Killing Time On Mars

by Alec Taylor

  There were always a couple of early birds in the dining room, no matter what time it was. I arrived before 07:00, and already a few other colonists were quietly sipping coffee and watching the news. I collected some cereal and coffee (surprisingly similar to Earth coffee—I guessed that we had successfully grown coffee beans, though we only had soy milk) and sat at the table near the door.

  I’ll wait until Glen comes to breakfast, I thought, see how he’s holding up. Maybe I’ll give him a reassuring greeting and then head off to the office.

  I sat there for a long time, waiting for him, refilling my coffee, and watching the projection of news from Earth. The headlines were repetitive—the theme of the day was once again conflict between JOSEV investors. This time, China was accusing the US of developing Tobler weapons and threatening airstrikes against suspected development sites. The dining room gradually filled for breakfast peak hour. And then, just after 08:00, Glen suddenly appeared in the doorway.

  I was looking down but instantly knew that something was wrong. I looked up and froze. He had stopped in the doorway, about five metres from me, holding out his arms slightly from his sides. He was physically occupying the exit. He held a long, thin, curved grey-plastic blade in each hand. And he had the expression of a madman. He was staring forward and slightly downward; his lips were moving, as if he was chanting or praying.

  Time slowed. I became aware of every hair on my head. Goosebumps instantly appeared across my face and neck and arms. I could hear every single tiny noise in the room, including a stifled gasp from a woman who had just looked up from the breakfast buffet near the door. I could hear and feel my heart as it made a single beat. One by one, people in the room stopped, looked up at Glen, and froze.

  18. PRIMAL RESPONSE

  The rest of my account of the dining room incident is based on footage captured on the suit cams of three colonists. The reason I can’t give a personal account, despite being directly involved, is because I simply blacked out. I have no recollection of anything that happened from the moment that Glen leaped, until I was kneeling over his dead body.

  On the footage, Glen flies through the air to the right, his left arm stretched out in front, his mouth open wide, his teeth bared. There are four colonists standing at the serving table. Three of them are looking and recoil as Glen comes toward them. The fourth colonist is Petr Stevenson. He is the closest to the door. His back is toward Glen; he hasn’t noticed Glen yet. He is listening to the news inside his suit helmet, while scooping cereal into a bowl.

  Glen nearly scrapes his head on the ceiling before reaching the peak of his leap about halfway to Petr. He is moving quickly through the air as he nears Petr. The point of the knife descends and slips smoothly into Petr’s back, penetrating between the fourth and fifth ribs and slicing straight through his heart. Petr drops his bowl and arches his back. Glen’s momentum pushes them both into and over the serving table, and they bump into the wall on the other side. Petr’s body cushions the blow for Glen, who steps back and rips out the knife. A fine, flat spray of dark red blood flicks off the knife as Petr crumples to the ground. Glen turns and looks for his next victim.

  And I sit motionless at the table across the other side of the room. The footage lurches as the colonist who is recording stands up. I don’t know why I didn’t move. There are no signs that I am even thinking about escape, though I could have made it to the door in those first few seconds. But I’m also not trying to stop Glen. I’m sitting there motionless, with my suit helmet tipped onto the back of my neck. I look stunned: my eyes are wide; my mouth is slightly open.

  By now, self-preservation has kicked in for many of the other colonists. They are backing away from Glen, trying to take shelter behind columns and each other. The other three colonists at the serving table step backwards.

  Glen accelerates toward the nearest colonist, Meiying Chen. She raises her hands. The blade in Glen’s left hand slashes down across her forearm. It slices straight into the bone. They fly backward together. Glen’s right hand slices upward but misses Meiying’s body. They thump into a column and rebound. Glen flashes his right hand back across her throat and her blood sprays out across Glen’s suit and the room. He has cut nearly completely through her neck. The knives are very sharp. He steps back and looks to his right. His expression is wild; he looks like a rabid animal.

  John Mason is sitting at the far end of the first table on the right of the dining room. His helmet camera is filming the events of that morning; it is his camera that shows me sitting motionless during the first few seconds. But then I close my eyes. My chest rises as I take a large breath and reopen my eyes.

  Then Glen looms in front of John, who holds out his hands. Glen sweeps his right hand in a large arc and the knife plunges through John’s side, splitting a rib, puncturing his lung, and entering his spine.

  And then I finally appear behind Glen, moving quickly. He turns to face me and just has time to bring his arms up. I grab each of his wrists with my hands, pushing him backwards. We struggle for a moment as we shuffle toward the wall, then his left hand connects with it, pinning my fingers behind his wrist. I slam my head forward and my forehead connects with his nose. His head kicks back and connects with the wall. I pull his left hand away from the wall and thump it back against it. He drops the knife from that hand.

  Then he kicks out with his knee, just missing my groin but connecting with my lower stomach, driving the wind out of my lungs. He flicks his hand down and nearly cuts my arm. I leap backward and bend over, struggling to breathe. He jumps toward me, his right hand with the remaining knife heading toward my neck. I lean back and slap his forearm with my left hand. He spins around in front of me. I step in behind him to encircle his upper torso with my arms from behind. As my arms close around him, I catch the hand holding the knife and push it up across his body. Then I lift and squeeze.

