Mars Sample Return 10

The finale of this speculative tale based on the history of the Viking Lander experiments and recent NASA plans

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9

Welcome back to Glass Half Full and thanks for reading! Today’s the big finale! We’ll catch up with both Randy and Joan as events come to a head.

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Visualization of the OSIRIS-REx capsule reentering Earth’s atmosphere (Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via SciTechDaily)

Randy sat in his cell, shivering. It was the bone-rattling, teeth-chattering type of shivering that only happened when his cell-mate, Josué, had been taken out for his weekly shower or for interrogation (an “interview,” as their jailers called it). Most of the time, with both of them in the cramped space, the cold hit differently, the shivering reduced to something more vibrational.

By now, some number of months into his captivity, Randy had developed a whole classification system for ways to be cold, something like the Inuit had for types of snow. In addition to the bone-rattling shivers and the vibrating shivers, there were the jittery shivers, the muscle-clenching shivers, the hug-yourself-like-your-mother-used-to shivers, and the get-up-and-dance-around-the-cell shivers.

The level of cold depended on the time of day and how much they’d been given to eat. Usually it was just one meal a day, with one bottle of water meant to last the whole twenty-four hour period (assuming days in here really were twenty-four hours, which Randy was far from certain of). The paper-thin jumpsuits they’d been given did nothing to hold in their body heat.

Good thing he was used to the cold, from many wilderness trips. He tried to view his captivity as just an extending camping trip, but one with no campfires, no stars, no fresh air, no wildlife, and worse food. That psychological trick might have been possible if the low temperature wasn’t the only physical pressure their jailers were using.

But then there was the sleep deprivation (which, Randy had to admit, sometimes also happened while camping). At odd hours of what passed for night in this windowless space, music would blast from speakers in the corner of the cell. Usually it was Michael Jackson’s “Bad” or “Sweet Home Alabama,” occasionally “Sweet Child of Mine.” None bad in themselves, but on repeat at high volume, they quickly became maddening. Slash’s guitar hook made for a particularly brutal ear worm, one that lasted for days. And if the jailers were feeling extra-sadistic, they’d switch it up with “Baby Shark” or that Friday song.

Even worse was what passed for silence in this place. Of course it was never truly silent, with the inmates on their floor making a variety of night-time noises, from snores to farts to screaming. But what got to Randy was the sound the HVAC vent made whenever the AC was on, which was ninety-five percent of the time. It had an irregular metallic tick-tickety-tick sound that was almost worse than the cold and the lack of food. He’d find himself eyeing the vent balefully, wishing he had a hammer.

If I had a hammer,
I’d hammer that ve-ent,
I’d hammer that ve-ent,
All over this cell.

At which point he realized he must really be losing it.

How long had he been here now? Months, obviously, but he wasn’t sure how many. He’d tried to keep track at first, but lost count after the first month. And since there were no clocks, and the inmates in this prison never saw the sun, he wasn’t entirely sure the jailers were keeping them on a standard diurnal schedule. Some days seemed shorter than others, and some nights longer, but that could just be his own faulty perception of time.

He knew for certain that this was the third facility where they’d kept him, and it was some distance from central Utah. After loading them into the troop carrier, the Gray Berets had driven them to Hill AFB north of Salt Lake City. From there, new guards, ones wearing unmarked tactical gear, their faces covered with neck gaiters, split them up on different buses.

Randy found himself separated from Hollender before he knew what was happening. He thought he recognized one other guy from the troop carrier, but the guards kept them apart. Most of the other passengers were Hispanic. Whenever anyone tried to speak, a guard would snap, “¡Cállate!” The windows of the bus were blacked out, but it drove at high speed for hours. Randy suspected he was now in the custody of ICE, which had become an all-purpose federal police force.

They were kept for a week in a tent facility in what looked to Randy like the high plains of Wyoming. Then another ride of a few hours, with more twists and turns, brought them to what seemed like a city jail. After another week there, he’d been transferred to this facility, along with a new bunch of fellow prisoners.

At each stage, he’d asked when he’d get to call his lawyer, and what he was being charged with. To which the guards just laughed.

“I’m an American citizen,” he’d said at one point, trying not to shout. “I have rights!” Another laugh from the guards.

