AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 84
ARES III SOL 86
A light flickered on the rover’s dashboard, then shone steady for about a second, flickered again, shone, and winked out.
“What was that?” Starlight Glimmer asked.
“Hab beacon,” Mark answered, not taking his eyes off the mostly flat terrain in front of them. There were still rocks here and there, not to mention the annoying gullies and the very occasional crater rim or hill. The rover had returned to Acidalia Planitia, leaving behind the more visually interesting floodplain of Ares Valles. “We shouldn’t be picking it up yet. Must be some freak Mars weather.”
“Um?” Starlight wanted to look up the word beacon in Mark’s computer dictionary, but the computer was an integral part of the rover’s control system. Yes, there was a steering yoke and a throttle control and brakes, just like a parade autocart back home, but there was so much else that had to be controlled. Mark kept one hand near the keyboard at all times while he was driving. “What’s a beacon?”
“The Hab has two radios,” Mark said. “One was for talking to Earth. The antennas for that were smashed in the storm.” He took his hands off wheel and keyboard just long enough to slam fist into hand, demonstrating the word smash. Grabbing the wheel again, he continued, “The other sends one signal on one frequency only. Remember frequency?”
“Yes,” Starlight nodded. She’d practiced that one a lot. It would come in very handy when the time came to communicate with humans on Earth.
“Can’t change the signal, can’t change the frequency, so can’t use it to talk,” Mark said. “The rovers use it so we always know which direction the Hab is.”
“Oh. So… like a… um…” She didn’t have the word, but the Equestrian word was a compound of two others, and considering how similar in structure their languages were… “Like a light house?” she asked.
Now Mark did take his eyes off the nonexistent road for a second, looking at Starlight with surprise. “Lighthouse? Yes, like that,” he said. “But lighthouses tell ships, danger. A beacon says, come here.”
Oh, a beacon! Now Starlight knew what Mark meant- like the lights used to help guide airships into port after dark, or the ancient mountain bonfires the earth ponies had used to warn their tribes of pegasus or unicorn attacks back in the days before unification.
But how would you do that by radio? There were affinity spells that could guide a pony to a place easily- there were affinity spells strong enough to drag a pony there by sheer force, in fact. But radio didn’t drag. Radio was just lazy light.
Aha! Light! If you were following a light beacon, you’d head towards the origin of the light! If you were on the right track, the light would get brighter! So if you had a directional antenna, like a parabolic dish, then the signal would be received most strongly when the dish pointed right at it!
What a simple, brilliant invention! She couldn’t wait to describe it to Twilight Sparkle over the water-telegraph. It would work like a magic beacon for anypony, not just unicorns or those with a magically enchanted receiver. “Good-good idea!” she said.
Mark shook his head, as he did so often when she praised something he took for granted. “Very good idea?” he suggested. “Maybe great idea?”
“What is great?”
“Great means both ‘very big’ and ‘very good.’” Mark glanced down at his dashboard. “Time to stop for today.” He looked around, decided he liked the ground where he was, and eased the rover to a stop.
Starlight could hardly believe she was looking forward to putting her spacesuit on. The suit was cumbersome, stiff, noisy, and generally annoying. Sometimes the helmet would knock into her horn, which was always painful. But the air inside the suit didn’t stink like the inside of a Manehattan sewer. Once outside the airlock, the suit let her enjoy a whole planet’s worth of open space. And, for an hour or two, she could put distance between herself and her traveling companion.
To be blunt, Mark stank. Starlight had met many, many ponies in her life, including not a few homeless wanderers seeking who knew what, and the most stinky, unwashed, hygiene-exempt pony she’d ever met in her life could have served as a large air freshener if you hung him around Mark’s neck. Beyond the poop smell and the pee smell of the rover, there was the sweaty musk of, not to be unkind, one hundred and seventy pounds of monkey fresh from the tree.
I don’t remember Sunset Shimmer smelling like this, she thought. Or any of her friends. Or even that film freak, whats-her-name. He looks kind of like a human, and the word human is apparently the same in both languages, but… argh!
I can’t even talk about it to anypony else, because the mirror is supposed to be a secret!
“How much farther?” Starlight asked.
Mark made a tipping-back-and-forth motion with his hand. “Hundred kilometers, maybe less,” he said. “Two sols to go.”
Starlight frowned. Without a spacesuit, a pony could cover a hundred kilometers in a day without getting very tired. She was tempted to just go galloping over the sand and rock and dust until she got back to the Hab, where the atmospheric regulator filtered out the worst of the poo-stink and where she had her own bunk and, praise Celestia, there was a shower.
