AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 370
ARES III SOL 364
Starlight Glimmer poured magical energy in a by now familiar pattern into the fabric of the crystal cube in front of her. Of course, it had been months since she used this particular pattern- not since, come to think of it, shortly before the engine test and its consequences. That had been… five months? Five whole months lost to one emergency after another?
Well, it wasn’t five months absolutely wasted. Dragonfly had been revived and put on a gradual road to recovery. The fifteen jumbo batteries had been made, although they’d been repurposed since. And, of course, there had been other issues as well.
But it was still five months with no increase in their magic generation capacity, and only three months remained until they left the cave. And the nineteen (well, eighteen and a half) batteries they had on hoof might not produce or retain enough magic to last the hundred days between departure and Escape Day. She wanted twenty-seven full batteries, fully charged- almost two tons, one whole cubic meter of mana batteries- for the trip. That meant she needed at least nine more, and then she needed spares on top of those so that last-minute magic usage wouldn’t leave them short when it came time to go.
So here she was; three batteries powering a field projection, three more batteries for her personal use, and six blank batteries with salvaged casings ready to go. In two weeks she’d make six more. Two weeks after that, the final six. Thirty-six batteries- nine (and a half) above the required minimum. Those nine batteries ought to be sufficient power for their last month in Acidalia.
With one last quick surge of power, she completed the enchantment on the second battery of the day. She switched off the battery under her hooves, conserving the residual power, and shifted over to the next battery.
“Excuse me?” Cherry Berry had been standing behind her; Starlight hadn’t noticed. (Well, she had, but she’d assumed it was Dragonfly, who always stayed within a couple of ponylengths of a battery in field-projector mode.) “I didn’t want to interrupt you while you were concentrating, but something weird’s happening with one of your bins of crystals.”
Starlight’s ears picked up. “Really?” she asked. “What kind of weird?”
“Water’s trickling down the sides of it.”
“Yeeeeesss!!” Starlight left the batteries, left the field projector- with three batteries backing it, it could run for over an hour- and galloped over to the trays of cut crystals she’d been using for her rainbow crystal enchantment experiments. Unlike the others, which were trays now filled with the standard randomly-enchanted crystals, the crystals in the bin on the end had a single straight, unchanging blue stripe underlying the rippling colors of the surface. And there, on one facet of the six-sided quartz shafts, the stripe broke through the surface and made a large, deep blue spot.
By design the crystals had been arranged to overlap the edges of the box. And yes, yes, tiny trickles of water were running down those overlapping crystals and down the sides of the tray. “It works! It works!” Starlight cheered, dancing up and down on her hooves with excitement.
“What works?” Cherry Berry asked.
“My enchantment overlay for pumping water back upslope to the top of the farm!” Starlight said. “Look, it’s very simple.” She scooped up one of the crystals in her hoof and held it under Cherry’s nose. “The blue stripe is the enchantment- a conduit that passes water, and only water, and passes it in only one direction. Water comes out the blue dot. If it drips onto a crystal enchanted like this one, it gets sucked up and pushed up the line to the next crystal!”
“Okay,” Cherry nodded. “But it’ll be a lot of work making all of these and planting them in rows-“
“No, no, that’s the genius of it!” Starlight grinned. “This is an overlay on the rainbow crystal enchantment! It self-propagates!” She glanced down at the pile of crystals, with most of the blue dots facing more or less up. “And it self-propagates pointed in the right direction! All I have to do is plant these every so often along each side of the farm area, and the rest of the water lines will build themselves!”
“Okay, that is good,” Cherry agreed. “But you don’t want every crystal to be one of these, or else you’ll end up with constant rain in the cave.”
“That’s easy,” Starlight said. “The rainbow crystals can’t pass their enchantment on to a crystal that already has an enchantment. So all I have to do is enchant a continuous row of crystals along the upper and lower bounds of where I want the water lines to go, and the rainbow enchantment can’t cross the line!”
“I see,” Cherry said. “I guess you had this planned out.”
“Well, yes,” Starlight agreed. “It’s a simpler variation on the enchantment we use for life support. It has to be- overlaying it on top of the rainbow crystal spell weakens it a lot. But with enough crystals, we should be able to recycle water from the cistern up to the airlock- in fact, if the enchantment reaches below the surface, it could tap the subsurface water that drains there from the back of the cave! We establish a magic-powered water cycle that requires no pony intervention!”
