MISSION LOG – SOL 43
My arm hurts, and the raw skin under my dressing itches like fuck, but I can’t touch it. I’m off the magic pony pills, and I’m not feeling any withdrawal symptoms, aside from the nagging reminder that aspirin doesn’t do shit.
But survival demands I get off my ass, so I put in a full day’s work today. So did Starlight, who is obviously still in bad shape but won’t stay down. Spitfire’s mad at both of us- especially Starlight, after she snuck around her to make me a magic spacesuit comm that can talk with theirs. It consists of a brick-sized magic battery from their ship, an enchanted gem from Fireball's snacks, and a few other odds and ends, all of which I have to wear inside my suit, but it works.
When she found out we intended to work, Spitfire almost hit the dome, she chicken-flapped so hard. She wanted to ground us, but we insisted: if everybody doesn't work, everybody dies. The pony food packs are counting down to starvation, and once they’re gone I only have a few days’ worth after that before they begin starving. The only way crops will be ready in time is if we get them planted now.
The boom on Sol 40 might have got NASA’s attention, so yesterday I added a couple of words to my doctoral thesis written in Morse code just north of the solar farm. True, “Burned, healing” will make NASA worry if they read it. But if they read my message before seeing smoke coming from the cave, me saying nothing would make them worry a lot more.
Of course, the odds are they haven’t noticed either one. As big as the perchlorate explosion was close up, it was less than a fly’s fart so far as the surface of Mars was concerned. They’d have to have been looking right at Site Epsilon to notice anything. An hour either side of the explosion, there wouldn’t have been anything to see. But there’s a chance, so I updated my rock blog.
Today was a dirt doubling- probably the last, but definitely the most ambitious. All the dirt in the Hab and pop-tents is now fertile, but we need starter dirt for the cave farm, assuming that’s still workable. So today Fireball carried one bin of dirt at a time out to the alien ship for storage. It has air and heat now, thanks to their life support system and Hab power running the one heater they left inside, so the soil bacteria will survive there. Meanwhile Cherry, Dragonfly and Spitfire dragged even more Martian dirt inside to replace all the dirt that got put in storage for the cave.
I should have helped with that, but I had other things to do. Also, I figured I could make Spitfire happy and get out of the way while all sorts of human germs and pony germs and dragon germs and whatever-Dragonfly-is germs get stirred up and tossed into the air. And she’s right to want me out. Burns are really susceptible to infections. I could get tetanus, or e. coli, or flesh-eating bacteria. Or some magical pony super-bug that leaves me perfectly healthy except that my hair turns green and my arm falls off for no apparent reason.
This is a serious concern. If my arm falls off, NASA will kick me out of the space program, and I’ll not only be stranded on Mars, I’ll be stranded and unemployed on Mars. I only hope I can get the unemployment office to do direct-deposit, because I don’t think my bank has a branch out here.
Okay, enough lame jokes. Yes, I spent a couple of days worrying about cross-species infections, all War of the Worlds and shit. But I didn’t mention it here for the same reason that I eventually got over it: we’re all living in the Hab now, so it’s inevitable that we’ll be exposed to each other’s bacteria. Nothing can be done about that, even if we weren’t wading in each other’s shit every week to produce fertile soil for our upcoming crops. We either risk death by disease, or we guarantee death by not working together and doing whatever we can to save our butts.
And, up to now, it’s actually worked out okay. Starlight keeps pushing herself to exhaustion, and Dragonfly appears to be running out of steam, and of course I got myself burned like a stupid action hero, but nobody has actually gotten sick. The Ares-III crew was in strict quarantine for two weeks prior to launch specifically to rule out most contagious diseases hitching a ride and ruining the mission. Maybe the ponies did something similar, or maybe magic pony arm-stealing germs don’t like the taste of poor mundane Mark.
But accepting unavoidable risk is one thing, and tempting fate is another. Even if all the bacteria we have left are the happy healthy kind, the good kind in the wrong place can be just as bad as the bad kind. Since the air in the Hab was full of ‘em today, my burned arm got a fresh sterile dressing and Starlight and I decamped for the cave.
My flight suit is wrecked- no surprise. The right arm is gone completely except for the electronics. Same deal with most of the torso. The helmet might still be good, and my left glove would be salvageable if there were some point to it without the right. The life support systems are charred and probably wrecked, but I might be able to use it for spare parts if I get that desperate. I still have my EVA suit, which was built more rugged to deal with being on a planet instead of a spaceship. I also have several other EVA suits, if it comes to that.
