by Nolan Oreno
A loud knock on the door behind him woke him from this dream. He quickly scurried to the window and peered through it into Autumn’s sad eyes. Hollis surveyed the area around her to be certain they were alone, and they were, from what he could see. He then rested his head on the glass and spoke loudly.
“I guessing you don’t have good news for me, do you," he mouthed into the glass.
Autumn slowly shook her head from side to side.
“So what is it?" he asked.
“They’re watching. I can’t talk to you for long. I’m trying to change their minds but no one is listening. They want to banish you from the colony," she hurriedly said.
Hollis thought hard on the meaning of the word banishment.
“Banish?" he said. “But where would I go?”
“Anywhere that isn’t here. Probably the garden. Saul convinced the others that you are a danger to the colony. They want you far away from the Hub but to continue your research."
Hollis spoke louder. “Autumn, he’s lying to all of you. Saul just wants to shut me up because I know the things he’s done. He’s responsible for all the bad that has been happening around here. He raped Janya, he got her pregnant with a child she couldn’t live with, and then he killed Asnee because he knew the truth of it. He’s doing the same to me. He’s shutting me up."
Autumn somberly shook her head.
“We all saw the pregnancy test, but it was Asnee that did that to her," Autumn said. “Saul told me you came to him one day and told him you saw the bruises and thought it was Asnee causing them."
“No, no I promise you it wasn’t Asnee. He only found the bruises. He would never do something like that," Hollis said in a panic to regain control. “It was Saul. It's always been Saul. I need you to believe me."
“Hollis, how can I believe you when you continue to destroy your brain with these drugs? How do I know it's not just some delusion, like back at the valley?”
“It’s different," Hollis urged. “It’s real this time. It’s all real.”
Autumn paused for a moment and lowered her eyes. She spoke more sternly this time.
“Saul will be held responsible for Asnee’s murder," she said. “He was horribly wrong to do what he did. I understand why you hate him because I hate him for the same reasons. But I know him, and he couldn’t have done what you say he did." She sighed deeply. “Asnee had his own violent tendencies and we all saw that earlier today. Asnee lied to you, Hollis. He lied to all of us."
Hollis felt his hope fade upon hearing her words. She didn’t believe him, just like everyone else. Her showing up was nothing more than an act of pity.
“Time’s up," a voice yelled from behind Autumn.
She turned to acknowledge the voice and faced back at Hollis. “I’m sorry," she said. “I promise I won’t let them hurt you. This will be over soon and you’ll be back here with us when emotions die down. You just need to clear your head, of everything."
She rested her hand against the glass for a moment and abruptly turned to leave, leaving her sweaty palm print behind.
“Wait!” Hollis yelled, and she stopped to listen for one last exchange. “I understand why you don’t believe me, but I know who you will believe. Ask the Computer and then you’ll know what’s fact and what’s fiction," he said. “All you need to do is ask.”
Autumn nodded softly and then left down the hall to join the others in the meeting room. When she entered the room, the other colonists turned to her in silence and acceptance. She acknowledged no one, especially Saul, and took her seat at the large meeting table.
“Okay, does anyone else want to see the accused before we begin the final deliberations?" Saul asked.
Coughs and awkward shifting in seats were the only sounds in response.
“Alright, then we’ll begin. We’re still a democracy here on Mars and will continue to act like one. No one person gets to make the decisions around here, they must come from all of us. So, this is how we are going to decide. Before each of you is a sheet of paper. I want you to write yes or no on it to indicate your support for the banishment of Hollis Reyes to the colonial garden for the time being. Once I receive all the votes, I will read them out loud, and if we have more than eight votes for banishment, we must all support it without question. If we receive more than eight votes against banishment, we must revisit the other applicable punishments until we get a consensus on one. But either way, he will be punished for what he did. Sessions with the Computer is no longer a viable solution," Saul said painfully, rubbing his stitched jawline. “Do we all understand?" The crowd quietly nodded and wrote down their vote.
Autumn watched as the others hesitantly etched down their single word, and then, when all the others had finished, she wrote down her own. One by one the colonists deposited their votes into the box until there were no more to be cast.
“Okay, we have a consensus," Saul said after finishing reading the ballots. “We have a total of fourteen yes’s and three no’s, meaning that colonist Hollis Reyes will be banished to the garden until his behavior has shown improvement. I will need two other volunteers to help me move Mr. Reyes, and for the rest of us, we will all meet on the hill for the funeral rites for our good friend Asnee Rao, may he rest in peace."
“I’m not mourning a traitor," Maven shouted from the audience. “He tried to kill one of our own.”
“And I killed one of our own," Saul said sternly. “If that’s true then I don’t deserve your respect either.”
Maven sank back into his seat, and in respect, the orders were carried out without question. Autumn was the only one who remained at the table once everyone left the room. She sank her head into her folded arms and closed her eyes. The world around her had become dizzying. In a sad silence, she contemplated the meaning and consequence of the word yes that was scratched onto her own ballot.
Part Seventeen: Exodus
“Take off your exosuit."
“No."
Saul looked at Maven and Franco at his sides and then smiled. The blood-red stitches along his chin held his broken face together.