“We hope.”
Cherry’s skepticism took some of the wind out of Starlight’s sails. “Well, yes,” she said. “But this is what I can do with the time and resources we have remaining. We don’t have a pump or water lines to do this mechanically. And if we don’t do it, within a month or two of our departure, every plant in the cave will dehydrate and die.”
“I know, I know,” Cherry said. “But… we’re never going to see this in full operation, are we? I mean, long term. We don’t know what will change after we leave.”
“All we can do is give the farm a fighting chance,” Starlight said. “We’ve got light and water handled. We’ll know before long if we’ve got heat. I just wish I could think of something for pollination.” She looked at the crystal a moment longer before setting it back in the tray with its siblings. “Unfortunately, the rainbow enchantment doesn’t work at a size small enough for a quartz chip to levitate itself.”
“I’m not sure I like the idea of tiny bits of flying glass anyway,” Cherry said. “Well, good luck. Let us know how we can help set this up.”
“I will,” Starlight said. “But I need to finish the batteries now, and then I have to make the boosters for the test launch. And then there’s all sorts of other things I need to do.”
“Actually, about that,” Cherry Berry said. “Could you… um, could you make me a set of crystal dice like yours? I’m tired of the way the computer dice program keeps finding ways to dump me in Harry King’s dunny wagon.”
“Why exactly did you pick the Assassin character from the pre-gens Mark made, anyway?” Starlight asked.
“He wouldn’t let any of us play wizards or witches,” Cherry said. “Roof-jumping was as close as I could get to flying. But I don’t understand why the computer dice keep failing me on that skill, and ONLY that skill.”
“Well, it could be worse,” Starlight said. “You could fall into the River Ankh instead.”
“Ugh. Go make your batteries.”
Starlight, still feeling pleased with herself and her genius, went back to do just that.
Was it ever explained why the magic blast just before Dragonfly's revival caused the self-replicating enchantment?
It'll be awesome if the crew manages to use those rainbow crystals to sustain the farm long past their departure.
Starlight could probably teraform a planet by herself given enough time.
9061103 They don't know. Self-replicating enchantments are a thing that could happen- a thing that's cautioned against, and feel free to make a story hook out of some Sorcerer's Apprentice or Pastel-Goo Scenario variant if you like. But now that it's happened, it's a thing to use if convenient.
Starlight will be taking back some rainbowed crystals to Equestria for experimentation, if she can at all manage it.
One objection.
Given that you can walk across the River Ankh, at least most of the time, and that its the only River in the Multiverse that the City Watch can draw Chalk outlines where a body is found. I question if you can "Fall into" the River. You can fall onto it....and regret doing so greatly.
But into....I mean yes, things live in the river, so I suppose if you fell with some force. But sailing ships up the Ankh requires a crew of men with shovels to clear the way in front of the ships.
Thanks for the update!!
9061103 Hm, several multiples of Equestrian normal mana level on an alien planet blasted against unstable crystals.... Just be glad they didn't get Crystal Bees out of it.
9061123 True, but consider if you will how much more difficult it is to break the crust from underneath than it is to break it by falling from a height. (Granted, you will have MASSIVE amounts of motivation to do so in that situation, but...)
9061118
Back to Equestria... or Earth.
If I remember my terrarium set up properly, once you get the right temperature, and the right amount of water in a closed system it begins to self perpetuate in a predictable cycle. What you really need is a source of CO2 to maintain the O2 cycle. And it doesn't have to be much in relation to the total size of the Tank. They may find it raining in the "Garden" when the next mission gets there. ...
9061118
Oh, I like that name!
One wonders what the ponies would make of Lankhmar...
9061118
Ostensibly, she's going to take them back to where she lives. A crystal castle.
A. Crystal. Castle.
I cannot envision this ending well, but at least she's not living in the Crystal Empire.
9061172
Plants do produce some CO2; life requires energy and the metabolic processes to unlock that energy produce CO2 for plants just like it produces it for animals. They also need CO2 both to grow and to store the energy of photosynthesis, though, and I have no idea if a plant could survive just off the CO2 it respirates; I'm not sure anyone knows because I have no idea if anyone was ever curious enough to test it.
