Sol 276
MISSION LOG – SOL 276
Hay harvest today at the cave. More than last time, but quite a long way short of previous cuttings. We just finished weighing the harvest, and it comes up to 372 kilograms. That, with only a little more supplementing with potatoes is enough alfalfa when added to the reserves on hand to get us to Schiaparelli and to launch day.
Of course we’re not going to ignore the plants after this. Fresh food (even if we’re all damn well sick and tired of the taste of potatoes and alfalfa) is always better than old. And plant life helps charge the pony magic batteries. So we’ll keep growing, and keep harvesting, until the cave and Hab farms play out or until it’s time to leave. But from now on it’s surplus. From now on we have enough food to last until we leave this rock, plus seven days in space. After that… well, if we can’t figure out a way to meet up with Hermes in seven whole days, there’s no point.
Aside from harvest activities, which took about an hour and a half- we’ve got really good at putting hay in sample bins- it’s been an ordinary day. To give you some idea of what the routine is right now, with our strictly limited EVAs, here’s the daily schedule, more or less.
0600, or local dawn – Wake up, clean up as well as we can without soap, eat breakfast (in my case, five potatoes).
0800 – Hab internal routine. The ponies water the Hab potato plants using their suits, while I do maintenance on one machine or another. Meanwhile we keep an eye on the Pathfinder chat in case NASA has something urgent to tell us, like the location of Earth and Mars in relation to one another or the many uses of hematite.
0900 – Prepare for EVA to cave farm.
1000 – Arrive at cave farm, hug Dragonfly’s cocoon, turn on the Pastel Machine for a few minutes so Dragonfly gets her daily allowance of rainbows and lollipops, do farmy things. End with a chapter from Lord of the Rings, read aloud in turns as English practice.
1200 – Leave cave, return to Hab. Others go inside first; since I have more durable suits and spares if necessary, I stay out a bit longer to sweep off the solar farm and do the other little chores that need doing outside.
1300 – Lunch. Four potatoes for me plus some alfalfa tea. (Though Cherry recently picked some leaves off the cherry saplings and tried making cherry tea; it’s surprisingly good, especially compared to the taste of boiled hay.)
1430 – Book work time. Starlight works the others over on their English for an hour, while I work on reports to be eventually sent to NASA on things like the farm, geology experiments, etc.
1530 – TV time. Shitty sitcoms and laughable action from the 1970s.
1800 – Dinner. For me, five more potatoes, whether I want them or not. (Hint: I don’t. All seasonings and condiments are exhausted now except magically harvested salt.)
1900 – D&D time. Starlight is working on her own campaign so she can take over as DM, but in the meantime I’m allowing Slash Magnus, Pickflower, Daub Cake and Schmaug to finish their campaign. Tonight’s probably the final session of that, since yesterday they faced the lich king. All thoughts of parley, feelings, negotiation went right out the window when Lichy disenchanted the gazebo, killing it dead instantly. After that it was a no holds barred curb stomp. Ponies are scary as all fuck when they’re mad, doubly so when the dice are all going their way. The battle ended with a dwarven hammer applied directly to the phylactery along with the warcry, “THIS ONE’S FOR MISTER DARCY!”
(Don’t ask me how the gazebo got named Mister Darcy. I haven’t got a clue, and I was there when it happened.)
Between 2300 and 2438/0000 – Bed.
That’s our routine, or our rut, depending. Hopefully we get to break it soon. D-day for the second attempt to get Dragonfly out of the cocoon is officially Sol 284- eight sols from now.
Let’s hope it works. I got the Rover 1 radio shack conversion finished two sols ago, but I can’t go any farther on the Whinnybago without help from Starlight and/or the bug. And although we still have plenty of time- we’re scheduled to roll out on Sol 451, which is still half an Earth year off- we don’t have as much time as we used to.
And time has never been our friend on Mars.
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Nothing but salt? Now that's a horrible way to eat spuds.
Mr. Darcy! Noooooooooo!
At least he was swiftly avenged.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jane Austen reference in a fanfic is in need of a comment in the form starting with “It is a truth universally acknowledged...”
But seriously, did NASA slip a copy of Pride and Prejudice into the English lessons curriculum?
Rest in peace Mister Darcy. You were, and always will be, best gazebo.
O had one hell of a week in Vancouver And these chapters helped make it worth while
#RememberMrDarcy!
Question:
Now that their calorie needs for the duration of their remaining Sols have clearly been met, can they now plant the peas and beans that were mentioned in the book (page 14), or did they already eat them (or, did they perish in the Hab breach; probably depended on where they were stored)?
Mark chose to plant the potatoes because they yielded the most calories, but now that those needs have been met, starting a small crop of beans and peas would, at a minimum, provide a nice variety to their meals.
That is the best use of disenchant i have ever seen XD
8982377 The peas and beans had been cooked and thus weren't viable.
Huh. I never made that connection before.