“Hollis, what you still don’t realize is that you no longer have free will. You gave that up when you attacked me and protected Asnee from his heinous crimes against the colony. Make this easier on yourself. Take off your exosuit and you can carry out your sentence like a man."
Hollis looked down at the gear that covered his body and the helmet tucked beneath his arm. “If you take my exosuit I can’t make trips out to the valley. I need to go to the valley to finish my research. The tree won’t survive without testing on actual Martian soil. The garden can only take me so far, but if you want the tree, then I’m going to need my exosuit."
Saul moved forward into the garden. He pushed aside plants and bushes that blocked his path and came face-to-face with the botanist.
“Do you actually think I give a damn about your tree?" he whispered between Hollis and him. “Do you actually believe you will change this world with a seed?" He reached down to the helmet and yanked it from Hollis’ grasp. “You are a failure, Hollis. Not only have you failed the colony with your wasted work, but you failed your family as well."
Saul abruptly turned away from Hollis’ frozen face to look at Franco lurking through the plants behind him. “What was her name again, Franco?" Saul asked him.
“Whose name?" Franco yelled back.
Saul grinned back to Hollis through reptilian eyes. “His dead daughter."
Franco lightly chuckled. “I don’t know, he went crazy on me before I got an answer."
“Well, if I’m not mistaken, I think her name was Rosa. Am I right? Was her name Rosa?” Saul turned the helmet about his hands. “Same name as my housekeeper back on Earth. What a disgusting name."
Hollis trembled in rage.
“Just look at how you’ve failed her, Hollis," Saul continued, looking around the dome. “After all your promise, after all your opportunity, look at what you’ve become: a prisoner in your own garde
n."
“You’re insane," Hollis said.
“I might be," Saul said. “But sometimes insanity is exactly what you need to survive."
Hollis took a quick step at Saul but was stopped by a nail gun lifted to his forehead.
“Do you want to die like your crazy fucking friend? If not, then take off your clothes!" Saul shouted, his finger twitching on the trigger.
“You think you’ve tricked them," Hollis said loudly, holding back tears of hate. “You think you’ll be their leader forever. But one day you’ll die, and you’ll turn to dust and be lost in the sand just like everyone else. One day, not long from now, no one will remember you. It’ll be like you never existed, and all this madness will have been for nothing."
“Unfortunately for you, you’re wrong," Saul laughed, and straightened his back so that he would grow taller. “I’ll live on through my children and my children’s children. While you’re rotting away in here, I’ll have developed generations of the new humanity with my blood as the foundation. Everyone will know my name as humanities founding father. I’ll be the new Adam. Not only will I be remembered Hollis, I’ll be worshiped. And what will you be?"
Hollis helplessly gazed back at Franco and Maven who looked uneasy about Saul’s speech. “I know we have our differences, but you two are decent men," Hollis said at them. “For a time, I’ve known you like brothers. We trained together. Lived together. I can’t believe that he’s convinced you to commit evils like this. To hurt these women and kill these men, for what? The sake of being remembered? You are not monsters like him. You are good men."
Franco averted their eyes from Hollis, but Maven spoke out quickly. “You don’t understand the things we have to do to stay alive. This is a different world."
“No," Hollis said. “It doesn’t have to be. It never has."
“Ignore him," Saul interrupted. “He’s only buying time. While we’re surviving in our new world, he will be dying in his old one."
“And what will this new world look like?" Hollis asked through clenched teeth. “Will it be a world worth living in? A world worth being remembered for?"
“You won’t ever know. You’ll die in here as a lonely and forgotten man," he said.
“You can’t make me stay in here forever," Hollis returned. “The others know where I am and won’t let you imprison me like this. This isn’t just your decision. And when I get back to the Hub, I’ll do everything in my power to convince them of who you really are. I’ll stop this insanity."
“You’ll be surprised with just how quickly they forget you, Hollis. Days will pass by, and then weeks, and then years, and by then they won’t think twice about the crazy old man locked away in the garden with all his conspiracies. No one will come to your rescue. No one will care. They will have no use for you anymore because the world I’ll build for them will be enough," Saul said, and then slowly lifted the nail gun once more. “I don’t have any more use for you either. Nothing is stopping me from killing you right now and telling the others you attacked me and there was no hope for you. So think of your banishment from the colony as me being sympathetic because the alternative would be far easier for me. It’s your choice. You can die here now, or you can die here a long time from now."
Hollis’ choice was that: he had none. He was out of options. He reluctantly unfastened the exosuit that brought him there and stripped off all his clothing underneath, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but his skin. By the end of it, he stood naked in front of the three men in humiliation and agony.
“Enjoy your new home," Saul chuckled after inspecting his frail and pale body. He took the exosuit into his arms and turned back to the exit to rejoin Franco and Maven. The three entered into the airlock and departed in the Crawler that waited in the desert on the other side. They drove back to civilization, leaving Hollis with nothing but his garden.
