God of Mars
Hell is being taken from God's site.
I can't remember what movie that's from, and this far from Earth I can't use the internet.
I'm about midway through a three month shift as "primary" aboard the UNSE (United Nations Space Exploration) Alexander (UNSE-5920-C-A51).
Space travel feels worse, since your dumb ass signed up to be taken from God's site.
So much of our lives on Earth consist of little reminders and flags that tell us, yes, God is there. He is watching. He built these mountains and dug these rivers for you, precious humanity.
He loves you very much.
That feeling is gone from me as I wander around the interior of the Alex. Alex is a cold beast of a ship; filled to the brim with all manner of equipment and twenty thousand men and women to begin the initial stages of turning Mars from shitty red rock into livable habitat. I'm unfamiliar with the subtleties of this process; I'm an astronaut.
When they were building the Alex there were couple of moments in the design from an article I read in the New Yorker that said the ship wasn't even designed for people to use it. The project was delayed a few years to add things like catwalks and sleeping quarters. It was a mis-communication.
The designers thought there would be two ships, one that the humans would operate from and the other would carry the supplies and be remotely steered. That turned out to be, obviously, twice as expensive as one ship.
The actual terraforming equipment is about 60% of the bulk of our cargo, and the rest is estimated to be "everything we need." Except God's site. Right.
I look around and see only man made things, breath recycled air, eat reconstituted food, exercise in the cold but ergonomic gym.
This mission was going so well before the first shift apparently committed suicide two weeks before his replacement was supposed to awoke by the timer. His name was Bob Chairman, and he had shown no signs of mental instability. Stacy Kajakiru, his replacement, had to spend a good day and a half cleaning up all the blood.
Couldn't use pills, there buddy? Committing suicide on this mission is horrible for the personnel rotation at this stage; but to do it so messily? Insult to injury.
Kajakiru then spent the next week on course correction in between the regular checks on ship systems. She double checked a few things just to make sure Chairman hadn't gone crazy to some sort of atmospheric issue or an infection.
Everything green, she said. She also complained that even with the three hundred terra flops of entertainment material, there was nothing explicitly pornographic outside a few hundred r-rated films, but the films, even the recent ones, were prudish about sex, she complained.
She'd then met her replacement-that would be me-and recounted the whole story and let me check out the video of Chairman killing himself just I wouldn't get the willies about her "secretly being a killer."
I watched Chairman sit down in a chair in the east observation bay, one of the only two windows we had on the ship, and methodically open his arm from elbow to wrist. He tried to do the same with the other arm, but he'd hit something that weakened his grip, so he he held the box cutter in his mouth and pulled his arm along it while turning his head.
Kajakiru had said it was messed up to see. Willies I got, regardless.
I scrutinized Chairman's profiles and tests results-all Sixty two pages of them and thought about God.
Chairman was single, strike 1, an atheist, strike 2, and was former military, even if I share that trait, it's a strike 3, he's out.
Other than those things, he was the picture of good mental health. But I'd see those three traits come together and crush the average man more than once. I found myself hoping Chairman didn't go to hell. I remembered a sergeant major in the Marines I'd worked with, who said that as a staunch atheist, it was his faith that sustained him.
I guess Chairman's atheism wasn't strong enough.
I wondered if the God I know is not the god of Mars. Perhaps we only think our god created everything because we haven't found the ear marks of other god's handiwork.
What if the God of Mars does not like us? What he sabotages our efforts to green the planet? What if he just likes it red and the tiny humans are ruining his décor?
I understand it will take an entire generation (two rotations) to get things ready to even begin on Mars. The next generation will have the pleasure of "Zero Day" when they will land on Mars. Assuming nothing stupid happens. Chairman's suicide doesn't exactly bode well for the mission, but I'm a religious man, not superstitious.
Kajakiru went back into her deep sleep chamber two weeks after I woke up. There is decent number of empty sleep chambers.
Impressively, they figured some people might a child or two at some point. During the screening process they tried very hard to cut down on that; trying to find homosexuals or otherwise not prone to having children. There was a big article about it in Time magazine about how it was not fair to heterosexual scientists.
It all balanced out though; how many queer doctorate level planetary scientists do you know? Well, they asked both of them, only one actually wanted to go.
Chairman.
I feel as though his ghost is trapped on the ship now. Morose and lonely. It's okay there buddy. I'm here. We can talk. After duty hours I began the slow process of sifting through those movies to see if I could catch that one line about God's sight.
Urrm. Urrm. Urrm. Urrm.
