AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 261
ARES III SOL 258
TRANSCRIPT – WATER TELEGRAPH EXCHANGE, ESA BALTIMARE and ESA SHIP AMICITAS
AMICITAS: Amicitas calling Baltimare, use suit SG for responses, over.
ESA: Baltimare calling Amicitas, over.
AMICITAS: Need Twilight Sparkle and Queen Chrysalis at once. Mark’s people request direct communication. Long message to follow, over.
ESA: TS on site. QC in Horseton and will be on site in two hours. Proceed with message, over.
AMICITAS: Message begins. We need to consult with you about a serious issue of crew morale. Recent close calls with disaster have left the Mars survivors on edge and at one another’s throats. They report symptoms of depression, unfocused anger, and a general inability to get along with one another. The one crew activity they still undertake together is daily work at the cave farm to supply magic and love to Dragonfly’s cocoon. End paragraph.
AMICITAS: It is our opinion that the core of the problem is personality conflict made worse by mental exhaustion. These conflicts were formerly smoothed over by Dragonfly, whose presence is missed by all members of the crew. We therefore request that the revival of Dragonfly be made the top priority in the hopes that morale will improve. Message ends. Over.
ESA: TS – QC already said changelings in cocoons of that kind can’t be forced out without great danger. Over.
AMICITAS: It will be some time before Mark’s people answer. It takes about an hour to get a response to any message sent. We are translating and retransmitting this entire exchange for their benefit to help make things easier. Over.
ESA: TS – we really don’t know how to get her out. We don’t even know if it’s safe for her to be out, over.
AMICITAS: SG – I want to add we’re embarrassed and ashamed our friendship problems have grown so bad that Mark’s people demanded this. We should all be better than this, over.
ESA: TS – You’re going through very hard times. Friends understand these things. Stand by for Chrysalis, over.
AMICITAS: Standing by, over.
ESA: QC – Let me get this straight. Unfocused anger means angry with each other for no good reason? Over.
AMICITAS: Affirmative, over.
ESA: Depressed means don’t want to do things, or sad? Over.
AMICITAS: Both. Over.
ESA: And you all go together to visit Dragonfly every day? For how long? Over.
AMICITAS: Cave chores and magic field projection takes between one and two hours, not counting travel time, over.
ESA: QC – Understood. Stand by for procedure to revive Dragonfly. Over.
AMICITAS: Just received new message from Mark’s people. Disappointed in news that Dragonfly can’t be revived. Is there anything we can do to speed up her reviving on her own? Standing by, over.
ESA: QC- Procedure for reviving Dragonfly. Take one stick. Apply vigorously to side of cocoon while shouting the following chant: wake up you lazy drone, quit draining people in your sleep, don’t you know larvae are starving in Mareitania? Repeat as needed until desired results are achieved. Over.
AMICITAS: Please confirm Dragonfly draining emotion while she sleeps, over?
ESA: QC- That is what I said. What do you intend to do about it? Answer required. Over.
AMICITAS: Mark just got back from solo cave run. Vote is unanimous: find a stick. Over.
ESA: QC: Okay, don’t do that. If Dragonfly really was draining you in her sleep you would either have denied the possibility or got angry about the stick thing. Please do not beat my subject with a stick more than maybe once or twice, over.
AMICITAS: Once or twice, over?
ESA: QC – I want her back in one piece with all the brains she had when she left. But she deserves a poke. Lazy bug should be out by now.
AMICITAS: SG- But if Dragonfly isn’t the cause, what is? Over.
ESA: QC: Cabin fever. Nerves. Personality conflicts. Maybe Dragonfly a little bit- can’t blame a bug for snacking. In your case, I’m guessing that you’re all angry at the situation and taking it out on each other even if you don’t want to.
AMICITAS: Then what do we do about it? We can’t exactly leave the cabin, but we can’t live like this either.
ESA: QC – Negative emotions breed negative emotions. Positive emotions breed positive ones. Do new things together that you all enjoy. Over.
AMICITAS: Any suggestions? Over.
ESA: QC – what do I look like, a shrink? TS - I think you should begin by remembering you are friends. Friends sometimes get mad at one another, but true friends learn to forgive. Over.
AMICITAS: SF – I still vote for stick.
AMICITAS: SG – We will try to follow your advice. Please stand by for further messages from Mark’s people. Over.
ESA: Standing by, over.
AMICITAS: Message begins: We hadn’t considered the possibility of Dragonfly influencing emotions while asleep. Good to know this doesn’t seem to be a major problem. But we still need advice on how to revive her. Paragraph ends.
