Life on Mars?

"The biggest mistake I ever made… I was always a closet heterosexual."

-David Bowie

Modern Love

Although morning, the sun had not yet risen over the horizon. In the cold dark of the small room, a woman sat, hiding from the rest of the world as she waited against the sick feeling coursing through her. She sat on top of the laundry machine, the only place to easily sit while also being the furthest she could be from the other resident in the home. Although the room's lamp was off, a light glowed from the woman's chest, the device strapped onto her and its fusion reactor illuminating the piece of paper that was currently in her shaking hand.

She took a breath, calming herself and preparing for what was to come. In the hand opposite of the note was a cell phone. She unlocked the face, scrolled through the contacts, and after a shiver of hesitation, she dialed the number.

Across the world, another woman was lying in bed. To the unassuming eye, she looked to be sleeping while wrapped in the arms of a lover, but this was not as it seemed. Although it may have seemed that there were two people in the bed, what accompanied this woman was a full sized body pillow. Far past any reasonable hours to be awake, the occupant in this dark room was asleep, high above the world inside of their high-rise apartment, recharging from a long day's work. But, breaking through the tranquil darkness and privacy of the bedroom was a sudden bright light and loud ringing.

A cellphone, lying on the nightstand, lit up the darkness of the room, and after a moment to take in the sudden awakening, a hand emerged from the crack beneath the sheets and pulled it inside.

"Hallo?" asked the voice. Through serendipity, the word having the same meaning in both languages she was fluent in.

"Dr. Ziegler?" an awake and alert voice asked over the phone.

The urgent tone woke up the sleeping woman, who sat up in bed and responded, "Yes, what's wrong."

"Yes, Doctor. There's been a terrible accident at a nearby chemical factory and we have two amputees currently needing attention."

Throwing the covers off and swinging her legs to the side of the bed, Dr. Angela Ziegler, PHD, MD, was ready to act. "What is their current condition?" she asked.

Quickly, the nurse reported, "Dr. Mugandi is currently in surgery with one and the other is stabilized and on ice at the moment."

"Alright, I will be there in about thirty minutes." The doctor answered, giving a salutation and hanging up the phone. The doctor went to her bathroom and took a quick shower to wake up the rest of her body before getting changed into the previous day's work attire. Not much longer after that, Angela was standing beside her door, pocketing her car keys, access beacon to the apartment's garage in hand, and tying her blonde hair back into a high ponytail, the hairs themselves assuming their fixed position from years of constriction and memory.

As soon as she brought her hands down, the phone began buzzing once more. Reflexively, Angela answered the phone as she moved to the door, reporting, "I'm on my way, what's the-" but before she could finish requesting a report, a different voice answered her. While she had been expecting the triage nurse to be calling in a panic, the voice that answered her was calm, controlled, familiar, and put a chill down her spine.

"Hello, Angela."

Cold sweat forming in her palms, Dr. Ziegler stuttered before answering, "H-hello, Lena… how are you?"

"I got your letter today." The English woman said. "I see you wrote that you weren't going to be able to attend." There was silence, a pause to keep calm before she finished, "Why?"

Like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, Dr. Angela Ziegler knew that this day would come. Like a seed planted into the dirt, the announcement from half a year ago had set in motion a creeping dread, something that was recognized, but the full impact of its meaning had been growing and growing until the coming struggle could no longer be ignored.

Lena was getting married, and there was only one problem with that.

Angela felt like she was cornered in her own home by the voice coming from the tiny box. The doctor combed her hand through her hair as she nervously glanced at the dark floor in her entryway. "Lena…" she began, "You know why…"

"No." the English woman responded sternly, voice like an axe being sharpened at a whetstone, "I don't."

"It's just… well…"

"'Just what?' exactly!"

Angela thought she had prepared herself, signing her regrets for declining the invitation and hoping for the best while being ready for the worst; but it seemed that things were going to be much harder than she had anticipated. "It's… well, you know why-"

"Say it!" she demanded. Something in the background of the call fell over and its impact on the ground was audible on the line. "I want you to say it to my face!"

Angela covered her mouth, almost as if she were hiding from an intruder on the other side of her closet door. Dr. Ziegler was unable to speak, completely off guard by the confrontation, and even though she knew what the answer was, she didn't know how to say it in a way that would make the situation anything but worse. But, to her luck, there was an intruder on their call. In the background of Lena's line, an old squeaky door opened, and another voice began to speak. Although it was unrecognizable, Angela assumed that it must have been Emilee, Lena's longtime girlfriend. With the sudden release of pressure, Dr. Ziegler could breathe and release the stranglehold on her mind. With the gridlock broken, Angela was able to think, and with it, she remembered the reason why she was awake at such an early hour, and said, "Lena, I'm terribly sorry, but there's an emergency elsewhere and I need to get going."

