The following is a mystery divided into five acts. Each week, readers will vote on the way they want the story to progress in the next act. You have five weeks to figure out the mystery.

NOTE: You MUST have a Google account to vote and/or get a Clue Drop. Each account can only vote one time.

Click here to listen to the story.

The Aurora Express: Act 1

I’m sitting at my desk, drumming my thumbs on my knee. On my computer terminal screen, I’ve typed “I am so bored” over and over. My partner, Tyasia, enters the office and looks over my shoulder at my screen.

“Another bustling day in the Aurora Express Investigation Office?” she chuckles. She sits at her desk across from me and opens a thick book on Interstellar Botany: The Art of Gardens in Space.

I say, “Ugh, I just wish something would happen.”

She puts down the highlighter she’s using to mark up the book (okay, seriously, who highlights a book if they’re not taking a class?) and then she stares at me. “You…wish a crime would happen?”

Ok, I know that crime is bad. Of course it’s bad. But also…it would relieve this horrible boredom. “Maybe just a little one?” I smile.

Unlike the engineers, pilots, and scientists onboard this months-long journey to Mars aboard the Aurora Express, Tyasia and I were assigned this Investigation Office job by the Nova Interstellar Community Consortium (NICC), the company paying for us to go to Mars. NICC probably figured it would be an easy gig where we couldn’t get into too much trouble. After all, everyone on board, even the non-scientists like me and Tyasia, had to go through multiple rounds of vetting and background checks before being chosen by NICC to populate the new city on Mars.

I say, “Like, maybe someone could lose their slippers. Or ask us to investigate whether someone doesn’t really like their new haircut.”

Tyasia doesn’t even look up from her book. “Everyone on this ship can find their own slippers. I mean, yeah, the ship is big, but our living quarters are tiny. And yes, I did mean it when I said I liked your new haircut yesterday.”

The little smile on her face makes me think she still might not be telling the truth about my haircut. Nevertheless, I decide to let it go and change the subject. “Why are you reading an actual book?” I ask her. “You know you can download anything onto your tablet. In fact, where did you even find that?”

“Would you believe I brought it with me?” she asks.

“No. They barely let us bring any personal items. I can’t imagine you’d take up precious cargo space with that giant tome.”

“Well, that’s why you’re in the Investigation Office. I borrowed it last week from Dr. Foster’s Greenhouse library.”

I shake my head. “Since when do you even care about botany and growing plants in space?”

Tyasia shrugs and turns a page. “You never know where or when you’re going to find the secret to life.”

I’m mid-eyeroll when Jordan Ramirez, a young woman in her mid-20s, crashes through our office door.

“Dr. Foster!” she gasps, trying to catch her breath.

Tyasia and I both jump up from our desks. Tyasia guides Jordan to a chair, putting a comforting hand on her back. “Breathe, Jordan…breathe…” she murmurs.

Jordan shakes her head, clearly agitated. Okay, to be honest, this isn’t new for Jordan. She’s one of those people who wears her emotions on her sleeve. If she stubs her toe, everyone on the ship hears about it. Tyasia and I exchange a glance that communicates: Here we go again.

Tyasia hands Jordan a cup of water from the water cooler in our office, and Jordan drinks it down quickly before exclaiming, “Dr. Foster is missing!”

I raise my eyebrows at Tyasia who just shrugs back. This sounds like more than a stubbed toe, but again, it’s hard to tell with Jordan.

I sit back at my desk and open the notebook app on my tablet, ready to take notes. “Um, okay, can you tell us a little more? Why do you think Dr. Foster is missing?” I ask.

Jordan takes a deep breath and lets it out. “She and I go walking around the ship together each morning.”

I furrow my brow. That’s…interesting. Back on Earth, Jordan Ramirez ran a small but up-and-coming interior decorating firm in Atlanta, Georgia. She was known for her use of natural fabrics and materials. I had no idea she was friends with Dr. Foster, the sixty-three year old Chief Botanist.

Jordan continues, “She was teaching me about plants and how I can incorporate nature into room designs once we reach Aurora City. I figured that people are going to miss Earth a lot, and I want to help them feel connected to their lives back home through interior design. Like a little bit of Earth on Mars in your living room. She was super cool.”

Tyasia purses her lips together. She caught that, too: Jordan is talking about Dr. Foster in the past tense. That seems like an extreme reaction just because Dr. Foster missed a morning walk.