Anyway, I've been reading Peter Is The Wolf for years now. ^^
8982392
Second best here, though I guess the situation our group ran into was somewhat similar?
A crazy alchemist managed to create an item that switched souls between two bodies. So of course we ran into a rampaging adult blue dragon.... that moo'ed at us. Needless to say some freshly pulled grass, a few animal handling checks, and we found ourselves an epic pack bovine.
Fast forward to later that day, with a brand new supply of wood for our damaged ship courtesy of our new pack dragon. Our druid decides to try a dispel just for funnies. Natural 20.
We now have a dead dragon to strip for scales, food, parts, ect.
It's just too bad that we ran into a rather murderous cow the next day, trying to regain it's body and exact revenge on the alchemist that 'cursed' him.
I'm looking forward to Dragonfly coming out of her cocoon. I suppose that's what "getting back to plot" is going to be.
It's always been my head-canon that ponies are just like Hobbits. They're really nice people, but dear god do not make them mad or make the mistake of thinking they're wimps.
"...ease and peace had left this people still curiously tough. They were, if it came to it, difficult to daunt or to kill; and they were, perhaps, so unwearingly fond of good things not least because they could, when put to it, do without them, and could survive rough handling by grief, foe, or weather in a way that astonished those who did not know them well and looked no further than their bellies and their well-fed faces. Though slow to quarrel, and for sport killing nothing that lived, they were doughty at bay, and at need could still handle arms."
I wonder if Mark might make the comparison at some point.
Filler chapters are going away? But that was such a great way of getting readers to associate with a man on a potato diet!
I still think there may be something to chrysalis stick idea.
8982683
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gQmCywiQbyrvJGOn6f_IFdRH2aToL1IS/view?usp=drivesdk
But with Glimglam's luck she should've shot herself in the face with a fireball at least once.
8982412
I’ve never been convinced that the potatoes were viable, either (see previous
postrant).Trouble is with falling into a timed day is that each day looking just like the one before and after, you rapidly lose count of how many days have passed, especially when a deadline approaches, which is never used properly.
A deadline was a string placed along the ground a distance away from the prison camp fence, so that anyone attempting to approach the fence had clear warning at which point they really should be shoot to killed beyond. A second line should really be placed before the deadline as a warning that continue and you will be dead.
Sort of like people treat the deadline as a suggestion rather than an event horizon. Doing that gets people blase about machinery warning symbols then they complain about surviving getting their arm ripped off by an industrial robot or swallowed by a processor.
Could they attempt to make soap from the extra bit of food? How bad would a fire be in the near Earth atmo of the farm given that they have so much extra water plenty of venting and space deeper into the cave where they are not planting food for clearance to make ash from extra cuttings of plants?
Mind this is just a wild guess with half remembered idea of how old soap was made. I would have to look up how soap can be made for a better plan on hygiene and moral.
8982538
Likewise. And now I need to continue reading that.
...except for the touch of prussic acid...
Cherry leaves contain cyanogenic glycosides. Not enough to kill in small quantities, but enough that they'd all be feeling rather ill.
8982829
I have done logistic work on subs (Never worked on one I am not crazy enough to lock myself in a tin can for months) and fresh food goes like the clappers, whenever a sub NEEDS to resupply they have a shitload of condiments left over and literally nothing else, crews will also pick up food in quite imaginative ways, they can be very clever and motivated when all they have to eat is chicken tikka masala rations.
it is time to beat Dragonfly out of that cocoon before some one dies to a suit falling.
Noooo, not Mr. Darcy! You killed him, you bastard! How could you?!
I enjoyed the reminder that for all their focus on peace and redemption (which I approve of), the Equestrians are not to be trifled with. XD
If Mark doesn't name his character for Starlight's campaign Elizabeth Bennet, I will be sorely disappointed.
8982801
The only reason she didn't yet, is because for unicorns, Fireballs come OUT of their face :P
8982951
The cyanide would boil away. If properly prepared that should not really be a problem.
Also, these are equestrian cherrie plants.
#adds cyanide to list of available chemicals
8982951
How you explain then japanese cherry leaf tea :P
Also cherry leaves in tincture are used as medicine.
Nearly all plants contain something toxic. Popatoes do, tomatoes have quie nasty toxin in berries
8982683
I like that comparison! I've always hated that we didn't get "The Cleansing of the Shire" in the movies. Them getting back to the Shire, seeing what Saruman had done, and basically going "oh HELL no!" and mopping up Saruman and his goons was just glorious in the book!
Ooh! Mister Darcy!
Remarks and corrections:
> I can’t go any farther on the Whinnybago
Should be "further"; "farther" is only used when talking about physical distance.
Very good chapter. Unexpected D&D run and result.
Greatly done comedic short story
That why the Yeti died in Canon. The moment he enslaved & killed he was to be disposed off.
Rather fitting to see how peaceful comes to be.
Since one needed to be capable of great harmful to not be harmless instead of peaceful.