There’s still a good bit of perchlorate left scattered around. The eruption scattered the stuff enough that it dropped below decomposition temperature rapidly once the fuel was gone. What’s left should be easy to clean up. About a quarter of what we dumped down the hill is already blown away or sloughed into the soil. I say good riddance. If I think of some insanely suicidal plan for our survival that requires me to make solid rocket fuel I’ll ask Starlight to revive that spell. Until then I don’t want to see even a speck of pure perchlorate salts ever again.
That wasn’t the reason we went, though. We already knew that from the report Cherry and Fireball gave us. Today was about making the cave airtight.
When we went into the cave we took a magic battery and two ten-liter tanks full of compressed liquid CO2, produced by the MAV descent stage’s fuel plant. Of course, this wasn’t a fart in the wind so far as pressurizing the cave was concerned. The open space inside could be anything from 10,000 to 50,000 cubic meters, and twenty liters of liquid CO2 would only fill forty cubic meters to one atmosphere’s worth of pressure. Releasing it all in the cavern at once would raise the existing air pressure by about one-tenth- call it 0.1 pounds per square inch instead of 0.09 psi. (The Hab’s one atmosphere internal pressure, the same as on Earth at sea level, is 14 psi.)
But Starlight said it was enough, and I guess she was right. She used the battery to create two airtight force fields, sealing off the cave in both directions just far enough for the two of us to stand between. I opened and closed the valves on the CO2 tanks and watched the pressure readings on my suit to keep the area in our slice of cave at one-tenth of an atmosphere (1.4 psi, or fourteen times Mars’s normal pressure).
We walked the length of the cave doing this. Starlight was wobbly on her feet to begin with, and by the time we got to the end of the dirt floor she was ready to pass out again. Still, she used one last burst of magic and all the remaining CO2 in the tanks to get a reading clear to the far end of the cave. I ended up carrying her and the battery back to the rover; I’ll go back for the empty tanks tomorrow.
The news is actually pretty good. In fact, I’d call it suspiciously good. The cave leaks like a sieve at the entrance, but Starlight says she can fix that when the ponies put the airlock in place, ideally tomorrow. And there’s another substantial leak way at the back, almost in the middle of the hill. But most of the cave is actually airtight. I don’t know if the permafrost or compacted soil on top of the cave is creating a seal, or if the air leaking is too low for Starlight or my suit to detect it, or what. But it does mean that, after a couple of magical welding jobs, the cave will hold air.
And doing the math, it’s just now sinking in to me how much air it would require. NASA provided us with 350 liters of compressed oxygen and nitrogen. That’s enough for one atmosphere pressure for the rovers, the space suits, and the approximately 240 cubic meter interior space of the Hab, plus a significant reserve, but it’s not a drop in the bucket for the cave.
Assuming 25,000 cubic meters from entrance to rear, it would require 12,500 liters of compressed liquid air to fill the space to one atmosphere. The most oxygen I can safely transport at a time is fifty liters, and replacing that requires seventy-five hours of run time on the MAV fuel plant plus whatever time the oxygenator needs to turn carbon dioxide into oxygen. If I had to fill it myself, I’d run out of food long before there was enough air for my crops.
Luckily I don’t need to. The pony ship’s environmental system is back up and running, complete with its direct connection to their home world’s atmosphere. What would take me over a year will take them a matter of hours. Best yet, their system also provides Earth-levels of carbon dioxide (well, almost- 0.028% CO2 instead of our global-roasting 0.045%, but that’s still plenty for plants). That limits the amount of Mars atmosphere we’ll have to bring in for our farm to thrive.
(Fun fact: plants give off almost as much CO2 at night as they absorb during the day! Photosynthesis turns CO2 and water into oxygen and sugar, but at night plant metabolisms reverse the process and use the sugar to live and grow on. That’s why Earth still has so many green things without requiring CO2 atmospheric levels that would kill most animal life on the planet. But once we really get going with the plants that little difference will swamp whatever the aliens and I contribute with our own lungs, so the occasional hit off a Mars bong will be required to keep our crop nice and mellow.)
