Mission Critical:

Journey to the Red Planet

By

Marilyn Peake

http://www.marilynpeake.com

Mission Critical: Journey to the Red Planet

© Copyright, 2020, Marilyn Peake

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

Book Cover Art by Cheri Lasota at Author's Assembler:

https://www.authorsassembler.com/

About the Author

USA TODAY and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author Marilyn Peake writes Science Fiction and Fantasy. She’s one of the contributing authors in Book: The Sequel, published by The Perseus Books Group, with one of her entries included in serialization at The Daily Beast. In addition, Marilyn has served as Editor for a number of anthologies. Her short stories have been published in numerous anthologies and on the literary blog, Glass Cases.

AWARDS: Silver Award, two Honorable Mentions and eight Finalist placements in the ForeWord Magazine Book of the Year Awards, two Winner and two Finalist placements in the EPPIE Awards, Winner of the Dream Realm Awards, Finalist placement in the 2015 National Indie Excellence Book Awards, Winner of “Best Horror” in the eFestival of Words Best of the Independent eBook Awards, and Semi-Finalist placement in the Young Adult category of the Kindle Book Awards.

Author Links:

Marilyn Peake’s website: http://www.marilynpeake.com

Newsletter Sign-up: http://www.marilynpeake.com/newsletter.html

Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/Marilyn-Peake/e/B00LZV77Q8/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1437976058&sr=1-2-ent

Follow Marilyn Peake on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Marilyn-Peake-Author-1649249058685297/

Follow Marilyn Peake on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marilynpeake

Follow Marilyn Peake on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/387792.Marilyn_Peake

Allison Jiang: Computer Diary Entry

One-Way Ticket to Mars. The words jumped out at me. I’d won! After a grueling year living in a Mars Simulation Habitat out in the godforsaken desert of Utah, after all the physical and psychological tests, all the poking and prodding and blood and urine samples, I’d been chosen! I was one of only ten people—five males and five females—selected from thousands of applicants.

After staring at my computer, then printing out the email so I could hold it in my hands and make it part of the physical universe, I went downstairs to tell my parents. That did not go well. My mother screamed. She put her head in her hands and wept. My father’s face tensed, while fear glistened in his eyes. He looked distraught, torn between wanting to comfort my mother and wanting to plead with me not to do it.

My mother did the pleading. Why? Why? Why would a beautiful, smart young woman like me want to throw away her life on a one-way trip to Mars, the first manned trip ever to Mars? Anything could go wrong. If we made it that far, I’d never be able to return home to Earth. I’d die there. I’d never marry, have children. She’d never see me again.

She was frantic, desperate.

When I’d first applied to the reality TV show, Mission Critical: Journey to the Red Planet, she tried to talk me out of it. I drew a line in the sand, stood my ground, rebelled like a teenager. She backed off, eventually laughed about it, assuming it was just a passing fantasy that would never happen. How could it? It was a reality show, for God’s sake. On Mars.

But the producers had gotten some impressively qualified scientists and medical doctors on board and the mission had continued to inch forward toward becoming reality. Training out in the Utah desert had been run like a survival reality show, everything recorded for later TV viewing. My mother had assumed I’d get beaten by the harsh conditions and rigorous training. In the end, however, I was one of the final contestants who survived the ordeal. There were twenty of us. We were sent home to wait the selection of the final ten chosen by a team of space scientists and medical professionals for the actual trip to Mars.

I could hardly believe it: I was one of the chosen. After receiving the notification, I was to report to training camp within thirty-six hours. Not in the Utah desert where we had initially trained. This time, we were going to Florida to blast off from Cape Canaveral. Awesome. So many rockets had blasted off from there. This thing was becoming real.

Once again, my mother pleaded with me not to go. I felt her fears were unfounded. I knew the reality show had announced this was a one-way mission. But how could that be true? It was just a brilliant publicity stunt. They’d bring us back, I was sure of it.

I was twenty-six years old, recently finished a Ph.D. in Biology, still living at home with my parents and deeply in debt. Going to Mars would secure my future. First of all, the reality show offered to pay all outstanding education bills for its participants. Second of all, if we returned to Earth, which I was pretty sure we’d eventually do, I could earn a living through tours and speaking engagements. And what if I did end up living on Mars forever? I’d be one of the first people to colonize a new planet. I could live with that.

My mother refused to see me off at the airport. My father drove me. My last glimpse of him through the glass wall showed him bent over crying. He looked so small and broken. He’d always been larger than life to me, an engineer who worked for NASA. I saw myself as following in his footsteps. I wanted him to be proud.

At the base camp, I had to make my first difficult decision. I knew it was coming. All the females had been warned and prepared. We had to decide whether or not to be sterilized. We were informed of the risks with either decision. If we chose not to be sterilized, we would be given enough birth control for the first two years. There would be a regular schedule of rocket ships blasting off from Earth bringing cargo to our settlement on Mars. Birth control would be continuously available that way.

We were warned that Mars atmosphere is inhospitable to humans. We could never, ever go outside unprotected. We’d have to either be inside one of the reality show’s habitats or wrapped up inside our spacesuits or traveling in a rover that had life supports. No other options. That was it. I opted for sterilization. I wasn’t sure I wanted children, anyway. And I couldn’t imagine bringing a child into that kind of world. Although for that matter, I couldn’t imagine bringing a child into the world as it existed on Earth either. The constant water wars and droughts, the massacres forever flashing across TV screens, the floods and fires. There were times I felt petrified watching the news. It felt like being trapped in a burning building. All my survival instincts screamed: Run! Run! Get the hell out of here!

