by Nolan Oreno
Hollis had entered the University of Mexico’s biology lab on the day of contact with the comfort that only normalcy laid ahead of him. He ran through all the habitual motions that came with beginning a long day of work: setting his keys in the cracked lime-green ceramic bowl at his desk, turning on the laboratories power at the breaker, recoiling as the sparks flew, brewing a hot cup of coffee, adding a dash of sugar and milk, checking the system levels, filing away papers left overnight, and writing reports with his favorite yellow pen- the one with teeth-marks on its tip. It was not until he sat down at his desk that he noticed a departure from the routine.
A tightly sealed letter laid before him. It was placed perfectly in the center of his otherwise cluttered workstation. It was addressed by the ECS, or the Extraterrestrial Colonial Society. Hollis instinctively knew something of importance was concealed within. The act of mailing a physical letter was something of a taboo during his era of electronic-dependency and would only be done in matters to assure legitimacy and privacy. Realizing this, Hollis hesitantly leaned forward in his chair, lifted up the letter, and torn open his fate. Nothing would ever be routine for him again.
Hollis forever since regretted the day he found that letter, wishing more than anything that he died on Earth along with everyone else. He grew to despise his new home on Mars and would be successful at times convincing himself that he was not on Mars but instead on some secluded desert on his home world, not far from a bustling city or a vibrant ocean. Not far from Rosa, his lost daughter. With enough tricks of the mind he could, at times, convince himself that he was not millions of miles from home. Even still, two years into his contract on Mars, Hollis dared not to let his eyes drift out the passing windows of the Hub and into the true reality. He was happy that the majority of the hub was underground, and yet, he kept his eyes low as he walked. He let his ears be guided by the muffled sound of the twenty-one others echoing down the long hallway. Soon enough, the sounds grew more distinct and some words and sentences could be distinguished. With a few more strides, Hollis could hear not a conversation but an argument brewing. Pitches rose and fell with bursts of dueling emotions. Hollis entered the expansive dining area with caution.
“Enough of these fucking excuses, Janya! Tell me the truth!"
“I told you, I don’t remember! Let go of my arm! You’re hurting me!"
Hollis could see that the performers of the altercation were two other colonists, technician Asnee Rao and engineer Janya Taksin, and they were locked together in a grapple in the center of the dining area. The sparse onlookers hardly held their heads above their tasteless meals and did nothing to intervene. Events such as these happened daily since Earth went dark and would typically resolve themselves in time. All one had to do was wait for the shouts to cease, as they eventually would, and carry on with their daily duties, whatever those might be nowadays. However, Hollis knew today's fighters as his closest companions in the colony and would not stand by idly as the others did so easily in contentment. He leaped forward into the emotional storm.
“Asnee, calm yourself! Let her go!" urged Hollis, pulsing with adrenaline.
Asnee turned from Janya and shot Hollis a look of resentment. He slightly loosened his grip over his quarrelling lover.
“Shut your fucking mouth, Hollis! This is none of your concern!" Asnee snapped.
“It is my concern," spoke Hollis as he carefully inched closer. "You’re two are my closest friends here and I can’t have you battling one another. Just let Janya go and we can talk about it, okay? We can be civilized about this."
“Civilized?! You want me to be civilized do you?!" Asnee tightened his grip once more, bluing Janya’s wrists as she cried out in pain. “You’re allowed have these outbursts. You’re allowed to lose your mind, but I have to be civilized?! Damn you Hollis!"
Hollis stepped even closer to his friend, chest raised and fists clenched.
“We’re all losing our minds, Asnee. That’s the sad truth of it. But at least you have Janya to share your pain. At least you have her to guide you through all this insanity. You can lose your mind Asnee, just for God sakes don’t lose her."
Asnee felt the impact of Hollis’ plea and tore himself from the sobbing Janya after a moment's reflection. He dared not look into her in the eyes, into her pain, and only listened to the pattering of her feet as she ran from them and out of the dining hall. Once Asnee was assured she was far gone, he fell backward into an empty chair, defeated by himself.
