. It cut a line down her cheek and Lennon felt the fresh blood on the right side of her face. Strangely, it felt cool, like water. She did not feel the actual injury at all. She fell on her back. Parker approached her and Lennon kicked with all her might, striking Parker in the middle of the face. Parker shrieked and flew backwards, dropping the knife.
Lennon used as much strength as she could, leveraging the reduced gravity to leap across the room at Parker. She landed on Parker, and the two rolled several times while Parker attempted to stab the syringe into Lennon. However, Lennon used her right hand and as much of her left arm as the pain would allow her, struggling to keep Parker’s hand far away. Finally, Lennon decided that she was unable to compete with Parker’s strength. She kept her grip with her right hand, but released the hold that she had with her weaker left arm. Using the hard face of the splint as a weapon, she struck Parker in the throat with her forearm, driving the splint with as much velocity as she could muster. As Parker choked and gasped for air, Lennon took Parker’s own hand and caused her to inject herself with the syringe. Parker’s eyes narrowed in anger, then went wide, and finally became droopy and relaxed. Lennon dragged her over to a table and threw load straps over her, cinching them tight around Parker and the table. She struggled to clasp the buckle with one hand and realized it was impossible, but by leaning over, she was able to use the hand on her splinted arm to help. Using both hands, she finally got the buckle to connect with a satisfying click.
The buckle was solidly latched. There was a loud whir as Lennon held it down and further tightened the cloth straps. Parker struggled weakly but was unable to free herself. She moaned as the sedative slowed her ability to move and speak. Lennon put her back to the remaining inflatable wall of the room and leaned against it, letting herself slide to a sitting position while she caught her breath.
Half of the room had collapsed from Parker’s damage to the inner wall. Blood coated most of the floor. Matthews was in the middle of part the room that remained, clutching his chest and sucking for air. His face had a large gash on the left side, from his eyebrow to the left part of his chin. It was going to need stitches. More concerning was his chest and upper body, which was so soaked in blood that Lennon could not identify where it was cut. There was no bubbling or wheezing sound around the chest, and he did not have pink foam around his lips. This was a good sign, because it indicated that his lungs were not punctured. He turned and looked her in the eyes, and his eyes were wide with fear and a sad look of disappointment, as if he was accusing her of a deep betrayal. She had tried to help, hadn’t she?
Suddenly she found herself back on the Seeker 3. She was in a sleeping area, and it was not hers. She was in the Men’s Quarters, in a sleeping area with Matthews. He eyed her oddly. “Lennon, what’s going on?” he asked with a nervous smile.
“Haven’t you been lonely?” she asked him flirtatiously. Back on Mars, her physical counterpart echoed the same words as, she sat with her back against the vinyl wall, sobbing.
“Lennon,” he answered, “I like you. I do. I really like you. However, we both know that this is not the way that we should do this. Go back to your bunk.” Matthews had a calendar in his sleeping area; the picture of the month was a tractor, of all things. The day was marked with clear, concise writing. Day Fifty Nine.
She gasped. She began to speak, but she was no longer with Matthews. She was at an electrical box, typing on a mobile computer with which she had seen Abrams always tinkering. She had plugged the computer into the electrical box with a thin wire. She read the screen while her fingers typed. Bunk 4A fan control config line 6: MaxRPM=0.
“No,” she said aloud. Her protests went unnoticed, her memories unimpeded as they returned to her consciousness from an area of her brain which had been hidden for a long time.
The mobile computer disappeared from her hands and she was in the Atrium of Seeker 3. She was smiling and humming while she examined her pepper plants. Parker was hovering a few feet away with a strange, mocking smile on her face.
Lennon touched the dark leaves of the plant with her left hand. In her right hand was a pair of scissors. “No,” she pleaded again, as she saw herself begin to snip pieces from the plant. She looked up into Parker’s dark eyes. “I believe in God,” Lennon said. “This can’t happen.”
“Even the demons believe,” said Parker in a low voice. She laughed.
Lennon fought to control herself, to regain command of her limbs, to stop the destruction of the plants. She could not do it. She closed her eyes and screamed.
“Lennon?”
She pulled at her hair. “It’s not possible,” she said.
