(Short Story) Smells Like Murderer
Passengers
Ada O’Conner :- A tall, middle-aged woman who owns a library both on Earth and Mars. She is hooked with mystery novels and riddles since she was in high-school.
Captain William Burnside :-And old soldier, served America in the WW3 which was started by China for non-renewable resources. Physically Captain William is in a very good shape. He is short with bronze skin, copper hair and brown eyes.
Dr Joseph Macfarlane :- He is a French who defines himself as straight. He has a postgraduate degree in medicine. Joseph is very tall with pale skin, black hair and green eyes.
Delivery boy Joe :- To make an urgent delivery, Joe was given a free pass for The Phobos Express. He is British who defines himself as gay. He didn’t finish school. He is crazy about comics and animated pictures.
Ms Isabella Johnson :- Isabella is a 50-year-old personal trainer who enjoys badminton, adult colouring books and cookery. She has one or two distinguishing features including a mole on her nose and buck teeth.
Phobos Express Personal Station, Gia City, Mars
DAY 1 7:00 AM
“I HATE THE WAY HYPERLOOPS ARE ALWAYS ON TIME! Where are the days when public transports used to get delayed every odd day?!”
I screamed as I was running towards the entrance of the Phobos Express Personal Station. Phobos Express departure time is 7:05 AM, and it’ll exactly leave at that specific time because we live in a world where everything is technologically advanced and systematic! Artificial Intelligence with advanced machinery has made pretty much everything possible at this day and age.
Oh well, you can’t call Phobos Express as a public transport though, only five passengers are given the privilege to travel from one dome to another through Phobos Express. The whole hyperloop is designed and filled with old-timey elegance and charm with comfort level upped in every way possible. To get the hold of the tickets, you need contacts more than money.
I can run for a more extended period on Earth compared to when I run on Mars, artificial oxygen generated by doom will never be able to compete with natural oxygen that’s for sure!
“At long last, I’m finally in attendance and that too barley on time, It’s only 7:04,” I screamed with happiness as there was no other thing that could make me happier.
My happiness was short-lived when I heard the conductor shouting at me. “BOARD THE TRAIN WITH ALL YOUR BELONGINGS, WE WON’T BE ABLE TO STORE THEM AT THE BACK THE TRAIN IS LEAVING IN 30 SECONDS!” It sucks to board a high-class locomotive train with all the amenities in the world with a load of baggage you can barely handle. One of the reasons I hate perfectly scheduled departures.
As I board the train, I follow a glance on every other passenger who has boarded the train. The other four humans who are going to make every possible use of the privileges that come with this train.
Men never change, as I enter the bar section I see a French guy waving at me as he knows me for like forever!
“Bonjour madame, je peux connaître votre nom?” was his first sentence, he splashed some French words on me, that guy undoubtedly wants to get in bed with me!
“Pardon my French Monsieur but I’m not extremely good at it, and I don’t feel like employing the real-time translator provided by some private company so they can spy on every word we speak! I’m old fashioned that way, can you speak English?” I replied to him, even though I pretty much perceived what he said, allowing him to swing and hit first would have been fatal for our temporary intimate relationship.
“Of course, may I know your name please?” He asked.
“Ada O’Connor, May I know yours?” I replied, apparently name exchange are few of the old-time techniques we still use even in today’s age. We can merely look at the person and extract all the social information we need with the help of the lens integrated near our cornea but we still possess something called etiquette even at this day and age.
“I am Dr Joseph Macfarlane. As you are a tad bit a late let me help you introduce the other passengers. I’m sure you would love to connect with them.” He insisted.
“Sure, sounds like a plan Doc! I can address you as Doc, right? It’s brief and sounds cool that way.” I replied with a smirk, obviously I suffer no problem with names, I merely wanted to mock him a little!
“Sure Ada you can call me that.” He replied with a blatantly obvious hesitant smile, mission accomplished!
