Read by Alex Woodhall
I don’t suppose anyone will ever read this.
I’m torn between hoping they do, because then the cat, Fripp, and I might yet be saved, and maybe even hailed as returning space heroes. And also hoping they don’t, because what would the astronauts find? Tattered notes, turning to dust in the dry, red winds, and a couple of skeletons sat at the console, one in the chair, one on the keyboard, in however many years’ time. A half empty flask of home-brewed vodka, if we ever get our shit together, literally, to grow potatoes, and something on the wall about how Mars is a bad scene. Old blues tunes on the laptop. Selfies of us on a long-dead phone. Will Fripp and I be rescued before we lose it completely? I fear that ship may have already sailed.
craft. So we’ll be all right, for the moment. It’s just a question of how long we can last. I do think Fripp should be tried for his crimes, he is a mass murderer, after all, but there’s nothing here. You’d think that there might be. Some stoic Soviet survivor, from a black ops project that nobody heard about, back in the Eighties, who’d set up a bar. But no. Mars is as advertised. There is no life on Mars.
The computer still seems to be working though. Elon Musk, not so dearly departed, would have liked that. Internet connectivity was a part of his vision. He used to stomp around the penthouse, shouting orders. ‘Why?’ he’d say ‘Why isn’t this working? I want to build a new society on another planet, where I am respected! What is so goddamn hard about that? Make it happen!’
The stressed-out tech guys would try to explain, but Elon was not a man who’d got where he’d got to by listening to anybody. His ideas had been doubted all his life, and ignoring that kind of unpositive thinking had made him a billionaire, many times over. To the point where he had enough spare cash to launch a mission to Mars. Where, finally, he would be understood. And in charge.
‘Am I not paying you enough? Why do you negative Nancies have to crap on my vision?’ Often, he’d be chairing these meetings in high-waistband shorts. Did he rush the project, because life on Earth was too frustrating? It’s hard to avoid that conclusion. But threatening the staff when you’re in Frisco is one thing, when you’re in Frisco. It’s something else when you’re on Mars.
Or not, as in this case.
Late at night, gazing out at the endless, dead sky, drinking a cocktail of what’s left of the booze, and the only other liquid source on this planet (it’s not pretty) I imagine him attempting to argue his way out of this. Having a fit at the moons of Mars, and the moons of Mars just looking back.
There were six of us to begin with. Or seven, if we’re including Fripp, which really, we should. So Major Brad, (‘not Major Tom!’ he’d say, during training - oh, how we laughed) and me, Elon, Shira, Angela and Beth.
None of these characters need concern us now, they’re all dead. I wish I could say I’d got to know them better - Shira, Angela and Beth had not been selected, by Elon, entirely because of their qualifications in astrophysics. But what with the meds and everything, it didn’t quite happen. You could question the wisdom of drugging six strangers and a cat, and sending them off into space, but who knew? Nothing like this had been tried before. Presumably, it won’t be attempted again, for at least a few decades. I mean, I hope it will, but after what happened, I’d be surprised. Certainly, if potential investors have seen the footage, there won’t be a cat on the flight.
You start off with the idea that you’ll boldly go ... I’d been in the Middle East, as a jet fighter pilot, and flown a few operations that were, officially, surgical strikes. But then the plane had got winged, and there’d been a nasty crash-landing. It had taken me a while to get back to the base. There may have been casualties along the way. Not all of them military. Recovering in the hospital, I wasn’t feeling too great about all that. There might have been villages where there were problems, shall we say. So, where could I seek absolution? Outer space? Outer space, yes.
The training is fairly simple to begin with; ‘No pussy, no beer! Get used to it!’ The guy actually said that. Funny to think of it now.
You’d have thought my war record might have been an obstacle, but as it turned out, I was just what they were looking for. Muscle, basically. Afghanistan, with its waterless mountains and its ongoing deserts, wasn’t really all that different from Mars, and I’d survived that, just about.
So there was the anti-grav training, and so on. The only aspect I found a bit tricky was the meetings with corporate. Was I psychologically stable enough? No way, even I knew that, but it’s surprising how much you can get away with if you just stand there, looking flinty-eyed and resolute. They don’t know, they can’t tell! You’d think they’d be able to, but apparently not. And they don’t really know about cats either.
And so off to space we went.
Where the mission ultimately failed, I think, was when Elon’s PR department decided it would be a good idea if a pet was included. Something to keep the viewer interested, while the rest of us were in suspended animation. Fair enough, but also, not. A dog was debated, a Rover on Mars. But that was nixed as potentially ‘too downbeat.’ A golden retriever mysteriously vanishing from the live-feed might have cast a dark shadow over the mission. But a cat? Doable. They do have a habit of wandering off.