Until arriving at this facility, he hadn’t talked to anyone with higher authority than a prison guard. Here, they all wore non-descript uniforms with a Gentech logo. Randy guessed that was a private prison contractor. On repeating his questions, one guard confided that he didn’t know what any of the prisoners were in for. “But if you’re here, you can forget about a trial or any of that stuff back in regular America.”

The agents — of which intelligence service Randy never knew — who conducted the “interviews” were even less forthcoming. From their questions about Antifa and Venezuela, they seemed to think Randy was part of some left-wing terrorist organization. But since he wasn’t, he couldn’t give them the answers they wanted, not even when they brought in a tray with a hot steak, a baked potato, and a cold beer. After a while, the agent opened the beer in front of him and took a long sip, making an exaggerated “Ah!” at the end. Which didn’t really make a lot of sense. If it had been a hot cup of coffee, Randy might have invented a story.

Later, after several of these sessions, he did concoct a fantasy. It included a group that wanted to overthrow the current administration, not to mention blowing up every Fortune 500 company. The new eco-regime would make everyone ride public transit, eat tofu, and keep the thermostat at 65 in winter, 78 in summer. Single-family homes would be bulldozed in favor of towering apartment blocks. No gas stoves, only electric. And only gay sex — lots and lots of gay sex.

By the end of the tirade, Randy felt hysterical. The agent silently picked up the tray of tempting food and left the room. This time, the entree was fish and chips, the smell of the fries so mouthwatering that Randy would have lunged at them if he hadn’t been shackled to a steel chair bolted to the floor. The aroma lingered in the interrogation room, taunting him.

After that, they stopped taking him out of the cell for interviews. They’d lost interest in him, but the psychological and physical pressure continued unabated, if only out of cruelty. The same couldn’t be said for Josué, who was still pulled out for questioning at least once a week.

Now that it was too late to do any good, Randy realized his mistake: thinking this was still the America he’d grown up in. The one he’d loved, whose land he’d tried to protect. The one where citizens — more and more of them as progress had moved fitfully ahead in the imperfect nation — still had rights. But it hadn’t been that country for nearly a decade now. Somehow, despite keeping up with the news that followed the growing (and now full-blown) authoritarianism, he’d thought it could never touch him. What a fool he’d been!

So now he sat on his cot, staring at the god-damned tickety-tacking AC vent, trying to stay warm while passing the hours of another interminable day. He tried to count his blessings. Which amounted to: it could be worse. He hadn’t been physically tortured. He hadn’t been beaten, water-boarded, or shocked. He still had all his teeth, fingers, and toes. He wasn’t broken or bloodied. Except in his soul.

His thoughts, such as they were, were interrupted by the click of the electronic lock on his cell door, which opened to reveal two Gentech guards. “Prisoner 23659, you’re with us.”

This was odd. He’d just had a shower yesterday, and they were only allowed one per week. (He figured they had to make up in water costs what they spent on all that air conditioning.) They’d never taken both him and Josué out of the cell at the same time before.

“What are you waiting for? Move!”

He stood and went to the door, raising his hands in front of him at waist height, ready to be hand-cuffed as usual.

“Not necessary,” said a guard. “Follow me.”

He fell in line between them. “Why? What’s going on?”

“You’ll see,” said the guard in front.

“It’s your lucky day!” said the one behind.

What new kind of psychological torture was this? Whatever it was, he wouldn’t fall for it. He wouldn’t let them get his hopes up. They were probably taking him to solitary. He’d miss Josué, though they hadn’t had much to say to each other, due to the language barrier. Randy had some Spanish, but not enough to understand his cell-mate’s particular dialect, which he’d managed to gather was a variety spoken in Honduras.

They passed through sturdy, locking doors and entered what looked like a reception area with a long curving counter and few upholstered chairs for visitors. He’d never seen it before, since prisoners were brought in through a garage-like processing area.

Hollender was standing at the counter, also in a prisoner jumpsuit, a big, shit-eating grin on his face. “Congratulations, son, we’re getting out!”

Randy stared at him for a long moment, Hollender’s smile faltering. “You’re kidding me!” It was all he could think of to say. It didn’t seem real.

“Not at all, ask him.”

The guard behind the desk was like all the others, but older, and he had a nameplate on his chest: George Mitchell. “It’s true, orders came in this morning. Here’re your things.” He placed a cardboard box on the counter. It had “Jameson” and his prisoner number stamped on it. “You can change in there.”