Hollis took a seat next to his now docile friend.
“What happened, Asnee? What’s wrong?" he asked.
Asnee took a moment to regain his thoughts before he spoke.
“Did you see the bruises, all over her body?"
Hollis shook his head slowly in concern. "No." He felt his heart skip a beat. “Don’t tell me that was you?"
“Of course not. Never." Asnee covered his face with his hands. “She’s doing it to herself. She won’t admit it. She comes up with all these bullshit excuses but won’t admit to me that she’s doing it to herself." He closed his eyes. “And all I want to know is why."
Hollis was unsure of what to say next and waited in motionless silence along with the others in the cafeteria. He waited for all the pain to go away, but it was the only thing that remained.
After a prolonged period of unbroken silence, Asnee spoke again.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what you saw there. It’s just, you were right. Without Janya all I’ve got left is this insanity." Asnee rose up from his seat and retreated towards the dining hall exit in a slow stumble. “I can’t bare lose her, too," he mumbled under the cold of his breath, and then he disappeared into one of the many branching hallways.
Hollis remained stationed in his seat and baffled by the events as they had unfolded. Asnee, his closest of friends, had always been the optimistic powerhouse who refused to let elation end. With Asnee, there was never a dull moment. His conversational cargo was always filled with corny jokes and wisecrack humor that could put a smile on anyone. That was what attracted Hollis to Asnee in the first place. No matter how bad things came to be, he was always ready with a punch-line. Asnee was the colonial comedian rather than one of its technicians, and it seemed he had lost what Hollis had grown to love the most.
Asnee too was attracted to Hollis but in a different way. The selectees of the colonial program met at the very first meeting back on Earth, three months after Hollis had opened the fateful envelope in his graduate school's laboratory. The newly revealed twenty-two winners were shaking one another’s hands and showering congratulation’s over an extravagant dinner in a grand banquet hall within a towering Los Angeles hotel. The food appeared to grow straight from table’s surface in continual abundance as it was instantly replenished whenever plucked dry. All along the parade of platters were heavenly aromas wafting from exotic meats, unseen colors radiating from unknown fruits, sizzling spices baked into simmering sauces, and endless more sensations for the world's most famous twenty-two people to gorge themselves upon.
As young Asnee Rao scanned his eyes across the banquet hall, counting the number of colonists around him, he suddenly realized one was missing from the table. He asked the others of the missing colonists whereabouts, but no one could lift their heads from the captivating plates to bother giving a useful answer. Asnee took advantage of the meals hypnotic power to slip away unseen, without an armed guard following, and explored the grandeur of the hotel on his own in search for number twenty-two. It was no concern to him that his meal grew colder each minute he was away from it. Something told Asnee that this mysterious man did not want to be found and such a possibility made him curious.
With a new cause, Asnee continued navigating through marble coated foyers and candle-lit labyrinths of the grand hotel. After minutes of patrolling curling stairs and high-arching doorways, Asnee was soon to give up on the hunt. On his walk returning to the banquet hall, Asnee was alerted by a cool gust of night air of the man’s hiding plac
e. He followed the breeze to an open balcony that overlooked the vast bordering ghettos that spread not far from the buildings basin. There, gazing not upwards to the stars, but downwards to the ground, stood twenty-two. Upon feeling Asnee’s presence, a young man with dark olive skin and rugged features turned around. He dropped his cigarette to the dusty streets below.
“And all this time I thought we weren’t allowed to smoke as soon-to-be colonists," smirked Asnee. “They say it’s addictive, and I hate to break it to you, but up there there’s few tobacco farms.”
“Everything is addictive," chuckled the boy in response. “And luckily I’m an expert at farming things."
Asnee laughed reassuringly and joined the boy on the balcony.
“Some of us are too young to drink alcohol, but that’s not stopping them from drowning their stomachs with wine back in there. So I think our new fame has given us exemption from most rules, wouldn’t you agree?"
The boy nodded amusingly in response and returned his gaze back to boundless broken homes beneath them.
