Player Ranked #24

The song "Hotel California" played. The piano notes bounced in the small rounded spaceship. This was the ninth simulation, and would be different; one of the few remaining female players was in charge. Angela was an alpha-female and would not lose. She planned to wipe away the psychopath even if it kicked her out of the rankings.

The Io Observer was back at an hour away from Mercury, and as she opened the sharp eyes, she was in charge. Her, she was here speeding to her death.

Christian, played by Angela, refused to keep the same timeline, she did not force the character to grab a handle to get stung. There was no time. A voice said from the distance: "Pre-approach stages, static probe launch in five minutes."

"No need," said Christian. He pushed himself forward with both hands away from the back of the ship pointing to Mercury, "No need for the probe, the corrected value is six thousand. Let's set the generator to that value. Do it Marilyn," spoke the player.

"Sir, we highly recommend three thousand, that value is based..." began Million Command speaking live.

"Do I look like I give a hoot?" Angela did not like to swear even in character. She had two children, and as a mom, those words were out of her vocabulary. "Who is in this death tomb? You are not, I am. The President was clear, do as I say." Christian floated with the rockets, did not even talk to Nick and made his way to the module, giving his captive two pinched cheeks. She would land this module even if it meant losing every point given by this game. Christian, played by Angela opened the door to the landing module. He dressed in a fully automated suit and put on the helmet and gloves. He clipped in after powering his suit and taping the gear to the back of the module's wall.

"Decouple now, I say, now!" yelled the Jester as soon as he could. Mission Command complied. "I know, the red switch."

"Wait until you feel the separation kick. You have seconds before passing out. You need to start the static generators or the arcs will destroy the ship."

"I know, I know, punch it." The player had just save five full minutes of deceleration by cutting she story short.

There was a kick equal to being shot out of a catapult. Christian was glued to his seat unable to raise his hand. "You will die if you do not hit the switch now." His vision blurred. He raised his hand, touched the button. The generator worked, the value increased until it reached six thousand.

The computer software was sending signals in intermittence to different portions of the ship. One such order was sent to a window, which unsealed and ejected out. Vacuum filled the ship. To wake Christian up, Mission Command forced every light and every speaker to alarm mode. Nothing seemed to work. Christian finally regained consciousness. "We must slow down, change course if you have to. The angle of landing is too violent."

The front thrusters went into action.

"We have planned a 4.2-degree landing. At most we can draw the angle down to 2%, but that will delay us on the surface by half an hour."

"That's fine," she said. Angela was not sure what this meant.

"Hang tight; you are not going to like this old friend,” said Patrick Martin in The communication channel. “Good luck.”

This time they had about ten more minutes of deceleration. The angle of arrival was better. The ship missed the surface by about twenty feet and continued away from mercury almost escaping the gravity on the other side. They were shot up on an elliptical orbit. The ship went up away from the planet, and Christian saw the large sun pass ahead of him in the window above. From here, he could see bubbling in the gas. The ship kept decelerating. Then it turned and prepared to come down. The capsule was spinning, turning. Christian had no way to know how fast he was going.

"Strap in, this will not be easy," said the voice of Mission Command.

Patrick added,” When they say strap, they are not talking bondage.” There was kindness and compassion in the military’s voice.

The player saw the rocks and just replied, “One friend is better than none I guess.”

Marilyn's broadcast shifted to a view from outside. She illustrated the orbit, the trajectory and then the re-entry. The capsule hit the ground at about two degrees downward. It hit some rocks, ripped the outside structures attached to the outside of the lander and then rolled and bounced two hundred feet before it fell back like a dead garbage can thrown by a city worker. The low gravity was helping. It turned, bounced multiple times before it settled still. In all, the distance covered on the surface of mercury was at least two hundred miles.

The Jester passed out several times in the capsule. The seat in the capsule was designed by brilliant engineers, today they showed their true power. Christian survived. The pieces of the launcher were still taped to the wall. Dust slowly settled in the capsule and at the point of rest. The capsule looked like it was without life, the power was out.

Light and energy returned in the Jester's suit. He was bleeding from the lips and nose.

Marilyn spoke, "I will now pretend communication with Mission Command will still work to help the player. Please know, I can calculate this assumption is wrong. Christian will have this video game to help him, but from this point forward, even I will not be able to help or communicate with him. Ground control will be silent. The level of energy from the sun here is a blanket on most communications, including mine."

"Mister Maltais?" said Mission Command.

"Yes," answered the voice in the suit.

"Nice landing, thanks for taking great care of the ship." The engineer did not intend for there to be humor, he meant it. But under the circumstances, the statement was truly hysterical.

"That's the smartest you can come up with? God! Put Patrick back on the line." The player knew he was scored based on his capacity to play the psychotic killer. This was the best she could do.

The voice of the Colonel came on the line a couple of seconds. "Hi gorgeous, you know you need to return the keys to that ship when you are done with it, right?" That got a blood-filled chuckle from within the suit. A smile returned to the face of the man in the suit. It helped the killer unclip, roll to his stomach and push away with both hands from the ground. Patrick spoke again, "Someone just handed me a note, do you want the bad news first or the worse news?"

