AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 203
ARES III SOL 202
“Here. Dig here.”
Mark shrugged and stuck the well-worn sample shovel into the dirt about three feet away from one of the cherry saplings, directly under Cherry Berry’s hoof.
All that could be done for the food crops had been done, which is why Mark and Cherry could spend an hour tending to the saplings, which had escaped the worst aside from losing leaves during the brief blowout. Despite their best efforts, three-quarters of the plants pulled out of the sinkholes and transplanted were dying. A number of the alfalfa plants in the areas that hadn’t actually subsided were also sick, leaves yellowing noticeably despite the best encouragement Cherry Berry could give. Even some of the potato plants had begun to sicken, though those were responding better to transplantation away from the areas where veins of sticky black goo had crawled up the root systems.
The bad bacteria were a problem that had no easy solution. Starlight Glimmer made it clear that she had nothing- no spell at all- that could tell the difference between beneficial and harmful bacteria. She couldn’t pick them out the same way she picked out grains of perchlorate or salt. Yes, she could kill them, in theory, but she could only do that by killing absolutely everything in that zone of soil- good bacteria, bad bacteria, plants, the lot.
And in practice she refused, because most of the spells that could do that were the blackest of dark magic- cheaply cast spells that, the more you cast them, the more they wanted to be cast. Somehow, despite her obsessions, Starlight had managed to avoid casting dark magic during her (ahem) Bad Old Days Which Are Now Over, and she certainly wasn’t going to begin using the stuff now. So no, directly attacking the problem with magic was out.
There weren’t many other ways of addressing it, either. According to Mark, the best solution on Earth would be to change crops to something that would grow in anaerobic (whatever that meant) soils. Failing that, you drained and drained and drained the land and aereated it thoroughly- turning the soil as deep as you could go. Unfortunately you really couldn’t do that and grow things at the same time. And while Cherry Berry’s natural earth pony magic helped a little, growing things wasn’t her special talent, so a little was all it helped.
Aside from the ongoing problem with the sticky black goo, the problems with the cave appeared to be stabilizing. The subsidence seemed to have, well, subsided. And the well, which had been dug down in the back of the chamber until the shovels started striking chunks of crystal and still-thawing permafrost, had stopped seeping water.
Of course, part of that was because the cave was still getting colder. Two days before Mark had set up a cup midway down the row of trees, half full of water, as a temperature test to see how the cave was doing overnight. This morning there had been a thin film of ice on the surface. The Artie Gee just wasn’t keeping up with the sheer dimensions of the cave and the eternally cold rock of the planet that surrounded it.
As a last desperation move they’d asked Equestria to begin heating the air coming through the life support system. That was bad for the crops long-term, because it would dehydrate and stress the plants. But, as Mark pointed out, you had to get through the short term to reach the long term, so Equestria did what it could.
The problem was, the air intakes for all the life support systems in the combined space programs of Equus were housed in a single building, the air coming through at room temperature. For months that had been all right, because it had been spring and then summer back home. But now autumn was more than half over, and Winter Ramp-Up and Hearth’s Warming were not far off, and with them snow and bitter cold in the Baltimare area.
And the best Equestria could do was put a lot of space heaters right next to the air intake for Amicitas and, well, hope for the best. The alternative- moving the intakes somewhere where the air could be heated to useful temperatures- would require building such a facility and then shutting down life support entirely while the Equestrian end of the system was physically moved. Nobody liked that idea.
Ironically, the seasons were moving in the opposite direction on Mars. Acidalia Planitia was midway through its (supposed) spring. The Martian days were now longer than the nights. Each sol the cave got a little more lighting and heating. Come Martian summer, the temperatures would rise from the -30 to -100 range they'd experienced during the first crash to occasional days when the peak temperature might just get into positive digits. But despite all of that, here and now they were still losing the heat battle to an entire frozen planet.
And the plants could sense it.
“Mark,” Cherry Berry said as Mark was digging for the rot-infested root Cherry had sensed, “the plants are sleepy.”
Mark stopped digging. “Sleepy?” he asked. “Sleepy how?”
Cherry put a hoof on the sapling. “This one thinks winter is coming,” she said.
“Great,” Mark said. “So cherry trees are loyal to House Stark.”