“Lennon, come out of it. Talk to me.” It was Matthews. He had dragged himself over to her. The gash in his face was open and seeping. He saw her look of horror at the injury. “It looks worse than it is,” he said. “I’ll be ok. You got one too, it seems.”
She looked around. A trail of smeared blood followed him to the spot where he had been lying. Next to the spot, someone had discarded two knives on the floor.
“No,” she said.
“Lennon, I can help you. I need you to focus on my voice.”
“Why are there two knives, Jonas?” she cried. “Why are there two knives?”
“Silence, you self-righteous hypocrite,” she remembered Parker screaming. “You don’t even know your name.” In her mind, she heard Parker speaking clearly, from her seated position on the bedroll in her sleeping area, where Lennon had found her acting strangely. “Let’s stop the games, Lennon. You know who I am. Do you really not recognize me?” She screamed in agony while Parker’s voice continued. “We used to be close.”
She had a sudden memory, a vision that began with an image of Parker’s face. The scene expanded before her until she could see Parker standing in front of her, smiling coyly, facing Matthews as he approached her. Lennon walked behind Matthews. Parker winked at Lennon over Matthews’ shoulder. Matthews turned. “Wha—?” he said.
While Matthews turned, Lennon felt a cold, smooth object in her hand, the hand holding the syringe. She looked down and saw that she was holding a knife of polished stainless steel—not the syringe. She wondered if she had ever been holding the syringe. Had it been the knife all along? Images of the room and Matthew’s surprised face reflected in the large blade. Matthews’ question popped into her head, from the first time she showed him the syringe. “She drugged him with that? How did she get the drugs on it?”
She raised the knife up just as she saw Parker take out her own knife and push it into the chest of the distracted Major.
“You have been possessed by a demon,” Matthews said, interrupting the memory. “I’ve suspected it for a while, but haven’t been able to prove it until now. I’ve been praying for you for ten minutes. I don’t know how much time we have. You need to listen closely.”
“No, it’s impossible. I believe. I went to church.”
“Even the demons believe, Lennon.”
She kicked at him and tried to crawl away, remembering Parker saying the very same thing. “No, no. You’re wrong. Get away.”
“It’s a verse in the Bible, Lennon,” he said. “James 2:19.”
She stopped trying to pull away. He continued, “It says, ‘You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble!’”
She moved towards him. “How could it be? It’s not possible.”
He put his arm around her. “L
ennon, how do you know you are a Christian?”
“I… I went to church. My mom was Christian. I’ve always believed it.”
“Do you believe that God raised Jesus from the dead?”
“Of course.” She took hold of his hand with her own, taking comfort in it. She looked down at her right arm, bare and spattered with blood, skinny from the loss of muscle. A sudden pain erupted in that arm at the elbow and blood began to seep out. “What is happening?” she whispered. The wound began to spread, and a long cut emerged and grew from her elbow to her wrist.
“It’s coming back,” he said. “Focus, Lennon. Look at me.” She looked into his eyes and tried to ignore the pain in her arm.
“Have you ever confessed with your mouth that Jesus is Lord?”
“I… I don’t know…” She felt her back tearing in four places and the wetness of blood soaking into her shirt. She screamed. “I go to church. It hurts, Jonas, it hurts.”
“You need to confess that Jesus is Lord,” he shouted. “Admit that reconciliation with God is not something to be earned or owed but is a gift. Ask for salvation, and with that will come freedom from the demon that is oppressing you. Take in the Holy Spirit with the salvation of Jesus Christ and you will be free.”
Something was digging into her neck, something sharp and cold. She felt three lines slicing down the right side of her neck from her ear to her collarbone. She squeezed Matthew’s hand, fearful that she was crushing it, but unable to relax her grip.
“Now, Lennon,” Matthews whispered. “Do it.”
Lennon closed her eyes and spoke one word: Jesus. Upon the mention of that name, the pain in her neck stopped.
“Keep going,” he urged.
She had suddenly come to the realization that she had always tried to do everything on her own. Until this time, she had never actually admitted, or more importantly, believed, her need for God. The revelation sent shivers up her body and she wondered how she had not discovered this before. Shaking, she bowed her head and she prayed. As she prayed, she felt a terrific release of all of the anxiety and the guilt that had plagued her. She felt the relief of giving her entire being to God. She felt the demon being torn from her, cast away from her. She felt peace. She fell into Matthews’ arms and cried.