Love, Death and Robots. Volumes 2 & 3

“Yeah, right, very nice, you do that,” Martha said absently. If you can’t be polite to your own hallucinations… She didn’t bother finishing the thought. Little crawly things were creeping about on the surface of her skin. Best to ignore them.

“Wait. Here. Rest. Now.”

She said nothing but only sat, not resting. Building up her courage. Thinking about everything and nothing. Clutching her knees and rocking back and forth.

Eventually, without meaning to, she fell asleep.

* * *

“Wake. Up. Wake. Up. Wake. Up.”

“Uhh?”

Martha struggled up into awareness. Something was happening before her, out on the lake. Physical processes were at work. Things were moving.

As she watched, the white crust at the edge of the dark lake bulged outward, shooting out crystals, extending. Lacy as a snowflake. Pale as frost. Reaching across the molten blackness. Until there was a narrow white bridge stretching all the way to the far shore.

“You must. Wait,” Io said. “Ten minutes and. You can. Walk across. It. With ease.”

“Son of a bitch,” Martha murmured. “I’m sane.”

* * *

In wondering silence, she crossed the bridge that Io had enchanted across the dark lake. Once or twice the surface felt a little mushy underfoot, but it always held.

It was an exalting experience. Like passing over from Death into Life.

At the far side of the Styx, the pyroclastic plains rose gently toward a distant horizon. She stared up yet another long, crystal-flower-covered slope. Two in one day. What were the odds against that?

She struggled upward, flowers exploding as they were touched by her boots. At the top of the rise, the flowers gave way to sulfur hardpan again. Looking back, she could see the path she had crunched through the flowers begin to erase itself. For a long moment she stood still, venting heat. Crystals shattered soundlessly about her in a slowly expanding circle.

She was itching something awful now. Time to freshen up. Six quick taps brought up a message on her visor: ‘Warning: Continued use of this drug at current levels can result in paranoia, psychosis, hallucinations, misperceptions, and hypomania, as well as impaired judgment.’

Fuck that noise. Martha dealt herself another hit.

It took a few seconds. Then—whoops. She was feeling light and full of energy again. Best check the airpack reading. Man, that didn’t look good. She had to giggle.

Which was downright scary.

Nothing could have sobered her up faster than that high little druggie laugh. It terrified her. Her life depended on her ability to maintain. She had to keep taking meth to keep going, but she also had to keep going under the drug. She couldn’t let it start calling the shots. Focus. Time to switch over to the last airpack. Burton’s airpack. “I’ve got eight hours of oxygen left. I’ve got twelve miles yet to go. It can be done. I’m going to do it now,” she said grimly.

If only her skin weren’t itching. If only her head weren’t crawling. If only her brain weren’t busily expanding in all directions.

* * *

Trudge, drag, trudge, drag. All through the night. The trouble with repetitive labor was that it gave you time to think. Time to think when you were speeding also meant time to think about the quality of your own thought.

You don’t dream in real-time, she’d been told. You get it all in one flash, just as you’re about to wake up, and in that instant extrapolate a complex dream all in one whole. It feels as if you’ve been dreaming for hours. But you’ve only had one split second of intense nonreality.

Maybe that’s what’s happening here.

She had a job to do. She had to keep a clear head. It was important that she get back to the lander. People had to know. They weren’t alone anymore. Damnit, she’d just made the biggest discovery since fire.

Either that, or she was so crazy she was hallucinating that Io was a gigantic alien machine. So crazy she’d lost herself within the convolutions of her own brain.

Which was another terrifying thing she wished she hadn’t thought of. She’d been a loner as a child. Never made friends easily. Never had or been a best friend to anybody. Had spent half her girlhood buried in books. Solipsism terrified her – she’d lived right on the edge of it for too long. So it was vitally important that she determine whether the voice of Io had an objective, external reality. Or not.

Well, how could she test it?

Sulfur was triboelectric, Io had said. Implying that it was in some way an electrical phenomenon. If so, then it ought to be physically demonstrable.

Martha directed her helmet to show her the electrical charges within the sulfur plains. Crank it up to the max.