Cherry Berry often couldn’t tell if the confusing things Mark said were due to her struggles with English or his bizarre jokes. “The tree is going to sleep soon,” Cherry insisted. “Leaves go brown. Have to run past them to make them fall off.”
Mark looked even more confused. “Excuse me?” he asked. “Make leaves fall off? Leaves fall off by themselves in the fall. That’s why we call it ‘fall’.”
“In Pony-land they don’t,” Cherry said. “We have Run the Leaves. Earth ponies run through trees, through forests, make all leaves fall in the same day. Keeps trees healthy for winter.”
“Uh huh,” Mark said, returning to his digging. After a couple of shovelfuls of dirt he said, “You know we need at least one more good harvest of hay to make it to Sol 551,” he said. “Preferably more.”
“Yes.”
“You know this next harvest isn’t going to be good at all.” Shovel, dump. “In fact, we might need to use most of the harvest to make cuttings and transplant those. We don’t have seed to replace the lost plants, and the conditions suck for starting new seed now anyway.”
“I know all that.” At least, Cherry knew all she understood of what Mark said.
“Which means we can’t afford to have a winter right now.” Mark struck the root, scraped away a bit of black sludge that had crawled its way through the soil to attack the sapling, and chopped away the affected root with the edge of the shovel. “We’re going to have to re-bury the pipes,” he said.
“Yes,” Cherry agreed.
“And let the water run free again.”
“Yes.”
“Which will make the anaerobic bacteria- the black shit here- very happy,” Mark finished.
“I know,” Cherry Berry said. “But it smells like our new compost. Won’t it like that too?”
Mark leaned on his shovel, having spread the gunk-contaminated soil on the surface to dry and air out, killing the bad bacteria. “We’re in deep shit,” he said.
Cherry didn’t respond to that. For one thing, she’d avoided that word ever since Starlight had explained it was equivalent to one of the most crude and primitive expressions in Equestrian. For another, she’d spent far too much of her life deep in… horseapples… and was trying to reduce the remaining part of her life where that would be the case.
The problem was finding a way of doing that without reducing her remaining life, period.
“So, given that we are in deep shit,” Mark said, shoveling healthy, dry dirt into the hole made by the root amputation, “why are we spending time tending trees which we’re going to have to kill years before they bear the first bit of fruit?”
Cherry Berry couldn’t speak. Words just failed her. In fact, her eyesight began to fail too, or at least Mark was looking all blurry all of a sudden.
“Oh,” Mark said. “Yeah, I forgot.” He leaned forward and put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get back to work. Where’s the next tree that needs help?”
It took a shove, but Mark got Cherry Berry back to work. She blinked the tears away and began walking around the next sapling in the row. This one felt a little sleepy too, but it didn’t have any root rot.
Neither Mark nor Cherry Berry spoke of the little moment again.
Could Starlight shove oxygen into the soil and suffocate the anaerobic microbes with it?
8885196
You have to admit, though... it's not a fun surprise to find out that your lunch just got a lot more expensive than you figured when ordering because the tax is a much higher rate than you thought
Poor Cherry Berry.
Not a biologist at all, But wouldn't oxygenating the water be a step in the direction of a solution here?
How could you forget? She's cuter than a basket of kittens, and right there Mark. Cherry wants cherries. Cherry gets cherries. She gets stranded in tartarus. Tartarus becomes cherry orchard as far as the eye can see.
8885231 The problem is that wet soil has no place for air to go, and the amount of oxygen you can dissolve into water isn't going to kill a fraction of the anaerobic bacteria that air would.
Looking at the positive side of things: Cherry finally gets a chance to make some some cherry leaf tea! I wonder what she will think of that.
Personally i hate the stuff, but i don't have a cherry for a cutie mark.
this probably would be about as draining as sealing the cave and take all of there remaining magic but... couldn't starlight re-purpose the bacteria like twilight did the vampire fruitbats and parasprites?
Huh. I'm surprised they didn't have even basic climate control on the life support, or at least drew from air inside the building. They really just stuck an intake out a window and called it a day, even if that meant sometimes when it was winter and night in Baltimare all the astronauts would be being sent sub-freezing air? Am I misunderstanding something about how the seasons are important for the feed?
