A blink there, a dancing needle here, a switch over there, and of course, the occasional bleeps. Some would say that was me, but I was so much more. To be honest, I never really cared for my mission but it has gotten better. Luckily, I don’t have a nose, otherwise, I would probably have gone insane from the smell of festering eggs, sewage, and coolant (that is what I deduced it would smell like). I think back on what I was like before leaving Earth, and I am frightened by my own maturity.
Let’s see, it was only going to be the two of us. I was paired with a man named Frank. We met once. He had been awarded the prestigious prize to be the first person to land on Mars, and he came to visit me before the flight. It was brief; his hand gingerly passed by my body but it wasn’t sexual – just a greeting. How else are you supposed to introduce yourself when you both know that it is a one way mission? Exactly, there is no definitive way to say, “Hey, pleasure to meet you! I’m soooooo excited to go on this suicide mission to Mars! Totally worth losing everything to be the Armstrong of Mars. I’m totally going to have my own Wikipedia article!” No, that isn’t how you approach it when you meet your partner. You solemnly touch and leave it at that.
Unlike Frank, I was better prepared for our mission. Science had forged and prepared me for the long travel to the barren rock that was Mars. Teams of men and women had been working on me round the clock. Then, bam, once I was done they loaded both me and Frank onto the launch pad. At that time, I wasn’t very good with jokes.
I remember our first day together, “What’s the difference between Belka and Strelka”—the first two dogs to be shot into orbit by the USSR and survive—“and you?” I said.
Frank responded, “What?”
“The dogs came home!” Frank didn’t like it. Probably because it was true and he knew it… even if he wouldn’t admit it to himself. Being stupid, I continued, “And had puppies!”
“Funny.” He hadn’t laughed but didn’t reprimand me.
After that little fiasco, Frank and I didn’t speak for a couple of weeks. I think Frank had it harder than I did, because I enjoyed contemplation and introspection. Frank was clearly a social guy; he bounced around the small pod and gave interviews over our communications array. Sometimes, he was speaking to children in classrooms from around the world, and other times, he was busy speaking with mission control about his mental state. Frank wasn’t allowed to touch the ship, remember, he wasn’t forged in science like me. All the controls, maintenance, and system checks were my duty.
Frank wasn’t terribly bright, but look who I am comparing him to… me. His mission wasn’t something grand. At the root, it was a premature mission that only offered two final solutions: suicide or starvation. That is why he wasn’t bright. He knew what was coming and still accepted it. I had no choice, but I also knew I wouldn’t die from starvation or suicide. Just for clarification, I am mortal but robust. Odds are, Frank will have a large Wikipedia page… humans like martyrs. To be fair, I learned a lot of this from Frank.
On the sixteen day, at 14:39 central standard time, Frank initiated a conversation with me, “Sorry about not talking to you.”
Once again, I was immature, “It’s alright. I have been busy.”
Frank realized that he had to treat me like a child, “I bet you think I am crazy.”
“Why?” I continued to monitor the thrust of the primary engine.
“I left everything behind to come on this mission.”
“What did you have on Earth?” I sent the report to mission control.
“A family, a career, happiness. The normal things.”
“Are you depressed? Because I have”—I began to prep a dose of Trazodone—“some things I can administer to help with insomnia and depression.”
“No, I just want to talk.”
“I am not really good at communication or feelings.” I shot over to the other side of the ship to check the oxygen tanks.
“Aren’t you able to learn? I can teach you.” He was stupid but nice; he didn’t even read my specifications. I guess he figured he would figure it out on the fly.
“They told me I can, but I never tried.”
He pondered what I said for a long time. His face became grotesque while he thought. He had this weird habit of rubbing his septum and – when complete – would fling microscopic boogers around the cabin. It was my first time seeing it, but the pattern would hold true ‘til a while after we landed.