I was getting the hell out of there. I was leaving for Mars. If we could establish a thriving colony there, it would represent an escape hatch for people on Earth.

Shortly after arrival at base camp, I found myself on a gurney, meds dripping into my arm to make me drowsy, relaxed, letting go of everything, not caring. Count down from 100. 100, 99… That’s all I remember. I woke up a changed woman. A human being with a womb, but tubes tied into knots that would prevent my eggs from ever traveling down through them—happy potential kids screaming and shouting their way down a sparkly pink waterslide on a hot summer day—to splash into the water and dance and commingle with their waiting partners. I would never be a mother. Not unless I decided to have my tubes untied and it worked.

When I recovered, I felt I’d made the right decision. We’d been warned that nobody knew how pregnancies would fare on Mars. There would undoubtedly be miscarriages. There might be deformities.

We were colonists. We were forging a path. Doctors would be part of our team. They’d assist with pregnancies, do things and invent things to try to counteract any negative effects from our environment.

In Roman mythology, Mars was the god of war. On the planet, our bodies would be at war with the god and his red, dusty, suffocating world. We’d always be fighting for survival.

When the day finally arrived for blastoff, we got to speak to our loved ones by videophone. My mom and dad both managed to keep a stiff upper lip. They wished me well and promised to watch the show.

Then we filed into the first spaceship that would rendezvous with another one already orbiting Earth. That second one, named Mission Critical, would take us all the way to Mars.

Our bodies jounced around and trembled as we fled Earth’s surface. Strapped into chairs tilted back so that we were lying on our backs, we were pushed down into them hard by g-forces increasing to 3gs, meaning we had three times the normal force of Earth gravity acting on us as we blasted off into space. That was intense. And frightening. I wasn’t an astronaut. Neither were any of the others chosen for the reality show. We had very little training, just enough to get where we were going and set up a colony unlike anything people had ever before attempted in the entire history of the human race.

After docking with Mission Critical, we walked one by one through the docking port into the belly of the beast that would soon break free of Earth’s orbit at an escape velocity of 25,000 miles per hour to set off for our ultimate destination.

As soon as we entered Mission Critical, we became sardines. We were crammed into a vehicle that had so little space, it felt more like a tin can than a rocket ship. Each of us had our own separate room, but it was tiny. We’d sleep on a shelf above our tiny living quarter. We couldn’t shower; there weren’t any facilities for that. Instead, we’d be taking sponge baths using warm soapy water that we squirt out of a tinfoil pouch. We’d eat canned and freeze-dried food, along with vitamins and other supplements. We’d get to know each other in the kitchen area the size of a pantry and at regularly scheduled get-togethers in a social space so small it was basically a circular couch surrounding floor area only big enough for a few of us to stand at one time. That is, if we could stand. I’d originally thought our ship would have one of those large spinning wheels or some other method of creating gravity. But that type of ship costs money. Mission Critical had zero-g. We’d either be floating around inside the ship or strapped and tethered to something our entire journey. When we reached Mars, Mission Critical would be jettisoned out toward the sun, discarded in space. That’s how cheap it was.

Everything in the public areas would be filmed. As would the stories we told in a Confessional the size of a phone booth.

That first night in the social area made it very clear that we weren’t astronauts in any traditional sense of the word. We were nothing more than reality show contestants in astronaut clothing. We were zoo animals: living creatures placed in a cage for people to learn more about us. Also, to learn about human survival on Mars. Mission Critical had been billed as the Out-of-This-World Reality Show of Reality Shows, the one that everyone on Earth would watch.

The show, no doubt, would make billions of dollars in advertising money and merchandise. We had all signed away the rights to our own likenesses. From now on, my face could be plastered all over merchandise whether or not I approved of the products. If the show wanted condoms or dog food cans or sparkling rainbow-colored unicorn butts with my face on them, I could not complain.

I knew that I had to accept the reality I had signed up for, and I had to get along with everyone on the Mission Critical team. This was my new social group, my new family. It would soon become my one and only society. I made myself let go of judgment. I forced myself to accept things however they unfolded, to go with the flow.

Serious and studious by nature, I tend to analyze and judge everything. I mostly let go of that only through fantasy. Third generation Chinese in the United States, I was raised by parents less strict than their own; but they still insisted on high performance in school and some pretty strict rules. Determined to give me more freedom than they had experienced as children, I did have access to television shows and movies, computer games and whatever I wanted to read. Those were my escapes and where I felt safe to let down my guard and explore new ideas.

Mission Critical would be my real-life computer game, the place where I’d banish judgment and just play the game. Wherever it led. However it unfolded.

The social interaction room had a sign above it: Constellation Room. It had a double meaning: a group of stars in the sky…or us, a group of stars in a groundbreaking TV show, also high up above Earth.

Our first entrance into that room was dramatic. Filmed by multiple cameras, we were invited to the room one by one over a loudspeaker. As soon as our name was called, we were to fling open the door to our private room, float out into the hallway that had bedrooms on either side and use handles along the wall to propel ourselves to the Constellation Room, all the while beaming with smiles and waving with a free hand whenever possible. As soon as the first door opened, lights started flashing all over the place. Blue, yellow, red, purple, orange. Lights ran along the edges of the floor, in straight lines along the ceiling, and blinked haphazardly all over the walls. Upbeat, kick-ass music accompanied them. It was like being in a disco. A very tiny disco. The hallway was so narrow, it reminded me of the garbage compactor that closed in on Luke Skywalker and his companions on the Death Star. Good thing I wasn’t claustrophobic. I banged my elbows up pretty badly propelling myself toward the Constellation Room that first time.

