Once the others had been tucked away neatly in the bathroom, her worries of the smell in the main chamber were gone. The thought of shooting them into space crossed her mind, but she thought that would be a little wrong. Something inside of her insisted that there still might be a chance for rescue. How was she to explain that her other three mates’ bodies were drifting somewhere in the vacuum of space? But really, that wasn't the thing that bothered her most of all. Initially it made her feel sick to her stomach to get rid of their remains, but then time went on and she realized her rations wouldn't last forever. And then there was another reason altogether why she didn't want to get rid of them. How was she to explain that her other three mates’ bodies were missing pieces?

Samantha and Larry at one time had discussed the idea of getting off the rock in secret, but nothing came of it. Larry was entirely convinced that they'd miss earth entirely with the ship's guidance system down. There was no one on the other side to receive them. It would be completely up to luck. That scared her. No. It was better to be where she was than to be listing through space infinitely. So just the thought of it was out of the question.

So, she was stuck. And she knew that but recounting the events and reminding herself that she was stuck was the only thing that kept her company. It kept her grounded also. Constantly it reminded her that nothing was going to change.

After the little green man left her to her thoughts, Samantha swept her feet from room to room and moved her hands sporadically in her pockets. She gritted her teeth and intermittently breathed heavily through her nose.

Before, when she was still on earth, she would never have called herself a deep thinker. To be completely honest, most people probably would not have. Her time was filled with karaoke, drinking, long nights of studying, and finally scrolling through her news feed while lying awake in bed for hours. For the most part, Samantha was not the philosophical type; she was not the scholarly reader but rather the leisurely consumer; she was not the unbiased kind. No, Samantha had been struck with the super-stimuli of everything around her and was terribly normal. Then the curtains were pulled, and she was left alone. Her life, in many ways, changed drastically once she was alone. Not just in the physical world, but also the mental. She realized that once things were quiet, she could hear herself think. Irrelative to the situation she was in, it was kind of nice to play her thoughts over and over until they evolved in ways that she was satisfied with. It was only when she took old memories from creases in the mind she didn't even know existed and replayed them over and over in her mind's eye that she grew bored of them. And boredom led to increased mundane activities. When those activities reached their end, she finally succumbed to madness. Oddly enough, she knew it too. It came in bursts.

At first, she talked to herself and although that in itself was not enough to let on that she was gone in the head, it was something of a start. Then the things in the P.O.D. started moving around on their own. It was odd. Things she didn't even notice at first. Small things. Then larger objects like the couch or a chair or stool. That's when she knew she'd gone mad. The rational side of her knew that things like that didn't just happen all on their own. Maybe she'd been secluded for so long that she'd decided to mix things up a bit. Could it be that Samantha herself was the one that moved everything around? Could she have forgotten about it? Was it truly as simple as that? That's when the little man showed up and really made her think.

Was it possible that she'd eaten rancid meat?

No. She couldn't think about that.

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Helpless. Hopeless.

None of it mattered anyway. Once their bones were picked clean or maybe even after all the marrow was gone, (if she cared to take it that far) only then would she finally face the thing she'd been hiding from. She was fucked from the beginning of it. They all were. No one was coming. Some part of her knew that.

What was a person to do when they were knocking on death's door? When they were just waiting for it. It made her life seem totally worthless. She could go on and on about how she could have or would have done things differently, but not even that would matter. Nothing mattered. And wasn't it funny that up until the point in life that she was forced to face her own mortality- at that moment she realized that her life had been leading up to it the entire time? She'd been on a track. This was where she was meant to be. Maybe. Maybe she'd lost it. Maybe. She couldn't be sure. But one thing she knew, and it might have been the saddest part of it all, was that this fraction of her life was a synopsis of all the years she'd lived. It didn't matter if she had twenty minutes or twenty years. She was going to die. And with it being so close to the end she had no other choice but to actually think about it. It was as though she'd fallen right in the sweet spot. Just enough time to think it over and just enough time for it to never mean a thing.

Think. Think. Think goddamn it.

And then there was that. Did thinking about it at all help? Was it relevant? Was it ever?

She didn't want to die. She was going to die.

Finally, she came to the main room and sat on the couch, staring up at the wide window looking out at the nothingness that was space.

Samantha was fidgeting with something between her knees. It was odd. She kept toying with the trigger. There was no hiding it in her movements; she was nervous. Her thoughts ran wild. Then she heard it. She heard the thing she'd been waiting for.

"There you are." The little green man materialized adjacent the couch, snugly curled up on a fat chair.

"Here I am."

"Did you think about what we've talked about?"

"Sure. I have."

"And? Have you come to any conclusions on any of the matters?"

"Not really. Yes."

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"What I mean is that it's all relevant and irrelevant."

"You sound crazy."

"Maybe I am. I don't know anymore. But it's what I believe. Now, you've talked at me all you've wanted. I think it's time I've had my say. I might come on a little heavy handed, but I've got something to say. It doesn't matter and it does. It's all a matter of perspective. I can regret going to university and busting my ass for years just for the opportunity to go to Mars. I can be glad for what I've done. But the world doesn't change on hindsight. We're like marbles drifting around. Ricocheting, I think. We strike a surface and then our destinies are determined by our trajectory. So no. Good. Evil. It's all the same thing. It just depends on how we hit the surface. It's odd to say. But I've come to terms with it. I know what I'm going to do."

"Is that so?" The little man eyed her for a moment and shifted in his seat. Now it was his turn to feel uncomfortable. "What's that then?"

Quickly and without pause, Samantha stood from the couch, outstretched her arm, and fired Hal's blaster at the window. The first beam bounced off of the glass with the second beam splintering it. Wind whipped around her hair, tugging her towards the crack in the window; her feet were sliding against the floor. Then she fired again and in a millisecond the window was gone and so was she.

For a moment she drifted over the sand of Mars. It was nice. She felt like an angel. Then her eyes swelled and watered and she fell face first on the ground, sliding. Finally, her body came to rest at the base of their ship. There was a part of her that wanted to run inside, but she couldn't. So, when she brought her body up on both arms like a woman in a strange yoga position, her arms gave out and her face fell back in the soil.

"Alright."