The Maretian

by Kris Overstreet

Sol 514

TRANSCRIPT – VIDEO TRANSMISSION FROM ARES IV MAV, BEGINNING 16:11 HOURS (ARES III CLOCK)

MARK WATNEY: Hello, Johanssen. Sorry we’re getting a late start today, but Starlight and I tackled the first stage engine removal today. It was a lot of hard work, mostly because we had to remove one of the outer ring of engines to make room to get at the middle one. And we got just a little bit nervous lifting up the ascent stages, because it would really have sucked if the launch program triggered while I was under the thing. But it didn’t, and it’s back on the landing stage, all nice and secure again. Tomorrow we go in and install the booster targets where the central engine was. More hard work, and expensive on magic, but once those tasks are done the worst is over.

Anyway, I hope you don’t mind my eating lunch between questions. We all worked through normal lunchtime. As you can see, my lunch is a beef Stroganoff entrée and three potatoes. I dip the potatoes into the beef pack before I eat them. That way I feel like murder only a little bit.

BETH JOHANSSEN: Good morning, Mark. It’s morning shift on Hermes right now. Fortunately, our scheduled flyby and rendezvous on Sol 551 will also be in the morning, so we don’t have to change sleep shifts. We’ll be ready and alert when the time comes.

Okay. Here’s the first question. Um. Mark, remember, I didn’t write these, okay? The question is, “How do you feel about being the only human on the face of Mars for so long?”

WATNEY: Wow. Start with the big ones first, huh? Well, not a sol goes by that I don’t miss you guys, all of you on Hermes. But at the same time, well, I’ve got my new friends. And maybe they’re not human, but they’re still people. So it’s not like I’m absolutely alone. God, if I had been I might really have gone nuts. Maybe paint a face on Rover 2 and call it Wilson or something.

Anyway, next question?

JOHANSSEN: “We’ve been reading your logs. You seem to tell a lot of jokes. Where do you come up with them?”

WATNEY: Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret. I met some other aliens. They’re gray and tall and skinny, with heads like those Easter Island statues. About once a month they give me some lame jokes, and I let them pet the ponies for an hour.

Now obviously that’s not true. The truth is, that sort of thing just pops into my head sometimes, especially when I’m angry or stressed out. And I get really angry at this place sometimes.

DRAGONFLY: It’s true, he does!

WATNEY: Hey! Wait your own turn! Haven’t you got some snuggle seconds to go eat?

DRAGONFLY: Seriously, if he could blast Mars into a million pieces, he would.

WATNEY: Go on, move it! Yeah, anyway. Making bad jokes makes me feel better, like this fucked-up situation is somehow under control.

Oops. I promised NASA I’d try to watch the language. This effed up situation.

JOHANSSEN: Next question. I promise, Mark, I didn’t make these. “What’s with the potty mouth?”

WATNEY: Now that one has Venkat Kapoor written all over it. Well, I’ll tell you. When I wrote the early log entries, I really expected to die here. NASA believes that astronauts should be perfect, morally upstanding examples to the world, right down to not knowing a single swear word. Well, the truth is, astronauts swear just as much as anyone else, or as little. Martinez swears as much as I do, and he’s a good Catholic boy. And I’ve caught Lewis a time or two letting one slip. But you and Vogel never cuss at all.

But back to my point, spending months expecting to die kind of put NASA rules about clean language in perspective. Bad language makes me feel better, so I use it. And if some sensitive soul is upset because I said a dirty word, well, fuck ‘em. They get a vote once they’ve spent some time marooned on another planet.

All that said, I really am trying to do a little better. NASA is going to a lot of trouble to bring me home, and the least I can do is not add to that trouble. But it’s a hard habit to break, especially since I’m still millions of miles from anyone else who cares. See, I could have said, “who gives a shit,” but I didn’t! I’m getting better! Next question.

JOHANSSEN: Um, okay. Next question… “what have you got against potatoes?”

WATNEY: What have I got against them? Nothing! Potatoes are easy to grow, adapt to a broad range of environments, and provide high calorie content plus a respectable nutrient and protein load if you leave the skins on. They’re not nature’s perfect food, but they’re pretty good, especially in a desperate struggle for survival.

And before this trip I used to like potatoes. Baked, fries, hash browns, fritters- I even tried latkes a couple times. They were pretty good. But when you eat one thing, ANY one thing, the exact same one thing, over and over again for a year, you’re going to get really tired of that one thing. And as you might tell by the faces I’ve been making as I eat, I am absolutely done with microwave baked potatoes. Maybe I’ll change my mind after I spend some time eating other foods. Seventy or eighty years ought to do it. Next?

JOHANSSEN: Next one: “What’s it like, being humanity’s sole representative to our first alien visitors?”

WATNEY: If you want to be honest, really messed up. I mean, you’d expect a first contact to be carefully planned, the best of one world seeking out the best of the other and making one small step at a time. What we got instead was a whole series of extremely improbable events that ended with five aliens and one Earthman on Mars. And believe me, nobody, least of all me, would have picked me to represent all humankind to a bunch of shipwrecked aliens.

