Little apple of death

I arrive at the meeting and stand to attention in front of the holographic display module. The room is creamy white and brightly lit. There is a communion ball suspended from the ceiling. Once the door I entered closes, it instantly conceals within its structure. The walls appear soft and padded, but on closer inspection they are in fact spongy, constructed from a white fungal material.

It’s as if I’m standing inside the head of a huge white mushroom. I reach out and touch the surface nearest me. The texture is, very similar to the substance attaching my prosthetic leg to my stump. I take it as a good sign; that the meeting is via hologram. A holographic communication from Earth would be impossible because of the time delay. I must be talking to someone on the Mars base.

I step back from the wall as the lasers flicker into life. A short, grey-haired woman wearing white overalls appears in front of me.

“Greetings. Doctor Ximena?” she asks as she looks down at a tablet. I nod my recognition. “I’m Doctor Green.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I respond as my heart pounds, but my face remains a mask.

I believe you had an unfortunate accident with one of our rovers yesterday while on sample recovery?” she enquires.

“That is correct. I must apologise, it was poor judgment on my part.” she raises her hand to interrupt me.

“No need to apologise, Dr Ximena., we rarely use the remote rovers anymore and your report on the matter was very thorough.” She pauses for a moment.

“How are you finding your stay in the Dome?”

The question throws me off balance. I hadn’t prepared for such a personal inquiry.

“It’s very different from Earth.” I stutter as I try to compile my response.

“Humm,” the doctor paces around the room while reading the notes on her tablet.

“Doctor Cho is concerned you may be struggling with the aftereffects of stasis. It’s very common for the process to affect people negatively. Have you been experiencing any strange dreams or hallucinations?”

“Nothing more than the odd headache.” I lie smoothly. She peers at me over the top of her half-moon glasses.

“Even so, Dr Cho has suggested reducing your stay in the Dome.”

“I see.” I reply concisely.

“How would that be possible? The shuttle I arrived on isn’t due to return for another 17 months?” I reply.

“Don’t worry about that; it can be arranged.” She pauses,

“You have a daughter waiting for you back on Earth, I believe?” I nod.

“Laura, must be eager to see you.”

I smile sweetly, although the mention of Laura’s name has risen my heckles.

“I’m sure she is. If my skills are no longer needed here, I will return to Earth.”

“Very well, I will notify NASA and make arrangements for you to leave tomorrow, Dr Ximena.”

She nods, and the communication is ended.

Pacing the room, I wait for the door to reappear. I know a cleverly worded threat when I hear one. My heart wants nothing more than to be back on Earth with Laura but obtaining that water sample is more important than ever. Something is very wrong on Mars and the people of Earth need to know.

I don’t have much time. The idea comes to me on my return journey through the Dome on the hover train. I can’t get a sample from the outside wall, but I might get one from underneath it. The presentation I was shown on my arrival showed the tunnels located by the outer walls of the Dome structure. The water from the exterior layer of ice must drain down into them. I only need a swab’s worth of liquid. Enough to hide inside a capsule casing, which I’ll swallow before entering stasis.

I’m more certain than ever that what I saw in the dream, in the house and on the video feed is real. That leaves me with a lot of questions. If there were a tree growing on Mars, what would it need to survive? I have to approach this logically, as a scientist.

First, a tree would need a water source. There’s a little water vapour in the air, and we know there are underground resources of water that were accessed by boreholes when they built the outer structure of the Dome.

Second, there would have to be organic matter. There’s no organic matter on Mars, or is there? My mind flashes back to the decaying bodies of the last Earth crew and the doctor's chilling words about crater 212. “That’s where the last earth crew ended up.”

Even if their bodies weren’t enough organic matter to support a tree. If there were a mycelium network connecting it to the cherry tree in the Dome, it could supply it with the missing nutrients it needs. But that still leaves the question of the atmosphere. Although the daytime temperature can sometimes reach 0 degrees, no living organism could survive the -63 degrees that accompanies the night.

There must be an explanation, what is it I’m not seeing?

I kick the chair of the booth in front of me in frustration; luckily, my carriage is empty.

I try a fresh line of thought. Let’s just say there is a tree on Mars and I’m not experiencing hallucinations brought on by Stasis, what kind of tree would it be? I search the internet from my wrist com.

I stumble upon a likely candidate. It’s called a ‘Manchineel’. It grows in coastal areas; loves dry barren earth and flourishes in places most vegetation can’t survive, like sandy rocky regions and It’s extremely resilient.

I trawl through the images and recognise the knurled branches and the small waxy leaves that I saw in the video footage from the crash. I inhale loudly, the photo shows little red apples growing from its branches, just like the ones I saw in my dream. I read on:

Everything is poisonous on the Manchineel tree, its leaves, its bark. The name translated means ‘Little apple of death.’ One bite of its fruit and your throat would swell, you’d die from asphyxiation. Indigenous tribes used it for poisoning their arrowheads and even the water supply of the invading Spaniards.

But what about the lizard I saw in its branches? Surely nothing could live in such a toxic environment. I’m wrong again. I draw breath as an image of a creature fills the screen. It’s the lizard I saw in my dream. The small text underneath reads:

The black spined Iguana. The only animal that can eat Manchineel fruit and live in its branches. Its most unusual feature, a third eye, which it uses as an additional sensory organ.

The lizard with the third eye I saw in its branches in my dream. It all adds up!

My mind wonders back to a conversation I had with Laura. She was seven years’ old standing in the garden. It was a warm spring day, and the air was full of the promise of summer. She had a pop-up net and was preparing to release the butterflies she had nurtured from caterpillars. Reluctant to release them, she was trying to find an excuse to keep them as pets.

“But if we let them go, what will they eat?” she asked

I smiled and crouched down to her level.

“They’ll get nectar from the flowers and help make new flowers by spreading the pollen.”

She looked sad. I put my arm around her shoulders.

“If we keep them in there, they’ll die.” She looked up at me as if this was the hardest decision of her life.

“Look,” I pointed to one butterfly, “you see how that big one is uncurling it’s tongue to drink from the slice of orange we put in there?” She nodded.

“Well, nature has designed the butterfly’s tongue perfectly for reaching the sweet nectar from flowers. Some plants are made for the creature and some creatures are made for the plants. They need each other to survive.”

She nodded as if she understood and unzipped the net. We sat and watched as they fluttered away, one by one.