Poor Cherry...
And, I mean, all of them, in this situation, but particularly her right there.
8885220
You'd run into the same issue as before. The oxygen has to come from somewhere, and whatever's in the way has to go somewhere. Plus, it takes prolonged oxygen exposure to kill the anaerobic bacteria, probably longer than Starlight can manage.
Could Mark use the soil in the Hab that has only good bacteria in it to transplant? Like, transfer the plants to the hab for a while, get starlight to kill everything in the cave and sterelize it, then dump some bucketloads of fresh soil with only good bacteria on it. The good bacteria would breed and they would not have to worrya bout the bad ones.
I know this might be a really bad idea in many ways. But since they might want to nuke the ground bacteria and not use black magic while doing it there is, theoretically, ANOTHER option which is available.
The Death Box, i am not sure what kind of radiation it uses but could it not be used to irradiate the soil and kill all bacteria, this would leave a barren soil which could be re-planted with the good bacteria and then re-planted with the crops to a clean soil.
I am quite sure this is not feasible thing to do and there must be a lot of reasons for it. But many products are sterilized with gamma radiation. And the thing is already in the cave, not sure what kind of radiation it uses and what its effects would be.
8885265
The spacecraft themselves have heating systems. No need to pre-heat the air.
Just send it as cold as reasonable, and have everyone select his own climate. I am sure dragons, changelings and ponies disagree on what temperature to set the heating system.
8885273
First reason that comes to mind is that it would involve cracking one of the iridium pellets. And the person doing so is not liable to survive the experience and resealing would basically be impossible.
8885278
Maybe, i do not know how those things are sealed. Could be they have some options to unseal them without cracking them open, and could be the Death Box has some remote functions which would be used in this manner.
And as the danger part comes do remember there is magic in Mars. Remote manipulation might not be impossible, teleportation IS an option and whatever shenanigans people choose to use can be done. I mean theoretically since you can take away empty space it would only make sense that you could PUT an empty space in the shielding of the Death Box for a while no?
8885258
That's probably doable, but it would take A LOT of magic, I'd think.
Re-purposing the bacteria would be immensely harder without Fluttershy. Plus, bacteria are only there to eat, breed and... huh. Just eat and breed. The fruit-bats had far more complexity, which made it easier to change their "minds". Bacteria seem pretty single minded.
8885296
yes but all starlight really needs to do is change the target of there appetite, which twilight was able to do with the parasprites by accident.
8885298
They're bacteria. They don't really have a conscious mind to change. And neither can they truly eat anything other then what they are already eating.
8885278
Except that the rtg uses relatively harmless plutonium. Unless they eat it they will be fine.
8885277
Ahh, yes, good point! Thanks.
8885273
Another idea would be to just expose it to vacuum.
Damn, that must've hurt like a motherfucker. Poor Cherry
But I'm calling it now (as someone must've done before), those trees will still save them. And somehow the cave will persist.
8885334
Harmless? The entire reason it's used it because it's so radioactive it gets hot enough to cook eggs.
To directly quote the book:
We fight, because we can, for those who cannot.
8885350
Plutonium-238 only emits Alpha radiation.
I am sure Annie and dr Shields want the radioactive stuff away from the crew and flagged for PR and psychological reasons. Not because its dangerous.
Mark can be a clown sometimes.
In the end, it might be better to murder the whole cave and start from scratch.
Now that the integrity of the cave is no longer in question, and insulation is less of a concern, they can plant basically the entire cave without risking a blowout. That would also give them more magic, faster, since the living population would be much larger.
8885350
Pu-238 is indeed very radioactive and dangerous.
In fact, you will die in just a few decades!
That is, if you don't have a sheet of paper to protect yourself with.
Dude, it's alpha-emitter (not to be confused with alfalfa-emitter wich would be even more useful) and it won't harm you unless you - yes - literally eat it.
Explanation:
It doesn't poison air or water. Well, it slightly does, but so little that, in fact, it could be put directly in a bucket of water and you will be safe sitting on said bucket.
Trust me, I live in the city near which (I will be simplyfing) a lot of uranium was produced, enriched and then blown up to create mining cites in 1969-1987.