All the ships pieces and parts come together in the urrm noise. The air systems, the gravity, the engines. I carefully thought about the onomatopoeia for a long time. I thought there would a "Th" sound, but when I put my ear against the northern hull, there was no "Th." The "Th" only happens in the sleeper bays, which I assume is some sort of acoustic thing, probably due to all the tubes and gasses in there.
The "Urr" is omnipresent. It's everywhere. The Urr is the baseline to the simple, perpetual tune the Alex is playing. The Urr is the God of this ship. The "mmm" is the sound traveling from material to material. The "mmm" is like the epistles of the New Testament. It's how the word of Urr gets from place to place. I wonder if I should pray to "Urr" for Chairman's soul.
I feel bad for the guy; worse now that I've categorized his personal affects. He was not actually single; but he'd been living in a country that didn't recognize same sex unions, and he and his husband had been fighting the government to adopt, in between fighting the government for other rights. I felt compelled to read his hand written journal and my reward for my snooping was the heartbreak of intruding on someone else's trouble and worry.
Chairman had meet Tran when they were both taken hostage while working for the Red Cross. They'd both been tortured; along with six others.
Small world: my old unit was part of the rescue operation. Chairman had one of the unit patches in his personal affects. It's a crest style patch with a sword down the center and two rifles forming an X.
I felt really terrible for this stranger named Tran then; someone would have to tell him Chairman wasn't coming home.
I'd sent the official message with Chairman's death as part of the situation report; and it had probably reached earth a few weeks ago.
No response yet. For some reason I pictured the United Nations mortuary affairs representatives pulling up in a boat to a house on stilts. Tran covering his face to hide his tears.
Awful. At least my imagination remains firmly grounded in human things.
Urr isn't as powerful as my God; but I hope he can bring Chairman's spirit home.
Can gods make exchanges? Like Muslims for Hindus and Hindus for Muslims being traded by their newly formed, allegedly all-Muslim or all-Hindu countries a few hundred years ago?
What if Urr is greater than that? What the Urr is the hum of all machines? Urr would certainly be able to make and exchange then. Chairman might not be so alone in Urr's afterlife.
There could many people tangled up in that limbo; at least he'd have someone to talk to.
Earlier this morning I got a transmission response to the situation report. Tran had died in a plane crash on his way to the United States. Oh. At least Chairman won't be alone.
I told my replacement, Paul Burke, to keep his mind occupied like I did while I was awake, and after my second shift, the next time I wake up we’ll be in orbit of Mars.
Then we’ll see what God is like there.
I can't remember what movie that's from, and this far from Earth I can't use the internet.
I'm about midway through a three month shift as "primary" aboard the UNSE (United Nations Space Exploration) Alexander (UNSE-5920-C-A51). Space travel feels worse, since your dumb ass signed up to be taken from God's site.
So much of our lives on Earth consist of little reminders and flags that tell us, yes, God is there. He is watching. He built these mountains and dug these rivers for you, precious humanity.
He loves you very much.
That feeling is gone from me as I wander around the interior of the Alex. Alex is a cold beast of a ship; filled to the brim with all manner of equipment and twenty thousand men and women to begin the initial stages of turning Mars from shitty red rock into livable habitat. I'm unfamiliar with the subtleties of this process; I'm an astronaut.
When they were building the Alex there were couple of moments in the design from an article I read in the New Yorker that said the ship wasn't even designed for people to use it. The project was delayed a few years to add things like catwalks and sleeping quarters. It was a mis-communication.
The designers thought there would be two ships, one that the humans would operate from and the other would carry the supplies and be remotely steered. That turned out to be, obviously, twice as expensive as one ship.
The actual terraforming equipment is about 60% of the bulk of our cargo, and the rest is estimated to be "everything we need." Except God's site. Right.
I look around and see only man made things, breath recycled air, eat reconstituted food, exercise in the cold but ergonomic gym.
This mission was going so well before the first shift apparently committed suicide two weeks before his replacement was supposed to awoke by the timer. His name was Bob Chairman, and he had shown no signs of mental instability. Stacy Kajakiru, his replacement, had to spend a good day and a half cleaning up all the blood.
Couldn't use pills, there buddy? Committing suicide on this mission is horrible for the personnel rotation at this stage; but to do it so messily? Insult to injury.
Kajakiru then spent the next week on course correction in between the regular checks on ship systems. She double checked a few things just to make sure Chairman hadn't gone crazy to some sort of atmospheric issue or an infection.
Everything green, she said. She also complained that even with the three hundred terra flops of entertainment material, there was nothing explicitly pornographic outside a few hundred r-rated films, but the films, even the recent ones, were prudish about sex, she complained.
She'd then met her replacement-that would be me-and recounted the whole story and let me check out the video of Chairman killing himself just I wouldn't get the willies about her "secretly being a killer."