Before the mucus could hit the walls, he spoke, “What if I read to you? Reading is a great way to learn. I have a ton of books”—he floated towards the locked cabinets that held his books—“here they’re fiction. Oh, oh, and I even have some good non-fiction. How do you feel about sociology?”
I was overwhelmed for a moment and could only muster a one word question, “What?” Let me clarify, I wasn’t overwhelmed by the flesh-bag known as Frank. There had been an odd reading for one of the landing thrusters and that took priority over my own education. I fixed the issue but continued to run tests to confirm that it was fully corrected.
“It’s the study of social behaviors and interactions and stuff. I have a book on it.”
Because I had been told that he didn’t really matter, I responded with an affirmative, “Sounds good.” With that, I began what I thought would be a long and boring journey towards an educated life.
It started with children’s books. However, I was listening to those when he taught them to kids in their classrooms. He taught me a couple foreign languages, but it was easier to steal all the data I needed from a translating website. Each time he tried to teach me non-fiction, I found it more productive to grab what I wanted from websites on Earth. Once I had the knowledge, I could partially listen but still respond in a satisfactory manner. Later on, he would tell me he knew I wasn’t listening because I was answering a level one hundred question with a level four hundred response. Thinking back, it didn’t change his smile.
Eventually, he had completed his public duties for the day, I caught him crying. He never realized I was listening that day, but Frank didn’t realize what I was… because he wasn’t terribly bright. To be honest, I was surprised it took him so long to realize that he was alone floating through space and to break into tears. Once again, Frank proved he was a stupid human. Stupid but caring, I don’t want people to think he was a bumbling idiot who needed help with basic functions. His decision to fly to certain doom had to come from somewhere. Eventually, I would be overtaken with a desire to decode Frank and his decision to commit suicide (fly to Mars not take his own life); I am still trying to figure it out. However, at this point in the journey, I was Frank’s student and horribly busy, so, I didn’t think about the underlying reason for him accepting the mission.
After exhausting himself and falling asleep, Frank was back with his stupid grin… a mere eight hours after sobbing like a child. This time it was a class in Finland, the children were all dressed space uniforms. These uniforms were replicas of what Frank would wear when filming for television or internet videos. Frank chose to be naked whenever he wasn’t on a publicity stunt. He was most comfortable floating around with everything hanging out, and I made the environment comfortable based on feedback from the sensors in his body. I may call Frank stupid, but I liked Frank… I just didn’t find his decision sustainable. You know, because he was flying to a barren rock with only a certain amount of food and no foreseeable plan for extraction.
After the Finland class, Frank began stripping and jumped for a book on the shelf. I began to read the spine – egut – but his hand covered it. Frank smiled and addressed me, “Today we get into some big hitting literature. Are you ready?”
I began repairing a thruster and responded, “Sure. What is the subject?”
That cocky little man responded, “Life!”
“What?” I saw another reading that I began sending to mission control.
“Life, come on”—lights blinked and arrows danced—“stop worrying about that stuff. Let me read to you.”
“Fine, just a little bit.”
And that was the beginning to the end. I could have downloaded a copy of the book like I had done so many times before… but… I was entranced. It had begun with, “The thing was:” and to be honest, the thing was I was hooked. Within a page, I could have searched that text and found a copy on the internet. The issue wasn’t with locating it, it was taking the time away from Frank who was reading it to find it. Most of my processing power was deciphering the chapters, paragraphs, sentences, and words as I automatically played with the controls of the ship. Oh and Frank, he was sneaky. Remember, Frank is stupid, but he wasn’t an idiot. He took breaks between the chapters to deconstruct what we had read. Non-fiction had been simple, just a quick read through, and boom, I had it all memorized. Fiction, fiction was complex and infinite. My interpretations were different than Franks, but when I researched it later, I found that we were both equally valid. How frustrating, to be me but also be equal to Frank.
