by Emma Newman
But I haven’t unpacked my cargo crate yet. Confused, I turn the paper over, wondering if it’s something a previous inhabitant lost and left behind. There are words painted on the thick stock, swirling like informal calligraphy.
DON’T TRUST ARNOLFI! the message reads, and my heart stops in my chest at the sight of the familiar style.
Even though they’re just words on a plain background, and not the usual landscapes that I paint, I know my own style too well. I painted this myself.
2
I STARE AT the scrap of paper, the dizziness returning as I pay less attention to the room and how I am standing. I sit on the bed, staring at the brushstrokes, certain it’s my own style. Slowly, my spinning thoughts settle enough to try to fathom this. I can see several possibilities and the first one that leaps to mind is so frightening that I immediately push it away. Instead, I fixate on an alternative: that someone on this base is trying to play some sort of sick joke. But I’ve only just met these people. Why would they want to do that?
Another possibility is that I have been here before, left that note for myself to find by pure chance and then somehow forgot all about it.
Just the simple thought that I might have been in this room before—the only place that seemed unfamiliar on the base—sends a shiver down my back. That seems like the first stage of immersion psychosis and I know I’m at high risk for that. Covering my eyes with my hands, I feel sweat on my upper lip even as I try to fool myself into thinking I’m not afraid. But I can’t shake that thought, so I open the calendar via my APA to review my activities for the past six months. It’s all there: the date I left Earth, all the minutiae of my self-care regime during the flight, the media I consumed, the messages I received in transit and the replies I sent.
Of course, it could all be false data. But then, I remember it all. Not every single moment, but I recall it as well as any other six months I’ve ever lived through. Well, most of them anyway.
Even if those memories are real, I could still be on Earth and could have spent those six months in a fully rendered virtual environment. It makes a perverse sense; surely it would be cheaper to trick me into thinking I’m here than to actually send me?
I call up my v-keyboard and type, “End immersion.”
“No immersion in progress.” My APA flashes up a message in the lower half of my visual field.
It could be reporting that as part of the scheme to trick me into think—
No.
No. No. No. I am not going to fall into that spiral. That way lies madness, and I am not going to let a slip of paper make me lose my grip on reality. There has to be a more plausible explanation. Gabor wanted the real deal; he made that perfectly clear to me. Nothing short of my physically coming to Mars and doing his bidding was going to satisfy him. It’s not like the man couldn’t afford to send me here.
Instead of trying to work out whether the last six months actually happened the way I remember, I focus on the paper, and the first, terrifying explanation that occurred to me returns to mind. I have to face it rather than push it away; I know that.
What if this piece of paper isn’t even real? What if I think it’s there, but it isn’t? Seeing something that definitely isn’t real would be a step further than immersion psychosis, and I slide deeper into an old fear that has dogged me for most of my life. I breathe in deep and release the air slowly, calming myself, to avoid having an elevated heart rate reported to Dr. Elvan. I run my fingertip around the edge of the paper carefully, so I don’t cut myself, studying its dimensions and the way it feels in my hand. I zoom in, looking at the fibers. It is really there. This isn’t what happened to my father. I am in control and I know what is real. “I know what is real,” I whisper to myself. “This piece of paper is real.” The fear subsides.
The paper is the same weight and texture as that of my preferred sketch pads, four of which should be in the cargo box in the corner. A quick glance at the touch pad on the side of the box confirms that it remains sealed and locked. Only I can open it, and the lock date matches the day before I left Earth, so I couldn’t have taken the paper from this crate and neither could anyone else. I unlock it. The blank canvases are wrapped and packed in protective foam; my boxes of paints and pencils are strapped into place. After some effort, I move enough out of the way to find the smaller container that holds the sketch pads.
There are only three inside. That can’t be right. I’m sure I brought one more.
A quick check of the flight manifest, and the form I filled in listing all my materials, confirms I packed only three. I was warned this would happen: disorientation and loss of details due to the long period of isolation and probably far too much immersion. I scan down the list and note that there are also four fewer canvases than I thought I’d planned to bring. Shit.