Randy didn’t know what to say, to either man, so he took the box into the indicated restroom and entered one of the stalls. He opened the box and found the clothes he’d been wearing, his wallet, a wristwatch. No cell phone. A beat-up straw sun hat and a bandana. Hiking boots, still covered in good old Utahn dust. He might have been imagining it, but he thought he caught the scent of sage.

For the first time in months, the sound going through his head wasn’t an annoying ear-worm or the clacking of the AC vent, but the call of the sagebrush sparrow.

He had to sit down on the toilet and put his head in his hands, trying not to sob.

The door to the restroom opened and someone took the stall next to his. “Everything okay in there, son?”

Randy sniffed. “Of course.” He started changing out of his jumpsuit, finding that his own clothes were now a couple sizes too large.

It sounded like Hollender was doing likewise. “It’s okay,” the older man said, “you can thank me later.”

“Thank you?” Hollender had gotten him into this! Randy had spent a good part of the last months trying to get past his anger at the man whose rash actions had landed them both in this prison. He kept reminding himself it had been his choice to jump into that pickup, no one else’s. The effort hadn’t helped much. “For what?”

“For busting us out of here, of course,” Hollender replied.

“Busting us out?”

“Well, not busting out exactly, but you know what I mean. It pays to have friends in high places.”

“Friends?” Randy was having a hard time following along.

“Yeah, I’m buddies with the governor. And he’s in good with all these federal types, even some of the First Family. It took longer than I thought it would, but we all got pardons, you, me, Jeff, the rest of my crew. Can’t say the same for your friends who joined us out by the gate, unfortunately.”

That stopped Randy with one boot on, one boot off. He opened the stall door. Hollender was standing at the sink, combing his hair.

“The Navy arrested them too? But they never set foot on the base, did they?”

Hollender looked at him in the mirror. “Didn’t matter, being co-conspirators, fellow travelers, and such. All those off-roaders and what not, the authorities could tell they were just a bunch of good ol’ boys. But your friends must have looked like commie tree-huggers, so they took them in. Not sure where they are now, though I’ve heard rumors. But hey, the bird-watching in El Salvador’s supposed to be nice.”

“El Salvador!”

“Now, son.” Hollender turned to face him. “Best to forget all about them, since there’s nothing you can do, leastways not until you get outta here.”

Randy found he was clenching his fists. That was better than wringing Hollender’s neck with them, which was what he really wanted to do. But that wouldn’t help his friends. And he apparently owed this man for his freedom. He grabbed his other boot and left the restroom.

“Your driver’s waiting outside that door,” said George the guard, pointing. “Just sign here, and you can be on your way.”

The form he signed probably forfeited any recourse for the treatment he’d received here, but Randy didn’t care.

Outside, grasslands stretched off to distant mountains, the prison complex apparently the only structures for miles. Randy guessed it was in Idaho. And it was summer now. Ninety-five degrees had never felt so good. The fresh air nearly had him giddy.

Aside from the driver — who seemed to be a federal agent, not one of the private prison guards — it was just him and Hollender in the black SUV. Hollender rode up front and chatted with the agent as if he hadn’t just been locked up for months by the agent and his colleagues. Randy had to wonder if Hollender hadn’t received special treatment on the inside.

“Hey, driver, what’s the date?” he thought to ask.

“Fifth of August.”

So four months in that hole.

In Twin Falls, the agent put them both on a Trailways bus to Salt Lake City. “Complements of the federal government. After that, you’re on your own.”

They sat together on the bus. There were few other passengers. They made small talk on the drive, Randy not wanting to discuss their incarceration or anything that led up to it, and Hollender apparently feeling the same. Hollender said he couldn’t wait to get back home and wondered what kind of meal his wife would have waiting for him. Which only made Randy think the man had been allowed to phone home.

As for himself, he’d had a few dates with a woman named Jane right before the ill-fated demonstration. He doubted she’d be waiting for him. He’d never ghosted a woman before, even unwillingly.

They got into SLC in the late afternoon, the heat of the summer day still radiating off the concrete and metal. They were held up by heavy pedestrian traffic near the shiny new downtown hospital. Most of the people had worried looks on their faces. Randy told himself that was normal around a medical center.

