S Morden - One Way

“Oh sinner, let’s go down, down in the valley and pray.”

Rockets blew up sometimes. Even those carrying people. And if they were going to Mars, sometimes they didn’t get there. Or if they did, they plowed into the ground and left a new crater.

“I think I hear the sinner say, come, let’s go in the valley to pray.”

He used the steps to climb up into the coffin. It was even colder inside. Water-cooled cold. There were pipes going in and out of the shell.

“You shall wear the starry crown, good Lord, show me the way.”

He laid himself down. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. They were going to be in the same position for a year, so he ought to be told whether to put them by his sides, or cross them at his waist, or fold them against his chest.

“Oh mourner, let’s go down, let’s go down, let’s go down.”

His teeth were starting to chatter. He was utterly at their mercy, and he always had been. He might not be going to Mars at all. He could wake up anywhere. He might not wake up at all, and be used for spare parts. That was stupid. Why all the training, otherwise?

“Oh mourner, let’s go down, down in the valley and pray.”

One by one, their voices were being stopped up. He couldn’t see what was being done to them, but his own team of medics was holding out a mask over his face. He could hear the hiss of gas, and caught a whiff of magic marker pens.

“I think I hear the mourner say, Come, let’s go in the valley to pray.”

The mask came down, and he needed to breathe the gas in, and didn’t want to breathe it in at the same time. Keep singing. Keep singing. He was the only one left.

“You shall wear the starry crown, good Lord, show me the way.”

[Redacted report from Gold Hill Assessment Center Building Two (2) to Project Sparta 5/20/2047]

Kittridge, Franklin Michael.

DOB 1/20/1996.

POB Modesto, CA.

Married: Scott, Jacqueline Christina 6/11/2022. Divorced 7/5/2040.

Children: 1, Scott, Michael Clay 12/5/2023.

Arrested: 7/4/2038 Murder One.

Sentenced: 3/20/2039 Murder Two 120 years detention without parole.

Dominance 38

Emotional stability 78

Openness to change 35

Perfectionism 82

Privateness 92

Rule consciousness 86

Self-reliance 87

Social boldness 25

Overall Utility 83

The pain woke him up.

He felt as if he was on fire, and for a moment he saw the white phosphorous flames that were engulfing him. But that initial wash passed by, and all he was was cold.

Something was trying to push through his lips, and he couldn’t turn his head to get away from it, but he could clamp his jaw shut to prevent its entry.

His cheek stung with the slap, and when he gasped, a lukewarm, moist mass was pushed into his mouth.

“Chew it, and don’t swallow. It’s a sponge.”

That was… Alice?

The inside of his mouth was as dry as a sepulcher. The water-soaked sponge slowly loosened his tongue, while she ripped the tape—faster than was strictly necessary—from his eyelids.

The glare was too much to start with and, what with that and the eyedrops that more or less went in the right place, he was still functionally blind. He chewed at the sponge, and when he’d drained it completely of moisture, he pushed it to the front of his mouth and let it roll out.

“Mars?” he croaked.

“It’s either that or a particularly shitty version of the afterlife.”

He tried blinking, and it was scratchy, but doable. The lights over him started to resolve out of the white mist into individual sources. A tube replaced the sponge, and a jet of cold water splashed over his tongue.

“Swallow.”

He did so, and it was like taking down a stone. He was gasping with the effort.

“Again.”

He didn’t want to, but knew he had to. Unless she was poisoning him. But there was no way he could have stopped her from doing that, so he wrapped his tongue around the bolus of liquid and choked it down.

“We don’t have much of this: what’s in here is yours. But it turns out that we don’t have much of much.”

He heard her shuffle around out of his eyeline, which was forcibly directed to the ceiling by his head restraints. He tried to twitch his fingers, and was surprised when they responded first time. His toes, too.

“Meaning?”

“It means we’re critically short on supplies. We can afford to go hungry, but we can’t go thirsty.”

He was lying in some sort of form-fitting soft rubber, cut so that it held him in place. He lifted one arm, and it came free with a distinct sucking noise.

“But Mars?”

“There’s a window downstairs you can look through, and there are cameras on the hull. It certainly looks like it. But the kicker is the reduced gravity: can’t fake that. Be careful how you move, because it’s a bitch.” She held out her hand, and he failed to grasp it at the first attempt. “Just stay still. Let me do the work.”

She gripped his wrist and pulled. Everything felt wrong and nothing felt right. He was weak, stupid and dizzy, and had to hold on to the sides of his coffin while his world, whichever one it was, stopped spinning.

“You won’t feel up to much for a while. But the sooner you get moving, the better. You won’t be the only patient I have.”

Frank didn’t recognize where he was. He’d never seen the inside of the capsule before. He squinted, looked at the two tiers of four coffins arranged against the circle of the wall, and the hole in the center of the open grid floor. There didn’t appear to be anything above them—so they were near the top of the lander, then.

Alice threw a set of overalls at him. He didn’t try to catch it, just allowed it to wrap around his face and then slide down onto his legs. The way that it had flown through the air, on a flat arc, looked odd. Alien.

“Crap. Can’t hit jack,” she said. “Come on, up. Marcy’s next, and I guarantee you she’s going to whine like a baby.”

“Who else is up and running?”

“Brack. Me. You. And seriously, we haven’t got all day.”

A day which now lasted forty minutes longer.

“You’re not special. I’m doing this in order of priority, and currently you and Marcy are the priority. Now get out of my way.”

Her face looked puffy, and florid. Perhaps his did too. They were living under reduced air pressure and reduced gravity. He’d been told to expect fluid to pool in places it shouldn’t, at least until his body had got used to it all. And even though he’d been asleep for… however long it was… he’d been in zero g almost all the time.

He picked up his legs, right then left, and dangled them over the side of his coffin, and laboriously struggled into his one-piece overalls. There was an embroidered patch on his pocket. Not his name, nor one of those fancy mission patches either. Just a number. Two. He was number two.

He managed to focus on Alice, and saw she was wearing the same blue as him. She had her back to him, taking read-outs from one of the other coffins: Marcy’s, presumably.

“What?” she grunted.

“What number are you?”

“One,” she said, without looking round. “Because I’m better than you, I guess. Jeez, I don’t know. It’s not my prison number, so they probably just assigned them at random.”

“And how are you?”

She paused, and glanced over her shoulder at him. Her ponytail moved with unnatural slowness. “I’m doing OK. Maybe women’s physiology is better at coping with this crap, I don’t know. XO will want to know how we all are. There are tests I have to do on you all.” She turned back. “Brack’s down below. If it’s any comfort, he’s not in any better state than you are. But thanks for asking. He didn’t.”