I watched Chairman sit down in a chair in the east observation bay, one of the only two windows we had on the ship, and methodically open his arm from elbow to wrist. He tried to do the same with the other arm, but he'd hit something that weakened his grip, so he he held the box cutter in his mouth and pulled his arm along it while turning his head.
Kajakiru had said it was messed up to see. Willies I got, regardless.
I scrutinized Chairman's profiles and tests results-all Sixty two pages of them and thought about God.
Chairman was single, strike 1, an atheist, strike 2, and was former military, even if I share that trait, it's a strike 3, he's out.
Other than those things, he was the picture of good mental health. But I'd see those three traits come together and crush the average man more than once. I found myself hoping Chairman didn't go to hell. I remembered a sergeant major in the Marines I'd worked with, who said that as a staunch atheist, it was his faith that sustained him.
I guess Chairman's atheism wasn't strong enough.
I wondered if the God I know is not the god of Mars. Perhaps we only think our god created everything because we haven't found the ear marks of other god's handiwork.
What if the God of Mars does not like us? What he sabotages our efforts to green the planet? What if he just likes it red and the tiny humans are ruining his décor?
I understand it will take an entire generation (two rotations) to get things ready to even begin on Mars. The next generation will have the pleasure of "Zero Day" when they will land on Mars. Assuming nothing stupid happens. Chairman's suicide doesn't exactly bode well for the mission, but I'm a religious man, not superstitious.
Kajakiru went back into her deep sleep chamber two weeks after I woke up. There is decent number of empty sleep chambers.
Impressively, they figured some people might a child or two at some point. During the screening process they tried very hard to cut down on that; trying to find homosexuals or otherwise not prone to having children. There was a big article about it in Time magazine about how it was not fair to heterosexual scientists.
It all balanced out though; how many queer doctorate level planetary scientists do you know? Well, they asked both of them, only one actually wanted to go.
Chairman.
I feel as though his ghost is trapped on the ship now. Morose and lonely. It's okay there buddy. I'm here. We can talk. After duty hours I began the slow process of sifting through those movies to see if I could catch that one line about God's sight.
Urrm. Urrm. Urrm. Urrm.
All the ships pieces and parts come together in the urrm noise. The air systems, the gravity, the engines. I carefully thought about the onomatopoeia for a long time. I thought there would a "Th" sound, but when I put my ear against the northern hull, there was no "Th." The "Th" only happens in the sleeper bays, which I assume is some sort of acoustic thing, probably due to all the tubes and gasses in there.
The "Urr" is omnipresent. It's everywhere. The Urr is the baseline to the simple, perpetual tune the Alex is playing. The Urr is the God of this ship. The "mmm" is the sound traveling from material to material. The "mmm" is like the epistles of the New Testament. It's how the word of Urr gets from place to place. I wonder if I should pray to "Urr" for Chairman's soul.
I feel bad for the guy; worse now that I've categorized his personal affects. He was not actually single; but he'd been living in a country that didn't recognize same sex unions, and he and his husband had been fighting the government to adopt, in between fighting the government for other rights. I felt compelled to read his hand written journal and my reward for my snooping was the heartbreak of intruding on someone else's trouble and worry.
Chairman had meet Tran when they were both taken hostage while working for the Red Cross. They'd both been tortured; along with six others.
Small world: my old unit was part of the rescue operation. Chairman had one of the unit patches in his personal affects. It's a crest style patch with a sword down the center and two rifles forming an X.
I felt really terrible for this stranger named Tran then; someone would have to tell him Chairman wasn't coming home.
I'd sent the official message with Chairman's death as part of the situation report; and it had probably reached earth a few weeks ago.
No response yet. For some reason I pictured the United Nations mortuary affairs representatives pulling up in a boat to a house on stilts. Tran covering his face to hide his tears.
Awful. At least my imagination remains firmly grounded in human things.
Urr isn't as powerful as my God; but I hope he can bring Chairman's spirit home.
Can gods make exchanges? Like Muslims for Hindus and Hindus for Muslims being traded by their newly formed, allegedly all-Muslim or all-Hindu countries a few hundred years ago?
What if Urr is greater than that? What the Urr is the hum of all machines? Urr would certainly be able to make and exchange then. Chairman might not be so alone in Urr's afterlife.
There could many people tangled up in that limbo; at least he'd have someone to talk to.
Earlier this morning I got a transmission response to the situation report. Tran had died in a plane crash on his way to the United States. Oh. At least Chairman won't be alone.
I told my replacement, Paul Burke, to keep his mind occupied like I did while I was awake, and after my second shift, the next time I wake up we’ll be in orbit of Mars.
Then we’ll see what God is like there.
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