The doctor waited for a second to see if her exit plan worked, to which it had, but as she said goodbye, the only farewell she received was a curt, "This isn't finished." Before the line went dead.

Angela let go of a breath that she didn't even know she was holding, and took a grip on all of the trouble she was in. She wanted to take a seat, lean against the wall and slide down to the floor. For as strange as it felt, a part of her wanted to sob, but now was not the time. She was expected elsewhere, and for as much as it felt like a mountain of bother was on her mind, it was a trifle when it came to the lives of others.

She pulled her coat on and double checked to make sure her keys were in her pocked. As she opened the door to her apartment, she looked above the precipice, at a cross of shining gold in the darkness. It wasn't just her crucifix, but her family's. She took another breath and exited her home, walking to the elevator and commanding it to take her to the parking garage.

The descent was long, and its silence allowed her to contemplate the situation she was in. The teachings of the Lord had guided her through the troubles and tribulations of her life, and surely the Good Shepherd would guide her through these times as well. She just prayed that Lena would come around to understand the predicament she was in and the decision that Swiss doctor had made. By the time the elevator hit reached its destination, Angela had decided that something must be done, and as she thought it over, she considered that the best thing to do would be to send Lena and her partner a gift, something sincere to show that she still cared.


Many years ago…

From graduating at the top of her class at Medical School at the tender age of seventeen, it seemed that the sky was the limit for the young Doctor Ziegler. Still, even with a world of possibilities before her, becoming the Head Medical Officer of Overwatch was still surreal for the doctor, even after it had been a few years at the Organization.

Although much more accustomed to the medical labs of the facility, over the past few months Angela had become much more acquainted with the experimental science labs on the premise. Not out of her own curiosity, but instead out of need.

So, late in the night, after raiding the cafeteria's coffee machines, Angela entered into the experimental wing of the science department with a four-cup cardboard holder full of black coffee in Styrofoam cups. She approached her workstation and set the drinks down out of the way of her projects as she sat and got back to work.

Although the department had shut down for the night, she was not alone in the lab. Deciding to indulge herself on one more distraction before getting back to work, Dr. Ziegler stood up once more and walked up to the reason why she had begun working outside of her normal department.

In the center of the lab was a secured observation container. Like a habitat at a zoo, this device was only about 144 square feet in total, but unlike an animal cage, it held the amenities that a human would need. Although most of the container was glass, made from see-through aluminum, there was a secure port where items could be sent in and out of the habitat. There was a bed, a table, a chair, and a small chalkboard for messages to be written on inside. In one of the corners was privacy screen as well as a secured wall, which as she had been told, hid the shower and toilet for the occupant to have some privacy. A heavy blast door secured the container, and a large apparatus above it glowed with all sorts of machines that maintained the environment within.

Atop every viewport of the cage was a screen hooked up to camera's within. Although it may seem redundant to the uninformed, due to the nature of the subject, at certain times it was the only way to see the person on the inside.

Angela Looked the sterile environment, checking what she saw through the window with her own eyes and then checking the digital screen, and was surprised to see that both were matching up rather well.

The subject's name was Lena Oxton, it was said that she had been a part of the organization for a while, but Angela did not think that the two had had the chance to meet before (which, as the head doctor, was often a good thing). Doctor Winston, the 600 lbs genetically modified gorilla that headed Overwatch's science division, had said that she was his very best friend. That didn't matter, of course, since someone that needed her help was all the justification that Angela would require to act, but it did help explain the predicament she was in.

Angela thought that she was a smart woman, and she often thought that her PHD's were a good enough means to justify that fact, but what Dr. Winston described had happened to Lena made the young woman feel far outside of her depth. As he had described, Lena was in an accident that involved an experimental aircraft which had somehow caused the English girl to become a singularity in their timeline. Although it used a formula that Angela had taken quite a while to grasp, the reason for the monitors in the room was because it calculated the erratic ebb and flow of time that Lena was experiencing. The machines connected to the chamber created a stable environment for her to survive in, but even with its assistance, it was not uncommon to see two very different things from the window and the display screen.

It was quite the strange phenomena to experience. To this poor girl, Angela was probably just a blur of a labcoat over a pair of blue scrubs, and from Angela's time working here, Lena was sometimes a blur inside the container, or stuck as still as a statue for hours at a time.

The erratic nature of the subject in the container was probably what made Angela's current observation so strange, for what seemed like the first time she had ever know it, the two views that she had of Lena Oxton were actually almost completely in sync.