Anyway, we’re back at the Hab now, and the dirt doubling is over- probably the last one we’re going to do here. Dragonfly, bless her perforated heart, has just sweet-talked Spitfire away from doing her vulture imitation over Starlight’s bed. I’ve gotta do something nice for that bug soon. But first my three-quarters of a dinner, and then tonight’s line-up of fine quality viewing.
Leading off with The Electric Company. Of course, my mind is still blown by the fact that Morgan Freeman was once young. And, apparently, a hippie. Or a beatnik. Or a hippie beatnik. Or something. I wonder if the bug will write a sequel to her fanfic that has the Duke boys rescue Easy Reader from one of Boss Hogg’s schemes. I’m sure there could never be anything problematic with that idea whatever.
That’s sarcasm, by the way.
so was the explosion supposed to replace the habs airlock coming off? or is that still happening?
Life support comms next day. Plz Snd Twi Trty Lngst Bkz. Or, we need a million gallons, please get Twilight on the blower so she can talk us a river.
8698043
Watney has easy in the movie compared to the book. It's a fantastic read!
Was just reading some fiction from an anthology where the humans just got to another world that has working life. One of the issues brought up was cross-contamination by bacteria and viruses. The answer was that because there was unlikely to be common DNA patterns (and indeed, they found the world used two completely unknown amino acids in the DNA analogue) that there would be no way for such to thrive in a cross-species environment.
Basically, it gets in you and then dies because your tissues lack the required analogues for it to fuel reproduction. At worst, you'll be a little under the weather while internal clean up of the refuse happens, nothing more.
Watney's thoughts on observation... pretty spot on, I'd think. He doesn't have any reason to assume they'd already been looking in on him, but if they had he's right, they'd want to know about that.
Now, when was it he got his Pathfinder idea... OK, he found it Sol 82, took him ten or eleven sols to get there, figure at least a week of prep to make sure he had it all figured what he was going to do and where he was going to go ... probably a good three weeks yet for him to get that idea then.
8698049
Maybe it comes, but if they have the cave as a backup it wouldn't be nearly as bad. Not only that, but he didn't need to turn his hab into a bomb this time so some other calamity will be the catalyst to the crazy get-out-of-Mars plan.
8698043
I liked the book better. It has more of a focus on the science and Watney's personal attempts to survive on Mars, and less on the other characters than the movie.
Overall they aren't that different though.
8696863
I think I was a seventh grader in '66 when I read the "One Hoss Shay". Harley Davidson and Ford had similar reputations in the day. Now I've GOT to read your latest. O-º
Morgan Freeman was once young? Pfft! Pull the other one.
I really think that there should have been a series of the radio show "The National Lampoon Radio
Hour" in Lewis' collection, The Immigrants would have been apropos for a laugh.
Ironically, Farmer in the Sky was a wonderful 1950 adolescent's level novel about the challenges of terraforming Ganymede. Some of the hard scifi of that time has some level of parallel, or inspiration for The Martian? Especially the bit about using conditioned Mississippi bottomland soil for their dirt doubling.
Ford: Fix or repair daily. Found on road dead. I had a '66 mustang... O›o
8698035
Now I'm wondering if a human could catch the Cutie Pox. Thanks for that mental image.
8698187
Look on the bright side: he'll be very skilled.
8696863
It really only matters if Changelings can get out of vaguely quadrupedal shapes. I mean, it's up to you, but I'd think it be a lot harder.
I'm also not sure if Changeling fanfiction would be amazing or horrifying.
8698263
Dragonfly already turned into a human earlier in the story.
8698263
In two episodes of MLP:FiM, changelings turned into a rock, and one turned into a giant bug monster. So I'm pretty sure they can make themselves look like anything they want.
8698263
In canon, they are shown to mimic bipeds and inanimate objects not-at-all-pony-shaped.
And check out:
Dear Small Pony Book by Carapace. Light, fluffy, and hilarious. Thorax's journal from his time in the Crystal Empire.
Wedding March by Carabas. Adventure, political intrigue and a dash of comedy. Latest in a series covering major show events from world leader's point of view.
The Changeling of the Guard by vdrake77. Comedy and adventure. Set before S1 starts, it follows an exiled changeling living in Canterlot.
Changeling Space Program If you havent read this yet, GET TO IT ALREADY! Seriously.
Still want that fanart
8698297
She did? Where'd I miss that?
