Mission Mars (10 page)

Got a sympathy lay from Carmen for Christmas, which is nice, I guess. Craig and Samantha, however, might have actually discovered true love. Those two are always whispering to each other and giggling like a couple of high school kids.

The network said that the gossip sites back on Earth are calling them “Cramantha,” which sounds like some type of prehistoric bird.

Good for them, though. Everyone deserves to be happy.

I know most people think that Craig and Samantha got tired of each other, or that Carmen broke them up. The truth, however, is that the studio transmitted notes saying that their relationship wasn't sanctioned, of all things.

What that really means is that “Cramantha” wasn't interesting enough, but the directive was still the same. And for some reason, they're actually going along with it. I don't know why. It's not like the network can punish us all the way out here. But sure enough, Craig was suddenly hooking up
with Carmen, while Samantha cried about losing her true love in the Confession Airlock.

Meanwhile, I've been receiving notes that the audience thinks I'm boring. One of those asshole producers even said that watching the ship get hammered by debris was more exciting than watching me interact with the cast. Well excuse me for not being a complete asshole or a total slut. What do they want me to do, start a fight or something?

Today, Samantha was found dead in her room. None of us know what happened. When she didn't come down for breakfast, Craig went to check on her and came back bawling his eyes out.

The medical staff is still trying to figure it out, but it might be a while before we have a cause of death. We're all pretty sure it was suicide, though.

I decided to give a speech to the crew about sticking together and not letting this hurt us. Everyone seemed to appreciate it … especially the network execs, who said that my numbers have started tracking a lot higher.

I've never been very good friends with Craig, but figured that he needed someone to talk to. I sat him down in front of one of the main cameras, put my arm around him, and listened as he told me something that shouldn't have surprised anyone.

Apparently, the former couple still tried to meet in the one storage area where there wasn't a good camera angle, but Carmen quickly put a stop to that. I don't know why Carmen
even cared that Craig was still in love with Samantha. It's not like she really cares about him.

After crying some more, Craig told me that he was going to break things off with Carmen. That threw me for a bit, especially considering that he'd basically admitted to cheating on her already. Even if he hadn't outright said it, his temper tantrum at breakfast that morning—complete with eggs thrown against the dining area entrance—made it pretty obvious to everyone.

The last twenty-four hours have been unlike anything I've ever experienced. You would think being on a spaceship heading to a new planet would be strange enough, but discovering that a murderer is on board can easily overshadow that.

Looking back on it now, I don't know why any of us didn't suspect that Samantha had been killed. Maybe it's because the only additional crew we have with us are scientists and technicians. There's an extensive medical staff, but none of them even considered the possibility of foul play. And even if they had, it's not like any of them had a background in forensics or interrogation. How were we supposed to know that Carmen, the requisite, ‘hot crazy chick' was actually a stone-cold sociopath? Now, that's some scary shit.

She'd been careful the first time, blacking out the cameras and waiting until Samantha was asleep before suffocating her to death. With Craig, however, it was a pure crime of passion. They'd gotten into a fight and she stabbed him with a knife from the kitchen. In the heart. Killed him instantly. Everyone on earth saw it. Even so, the producers never said
that we had to do anything about it. Actually, what choice did we have?

But as it happened, when Carmen was told she would be isolated from the rest of the crew, she put up one hell of a fight. Before they managed to get her under control, though, she severely injured one of the science guys with the same knife she used on Craig. That guy's currently in the infirmary and not looking good. Carmen, on the other hand, has been tied down and jailed in the Confession Airlock. We're still trying to decide what to do about her.

The science guy died last night. That brings Carmen's total kill to three. That's what convinced everyone aboard that Carmen needed to be taken care of before anyone else got hurt.

It wasn't a decision that we came to easily. There was a lot of debating, crying, and screaming. I hate myself for thinking this, but it made for great television.

In the end, it was Jared who finally agreed to do it. He said he'd go the Confession Area and tell Carmen that he was sneaking her out. The rest of us cleared out to our rooms, but still watched everything unfold on the closed circuit monitors. Sure enough, he got Carmen to follow him out of the Confession Room and into the kitchen. I'm not sure what he said to her in there—it looked like he was trying to point out some type of hiding place for her. Whatever it was, it got her to lean over one of the storage compartment doors in front of him. That's when Jaren grabbed her hair, yanked back, and slit Carmen's throat. He'd been smart enough to remember drainage pan, but forgot they were in a low gravity area. The
blood floated out into the kitchen area before splattering to the floor. While those of us who could stomach it, cleaned up the gore (and the producers back on Earth, more than likely were completely losing their shit), Jared discharged her out of the outer airlock—along with bodies of Samantha, Craig, and the science guy.

Jared killed himself yesterday. We had to send his remains out of the airlock just like the others. I guess even though Carmen was a serial killer, he couldn't live with himself for having to do what he did.

Some people started to say that we should stop the show, but there was no way I was going to let that happen.

“Come on, people!” I yelled, to get their attention. “It's not like we can turn around and go back home. Good God, we're already halfway to Mars.” Still facing my shipmates, I pointed to the overhead cameras behind me. “No matter what …, those fucking producers are going to keep broadcasting everything we do here back to Earth, no matter what we do. Whether we want them to or not. Whether we feel right about what's happened or not. We're the money in their pockets. Our lives are no longer our own.”

