Killing Time On Mars

by Alec Taylor

  It wasn’t easy to be in a relationship with someone and not live with them. We were forced to find time alone together in our rooms based on the movements of our roommates, or find an unoccupied room and take a sleeping bag. We snatched private moments, but we were continually frustrated by the confinement of the colony.

  One Saturday night, June and I were in my room while Tony was out. We were lying together on the bed, staring at the ceiling, totally comfortable with each other. She just made perfect sense to me. And yet she surprised me every day. I had to continually force myself to hold back with her, but it was getting harder and harder. I wanted to know everything about her. I was hooked.

  “Why did you come here?” I asked on a whim.

  “Do you mean your room, or Mars?” she replied with a smile. “Probably the same reasons as everyone else.”

  I’m not sure about that, I thought.

  “Obviously, it was an amazing opportunity,” she continued, “and I wanted to be a part of something important. But the truth is, I wanted to look after my family. You know I grew up in England? I had a privileged childhood, though I didn’t know it. I went to a good school and did civil engineering at university. Then I landed a role in the graduate program in the civil service, sponsored by the Planning department. I was young and naïve and everything was going well until my parents lost all their savings in the stock market crash. They were heavily geared and quite unlucky. In the end, they went bankrupt. They had nothing and couldn’t find work—and I mean anything to do at all.

  “Anyway, I wanted to help them out financially and had heard that JOSEV was offering family support to selected colonists. Also, I had a funny romantic idea of this place and what I could do here. I thought it would be like building a new and better world. Ha!”

  Her laugh was dry and ironic.

  “Okay, now let me guess why you came here,” she said. “You’re a hopeless romantic on a great adventure. No, that’s not it. You have sixteen illegitimate children back on Earth and couldn’t afford the alimony. No, that’s still not right. You’re…running away.”

  “Right,” I said with a smile. “On all counts. Actually, I always wanted to come here, ever since they discovered Tobler fusion, way back in high school. Remember when everyone started talking about harvesting on Mars? That’s when I decided I wanted to come here and do something worthwhile for the world.”

  “Mike,” she said, suddenly serious. “There’s something else, isn’t there? What is it? Does it have something to do with your brother? You never talk about him.”

  I was comfortable with her, almost too comfortable. She had become a source of strength and resilience to me. I wanted to tell her and could no longer resist.

  “Actually,” I said, “it did have something to do with my brother.”

  “Do you want to tell me?” she asked quietly.

  I took a deep breath and wondered how much I could tell her.

  “When did he die?” she asked.

  “I was thirteen and he was nine. I was with him when it happened. We were coming home from school together on St Kilda Road, in Melbourne. We crossed the tram lines and were walking on the platform along the other side of the tracks. It was a cold night in the middle of winter and it had rained earlier in the day. It was freezing and there was ice everywhere.”

  The scene came flooding back to me in vivid detail. The dark night sky, the smell of cold rain in the air, bright billboards shouting about products to buy, the noise of trams rolling down the tracks. Cars hissing past on either side of the tramlines. A crowd of people facing away from us, waiting for the lights to change, waiting to cross the road.

  “And then he slipped,” I said, the well-practised lie rolling easily off my tongue. “It all happened so fast. One moment we were walking along the platform, the next he was falling over. Another tram was coming and…”

  I stopped for a second, remembering his fall and the sickening image of his head colliding with the front corner of the tram. June looked at me with deep sorrow in her eyes.

  “…and his head hit the tram. He bounced off it in front of me and landed on the ground. And then I watched him die. I could actually see his life disappear. I’ll never forget it.”

  “My God, that’s so awful,” said June, squeezing my arm and kissing my forehead.

  I shuddered as a wave of guilt swept over me.

  “Yes,” I said. “It was a one-in-a-million thing. If he’d fallen any other time, he just would have picked himself up. But falling at that moment, with the tram right there, meant it was all over.”

  “It’s horrible,” said June.

  “Yeah. I felt terrible, so guilty…guilty that I should have been a better brother, that I should have been holding his hand or something.”

  I closed my eyes as another wave of guilt swept over me.

  “Oh, Mike,” said June. “It wasn’t your fault. You were only thirteen.”

  I opened my eyes and saw that June was looking intently at me. I had trouble holding her eye contact. Suddenly her eyes widened and I saw something like realisation in her face. She stared at me for a moment and then asked, “Is that why you came here? To forget your brother?”

  “In a way,” I said. “You could say I’ve been running from his memory ever since. I joined the police force straight out of school and accepted a post at a station on the other side of the city. Then I eventually moved to ASIO in Canberra.”

  “Is that why you feel so responsible for everyone here? Why you were so angry with yourself about the people who died in the dining room, and why you couldn’t accept that Eli killed Imani?”

  I was amazed to realise that she seemed to know me better than I did.

  “What is it?” asked June again, perceiving that I was about to say something.

  I blurted out, “I’ve seen him here a few times.”

  “Who?” asked June.

  “Robbie.”

  “Your brother?! You mean…like a hallucination?”

  “Yes.”

  Now I could see fear in her eyes.