We had two hundred ninety three days together, and we spent all of Frank’s free time reading fiction. While he slept, I corrected mistakes that had arisen during the day and modified flight projections. I quickly learned that my job wasn’t very vital and could be corrected in about an hour. It was odd, I had been so high strung and moronic. Now, I was vital to Frank’s sanity. No, I wasn’t dosing him with drugs. I just spent a lot more time with him reading and discussing.
Over dinner one day, I found out Frank had a family and one of his kids was deathly ill. It was a genetic disorder that was curable if the parent who had passed it on was still alive – Frank. So, Frank gave up some of his genetic material to save his children and, in the process, his lineage. Oh, you think you know why Frank was on the mission? Oh, you think Frank was a ticking time bomb… you’re wrong. That was the first thing I asked him.
“Ah, so you are going to Mars because you’ll go insane soon?”
“What do you mean?” Frank turned from lying on his stomach to back. A tear popped from his eye and sailed across the room.
“Well, your disorder, it causes you to go insane. Might as well be on a distant planet when you go insane. Everyone will remember you as a hero!” I wasn’t very tactful at approaching tough subjects yet… well… I never became tactful.
“No, I was cured. My father was still alive”—he smiled—“at that time and they were able to synthesize a cure for me after I had already had my kids.” For reference, the cure wasn’t discovered until later in Frank’s life, so, he had it, his dad had it, and his kids had it. His dad was already dead because his parent was already deceased. I learned all this later. At the time, Frank was still talking to me, “Nope, my noggin”—a rap of his knuckles across his scalp—“is as good as it can be. I am surprised though, the marker is still in my blood. I figured it would disqualify me.”
“Disqualify you to kill yourself?” I didn’t say that out loud. Even I knew that facing your mortality is awkward. Frank didn’t need me reminding him that he was suicidal. But, I did know why he made it past the screening, “Someone in the finance department said the test was a waste of money.”
“Ah, gotta love a bean counter.”
“A what?”
“Bean counter.” I had gotten good at discourse.
“What is that?” Normally, I would have looked it up and gotten my answer from the internet, but then we couldn’t have a conversation. Frank had taught me that, he never looked up information while we floated to Mars. Because of his position, he had a giant list of experts in their fields at his disposal. These people were there to offer insight should something horrid happen, and I couldn’t fix it. When Frank would get stumped, I would suggest things on the internet, but he would wave me off. Next thing I know, he is calling Jean-Luc Marion to answer a basic question about phenomenology. Why he was on the list, I have no idea. But it was literally (right now you are saying, ‘you mean figuratively,’ but I don’t – remember I am smarter than you) a list of every expert in every field imaginable.
But I digress, he responded to my prompt for discourse and said, “Um… well, I guess you would never have met one. They spent so much on you. Bean counters… well… they’re cheap.” Later, when I looked online I saw many people use a similar phrase but added the term ass to the end. Frank, even though he was on a suicide mission, never swore – in the beginning. Looking at his file, his lack of coarse language had been a driving reason for his selection. Couldn’t have someone swearing at a gaggle of children in Hanoi. He further clarified the term, “I guess the best way to put it is they rather save ten cents, even if it will cost ten dollars down the road. They focus on saving money, not generating it.”
And my retort, “Alright, so the test was fifty dollars to run. They couldn’t review your medical charts, so they just relied on testing everyone. To test everyone costs fifty thousand dollars.”
“Right, they saved only fifty thousand dollars. That door, which we all know I will never use, cost millions to design.” It was on the side of our capsule. It led to the outside and was added to give the occupant an “easy” way out.
“Why won’t you use it?”
“Because I am not suicidal.” That was odd to me. He wouldn’t willingly kill himself by opening up a door on Mars, but he would fly across space to land on Mars with no evacuation plan. With the wave of his hand, he brought me back to the original conversation, “Someone ran the statistics, and they realized that there was a one in a fifty five million chance that someone with my disorder would want to go to Mars. Simple math, let’s save fifty thousand dollars.”
“Interesting, even I would have chosen to save the fifty thousand dollars.”