It's Russia, we're crazy like that. Yeah. Mining is slow, let's throw a flipping a-bomb into that hole and se what happens.
So.
In school, every year they instructed us in how to handle radiation dangers, just in case some curious kid would sneak up on some dumping cite and find some inactivated (don't know the correct term in English but it means in Russian "used to be radioactive") waste to show his friends.
The correct answer is: do not touch, if touched, throw far away, infrom the police and then immediately go to the shower.
It's not because you have something dangerous OUTSIDE of your body that might kill you.
It's because you might unconsciously lick your finger or pick your nose and get it INSIDE your system.
Then it really does become dangerous because both uranium and plutonium would infuse into your bones.
And then decades become days.
PS: Fun fact, when the meteor hit the city in 2013 some of us thought that the mining was continued.
PPS: Yeah. Meteorites from above, radiation from below, minus 12 degrees outside right now. I could as well be on Mars.
PPPS: I know Uranium and Plutonium are different but they are both alpha-emitters.
8885406
Only assuming they have enough material to replant the entire cave, and enough preserved food to last until the entirely new harvest is ready.
Plus, you want to kill Cherry's trees? You monster
That said, it's perfectly understandable why Starlight doesn't want to use dark magic, but it could be interesting to see what happens if she finds she has to use dark magic.
8885398
8885425
Yes yes I get it, I was wrong, I can admit as much.
Does mean that unless changelings are hilariously vulnerable to radiation for some reason Dragonfly is sure is overreacting.
8885406
There's nowhere to re-plant the cherry trees.
You soulless bastard.
i.imgur.com/nHvmldp.png
8885446
So much for cockroaches surviving the nuclear apocalypse, I guess.
Oh, don't look at me like that. They're bugs.
Have "Starship Troopers" taught you guys nothing?
sensesofcinema.com/assets/uploads/2017/05/cteq-verhoeven-starship-troopers-750x400.jpg
I really hope Cherry Berry gets at least one harvest from those trees. Just so she can enjoy a few.
So when the MAV lifts off, will Cherry Berry have a small cherry sapling in a sealed environment container to take with her?
(You know, I *so* want to write that scene)
8885346
That would also kill the bacteria they need.
8885446
I for one appreciate that you quote your source and do some research, And admit it when your wrong.
No harm done.
My hypothesis is that Dragonfly isn't sensing surface thought of stuff, but projecting her own opinion, that came after Marks stern warnings about it.
8885479
Alternatively she's hearing the barking but not seeing the source is a tiny defanged chihuahua :V
I’m rooting for at least one tree to bear fruit before they leave.
8885346
8885470
Problem with this is that bacteria like that are very VERY durable, specially when they are entombed within mounds of dirt. I am unsure if vacuum would kill sufficient amount of them, then again same goes for the Death Box option i suppose.
Well done, Mark. You basically told Cherry that the best way she could help the crew survive is by killing her dog.
The Ultimate Solution for Life in Cave Problem may be achieved via same summoning spell: just use it on cytosine --- it's barely any more complicated molecule than perchlorates and even the most tough bacterial spores can't survive without DNA.
Also is water supply crystal reversible? If so, then Equestrian side may alter between pumping water in and sucking it out, and on cave side they would only additionally need a big bucket (Starlight can probably weld one from sheet metal if they don't have large enough). They get no spillage advantage plus significant fraction of old system's heat input.
Another question: can Starlight enchant pairs of teleportation crystals? That could make bucket work a bit easier: leave one outside, dump other in well (plus If crystals are not reversible, then it would be pretty interesting violation of thermodynamics that may be abused for free energy for heating)
8885467
I'm also hoping for at least one cherry harvest before they have to abandon the cave, mostly for the hard work Cherry put into it ... and maybe cause several botanists back on Earth brain aneurysms
Why not just pull the water out of the deep parts?
8885425
Is "depleted" the word you want?
8885258
Maybe, maybe not. You saw how it went with Twilight.
The current situation with Starlight being wrecked was because they went in without a plan.
When they do come up with a solution, they'll need to take a little while to talk this one out, and not emergency-rush it through. Otherwise they're in danger of a cave blowout again.