“It’s a bit humid out here," Asnee pushed again for a conversation. “You must really not want to be in there with the rest of them.”
The boy pulled out another cigarette from his coat pocket and offered it to Asnee who shook his head in response. He then promptly lit it for himself.
“I’m from Mexico, I’m comfortable with this kind of weather," the boy smiled between the burning fuse. “But to be honest, being in there with all that food, all that extravagance, all that wine- you’d think the world was already saved." He scanned his gaze over to the horizon. “I can’t convince myself that our soon-to-be job is already finished." He turned his gaze upwards to the hazy stars. “I don’t think we can afford any more parties."
“Beautifully stated my friend, I couldn’t have said it better myself." Asnee eagerly outstretched his hand. “I’m Asnee Rao, and you, you must be the corn guy."
They shook. “Hollis Reyes, actually."
“Hollis, huh. I think I prefer corn guy."
The two spent the remainder of the dinner out on the balcony, sharing cigarettes and stories. They talked about everything there was to talk about besides Mars and their mission: their homes, their families, their lovers, and all those they were leaving behind. Soon enough, the breeze grew a few degrees too cold, and they returned to their even colder dinners.
Hollis beamed backward at this memory as he watched his distraught friend disappear and wished more than anything that he could relive that night. He craved to find himself gorging upon that great meal once again, where the tastes and helpings seemed endless, but instead he found himself chewing upon the dried nutrient-bricks all the colonists were subjected to eat for meals. He tore its tin-foil wrapping aside and dug his teeth into the tasteless dust. Hollis was not granted with the luxury of jumping backward to times greatest moments.
He could only go forward.
Hollis was focused on his bland-brick meal when a silent figure from another table approached him, a figure who had been watching him all along.
“Hollis, take a walk with me. We need to go over a few things," urgently spoke the tall man as he loomed over Hollis’ shoulder.
By the stern tone in the voice, Hollis deduced that it was Saul Lind, the architect for the Refugee Settlement. The settlement was meant to house hundreds of the escaping citizens of Earth in a close-net community of twelve massive apartment towers. This was to happen in the years to come in small groupings at monthly increments, beginning first with the family members of the Martian colonists. Now, it was a deserted construction site without any practical use.
Saul, as its architect, was one of the older colonists at age thirty-three and garnered much respect in the community because of his seniority and bravado. Beyond this, he was thought to be the last person in the station with their sanity still kept.
“Sure, I could use some new scenery," Hollis motioned onwards.
Taking any excuse to give up on his dinner, Hollis rose from his seat and followed closely behind the shadow of Saul, moving from the mess hall and into the catacombs of the Hub. Saul, a tall and thin man with messy blonde hair, did not speak as they walked and only stared ahead towards whatever destination awaited them. Soon they were climbing an inclined ramp out of the bowels of the underground Hub and into one of the many elevated observation decks. The deck was overlooking the expansive Martian desert that spread beneath a dark orange sky. The multiple observation decks were some of the few parts of the Hub that extended out of the ground, used mainly for weather observation. The rest of the station remained safe beneath the soil where Hollis preferred it.
Martian sunsets were something of angelic awe, and it was happening right before the both of them. Even while the Sun shined far softer on Mars than it did on Earth, being about one-fourth in size, it nevertheless radiated vibrant bands of color across the wide Martian sky, casting chromatic layers like that on a birthday cake. Each of these bands had their own separate beauty and their own separate experience for the viewer. Hollis, however, chose not to study this visual feast and kept his eyes trained from the window, as he always did. He stayed within the walls of the Hub and within the illusion it brought him. He stayed within the underground.
“What are we doing here Saul, what do you want to talk to me about?" asked a nervous Hollis, uncertain of the exposed setting of their conversation.
“Is Janya okay? I saw the fight back there in the cafeteria between her and Asnee, and it looked like it was getting intense. What was that about anyway?" Saul asked.
“Asnee’s under the impression that she’s harming herself. Personally, I could never imagine Janya doing such a thing, even under these circumstances, but I guess there’s evidence to prove it."