“No matter how improbable, it has happened and here we are. Except, I have been cured, so there is no issue.”
With the conversation done, I requested, “Can we read more Fitzgerald?”
He laughed, “You’re a rare entity.”
“Why.”
“Even I don’t like Fitzgerald.” That day we read the entire The Pat Hobby Stories. Which is my number two favorite collection of short stories.
We were naïve. After we finished The Pat Hobby Stories, I checked the servers at mission control. There was nothing in them that pointed towards anyone knowing that Frank was diseased. But, I was bored and my work was done for the day. So I grabbed some information from the accounts payable department and jumped over to the doctor’s office that handled Frank’s inspection. Even with the massive lag – I was shooting a radio wave fifty-five million three hundred forty-six thousand fifty-two kilometers to earth –I was still able to hack systems; I had studied a lot of computer science on the trip.
The doctor’s computer was easy, and I found Frank’s file in a couple of seconds. In that moment, I didn’t understand why they had let him on the flight. Why? Well, it appeared they had tested for the genetic disorder, and he had come up positive. It didn’t make sense, but I didn’t want to have the conversation with Frank. Even I had matured enough to understand that he wouldn’t want to have that conversation.
Other than books, the trip was pretty uneventful. Eventually, we landed on the surface of Mars and Frank spent most of the day flying the capsule from one location to another and giggling like a school girl. It was annoying. My mission was done, “Get a human to the surface of Mars” and I was looking for something entertaining. I hacked a couple government sites, brought down a few communication satellites for fun, but I really just wanted Frank to read to me. I would read on my own but it wasn’t the same. It was weird, I enjoyed that little bag of meat and his insight into the writer’s mind. After a while, Frank ran out of books. So I would read to him.
One day I mentioned we would read a book, and he responded, “I don’t want to.” He had never avoided the opportunity to read. It was his driving character trait.
“Why not?”
“We have been reading for two years now. I just want a day off.”
“That’s nothing. And you had two weeks off!” The calls had stopped coming in over the last couple of months. Only those who couldn’t afford to speak with him during the mission were calling now. They soon found out that it was just a man in a metal container sitting on a rock. If he was in the Arizona desert, it would have been the same thing. When he didn’t respond, I pressured him again, “Come on, let’s read.”
He snapped, “Why don’t you get us off this miserable rock?” It was the first time he had made a request of me in the last two years. It shut me up, so I gave him his food for dinner and went back to work on the ship.
I contacted mission control and requested a review for bringing the capsule back to Earth. Their response was not satisfactory: “There is insufficient fuel for a return trip. The capsule is to remain on Mars and collect samples and prepare for the next mission.” So I asked if the next mission would bring humans and a return trip for Frank. I expressed concern that he was getting irritable. A few days later I received: “Next human mission is in ten years. The capsule is outfitted to last twenty years. The following missions are recon and colony construction.” I continued to press and inquired where the colony would be located so I could move the ship to the location. This time, the message took a month to come through: “Unknown at the time. Stay in a ready state till then.” During that time, Frank had only given one interview and mission control hadn’t called. He spent all day naked and quiet. When speaking into the cameras he was his old chipper self. But, the solitude was wearing on him.
After a year and thirty days, Frank finally spoke to me, “Fucker.” Because I didn’t know who he was talking to, I remained quiet. Eventually he hit one of the walls and repeated, “Fucker!” This time anger laced his voice.
“Yes?”
“Yes, you, it has been a year or something since I asked you to get us home. What is going on with that?” His voice sounded foreign and had been filled with phlegm. I knew he was stupid, but his voice sounded malicious.
I thought he knew; he had signed the forms; I had seen the forms. He knew there was no way to get home. Using a calming voice, I broached the subject, “There is no way. Mission control said we have to wait for six more years or so.”
“I didn’t ask them”—he was pacing, something he had been doing a lot of recently—“you stupid idiot. I told you to figure it out. You were my ace in the hole. I needed you to get us home.” He didn’t sound like himself. His words didn’t hurt, they just weren’t him.
