All Jean-Paul could fucking think about was kinds of lubricant, and he was hoping that there was some deluxe desensitizing kind of lubricant that he could get at the drive-thru health and beauty aids joint, the one that now had cyclone fencing and fucking bulletproof glass everywhere from people trying to get at the OxyPlus nasal inhalers and also the Epsom salts that were used in the quick, explosive chemical reactions that made the new more potent polyamphetamine tablets that you could get everywhere. Maybe Vienna had some nasal inhalers, and if he was supposed to have the Pulverizer pulverizing him, the OxyPlus would charge up his prostate and loosen him some. Vienna was fucking talking to him while she was driving, and she was telling him all this stuff about her day, like apart from everything else, she lost a fucking earring, comatose, baby, and her friend Stacey just was being a total bitch and refusing to allow her to teach hand signals for the history of terrorism class, but he wasn’t hearing any of it, because he was worrying about the Pulverizer pulverizing him and drilling his colon all the way up into his diaphragm.
He punched buttons on the fucking satellite radio. He liked the motivational programs. He liked the station that played nothing but motivational programs, like Closing the Big Sale with Glenn Baisley. Somehow, by happenstance, he scanned past the local news outlet, Channel 932. Through whatever sequence of events secretly overseen by the Dead Mother, he heard the tail end of the report in which, in a voice dulled with repetition, an announcer observed that “on the east side of the city, near Rattlesnake Canyon, another jogger has been badly mauled by a wildcat—”
Colonel Jed Richards — according to those at the agency who were employed with no other purpose but to watch the feeds of the cameras inside the ERV — had suddenly elected to turn the video camera from the main console, where it had been positioned for these past few days, so that it would again capture his face.
Many were those who upon first seeing that face saw something that they believed they would long find unforgettable. In the months afterward, when NASA employees spoke of the face, they spoke of it with the kind of fear and disgust that is reserved for atrocities. It was no longer a face as we know it. It was a face without the neotenic smoothness of twenty-first-century man; it was a face ragged with woe and bad hygiene; it was a face that had rappelled humankind backward down the evolutionary chain, back beyond the Cro-Magnon or the Australopithecus; it was the face of a sallow and underfed dog, though a dog that nonetheless continued to have human features, the face of a starveling coyote or hyena, with gigantic furry rings around his eyes, as in the eyes of a raccoon, with bloody residues in the eye sockets and rivulets of congealed blood cascading from them. There were crusty bits of crimson about the nose and the corners of the mouth, and the mouth hung open as though he couldn’t get enough air; his tongue, blackened, hung out of his mouth; long, patchy hair hung down over his eyes; he gasped, wordlessly, and this face looked into the camera so plangently, so balefully, that none of those who witnessed the face could fail to turn away; and despite that, Colonel Richards, however mysteriously, had managed to stay alive with little or no oxygen in the capsule, and those who watched the face, those who turned away and then turned back, those who bore witness as the face revealed itself, they felt as though they had to do something, and fast, to help this poor, agonizing man, to relieve his suffering in whatever way they could. There was weeping in the canteen, where NASA employees lined up for yet another ice cream bar — the only foodstuff that remained stocked in the canteen since the ordeal began. There were moments of true pathos when people would shove their legal tender into the machines, get the ice cream bars, and then watch as others fell huskily against the glass plates on the vending carousels, releasing in their sighs the accumulated months of frustration and disappointment. Many were the NASA employees who had not cared for Colonel Jed Richards in the early phases of the Mars mission. He was demanding, and he was vain. But here in the endgame, Richards had taken one for the team. This was what the team itself believed. Colonel Richards was gazing courageously upon the prospect of an inglorious death. Colonel Richards, the team believed, was perfectly aware that his death had either already taken place, such that he was presently in some new postmortal conscious state, the likes of which had never been seen before on Earth, or else Colonel Richards was going to have an even more inglorious death imminently. Upon reentry. Team members who couldn’t bear one another just a few weeks ago held one another, offered handkerchiefs, asked after the family, in the canteen, as if there were nothing that could repair the damage done by the end of the Mars mission. Nothing except family and friends.
It was after about an hour of the video, one hour of that haunting face, the face of death (it seemed), that Colonel Richards began attempting to talk to the camera. This was a difficult operation in the absence of oxygen, as any medical expert will tell you. It was just one of the many facts of the Mars mission that had become inexplicable, scientifically impossible, and, in a way, embarrassing. If Richards was now speaking, then the decision makers at the top needed to be summoned, because what Richards said was of the utmost importance. The words of Richards were like words from a mountaintop, from some lofty and spiritual aerie. The folks who made the decisions needed to know. And that meant waking Rob Antoine, who was napping on an air mattress in his office, and also Vance Gibraltar, who had carefully installed one of those Japanese napping cylinders in his office wall and who had been unconscious in there with Japanese music piped in for just over twenty minutes. These two men were rousted by the staff who were monitoring the monitors, and in their dazed conditions, they made their way to Debra Levin’s office. It was the first time either man had seen her without her makeup on, and they were impressed with her naturalness. They were further impressed that she was still on the premises. Appointees normally got well clear of the debris field.
Once these three principals were situated in the available chairs, Rob Antoine, without much conviction on the subject, asked to be patched through to the capsule, where the Tasmanian dog who had once been Antoine’s homecoming astronaut was strapped in, gazing at the camera. Soon, through the miracle of radio transmission, a link was established.
“Jed, can you hear me? It’s Rob Antoine. I’m here with the director of the agency, Debra Levin, and with Vance Gibraltar. Can you hear us?”
A ripple of consciousness in that mammalian face, as though it understood somewhat. Some mild neurological firing, the use of Richards’s name perhaps, had enabled the part of him that remained.
“We need to know, if you’re able to tell us, how you’re feeling. Can you talk to us about that?”
The director felt she needed to add something, though whether this was useful was debatable. “Colonel Richards, at this historic juncture, we want you to know how much you’ve given to the country, and how much that means to us. You are a true hero. A man of great stature. A patriot. Your contribution to the life of the country will not be forgotten.”
Then a hoarse whisper was audible in the transmission.
“What’s that, Jed?” Antoine asked. “Are you able to communicate in there? If you are able, please let us know.”
“Don’t bullshit me,” the voice whispered.