Rick Moody - The Four Fingers of Death

GingerSnap@sinisterteen.com: Are you okay, Daddy? Is there something wrong?

RichardsJ@marsmission.us.gov: There’s always something wrong on Mars, if you want to know the truth. It’s never easy. It’s like living in medieval times or worse. I’ve lost a couple of teeth, I’m a little bit malnourished. But just when you think it’s all too much, and you can’t wait until the months have passed and it’s time to get back into the Excelsior and start for home, there’s some arresting view, some overpowering landscape such as you have never seen before. For example, honey, Captain Rose and I were traveling by ultralight to the Meridiani Planum recently, where they are certain there have been very recent water flows, based on the satellite imaging we’re getting, and you wouldn’t believe the geological beauty of these ice deposits. They’re like some kind of curvilinear shelves, like the fronds of a fan, like the steps on some ancient cathedral, which is what this place is, a cathedral.

GingerSnap@sinisterteen.com: Exciting news here is that there’s a plan to build a really big seawall at the edge of the beach to protect against the ocean, which is rising like crazy. Some people are in favor of this, I guess, and then there are other people saying that the ocean levels aren’t going to rise at all. There are other people who are just leaving, because they think there are too many hurricanes around. I say okay leave Florida to those of us who are really from here, and who really care about the state however it is. (Emoticon.) But, Daddy, I have another question, because what they were saying online, you know, was that certain astronauts on the mission were killed in the line of duty. Can you just promise me that you aren’t taking any kinds of risks? Please? Why are you losing teeth? Can you please tell me?

RichardsJ@marsmission.us.gov: Where in the press did you see that? They really shouldn’t be printing stories like that. Ginger, I do what I can to be safe, to make sure I can get home to you, and, hopefully, to your mother too, if she’ll have me. I’m really not involved in any of the difficult research anyway, since my responsibility is primarily in the area of communications, and in command and control. That kind of thing. Lately, since the situation has changed, I’ve been overseeing power generation. It’s not very complicated. We have a simple nuclear power plant here, you know, a graphite-moderated turbine, and lately Arnie has been using it to do some chemistry where we take hydrogen fuel and solid carbon dioxide, which you can get in a frost state around here pretty easily, and then you fuse them and you get water and some other stuff. I don’t totally understand it, but the main thing is that this produces more power. I need to look after myself, honey, in order to run the power plant, so that’s what I’m going to do. Look after myself.

GingerSnap@sinisterteen.com: Is it true that you don’t age as fast as I do? I read that somewhere recently. And is it lonely there? Do you feel lonely? And, Dad, I have this other question. Can you tell me what this expression Code 14 means?

RichardsJ@marsmission.us.gov: Where did you hear that expression?

GingerSnap@sinisterteen.com: Code 14? It’s just something that people are saying a lot. It’s like it’s sort of become this cool expression, you know, people just say it around a lot. Somebody told me that it was this expression that came from the Mars mission. Like maybe it’s somebody else whose parents work at Cape Canaveral or something. Somebody told me it’s what people say on the Mars mission when one of the astronauts has gone out of control or something.

RichardsJ@marsmission.us.gov: Ginger, this is kind of important, I need for you to tell me if you heard this from someone at NASA. Is there anyone who was over at the house on weekends? Maybe visiting your mother or something? Maybe that guy, Mr. Gibraltar, was over there? Or maybe he said this to you?

GingerSnap@sinisterteen.com: Don’t get all paranoid, Daddy. (Emoticon.) I told you where I heard it. It’s like something people say now, like at school, and it means that the situation is all f — up or something. I’m trying to avoid swearing. Like when the situation has gone all crazy or something, people will say “Code 14! Code 14!” But are they saying this because there’s someone up there that was a Code 14? You’d tell me if the situation was dangerous?

RichardsJ@marsmission.us.gov: You don’t have to worry about that at all. They wouldn’t be putting us in these conditions if they didn’t have an exit strategy for your dad and the other people on the mission.

GingerSnap@sinisterteen.com: But what about those astronauts who got killed in the other missions?

RichardsJ@marsmission.us.gov: We’ve been over this. There haven’t been any hardware mishaps on any manned Mars missions. There was a chimpanzee who died for his country on the way here, sixteen years ago. And there were some guys who got killed during the second round of Mars shots. A few other small things. But it was the failures in those situations that prompted the agency to take dramatic steps to improve their safety record. Now what I want you to do is find your mother. Is your mother in the house? Can you have her get on here, so I can talk to her for a minute?

GingerSnap@sinisterteen.com: I don’t want her using my account. I have stuff on here that isn’t appropriate for people her age. She can access her own account.

RichardsJ@marsmission.us.gov: I’m not kidding around. Now means now .

(And here the delay was longer than usual. It was a pretty long delay, in fact, and mostly I filled these delays with intoxicants of various kinds, and with preconceptions about the conversation to come. So that I was already on edge when the screen beeped, and there was another message upon it.)

PogeyStark@marsmission.us.gov: What’s the problem?

RichardsJ@marsmission.us.gov: What are you telling her? Are you telling her things that you are hearing over at NASA? Where does she get all this type of thing? I’m really irritated about it. You can’t just let her live her life without filling her head full of all this stuff? Dangers of interplanetary travel? And what took you so long to get to the computer?

PogeyStark@marsmission.us.gov: Jed, there’s a lot of rumor and innuendo going on about the Mars mission. The press is onto other things, because they forget things, but there’s still a lot of gossip kicking around online. Some of this is easy to control and some of it is not.

RichardsJ@marsmission.us.gov: What if her future is contingent upon her not being contaminated with this kind of nonsense? Wouldn’t you do what was necessary to protect her?

PogeyStark@marsmission.us.gov: The father who has not only abandoned the family, but abandoned it all the way off the planet, is trying to get all interested now in how his daughter is parented? Do you want to help with the homework, Jed? Do you want to start doing that? Because most of her homework is done on the computer console that the school loans her, and the geometry teacher, for example, grades the pieces very promptly as soon as Ginger hits send. I’m sure that NASA, in their wisdom, who have made it possible for you to read the newspapers and play simulation games with ex-cons from Indiana and the like, could make it possible for a deadbeat like you to review your daughter’s homework once in a while. Did you know, Jed, that your daughter is having particular trouble with trigonometry? I don’t suppose you do. Well, if you want to start talking about how I’m supposed to be raising her, while you’re off scraping rock samples off the floor of a crater, then start today. I’ll be happy to relinquish some of the responsibility. I guess you won’t be able to pick her up three days a week, like this separation agreement I have here says you are supposed to do, so that I can have a day off now and then. And I guess you won’t be able to see her two weekends and one Sunday a month, and you won’t be able to maintain a room for her at your domicile, will you, Jed? Unless you’re going to have her fired up into space. Am I right about that, Jed?