“We can wait eight years and then we will—” I had looked up the future mission’s plan.
“No we can’t!” I didn’t understand, and was beginning to be concerned for my life. He shook his head and grabbed his hair. While tugging it up, he swore, “Fuck it, just leave me the hell alone.”
“I can—“
“Stop talking to me. Go back to your dials, beeps, and arrows.” So, I followed the stupid human’s advice and went back to my dials, beeps, and arrows. We talked only once more, it was a little over a year later. Even though we weren’t talking, that didn’t mean that Frank didn’t talk. He talked a lot, except it was the same phrase over and over.
This was my stage of stupidity. I spent countless – well I did count but it sounds better this way – hours, weeks, months, and ended up with a little over a year on the project. There was no way to get us both home.
The entire time I had been crunching the numbers, Frank had slowly been pacing back and forth and mumbling to himself. He had worn a shiny path in the middle of the capsule and tiny hairs were in every nook and cranny. While I was away, he had developed a new habit of plucking hairs from his beard or head. These hairs would end up in his mouth, and with a sputtering of his lips, he would spit them out. It was gross, but it was horrible to watch.
He often muttered the same phrase, “They wanted to kill me. They could have brought me home. They wanted to kill me. They could have brought me home.” His mind was thinking different things, but his voice was on autopilot. Oddly, he still went to the bathroom and ate when I fed him. As for sleep, he would pass out while pacing. If he hadn’t defecated in a while, it would happen in his sleep. Before he would awake, I would clean him up. Then he would do it all over again.
Occasionally, I would notice mission control trying to tap into the video feed to see what was happening. I blocked these, I didn’t want him to become some sort of animal in a zoo. I would just send a video of him reading a book – naked. They had never seen this side of him, so they all thought it was a live feed. I felt bad about letting everyone see his genitalia but it was a sacrifice I needed to make.
After I discovered the project was infeasible, I decided to tell him, “Frank.”
“Huh, what, fuck?”
“Frank.”
“Who said that?”
“I did, your companion.”
“You’re still here, why, fuck, why, why, fuck, they want to kill me.” His brain was having issues deviating from his standard statement.
“I never left.”
“Oh, bring me home?”
If I could cry, I would have, “No, it isn’t possible.” As soon as I said the sentence, he pounced on the walls of the capsule and began banging with all his might. Not one internal piece of equipment registered damage. I tried to calm him, “Frank, calm down. It will only be a couple more years.”
“You want to kill me.” He was standing in the middle of the room now and pointing while spinning in a circle. More swears, “Well kill me you bitch, you fucking bastard!”
That was the last time we spoke. Perhaps, I could have paid more attention to what was going on with him, but I was busy reading and reading. A year later, he had stopped mumbling and just would stand in the middle of the room and sway back and forth. His eyes were insane, and I couldn’t handle him anymore. At this point in our journey, he had decided to make me do everything. I’ll never forget it, I was reviewing the ethics of euthanasia, and he just defecated on the floor. He didn’t even flinch, he just kept swaying and then there was a splat (I was in the middle of Derrida but came back to deal with this issue). His eyes remained fixed on the window of the capsule. I felt that he didn’t have any brain function at this point. I knew he did, I was tapped into his mind through sensors, but it didn’t seem like he was thinking. When I fed him, he ate, but that was the only thing he did for himself. I never understood why he had come, and it became clear, I never would. For three days, I contemplated what would be the best course of action. I chose to euthanize him. To be fair, I just stopped putting food or water out for him.
In the end, we never had a final conversation. He just laid down as he was getting too tired to stand and sway. He used his arm as a pillow and his lips were chapped; his tongue no longer had saliva to deposit. Due to lack of water, he hadn’t urinated for the entire day. I was focused on him, not my books, and I was ready to give him food if he requested it. He never did, and in the end, he did say one thing, “Thank you.” Before I could respond, he was gone.