Apparently Hollender was more curious than he was. “What’s going on?” he asked no one in particular.

“You haven’t heard?” a nearby passenger answered.

Hollender shrugged. “No news, no cell phone.” Randy hoped he passed for a backpacker back from the wilds, not a just-released convict, but doubted Hollender could do the same.

“Hospital’s full of sick people,” the stranger said. “Mystery illness. Patients are quarantined, so family can’t even get in and find out what’s happening.”

Randy exchanged a grim glance with Hollender. They didn’t need to voice their speculations.

The bus eventually pulled into the station. At the curb, Hollender looked uncomfortable. “I’m going to look for Marge. Can we give you a lift?”

Randy couldn’t stand another minute with the fellow. “No, I think I’ll walk. I don’t live far, and I could use the exercise.”

Hollender seemed relieved and rushed toward the station door. Then he stopped, apparently deciding it was better to go around the building to the front.

Randy turned toward home, wondering what he’d find at his small house. Had his mother or brother figured out what had happened to him? Had they bothered to mow his small lawn or keep the native plants watered? Some of them needed an extra shot when it was this hot, especially if there hadn’t been many summer thunderstorms. What was the water situation, anyway? That all seemed vitally important, somehow.

He didn’t want to think about what else he might find when he got home.

* * *

When the call came in, Joan was on a lunch break at her new job. After months of searching, she’d landed a spot with a startup that disinfected spacecraft before travel to other planets. It wasn’t a particularly good fit. Her research area had been the spectrographic detection of the chemical signatures of life, not in engineering or biological sterilization.

Which meant she didn’t have a lot to do. She’d been hired mainly for the publicity aspect, her notoriety having earned her respect in some quarters of the space community. The startup was funded by another space billionaire, and if he didn’t mind funding her paycheck while she sat around doing not much, why should she?

She allowed herself one lunch out with her new colleagues each week, but the rest of the time she brown-bagged it, as she was doing today, sitting on a bench in an air-conditioned mall not far from her Virginia office. It would be another few months before she’d paid down enough debt and built up enough savings to feel comfortable splurging.

She was halfway through her tuna sandwich when her phone vibrated. It was an unknown caller, so she didn’t answer. A voicemail came through a moment later. She checked the text readout: “Joan, it’s Jim Hartwick. Call me immediately, I don’t care what you’re doing or how busy you are.” She played the message to hear his voice, which sounded rushed and stressed. She hit the callback button.

“Joan, thanks for returning my call so quickly. We need you to come in right away.”

The portion of the sandwich she’d already consumed suddenly felt like a bowling ball in her stomach. Why did NASA need her now? What was it about? There was really only one answer. Still, she had to ask.

“Is this about…”

“Don’t say it. Not on an unsecured line. I’m sending a car to your location. Don’t be alarmed by the federal agents.”

“Okay, I’m at…”

“I know where you are. I’ll fill you in when you get here.”

“Is it bad?”

He hesitated for a moment, giving an almost inaudible sigh. “Pretty bad. That’s all I’ll say. Except — if you know any good bacteriologists or epidemiologists, we’ll need their contact info.”

The line went dead. Joan’s fingers trembled as she opened a new message to her boss. She took a deep breath, telling herself it would be okay.

From her earliest days in grade school, Joan had learned that being right often had its Pyrrhic aspects. Now it seemed she’d won the most Pyrrhic victory of them all.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed it! If you did, please consider hitting that like button, sharing it with your friends, or even subscribing or upgrading your subscription. And please leave a comment with your thoughts. I’m on vacation until the middle of the month, so it might be a while before I can respond.

Question: did you find this ending satisfying? Did you want to know more about whatever it was that stowed away in the Mars samples? And whether and how Joan and her colleagues will stop it? There are many versions of that story, from The Andromeda Strain to (in a different context) Outbreak and Contagion.

You might have recognized a pattern with me now: I like to leave something open at the end, so you can imagine how the story would progress from that point. I’m hoping this lets the story live on in your mind longer than if I wrapped everything up. I admit, this might be an extreme version of that approach. But I was also less interested in the mechanics of battling a possible outbreak than in Joan’s arc, from playing with fire to falling from grace to redemption. Randy also got something of an arc, which I didn’t expect at the outset.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. What are yours?