To be honest, this is something that we would hope the resources of the two combined planets can come up with, because the Martians are fully diverted to saving the farm and can't spare the mental energy to come up with something brilliant. Possible exception being Starlight, who has nothing else to do except be brilliant while she can't do anything physical.
I feel like there's probably something that Equestria and Earth could share to Starlight, and that's all of Earth's chemistry, biology, maths and physics. Earth seems to be a long way further forwards in these fields than Equestria, but Earth knows nothing of magic or what Starlight is capable of. But give her the keys to the universe and show her the door and I bet she can do something amazing.
Let's also not forget Dragonfly, Cherry, Spitfire and Fireball all also have native Equestrian magic and abilities that, combined with Earth science know-how, may do amazing things.
We have seen Twilight transmute inanimate objects into living things, and we have seen Starlight transmute one object into another.
Can Starlight conjure food? Would it be edible? Would it provide sustenance?
Can Starlight transmute books, or bits of metal, or even rocks found on the ground, into something edible?
Can they make something like Soylent, by creating the base chemicals through transmutation, and using chemistry to make the complex ones?
"From Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(meal_replacement))
In January, 2013, software engineer Rob Rhinehart purchased 35 ingredients, most in raw chemical form, which he had concluded based on reading nutritional biochemistry textbooks and U.S. government web sites were every substance that the body needs to survive. Rhinehart, working at a start-up, had come to view food as a time-consuming hassle, and resolved to treat food as an engineering problem. The ingredients included potassium gluconate to get potassium (since pure potassium is too highly reactive to consume), calcium carbonate for calcium, monosodium phosphate for phosphorus, oligosaccharides such as maltodextrin for carbohydrates, and olive oil for fatty acids. With some trepidation, he poured the chemicals into a blender, added water, and drank the mixture. It tasted sweet, like cake mix.
Consuming nothing but Soylent for the next 30 days and measuring his results, Rhinehart claims that his energy levels skyrocketed, his skin improved, prolonged mental concentration was less fatiguing, and he was able to run farther than he ever had before. He adjusted proportions to counter problems such as a racing heart and an iron deficiency. Previously, Rhinehart had spent about two hours a day making food, eating food, and cleaning up afterward. He got Soylent preparation time down to 5 minutes in the evening, plus a few seconds to drink each "meal" the next day.
Over the next two months, Rhinehart lived mostly on Soylent, identifying and correcting further problems, and continued to refine the formula. One change was to use oat powder instead of maltodextrin: the original formula had no fiber. His monthly food bill fell from about US$470 to US$50, and Soylent gave him full visibility and control over his nutrition, enabling him to fine-tune his intake of any nutrient at will."
I don't know. I just feel like...if you can transmute one object into another, there can be a way to transmute something less useful into something more useful. I don't understand enough of chemistry or biology to know what is possible or what is needed.
But somebody on Earth would, and if they can communicate that to somebody who knows how to transmute, then there could be a solution to their food problem sitting in the hab right now nursing a headache.
Hey wait a minute, Twilight knows a spell to change people into other creatures for example breezies. Could Starlight transform everyone into something with more reasonable life support requirements?
8885442
8885450
There should be other options besides Dark Magic. It should be "relatively" simple to bring the inside of the cave up to over 100oC, at which point the bacteria all dies and they start over from scratch.
As for whether they have the supplies, right now they have enough alfalfa to get them as far as Sol 360, and enough potatoes to last Mark until Sol 680. Which means that they're actually pretty safe at this point.
And if they can plant the entire cave, I'm sure they'll have enough magic to...persuade the newly-planted cherry trees to hurry up and bear fruit.
8885703 Permafrost, I'm assuming. If starlight can't control how much water is sucked up, then trying to suck up all that water and permafrost would probably kill her.
8885469
I think a lot of us would like you to write it too. Or even write a spinoff of 500 hundred years in the future. Earth hasn't contacted Equestria for generations due to political turmoil and Equestrian dimensionauts visit Mars searching for viable cherry seeds to re-seed a ravaged Equestria bereft of cherries due to a terrible cherry blight.
8885862
I sort of meant just suck the water from the sludge. The permafrost can be left till later (that which hasn't already been turned into clathrates).