by Nolan Oreno
Hollis was quick to interject. “But is the Decompression Room really the best place we can hold him? Sure, it’s got breathable air right now, but with just a press of a button we could vent him into Mars without as much as a helmet to protect him. This can’t be safe. It can’t be ethical to hold a human in here like this."
Saul began banging on the door like a child at the zoo, trying to provoke the creature within to do something unexpected and worth the overpriced admission ticket.
“But you’re not human, are you, Richard?!" Saul yelled through. “There’s nothing unethical when it comes to locking a beast in a cage."
Inside the chamber, the Commanders cries continued. “I’m not a beast! Not a beast! A boy!"
Hollis yanked Saul away from the door. “Stop it, your jokes aren’t helping the situation. The Commander is clearly in some delusional state right now, so let's not test his limits. Is there nowhere else we can contain him? What about getting Novak to sedate him and put him in a personal cabin under lock and key?"
Saul clenched his jaw at Hollis, clearly not liking the reaction to his joke.
“No, you’re right. You’re right. Our history aside, I should act professional-" Saul gave a look back to the Decompression Room. “The problem, right now, is that Novak’s location is currently unknown. We obviously can’t lead Richard to any other room without putting him under with Novak’s sedatives. I barely got him in here without getting myself killed, and I can’t risk the wellbeing of anyone else here by letting him out. So until we find Novak, we need to leave him right there."
Colleen jumped into the conversation. “What do you mean Novak’s location is unknown? The Hub is only so big, where could he go?"
“It seems that way," Saul agreed. "But nobody’s seen Novak for a day now. So that leaves one of two options: he’s either outside the Hub or he’s somewhere really well hidden inside it.”
"What the hell is going on?" Hollis mumbled, feeling the colony crumble around him.
The discussion was interrupted by a loud scraping sound coming from the Decompression Room. The five quickly rushed back to the window on the hatch and peeked in with urgent curiosity. Together they witnessed a gruesome scene.
“What’s he doing?" shuddered Franco. "Clawing at himself? Jesus, he’s tearing through his suit! He’s digging into his skin!”
Maven turned from the window in horror. “We need to find Novak, as soon as possible. He’s the only person who knows the whereabouts of the tranquilizers."
Saul nodded, entranced by the running red beyond the window.
“I’ll wait here," Saul muttered. "I’ll make sure Richard doesn’t do any irreparable harm to himself. As much as I may disagree with this man he’s still my colleague and my friend. Colleen and Franco, go check the infirmary to see if any sedatives are lying around. Hollis and Maven, I need you two to cover as much area of the Hub as possible until you find Novak. Hurry, all of you."
Hollis, Maven, Colleen, and Franco did not second-guess the logic. Logic took time, and time they did not have. As more and more blood was drawn from the Commanders self-laceration, Hollis and the others sprinted in opposite directions to find sedatives or the doctor- whichever came first. Hollis had an idea of where to find the drunk better than anyone else did. It was Novak’s character flaw that held the clue to where he could find the man. Hollis broke away from Maven and ran through an off-shoot corridor, sharply rounding corners and dodging aside doors too slow to open. He darted into the Mess Hall, sending its few lethargic inhabitants in different directions to aid in the hunt, and then he continued on. He had a hunch: no animal strays too far from the watering hole.
Hollis trampled through the main kitchen, passing many aisles of discarded dried nutrient-bricks and water canteens, and entered into the Ration Room. The Ration Room was the main hold for the colony’s food supply, and it was intended to be restocked every year by airdrops from funding corporations. The supply appeared to be bountiful and endless, a tactic to provide the illusion that the colonist would never be threatened by starvation and are being cared for by their benefactors on Earth. It was because of this that the Ration Room was never intended to be rationed and instead serve as a decoration to sedate fears. However, without the hope of a future refill, the colonists were now urged to consider the Ration Room as their food source. Hollis had already calculated that living off their current food supply they had over six years of full bellies if they were to carefully consume the food supply, beginning first with the dreaded nutrient-bricks. It would be after this time that his research would need to be completed so the lifeless atmosphere and soil of Mars would be altered in such a way that crop growing could be possible. In his garden, Hollis had his own oversupply of farmer seeds just waiting to be used on fertile ground. He could begin an agricultural revolution on the dead planet, and they would never need to fear starvation again.
