Sitting in the floor before the couch, Bernadette rolled the dice. "One, two, three, four, five, six," She moved her piece around the board game. "Go directly to jail, do not collect two hundred dollars. Shit."

Samantha was sitting Indian style on the other side of the board game. "I wouldn't worry about it. You own all the blues and greens."

"Yeah-yeah." Bernadette shook her head.

Within the week that had passed, the four astronauts’ duties had completely gone down the drain. None of them cared to go on doing anything beyond cleaning their new permanent home and picking up trivial hobbies like board games and movie night. It was peculiar how they didn't really comment on the state of their world. They just went on the way that people do. But it was clear to anyone with eyes and time to sit and think that their micro-socio makeup was deteriorating. And yet not one of them did a thing to stop it.

Hal was drinking. Everyone could smell it on him. Their wine stock was short by a lot. His words were slow and slurred from time to time. Samantha was even sure that she'd seen him with a bottle of Irish whiskey. Drinking straight from the mouth of the bottle. Probably Hal's own personal drink for when the mission was a success, and they could go back home. The man had grown quiet. He didn't seem to care about morale anymore. He was prone to angry outbursts. Hal and Larry argued over the predicament. But only once. And after that, there was no more talk of it.

From then on Larry stayed locked up in his quarters, staring at his computer screen. The man began treating his mates as though they had the plague. It was rather unsettling for Samantha. She felt totally out of rhythm not having Larry there to joke around with or nod to whenever tech talk came up. No, she was forced to socialize with Hal and Bernadette. Larry had only come out of his room to watch a single movie with them since the telecoms went down. And since the... Larry didn't seem to want anything to do with humans. He literally had audience with the entire human race and that fact seemed lost on him. Or maybe it wasn't, and that's what kept him locked away. The few times Samantha saw him outside of his room in full light, she saw that he wasn't bathing. Acne was springing up on his forehead and his face was glazed with light as though he were always sweating. Oily skin. This made her feel bad for him.

Bernadette was doing a bit of socializing out of the norm herself. It seemed that the physician and the captain were each inviting one another to the other’s bed during sleep time. Samantha thought that was peculiar. Perhaps the most peculiar thing out of all the rest. But there was a lingering thought in the back of her mind. Hadn't she read somewhere that one of the steps of grief was sex? Something like that; she was almost sure of it. What was the harm in it though? Really? Samantha couldn't think of one reason why it was wrong, but it felt like they shouldn't be doing it at all. Desecrating the whole old world. Something like that. But without people around and their ideologies to follow, what did actions matter without judgements in place and principles and authorities there to cling to wrong doings? The world they'd all known had only existed because others had said it existed and they just happened to agree for the sake of it.

She shook it from her head and picked up the pair of dice to roll as Hal staggered over to the couch and nearly fell over the game board. But instead of falling he plopped down and examined the two women at his feet. Samantha could smell him. It was strong this time. Maybe stronger than it had ever been. He leaned forward and fondly rubbed Bernie's right shoulder. Bernadette smiled back at him and rubbed his knee.

"Wait!" Larry rushed into the room, screaming. The room turned their attention to him. He looked like a madman; his hair was wild and standing on ends in sprigs, his eyes were wide and bloodshot; his hands were shaking. "I've got it." He shook a piece of paper with scribbles all over it. Eureka! thought Samantha.

"What are you talking about?" Hal tried standing but couldn't seem to get the hang of it.

"We could- we could begin terraforming. We don't have the structures, but we could build them over time. Of course depending on how long the P.O.D. will last. I don't know. It could work. It could work. Really. Start with colonization. We take our fruits and vegetables we have in stock and start growing our own crops. That's all it takes. We'll ration food. We could start working on structural maintenance and maybe even additions to the P.O.D. in time. After all, we've got two engineers here. It's not much granted, but it's a start. It's a start. Then we could- we could discuss re-repopulation."

"What? What the fuck are you talking about?" Hal was standing now with both of his hands clenched into big balls. "Repopulation? Are you insane?"

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"That's just a small part of the plan." Larry took a step back. "We could always talk about artificial insemination."

"Get the fuck out of here." Hal pointed past Larry. "Get out!"

"Just listen. We need to make some kind of plan to establish order. While you have all be-been worrying about much of nothing, I've been trying to think of something that could pull humanity out on the other side of this all."