The days passed, and then the weeks, and just as Saul said, no visitors showed at the gardens gateway. In this time of solitude, Hollis did nothing to advance his research as he was expect to. He wandered about the garden in shame, proposing plans to escape his glass prison and win back his freedom, and his child. He wondered about how it might be possible to traverse the seventeen-mile stretch of barren desert between the garden and the Hub without a vehicle or an exosuit and break-in the station unnoticed. He pictured a knife in one hand as he crept through the halls of the Hub, eventually arriving to Saul’s bedside. He pictured the way it might feel to release Saul from life and send him back to the dark from where he came. The other’s would realize what Hollis did as good and cheer for him and reward him with their affection because they would know, deep down, he saved them all. They would apologize for their ignorance and embrace him as one of their own again. The colony would unify and become a place of hope once more, and all would know it was because of his single act of defiance. Only then would he give them the holy forest.
If he were to accomplish all this, Hollis vowed to himself he would raise Autumn’s child as his own. He would break free from all his original reservations and selfishness and love his child as the Computer instructed. He would teach his child the differences between right and wrong, good and evil, and in doing so, instill virtue, honor, and morality into their soul. He would tell his child the story of Earth, and the story of Mars, and the lessons to be learned from the failures of each world. He would make his child a better human than he ever was or ever could be and stand proud before his greatest creation. Hollis attempted to construct his child's face in his mind during his lonely hours in the garden. Would it be a boy or a girl? Would it have his hard features or Autumn’s fine features? His dark hair or her light hair? His dark skin or her light skin? No matter how he imagined the child, through all the possible variations and compilations, in each of them he saw flickers of his daughter Rosa. She stood within the silhouettes of all the versions.
“Have I failed you?" he whispered to her.
Nothing whispered back.
Hollis quickly let himself go after Saul’s leaving. For the first few days, he patiently waited, but no one came. They were frightened of him, just as Saul said. Unwanted and unloved, Hollis decided to forget the others as they had so easily forgotten him. He did not care to make any clothes to cover himself or act civilized because there was not a soul around to be civilized for. He would eat the gardens crop straight from the soil, and he sipped from the pools of water that collected on the ground without a care for hygiene or manners. His beard grew thick on his face and dirt collected in his hair and under his fingernails. As a result of his time living off the earth, his skin became blackened from the soil and his body thinned. He disposed of his wastes in a hole he dug on the outer edge of the biodome and rarely washed himself unless the smell grew too strong. He did not sleep in the clean cot in his office but in a pile of dried leaves that he collected beneath the trees of the garden. He did all this not because it was more comfortable or more practical but because he believe it to be more appropriate. He had everything he needed to survive, but if he was to truly survive, he would have to survive like an animal. He was human no more. He had that privilege taken from him.
Early in his lonely weeks, Hollis reaped the remaining drugs that grew in the garden for his personal uses. He found the last seeds of the enhanced Datura plant hidden within a tree nearby his workstation. Defying an inner-voice that begged him to stop, he plucked the seeds from its fruit and ate them to excess. During these hours of intense hallucination Hollis fell deep within his own mind. He saw things that most men cannot see, and should not see, and explored the far reaches of sanity with little fear or control. There, within the borders between worlds, Hollis uncovered truths that he could not fully comprehend or take back with him to the red world, and yet, still he embraced these fleeting journeys while they lasted. The experience left him with a greater understanding of how everything around him worked, from man to the moon, and that he had a fundamental role to be played in the system of existence. Like
the gears of a great machine, Hollis could see that he was an essential element to the universe just as all other things were. He was connected. However, the moment this inexplicable sensation of connectivity consumed his consciousness, his body washed away the toxin’s, and the high was lost. His hand was forced to pluck another forbidden fruit from the tree to return to this intoxicating omnipotence.
He refused to stop. He saw no reason for it. Fruit after fruit was taken until his stomach turned sour. By the end of it, he laid beneath the barren tree fighting against the crippling pains that thundered through his body, rolling him from side to side like an abandoned infant starved of food. The poison from the Datura seeds seeped through his blood and changed the tides of his biology until a massive storm had brewed within in, tearing down everything he had built in his years of life. Hollis screamed through the agony, grappling at the grass around him, and was helpless as he drifted past the edges of the void. He drifted and drifted until he returned to a dark place he never wished to go: Earth.
Hollis saw his old world as it now was. He saw the bodies of billions that covered the planet like grass, and the radioactive craters where forests and towns had once stood strong and proud. Earth was no longer what it once was and shared a likeness with Mars, a place he was far too familiar with. Desolate deserts of radiation infected the landscape, and the air was dried by toxic gasses that did not allow for complex life. Without an atmosphere to protect the planet from cosmic radiation and solar rays, Earth had lost its ability to sustain itself and most things on it. Hollis was forced through a tour of the torture by revisiting the dying world, witnessing all the sins mankind had in creating it. He walked through the deserts of the dead, over bones and broken cities, until the soles of his feet began to bleed. But no matter how far he walked, it all remained the same, and he could not escape the destruction and death. Into the valleys and over the mountain he traversed, but there was nothing but the desert. There was no forest. An endless and eternal desert. Before he knew it, the sands had swallowed him whole, and he was lost in time.