The player's mind was in pieces from the landing. The Rho chamber connected with the person on a much deeper level. Angela was gone, only the Jester remained. "I don’t remember any of this in Emilio’s sales pitch, it was all sunrises and mescal drinks." There was no doubt those were the words Christian would mutter after that accident.

"Good job Sherlock, you crashed four hundred and nine kilometers away from the Fuller Crater. You know how far that is on a rock this size? You are too far away. You're done, just shoot yourself, you failed." Everyone down at Mission Command cringed, but these were exactly the words Christian needed to hear.

"Now I know why the President likes you." Coming from a killer, those were kind words. "If these buggers want out of this rock, let's hope they find me. Let's set this up. What's worse than the distance?"

"You landed on the right side of that rock. So you will die of cold in about two hours. You only have the energy left of your suit. So don't waste your time saving these creatures or us. You destroyed mankind, that's what you wanted, right?"

Christian was being played by an expert player of the game. Angela was brilliant. She was looking around himself for ways to salvage the situation. "You geniuses out there, anything I can do to get to that crater? There has to be power left in this ship."

"We have thousands of people working on it."

The Jester stood up in the ship. He removed the taped pieces and turned the door hatch to open it. The ship was upside down, and he had to crawl at an angle. Outside was night, as much as it was possible this close to the Sun. Once outside, he used a flashlight to inspect the multiple structures attached to the lander. Most of them were crushed or had been ripped out.

"Ground?"

"Yes?"

"Can we eject one or more of these before the crash?"

"Yes, why do you ask?" The player did not care anymore.

"If we ejected one, could we calculate where the bounce upon landing would have been? Can we find what piece to eject so the capsule would have crashed closer to the Fuller crater? Assume we could do this over again in five minutes." Angela was no longer playing the game; she did not care about the story. She was just helping the next player.

Patrick's voice replied, "People here say this type of calculation is impossible. There are too many variables. Even the best calculators could not do it."

Angela no longer cared, her gloves were off. "Ask Marilyn." There was a long silence. "She is powerful enough to calculate this."

After a very long silence, Patrick replied simply, "I will." Finally, his voice returned, "She gave us a suggestion. She said removing the walking pad; those stairs would be helpful."

"Great." The Jester crawled back in the ship and began to pull the several sections of the launcher out of the lander. This was no easy task.

"What are you doing?"

"Milking this for all it's worth. We are past scoring point. I want this to work in real life."

"This is real life, what are you talking about?"

"Whatever." Angela, playing the Jester, pulled all of the pieces of the rocket one by one, brought them outside and began to assemble them in the darkness. "Can you play Hotel California, it will remind me of the now vaporized ghost." The music began in the helmet. Once all the pieces were outside and ready, Christian tested the handheld launch controller. He clipped in one of the rockets and fired it randomly into the sky. It blasted away like a firework on the 4th of July. He fired the second ten seconds later, then a third another ten seconds later. The metal began to heat as each rockets fired. "This works."

"Can you describe the launcher? People here don't want it to overheat. You can't shoot these too fast. You must wait a minute at least between two launches."

The Jester fired the fourth rocket. "The casing appears red. It must be hot."

"We need to control overheat. A rocket slid into the launcher, if too warm will explode. We know the pieces of metal at three hundred and sixty degrees will appear between red and orange."

"Want me to wait?"

"Yes. You went too fast, and people here wonder how the fourth rocket already did not blow up when you slid it in. Not sure why you fired it. It's empty and pointing at nothing."

"We need to cool it?"

"Where you are its minus one hundred and something outside. Trust me; the ambient environment is cooling it. We just need to know how fast we can send these rockets up. Can you time that?"

The Jester waited. After two minutes he tried the fifth rocket. It worked.

"Trying 110 seconds between launches."

"For the love of God Charrue," yelled Patrick, "what the fuck are you doing? You make no sense. Why are you wasting the rockets? Wait for the aliens." Marilyn, unlike the player, wasn't willing to stop the masquerade of her game.

"Trying now at 100 seconds between two rockets." It launched.

"Stop."

"Trying 90 seconds."

"Trying 80 seconds."

"Trying 70 seconds."

At that point, there was a giant explosion on the surface of mercury. Angela was shot up two hundred feet and landed on the rocks breaking her back. Her body was on the ground; her suit was ripped. The cold was killing her. There was so much pain; she began to yell.

Marilyn walked out. She was dressed in a simple pair of jeans and t-shirt. "I am not sure why you insist on making a mockery of my game. All this was uncalled for. I kept it going out of respect for your trip to mars. You have been disqualified."

"But..." she spoke blood bubbling on the corner of her mouth.

People easily forgot Marilyn was a woman and temperamental. "Emilio would have gotten the same result without turning my game into a fucking circus. Enjoy the next 45 minutes of pain as your extremities slowly turn to ice pops. Hurt!" The camera panned out. Marilyn accelerated the sunrise over the crater to make sure she both burnt and froze to death the screaming player who burned in the suit. The woman wasn’t joking.

Mission Failed

Lives Remaining: 23