Saul shifted in his standing position. “Evidence?"
“She has bruises and cuts, all over her body."
“I see," Saul muttered to himself.
“Is that what you wanted to talk about?" Hollis asked.
“No, I’m simply checking up on the status of the colony. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about." Saul turned away from the desert to face Hollis. The setting Sun cast a red haze onto his face, and as the sun descended, so too did the warm shade of Saul’s skin. “Too few are concerned with the colony these days, especially the one person whose duty is to do so."
Hollis recognized the direction of the conversation. “You mean the Commander," he said.
“Precisely. He’s allowing everyone to lose their minds and put themselves in harms way, like Janya and all the others. He’s allowing the last of humanity to give up on the future of our species. While our colony is falling apart, he decided to lock himself away in the Command Center doing God knows what. Listen to me when I tell you I’m not letting humanity end with this sad cast of characters. I won’t stand by as we all wait to die."
“What are you proposing, Saul?” Hollis asked tiredly. He had heard this argument many times before. He hoped Saul had something new for him, something to drag him out of the same sad routine he had been experiencing since the event.
“We need to lessen the Commander’s control over the Hub. Under his authority, mankind's last colony has become a starving dog that’s lost its lust for life. We need to bring the fight back. We need the smell of fresh blood to reignite the hunger in us- all of us."
Hollis jumped in quickly. “The Commander isn’t as much of a threat as you think. He’s delusional, yes, but he’s got little influence over the colony anymore. Like you said, he’s been locked away in the Command Center nearly every day since we lost Earth. He’s basically left us on our own."
“That’s not true. You only have as much power as you have resources," Saul affirmed. “The Commander is the sole one of us with access to all the stations route systems, including the builder-drone technology, which as of right now hasn’t been activated for months. We can’t allow the building and expansion of the colony to stop. If we stop, we die, it’s that simple. We need
to continue growing. We need to break from this stagnation. I’ve tried telling him this, but his clouded mind won’t budge. He tells me there is no use in fighting the death of our species, and that I should simply enjoy the last of my days in peace. It’s his hopelessness that is spreading through the colony like a virus. But I don’t plan on dying here. I never have."
“What would you have us do, Saul? Kill the man?"
“I know you’re a smart man, Hollis. We all are, that’s why we were chosen. You know that I have no intentions of harming Richard. I see the foolishness of that. I just need someone on my side on this- someone who still cares about whether we will live together or die alone." Saul placed his hand on Hollis’ shoulder and spoke carefully. “I need you to continue your research on EDN. I need you back working in the garden."
Hollis pivoted his body away from the darkening desert beyond the window. “Maybe the Commander's right, Saul," he said fearfully. “Maybe we should just be at peace with the way things are. It doesn’t have to be seen as a defeat. We can look at it as something else."
“You don’t actually feel that way, do you? That we should just accept our death?"
“When I was a child I had the greatest fear of flying transport shuttles, the ones you’d find in any overpopulated city," Hollis began, patrolling the back corner of the observation platform. “They were old and cheap and crowded, but they did what they were intended to do. My father would take one of these shuttles every day to his office in downtown Mexico City, all the way up to the highest floor of one of the tallest buildings. One day he invited me to see his office, which was something very unlike him. This was the first professional job he’d ever had and was very proud of it, but I had to ride in one of these transport shuttles with him to go and see it. So as the shuttle took off towards his office, gliding between cloud-breaking towers at immeasurable speeds, I tried my best to impress him and hide my fear. But with machinery comes malfunction, and the higher we rose above the streets, the more the shuttle's engine began to break-down. Before we got to his office the shuttle lost complete control and tumbled to the ground like a leaf caught in a strong gust of air. All its passengers became manic, possessed by the fear of the rapidly approaching ground. They were afraid of death. They thrashed in their seats, beat at the windows, and called out to whichever Gods they believed to save them. I looked at them, terrified, and then I looked at my father who was in complete stillness in the turbulence. Instead of becoming unhinged like the others who fought their death in horror, my father saw his last moment of life as something he should enjoy."