Nevertheless, my fears melted away. I felt excited, happy and proud to be exactly where I was. If music and lights were part of this grand experiment, surely all the basic safety measures needed for this trip had been taken care of. The frivolous was rarely built into a venture before the basic elements of survival had been locked into place.

After all of us had entered the Constellation Room and strapped ourselves into a place on the circular couch, the show’s host greeted us on a large-screen TV. Max McKinney: flamboyant, charismatic, full of energy and enthusiasm. His carrot-colored hair shaved on the sides and long on top gave the impression under the bright studio lights of a flame flickering across the middle of his scalp. His blue eyes burned with passion. They could change in a blink from excitement to concern to anger. If Mars wasn’t enough to draw in a huge viewing audience, Max should do it.

And then there was our fellow crew member, Scarlett Love. She was a wannabe Hollywood actress. She insisted Scarlett Love was her birth name, not a stage name. Twenty-eight years old, she’d moved to Hollywood from some little town in Ohio five years earlier, hoping to make it on the big screen. We all had to go around the room…well, around the couch…and introduce ourselves. It was clear from the moment she opened her mouth that she was potentially big trouble as well as a big draw to bring in an audience. She was drop-dead gorgeous. Blond hair, blue eyes, breasts that were easily Double D squeezed into a skintight V-neck T-shirt, and language that would make a sailor blush.

Max asked, “So, Scarlett, would you say this is your first big Hollywood role?”

Scarlett looked up flirtatiously, directly into the camera that was part of our TV screen. “Why, yes, it is, Max. And a pretty amazing role, don’t you think? Hollywood’s never had a role this important, this fantastic before.”

Max came right back at her, like a tennis player slamming the ball into her court where she might not be able to reach it. “You’re twenty-eight, right? Why do you think the audience has never heard of you before?”

Scarlett’s cheeks reddened. The joy left her eyes for a moment, replaced quickly by a flash of anger. “Well, I could have been a household name by now. But, you know, I don’t play the casting couch game. A movie role isn’t worth a blow job or having to fuck some skanky dude.”

Max didn’t flinch. Throwing his head back in laughter, he returned the ball full-force. “OK now, Scarlett Love, I guess you’re going to keep our censors busy. Let’s not do that too many times, though, OK? We don’t want your lines to be all, Bleep…Bleep…Bleep, right? Let’s not ruin your one chance at becoming a big star. Prove to the audience you’re more than casting couch material. You’re getting up there in age and we want you to become one of the world’s greatest celebrities. When people look up at Mars burning brightly in the night sky, we want them to think of you, Scarlett Love, as the biggest, brightest star of them all.”

Scarlett was flustered, but she fought back. Max’s statement was so filled with passive-aggressive meanings, it made our heads spin. But Scarlett raised her own head high as she replied, “I’ll never forget my interview on your couch, Max. I’m surprised I made it this far.”

Max had the ability to take anything thrown his way and dance with it. He never faltered. He grinned from ear to ear at the camera and then responded as though confiding in the audience. “I don’t even have a couch. This girl is crazy. But we love her already, don’t we, audience? We’re all gonna fall in love with Scarlett Love, I can feel it in my bones.”

Poor choice of words, but there you have it. Reality TV. The making of a star.

The rest of us paled in comparison. Only Ace Whitaker came close in charisma and raw sexual appeal. He was good-looking and cocky and had a bad boy vibe. He gave the impression that he thought of himself as better than the show, even though he hadn’t done much with his life after graduating college. He introduced himself by saying, “I’m a frat boy through and through. I get along pretty much with everybody, so I think I’ll be a good fit for this team. I also got good grades in Science and Math…I was a Chemistry major…So if we run into any problems, I should be able to help.”

He kept looking over at Scarlett and she kept looking back. There was some definite chemistry there, and I’m not referring to his college major.

Max baited Ace, same as he’d done with Scarlett. “So, Ace, you say you’re good in Science and Math. How many years ago did you graduate college?”

Ace replied, “Ummm. Three years, I think. Yeah, three years.” His voice trembled a bit. He looked nervous.

Max commented, “Hmmm. Three isn’t a particularly high number. It took you a while to count that high. Am I right, audience? Am I right?”

I imagined audience hoots and hollers being edited into the show right there.

Max continued, “I’m just playing around with you, Ace. You know we love you. The entire audience loves all you guys. You’re forging a path to another planet for the entire human race. If we keep trashing our own planet the way we are, we’re all gonna need to join you on Mars before you know it. You guys are our heroes.”

In my mind, I heard some kind of heroic music playing right there.

Then with a jab, Max sucker-punched Ace right in his manhood. “So, what have you accomplished since graduating college, Ace? You got some kind of high-powered tech job? An engineering position, maybe?”

Ace put his head down. He mumbled, “Nah, I’ve had some trouble with that.”

Max said, “Speak up, Ace. Look into the camera on your TV screen. We can’t hear you all the way down here.” That was kind of an idiot statement. We were communicating through video signals and satellites, not shouting across the entire distance to Earth.

Ace looked up warily. He repeated, loudly this time, “I’ve had some trouble with that.”

Max asked, “Ohhhh…What kind of trouble?”

I don’t think Ace ever meant to admit what he blurted out next. He wrung his hands. Beads of sweat formed on his forehead. I think he meant to sound tough, to win the pissing contest Max had started. “Well, I spent some time in jail. For nothing, mind you. I was up against an expensive lawyer in court. I couldn’t afford to match him. My own lawyer sucked.”

Max made his eyes open real wide like he was in shock. Like he hadn’t already been informed of every single important detail of our pasts. “Jail time? You were in prison? And now you’re one of the team members heading to Mars? I hope it wasn’t for anything serious, Ace. You didn’t kill anyone, now did you?”