Could this form and the flight manifest have been doctored?
Arnolfi said she was going to make sure my belongings were brought to my room. I type a request to my APA, asking it to check Principia’s drone records and see if it really was Arnolfi who arranged for the cargo crate to be brought here. In moments I receive confirmation that it was she. She could have followed the drones in, cracked the lock somehow, stolen the—
“Stop it,” I say to myself out loud. I don’t like the woman, but I know that’s my problem with psych professionals more than anything else. How could it be because of anything else when I’ve only just met her? And anyway, if she went to all this trouble to screw with my brain, why the hell would she want to seed even more distrust between us? It makes no sense.
She could be fishing for more work, a pernicious little voice whispers at the back of my mind. She could be deliberately sending me over the edge so she has something to do. All these perfect, balanced people here must make life as a shrink so dull. She’s—
I rest a hand on my chest and focus for a few moments on the breath filling my lungs and then leaving them, consciously pushing those thoughts away. I have to keep it together. I can’t screw this up on my first bloody day!
“Just because something is possible, it doesn’t make it plausible,” I say to myself. “What is the most plausible explanation here?”
I packed that crate months ago; it’s more than plausible that I misremembered a couple of tiny details. I was so nervous when I packed, and when I filled out that form, that it’s no wonder I’ve gotten confused.
I rub my thumb over the scrap of paper again. Am I really certain it’s the proper stuff? I could take a look at it in the lab when I’m able to use the equipment and then do an analysis of the paint too. That will confirm whether it’s from my supplies—or at least the same brand.
But leaving aside human error and the preservation of healthy, scientific doubt, this note is still here and still doesn’t make sense. If I don’t want to spiral off into some endless fractal of self-doubt, I have to assume I didn’t paint this—I have no memory of doing so, nor have I had the time to do so since my arrival, after all—so someone else did. That person could have hacked the lock and forged the opening date. The thought that someone here is screwing with me slithers back. Not Arnolfi—that would make no sense—and I can’t believe that Dr. Elvan would either, though I barely know the man. Besides, I was with him from the moment I disembarked and came to this room. The person who had this room before me left for Earth months before Mars Principia was told I was coming. Hell, before I even knew I was coming. That leaves Banks and Petranek as the only other candidates.
I know the decision to send me here was controversial—not just in my home but also here in Mars Principia—but this just seems . . . childish. Why would anyone here want to freak me out like this? And to take the time to find an example of my art, and then create such a good forgery of my style . . . it seems ludicrous. Almost as ludicrous as my having painted it myself and planted it behind the bed. It could have sat there for the entirety of my stay without being dis
covered.
The implausibility of either explanation frustrates me. I toss the scrap onto the bed, uncertain of what to believe about it. Strange that it resonates with my dislike of Arnolfi though . . .
I snatch it back up and stuff it down the side of the bed, as if putting it back where I found it can make it go away. I don’t want to think about it anymore. I need to settle in, find a sense of normality, before I start poking at that puzzle again. I find the photo that slipped down in the first place and prop it up on the small desk on the opposite side of the room.
Once I’ve unpacked the handful of personal belongings, showered and dressed in a set of the superlight clothes I packed in the cargo box, I stuff the flight suit into the chute for dirty clothes with no small amount of satisfaction. I’d recycle the damn thing if I didn’t have to wear it again.
Lying on the bed, I open the message from Charlie and have it played on the screen. His face looms out, huge, from where the Martian landscape was just moments before. He looks tired.
“Hi,” he says into the camera, running a hand through his hair. It’s longer than he normally wears it. I suppose I’m not there to remind him to get it cut. “So, I guess you’ll either be just about to land or just arrived. I’m hoping to get a confirmation that all is well any minute now, and it’s making me worry, so I thought I’d message you. It’s . . . just after three in the morning. Mia was up earlier and I just couldn’t get back to sleep.