However, the old rule of matter not being created or destroyed continues to hold true. If they stuff the cave with 500 kilograms of carbon before they leave, then that carbon will stick around as long as less than 500 kilograms are locked up in the biomass of the plants. At the very least, if they killed all the other plants (leaving them lying on the ground - they'd release the carbon as they decayed) and left the cherry trees, the trees would probably have CO2 for some time, since they wont reproduce without pollinators and would gain mass only slowly. The biggest danger would probably be any plant capable of reproduction - the more they spread through the cave the more of the carbon they'd lock up.
There's also a way they might be able to triage the plants - Carbon dioxide is heavier than air, so it should concentrate slightly more in the deeper areas of the cave. Without actually doing the experiment, I would expect if plants die of a lack of CO2 they'd die in the upper parts of the cave first, and then the CO2 from their decaying biomass would flow deeper into the cave and keep the plants there alive. With a system like that and a steady release of CO2 (say, from a pile of dead plants left behind in the back of the cave) it might be possible to keep some of the plants alive for some time. That only applies for the same kind of plant, though - some of the species of plants might be more resistant to lack of CO2 than the other and would therefor die slower.
9061139
Well..... That'd solve the pollenation issue.
Hello Murphy, fancy seeing you here.
9061224
I have no idea if anyone else has already mentioned this, but the Aries 3 MAV fuel plant is designed to pull CO2 from the Martian atmosphere and concentrate it. It's not something that they need to bring along to Schiaparelli, so perhaps they could figure out a way to power it and let it release CO2 into the cave at a steady rate or regular intervals.
9061224
If you put an airtight bag around a plant it will suffocate and die.
9061210
I'm sure that Discord will appreciate Twilight's castle's new colour scheme. And probably Rainbow will, too.
9061257
There are known cases of plants remaining sealed inside airtight containers for decades and surviving: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bottle_garden
However, those are special circumstances since the plants are in balance, not growing and multiplying. I'm unsure if a plant trying to grow would use up all of the CO2 and then die, or if it would just slow/stop growing but still be able to stay alive with the minimal levels of CO2 released by respiration.
9061258
OH PLEASE MAKE THIS A THING.
So, we just passed the anniversary of the first Moon landing. I got me thinking about the first anniversary of the Mars landing.
"One year ago today, we successfully, and for the first time in history, put men on another planet. We're still trying to get them all back."
Pollination idea: discord turns a fly/bee into water, sends it though water system. Magic then wears off and vuala. The problem of course is that it's got a low chance of survival for the bees. :( brave souls.
9061236
That... might actually work. Like, LEM as a Lifeboat, might work. The NASA of 1970 cared more for what a thing COULD do than what it was DESIGNED to do, so why should our Martians be any different? And while they're at it, I'm sure they could figure out some kind of self-sustaining loop of reactions that would ultimately generate more heat than they require to be maintained...
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Happy Starlight is best Starlight.
It's too bad pollination can't be accomplished using strong gusts of wind...
9061109
That's the plan. Sweet revenge against the jerkass planet.
Now available in Marscraft. Bluestone self powered water conduits.
Would be hilarious if the next crew that got to The Farm, not only found a Terrarium, but also The Glooper.
Its hard to keep a Chaos Computer down.
It's working!
You finished...each chapter...in one or two days, no procrastination included. I’m impressed. Sorry, but I didn’t read it. Too long for me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t read Harry Potter or Percy Jackson.
Well they can if it works. Once Twilight has the dimensional co-ordinates and they have built a ship that can run the sparkle drive from battery power long enough they can travel to Earth’s Mars in a week. No reason to not return with a full expedition and study the cave of wondrous enchantment.
humm... I wonder if Ares 5 or 6 will land there, and find the farm still somewhat alive.
Further, I wonder if said ares mission gets a pony crewmember :D
to be fair you don't really fall "into" the Ankh, you hit it and sink if you don't get off of it fast enough. kind of like if a river was made of Oobleck.
Everything is going fine and dandy, as fine as it can be under the circumstances.