Once inside the oversized refrigerator that was the Ration Room, being nearly the size of a small barn, Hollis searched across the high shelves for the last breadcrumb to find Novak. Up and down he looked, tensions rising, and he knew he was closing in on the prize with each shift of his sight. He found what he was searching for but was quite disappointed in what it showed. There were only a few bottles of liquor left on the shelving where there were once tens of dozens. It looked ransacked, bottles tossed throughout and scattered on the ground, completely emptied dry. The alcohol stash was gone as was Novak with it. Where had he taken it all? Surely it had been in the span of the last week that Novak moved the load, little by little, without the notice of anyone in the colony. Few rarely partook in the colony’s supply as it was usually saved for holidays, so it was not surprising that no one noticed it missing. But where could Novak be storing such a large supply of liquor now? Hollis did not have the time to play detective. He did not have the time for any of it. He should be at the garden, saving not the Commander, but the fragile remains of the human race.
In a sudden burst of anger, Hollis hollered at the top of his lungs. “Novak!" The empty bottles shook. “Dammit, Novak!"
Hollis shuddered at the end of the frustrated wail and shook his head in fury. He failed. He failed his Commander. Just when he found himself back on track, he was feeling himself lose it again. Still, he could not shake the feeling that there was still a way to save him. Something he knew, something that he had, could save the Commander and end this nightmare. But what was it?
His hand met his forehead in an instant epiphany. He had his own organic sedative. The herb he had used nearly every night to help him fall asleep. The yellow herb, in the wicker box in his bedside table, tucked away with all the other drugs he had taken from the garden. It might be possible to light the herb on fire and toss it into the locked room, smoking the Commander to a deep sleep. From there they could safely move and secure him. Hollis was the fool to forget. The garden was too far a journey to make, an hour at its quickest, but to the sleeping quarters, maybe there was still time. Maybe he could hold back the last grain of the hourglass for just a little while longer.
Hollis progressed back into the cobwebs of corridors and foyers until he came upon the curved passageway that was the sleeping quarters. He followed the bend, passing doors with pictures of wrenches, clouds, microscopes, hammers, and drones, until he found his own logo: the tree sprout. The door cleared, and he was at his bedside table. He tried to swipe it open with his a wave of his hand. It didn’t work. He tried again, slower this time, and the drawer finally opened.
“No, no, no," repeated a hysterical Hollis when he realized the lockbox containing all of his herbal medicines was missing as well. There was nothing there, just like the alcohol and the Doctor himself. Vanished out of thin air.
Hollis mashed the drawer closed and stumbled backward to rest on his bed. He was panting with exhaustion and anger.
“No, no, no!" Hollis yelled.
Autumn, he concluded. Autumn must have taken the lockbox worried about his regression back into a
drug addiction. Her ignorance stole his last chance of saving the Commander. First her pregnancy, and then this. If nothing more, she had a knack for screwing up his life. Whether it was all intentional, that was something he would need to give time to consider later on. But for now, Hollis was left with no other options. He would have to return to the bloodshed empty handed. He hoped the others had better luck.
Hollis took a few precious seconds to bottle-up his rage, and then he made the long trek back to the Decompression Room. The Mess Hall was empty on his return, as was every other room and hallway, and he knew the reason even before he saw it. Hollis came upon a crowd that mirrored the one on the hill, and he pushed through the still bodies to the breath-fogged window on the hatch-door of the Decompression Room. The Commander laid motionless and sprawled upon the cold metal floor, as shredded and as blue as Janya was that fateful day a month prior. At the back-end of the small chamber streams of sand sprayed in from above. The room was opened and exposed to the Martian air. The Decompression Room was decompressed. The button had been pressed, and that was the end of it. The Commander was dead.