AMICITAS: As for crew activities, our psychologist has some ideas on that front which we can implement. Why does your program not have crew psychologists? Message ends, over.
ESA: QC – We don’t have psychologists because they would have at least half of us committed in a week. As for Dragonfly, the last report we have was of a magic drain powerful enough to create un-light. Current condition, over?
AMICITAS: Still true, though the cocoon merely looks dimly lit and not lost to vision, over.
ESA: QC – So long as you see a difference between her and everything else, she’s too sick to come out. Get her more magic, I don’t care how. TS – I do care how, be careful.
AMICITAS: Roger. Do you have any further information, or any questions for Mark’s people? Over.
ESA: Provided beacon signal is being broadcast as requested, no message. Starlight, let us know before your next big spell so we can try to refine our trace. Baltimare out.
I made a lot of progress today!
i.imgur.com/OA0ulZM.png
My next step is to write out the harmonies at the end, go back and color-code other harmonies, and clarify some rhythms with River Babble. I also uploaded my score (not finished yet) online. Check it out! https://musescore.com/user/27997005/scores/5117933
Oh wow, we're finally going to get a solution to the Dragonfly problem and see her rejoin the story! That's great.
Well, the closest thing to a traditional stick would be one of Cherry's saplings, so all they have to do is just rip one out of the ground, and-
Cherry: NO!
Heh. No sticks on mars.
Really wish this procedure worked on my computer...
You're pretty much everything else, as needed. Forgive them for thinking there's something you can't do.
8963551
You utter madman/woman/robot/etc. Keep up the fantastic work! I look forward to seeing the final version.
I can help you with that hump.
Ah, Chrysalis. Is there nothing that you can't put into perspective?
Idea: I may be misremembering, but didn't Rich Purnell figure out a theoretical method for converting electricity into magic? Pushing the big brains back in Equestria to turn theory into a rough-but-practical application could allow for more efficient mana battery re-charges, or for wiring a hab solar cell to something that will produce a small but steady magic field that can be used to nurture Dragonfly back to health.
Alternate idea: solid matter other than water and air can't make it through the life support systems from Equestria, but what about a flow of pure magic?
Queen Chrysalis is always good for common sense advice like this. I find it amusing how her style is so different from the professional style of NASA, and indeed other leaders.
It does make me wonder how many changelings there are, and if there is only one hive. I'm guessing several thousand changelings, and with her as the only leader and the only hive, making her like the CEO of a company rather than the leader of a nation. Considering the CSP is basically a business, that isn't too far off from the mark if true.
Show of Hooves and hands here, who desperately wishes they could hug Dragonfly's cocoon?
8963571
I'm a 27-year old male, thanks!
8963551
Okay, a few things.
First, I hope that one day you can find six people (and personally, I'd try asking the people who do the dramatic readings for some of the stories here) to provide the vocals for this song, because holy crap, it deserves that extra bit of effort, because it's awesome and I love it.
Second, I hope that you one day put the final product on iTunes, since that's the only way I can save this song to my devices (iPhone/iPad) without having to bookmark a page on the Internet. Barring that, YouTube, if only to spread it out to a wider audience.
Eagerly awaiting Drangonfly's dramatic emergence.
8960204
i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/380/307/add.png
Well played sir, you raised my theory before quite expertly beating it with a stick until it fell from its cocoon dead. On the other hand you didn't milk my theory first so I'm still happy.
Sticks do not exist. Would a radio antenna or spare bit of pipe work?
Sorry to hear your trip was so unproductive. Drive carefully.
8963594
I already have the voices I need lined up, we're just waiting for the sheet music to be locked after River Babble's approval. Most of us except for one are in a special Discord server I made for this project. If you want to join it as an observer, send me a private message. As for publishing, I intend for the final project to go on my YouTube and SoundCloud profiles, not iTunes. I don't do iTunes.
8963596
I haven't even finished the harmonies at the end, much less the instrumentation I hear in my head. Or, heck, the singers. I'll probably sing all the parts first by myself as a guide and "temp track".
8963583 He came up with a theory for it. Experimentation, engineering, and general applications to come in approximately 15 years.
"AMICITAS: SC- But if Dragonfly isn’t the cause"
"AMICITAS: SG- But if Dragonfly isn’t the cause"?
"Unfortunately I was uncomfortable at the con and then tired when I got away"
Ah, sorry about that.
"I'm going to try to get home all on one shot tomorrow night through early morning."
Good luck.
What a fantastic chapter!
Aww
And then Chrysalis' message... well, you probably knew exactly how funny that would be when you wrote it
Only, Chrysalis then gave several very sage responses of friendship advice, And a forthright and accurate explanation about the lack of psychologists. She's fucking magnificent.