Thinking of the shower, she was tempted to rip a piece of the rover saddlebag arrangement off, turn it into a saddle, and carry Mark, suit and all, along with her, if it meant getting the stink washed off of him sooner.
But no. They were a crew. They were a team. They were friends. And friends don’t abandon one another.
Mark finished locking down the seals of his own spacesuit and looked at Starlight. “Going to collect more rocks,” he said. “I’ll be done in two hours.”
Starlight snorted. Suddenly it became much more tempting to abandon Mark and his bucking rocks. She’d hoped that, as one horrid bean-based meal after another got converted into roadapples, and as the pile of food packs shrank to nothing, the rover might have a little more room in it. No such luck. Mark had come over all moon-landing, wanting to take samples for science. As if the rocks were ever going back to Earth! When rescue came, there wouldn’t be room for anything more than the six of them. Even Starlight knew that!
Calm down, she told herself. He’s trying to keep busy and stay sane, just like you are. And it’s only two more days.
“Okay,” she made herself say, wishing she had enough magic to spare for the Bottle-Up spell. Just take all the rage at spending almost all day in a rolling can with a stinky monkey who told incomprehensible jokes in a language she was just starting to understand and who didn’t know excellent breaking-edge music when he heard it…
… put it in a bottle and leave it on Mars, where nopony would ever find it again.
Of course, in addition to magic power, she’d also need a suitable bottle. The closest thing they had was the containers they were using as bathrooms, both of which were almost full at this point. Starlight did not want to think about what emotionally charged magic might do to such… ingredients.
“Okay,” she said again. “I will just… go… over there.” Way over there. About a country mile or two. “Do you have your crystal?”
Mark patted the front of his spacesuit. “Battery and crystal right here.”
Starlight used her magic to put her helmet on, having already skinnied into her suit. “I’m ready, then.”
Together the two squeezed into the airlock. It was cramped, but little more so than the rest of the horrible smelly rover.
“Starlight Glimmer, this is Amicitas, come in.”
“Amicitas, this is Starlight. We’re about a hundred kilometers south of the Hab. We should return in two days.”
“That’s great! Everything’s okay here… except… there was something I was supposed to tell Mark, but now I’ve forgotten.”
“If you forgot, it can’t be important.”
“No, I’m pretty sure it is. Um… did I tell you we removed four of the seats from Mark’s lander to install in Amicitas?”
“Yes, you did. Mark said okay, but save the old seats. The metal might be useful.”
“We did. And… well, I can’t think of anything else.”
“How’s the mana battery?”
“Thirty percent charge. We only take it to the ship for these sessions. We’ve kept some charge on it.”
“Okay. Save power. Don’t call tomorrow. We should be within trotting distance of the Hab after the next drive.”
“Roger. I’ll think about it. Have your suit ready tomorrow night just in case I call anyway, though.”
“Understood, Cherry. Starlight Glimmer out.”
As soon as the food issue gets resolved, their next priority should be producing something to use as soap. Judging by Starlight's reaction, they're not going to like what happens when Mark's soap runs out.
You've surpassed the originals word count! Congrats my dude.
Uh oh, airlock 1s going to pop soon.
really of all the things, you have to remember and that's the one you forgot? this is way keeping note cards is needed
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Yeah, they almost kept the Hab intact until Mark got back, didn't they? They were so close.
Congratulations on over a hundred thousand words of daily updates. :)
Seems odd Cherry would forget something so important (assuming that the forgotten thing is something like "Don't use Airlock 1 when you get back"); I wonder if there's something else going on there.
Well, I guess it's time to play pop goes the airlock, which is like pop goes the weasel, only with a significantly higher chance of death.
I doubt Mark particularly likes their smells, either. They all freaking stink by this point. Mark likely stinks worse because he's nto getting that slim period of time of freshness by taking in so much fresh atmosphere-his is all recycled, constantly.
Lol. Stink-ape!
Once upon a time, when I was but a wee llama, my stepfather brought home two hitchhikers for a shower, a meal and a night in an actual bed. Not the wisest move, but he wasn't exactly blessed with an overabundance of good judgement and nothing bad came of it, thankfully. They had been hitching from Georgia, and we're on their way to California and family, so they said.
The two of them had been on the road for days, and without a shower or adequate hygienic facilities for at least as long. And their stench was absolutely vomit-inducing. It took them three showers to get rid of it, and rather than try to launder their clothes, my mother just burned them and donated some castoffs for the cause. The stink was that foul.
I suspect that the reason Glimmer didn't notice the same aroma from EQG!humans is that all of the ones she met were within a few hours of a shower, deodorant and laundry and she never had to spend weeks cooped up in close proximity with one under highly unsanitary conditions. But I would be fascinated to see her compare Earth-prime humans with the EQG variety.