Hollis rested his head on the hatch. He felt a stirring in his chest like he never felt before. A voice emitted from the crowd of the motionless nineteen behind him. It was Saul's.
“You weren’t fast enough, Hollis," he said trying to hide the fear in his face. “He kept on scratching and scratching, getting into his organs, and all that blood- I couldn’t watch him like that for any longer. He was skinning himself alive, God dammit. It had to end, one way or another. I waited long enough for you and the others to find the doctor, or to find the sedatives, but when it came to the point where I couldn’t wait another second, I made a choice. I hit the button. It wasn’t a quick death this way, but it was much quicker than the one he was doing to himself. I had no choice."
Hollis lifted his head from the door and turned to face the crowd with Saul at its lead. He felt something coming. Something that he could not control. “You had no choice, you’re right. We couldn’t find Novak. We couldn’t find the sedatives. We couldn’t find anything. We couldn’t risk going in there so what else could we do?"
Hollis shifted forward, and his eyes fell upon Autumn. She could barely hold his stare and lowered her head. That was all he needed to see to at last break free from fear.
“I want each one of you to look through this window," Hollis screamed outward. “And I don’t want you to hide from it. I want each one of you to see what happens when you remain where you are now as lost and hopeless people. This is what happens. This is what will happen."
Hollis continued, passion twisted with anger. It was as if the words were coming from another, streaming into his mind from an entity beyond their world, and he had no way of stopping the message from being told.
“What happened to Janya and the Commander was no accident, it was a choice. Their choice. Our choice. It was the consequence of us living our lives as if they are now meaningless. But we could never be more wrong! We need to look around us for the first real time since Earth went dark and see this truth. We need to see what we still have and what we can still do because otherwise, if we don’t wake ourselves up from this comfortable daydream we’re living in, we’ll end up just like them. One by one. And who will be there to bury the last of us? Who will be there to remember us like we remember those that we lost?"
No one dared to interrupt Hollis in his revelation. It was something each one of them hungered to hear but were too frightened to admit they were hungary.
“The problem is this illusion we’ve found ourselves in. We think we’re alone and that our suffering is ours alone to deal with. But this isn’t the true! When one of us suffers, we all suffer. When one of us dies, we all die. We can only see this now because we’ve grown so small and the consequences don’t need to go far to reach us all. Don’t let your ego fool you. Nobody’s an individual. You don’t have the luxury to believe that anymore. You are not a single person, separate and unique from the rest. We’re all apart of something bigger than just one of us. Something far bigger. All of you need to realize that you’re not divided but united, with all of us."
Hollis could feel his vision blur.
“If we only knew this back on Earth. I can assure you we would still be with our families now, in our homes, in our countries. We wouldn’t have needed to flee like we did, to build a paradise somewhere far away, because we would have already been living in it! What turned us from our world was not the war but the illusion that we are separate and divided. Man against man. Religion against religion. Nation against nation. We always thought our enemies were different from us and wanted different things, but they didn’t. They just wanted to live in peace, just like we did. We could have had paradise on Earth if we stopped living like we were alone and that it was always about us and them. We lied to ourselves, and we lost our planet. But now we have a second chance to make it right!"
The people listened.
“If you want to fight for a new world then you need to stop trying to survive by yourselves and listen to Saul and rebuild! We need to continue the colony, together! We need to continue growing! We’ve all had more than enough time to mourn for the dead and play woe-is-me. We’ve given power to our emotions and drifted apart. Look where that gets us!" Hollis yelled, pointing back to the hatch. “The time has passed, and we need to start again, because only by starting again will we ever have the chance to do right by the evil’s we did on Earth by making another Earth, a far better Earth, and not for ourselves, but for our children. The future children of Mars!"
Hollis finished his speech and walked forth unafraid and unaided. The crowd saw this and parted to make way for him. Eye’s followed him as he crossed the masses, and from deep within the huddled body of the crowd, Saul radiated a smile. Hollis had done it. And Hollis smiled for another reason: he finally knew why his child deserved life and life deserved his child.
Hollis would stay late at the garden that night, convinced and purposed, just as he once was long ago.