So where the buck do they find a stick?
8963583
Rich Purnel came up with the magic-electricity equivalent of E=mc². From having that to actually managing to turn electricity into magic is no mean feat.
And I think that if they could send magic or magical charged air/water they'd already have done it. It would be one of the first possible solutions, would allow Starlight to use magic like no tomorrow and for them to build a new sparkle drive and go to earth way before Hermes. Would make for an entirely different first contact story, but it would not be "The Martian with ponies".
Most likely it would still be awesome, but not this kind of awesome
Chrysalis, never change.
8963602
They have (had?) some cherry tree saplings. They can get sticks.
Chrysalis: Not only Queen of the Hive, but Queen of Snark as well.
I really love your portrayal of her when she's in problem-solving mode.
8963778
Cherry Berry: "over my dead body"
8963702
Break off a branch from the cherry trees?
Mark Watney squatted next to the dark alien pod, feeling a little silly as he talked, but less silly than a few minutes ago when they all had taken turns wacking on the pod with a short length of metal tubing. (Fireball had hit the pod twice, although lightly, because he said 'The bug flinched, so she gets two.)
"Dragonfly, I just wanted you to know, you forced us into doing this. We sang to you, we hugged your pod, and we even followed your queen's advice with the stick so don't hold that against us. You need to wake up and get back to work. There's suits to patch and work to do on the Whinnybago and all kinds of things that only you can do. The Equestrians have done all they can do, and so it's down to some of our Earth magic to get your lazy bug butt out of bed. I don't want to do this, but you leave me no choice."
Mark placed a small plastic box on the ground, connected by wires to one of the midsize experiment batteries.
Edited below.
"Blame Martinez for this. He left an old MP3 player in his luggage with a couple of Disney songs on it. I found an appropriate one and put it on infinite repeat. The battery should keep it running for about a week, so you'll have company while we're back at the Hab, trying to do your job. Stop by when you're ready to get back to work."
Then he walked back to the cluster of ponies waiting for him at the cave airlock for their ride back to the Habitat Module.
Sometime later when everypony was getting ready for a short night's sleep, there was an unexpected change in pressure, and the Habitat airlock module cycled, revealing a changeling taking off her helmet who looked somewhat like Dragonfly except for the exotic paint scheme and the look of pure fury in her eyes.
"It's not a small world!" she frothed, flinging her helmet into her bunk and moving her head back and forth as she looked around the module. "This is not a small world after all! There's nothing small about it! That blasted (chirp) (screech) (hiss) song just kept playing and playing and playing until I couldn't stand it any more! Where is he! I'm going to kill him! No, I'm going to stuff this (hiss) (screech) music player into his suit and pod him and see how he likes having that blasted song rattle around in his head over and over and over!"
Use a radio antenna. It saved Mark, once. It can work for Dragonfly.
8963789
You. Are a cruel. Twisted. Sadistic. Wretch of a pony...that is all.
8963846 Thank you!
There is a noticeable lack of sticks on Mars (except Cherry's trees, maybe). Pounding the cocoon with RTG should work even better, though.
8963728
8963620
You make a solid argument as to why the first idea can't work without becoming a deus ex machina device.
In the novel there is a phrase that comes up early on, with regards to why Mark went from four comms systems to zero. "Failure of imagination."
It was the reason, post stranding, that Mark had no working radio. It was the reason the Amicitas wound up in a magic starved universe. It was the reason that the sparkle drive ate itself upon arrival in said magic starved universe, along with most of the mana batteries.
In the spirit of the source material — in a universe where magic is literally everywhere, even in the vacuum of space like some type of zero-point energy, why would creatures from such a place ever imagine a means of transporting/transmitting magic energy from point to point? Conceptualizing the idea might take a person from outside that frame of reference.
So, a thought occurred to me. From the Equestrian end, the air/water supplies can only send through simple molecules, and tend to make complicated things (like cupcakes, or brandy) explode, ruining the gem in the process.
But they could, for example, easily send through molecular oxygen. And with unicorns, to do the separating on the Equestria end, pure molecular oxygen. (Even liquid oxygen, with a little effort). Similarly, liquid hydrogen.
Now, fun fact, neither oxygen nor hydrogen will burn on their own. But mix them, and the result will burn.
So, here's an idea: cannibalise one Suit. Connect the air and water crystals to the inflow ends of two tanks; one for oxygen, one for hydrogen. (Use valves.) On the outflow end of these tanks, mix the two to create rocket fuel. The length of the burn you can get from this engine depends on the capacity of the tanks; but the crystals (and some coordination with Equestria) allows the tanks to be refuelled in flight (given a bit of time) - which means that as long as they can reach a safe orbit, they can use this engine to (eventually) get anywhere they want (as long as their food holds out)...