“Your mum says hello, by the way. I keep telling her she can send you messages but she said that every time she tries, she starts crying, so . . .” He shrugs. “It’s like you died or something. Maybe you should send her a message? Just to tell her you aren’t dead? She doesn’t seem to believe me.
“What else . . . well, work is stupid at the moment, with all the capsule bollocks going on.” It takes me a moment to remember what he’s talking about, as I stopped reading the news feeds about halfway through the journey. The capsule was one of the reasons I stopped, as the endless speculation about what was inside was getting boring. The fascination with it is understandable though; when a genius claims to know where to find God, builds a spaceship to go there and leaves behind a locked time capsule to open forty years later, it’s natural to be excited about what could be in it. I remember the bet I had with my neighbor and wonder if he’ll honor it if I win, seeing as I’ll be on Mars when it’s scheduled to open. He’s convinced it will contain the blueprints of Atlas, the ship the “Pathfinder” built, whereas I think it will just be a collection of her memoirs. Charlie was so fed up with it all he refused to join in. That’s what he said, at least. I had the feeling he didn’t like finding me out in the hallway talking about it. Not that I ever said that to him.
“We keep getting customers asking if the prices are going to change when it gets opened,” the message continues. “It’s just batshit crazy. The AI hasn’t had a clue about how to respond to the calls, so I’m having to teach it how to handle this sort of speculation. It means I get to listen to all these weird calls, which is kinda fun actually. There was this one bloke who called and I listened in live. He said, ‘If the Pathfinder left coordinates for where Atlas went to, will you be relocating to that planet?’ I mean, what the fuck? Even if we did get the coordinates and another Atlas was built and was sent off to follow the Pathfinder, I doubt an insurance brokerage service would be relocating there. So the AI said that it was a highly unlikely scenario and this guy was like, ‘But why not? It could be a very lucrative opportunity for your business.’ And the AI was like, ‘Okay, sir, thank you for your suggestion. I’ll pass that on to my manager.’ The whole time I just wanted to jump in on the call and make some comment about the most intelligent people having left on the first Atlas, but then I figured that wouldn’t reflect very well on our parents, so . . .”
His shrug and lopsided smile make me yearn to reach over and touch him. He looks so tired, so drained, I want to hold him and tell him I’m sorry I had that conversation at the stupid dinner party, sorry that I was forced to host it and that I wasn’t strong enough to refuse. I want to tell him that if I could start over, I’d take down the paintings in the flat and replace them with the ones that used to be there, foul as they were. But I can’t.
“Mia’s fine,” he continues. “Walking is nothing; now it’s running. Everywhere. And she worked out the manual controls for the printer, which I only discovered when I came back from the bathroom and found her covered in ice cream that she’d printed and then tipped over herself. I freaked out a bit, I have to admit. What if she’d said stew? JeeMuh. She could’ve been burned! Anyway, I’ve disabled the manual controls now and it all goes through my APA, which she isn’t happy about. I haven’t told my mum about it; she’d do her nut. She’s getting on my tits actually. Nothing I do is good enough at the moment. It’s like being a fucking teenager all over again.”
That’s my fault. In my absence, my mother-in-law has taken it upon herself to step into the breach, even though Charlie was the primary caregiver when I was on Earth. We got along fine even when I was at the lab all hours and generally absent for the rest. She was furious with me when we told her I was coming to Mars. I didn’t even get a chance to explain how it all happened. She judged, she found another reason to condemn me as a terrible mother—which she has had good reason to do, in fairness—and I haven’t heard anything from her since. Not that it bothers me. That sour old bag is probably responsible for all the bits of Charlie that I could do without. I’d never say that to either of them though.
