The Descent

I awake to the sterile stillness of night on Mars. My prosthetic is irritating me, and I lean down to scratch it. I realise it’s my calf that’s itching around the titanium frame. Perhaps I should be happy I have sensation where previously there was none, but I only find it disturbing.

I climb out of bed and silently dress in the blue overalls that they gave me when I arrived. I expect the doctor is sleeping soundly, having swapped my spiked water jug with hers earlier.

The eerie blue glow pulsates around the doctor’s door frame as I creep past and out of the house, making my way over to the old mining tunnels on foot.

I arrive at the entrance and lift the ‘caution no entry’ tape and duck underneath. I only have the light from my wrist com to go by as I scan the area for a way down.

There’s a rusty-looking cage suspended by chains in the far corner.

As I step into the framework, it groans like a killer whale calling for its calf. It doesn’t look like it’s been in service for a long time. I tread on something that crunches underfoot. On closer examination, I discover It’s a plastic wrapper from a candy bar. Fairly new, from the looks of the melted chocolate still on the inside. Tossing it over the edge, I watch as the wrapper descends further and further into the dark abyss. A wave of vertigo washes over me for a moment, and I grab onto a rusty chain above my head for support. Having steadied myself, I take a deep breath and hit the big green button on the worn-out looking control pad. The chains rattle noisily as it jolts me lower and lower into the darkness.

After a few minutes, the blackness is thick around me. I feel like I’m drowning, but I’m forced to turn off my torchlight. The pitch black is suffocating, but I must endure. I can’t risk running out of battery on my return journey.

Lights flash before my eyes, bright colours that can’t possibly be there. I feel like Alice falling down the rabbit hole. I think I see faces looming out from the shadows; I can’t be left to my imagination, so I close my eyes. I’m out of my depth, drowning like I have been the whole time I’ve been on this planet, barely keeping my head above water.

It seems like forever before I reach the bottom. Stumbling out of the cage, I’m relieved when my feet touch solid ground once again.

As I take a step forward, there’s another crunch. When I switch on my wrist com, a single beam illuminates the floor.

“There're loads of them.”

I mutter aloud, my voice feeling foreign as it ricochets off the walls. I direct my single beam of light, spot a tunnel entrance on the far side of the cave, and proceed towards it. Leaning my face in, a warm breeze greets me; it wafts warm air in my face like air from a subway tunnel before the train arrives. It smells damp and warm as I head into the small passageway, hoping to find a water source to collect my sample. I want to be out of here and back on a shuttle to Earth as soon as possible.

Entering a large open cavity, the wrapper trail finishes here. A light mist appears to hang a few inches off the ground.

“That’s strange.” I say aloud again, it seems talking to myself is something I do more often than I thought.

The mist should move, but it's suspended, petrified like a captured image in a photograph. I bend down and touch it, rubbing the fibres between my fingers, at first thinking it's webbing, but on closer examination, I realise it’s the consistency of silk.

The foul smell has intensified to a stomach-churning stench. Covering my nose with my arm and gasping for relief, I attempt to breathe through the fabric of my overalls. I stumble over something and lose my footing. I hit the ground hard, knocking the wind out of me.

Sitting up slowly, I wipe the grit from my grazed palms and dust the webbing from my shoulders.

Assessing the damage, it only appears to be a few scratches and possibly a bruised hip. I direct the light onto the object that caused my fall.

I see dark, silky hair half covering the decapitated head of a young girl, her mouth agape and eyes staring blankly towards the roof.

***

The sound ricochets off the walls. Someone is screaming; I soon realise it’s me, so I cup my hands over my mouth in an attempt to contain the noise. Not moving my eyes from the head, I recognise the facial features. It’s the girl from the photo in Dr Cho’s room. I realise in disbelief It’s her daughter!

The light from my wristcom starts to strobe on and off. It must have been damaged in the fall. Moving the interrupted beam of light around the floor, I catch sporadic glimpses of more and more decapitated heads, horrendous contorted faces silently screaming at me from the dark. White eyes turned upward.

The torch battery finally fails and the light stutters out.

“No, no no!” I scream, as if the words are coming from somewhere else. Desperately hitting my wrist monitor, but to no avail. I’m alone in the dark, not knowing which way to run, trapped living my darkest nightmare.

My body goes into shutdown. I try to move my legs, but it seems my brain isn’t communicating with either of my limbs. The shock has rooted me to the spot. I sink down on the floor, hide my head in my knees as the uncontrollable shaking takes over. It's naturally hot down here. I feel the beads of sweat mingling with my tears until I cant tell which is which. I’m aware I’m whimpering as I hear a child’s voice. First, far away, then suddenly right next to my ear.

“Momma, Momma, look!”

It’s Laura’s voice. When she was a child, she always called me Momma. I raise my head; a faint glow, like a pale blue film clip projected onto the wall of the cave, is playing back a memory like flickering cine film from a time long past.

We’re looking at her jar of caterpillars.

“Momma, look, they’ve all died and turned into leaves!”

I pick up the transparent pot, hold it up towards the light, and stare from underneath.

“It’s okay, Laura, they’re not dead, they are just changing into butterflies.”

She looks distraught.

“They’ve eaten all the food and now we just keep them warm and they’ll metamorphosis into new creatures that can pollinate the flowers.”

“What’s that white stuff at the bottom of the jar?”

“It’s silk, that’s what they make their cocoons out of.”

“And the black blobs?”

I pause for a moment,

“Oh, those are their heads, but they don’t need them anymore.”

A low rumble that dislodges dust from above interrupts my thoughts, and the memory fades. Another cargo carrier from Earth. That’s it! I laugh like a maniac at the irony. In my darkest moment, a light bulb flickers into life.

The cargo carriers are the missing link in my theory! I could explain the water source and the organic matter, but not how the mycelium could survive in the Martian atmosphere. But what if the atmosphere isn’t like Mars anymore? What if it’s more like Earth?

What if the cargo carriers have been transporting greenhouse gases from Earth and releasing them into the atmosphere?

Carbon storage had become a serious environmental solution, with hundreds of years’ worth of fossil fuel emissions needing to be dealt with to allow us a grip on global warming. However, getting the superpowers of the world to admit to responsibility for their own carbon footprint had almost resulted in another world war. This was the perfect solution.

It would take an incredible amount of gas, or an incredible amount of time, say 50 years. The gases would trap the heat from the sun, gradually warming the planet’s surface.

Now the hallucination has stopped. I realise I’m not in total darkness, and I’m not alone. A faint glow is being emitted from somewhere above my head.

I follow the gaze of the white-eyed, decomposing heads around my feet, up towards the gaping roof of the cave. Then I see them. Their black, leathery casing camouflaging them perfectly. The cocoons hang suspended like man size body bags as a faint bioluminescent light pulsates through the membrane.

I think I’ve found the teenagers.