I’m writing this down now for me, while everything is fresh and I remember it in detail. I know when all this is over someone will interrogate me, needing answers I won't have, but maybe by writing down my thoughts, hindsight will unravel some of the mystery. I guess I should start at the beginning.

It seemed like it would be a simple trip. A visit to see your family should never be filled with this much drama. Getting into the space shuttle was fun, I sent a selfie to my penpal in Newcastle Upon Tyne, and followed my family on board, along with the other travellers. Just a routine visit to Earth to visit grandma and grandpa. I took one last look at the rusty soil of Mars and the mountains in the distance. Olympus always looked great this time of year, I’m sure the other kids would be planning romantic trips to it’s summit and adventures exploring some of the oldest colonisers ancient biomes, Adiona was the most popular one to explore during the holiday. It sounded like it would be so much more interesting than what we would be doing. Eating biscuits, drinking gran’s weird flavoured teas. Pass.

Mom and dad were from Earth, they immigrated for mom’s job fourteen years ago. She was hired by a film company to build and create a more “authentic” martian film studio. Well, they got it, then they realised no one cared. My parents spent all their money getting to Mars and on the project, and then, because life wasn’t hard enough, an unexpected new baby, me, on the way. Dad did anything he could to get money, mainly as a handyman, while mom gave tours to Earthlings of the latest attractions of Abeona, including, “but not limited to”, water parks, underground oceans, and the latest archaeological digs. That old film studio has been left abandoned ever since it was built. My parents are doing better now, they have decent jobs, and grandpa has a lot of money to contribute to our flights.

Our lives are pretty great, my friends are awesome, my boyfriend is just the most romantic ever, giving me tulips and taking me on fun dates. Yet, every two years my parents would tear me away from home to Earth. Gross. The trip is long, about a week. Apparently it used to take months, but after some super smart science people figured out better fuel injector technology, along with gravity, and a whole host of other factors, the trip was shortened. Especially this time of year when Mars and Earth are as close as they can be.

Our trip was supposed to be easy. The captain of this ship, Mr Edward Smith, said that it was the crew’s eighty-fifth flight together. Impressive, I suppose, if that’s what you want to do with your life. The first five days nothing happened, as expected. Then, suddenly on day six some asshole decided to hijack our ship. He claimed to be a part of the Martian resistance, but I’d never heard of them until they took over the ship. Apparently known as New Jizo, they wanted to prevent tourists from coming to Mars and making a mockery of all the people who had died turning the planet into a home for the human species.

I’m not too sure what the big deal was, tourism had saved my family from starvation. To them, though, this seemed like a big deal. Big enough to threaten ninety-two people’s lives with the promise of “painting the Earth’s soil red” with our blood as we crashed into the surface. I wasn’t all too fond of the idea, and neither were the other passengers. It’s going to be difficult to take back control of this ship, when they have full control of it remotely from Mars. Their demands were simple, hand over control of Mars to them. As I’ve now found out, Mars runs nothing fully and independant of Earth, for some reason. Different sectors of Mars are run by different countries, who just employ Martians like my mother to do the groundwork. Even some restaurants are based on Earth because they had the capital to start up a chain of restaurants, and employ people. Economics and politics are hard to wrap your mind around, and often those things two things should never intersect. This I’ve all learned in the past twelve hours.

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As it so happens, we have a plan to stop these guys from using us in their cyber war against Earth. Turns out they need to have an on board device controlling the ship. When the hijackers took control, they locked us all in whatever room we were in. My parents were in their allocated pod. I got up to pee and get a snack from the canteen. That’s where I am now with four other people. One is our dear Captain Edward Smith, some girl named Knolo, Jeremy, the ship’s hydraulics engineer, and a wine expert called Sammy. Smith’s main communication manager contacted him and told him that an anomaly was detected in the room next to the canteen, which was now empty. If we could get there, the main deck would be in full control. Problem? The doors are made to keep anyone inside safe from the vacuum of space in the case of a break. The solution? A small vent that someone can crawl through Die Hard style.

That person is me, yay. Now I have the captains personal communication device so that someone can talk me through what I need to do. Clearly no one cleans these vents, I’ve got more dirt on me that a hooker has on a politician. As I exited the vent, it became clear that I was in over my head. “I have no idea what I’m looking for”, I said into the small circular device.

“It’ll look like it blends into everything, unassuming so we wouldn’t notice on a pre flight inspection,” a voice answered.

“Not helpful,” I replied, “do you have any tips?”

“Just see if something looks like it doesn’t belong.”

I looked around the room, clearly not knowing what to look for. Then something stood out, not because of any technological reason, but because it was the cleanest thing in the room. Like the vents this room hadn’t been cleaned often. A small metal box with a thin green strip of digital writing, seemed to be the only plausible thing giving the hijackers access to the ship.

“I think I found it, what do I do?”

“Open it up and type this in ‘Verify object code’ and tell me what it says.”

I opened it up to see a keypad built in a pentagonal shape.

“It says ‘Jizo RedBox', now what?”

I suddenly heard the voice Edward Smith through the vent “Take the biggest object you can find and smash it.”

There was a pause from the speaker before he replied, “Yeah, can’t argue with that” the voice, approval in his voice.

That’s what I did, I found a big wrench and hit it and then I hit it a few more times until the glowing green band stopped glowing.

Suddenly the door behind me opened up and I knew it was done. It seemed too easy, right? We won, but something didn’t feel right. Then it hit me, I went up to Captain Smith when it was done, and he brought me to the bridge. Apparently no one there had been communicating with anyone during that time. Apparently their whole communications were down, and had only returned after I destroyed the ‘RedBox’.

In the days that followed after we landed, Earth authorities sent soldiers to Mars to wipe out any insurgents, and ‘New Jizo’. Captain Smith came up to me and asked me about the box. Apparently it had vanished off the ship, and I was the only person who had seen it. I described it to him in as much detail as I could. He turned grey as I mentioned the shape of the keyboard, which is apparently highly unusual, and not used by New Jizo. Smith told me he thinks the hijackers wanted us to take back the ship, he thinks there’s something going on between the nations who control Mars, and New Jizo is a scapegoat for their plans.

It seems the Mars we will be returning to will not be the same as the one we left.