“Maybe she just overslept,” I offer.

Jordan shakes her head. “No, I knocked on her door for at least 15 minutes. I even got Lenny, the custodian, to let me in. She’s not there. Everything looks fine but it just feels..empty. I also checked the Greenhouse, the cafeteria, and the library.”

“It’s a big ship,” Tyasia says. “Maybe you just missed her at any one of those places.”

Jordan sticks her chin out. “I’ve been trying to contact her on her wristcom all morning. She’s not answering. Look, I get that sometimes I overreact about things—I can tell what you’re thinking. But I’m not overreacting. Something bad has happened to her. I can feel it. Please, you have to investigate. That’s your job, right? You have to investigate.”

I look at Tyasia, who smirks at me. She shakes her head and says, “You just had to wish something interesting would happen, didn’t you?” Tyasia sighs, puts a bookmark in her botany book, and grabs her tablet. Looks like we’re going to do some investigating.

Two hours later, Tyasia and I return to our office to discuss what we’ve discovered and figure out what to do next. Jordan was right—Dr. Foster is nowhere to be found. Moreover, we checked with Dr. Basu in medical, and Dr. Foster’s biostat link appears to have malfunctioned. The biostat comm is a device we all wear that constantly updates the mainframe computers with our vital signs, like heartbeat, blood pressure, and so on. It can also show our location on-board the ship within about 5-10 feet of accuracy. Dr. Foster’s biostat link keeps showing that she’s in her room, even though she clearly is not, so we can’t even use that to track her down. It’s showing all her vital signs as normal, but according to Dr. Basu, if the location services are malfunctioning, there could be a fatal error in the device—and we can’t necessarily trust any information it gives us.

“Okay,” Tyasia says as she stares at the whiteboard in our office. “Let’s review what we know so far.” Tyasia, who actually did intern with a private detective back on Earth, insisted that our office have both a bulletin board and a white board, just like you see in old-fashioned detective dramas. She argued convincingly that actually physically writing and touching the clues helps you better process than just typing them up. Until this point, however, we had no need to use either, other than to write each other funny messages and keep track of who had more points in our daily Crazy Eights games.

The whiteboard is covered in Tyasia’s neat handwriting with a few pieces of information in my messy scrawl. She reads out loud:

• Clue #1: The only people who saw Foster yesterday were: Jordan Ramirez at their morning walk at 7 AM; her nephew, Octavius Thompson, who ate breakfast with her; Dr. Basu for her regular checkup at 11 AM; and Olivia Green and Jake Harris, who both pulled shifts in the Greenhouse from 1-5pm.

• Clue #2: Jake and Olivia have shared that Dr. Foster said she was going back to her room to rest before dinner at 6pm, though no one remembers seeing her in the cafeteria. Octavius says it wouldn’t have been unusual for her to get her dinner from the cafeteria and eat by herself in her room.

• Clue #3: Nothing has been disturbed in her room or the Greenhouse. There’s been no forced entry and nothing appears to be out of place.

• Clue #4: The ship’s AI system, Amaryllis, reports that all systems are functioning correctly, and there has been no sign of any sort of security breach.

• Clue #5: Nevertheless, a manual check of the security footage from the camera in the corridor outside of Dr. Foster’s room has been corrupted from 6pm-12am, as has the security footage outside of the Greenhouse entrance for the same times. When questioned, Amaryllis reports that the security footage is fine and does not recognize the corruption.

When Tyasia is done reading, I tap my pen on the desk, thinking through what we should do next.

Before I can open my mouth, Tyasia speaks. “I think we need to report this to Base Command back on Earth,” she says.

I shake my head. “We already told Commander Xu on the ship. It’s her prerogative to tell Base Command. And she says she doesn’t think we should bother them with this…at least, not yet.” I really don’t like going against Commander Xu. She has this way of looking at you like she can read all your deepest, darkest secrets, and it’s frankly terrifying.

“I know but…something just feels really off about this,” Tyasia says.

“You’ve been hanging out with Jordan too much,” I laugh. “I think the best thing we can do right now is more in-depth interviews with the suspects…or search Dr. Foster’s room and the Greenhouse again. We need to follow protocol.”

Tyasia sighs. “Whatever we do, we need to do it quickly. Who knows what’s happened to Dr. Foster? She could need help. I still think we need to contact Base Command, but we need to agree as a team. So, I’ll go along with whatever you decide.”