  I said, “It hasn’t happened since Glen died in the dining room, and I’ve spoken to Chris about it. She said that kind of thing is surprisingly common and I should tell you about it.”

  “Did she,” said June absently, and I could see her mind was whirling.

  “June,” I said, “I haven’t told anyone else how Robbie died. You’re it, June. The only one.”

  She smiled faintly, leaned over, and kissed me lightly. Then she said, “I’m glad, but tell me if you see him again.”

  After she had stared into my eyes for a few seconds, a mischievous look came over her face and she said, “I was just teasing you, anyway. I know you’re not a hopeless romantic.”

  I sighed, shook my head, and said, “And you are?”

  “Yes. At least one of us is. You’re just a big Boy Scout.”

  “That I can’t deny,” I said, smiling.

  “You always do the right thing.”

  Another, smaller wave of guilt washed over me.

  “Really?” I said. “Okay, then. From now on, I’m going to break the rules just to shake things up.”

  “I’ll believe that when it happens. Actually, I think you will do the right thing, even if it’s against the rules.”

  “Hmm,” I said, pondering that for a moment. “You know, I didn’t just come here to get away from home. It was also my dream. This planet fills me with hope.”

  “Me, too,” she said and kissed me again.

  Confiding in June about the shadow of my brother had been a relief. However, I hadn’t told her the whole story, and he was not exorcised from my mind. I saw him twice more that year—and one of those times helped me discover who really killed Imani.

  ACT 3

  24. PROOF

  There are very few universal truths. Perhaps mathematics, with its precise rules and predictable outcomes, is the only thing that we can confidently say is ‘true’. Everything else depends on
perspective and judgement. And judgement relies on evidence.

  Imagine a black box and inside is the truth of a crime: the killer, the thief, the guilty party. Each piece of evidence is like a hole drilled into the box. Each hole casts more light inside. Sometimes a single hole lets you see the entire truth. Sometimes you look inside the box and think you understand what you see, but you later discover that it was an illusion or only part of the truth. There were not enough holes to show you the contents clearly.

  That is how I felt about Imani’s case. The evidence had only uncovered part of the truth. Too much was still in the dark. We could see enough to create a credible theory, but I wasn’t confident we knew the whole truth.

  Later that year, we discovered the truth about Imani’s death, and it touched on the very nature of life on Mars.

  25. ROAD TRIP

  The mood in the colony was depressed for several months after the dining room incident and JOSEV’s response. The ’shroom ban, the ridiculous psych assessments and group therapy, and the general loss of independence made everyone need a break. Fortunately, we were approaching the last month of the year—the ‘holiday month’ for the colony.

  Month 24 is a time of relaxation and renewal. It rejuvenates the colony for the coming Mars-year. Most of the colonists working in outposts return to the main colony, and people dream up creative ways of letting off steam. One year, there was a buggy-racing tournament. Another year, there was a massive hangar-tennis tournament, with improvised racquets and a bouncy plastic ball.

  The harvest is placed on autopilot—the system is on its own for a month. Essential jobs like cooking are rostered, with some painful and hilarious results—novice crews experiment daily with new and unusual recipes. The normal cooks are welcomed back with much gratitude at the end of the holiday, when they put on a feast. It’s also a time to clean up the colony, which tends to accumulate junk in random places—an old buggy tyre is left in a passageway, scrap cables are tipped into a corner and forgotten, basically 23 months of expedient junk disposal.

  Before the ’shroom ban, the holidays had been a busy time for Security. Most evenings, Security would have to intervene in at least one incident. However, the holiday month at the end of my first year was relatively quiet. Pete and I attended some accidents (high jump was a popular sport that year), and we still had to settle some arguments, but in the first week we didn’t have to take anyone to the infirmary.

  When I told Tony about our lull in Security, his eyes lit up.

  “Fantastic,” he said. “We’re going on a road trip!”

  “Great,” I said, frowning and shaking my head.

  Every year, some outside trips were allowed, at the absolute discretion of the Chief Executive Officer. There was no official booking system and Karl and Jan discouraged lobbying, but it helped if you had a strong relationship with the Executive Office.

  “We’ll take a buggy out for a few days, see the world, win big at the casino.”

  “Sure, sounds plausible,” I replied.

  “Hey, we could go to Valles Marineris!” he said.

  Valles Marineris is the largest canyon in the solar system. The first settlers had built an outpost for exploration, which had been abandoned but was still functioning.

  “We could invite June and Vivian as well,” I said. Noticing his hesitation, I added, “Don’t worry—they can fly out and meet us there. You’ll still get your road trip.”

  “Cool. Let’s do it.”

  Vivian and June said yes without hesitation—free time outside the colony was precious. We also craved some time away from the depressing news from Earth; it seemed like every day there was another major issue brewing between the JOSEV investor nations. The flavour of the month was accusations of spying on each other’s Tobler technology development and legal battles over intellectual property.

  We needed permission to leave the colony for recreation. Given my supposed heroism in the dining room, the group decided I had the best chance of securing an endorsement from the Executive Office. I wasn’t so sure, after my little stunt with the message about JOSEV’s spying. Karl took some convincing, but I played the heroism card and he finally agreed to let us take a buggy and hovee. He gave us three nights of leave outside the colony. Pete and Jan could handle the relatively low level of work in the Security Office.