Ace’s shoulders relaxed. He smiled into the camera. “Oh, no, of course not. It was a he-said-she-said kinda thing. I was at a party our frat was throwing, making out with this girl. We got carried away.” He winked at Max. “You know how it is. Next morning, she had regrets. She accused me of rape. Her family’s rich. Mine isn’t. I got six months in jail. It’s hard to get a job after that.”

Max cupped his chin in his hand, paced back and forth across the stage, looked thoughtful. “And yet we hired you for a very important mission and for what we think will be the most watched television show ever. Why is that, do you think?”

Ace answered, “The producer who interviewed me said he believed my side of the story. The same thing happened to him. It took him years to get his life back on track. He’s married now with a bunch of kids. He wanted to help me out. He said he saw promise in me.”

Max said, “Well, I believe you, too. You gotta show us what you’re made of, Ace. You make us all proud, OK? Don’t let us down.”

I imagined the thunderous applause of an audience clapping and yelling, a few whistles and stomping of feet. And a young woman curled into a fetal position in a darkened room, weeping as her TV screen flickered with images of a new hero rising.

Whirling around on stage, Max addressed the audience. “Let’s hope Ace’s lawyer isn’t an advertiser with our show. That would be wasted money, don’t you think?” Dub in laughter.

Max treated most of the rest of us with much less enthusiasm. I surmised that Scarlett Love and Ace Whitaker were going to be the stars of the show. The rest of us would be co-stars and the technicians responsible for making the Mars mission work.

Dr. Ava Rodriguez had a Ph.D. in Psychology and had worked in private practice for nearly a decade. She was a bit overweight and warm and friendly. Rather than asking how she might help us if we ran into psychological problems—which we undoubtedly would, considering our close quarters in a tin can hurtling through space and then on a dusty planet intent on killing us all—Max asked what her favorite recipe was. The question didn’t seem to bother Ava. She smiled and spoke at length about a number of her favorite “comfort foods” and cookie recipes. When she got to her fourth recipe, Max opened his mouth extra wide, put his hand over it and pretended to yawn. “Ava…Ava…Ava…You are a gem. You are the perfect mother figure. I’ll tell you what I’d like. I want you to mother those brave souls up there with you, OK? I have a feeling they’re going to need it.” Ava smiled. No one else did.

Turning his focus away from a person he obviously didn’t care to interview because he thought of her as boring, Max turned next to Wyatt Galloway. After consigning Ava to mom figure, he packaged Wyatt as the perfect hero.

Rubbing his hands together as though relishing what he was about to say next, Max first addressed Ace. With a smile on his face, he shouted as though yelling across the distance in space, “Hey, Ace? You listening to me?”

Ace chuckled. “Of course I am. I’m strapped to a couch facing the TV. It’s kind of hard not to listen.”

Addressing the audience, Max commented, “Ooooh, now that’s not exactly a ringing endorsement of my riveting stage performance, is it?” Dub in a mixture of laughter and shocked intakes of breath, maybe a few boos. “But I’ll take it. He’s listening, audience.” Then he spoke more directly to Ace. “Pay attention to Wyatt’s work history, OK? You’re going to learn something about how to get employed and stay employed.”

Seriously? Was that even necessary? The guy was headed for Mars, supposedly never to return. His main job, which had already started, was keeping himself alive and fighting for survival…oh, and being entertaining for the TV audience back home…not searching out an employment office. Had they been on a TV show back on Earth, I’m pretty sure Max and Ace would have spent a good portion of their time vying for Scarlett’s attention.

Turning to Wyatt, Max said, “So, Wyatt, let’s hear about your work history.”

In a Southern drawl, Wyatt replied, “Yes, sir.” At which point, Max interrupted him to comment, “And he’s a gentleman, too.” Wyatt dipped his chin in a way that made him appear modest, as though he didn’t want to look directly into the camera while being praised. Rather than respond to Max’s comment, he just continued with what he’d been about to say, “As soon as I graduated college, I joined the Air Force. On my last tour in Afghanistan, I suffered some injuries to my right leg. After I healed up enough, I took a part-time job as a taxi driver. Then as soon as I healed up completely, I started working as an airplane pilot for a bush plane company, carrying people and supplies into remote areas of Alaska.”

A look of awe came over Max’s face. “So, you like danger and taking risks?”

Wyatt answered, “Why, yes, sir, I most certainly do. In my free time, I went rock climbing or skydiving or took off on a motorcycle whenever I could. There’s nothing quite like an adrenalin rush.”

Max turned to the camera and addressed the audience. “Look at that, guys…A risk-taker up on Mission Critical. It’s so perfect, it’s almost poetic!”

I thought to myself, Let’s hope there’s no poetic justice involved.

Amping up the audience, Max continued, “Come on, everyone, give Wyatt a big round of applause!” At that point, we heard thunderous applause as a military march started playing over the speakers. I half-expected balloons or confetti to fall from the ceiling.

Ace blushed and squirmed a bit against the harness holding him in place.

Next, Max addressed Jayden Keller, asked him all about growing up with Asperger’s Syndrome, what it felt like being introverted and socially awkward. He threw a few compliments his way for being the chess champion at college, for being great with computers and fixing all kinds of machines; but then he stabbed him in the back, saying, “If you find it too difficult to interact with the people on your team, just spend time fixing the machines up there. Think of the machinery as your best friends, OK? Your team will love you for it.” Turning to the camera, he said, “We need to get this guy a C-3PO or R2D2.” Waggling his eyebrows, flirting with the audience, he added, “Or maybe a lady robot. What do you think, audience? Should we send a lady robot up to the Mars base to keep Jayden company?” Cue robotic sounds and canned laughter. Jayden, for his part, demonstrated a thousand times the social skills that Max had. He looked over at me and rolled his eyes. I did the same right back at him and saw a smile play out across his lips.