After watching for long enough, Angela returned to her workstation and got back to work. Being with Overwatch often meant that Angela was on the very bleeding edge of science, it was a challenge most often, but one that she had welcomed. Her discoveries and invention of Nanobiotic medicine had revolutionized care overnight, there was no one else in the world that was better suited to assist in saving Lena. Much of what they were doing now was unknown territory, and so while Winston and his associates worked to cure Lena, it was Angela's job to find a means to make her medicine adjust to work with the woman's strange condition.

A while after observing simulations with Lena's bloodwork, Angela looked up again at the subject in the chamber. Oddly enough, the two images were still almost synchronized. Lena was sitting on her bead, bent over and staring down at the floor. Angela recognized that look, and she knew what had happened.

A little over a month after the accident, a notice was sent for Lena to inform her of her mother's passing. It was breast cancer, if the doctor recalled correctly. Angela could relate, both of her parents had been murdered when they were out simply trying to do good in the world. But the difference was that Angela was only seven years old at the time, it was her understanding that children can cope with trauma faster than adults. The organization tried to do their best, someone was sent to receive and record condolences on Lena's behalf, but still, her condition almost treated her like a convict in confinement.

It was at that moment that Angela noticed something. Beside the monitor was a secondary display, a crude device that used simple video recording symbols to approximate what Lena was experimenting inside of the chamber. Fast forward, pause, reverse, slow, it did its job and reported what it had calculated, but through it all, Lena was unmoving inside of the chamber, just sitting at the corner of her bed and looking down at her hands. Worry beginning to set in, Angela accessed the records on her workstation, and began going through the recordings captured inside the environment. What had amounted for a mere 20 hours in real time could translate into days inside of the chamber, and with each report she saw, Lena as still as a statue, not moving from her spot.

Panicking, Angela got up, ran to the window and looked in, confirming what she saw, and without a moment of hesitation, she ran for the containment door. Strapping a special emergency rebreather on, Angela swiped her emergency card through the reader, and queued the bulkhead to open.

Dr. Ziegler may not have fully understood all of what was going on inside of the chamber, and she would most likely be chastised for what she was about to do, but she didn't care. Regardless of what others may think, she knew one simple thing; pain is universal.


Lena Oxton sat on her cot, eyes red from crying, body deflated and drained of energy. In what she was told was a place where time had no meaning, she had given up on the world outside of her body. Her tears floated in the air, like diamonds hanging in the sky.

She had wanted to just fade away, and for what it was worth, she nearly had already. Even though she thought that she knew what suffering was, the news she had received had brought her down to a whole new world of torment. Although she was a prisoner in this cage, she never felt truly alone until she had gotten the news.

Now, with nothing left to lose, she was ready for it all to be done with. Sitting on her bedside, holding the photograph taken of her mother and her upon completion of her air force training, Lena waited for the end. She hadn't eaten in so long that she just didn't even feel the rot of hunger inside anymore. She didn't know how much the simple things hurt, to hug her mother one last time, to say goodbye, or even just to argue and fight like they had done countless times before, but it was all gone now, and Lena was left alone in this tiny box.

Somehow, she didn't know when or how, but darkness covered her. Thinking it was Death finally come to answer her call, She slowly looked up, but standing before her was something else entirely. Expecting a cloaked figure with a scythe at his side, Lena was almost surprised to see a woman standing in front of her. Well, as surprised as she could be, with no energy, excitement, tears left to cry or life to live, all she could do was look up at her uninvited guest with burning red eyes.

Lena, slowing down in time to normal levels, watched as the figure raised its arms and grabbed a hold of her head, pulling it into her chest and holding it there. Apathetic, Lena sat in the embrace, devoid of emotion or feeling as time slowed down, and she began to feel the stranger in her den.

"Hmmm," she thought, "tits." But, as she waited in the embrace, something broke through her dying mind. She felt it once, and then again, and again once more. Like a drum hiding beneath flesh and bone, she felt the hot beating of a heart, reaching through space and time and striking deep into her soul, to memories of her late mother, holding her in her arms as she cried into her chest like they had done countless times before.

It was… something, something that wasn't pain, or suffering, or the deep blade of loneliness that brought strength to her body, and revived the emotions that had been drowned in a sea of misery. Reaching her arms up, she wrapped herself tightly around this stranger and cried into her chest, screaming all of the pent up torment that she had tried to stuff away since she had learned of her mother's passing.

Dr. Ziegler wrapped her hands around her patient's head and held on as tightly as she could and allowed Lena to cry into her bosom, ignoring the pain as Lena's screams and supersonic vibrations left bruises that stretched deep within the doctor's tissue and fractured all of the ribs in her chest.