“Over here, meet Captain William Burnside I hope we’ll not get bored because of the WWIII stories Captain has in store for us!” Doc began with the obligatory introduction session.
“Nice to meet you Captain” I gave a simple and easy reply as I was extremely sleepy for the introductions. Waking up early is not something I always do.
After a long introduction session and conversing with people like, a doctor, Captain, a qualified trainer and even a goddamn delivery boy who obtained the tickets because the topmost branch of his company required him to attempt an urgent delivery. Luck favouring his side, Phobos Express was the only available hyperloop for that urgent job.
It was time for me to take some rest, I went to my room with the intention of not getting out of it till the end of the journey.
Day 2 6:00 AM
For my surprise, I was greeted with deafening knocks on my cabin’s door almost 22 hours after I decided to not get out of my cabin till I reach my destination.
“There has been a MURDER, Ms Ada we need to confirm you are safe please open the door for us!” I heard more than two or three people shouting from the other side of the entrance.
I slide the door open and replied. “I’m good, not dead yet. May I know who was murdered?”
“Please come with us to the bar counter, I’ll fill in the details over there. Right now I need a goddamn brandy to soothe my nerves.” Ms Isabella replied to my question.
“Okay, I’ll be there in a few minutes.” I rushed towards my bathroom to get myself changed.
As I enter the cabin where the bar counter is I see Ms Isabella, she informs me that Captain has been murdered. She hasn’t inspected the homicide scene. She was able to identify the lifeless body of Captain because the door of his room was slightly open which is unusual and the next thing she did was to run in a hurry to inform us.
“Steer us to the dead body, let’s inspect what exactly happened. There is no detective among us our situation is tight. There is no guarantee that the murderer will stop at only one victim, we all might get massacred. We need to expose him before the victim count increase.” I instructed.
After getting the dead body inspected by Doc it was concluded that the death occurred due to malfunction of the chip which handles the oxygen intake of the body here on Mars. The chip is necessary to implement or else the body won’t recognize artificial oxygen present inside domes. The death occurred in an extremely unusual way because that chip is immune to malfunction, it was designed in that way. The sole method to inflict the damage is by some kind of infrared device which you don’t get hold of easily.
I conveyed my inspection to the other passengers and proposed them to allow me to handle the further inspection because the mystery around the death piqued my interest.
A dead body, only four passengers left on board. There was no other way for the culprit to escape for one more day, this was going to be a fun trip. Deep inside I was excited as the scene was set for me to solve the biggest murder mystery on the planet.
Day 3 10:00AM
Today was the last day to apprehend the culprit, and I made a mistake declaring that I am onto him/her. This made the culprit cautious and now the murderer is not making a move. I confined myself into my room to think about the odds of every individual being the murderer.
Passengers were suspicious about Doc because his knowledge about the technologies we have inside of us. I reassured them he was with me for the whole night. Conceivably I provided the murderer with an alibi, but I was confident because he kept me entertained for the whole night which gives him no time to carefully assassinate an old man.
We conducted a thorough check on every passenger’s belongings to find something suspicious, but we never found anything remotely close to that. The delivery boy just had a company parcel. Isabella had nothing but beauty products which she endorses, Doc had some tools not known to the layman and his other luggage was in the different compartment, I was very open about all the belongings I had with me. The time was passing away and if I can’t capture the culprit soon he/she will walk away because of no evidence or confession.
The whole idea of not even being close to finding the person responsible was eating my mind so I stopped by the bar for some whisky on rocks.
The time went by, we reached the station and the culprit was not found. I over-estimated my ability to the point that I gave away any opportunity for him to strike back and mess up in the process.
Few weeks later I received an email from an unknown source with a riddle, the riddle was:-
I was not what I told I was,
We never got a chance to talk,
What you sought was always in the open,
You all were too blind to find it,
I was the unexpected fifth,
Take a guess and you’ll hit.
“GODDAMN DELIVERY BOY!” I screamed.”
Author’s note
Just a fun experiment to create a fictional story of my own! :)