  He is off the ground. He desperately pushes down with both arms as I bend his right arm upward. I edge the point of the knife toward the top of his neck, just under his chin. His legs kick back and connect with my shins, but I don’t flinch. My head tips back, my back arches, and the veins along my neck and across my forehead pop with effort. I squeeze again with one last effort and the long thin knife slides into Glen’s neck, straight through the top of his spine, and finally connects with the back of his skull. He suddenly goes limp in my arms.

  I breathe out and gently lower him to the ground. I kneel down beside him, my hands on his shoulders, looking into his face as his life departs.

  That’s when I awoke and found I was looking down at my dying brother’s face.

  19. RECOVERY

  My nine-year-old brother’s face was contorted with pain and distress, his eyes desperately searching as his life slipped away. The muscles went slack across his brow and around his eyes and mouth, the colour in his cheeks drained to grey, and he was gone. A massive wave of loss and grief washed over me. I turned my head and threw up violently.

  I looked back down and realised I was looking at Glen, not my brother.

  Then I became aware of the screams and cries of colonists in the room. Some were rushing out through the doorway, others had realised that the conflict was over and were staring in shock at the blood and bodies on the floor. One man was still absently eating breakfast, as if continuing his normal routine would mean that the horrible events had not occurred.

  I looked at my hands and saw they were covered in Glen’s blood. They were also shaking uncontrollably.

  A soft hand pressed my shoulder and a gentle voice said, “Mike, it’s all right. It’s over.”

  I looked up and saw June leaning over me. She picked up a napkin and gently wiped my face. She wrapped her arm around my shoulder, and said, “It’s okay.”

  Chris was already in the dining room. She hurried over to us.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  June nodded and Chris moved over to kneel beside John, who was still breathing. I could hear screams and sobbing,
and I looked around to see that several colonists were still in the dining room, staring at the carnage.

  Chris got up, went over to Meiying, and just said, “Oh, no.”

  Then she went over to Petr. He wasn’t breathing and she couldn’t find a pulse. She started pumping his chest, trying to resuscitate him.

  “June,” Chris called out. “Help John.”

  June went over to John. He was barely conscious; his blood was pooling on the ground. The sobbing continued in the background.

  “Put pressure on the wound,” said Chris, and June pressed on his side.

  Pete and Karl appeared in the doorway and stopped there for a few seconds, clearly stunned by the horrifying scene. They looked at the sprays of blood across the ceiling, walls and floor. Then Pete noticed me and rushed over. “What the hell happened?”

  “Glen…had…knives,” I replied. I had to breathe between every word.

  “What? My God, he did this?” he said, looking around.

  I could barely even move my head to nod.

  “Is he dead?” asked Pete, looking down at Glen.

  “I…Yes,” I replied.

  “Who killed him?”

  “I…” I said, realising that I didn’t actually know. I looked down at my blood-soaked hands, and then looked back up at Pete. His eyes widened.

  “Chris,” yelled June. “John needs help.”

  “Okay. Damn, I’ve lost Petr’s pulse. Come here and try mouth to mouth; I’ll take John.”

  Blood gushed out as June removed her hand from John’s side.

  “I’ve got to get him to the infirmary. Karl, help me carry him.”

  They carried him away, blood trickling from his body.

  Pete looked at Meiying and said, “Oh, fuck, she’s dead! Jesus.”

  A couple of colonists standing nearby gasped when they heard him.

  My training finally kicked in and I said, “The colony, Pete. The colony comes first.”

  “Yes, I’ll go make an announcement and gather the response team. Actually, I’ll just get Tony and Liu; everyone else has already been here. Okay, everyone,” he said loudly to the rest of the room. “Everyone out. We need this room cleared now. Come on, everyone out.”

  Pete ushered the last few colonists out of the dining room and a few seconds later made an announcement. He said that there had been an incident in the dining room, which was now out of service, and asked everyone to go about their normal days. Tony arrived and June told him what had happened as he took over the CPR on Petr. It was hopeless. Tony continued for a few minutes, until Chris appeared back in the room. She asked us to stop and felt for Petr’s pulse. Then she said, “It’s no good. He’s gone.”

  “John?” asked Tony.

  “No,” replied Chris, shaking her head. He was dead, too.

  I leaned back and sat against the wall, staring at the horror all around.

  “What do we do now?” asked Tony, waking me from the nightmare.

  I tried to regain my composure, but I was barely able to think. “We need to…cordon off the scene, collect evidence, and then…I guess someone has to clean it up.”

  Pete came back and spent the rest of the morning combing over the scene and collecting footage from various colonists. He recovered the knives that Glen had used—they were scythes for harvesting crops, which had been shaped into thin blades and then sharpened.

  I was in slow motion and couldn’t help much. The bodies were carried to the infirmary, and cleaning equipment was collected from the laundry. A few amazingly generous—or perhaps morbidly curious—colonists volunteered to clean the room. They scrubbed the blood off the walls until there was only a very faint stain. I sat leaning against a column the whole time, trying to remember what had happened while I had blacked out, and trying not to remember my brother’s face.