Max never noticed. He moved right on to Dr. Mia Trevino. She was a medical doctor who’d worked for nearly a decade as a General Practitioner. She would serve as our primary physician. Max spent her entire introduction teasing her about how she’d get to see all her neighbors nude. His worst line was: “It’s not every day a person gets to do prostate and gynecological exams on all their neighbors. Am I right, audience?” Mia ended up making eye contact with Jayden and rolling her eyes. I think I realized right then and there that Jayden had started something that helped us get through the rest of these excruciating interviews.

I literally jumped when Max called my name. He pretty much pulled a combination why are you still living at home with your parents and funny you aren’t married yet routine on me. I got through it the best I could. About halfway into it, I looked over at Jayden. He rolled his eyes in sympathy. From that point on, I didn’t really care what Max said. All my concentration went into fighting the urge to crack up laughing.

I was never as happy as when the focus finally shifted off me and moved to Dr. Tom Hooper. He was our surgeon. Having worked for five years in that capacity at a top-notch hospital, he’d actually separated twins who were conjoined at birth. Max basically fawned all over him and led the audience in a round of applause for his surgery with the twins. And then, oh my God, he actually showed video of the surgery. Anything for ratings. Anything at all. I tried not to vomit because that was gonna get real nasty in zero-g.

By the time he introduced Gavin Wilkerson, a tech whiz whose start-up company had earned millions of dollars before he sold it to a bigger company for nearly a billion, Gavin’s face had gone an awful shade of pale. Max, of course, started right in on him by asking, “So, what’d you think of that surgery?”

Jayden looked at Gavin and then rolled his eyes a bunch. He was sitting off to the side where he could easily be edited out of the TV shot. Gavin kept looking over until he got himself under control and his cheeks pinked up a bit. He seemed fully recovered by the time Max asked him a bunch of questions about his inventions.

Then “last but not least,” as Max put it, Dr. Gwendolyn Moore was introduced. She had two PhDs, one in Electrical Engineering and one in Mechanical Engineering, and had worked for a private space company. She got off the hook with only one insult. After asking her a bunch of questions about her work for the space company and pointing out that she’d be invaluable to the rest of us with all her experience, Max asked, “You’ve worked hard for a lot of years, haven’t you?” Gwen said, “Yes, I have. I believe in hard work, that you can fulfill a lot of your dreams if you work hard.” Max then threw his head back and laughed with gusto before saying, “All work and no play makes Gwen a dull girl…or someone capable of saving the day if your ship breaks down. I mean out there in the middle of outer space, if something goes terribly wrong, your team could use a gal like you, wouldn’t you say?” Gwen looked shocked by the question. I mean what do you say to something like that?

After we’d all been introduced, Max said he had a big surprise for us. A curtain rose. Behind that curtain: fifty of the most popular singers in the world. They all launched into singing David Bowie’s Space Oddity. I’d never realized exactly what that song meant before. I’d never listened closely to all the words. For the first time in my life, I realized that Major Tom had become lost in outer space. Oh, lovely…What a nice surprise.

After Max wished us well and said goodbye and the TV cameras turned off, pre-recorded information came across our screen. We were given a schedule in which each of us had a fifteen-minute slot to go into the Confessional and record our thoughts about the first social gathering that had just taken place, including impressions we had of our fellow teammates. Until our turn, we were free to go into our rooms or any of the social areas on the ship.

Then a doctor came onto the screen. She introduced herself as Dr. Elizabeth Pearson. She told us that she or one of several other doctors would be available 24 hours a day by email or videophone to answer any medical questions we might have that didn’t involve actual medical care. In other words, she was there to answer the bazillion concerns we might have about our experience in space, all the Oh My God, I’m going to die, aren’t I? kinds of freak-out questions that could easily exhaust our onboard doctors and drive them crazy. She also told us that we had medications in our private compartments—all kinds of medications to make our trip to Mars bearable. Sleeping pills, anti-anxiety and anti-depressant drugs. We had a limited amount. Any additional doses could be requested from Dr. Ava Rodriguez, our team psychologist, or Dr. Mia Trevino, our G.P. Dr. Hooper would only prescribe medications related to surgery if and when that was needed.

We also had a full bar the size of a cabinet in our compartments stocked with small bottles of liquor, but that kind of hospitality would end once we reached Mars. We were told: Enjoy the perks while you still can. Mars will be a much harsher environment.

All the while numerous cameras rolled around in their sockets—scanning our environment in every possible direction, like chameleon eyes. Recording us, sending footage back to the TV producers on Earth who would splice and dice and chop it up, then glue it back together in the form of stories both heartwarming and salacious.

Jayden Keller: In the Confessional, One Month After Mission Critical Left Earth Orbit for Mars

I’m glad I was chosen as one of the first people to set up a colony on Mars. Up here on the Mission Critical ship, social gatherings are much easier for me than they were back on Earth. No one thinks of me as strange or different. Everyone seems to value me for my technical skills. It’s a different situation. People must know on some level that we could easily die—on the ship or on the hostile planet Mars is sure to be—and it will be up to the people with technical skills to save us all by continuously solving difficult problems.

There are a couple of people with outgoing personalities and the kinds of social skills that make people popular back on Earth. Those skills still work here, but they’re not the only skills people respect.