Taking a few steps toward the other man, Hal started breathing heavier. Samantha saw Hal reaching towards his hip. "Don't you get it? We're fucked. Humanity is irrelevant. We were just a passing fucking fancy on the wind. Don't you understand? We're just a blink in the universe."

"But it doesn't have to be that way. We can do something. We can try to-to do something to stop us from dying out. It'd be foolish not to try!"

"Just shut up! I don't want to hear this. No one does. Do you really think it matters? Even if we worked our fingers to the bone, we wouldn't be able to make it back home. Can't we just die in peace?"

"Hal," Larry's eyes were wide. The paper had fallen out of his hand like a feather and he had taken a few more steps away from the other man. "Why are you pointing your blaster at me?"

Tears were running down Hal's face. The arm extended with the blaster was bobbing furiously. "My family died down there! Fuck you!"

"Please. I'm sorry. I'll just go back to my-

"What? Go back to your room and scheme some more? Go back to your room and draw up crazy plans of a hopeless dream? I don't think you'll be doing that."

"Just-

Bernadette rolled the dice as Larry hit the floor. Hal returned to the couch and sat, watching the two women play their board game.

By the time it was Samantha's turn, and she was shaking the dice in her hand, Larry had gasped and gurgled for the last time.

Time passed in the P.O.D. quickly. Surprisingly, no one seemed all that phased by the death of Larry. It was very underwhelming. Something that Samantha could never have accounted for. Death was a thing she'd never before been comfortable with. But now- it was just a tedious thing to care. During this time, Hal grew more and more irritable; circles encompassed his eyes thickly, he was quiet mostly with small and extremely volatile explosions of brief violence. It was odd. The way they all came to understand this hierarchy. Hal was like the great bulldog in the corner that no one bothered. They hadn't debated as a group as to what to do with Larry's body, so they kept it. They could have pushed him into space, but what good would that have done? Besides, it was good to keep his corpse. It was as though he were still there with them. The place smelled of course, like rotting meat, but nevertheless they propped him in a chair or on the couch; sometimes they sat him with his head on the counter of the kitchen. He was like a gooey dummy once the rigor mortis passed. A few times, Samantha was positive that she heard Hal actually carrying on a conversation with the dead man from down the hallway.

It was all very strange and dream like. Only in the brief moments that Samantha had to herself during sleeping hours, was she finally able to step back from the situation psychologically and think about it all from a perspective- a perspective like the one she had before. Sure, it was fucked. The old world was gone. The new one was nothing more than a few lonely astronauts abandoned on Mars. She surely couldn't talk to Bernadette about her feelings. The physician was too close to Hal. Bernadette followed the man around the P.O.D. as though she were being lead on an invisible leash. And there was no way in hell that she could ever talk to Hal in any rational way. So, sure, Samantha feared for herself and for her life in ways. But sometimes she wished it were all over. Who knew? Maybe the Oxygen would shut down while they were all sleeping, and they would all pass on to the next life without a worry. Maybe Samantha could give fate a push in the right direction by sabotaging the life support herself. But that was just it. She couldn't. She just couldn't. She wasn't ready to die. Call it fear or the will to live of a small mammal holed up in a hard place- or whatever else you'd like really. But what it was for her was hope. Maybe there was hope. The kind of hope Larry had tried talking about before he died.

As time passed, food was beginning to deplete. They'd had no plan in place for food beyond their rations. Hal didn't seem to care. Neither did Bernadette. But every morning for an awfully long time, Samantha could smell the bacon wafting down the hallway towards her bed chambers. Somehow life went on without any reason for it. And when Samantha would walk down the hallway in her slippers to see Bernadette craned over the stove and Hal kicking back on the couch she thought that perhaps it had all been a terrible dream and the crew could all go back to cracking jokes and being friends. But as she would sit at the counter with her head in her hand and her elbow on the counter she would glance over and see Larry's dead gaze looking at her from across the room where he sat by the bathroom on the floor. Then she would know it was all real. It was real and Larry was dead. He wouldn't be coming down the hall after her to join the others for breakfast, because he'd been there all along.

It went smoothly but very waywardly. The way that a painter feels from locking himself in a room for prolonged periods of time to complete a masterpiece. Complete depression. Around the people Samantha had thought of as family were now the ones she felt most alone with. And so, she was alone. They all were.