CHAPTER EIGHT

JUST ANOTHER SUICIDE

He was locked away. Under their control now. Whoever they were.

He was thinking about things again.

Thinking too damn much.

The dirty bomb used in the Chicago bombing had killed over five thousand people. Much worse than Oklahoma City or even the terror of 9/11. But the tactical nuke that was detonated in a shipping container at the docks in Red Hook, in Brooklyn was the worst of all. It took out half of New York City. Four million dead and the country’s economy in ruins. After that, the United States effectively ceased to exist, even though the fiction was maintained for another dozen years or so. In the end, it dissolved almost as fast as its old Cold War nemesis, the Soviet Union had. He remembered it in a flash of memory now, coming back to him. It was scary. Real. Serious. Bad. A guy named Ryan had been involved in it somehow.

The guy they got for it was a guy he knew. But it wasn’t that Ryan guy, it was another guy. This other guy had been an agent also, and he had been into a lot of nasty business. However, Ryan didn’t think that guy was capable of mass murder, and he didn’t think his string-pullers, Americans like him, would be capable of ordering something like the mass murder of millions of their fellow Americans. But anything was possible when there was a point to be made, a political career to be enhanced, or a cause to be advocated. No matter how crazy. Or how evil. So the bomb blew, the people died, and Macky was set-up as the fall guy.

Maybe he really was responsible? Who knew for sure?

Ryan remembered that for two weeks before he died the vids and media reported how depressed Macky had been, how despondent and shameful—full of guilt for his horrible dirty deed. Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap for sure. Of course no one ever spoke to him other than the federal cops, no one ever interviewed him, you never saw him on any vid or program actually say he was depressed, shameful, or especially guilty. You never saw or heard him at all. Macky never said a word. That was kind of unlike Macky.

Something was going on.

So his suicide wasn’t totally unexpected.

They cut him down in his cell. The twenty-four hour suicide watch had been lifted for the Christmas holidays. Nice touch, that one. The media played it up big and Citizens saw it as a Christmas present from the Big Man himself to citizens everywhere.

Ryan wasn’t buying any of it.

Thing was, Macky was a sharpy. He may have been set up, but he wasn’t taking the rap. He wasn’t no patsy. Even in death he spoke loud and clear.

After the doctors and ghoul-squad cut him down, they immediately determined that—for sure—it really was suicide. What a surprise! Then they had the body taken away for autopsy. Purely standard stuff, cut-and-dried to back up the official determination of suicide. Nice touch, smoothly done, except Macky wouldn’t keep his mouth shut even in death. Though no one noticed it, Macky had something to say even as his fully clothed body hung there in his cell right before Ryan. When he was cut down before the corpse was sent to autopsy, Ryan made sure he was there when Macky’s body was stripped of its clothing.

Ryan saw the message. It had probably been cut with a razor, cut right into his skin before he died. The resulting scabs formed words—words written upon his stomach and chest that were quite easy to read. They said,

“No Shame. No Guilt. NO SUICIDE, EITHER!”

More words were cut into the side of his abdomen. They read,

“Innocent. DOC did me! DOC did IT!”

After seeing that, Ryan knew he had to get away. He had to get as far away as he could, some place where the long arm of The DOC could not reach him. Off-planet maybe. As far as possible. Ryan had to get somewhere they could not touch him. Fast. Maybe Mars? He had seen something he was not supposed to see. Those words were his death sentence. The same for the doctors who performed the autopsy. You should have seen their faces. They knew the score. They knew they’d get a visit soon—their families too—just in cased they’d blabbed. No one would find any bodies, people just disappeared like that all the time now. They say there are a lot of serial killers, but Ryan didn’t think so. If there were, they were working for the government! It happens too much now. Like in old Argentina in the 1970s, like Russia in the 1950s, like Germany in the 1930s. They disappear—gone forever!

It went fast. The doctors just disappeared. The autopsy photos? Well, it seems that none had ever been taken. So they could not possibly exist either. Ryan knew different. He’d taken some of the photos himself. His copies disappeared as well.

Macky?

Just another suicide.

Ryan?

When he woke up he was here.

Wherever here might be.

Solitary confinement. Lost. Forgotten. Alone. He wished he could escape, get to Mars. At least those were what he thought were his own thoughts in his head. But they can play with your mind here, program you into whoever they want you to be. Did he really want to go to Mars? That’s what he thought he wanted to do, but he was not even sure of that anymore. Maybe it’s just stuff he’d read in that old paperback?

Mars Needs Books.

Was there even a human colony on Mars?

Ryan remembered years back when the third President Bush had begun the project. Then when the fourth President Bush, his nephew, initiated settlement and the second President Clinton began colonization. But of course, that was all so long ago. Decades really. In the reckoning of present history it was ages ago to the current digital world.

He didn’t remember it that clearly. He didn’t know how long he’d been here. Weeks? Years? Decades? He felt old, but he couldn’t tell if he was old or not. He couldn’t tell much at all.

Ryan picked up the copy of Mars Needs Books. The old battered paperback had blurbs on the back cover that began:

A rousing novel of interplanetary intrigue and adventure as a slip of a girl, Arabella Rashid, seeks to change the world and set it free....

He turned to Chapter One and began reading....

“Everywhere he went on Mars they were always asking him about the paperbacks....”

Ryan wondered what the hell this was all about?

He never realized it then, but he was already on his way to Mars.