//------------------------------// // Sol 97 // Story: The Maretian // by Kris Overstreet //------------------------------// AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 96 ARES III SOL 97 [7:49] JPL: Good morning, Mark and friends. This is Venkat Kapoor. JPL is relaying my messages from Houston. First, regarding the message Dragonfly sent towards the end of our window yesterday: Theodore Sanders, the chief administrator of NASA, asked me to tell you that he understood your message perfectly. For my part, I add: hello to you too, Princess Twilight Sparkle. We hope to meet your subjects in person soon, and yourself as soon as possible. Mark, you’ll find in your email the detailed procedure for attaching a suit antenna to the communications mast, including the modifications required to step down the transmitter power to a safe level. We anticipate this will require a two-hour EVA assuming the electronics are pre-assembled in the Hab. Once that’s done we’d like you to put together a full report on your farming methods. The upgrade to the rover’s communications app should be complete. Please install that and respond once the rover computer is rebooted. If reboot fails, leave a message in the ASCII array around Pathfinder. If we don’t hear from you by rover-chat we’ll have Pathfinder run a panoramic at 10:00 your time. Assuming the upgrade works, please prepare up to six images for transmission to Earth this afternoon, all 200 Kb in size or smaller. For today we want photos of your current farming setup to go with your written report. Our primary concern is to get a firm estimate of how long you can feed yourselves. The earliest we can get any resupply to you is Sol 500. The positions of Earth and Mars and the limitations of our available boosters make earlier resupply absolutely impossible. We would prefer to target a date not earlier than Sol 580 so we can send enough supplies to be worth the launch. Also, right now we have only one booster available, with two more coming on line in another seventy sols. We’ve been planning resupply probes since we first learned you were alive, but we’ve just barely begun the actual assembly. One of the delays has been planning for food and other supplies for your guests. With that in mind, we want to spend the rest of the morning talking with Dragonfly or whichever of your guests is available. Please let us know once you’ve finished installing the software update. [08:09] WATNEY: No small talk? How have you been? Did you sleep well? How’s the wife and kids? My, some weather we’re having, isn’t it? I’ve copied the basics of the procedure you sent to a whiteboard so I can assemble the transformer. I think I can be done before midday; it’s all commonsense stuff, nice and simple. Once this is done and tested I want to give priority to testing to see if you can receive transmissions from the alien ship’s radio. If so, that gives us a parallel or backup communications channel for when Pathfinder is running data dumps or if it breaks down. As I said before, I’m a bit reluctant to give firm numbers, but I’m hoping for harvests every fifty-five to sixty sols. Each harvest in the cave farm should produce, in round numbers, about 300 kilograms of alfalfa (about 100 days of food for the ponies) and/or 1800 average-size potatoes (130 days of food for me). Plans to revive the farm in the Hab and re-seed it would produce 15 kilograms of alfalfa (5 days of food for the ponies) and 720 average-size potatoes (50 days of food for me). The Hab farm would have alfalfa primarily for nitrogen fixation; the soil we’ve cultivated in the Hab is too shallow for alfalfa to develop a healthy root system. The Hab farm won’t be long-term sustainable- not enough soil for rotation. Too soon to know if the larger cave farm can be sustained. I’ll go into more detail in my report. Starting software update and reboot now. I’ll send Dragonfly out to talk to you once I verify that the update is good, and then I’ll get to work on the radio procedure. [8:23] WATNEY: Hello! Dragonfly here! Before we talk, our bosses from home have another message for you. This one isn’t so strange. It was short enough that I can remember it all. “Hello again from (don’t know how to say our home’s name in English). This is Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Being Friends, and Chrysalis, Queen of the Bug-Ponies. Thank you for taking care of our people. We’re sorry we can’t come get them yet, but we’re working on it. Please continue to be their friends. Great things can be done if we work together.” They also want to know how soon you can rescue us. They want to know all the parts. Okay, message delivered. What do you want to know? [8:42] JPL: Hello, Dragonfly. Please thank your bosses for us. We’ll try to set a time aside for direct contact another day. Right now there are two things I want to ask you about today. The first thing I wanted to ask was: how soon can your people come to rescue you? From your message, it doesn’t sound like they’re coming any time soon. [8:55] WATNEY: We don’t know when rescue comes. I will ask Starlight to contact home so I can give more answer. [09:07] JPL: How do you talk with home? Mark says you come from a parallel dimension- a different universe. [09:21] WATNEY: Our air and water comes from home. They are connected by magic. We use a code to turn water on and off and watch the splashes for replies. It’s slow and it makes a mess. We tried many other things but nothing else works. [09:33] JPL: Did you say your air and water comes from your home? Is there a limit to how much air or water you get? [09:59] WATNEY: Each life support system has two crystals in it- one for air and one for water. Magic in the crystal connects them to a larger crystal back home- makes them like one crystal. Water is pumped from a tank; air makes a circle back and forth from the air at home. If air pressure on this end drops too low too fast, or if water runs too long, the