  We were required to log an itinerary with Security, which I did on the morning we left—we didn’t want any interference with our plans. We all brought spare suits, sleeping bags, and our daily meds. Tony and I also collected pre-packaged food, emergency kits, spare oxygen, repair equipment, and some other general supplies.

  Early on the day of our trip, we met in the staging area of the hangar. After going through the airlock, Vivian and June walked out to a hovee and flew away. Tony crammed our stuff into a big bag and then spent a long time wedging it into the rear luggage bay of the buggy. He kept coming back to look at the telemetry readings on the buggy console, then going back to fiddle with the luggage. I waited patiently, amused by his uncharacteristically obsessive behaviour.

  Eventually he was satisfied and said, “Okay, bro, ready to go?”

  “What the heck was that all about?” I asked, laughing.

  “Centre of gravity,” he replied and pushed the joystick forward. I had a vague idea of what he was talking about, and I didn’t like it much.

  “Hold on, hold on!” he said, stopping quickly a few metres out from the hangar. Dust poured forward from the tyres and swirled around in eddies.

  “Sorry,” he said and touched the console.

  An old, cheesy song projected into my helmet. The first words of the vocals were “I want a new drug.”

  “Very funny,” I said sarcastically, though it was funny.

  “Thought you’d like it,” said Tony. “How about this one?’

  He touched the console again and the song switched to ‘Jailbreak’ by AC/DC.

  “Hmm…” I said.

  “Hold on to your hat, Alice. We’re going down the rabbit hole!”

  “Oh my God,” I said and grabbed the straps of my harness.

  He smashed the joystick forward and we took off, dust spraying high into the air. His driving rivalled Hu’s flying. It was incredibly aggressive, though not quite as skilful. We permanently stayed at top speed, weaving across dust fields and open rock shelves. We rarely had all four wheels on the ground.

  After a few minutes, I noticed a sand dune in the distance. It quickly became larger as we sped toward it. And then I suddenly guessed why Tony was interested in our centre of gravity.

  “Umm…”

  “Don’t worry,” said Tony. “I see it. I’ll slow down.”

  He selected a speed on the autopilot and we slowed down very slightly but continued to race toward the dune. We swept up the front face before I had time to react. As we went over the lip, Tony disengaged the gears and we sailed into the air. We went up forever, my heart pounding in my chest. I looked down desperately, trying to see where we were going to land. Dunes stretched out in front of us into the distance.

  I had forgotten the feeling of weightlessness. At the top of the parabolic arc, we gently lifted into our harnesses and were floating in space again. The buggy was perfectly balanced—we were very slightly tipping forward, as if to land going downhill.

  Looking forward, I could see that we were going to land near the top of the next dune. We just cleared the peak and gently connected with the dune. Tony hit drive again and whooped loudly, and I realised that I was also cheering. We raced down the other side and up the next dune. Tony slightly adjusted our angle to straighten up and then disconnected the drive at the last second again. We jumped into the sky.

  “Centre of gravity!” I yelled at Tony.

  We made several jumps before the timing started to miss. On the last jump, we landed flatly on the top of the next dune, the bottom of the buggy thumped into the sand, and we bounced straight back into the air.

  “Oh, fuck,” said
Tony.

  Fortunately, we had lost a lot of momentum in the bounce and the balance of the buggy kept us upright. Tony engaged the drive and pulled the joystick back to centre to lock the wheels. We bounced again at the bottom of the valley between the dunes, but this time the tyres gripped and we tipped forward. Tony pushed the joystick forward and, as we landed for the last time on the next dune, the front wheels caught the sand and pulled us down. Then he gently pulled back on the joystick and we stopped at the top of the dune. We were both breathing hard.

  Then we burst into laughter. After a little while, we regained our composure and sat there, basking in the bright desert around us.

  “Feel alive yet?” asked Tony.

  “Yes. Just don’t kill me in the process, okay?” I replied.

  “Okay, no more jumping. We’ll head to the edge of the dunes and go around. It’ll be a bit longer, but we’ll be able to go faster. We’ve got a long drive. Do you want to have a go?”

  “Only if you get tired,” I replied.

  “I’ll never tire of this,” he said. “Listen, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Do you remember the storm, when Karl compiled the evacuation list?”

  “I try not to.”

  “Well, you’re right to try that, because your name wasn’t on the list.”

  “Really,” I said, thinking about that for a moment. On the one hand, it made sense, given I was so new and didn’t have strong relationships with the executive team, particularly Karl. On the other hand, I still had strong bone density and would be most likely to survive re-entry into Earth’s gravity.

  “Yeah, really,” said Tony.

  “I shouldn’t be surprised,” I said, smiling. “I expect Karl chose his closest friends.”

  “In a way,” said Tony, “but there was more to it, I think. There was a pattern; it looked like he’d chosen people aligned to a particular…ideology. Except for me, that is.”

  “You were on the list?” I said with mock surprise.

  “Yeah, I know. It’s all those blocked toilets back on Earth. They desperately need janitors with interplanetary experience.”