I'd tried to sound indignant, but honestly, I was glad. What happened to Samantha and the others was terrible, but I didn't sign up to leave earth for the rest of my natural life so that our show could get canceled. Fortunately, everyone eventually came around.

The very next morning, the producers sent me a clip of my speech. It's been playing on all the networks since last night.

We finally reached our landing point on the Gale Crater and everyone was beyond ready to get the hell off this ship. The events of the last month had caused nearly all forms of interaction between our team to grind to a halt. Everyone just stayed in their rooms, only coming out to eat or use the bathroom. There was a lot of confession booth stuff and a few long and tearful embraces, but past that, things were pretty dead.

I can only imagine how boring that was for the people watching back home. Fortunately, the landing will provide not only a historic moment, but also a monumental amount of tasks to keep us occupied. Terraformers, habitats, swing shelters—we'll have to build it all … and that's AFTER digging the tunnels and living spaces to keep us sheltered from the atmosphere. I volunteered to set up the cameras, which would once again make sure that everything we did was broadcasted back to our earth-bound fans.

We're finally done getting the habitat set up. The ship plays a major part of it, but everyone avoids going there as much as possible.

Things have also started getting back to some sense of normalcy … for a reality show, anyway. New drama happens every day; even the scientist people are hooking up with the regular cast members. According to the producers' transmissions, our ratings are higher than anything in the history of televised media.

I know that things haven't gone at all like we'd planned, but it feels like things are finally starting to work out and go my way.

It occurred to me today that the dates I've been keeping might not correlate with the days and nights that we experience here on Mars. It's one of a million little things about this place that seems to be driving everyone a little stir crazy.

I guess we all had this illusion that after a few weeks, a well-dressed host would walk through the door and start doing some type of stupid rose ceremony. After a month of living like caged celebrities, however, routine has finally started to settle in. Cycling the oxygen tanks, checking the misters, checking the greenhouse plants … it's all beginning to grind us down from rock stars into people just trying to exist from day-today. Everyone knew that this was a permanent assignment, but the finality of it is actually beginning to sink in.

A massive explosion today took out a bunch of the oxygen tanks. Most of the science, tech, and med staff were there when it happened. I don't know who's been killed or who's still alive, but I'm grabbing my portable camera and heading there to find out.

It was two of the science people who snapped first, which really surprised me. I figured that there would be so many new things to research and discover, that they'd all be happy. A husband-and-wife team had been fighting since we landed, but everyone just attributed it to run of the mill marriage stuff. I guess it should have been obvious that questions like, “Why did we move here?” and, “Why can't we have kids?” have a
completely different scope when you're on another planet. It can also make not existing seem like a much better option than just being alive.

I'm not sure why they thought their decision to end it all had to include so many of the remaining group, but the oxygen tank explosion was a huge loss of our most valuable resource, and has left us with very few people who know how to keep everything going.

The suicide letter and apology was much appreciated, but that still doesn't change how screwed we all are now.

Steve is the only science person whose name I bothered to learn, which, in retrospect, seems like a pretty dick move on my part. These people weren't here for fame, or to escape their past—they wanted to do something truly amazing.

With that in mind, I can hardly blame Steve for being a little standoffish towards the rest of us. But that still doesn't give him the right to ration our food and even our oxygen like some sort of tyrannical dictator. We're not just dumb actors out here. We're people … and we don't deserve to be treated like this.

The group decided to kill Steve tonight.

I wasn't in favor of doing it at first. I normally don't care about what the network execs say, but another gruesome situation where people ended up dying could force us off of the air for a while. Eventually, though, hunger, and a need to breathe without seeing spots, overwhelmed my concern for our continued on-air presence.

I'm not sure who will actually do the deed, but I hope it's not me.

I didn't have to do it, but I did help hold him down. Steve didn't put up much of a fight, which somehow made killing him feel so much worse.

The producers sent us all these scathing transmissions about “broadcast standards” and such, but they still didn't take us off the air. Go figure. If they won't cut the feed after we kill two of our own or two more crew members commit what amounts to a murder-suicide, then I think it's pretty safe to say that we're okay. At least as far as remaining on the air, that is.

Remember what I said about them not canceling us? Well, we are definitely being canceled, but not in the way I was worried about. We've all started to realize that being canceled isn't a matter of viewership, it's simply a matter of survival.

We'd all been trained to get by with the help of people who knew what they were doing. There are still a few people on the medical staff left, but that won't be enough to save us from the flu that's started wiping everyone out. We're not sure if the sickness is so bad because it's a virus that our bodies have never seen before, or there just aren't enough of us to figure out how to fight it. Whatever the case, we're dropping like flies.

Some people thought one of the guys brought it back from all the time he spent outside checking the support structures, but I don't think that was it. The germs we naturally carry in our bodies are in a completely new environment. There's no
telling how the interaction with a new planet's atmosphere and radiation would alter or mutate them. We've also been growing and eating food that was prepared in a completely different way than our bodies were used to. Not to mention possible radiation poisoning. Can you imagine how much that might have thrown off our immune systems? It's a wonder we haven't all died already.

I haven't gotten sick yet, but I'm sure it's only a matter of time.

The good news: the virus isn't going to kill me. After that, however, everything is still terrible. Horrible. On the other hand, funny. Somewhat.