Mars

Mars (A Story by Draco Drella) 2001/02
*
Preface
This is a story which will bring joy and satisfaction at its deepest
level to your innermost hearts.
It opens as an astronaut, far from the world, gazes out through his
monitors at a world, so far away, and a one which he knows he will
never see again.
You can join with his pain, his suffering, as he looks around at the
capsule which is his home. See, with him, the surface of Mars. A vision
that he has been observing, at close hand, for a period of 11 years,
223 days and about 10.26minutes.
Together you will learn how painful it is for "What was his name?" He
hasn't heard it for years and he is beginning to forget what his name
is. The labyrinth memory world, that he has inhabited for these many
solitary years, has both clarified and clouded it's, seemingly
bottomless, supply of world.

He is a person for whom we must weep, as he searches the veins, in his
arm, for a one that he can use to spike up his first hit of heroin,
since he drifted into a coma, lasting 71 hours and 27 minutes.
Just as he finds a good enough vein, he returns to an image which is a
gateway into his most travelled area of memory.
He gazes at an image of the first rays of the, midsummer morning, sun
as they hit Stonehenge.
As the first rays rested on Stonehenge in midsummers day 1970, nearby
he was born. The exact moment of his birth, his father had been on the
stage at the Stonehenge festival.
His father, Sinatra Devereaux, was the lead guitarist in the Glamorous
Deities. The Glam as their fans called them were the first San
Francisco Acid band who got famous in Britain.
They had more hits in the UK than Jefferson Airplane. They were more
famous than either the Dead or Country Joe. It was this enduring
popularity that took them to Stonehenge in the summer of 1970 and thus
our hero's birth.
It is a time to look as Frank...
That is his name, he remembers at last. He remembers how his wife used
to call him. He remembers the pride he felt when his name was called at
the prize giving ceremonies at school. He was very good at school and
he knew it.
We look as Frank forgets his next hit of Smack for a moment and starts
to type on the key board. It is an unusual keyboard but it serves it's
purpose. He does not forget the smack for long though, because he is as
addicted as the punk who steals your car radio. Neither is he any
better dressed, what was a clean and smart suit of clothes, resembling
a military uniform, has deteriorated into a grubby smelly shell that he
sees no point in changing.
But wait....
Yes wait, before you weep, before you entrust him with your pathos,
look, he is not just a victim. Look at the face, and on it, you will
see the mark of Cain, which brought him to this "Place of wandering, to
the East of Eden."

Story:-

I look around and I see a tear in the strapping which we once jokingly
referred to as furniture. I am now so used to weightlessness that I
have to make an effort to remember what furniture is. If I ever did
return to Earth then the joke would be to refer to chairs and beds as
strapping. There is a syringe drifting in my direction. It has been
drifting my way for about six days but I am too lethargic to do
anything about it. I guess that if I did nothing then it would touch me
in about another two days, but then it would start to drift back to
where it started. The drift of debris in here has come to replace the
life forces which were once familiar. In here I am an omnipotent deity.
Nothing happens unless I make it happen.

This is going to broadcast on all frequencies until the equipment gives
out. I'm dying and I'm not sorry. I've been on Mars for eleven years
and it has felt like several lifetimes. Death is the thing that I have
been waiting for the last eight years. I really don't know how I have
lasted so long. I am not a medical doctor but as part of our training
we had to spend some time learning about medicine so I know that the
human body is resilient but cannot take the kind of punishment that
eleven years on Mars will give it. I have been exposed to so much
radiation that I should have died of cancer at least but here I am.
Sorry, I should tell you what happened in the same order I
suppose.

I'm only forty five years old but feel so much older. I was married but
now I assume that I am widowed. Apart from two years in the Marines I
spent the years between being aged eighteen and thirty as a student
studying and researching and teaching science at the University of
Berkeley in California. I spent the next four years preparing to be one
of the first astronauts on Mars. I am finding it difficult to
concentrate. I have been a heroin addict for a year now.

It started as a way of coping with the physical pain but it soon became
a way of coping with this existence. I think I probably have enough
smack to last another fifteen months and, by then, I pray to God that I
am long dead. Drug usage really messes up a person's attention span. I
learned this from my father who was addicted to Heroin for most of his
life. I was trying to put things in order.

