The Maretian

by Kris Overstreet


Sol 70

Crates and consoles wrapped in plastic littered the small warehouse on the grounds of Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, California. Interspersed among them stood seventeen JPL engineers: software specialists, hardware engineers, testing specialists, and four octogenarians who had been called back from retirement to contribute their expertise as the last surviving members of the original Pathfinder team.

And in the center of it all stood Bruce Ng, standing next to a freshly uncrated, just retrieved from the Smithsonian, duplicate Pathfinder. This had been the fully operational duplicate used to test fixes for problems that came up during the surface mission. Until now it had been a museum piece, part of the grand exhibit celebrating Project Ares and the history of Mars exploration. Now it, like the old men, had been called out of retirement.

“Okay, here’s what we know,” Bruce said, barking out facts machine-gun style. “Mark Watney is driving south-southwest of the Hab. He’s on more or less a direct route to Pathfinder. There’s only one possible reason for him to go there- to salvage the radio. And we have until the day he gets back to the Hab to figure out how to receive whatever message he sends us and send one back he can understand.”

Bruce pointed to Pathfinder. “We’re going to have to assume that Pathfinder isn’t significantly damaged by forty years on the Martian surface and that it’ll reactivate with no problems once it has power again,” he said. “If Pathfinder can’t boot up or produce a signal, we can’t do anything to help, so we aren’t going to test those scenarios. But everything else is fair game.

“In the next two weeks you’re going to put together whatever you need to get this machine working and talking again. Then we’re going to learn the operating system and how to tweak it. We’re going to simulate malfunctions with the memory, with the imagers, with the high-gain antenna tracking system, and Sojourner. We’re going to brainstorm and test ways to produce actions on Pathfinder that Watney might be able to interpret as communication. And we’re going to do it knowing that two-thirds of the original technology we used forty years ago was thrown out as obsolete while most of us were still in grade school.

“All right, everyone,” Bruce sighed, “think of this as the biggest retro-gaming project of your lives. If you can build a MAME arcade cabinet, we can do this. Let’s get started.”

Crates were opened.

Plastic was tossed away.

Things were plugged into wall sockets.

One of the old Pathfinder hands paused when his cel phone rang. He shrugged at Bruce, who gave him an exasperated look little different from his usual look, and took the call. “Hello, sweetheart,” he said. “Grampa’s a bit busy right now.”

The phone’s speaker buzzed in the old man’s ear.

“No, I’m going to have to miss your party,” he said regretfully. “NASA called me in to help them work on something that’ll help that poor man on Mars.”

Excited buzzing.

“Yes, and his cute friends too.”

More excited buzzing.

“Well, I don’t know about that, darling. We don’t even know if Orange Leader speaks our language.”

Buzz, buzz.

“I’m not surprised. Tall Boy is the biggest, and Jimmy always had a love of anything big.”

Buzz, buzz, buzz.

“Honey, there are a lot of people here with me who are going to do their absolute best for all of them. But they’re kind of waiting on me, so-“

Buzz, buzz!

“Well, I haven’t really thought about it,” he said. “I figured I’d wait until we could talk with the astronaut and maybe get better pictures.”

Buzz, buzz.

“Don’t listen to him. For all we know they could be puppy dog aliens. Or kitty aliens too. What does he think they are?”

Buzz.

“Well, it’s possible. Why does he say that?”

Derisive buzz.

“Kitties are not girly. And ponies are not manly. You can like whatever you like, and don’t let Jimmy tell you any different. Now you tell him to behave, and once my job is done here we’ll all go up to the mountains before the ski season ends.”

Buzz buzz!

“Love you too. Bye-bye.”

He put the phone away. “Sorry,” he said.

“Can we get on now?” one of the other engineers said tonelessly.

“Not helpful, Tim,” said Bruce. “Roger, we all understand, but please turn off the phone for now?”

The work of reviving Project Pathfinder resumed.