crystals back home shut off, must be start again by ponies at home. But: main ship life support is made for always-run water flow as we need it. Danger: if life support magic shut off, our space suits do not work. Can’t get more suits. Starlight has speak with home now. Home builds a big rescue ship now. Twice as big as our ship. Home tests a new engine that can jump from one world to another like how we got here. The first test robot ship did not come back. They also work on a signal a ship can use to find the way back to home. But even if new engine works, home can’t rescue yet because home does not know where we are. They need to know very very good the place or else get wrong world, maybe not get back home again. Until they can find us, can’t rescue. [10:15] JPL: I understand your answer. We did not think it was possible to travel between worlds as you have done before. We understand that doing it safely and on purpose requires a lot of testing. Tell your people that if we can do anything to help, we will. It will be many hundreds of sols (Mars days) before we can send our own rescue ship. We would be very happy if you could rescue Mark sooner. [10:18] WATNEY: We would be happy to save Mark too. We don’t know if we could take him straight to Earth. Space in your world has no magic, so it might be danger to stay in your world too long. Home works on it. [10:30] JPL: I understand. Now for my second question. We want to send more food and other things in case the farm doesn’t work. What kind of food do you eat? Mark mentions alfalfa. Do you have other Earth foods? What can or can’t you eat? Do you eat meat, or only plants? [10:56] WATNEY: I don’t know all the words. Mark tells us all our food is the same as Earth food he knows. But I will do my best. The ponies are Cherry Berry, Starlight Glimmer, and Spitfire. Spitfire says they can eat meat if need to, but most ponies get sick think about it. Much like better plants. Spitfire says also eat milk, eggs, but these are not plants. Fireball is a dragon. Dragons eat almost anything. Can eat meat, but think eat talking people or smart animals is wrong. Can eat some plants, but hay is no good for dragons. Need eat gems, gold at least a little for health. Fireball eats only gems from the cave; cave has gems for very very long time. I am do not know the word, say bug-pony. Bug-ponies do not need food except very very small bit sometimes. Can use food to make goo, pods, other things. We eat power from good emotions, especially love. Also drink water. If you send food, send only for Mark and three ponies. Fireball has much food, and I don’t need food. Also please send meals with not so much bean. Cherry doesn’t complain (had to ask Starlight for the word), but Starlight and Spitfire tired of nothing but bean, bean, bean, bean. Spitfire wants to try meat so long as it tastes different than bean and doesn’t come from any person she knows. (Not a joke. She says that.) But Mark is afraid meat might hurt us or make us angry. [11:08] JPL: You say you eat emotions? [11:19] WATNEY: Yes, I say that. [11:30] JPL: Stay there a little while. I need to talk to someone here. [11:41] WATNEY: OK! [11:46] JPL: Can you feel the emotions you eat? How is everybody feeling? How is Mark feeling in particular? [11:59] WATNEY: It is not good to talk about feelings if you don’t need to. It makes people angry. Angry is not an emotion I can eat. [12:11] JPL: I know, but I am responsible for Mark. I need to know so I can do what I can to make him happy and relaxed and alert. [12:23] WATNEY: Antenna procedure complete. Mark Watney used to be very happy and relaxed and alert, Venkat, but right now I’m a little annoyed with you. What did Dr. Shields say when you asked her about this? [12:35] JPL: I apologize, Mark. Dr. Shields was against it, but I overruled her. We’re all very worried about you. You’ve spent almost three months cut off from all human contact, and that has effects. We need to know if something is wrong so we can try to find ways of improving things. Our resources are limited, but we need to at least know what’s wrong if we’re going to do anything. [12:48] WATNEY: Yeah, I get that. But this is still damn intrusive, and bringing a third party into it crosses a line. I’d be even angrier, but Dragonfly talked me down a bit. By the way, this little chat better not be live to the whole fucking world, understand? Because you and Dr. Shields are one thing, but I don’t want my emotional state in the National Enquirer, and I’m sure the ponies don’t either. [13:00] JPL: I shut the public feed of your chat off during the rover software update. The entire chat with Dragonfly is confidential for now. Anything about your emotional state will remain confidential permanently. You have my word and Teddy Sanders’ word on it. [13:11] WATNEY: Good. I just told Dragonfly she has permission to tell you the truth about me. I’m going to go cool off some more. I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Stand by for Dragonfly. [13:26] WATNEY: Okay. Mark is still really upset. Before he was really happy to talk to you. He likes all of us very much. He thinks we are cute. He looks forward to be rescued. Mark always feels better when he makes things. He likes making plans. He likes it when things work. He likes it less when he has nothing to do. He hates the music disco, but he listens to it because it makes him not think about doing nothing. I typed more things about my crew, but it got too bad so I deleted it. I don’t have permission from the others and they will be angry if I do it. I will talk with Cherry about it before I do it. You are responsible for Mark but she is responsible for us. [13:38] JPL: I understand. Please tell Mark I’m sorry again. I won’t ask again about your friends, but please tell us if you think it’s important. Thank you for your help. Please clear this channel and ask Mark to begin the upload. Kapoor out. [13:49] WATNEY: Okay. Dragonfly out.