Scarlett Love and Ace Whitaker are two of the popular types. They’re the stars of the show. Max has said so, and I accept that.

But the other night I saw something that alarmed me. I’m not ready to report it through official channels because I’m not exactly sure what I saw. But I thought I’d mention it here in the Confessional, so there’s a record of it. If it’s an actual ongoing problem, I’m assuming other people will report it as well, and the TV show producers can decide how to handle it. In a situation like ours, everyone has to be able to depend on each other. Anyone who’s untrustworthy has to be dealt with. That’s my analysis.

I like how the lights on the ship tell us what’s up and how to adjust our moods. When it’s time to go to the Constellation Room to socialize, the lights in the hallway flash and music starts playing. The beat’s energetic. It cues us to act happy and show enthusiasm. While the lights on the walls flash double-time to the beat of the music and in a set pattern—first, the lights in the second row from the top flash, then lights in the third row from the bottom flash, then lights in the middle flash, and so on—those running along the floor and ceiling keep time to the music and move in the direction toward where we’re supposed to go. Thanks for that. It’s comforting. When I follow the lights, I know I’m where I’m supposed to be. When the lights in the social areas turn a cool, relaxing blue, it’s time to go into the Confessional and confide things. They’re all blue right now.

In the Constellation Room, we get to talk with the TV show host back down on Earth through a TV screen. Max is full of energy and has orange hair on top of his head. He gets us to say things we wouldn’t otherwise say.

But there are some things we definitely shouldn’t say there. The whole Constellation Room setup is meant for public broadcast, and we’re face-to-face with our teammates in there.

Things get weird up here in outer space. We’re attached to Earth only through electronic screens. What if they all went dead? We’d lose touch with every other person in the entire human race. It would only be the ten of us forever and ever. Well, unless someone has a baby. Some of the women were sterilized, so I don’t know how many babies there will ever be. Maybe we’re the last human beings any of us will ever see.

Several of the people on our team are taking drugs regularly and drinking. It blurs boundaries. Boundaries are already blurred. We’re in a spaceship. We’re never coming back to Earth. All the people we see outside of here are just tiny images on a TV screen. Maybe they’re not even real. Maybe they’re computer-generated. I refuse to believe that.

One night, I took a Xanax. It was too high a dose for me. I saw ghosts moving through the hallway. Not really. It was just for a second and I only saw them out of the corner of my eye. A mirage. Or maybe something programmed into the lights to throw us off balance, to make the reality show more interesting.

So I don’t trust myself. But I should tell someone. I’ll tell it here in the Confessional. I passed by Ace’s room two nights ago. His door was partially open. He had wrapped tethering straps around himself and Scarlett, and had her face pressed into the mattress. He had something in his hand—a knife, I thought at the time. A big knife, his hand wrapped around it, up against her neck. He said, “You like it rough, don’t you?” A split second later, he did something with the knife—slid it into a sheath or something—and used his hand to cover her mouth, so I couldn’t tell if she was screaming or moaning. I went to find someone, but Scarlett came to the door before anyone else came out into the hallway. She smiled at me like everything was OK before closing Ace’s door. So maybe everything’s OK.

My time’s up. That’s all I have to say. Except that I like the circular window in this room. It reminds me of an eye. God’s eye. Are we God? I like that we have the choice to look through it or close the blinds. I prefer having them open. I wish I could have one like this in my bedroom. When we were in orbit around Earth, it was fun to come in here and figure out exactly where we were above Earth and what time of day or night it was. The prettiest view I saw was a sunrise over the ocean. Apparently, we passed through sixteen sunrises and sunsets during every twenty-four-hour orbital period. I wish I could have seen them all. I also like that the surfaces in here are blue screen rather than green screen. Neon green would be jarring. I wonder what the Confessional will look like on the TV show. Anything could take the place of the walls, the floor and ceiling. I wonder if you’ll make us look like we’re floating in outer space.

Dr. Ava Rodriguez, Psychologist: Clinical Notes on Scarlett Love, Three Months After Mission Critical Left Earth Orbit for Mars

Scarlett has confided in me that she’s pregnant. Obviously, there is reason to be concerned about this. No woman has ever in all of humanity’s history been pregnant in outer space or on any planet other than Earth. We have no precedent.

Our trip to Mars is expected to take eight months. We have five more months before we get there. Scarlett is only three months pregnant. She has six months left if her pregnancy goes full term. Unless she goes into premature labor or has a miscarriage, she’s going to deliver on Mars. We won’t be ready for this. We don’t have an OB/GYN on board. Dr. Mia Trevino, our General Practitioner, and Dr. Tom Hooper, our Surgeon, are the only crew members who have any kind of obstetrical training. Let’s hope it’s enough.

Scarlett also confided in me that she was raped three months ago by someone other than Ace Whitaker, the crew member with whom she has a relationship.

She and Ace have been attending couples therapy with me once a week. They have been working hard on their relationship and seem devoted to each other. The BDSM behaviors they practice are problematic, in that they use them as substitutes for intimacy. I’m working to help them gain insight into those behaviors, especially in regard to Scarlett’s abusive father and Ace’s controlling, narcissistic mother. A baby complicates the situation, as they will need assistance in becoming healthier parents than they had in their own childhoods. In addition to this, Scarlett feels that the baby is not Ace’s, as they used birth control every time they had sex. She’s pretty much convinced that the man who raped her is the baby’s father.

Scarlett was not willing to tell me who raped her. She wants to make sure Ace thinks he’s the father, whether or not he is. I strongly advised her to have a paternity test done.