Early on I was really nervous. I mean, this is the biggest opportunity anyone’s ever had, and if I said the wrong thing, history would say, “And that was Mark Watney, the biggest fuckup humanity ever had the misfortune to spawn.” But it helped when I figured out that the ponies weren’t chosen for this any more than I was. We just focused on surviving and working together without killing each other, and we kicked diplomacy up our chains of command. Next?

JOHANSSEN: “How does it feel to have met, lived with, and worked with, what was previously considered mythical creatures?”

WATNEY: About like this: “Oh those silly ponies and things, how cute they are, HEY THAT ALMOST KILLED US ALL huh that’s interesting MY GOD ARE YOU SUICIDAL oh the diabetes OMFG DID YOU SEE THAT THAT WAS AMAZING!” Yeah, that seems about right.

Seriously, they’re already interdimensional aliens from a culture which is remarkably close to, and yet in some respects radically different from, our own. The fact that they resemble some of our own myths is still kind of small potatoes, pardon the phrase, compared to that.

JOHANSSEN: “What effects have you experienced as a result of being exposed to the ‘magic fields’ the aliens make?”

WATNEY: I could make a joke, but the honest truth is, I have no idea. The ponies say Earth should have its own magic field from all the life there, but we won’t know until we can test it somehow. One thing I know for sure is, NASA doctors and scientists will be examining my body for any interesting changes for years to come. If there’s anything different about me, they’ll find it.

JOHANSSEN: “Is magic still magical to you?”

WATNEY: Hmmm… that one’s actually a good question. I’ve been living around magic since Sol 17, more or less. And I’ve gotten used to the idea that magic is a tool that can be used to make life easier- or, here on Mars, to make it even possible.

But there are still moments- and it’s not always the big moments- when I sit up and think, Holy shit, this is a unicorn holding a wrench with nothing but the power of her mind, things like that. So yeah, it’s still magical to me.

But you know what else is? Growing plants. Think about it. We know how plants do it, and we know the conditions to encourage plant growth, but we can’t actually make plants grow. They do it for themselves. One time we can work our asses off and end up with a barren field, and another time we just have to wave the plow at the dirt and the crops just jump right up.

And as tired as I am of being in space, it’s pretty magical too. It’s unimaginably vast and empty, except for the occasional planet or moon or star. No two planets we’ve discovered in this universe are alike. And the views are just incredible.

So I think you make your own magic. Everything’s a miracle.

JOHANSSEN: Um… again, not me. “Considering the traditional first thing about learning a language, what are the curse/obscene/bad words of the pony language?”

WATNEY: Well, almost every time I try to speak pony I say something horribly obscene by accident. You’d think I’d have a huge vocabulary of pony swear words, but I don’t. As far as I can tell, ponies don’t actually have cursing rougher than “shucks” or “darn” or, in dire circumstances, “roadapples.” What they have is a lot of double-meaning words that can be either innocent or filthy depending on use. Their F-bomb is (unintelligible), which means buck, or a full-body kick that ends with lashing out with the hind hooves. And it also means exactly what you think it means.

JOHANSSEN: “Mark, in the event Hermes has to take the long way back, will your roleplaying games continue? Do you plan to expand them to include the rest of the Hermes crew, and who among the eleven of you would have the most evil gamemaster laugh?”

WATNEY: Um… did a reporter actually write that one? Really? Whatever. If the Sparkle Drive doesn’t work out, maybe we’ll keep playing and maybe we won’t. Out of the Ares crew, Johanssen was the only active gamer. Commander Lewis had slung some dice as a junior officer, and I played in high school and some in college, but we didn’t have time to do any of that while training. And so far as I know, Martinez, Beck and Vogel just aren’t interested.

But I’d pick Vogel for most evil GM laugh, because he’s German. The problem is, I’ve never actually heard him laugh. No one hears Alexander Vogel laugh… and lives…

JOHANSSEN: That’s not true, Mark. Vogel laughs all the time. Just a gentle little chuckle. Next question: “What things were unexpectedly useful on your mission?”

WATNEY: Oh, come on, don’t you want to help build the legend of Vogel, Ares III mad scientist and supervillain? Well, anyway, there’s a huge list of expectedly useful items, like the duck tape, the sample containers, the spare electric cables… but the most unexpectedly useful things were the whiteboards and dry-erase markers. We pretty much destroyed those whiteboards re-using them. Whether using them to work out grammar or make plans for building something or other, they were more useful than anyone could have imagined when NASA included them in Ares standard supplies.

JOHANSSEN: Um… I’m not even sure I should ask this… “who is best alien?”

WATNEY: Shame, whoever wrote that question! I don’t play favorites among my alien buds! I like them all equally!

DRAGONFLY: It’s totally me.

WATNEY: Will you get out of here??

JOHANSSEN: Last question… “We heard that a couple of your crewmates…” um… “…got engaged. Do you have your eye on anyone, in a romantic sense?"

WATNEY: Sorry, everyone, but I was too busy to date for more than a year before launch. And for the dirty-minded among you, there’s nothing going on between me and any of the aliens.

DRAGONFLY: Also true, darn it.

WATNEY: Ugh… anyway, once I get back to Earth, I’m going to be too busy just learning how to be among other humans again for any romance. So sorry, ladies, but I’m off the market for now.

JOHANSSEN: Okay, that’s it. Thanks, Mark, I’ll send the recording immediately. Hermes out.

WATNEY: Thanks, Beth. Friendship out.