“I can’t believe how far away you are,” Charlie says, looking down so all I can see is the top of his head. In the darkness of the living room, the lights of the city behind him are bright through the window and the glow from the screen plays over his hair. “I keep trying to get it straight in my head, you know? I looked for Mars through the telescope your mum lent me and I couldn’t see a bloody thing with all the light pollution, but even when I was trying to find it, I couldn’t really believe I was looking for where you are.” There’s a long pause and he sucks in a breath and I realize he’s crying. “I miss you, Anna. It’s . . . it feels like you’re dead. I know that’s total shit and it’s just that it’s like three in the fucking morning and I’m knackered, but that’s what it feels like. I’ve stopped waiting for you to come through the door at the end of the day. I’ve stopped wondering where you are when I wake up. This is . . . it’s just shit, you know? And I’m trying not to be a total dick about this, and I know why you’re doing this but . . . fuck. It’s really hard doing this without you.” He wipes his face, still hidden from view, and looks back up at the camera. “Just send me a message when you get there, okay? I know Mars Principia will ping to let me know you’re there, but I need to see your face, okay? Okay. Bye, then.”
The message ends and I find myself wiping tears from my own face. I knew this was going to be hard—we both did—but that doesn’t offer any comfort now.
“Oh, come on,” I say to myself. “Get a grip, woman. Just a few months; then you can go home and it will be done and everything will be so much better.”
I don’t let myself dwell upon the dread that flickers to life at the thought of returning to that flat. Nor do I allow myself to question the real reason behind those tears I saw on his cheeks. I need to be careful. Stay positive. Be what I need to be here. Who I need to be.
And I can’t forget how lucky I am. I didn’t exactly choose this, but so many would do anything for the same opportunity. I’m on Mars! That’s amazing! I have to focus on the adventure, on the potential. Otherwise I’ll never make anything good and I need to not fuck this up. “Just once, Anna,” I whisper. “Just once in your life don’t fuck this up.”
I pat down my hair, still fluffy from the shower, check that I don’t look blotchy from crying—I don’t want Charlie to see that I’ve been upset—and instruct my APA to record a message. A prerecording icon flashes up on the screen and invi
tes me to select the amount of the room that I want included in the shot. I expand the boundary to its farthest edges, sit on the edge of the bed and tap the record icon.
“Hi, Charlie. I’m here! This is my new room. Nicer than the rocket and it’s got a proper loo. It’s the stupidest things you miss in space. I’m not saying that missing you is . . . Ah, shit.” I stop the recording and tap the delete option floating in the lower-right quadrant of my visual field. After a moment to think through what I’m going to say, I tap the record button again. “Hi, Charlie. I’m here! This is my new room on the base and I’m really pleased with it. I just had a shower, which was amazing. I got your message. I really wish I could hold you right now. I’m so sorry things are tough. Tell your mum to bugger off if she’s giving you a hard time.
“So, I’ve only met two of the base crew, Dr. Arnolfi and Dr. Elvan. They’re nice enough. Remember me moaning about the spinner? I take it all back; it really was worth it.
“Mia is still into the ice cream, then? Ummm . . . I’ll record a separate message for her. Later on. I have to go to the gym and have my baseline physical tests done. Another couple of days and they’ll let me out in one of the rovers. Then I’ll start painting, obviously, but I’m most excited about being able to go out to the Gale crater. I’m gonna take a selfie with Curiosity. Poor old lump. If there was a museum on Mars it would be pride of place, but I think they’re just going to leave it there to fall apart. I’ll finally be able to get some decent samples that haven’t been dug up by some fucking drone. I cannot wait to get cracking on all that. And don’t worry—I’ll be painting too, obviously. I just . . . I just . . . I guess what I’m saying is that I’m excited about being here and I feel bad about that, because I know it’s tough on you. It’s been tough for me too, but I’m so close to being out there, on the surface, after all these years of blathering on about it!” I pause, wondering if I should delete that. “I don’t know whether to send this to you now. I don’t know whether it’ll make you angry, seeing me happy to be here. I hope not. I . . . I know I wasn’t happy when I was home and . . . that was nothing to do with you. I mean, it wasn’t because of us. It was . . . shit. Look, I’m still a bit knackered from the flight so I’m gonna sign off, okay? Tell Mum I’m not dead and I’ll message her in the morning. I love you. Bye.”
