Sol 64, Mars surface
Ewa peeled herself out of her tent. It wasn’t all that simple since she had already sucked the air out of it and was wearing her clunky MfE spacesuit. Spending last night in her underwear had been a luxury that she wouldn’t be able to indulge in again any time soon. She had consumed way too much oxygen doing this - the resource she would probably run out of first. It was obvious she was going to die here on Mars. Her air supply might last one more week, while her water might stretch for twice that long if she continued to recycle the fluids as optimally as she was doing now. There was no need for her to skimp on the food. She would be dead in ten sols, one way or the other.
Regardless, she had no intention of just sitting down somewhere and dying. She had considered that option once or twice. All she had to do was switch off her oxygen. Within a few minutes, she would suffocate - not a pretty death, but a quick one. She could spare herself a lot of pain that way. The anguish had already started. The skin on her arm and leg joints was being rubbed raw by her spacesuit. She had applied lotion on those spots inside the tent, but she would have to sleep in her suit tonight. Ewa had no choice, though. She had to fight, even if the outcome had been predetermined a long time ago.
She glanced up into the sky. The view was better today. She could even make out Phobos, the Martian moon. Ewa checked the tables on her universal device. Getting her bearings was much easier now that she could run calculations off both the sun and the small moon. Ewa stared to the south, the direction in which the NASA base was located. On the horizon, she noticed a strangely shaped hill. It didn’t fit with its surroundings. It might have been created by a meteor strike. She decided to head that way to check it out.
She came to stop after only three minutes of walking. Ewa was confused about what had happened. Something had made her stop moving. She glanced down and lifted her right foot. It obeyed her wish. She then tested the left one. It worked as normal, too. She set off again - and once again stopped in her tracks. What was it? Had she just experienced a bout of schizophrenia? Ewa took a deep breath and released it. She wrapped both hands around her right leg and pulled it forward. Ten centimeters, that was enough. She repeated the process with her left leg. Ewa was glad that nobody could see her, but what she was doing was working. She was advancing, though quite slowly. But then her legs suddenly started working again.
Ewa felt relieved. She set her sights on the hill again and marched westward. The ground was sandy, and she was leaving a deep trail behind her. The backpack cut into her shoulders. Her joints ached. The hill vanished all of a sudden, and Ewa stopped walking, her heart pounding rapidly. What had happened to the horizon? She spun around. There was the hill again, behind her. How could that be? Ewa scanned her surroundings. A trail of human footprints led to the hill, and beside them, a second row ran to where she was now standing. She was the only one out here. She must have doubled back somehow without being aware of it. What did that mean? Was something - her own body or even her mind - trying to play a trick on her?
Ewa dropped her backpack on the ground and sank onto it. Who was the boss here? She was! She wouldn’t let this rattle her. She would decide in which direction she would go.
Her arm jerked suddenly. Her right hand started moving back and forth in front of her helmet as if trying to get her attention. Ewa tried to control her muscles, but without success. What did her hand want from her? She felt panic surge through her body. She had to regain control, no matter what. With her left hand, she rummaged for a tool. She could cut off the right one! No, that would involve slicing into her suit, which would cause her to instantly die.
She leaned down until her arm was within reach of the Mars surface. It extended to its full length, her pointer finger stretching forward. Her own hand began to draw a picture in the sand. No, it wasn’t a picture. It was forming letters. Her hand wanted to communicate with her! She really had lost her mind now. Ewa had to chuckle. She was leaning down to the Mars desert and writing letters in the sand. She would probably wake up shortly on board the Santa Maria, and this would all prove to be some horrible nightmare.
The English words Go West appeared in the sand. If her own subconscious was trying to communicate with her, why wasn’t it doing so in Polish? Wouldn’t that make more sense? After all, she formulated her thoughts in her native language. Or did this have something to do with a part of personality that she had split off? Ewa had read somewhere that such split personalities sometimes spoke in unfamiliar languages. At least, the language here was English, which meant she could understand the instructions.
“Why?” Ewa asked aloud.
She didn’t plan to follow the order, but she was curious about the motivation behind her second identity. Why did the other Ewa want to head west? She took a step back to provide space for the response, and her finger started writing again. It was both shocking and fascinating to watch. She was reminded of a horror film she had once watched in which the protagonists had used a memento to conjure up ghosts, who had then written things on a chalkboard.
“Trust me,” was now written in the sand.
“I’m you, and you’re me,” Ewa said. “How could I trust myself considering all the people I’ve killed?”
“You didn’t do it,” her finger replied.
“That would be nice,” Ewa answered aloud, “but the proof was irrefutable. I even watched myself do it. I won’t fall for this line.”
She automatically moved back another step.
“There are supplies stored 410 kilometers west of here,” she now wrote.
Ewa flinched. Her other personality must be completely insane. Where in the world would supplies come from out here in the middle of the Mars desert?
“That’s impossible,” Ewa said. “You just made up that information. I must have made that up.”
“Spaceliner I,” her finger wrote.
The Spaceliner was the Mars spaceship that belonged to a wealthy businessman. It should reach the planet in a few months to set up a new colony here. Surely, the company had sent provisions to Mars ahead of the ship’s arrival. This was NASA’s standard procedure as well. The MfE initiative was the only effort that had gambled everything on a single roll of the dice. But how could anyone know where Spaceliner’s provisions were being stored? Her subconscious had cooked up a doozy of a story this time.
“There’s no way you could know that,” Ewa said with a shake of her head.
The mere fact that she was talking to herself and using her own hand to write messages to herself reflected the fact that her mental state was even worse off than she had feared.
“Trust me,” her hand replied.
Ewa laughed. She wasn’t crazy enough to do that. If she kept heading south, she would eventually reach the NASA base.
“You won’t make it,” her finger jotted in the sand.
Ewa’s jaw dropped. Her second self was reading her thoughts! She realized that this alarm was the only evidence of her illness. Of course, the other Ewa knew her thoughts. She was solely composed of them. Everything was playing itself out in her mind. If only she could somehow manage to get her hand back under control!
“What do you have to lose?” she read.
Her hand was making a good argument, but that wasn’t surprising. Ewa’s skills of persuasion had always been strong. Four hundred twenty kilometers in six days seemed doable even if that meant she had to cover seventy kilometers a day. Fourteen hours on her feet with ten hours of rest. It would be an overwhelming task, but at least she now had a goal. There was no way she could reach the NASA base with the time she had left.
“You won’t regret this,” her finger wrote in the sand.
This cinched it for Ewa. There was too much she regretted as it was. This journey west wouldn’t add to that. She was already looking forward to the excuse she would present herself when, at the end of her trip, the pitiless desert was all that was waiting for her.
You can get Mars Nation 2 here:
har
d-sf.com/links/790047
Brandon Q. Morris
--
www.hard-sf.com
[email protected]
Translator: Rachel Hildebrandt
Editing: Marcia Kwiecinski, A.A.S., and Stephen Kwiecinski, B.S.
Cover design: Audible Germany
Mars Nation 1 Page 31