  Thankfully, the plastic didn’t absorb the blood. A couple of the volunteers switched the serving table over to the other side of the room and, by the end of the day, the room had reopened for the evening meal.

  Tony, June, and I went back to the Security Office to look at the recordings that Pete had collected. I watched in wonder as I sat motionless while Glen killed Petr, Meiying, and John, and then as I fought and killed Glen.

  “Well done,” said Tony quietly. “He had to be stopped. You saved lives.”

  “Not soon enough. Why did I just sit there for so long?”

  “It was seconds, Mike, and your brain was still catching up.”

  “It was too long,” I said.

  “You were faster than everyone else,” said June, “and you were the only one who tried to stop him.”

  Then Chris arrived.

  “Do you want to see the footage?” asked Pete.

  “I was there,” she replied abruptly, but without any anger.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Chris.

  “What are you sorry for?” she replied. “If you hadn’t stopped him, more of us would be dead right now.” She sighed and continued, “I couldn’t save John. He lost too much blood, and I wasn’t able to get in fast enough to stop the bleeding. I’m going to talk to Karl about our equipment. We need a major upgrade for the infirmary.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” said June.

  “I know,” snapped Chris. “I also had a preliminary look at their blood and you’re not going to like what I found.”

  “Ah, shit,” said Pete and his shoulders slumped.

  “Yes,” said Chris. “Glen had consumed a large quantity of mushrooms. The amount of psilocybin in his blood was astronomical. In fact, he must have been a long-term addict to have so much in his system and still be able to stand up.”

  *

  The next day Liu gave us access to Glen’s complete digital footprint. We found that the only thing he seemed to have done outside work hours was play video games. He hadn’t chatted with anyone or played in any teams, but he was impressively successful at playing alone.

  Pete and I went down to Glen’s room. It was a cold and lonely place. He had had no personal items at all, none of the trinkets that colonists usually collected. His suits were hanging neatly and were all well maintained and washed. Surprisingly, his bed had been made on the morning of the murders—I guessed it was an old habit. We found a large bag of mushroom cookies in his bottom drawer. Under his bed, we found some strands of electrical wire, but not nearly enough to pin the explosions on him.

  We summarised all the evidence and Pete wrote a preliminary report for JOSEV, concluding that Glen had probably been the bomber.

  I believed Glen was the saboteur, though we only had a few pieces of circumstantial evidence. I didn’t have the same uncertainty and doubt that I had had when investigating Eli—Glen’s behaviour had been convincingly consistent with being responsible for the bombings. He had taken steps to cover his tracks, but as we started to close in he couldn’t handle the stress, consumed a large quantity of mushrooms, and became homicidal.

  The whole experience left me feeling empty. I would never really know why Glen did it or whether he was the bomber. I wanted concrete proof of his guilt and I wanted justice. His death was not adequate punishment for killing those innocent people or endangering the lives of the entire colony in the storm.

  The dining room incident shook the confidence of the entire colony. Imani’s murder had been the act of a jilted lover (or so everyone believed) who had then taken his own life. That was at least understandable, even if it was horrific. The dining room murders, on the other hand, were abhorrent and random. For a long time, colonists were nervous in the dining room and in public spaces generally. Over time, they returned to older and more social habits, but there was a subtle but permanent shift in the attitude of the colony: it was no longer safe.

  Two days after the incident, we held a service for Petr, Meiying, and John in the room where they had been murdered. Karl invited all colonists in non-essential roles to the event and gave them the afternoon off. Most of the colony filed into the dining room, glanci
ng sideways at the open space to the right where the three victims had been murdered. Karl, Jan, Pete, and I were waiting on the other side. Pictures of Petr, Meiying, and John projected onto the wall behind us.

  Every bench was filled with colonists, and people lined the walls. Everyone was talking in hushed tones and shuffling about quietly. As soon as the dining room became full, Jan started directing arrivals to the lounge, where the service would also be broadcast. Liu then patched Karl’s suit microphone into a live video stream.

  “Thank you, everyone, for coming to this service,” said Karl, speaking into every suit in the colony, “as we come together to remember and mourn the loss of three of our fellow colonists to a most heinous crime.

  “Petr Stevenson, Meiying Chen, and John Mason were taken from us by a madman. A man who will not be mourned, but will forever be remembered as an agent of evil who slept among us. He took the lives of these three people who were like family to us.

  “JOSEV is deeply shocked and troubled by these events, and we need to rebuild their confidence. We need to prove that we can continue production without interruption. Later, I will talk about how we will respond to this crime and make our world a safer place. But first we are here to remember our friends who have passed, through the experiences of their closest friends.”

  Karl then introduced three speakers in succession, who spoke about the lives and personalities of Petr, Meiying, and John. Finally, when they finished, he said, “I would now like to thank somebody who saved the lives of other colonists.”

  My heart sank. I closed my eyes and bowed my head. Pete had warned me that this was going to happen. Karl briefly described my actions and gave me an award from JOSEV, which I later shoved in my bottom drawer.