Part Eight: The Devil and the Desert
[PROGRAM INITIATED...]
[SESSION 14]
[DEC-18-2079]
Good afternoon, Hollis.
“Right back at you."
[DETECTED: ELEVATED VOICE PATTERN]
Your vocal scan tells me that you are quite content, which is a pleasant surprise considering the recent tragic events in the colony.
“I’m not about to throw a party, but I've got a good enough reason to be feeling proud. Yes, humanity's last doctor has vanished out of thin air, and yes, our heroic Commander was killed just a week ago in an unimaginably horrible way by his own hand, but in all of that, somehow, I’ve made great progress on EDN. Unbelievable progress."
Has one of the prototypes shown the possibility of growth in Martian soil?
“No, not exactly. Before I bring a potential seedling batch into the outside, I test them in a terra-firma trowel inside an isolated section of the greenhouse. I call it the Nursery. It’s essentially a glass chamber filled with turf that is organically identical to the soil found on the crust of Mars, and the room’s isolation allows me to alter the atmosphere inside. This way I can produce an oxygen and nitrogen-deprived atmosphere that is harsh on life, or an oxygen and nitrogen-abundant atmosphere that is favorable to life- or anything in-between. I always start off the seedlings in Earth-like conditions and slightly harshen the atmosphere until it becomes closer to the Martian atmosphere, like turning up the knob of a thermostat. The better a seedlings fair on this Earth-to-Mars atmospheric scale, the better I can predict its success rate on Mars itself, inside in the valley. So if a seed reaches a certain point in this test before failing, say about seventy percent on the Earth-to-Mars ratio, I can then alter its organic composition until it goes beyond its last point of survival, and so on, until I get to a one-hundred percent success rate. This process is what takes up most of my time. The hard part is not crafting a seed for the soil but for th
e atmosphere. The soil is easy. Mars once had a tropical ecosystem, and the remnants of its past history of plant life are still found in the soil today, so it’s actually easy to find strong and wet soil. But trying to build a forest in a vacuum that has nearly zero levels of oxygen is almost impossible. Life feeds off oxygen and nitrogen. There’s no way to fuel carbon-based organics with anything else and expect healthy growth. So it’s my goal to develop a tree that requires almost no oxygen or nitrogen to grow yet produces it in gallons with each exhale by rearranging carbon dioxide and other gasses. It’s like making something out of thin air. Something out of nothing. An atmosphere out of a void. But the hardest part is making sure the tree can survive these deadly conditions. This is what EDN stands for: Environmentally Durable Nature.
And you say you have made progress?
“Yeah, sorry, sometimes get lost in the scientific explanations. I just produced a batch of prototype seedlings that were able to sustain the Nursery at a seventy-nine percent Earth-to-Mars ratio. It’s the best I’ve tested yet."
That is great news, however, seventy-nine percent survivability is still not one-hundred percent. We need to be assured the tree can survive the valley before we waste resources on synthesization.
“That’s right. Like I said, I’m not throwing a party or anything, but this is a step forward. It means I’m on the right track."
Autumn Florentine is due with the child in two months and twenty-nine days, on March 20th, 2080. Can you predict a stable EDN seed to be synthesized by this date?
“Unlike you, I can’t predict the future. I can only make estimations. But I promise you that I’ll dedicate myself to this project until I have my tree. I’ve come to terms with my responsibility just like you wanted me to, and I accept all the challenges ahead to create it in time. But I need to know why the seed needs to be ready for the child’s birth. Sure, the Hub might not be a comfortable place to raise a kid, but it is a good enough place, and considering our circumstances, it’s not the worst place we could be living. The oxygen generators in the station will give us breathable air for the time being, and the solar panels are designed to be functional for thirty years. Sure, we’re running out of food, but that shouldn’t be a problem for a handful of years, and at that point this planet should be terraformed and able to grow crops, assuming I don’t drop dead and my research ends. I promise you I’ll finish EDN, but finishing it in three months in time for the birth is a lot to ask. So, I just want to know why there’s a deadline for EDN? What is it that you aren’t telling me? What do you see?”