However, won't the ponies be cut off once on Hermes, because water?
Oh my bazingas,of COURSE Discord would be friends with flutters! How did i never notice this before?
The quote is from witches abroad,by the way.
Cherry's really pessimistic for the person who wants the farm to last more than anyone. I guess she's just trying to avoid disappointment? Or maybe I just misread how much she wanted the farm to survive without them.
9061715
Only river on the disc you can draw a chalk outline on.
By Faust, the cherry trees have a chance!
Inb4 Cherry's luck is just as bad with the new dice.
9061804
Use the toilet phone. Talk into the toilet, then you can space any surplus.
Alternatively, use any largeish sealable container in the spin section and space the excess water.
9061932
If I recall right, it took a special rare skill to be able to dispose a body in that river.
Starlight still tries her luck with rainbow goo scenario.
9061109
and would become an alicorn of stubborness?
9062645
Law of conservation is what concerns me.
A very particular environment being suddenly exposed to, essential, something from nothing.how water tight are the electronics?
What if they're wearing or moving a suit when water starts tapping out while around sensitive electronics?
What are the cross universal laws on pumping copious amounts of something into a space where 'nothing' is?
What if, for every amount of matter they send, an equal amount is sent back... Or welled up and sent all at once?
I KNOW I'm over thinking it, it's just a story, but they're concerns I have for the characters, and both their universes. Is this how wormholes or interdimentional rifts are created? What about the universes that cross the bridge between the two?!
FTFY
9061210
The rainbow enchantment can't infect crystal that's already enchanted.
9062888
Who's to say that the crystal in the castle is enchanted? Sure it was raised by magic, but wasn't itself enchanted, so far as we know. Also, Ember munched on it with no issues.
With the way things are going, I suppose the crew isn't gonna stick around long enough to experience the Sleipnir II goodie-bag... I was looking forward to discussion of more modern entertainment and not-alfalfa-or-potatoes. Hopefully Hermes picked up some of that stuff for the ride back. I was anticipating their reactions to movies with effects that could fool them into thinking Earth does have some magic. Stuff like Star Wars, Star Trek, Space Odyssey, Alien, anything Disney or Pixar, and any other classics, plus some with more modern action like Iron-Man, Pacific Rim, and the like. Maybe even The Room, just to balance everything out.
9061236 9061389
Any plan will require the CO2 concentrator to run on whatever solar panels—if any—can be spared from the Whinnybago since the RTG is going along for the ride. The panels also won’t have anyone around to clean them (though Mars’ dust devils seem to do a not-unreasonable job on the Mars Exploration Rover(s)). So the question is whether the CO2 concentrator can run at a reduced level from a weaker power supply of unreliable output. There might be one or more pumps that require a minimum amount of current to function if they can’t have their gearing or compression ratio changed.
9063483
They are increasing the amount of light and heat inside the cave farm, so it's reasonable to put the panels inside. There would still be dust accumulation but almost certainly less than if there were left outside.
The catch would then be how much their output would be reduced in an atmosphere, and possibly the effect of the humidity on the panels and connection points.
9063789
I didn’t think of putting the panel(s) inside the cave—good idea! And if Starlight’s solar concentrators are providing near Earth levels of illumination for the plants, that means that the panel output would be increased significantly.
Humidity would definitely be a concern, though, since the panels were designed for an extremely dry environment. And any dust remaining on the panels—particularly on any electrically live points—would act as nucleation points for condensation and mineral crystal growth, something that could easily lead to galvanic corrosion. Sealing the panel(s) inside something airtight and transparent with some silica gel desiccant packs (were there any in the Ares III rations?) is the obvious solution, but I think Starlight’s used up all the sample bags. Maybe a quartz crystal sandwich with the panel(s) in the middle? I don’t know what the optical (transmission, in particular) characteristics of quartz are.
Oooh. One of the experiments with their little self-replicating enchantment?
Alas. No crystal bees
Hey, can't make crystal bees without the potential of getting stung
Oh my! She gets to deliver some fine embroidery work!
Entirely understandable
I have to wonder, if they were translated from English, how well would the Discworld books sell if they were introduced to Equestria.
Both the paperbacks and the snazzy looking hardbacks.