I advise refraining from making any comments about Cherry until the next chapter.
I've seen a lot of theories for what's going on with he ponies at the hab, but there's one more that I hope I'm wrong about. All of the symptoms we've seen are also consistent with spending too much time around a very hungry changeling. Just saying.
One thing that always bugged me about Equestria Girls is that seemingly random character that wasn't the same color as their pony counterpart. Like Celestia and Big Mac. What was up with that?
Hoo boy. This can't be good.
I hate it so much when people say that. I have forgotten so many things I really wanted to tell someone.
Got to admit that I have never seen any EQG, having activeliy avoided it, and I detest basically everything that I know of it. When EQG first appeared we were promised, from Hasbro, that it wasn't part of FIM and would never be canon to FIM, and I stand by that. So having a reference to it suddenly crop up in this story did irk me a bit, even more since I didn't understand the reference.
How do you forget something like, "The airlock is making a funny noise?"
I'm such a huge nerd over some really weird stuff (including, but not limited to, anime and ponies), and I love gushing about them...but some people need to listen to themselves man. Betcha they're the same kinda person that rolls their eyes at ppl who argue that gridiron is the better football over association, as if they're above that. Just the worst.
Er, sorry about the rant lol
Personally, I would have axed any EQG connections due to the technology gap between ponies and humans. I can't imagine Twilight & Co. would simply ignore a source of information that had already gone through their own space race. About the only way EQG wouldn't have a fairly large effect on the CSP universe is if they had never attempted to leave the planet in any meaningful way. Even then, however, you're looking at advanced radio and computing technology that has very direct application to space exploration.
Of course, I'm probably biased because I've never liked the EQG universe
Hab catastrophe in 3...2...1...
Well they're still a day out from the Hab. So Cherry Berry still has one more chance to remember and tell them. Though the ones still at the Hab might blow out the Hab themselves by forgetting and using it in that day.
I found it amusing that Starlight was considering hoofing it back to the Hab on foot from 100km away. Given their average pace they'll only be 20km away on the next day, so she might rethink the idea of just hoofing it back then. I mean it wouldn't even be that long of a trip at that point. Sadly the leaving a friend behind thing still applies. Though she could justify it by saying its giving him more room.
Cherry Berry you idiot, you are going to kill them!
EQG tech made me think of materials research, and that made me wonder about sourcing for some of the required materials for the CSP. We know, for example, that the parachutes were (and apparently still are) made of changeling rope. What about the heat shields for re-entry? I can't imagine they did, or even had the capacity for, proper testing and development. I'm picturing them testing various combinations of hardened changeling slime and shed chitin and the ESA's general reaction when they find out just what has been keeping them all safe on the way back into the atmosphere.
"Okay, but just how did you test these things?"
"Oh! That was the fun part! We called it 'Poke the Dragon'!"
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If you remembered enough to know you forgot something, it probably was important.
I'm no magical expert, but I do have a semi working theory on how the ponies get home. Okay first, can't do it from Mars if there's not enough life magic to contact home with the visual illusion spell then what starlight needs to do won't be viable. They need to get to Earth first because A. Earth should have enough life magic to properly contact Equestria. B. Earth governments would be willing to help them out, if only to secure trade routes to an alien world. C. Earth has more resources. Now Starlight then has to redesign the Sparkle Drive so that it purely goes fourth dimensional, and then turn it from a ship drive to a gate (Dragonfly can help with design.) that way they can probe it (Last thing you want is to go a not friendly universe, also Equestria can help.) I recommend building the gate in orbit to compensate for possible planet shift or if the planets aren't in the same place between universes.._univeri.._I digress, also it will allow space ships through. Though like I said I'm no magical expert. I love the story so far you're doing an amazing job, I loved the movie unfortunately I haven't read the book (Don't hate me!) and I don't get certain references, but I love it so far. Favoriteing!!
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There was a line in CSP about how the secret to making mirror portals had been lost, so I don't think even Starlight could make a gate. They could probably manage a probe though (which would be easier from the Earth side, since if the probe was successful it could use the magic field on the other side to come back - or just contact Equestria and ask them if a probe showed up).
Personally my guess for how they get rescued is that Twilight manages to get a rescue ship to them when the Hermes is halfway back to Mars, just for the reactions of its crew when an alien ship appears around Mars, picks up their targets, and then flies right by them at impossible speeds to drop Mark back off at Earth.
Leaving bottles of concentrated magical anger and frustration littered around a planet that, according to Dragonfly, already is very peeved they are there and wants them gone. I have a suspicion these bottles will break and infect the planet which will somehow make Mars even more hostile, especially towards its resident human. I'm kinda hoping for an angry red eyed dust storm roaring out Mark's name, but I doubt Starlight's dumping that much magic around out there.