8698316
Well, rocks don't move much, and other kinds of bugs arent bipedal. Walking on two legs is hard, or everything would be doing it.
8698340
I meant Changeling-written fanfiction. I've devoured most of the ones on this site.
8698372
Mark wasn't hallucinating when he saw Johannsen motivating him to drive the rover on sol 40. It's why Dragonfly is so drained.
8698316 Not to mention Thorax turned into a bear during Triple Threat.
In a fanfic I wrote, I took it to close to a rule 7 violation by having Thorax transform into a copy of the Crystal Heart after touching it and getting a feel for it. My thinking was, he's demonstrated that he can turn into a rock, and he collects love and turns it into magic, so emulating the Crystal Heart, which is a rock that turns positive energy and turns it into magic was not a huge stretch.
8698340 Given what we've seen the Changelings are able to do once they finally appeared again in the show, Chrysalis was really the most incompetent tactician I have ever seen, fictional or otherwise. She didn't have the slightest notion of how to use her species' assets during the Wedding episode. They could have crept in easily long before the Wedding and been waiting in the city in any guise they chose, positioning themselves to instantly overwhelm any resistance. If they wore some of the anti-magic stone, or Chrysalis realized she could just transport the whole thing into the Crystal Caves (since changeling magic is completely unaffected by the stone) they would have won instantly and NOTHING could have stopped them. If even Discord's magic is negated by the stone, then assuredly Cadance and Shining's Deus Ex Love Bomb would have fizzled.
Yep, if I had been an evil cherngelerng leading the bugs, I'd have easily stomped the ponies flat!
8698410
For you, I recommend I Don't Want to Grow Up by Orbiting Kettle. Comedy, slice-of-life, and friendship. Chrysalis confers with one of her generals over a recent defeat dealt them in Appleloosa.
It may be the headcannon you've been looking for.
8698410
To be fair, her plan to impersonate Cadance was a rather good one, and she successfully fooled most people in Canterlot (implying only Twilight really knew Cadance) or brainwashed them (Shining). She even isolated Twilight from her friends and turned Celestia on her.
Her use of Changeling troops was rather abysmal. Maybe she just really wanted to see Changeling orbital drops slamming into the city.
To me, it seems that hse's better at manipulation stuff, but tactics aren't so great.
8698049
No, if it was a replacement for anything, it was a replacement for the hydrogen explosion when Watney was generating water in the original story. As there is no need to make water in this story, that won't happen here.
8698405
"a rule 7 violation"?
8698505 Read that one, and the sequel/prequel with 'Slimy'.
8698652 The thing is, she didn't do that good a job impersonating Cadance. Twilight noticed something was off immediately about her behavior. A proper impersonator would have studied the target and mimicked her more closely. The others either didn't know her at all or were brain-damaged by THE PLOT (mainly Celestia, she was intelligence-worfed this time around in addition to power-worfing) into not noticing anything unusual about her.
Also, I never understood what the point of doing this during a royal wedding was in the first place. If it was to have so many royals and nobles in one place... then all the more reason to have as many infiltrators as possible already present. If it's just a flat-out invasion as we saw, there's not any good reason to bother (since the nobles are pretty useless and helpless anyway). In that case, you just needed to get Celly and Loony alone and whack them over the head with a rock or something (they'd go down real easy, since they can never fight back effectively).
8699209
I already gave my piece on it. I don't think it was too bad for her to act as she did. She had the excuse of a wedding to drive a mare insane, and, once again, no one questioned her. That says either they were successfully brainwashed or didn't know Cadance well enough to know she was acting out of character.
Shining was clearly out of his freaking mind for most of this, but who's to say she didn't manage another, smaller mind control attempt on Celestia? More reasonable than Celestia being brain dead.
Again, no argument on tactics. She utterly failed on that front. Why during a wedding? No idea.
Anyway, this is getting a bit off the story's topic. If you want to continue this conversation, pm me. Lets not clog this story anymore.
loved the new chapter, keep up the great work!
8699209
8699219
To be fair, you're going to have to remember who the target audience is. If you're a six year old girl playing "evil enchantress steals all the love", it's going to happen at a wedding because that's when these things happen.
8698410
Problem with changing into a rock is that those that walk around it can trip over invisible parts of the body that aren't hidden in the image of rock. Also i persume making something invisible is taxing. That's why changing into similary shaped ponies is best. I persume that the more the camuflage differs from the shape of changeling body the more taxing it is to hold it.