My name is Frank Deveraux. I was born in the summer of 1970 in England.
I was actually born in a hospital near Stonehenge which is in the South
of England. It was because my parents were appearing at a Rock Festival
there. I was early and my birth was quick. I don't remember it but they
say that it was a great festival. My father was a musician in a band
that were famous in the sixties and early seventies. My mother was
actually part of the band but she was never a star the way that my
father viewed himself. They were together until 1975 when I moved to
San Diego along with my mother and the physics teacher who became my
stepfather and who taught me to love science. Stonehenge is a group of
huge stones which are about five thousand years old. Nobody knows who
built it but they were amazing astronomers. They arranged the stones in
such a way that the rays of the sun on midsummers day illuminate a
particular spot. Most people think that this was the reason that they
built it, so that they could know when to plant crops and
harvest.

I loved life at Berkeley University where I could indulge my passion
for science and gain respect from my colleagues. I had a happy life
with a wonderful wife and child when I was thirty. Then I became aware
that it was just possible that I could become an astronaut.

Having a father who has been famous always puts pressure on a person
and I saw it as an opportunity to be as famous as he was. Don't
misunderstand me, my father was not Elvis Presley but he was part of
the "Glamorous Deities" who were pretty important at the time. Having a
father who has been famous can be a useful way of getting attention and
is a talking point for many people. I think it helped in my
selection.

I had always played sport and kept fit. I had done two years in the
military, which is so important, and, like I said, I knew a lot of
science. What impressed the selectors was that I had a scientific mind.
Four years later and I was honoured and so proud to be part of the Mars
team.

Mars is so far away that our mission could only be attempted when the
orbit of Earth and the orbit of Mars are at a particular conjunction to
make the distance less. The basic technique is to blast off into space
and then wait till Mars came to us. What this meant to we astronauts
was that we would spend seven months on our way to Mars. Once there the
planets would not be in a position for us to return for a further
eleven months, and then it would take us eight months to return to
Earth. We knew that we would be gone for over two years. The US would
probably not have attempted it had it not been for the end of the cold
war and the opportunity to learn from the Russian experiences of
lengthy space flights. As it was, it really was a battle to get funding
for the project, but Mr Bush wanted to be seen as another Kennedy and
the prestige it gave everyone was enormous. This all led to me being on
that launch pad in 2004 being watched by half of the world's population
as we set off for Mars.

To say we felt good does not begin to do the experience justice. I
often think about the feeling we had because it has been so long since
I have had anything that was a positive feeling.

There were two main difficulties in a mission such as ours. The first
was the physical and mental health of the astronauts. The second was
how to take enough supplies for the journey. The Russians had solved
most of the problems of weightlessness over long periods. There were
still difficulties but we knew what we were doing ( Or we thought we
did) and the rewards, in terms of status and kudos, were amazing. Neil
Armstrong was still a hero. The second difficulty was overcome by a
system of radical recycling. Very little left our craft. The fact that
we effectively ate our own shit was not the most publicised. By the
time that we ate it , it was not shit anyway. When we eat organic
vegetables we are eating recycled horseshit, but no one objects. This
radical recycling was not confined to our food. It was applied to
nearly all of our necessities. Thus the mission planned for less than
two years was practically supplied for a hundred.

We thought it was a difficult seven months as we dealt with the various
crises. The team worked well together and we arrived here and have been
orbiting Mars ever since. The plan was to send a detachment in a small
craft onto the surface of Mars but the plan for this was interrupted by
events on Earth. We had limited TV for an average of twenty seven
minutes in every twenty one hours so we had not kept up with what was
happening to the politics back home. That twenty seven minutes was used
to get technical data and news of our families. There were eight of us
in the crew so the minutes were shared between us as an average of
seventy five seconds each. I still don't know what happened. What I do
know is that when we left there had been some sort of crisis in the
Middle East. Israelis were yet again in conflict with Palestinians
which surprised no one. Things must have deteriorated because there was
a nuclear war and I have had no contact with Earth for ten and a half
years. If anyone receives this message they will know what happened
better than I do. I am hopeful that there are people left on Earth who
will, one day, be able to receive this. I will be dead by then.

The TV antenna has been trying to pick up a signal from Earth for the
last ten years and there has been nothing. If someone did establish a
link now it would be too late to get me home. I am going to die
orbiting Mars.

Originally there were eight of us. We learned something was wrong and
then we just had to guess. What had been a well adjusted team quickly
became a rabble. Foolishly I wanted to still send the probe down to the
surface of Mars. I thought that since we had come this far then we may
as well finish the job. The others pointed out that this would use fuel
which we might one day need to return home. The result was that we just
kept on orbiting. Our life support systems were of an excellent quality
and designed to last at least five years. They did this but they
started to fail right on the five years. A mixture of ingenious
maintenance and luck has managed to keep so many systems going till
now.

Eight people in a spacecraft orbiting.