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She hasn't left any bottles around yet, and I doubt she seriously would.
8739877 i just hope it be epic like starlight using magic to save the hub in time and burning out her horn a bit
Urgh, how do you forget "the thing that keeps us all from dying messily is making funny noises and Spitfire says she is sensing weird airflow currents that shouldn't be there"? That should have been the first and only thing today's broadcast was all about! Way to go, Cherry ...
And this should do "wonders" for her morale considering she already feeling useless and unsure of herself. Doubly so if Starlight puts herself in the bed again by having to emergency-fix the situation simply because Cherry forgot the single thing she should have remembered. You had one job, Cherry!
I don’t think the beacon re-invention plus the direct EQG tie-in works really well... Since ESA is using probes heavily, surely Twilight and Pinkie would have used that world for all things electronics related as it has a lot to offer (and Sunset would be eager to help). Also without the knowledge of a beacon, how did the ponies find the Hab in the first place?
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Well on the plus side Spitfire will be feeling vindicated at least.
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I was interpreting that as her realizing a way to do it with electronics. Whereas they were using magic to do the direction finding in their own space program. Magic can just point you at a target without needing to read stronger or weaker signals by direction. Though it is a bit odd when you highlight it like that. Though we've already seen in this that Starlight has very little clue how anything non-magical works (for instance rocket fuel). So it's entirely possible the suits and Amicitas both use radio beacons already and Starlight just doesn't know.
I think commenters are overreacting. Yes, Cherry forgot something important, and yes, it's probably the leak. But there was no explosion, so I highly doubt that's happening ahead of "schedule" unless these five have been putting a lot of additional stress on the airlock.
Though, okay, where did the crystal shards land? I don't know that that's it, but no one else seems to be talking about it.
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More like red eyed 'shitstorm' if she used the 'honeypot' as the container.
Cherry mustve been really distracted to forget the thing she told everyone else.
Please use Airlock 3.
Only four words?
Thats a Lot of distraction.
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Not only regarding the space program. While Equestria tech level is incoherent at best, EQG has elements like motor vehicles, internet and cellphones which should have drawn a so-called smart cookie like Twilight like a moth to a flame, yet apparently she never considered using the portal to smuggle and reverse engineer them for Equestria's benefit.
Juniper: "Bu...but, you said you'l be my friend(sobs)."
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I had an image of Starlight yelling ove a loud speaker "People of Earth, lend me your energy!"
and then all the humans raise their hands and all of the magic flies to Starlight and a magic portal just opens up.
Rip Kid Buu
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I wonder if the ESA's success is a result of her doing exactly that. It's not like access to higher tech is going to be disseminated through the whole society overnight. It takes years for a society to advance even with a continuous flow of goods, let alone such a small route, especially one that's classified.
Another possibility is if the portal is transforming things to conform to the other side (ponies to humans and dragons to dogs for instance) high tech gadgets might be transformed into low tech ones when going back to Equestria.
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Well, to be fair, nopony likes Juniper.
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She still has Sunset living there, with her magical diary. Also, Twilight can go back and forth and/or send pony agents, scientist and engineers to gather data.
Great, hyperoxia symptoms include disorientation so forgetting the very important "do not use airlock" is maybe a bad sign
Ah. I was wondering about the mirror world. And that raises questions about their space program...
A matter for another day. For now, I can only hope someone writes down the matter of the whistling airlock in time to tell Mark, and that Starlight has her suit ready for the emergency call.
On a lighter note, I do love that disco qualifies as "excellent breaking-edge music" for ponies.
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To be fair, some of those songs are not that bad.
That has more to do with the fact that if any animal found that smell to be pleasant and followed it, we would hunt and eat it.
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Fun fact: cockroaches are as disgusted with our smell as we are with theirs.
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Okay, but the reason I opted for a gate is because if you had the Sparkle Drive in the probe and one loses contact with it and it doesn't end up in Equestrias' universe then Starlight and Nasa would have accidentally given some other universe the ability of interdimensional travel. Excellent point though I don't know if I accidentally glazed over the fact of the mirrors (I tried to cram the chapters of CSP in my head as quick as possible.) or I'm just not there yet. P.S. Sorry for any grammatical errors I'm writing this from my PS4, I don't have a computer.
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And then Spitfire forces her into working before she can think up what else she can do with the life magic of....14 billion people?
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“Staying alive “ hehe
Now I get why discord can’t just rip a dimensional hole open. Mars has no magic on the other end to keep it open I guess. Even he needs the abundance of magic to work