How do you interview a cat for life on Mars? You’re looking for a certain robustness. A verve, a chutzpah. The idea was that the cat would float about the ship, for various scientific, but also PR reasons, while the rest of us were out cold. Six people asleep on and off for months wouldn’t have been that entertaining, but if a cat was allowed to roam around the craft, the mission might develop an online fan base, was the thinking. #CatsofInstagram would have nothing on us. Launching a rocket isn’t cheap, so if you can monetise the project, great. You’re trying to generate as much interest, buzz and ad revenue as possible. The last thing you want is for anyone on Earth to forget about the trip. So what Team Musk was after was a cat with a vibe.
An abundance of candidates went by the panel. You might be surprised how many people want to send their cats off to another planet. Or, you might not be.
Fripp, however, stood out from the crowd. It was as if he’d prepared himself for life on Mars.
Elon had suspicions. ‘This cat seems to have a negative energy?’
He wasn’t wrong about that.
But I argued for Fripp, During the training, we had sort of bonded. Was I drawn to the madness in his eyes? Or was he just friendly? Whatever, no one else cared which cat they were leaving Earth with. They should have done, but they didn’t. And seeing I was ‘the dangerous guy,’ my opinions carried a certain weight.
The journey to Mars takes three months, but it passes. You’re zonked out for most of the time.
I’d see Fripp every now and again, briefly awake every four weeks. But I had no idea what he was up to. If I had, I might have told Elon there was a traitor on board. Or I might not. I kind of wish I had now, though.
Basically, Fripp got into everything. To begin with, it was perhaps okay, he must have looked charming on the website, striding about like a young Marlon Brando, while the rest of us were comatose. Occasionally clawing at the capsules, especially mine, and feeding himself from the bio pods. But then he’d worked out how to undermine the supply system. After that, he may have overdone the rations a bit. What had been designed as a four meals a day diet quickly escalated. Two months into the flight, he was sauntering around the ship like an older Marlon Brando, having somehow contrived to gain weight in space. Which must be a first. And then, out of food, he’d begun to indulge his curiosity. You might not know this if you haven’t spent time with them, but cats, or some cats anyway, have this thing about plastic. On Earth, it’s just supermarket bags you have to worry about. But in space, it’s more of an existential threat. He’d become obsessed with the synthetics that covered the wiring. And no area of the ship was off-limits.
As a result, when we were approaching ground zero, not very much still seemed to work.
So there we all were, freshly woken on Mars Landing Day. This was it. A new world, not like the old one, was about to begin. Champagne was opened. Fripp, however, instead of having a glass of fizz with the rest of us, raced down the corridor, as if he’d sensed that something was about to happen. Very shortly afterwards, the ship went into meltdown. A distressed computer voice over the intercom;
‘Malfunction!’ said the HAL-like presence ‘Stress pills! Stress pills!’ But it turned out that Fripp had already found those, and hoovered them up.
‘Holy smokes,’ said Elon ‘what the Jiminy Cricket?’
I made a dash for the life-crafts, only to find Fripp already there. Perched on the pilot’s chair, looking full of himself. And most of the rations, and all of the drugs.
‘Fripp,’ I cried, ‘what have you done?’
‘Meow?’
‘Six lives, and billions of dollars, along with the future of space exploration?’
‘Meow.’
I thought about Alien, and how that ended. The cat as essentially a lethal force. We all bolted for the life crafts, but with the exception of one, none of them were functioning. The rest of the crew made their panicked farewells - life on Mars without the mothership wasn’t going to be viable, they realised. But as the ladies reached out for a last hug, and Elon tried to get in on it too (the ladies looked fetching in their Elon-designed space-suits) there wasn’t time to give Fripp a talking-to. So, looking back at the tragedy unfolding over my shoulder, and kicking Fripp off the chair, I pressed the switch for escape velocity, and hoped for the best. Blasting down to the planet below while the ship exploded, a fireball consuming Elon and the others. It’s hard to tell, but was Fripp proud of this orgy of destruction? I have asked him, but, sphinx-like, he either isn’t saying anything, or he just doesn’t know.
And now here we are, in the tent. Maybe we’ll work out a way of living here. Forge a new destiny, in the vastness of space? I’m not sure. I don’t really have anyone else to talk to, and Fripp’s not the most conversational Man Friday. I may have already gone totally insane. Oh well. But if there’s a moral to the story, then it’d be this; that it’s better to stick with the planet you started on, where there’s an order to things. And not to launch yourself off into uncharted territory. And especially not if there’s a cat involved.
(c) Quintin Forrest, 2021
Quintin Forrest lives in London, and is working on 'Bluff Prince Hal', a novel about Prince Harry. Which would be easier if the Duke of Sussex would just stop saying things.
Alex Woodhall has worked in comedy for the last 15 years, on stage, TV and radio. He DJs extensively around the country in clubs, festivals and evil corporate events and is one half of The Coffin Dodgers' Disco at The Phoenix. Interests include floodlit horse-massage at Crystal Palace and Gardener's Question Time.
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