Of course, one doesn't do this until one is at the MAV, because you might want to use the suit in question before then.
8963942 Think of the problem like this:
The step from theory to experimentation is a big one, but the step from theory to engineering solutions is often massive when it comes to subatomic physics (and the story thus far has implied magic is likely such).
Ooookay, a sudden thought. How long did it take for Dragonfly to start feeling the lack of magic?
And she had the cave farm as the closest source. The Hab's inhabitants weren't producing magic at the same rate.
So what happens when our survivors enter Hermes? A several months long flight with even less magic than that, because I doubt Hermes crew will be an equivalent source. And if they risk using Sparkle Drive to speed up the trip, that means consuming even more magic in the process.
Dragonfly might be screwed no matter what, at least if she leaves her cocoon.
Never change, Chryssie. XD
Well, good that it's not Dragonfly's fault, at least.
Just start playing pen and paper RPGs already.
'Dragonfly, whose is missed' - whose presence is
8963857
A pleasure. A truly inspired form of auditory torture. I once looped the same song through the vents at my college dorms...needless to say I was "convinced" to seek alternate lodgings.
They lasted a mere one hour, fifteen minutes. Less then expected.
8963789
I believe DF's line is:
8963962
Such a great idea!
Except for the overheating. It's been stated than the crystals don't work in temperatures over a hundred centigrade (212 Fahrenheit, boiling water) and oxyhydrogen torches operate at 570 °C (1065 °F).
That's hotter than those pictures of Spitfire they made while photobombing NASA.
But fine. You're a smart cookie and figured out how to make it happen without blowing up the life support crystals.
Then we have 14 ton MAV - that's with 0 fuel, 6 people, some food and five of your life-threatening life-support engines.
Assuming the mass flow rate of 20 grams/s and exhaust velosity of around a hundred m/s (google ISP of oxyhydrogen torches, fascinating read, I almost fell asleep) we get the force of stunning ten newtons for five suit engines combined.
Since the MAV needs at least 52 000 newtons to hover on Mars, even if the suits were massless, we would still need twenty six... thousand suits.
26 000 suits!
So, replenishing fuel on the go is out of the question, and I don't have safe assumptions for the ratio on which the Amicitas ship life-support can delifer 02 and H2. Then we could probably accumulate fuel first and then use it?
Well, unfortunately, that's what MAV does. And in the book Mark does exactly so. He electrolises the water to get H2, loads it into MAV and gets 760 more kg of fuel. With magical life-support he probably has infinite fuel, but the time is finite. I personally think that's where Kris is taking us, just making more fuel for MAV using life-support.
It's much better than building new engines out of life-support, since it, you know... Supports life.
8964161
That's why you need two crystals - one to pull in H2, and the other to pull in O2. They're not flammable until they mix, so you just have to make sure they only mix a long, long way away from the crystals...
You're right about the rate of fuel replenishment, though. That is a more severe problem. They'll have to generate enough fuel before launch to launch with (as you suggest) - the self-replenishing nature of the engines only really helps one way or another when they're already at least in a stable orbit, where it means they don't really need to carry enough fuel at launch to make the entire Mars-Earth run - just enough to reach orbit in the first place.
8963941
"Wake up you stupid drone, or else we'll strap this Death-Box to the side of you and see if we can cook a changeling for dinner!"
Excellent idea.
please let there be an infinity stone or two in that cave somewhere... any one of these stones would be really helpful about now: power, space, reality, time. any one of those could help them
8963581 Herself.
8963789 Martinez, not Perez.
8963942 In the case of magic batteries, ponies have those because enchantments, especially complex or power-hungry ones, require energy regulation in the absence of a controlling intelligence. Power storage gives you power regulation.
But the sudden change of the fundamental laws of physics is something no sane person is going to anticipate. So, bang.
8964183
Even in orbit it would give them very weak engines tho.
8963789
Scar was right!
8964187
That might actually wake her up faster too.
8964358
oh, you made me think of a scene in THIS story:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/205767/changeling-the-movie
8963789
Dear god, isn't this against the Geneva Convention?!
AMICITAS: It is our opinion that the core of the problem is personality conflict made worse by mental exhaustion. These conflicts were formerly smoothed over by Dragonfly, whose is missed by all members of the crew. We therefore request that the revival of Dragonfly be made the top priority in the hopes that morale will improve. Message ends. Over.
Whose is missed by all members of the crew; did you mean "Who is"? (Or whom, I can never get that right.) Second Amicitas paragraph, near top of page. : 3