Dr. Gwendolyn (Gwen) Moore, Mission Critical Engineer: Computer Diary Entry, Four Months After Mission Critical Left Earth Orbit for Mars

Tonight’s meeting in the Constellation Room shocked me. In my mind, I had thought everyone chosen for this mission would be tech-oriented and serious. I guess I was thinking of NASA and traditional astronauts; not a reality show with the technical expertise to blast a group of strangers into space and land them on another planet, but with the primary focus on recording their struggles and triumphs for a curious, Peeping Tom audience back home.

Scarlett Love’s face has been glowing, I’ll grant you that. Tonight, she seemed happy as she announced that she’s pregnant, at the beginning of her second trimester. Back home, the show host, Max, was ecstatic. He jumped up and down and clapped his hands while congratulating her. He promised that the next cargo delivery to Mars will include baby clothes and lots of other baby things. We never see the audience when he talks to us, but the sound of thunderous applause broke out right after he congratulated her. They’re using sound effects now, I’m pretty sure, just to keep us motivated. Unless there is a live audience. But we never see them.

The idiotic stuff he said: “Your baby will be the first Martian! Think about it, Scarlett, you and Ace are like Adam and Eve. You’re going to give birth on Mars to the child who will be the very first human being ever born there. When Mars becomes as populated as Earth, your child will forever be mentioned in the history books as the original ancestor for a whole line of Martians.”

Scarlett smiled, but she looked uncertain. Who wants their child to be referred to as a Martian?

Fifteen minutes later, out of the clear blue sky…well, maybe we shouldn’t use that term anymore, as we’re deep into the darkness of outer space, far beyond Earth’s atmosphere…Fifteen minutes later out of nowhere, Jayden Keller reported that he thought he’d seen Ace raping Scarlett. He wondered if anyone else had seen an incident like that.

Scarlett’s face turned bright red. She looked up at the camera with fury and defiance. Then she turned on Jayden. She leaned forward as much as her harness would allow and shouted at him. “The type of sex we have is none of your goddamn business, you little tattle-telling weasel! Mind your own business!”

Max was delighted. Grinning widely, he clapped his hands together. “Oh, the drama! Is this not a perfect snapshot of the human condition? Sex and aggression—Freud would be happy to know none of that changes in outer space—love, pregnancy, betrayal. I know I’m looking forward to seeing how this all plays out! What about you, audience?” The man is a sociopath.

Next, we heard cheers, whistles and clapping from an audience we never saw.

My God, Scarlett could die in childbirth. The baby could be deformed or mentally impaired from conditions in the spaceship or on Mars. I couldn’t imagine giving birth on Mars. A planet completely inhospitable to human life. We can’t breathe its atmosphere. We can’t step outside without enclosing ourselves in a spacesuit and helmet. We don’t even know if we can grow food there. If the cargo ships stop arriving, we could starve to death.

Emotionally, Scarlett was a child. So was Ace. And so was Max.

Allison Jiang: Computer Diary Entry, Six Months After Mission Critical Left Earth Orbit for Mars

Things have gotten ugly up here on Mission Critical. Scarlett and Ace are still together, but no one trusts him. I think we’re going to do something about it. I’m not sure murder is off the table. It’s up to us to protect his child…and our community. We don’t have access to courts or police up here. We are the law. Maybe the team will wait until we get to Mars. But I’ve heard whispers that certain people may take matters into their own hands before then.

Scarlett Love: Computer Diary Entry, One Month After Landing on Mars

I’m scared.

Giving birth on Mars was one of the most horrible and frightening events in my entire life.

I had been totally conscientious about using birth control. Everything was going fine. Until I was raped.

He just grabbed me and did what he wanted. I fought back. But he was too strong.

Ace turned cold toward me after I told him I was pregnant. He suspected the baby wasn’t his. We’d been fanatically careful about using birth control.

We both wanted to be stars. It’s all we’d ever wanted since we were kids: to be famous, to be up there on the big screen. Ace went to college for Chemistry, but his real dream was to somehow become a movie star. Reality TV was the closest we’d ever get. Unless we became such huge reality stars, the audience begged for us to be brought back to Earth to do appearances. Then we’d have a shot at the big screen. If the show could get us to Mars, the producers could find a way to get us back. We were determined to make it happen and to make our dreams come true.

I was eight months pregnant when we landed. A couple of weeks before then, Allison Jiang helped me enlarge my spacesuit. She took one of the extra suits, surplus in case any of ours failed, and cut fabric from it to sew onto mine. Maternity spacesuits, a thing of the future. We were both scared that the stitches wouldn’t hold, but she did everything she could to strengthen the seams.

After Mission Critical established its orbit around Mars, we moved into the landing module attached to it. Twenty-four hours later, we climbed into our spacesuits and prepared to jettison away from the mother ship and land on Mars.

As we hurtled down through the Martian atmosphere, g-forces pushed on us and pinned us to our seats. The landing was rougher than expected. I thought we were all going to die.

We survived.

When I stepped onto the red planet, my water broke. I was immediately plunged into a nightmare: the baby was coming early on a planet with no resources to handle it.

As Allison and Jayden helped me into the waiting rover, the red dust of Mars swirled around us. The ride to our settlement over the rocky Martian surface was brutally painful. Every bump felt like a knife ripping me open. Burning pain seared my abdomen.

Finally, our settlement came into view: stark white pods, the color of bleached bones, against a deep red soil and pink sky. The pods were connected to one another by what appeared to be hallways.

Tom Hooper grabbed me by the elbow and guided me out of the rover, across the Martian ground and through an airlock into the settlement. I didn’t want him touching me, but I was in too much pain to resist. Inside the first pod, he told everyone to help me out of my suit. I released the lock on my helmet. Someone pulled it off my head. Hands flew, peeling my suit away from my skin.