There was John, the soldier, Sammy the astronomer, Beryl the geologist
and Wayne the doctor. Now it embarrasses me to have to admit that in
homage to "Star Trek" Wayne was known by us all as "Bones". The
Engineer who kept the systems going so long was me. I am Frank, I am
not perfect but I have my moments. I was known by many nicknames but
Scotty was not one of them.

Nancy was the psychologist. Barbara was the second Engineer and I loved
her. Phil was the captain and he was another soldier. John and Phil, I
described as soldiers but their skills were actually very varied and
comprehensive. Their military function became more evident as the
mission fell apart but I would not like to give the impression that
they were passengers in any way. When we lost contact with Earth we at
first couldn't quite believe that Mankind had really been so stupid and
I blamed John and Phil, for no other reason than the fact that they
represented the military. This was, of course, incredibly unfair, but I
was not at my best then. My family had just been killed, along with
most (If not all ) of the people living back home on Earth. This brings
out the worst in people.

Nancy used this argument in her defence when she was Court Martialled
for killing Beryl. I argued in her favour but she was found guilty and
sentenced to death. John administered the lethal injection and I
couldn't look at him in the same way again. Nancy took the situation
worst of us all. She was always unbalanced, but until we lost contact
this was a foible which could be endearing or annoying, depending on
how you were feeling. We found out in the early months that she had
used her knowledge of psychology to answer the right questions to
appear perfectly rounded and balanced to the people who were selecting
the crew. She also claimed that she slept with three members of the
final selection panel but I did not believe her. Her whole life seemed
to be playing a part, to appear to be whoever she wanted to at the
time. When she accused Beryl of having sex with Sammy I thought that
this was another game that she was playing. We all lived in such a
confined space that if anyone had sex with anyone we would have known
about it. Nancy repeated the allegation at one of our meetings and
Beryl got angry and called Nancy some names. Later that night Nancy
suffocated Beryl while they were on watch together.

I suppose Beryl must have fallen asleep but I still don't know exactly
what happened. I argued that the death penalty was inappropriate but I
was outvoted on the grounds that there was no alternative for the
safety of the whole group. Nancy was the one who argued most forcibly
by pointing out that she would kill us all if she was given even half a
chance. It was a terrible time for us all and I still think we did the
wrong thing but it can't be undone and it was over nine years
ago.

That left the six of us.

Within two months this was down to four as first Bones and then Phil
died within a week of each other. Their exact cause of death I'll never
know but I'd guess that Bones had a stroke and Phil had a heart attack.
Both died quite suddenly and unexpectedly and I still think about them
a lot.

John, Sammy, Barbara and I made a great team. Each was tolerant of each
other and gave each other the mental space we needed to continue. John
was the first to feel the effects of weightlessness. Of course, we knew
exactly what to expect but, by a rigorous exercise programme, we had
been able to manage until three years ago. John started to feel cramps
in his legs and then his arms. He exercised more but it didn't help. It
seemed the damage had been done. Slowly over six months he lost the use
of both his arms and his legs. The pain became more and more unbearable
until he begged us to give him a lethal injection. I couldn't do it but
Sammy did. The main reason that Sammy did was because he was beginning
to feel the same cramps in his legs.

Sammy lasted eight months before I finished him off. I couldn't see him
suffer anymore. Barbara and I were in love by then and among the
sadness and the pain of the next two years we had our moments of
happiness. When Barbara died last year, of, what I think, was an
Aneurysm, I fell into the deepest despair. I was so depressed that I
neglected to exercise and the heroin was the only thing that I could
find which enabled me to use my limbs. I knew that it was a death
sentence but I am serving that already.

I am now losing track of time. I sleep then I wake. There is no night
and day or winter and summer. There is an endless continuum which I
break up into 1 Being high, 2 Being unconscious, 3 Being anxious. The
bits of living in between are getting shorter. Sometimes I wake and
feel lucid enough to write this journal, but more often, I wake and I
can barely reach far enough to get a hit of smack.

We left Cape Canaveral with such hope, not only for ourselves, but for
mankind. Slowly we were reduced from eight to one. Soon I will be gone
and then a lifeless piece of scrap metal will be orbiting Mars, good
only as an interesting exhibit in an Alien archeology display. What
will they make of us ?

Lately I have been thinking of Stonehenge, where I was born. For the
last six months I have been looking at a particular point on the main
monitor. I think that when Mars reaches it's midsummer the point will
become as bright as the sun. I don't know if I will live long enough
but the thought is sustaining me. I think of those early people who
looked at the point on the stone every day until midsummer when they
would be able to count the days until the various agricultural needs. I
think that they were looking for another sign from the stones. They
were looking for confirmation that they had lived another year.

Not a bad feat at that time.