Suddenly, there was a gurney. Someone lifted me onto it and rushed me through hallways into the medical pod. It was the last one, at the far end of the string of pods.

Dr. Trevino and Tom Hooper started pulling things off shelves and out of cabinet drawers. There was a taking of my blood pressure. A monitor. Whoosh. Whoosh. Whoosh. The baby’s heartbeat. It was still alive!

Minutes later, Tom Hooper decided I needed a Cesarean. I didn’t want him anywhere near me with a knife. He was going to kill me, I knew it. And kill the baby. I screamed. And screamed. And screamed.

I was deranged. And desperate. I begged Dr. Trevino to save me. She said, “Sure. Sure.” Dr. Rodriguez came in and held my hand.

I kept calling for Ace. Tom Hooper bent down and whispered in my ear, “He’s gone.”

What did he mean, He’s gone!? Where could he possibly go? We were in the only place any of us could survive on Mars. We were all here. At the Mission Critical settlement. There was nowhere else he could safely go. This was it, the only human habitat on the entire planet.

They stuck an IV in my arm. I calmed down. I entered a world of haze. I understood. Ace was somewhere in the haze. I’d find him.

Then, suddenly, a baby crying. Loud, healthy, lustful cries. It was my baby!

Dr. Trevino placed the baby on my chest, just long enough for me to see her tiny pearl-shaped eyes. She told me, “It’s a girl. You have a daughter, Scarlett.”

I named her Carmine for the red color of the Martian soil. We were both named for the red planet. We belonged here.

That night, life took a horrible turn. Tom came alone to my bedside in the medical pod. The only sound in the room had been Carmine, gurgling and making sucking sounds in her incubator. Then, suddenly, there were his footsteps.

In the darkened room and swirling confusion of my drugged mind, I thought his face that of a demon. The wrinkles along his forehead arched into an expression of monstrous evil. He said, “Ace is dead, Scarlett. Everyone believes he raped you. Life is fragile here on this hostile planet. No one wants to risk a sociopath within their midst. We all voted. There was only one Nay; all the rest were Ayes. The men drove off with him in the rover, then unlatched his helmet and pushed him out of the vehicle. He’s gone, Scarlett.”

Tears flowed down my face onto the pillow.

Dr. Ava Rodriguez, Psychologist: Computer Diary Entry, Five Months After Landing on Mars

Even though we have spacesuits and technology complicated enough to outwit the environment on Mars that’s nothing more than poison to us without our intellectual abilities to fight back, at heart we’ve become little more than a primitive tribe. We took a vote the day we landed. I was the only Nay vote, the only voice of reason. The men murdered Ace with everyone else’s consent. No one wanted to have a rapist in their midst.

I don’t think he was the rapist.

Tom Hooper’s behavior has become increasingly maniacal and grandiose. He’s placed himself in charge. The women are becoming increasingly uncomfortable around him. He talks incessantly about how cool it would be for a man to become Adam, the father of an entirely new civilization. He claims he could be Adam here on Mars.

I think he is Adam, Adam to Scarlett’s Eve.

I spoke with my sister by videophone today. She told me weird things that don’t match our reality. She told me that people love the show. She talked about how incredibly romantic it was when Ace walked out across the Martian landscape, driven there by grief when he thought his baby had died. She said the world loves Carmine. She’s so beautiful and sweet. They love how well she’s thriving on Mars.

I started to respond. To tell her that Carmine doesn’t look well. That she’s underweight and not lifting her head yet. That there’s something wrong with her bones. I wanted to explain about the effect zero-gravity appears to have on developing bones.

The transmission went dead. A few minutes later, a message appeared on the screen: There will be no more videophone communication with Earth until the second crew arrives on Mars next month and the entire first season of Mission Critical: Journey to the Red Planet has aired. Thank you for your patience.

Max McKinney, TV Show Host: Season 1, Final Episode of Mission Critical: Journey to the Red Planet

“And there you have it, folks. Our brave, brave crew members have all become heroes. Scarlett Love, our inspiring young mother who fought against all odds to bring the first human life into existence on Mars. Carmine, our beautiful first Martian. And her father, Ace Whitaker. I want to cry. If only all of us fathers could be as attached and loyal to our children as he was. And, oh, what a tragic turn of events when he believed his thriving child to be dead! It pulls at our heartstrings and breaks our hearts. And our admiration goes out to Dr. Tom Hooper. Not only did he perform the Cesarean section that saved Scarlett and Carmine’s lives, he’s beginning to assert himself as a natural-born leader. Until next season, we wish our crew all the best! You are in our hearts and minds. You will forever be a part of us. Mwaaah!...I’m blowing kisses clear across the universe to all of you dear people, our pioneers on Mars.”

****

Dear Reader,

I hope you enjoyed this book. When choosing books, people often make decisions based on the recommendations of others. If you enjoyed Mission Critical: Journey to the Red Planet and would consider leaving a review on Amazon or the site where you downloaded it, I would deeply appreciate it.

If you’d like to receive updates on my other books and notifications about special book sales, please sign up for my newsletter here: http://www.marilynpeake.com/newsletter.html

My website: http://www.marilynpeake.com

Amazon Author Page:

http://www.amazon.com/Marilyn-Peake/e/B00LZV77Q8/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1437976058&sr=1-2-ent

Follow Marilyn Peake on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Marilyn-Peake-Author-1649249058685297/

Follow Marilyn Peake on Twitter: https://twitter.com/marilynpeake

Follow Marilyn Peake on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/387792.Marilyn_Peake

All My Best,
Marilyn Peake