8699209
It indicates that trere were more than one party in the changeling nation. Someone delivered false informations about Cadance behavior to Chrysalis on purpose.
8699297 I was hoping someone would point that out. I tend to be one of the only ones who realizes much of the weak writing comes from 'It's For Little Kids Syndrome', and so I try to focus on the internal logic of the story instead. Thank god no one writing "Gravity Falls" thought that way.
8699313 Uhm, from the recent changeling episodes, it's clear they COMPLETELY CHANGE SHAPE AND MASS, otherwise Pharynx turning into the giant monster would have been futile since most of it would have only been an illusion with no physical substance. But that form WAS able to attack the mole monster and WAS able to hit it with physical force equivalent to what one would expect from something that size and mass. Therefore changeling transformations are absolutely physical in nature. There would be no 'invisible parts' if one of them became a rock.
That is an utterly baseless assumption. There is zero information about who spied out Cadance to begin with, or if any initial research on her was even undertaken in the first place. It also fails to take into account that Chrysalis herself demonstrated a complete inability to cover for her own blunders with Twilight or adjust her nature when it became obvious Twilight was suspicious, revealing that she was not a very strong actor to begin with.
8698977 Rule 7 - Don't take the p**s.
OH MY GOD! HOW COULD I MISS IT FOR SO LONG? When he said forth world problems, he ment problems happening ON THE FOURTH PLANET! I IS DUMB!
Hmm. My money's on insidiously slow air leak. Of course, the crew will probably assume that as well. Hopefully.
Also, it seems like affection has a lot fewer calories under these laws of physocs given Dragonfly's slow recovery. That's potentially concerning.
some of the comments reminded me of a silly story called "Derplicity", where Derpy is a changeling...it's a very silly story.
my main point is that in that story, Derpy got Cadence confused with Fleur Des Lis, and wrote her report on "Cadence's" behaviors accordingly.
also, Celestia said at the beginning that "a threat has been made", hence the giant force field. who made that threat? i've read several fan-stories where someone OTHER than Chrysalis sent a warning...
my mind is still blown by the fact that Morgan Freeman was once young. And, apparently, a hippie. Or a beatnik. Or a hippie beatnik
So much hair
Bug bug give the bug a hug!
Just give her a good, loving hug and she will be happy.
About what I'd expect from pony medicine, heh.
Maud Pie would be proud.
In the final stage you grow a horn and wings and earn the right to call yourself a princess. (Thanks, M.A. Larson!)
Yeah, I think they mixed enough of each other's bacteria with that, heh.
Don't force fields usually need tob e sustained though?
Ohh. They're just checking the cave walls. I see.
Permafrost, huh? Let's hope that heating up the cave to crop-growing temperatures won't un-seal it, then
Yes, I was wondering about that after the initial remarks on pressure...
Maybe they can use the ponies' life support system? Magically pumping over air straight from their planet should work.
Ah. Indeed.
But they do use some of that carbon to grow, so they still end up consuming some, y'know.
Also, a vampire
I just realized this; in the book, Watney specifically mentions that ingesting pathogens in his own waste is fine since he already has them. But if there are five other lifeforms also contributing waste (that I'm assuming hasn't been dehydrated and sterilized) won't those become a serious problem?
10044310 It's not really touched on except at the very end. But basically, it's a combination of parallel worlds and parallel life forms equaling parallel germs. Mark had an extensive quarantine; the Amicitas crew less so but sufficient to screen the really contagious stuff. The only real hazard remaining is tetanus, for which Mark was vaccinated long before liftoff. (And as we see in the show, Equestrian diseases have to get a bit inventive for ponies to really take notice. How many Earth germs have "slowly turn into a tree" as a symptom?)
Great chapter Cuddlebug scene incoming?
As Changeling fan i love every Cuddlebug scene even without cuddles as long the bug is there and don't do evil...
Hm... Wonder if there will be another story like this (sequel not counting)... Love it ♡
Edit 2023: Sequel is out by another Author
Normal air at 1 bar room temperature is a bit above kilo per m3 and liquid air is just shy of ton per m3, so there's something a bit off here.
Well, that's just ~4 kilo of carbon
Friendships are magic and their teamwork is awesome. Magic do it 20% more awesome.
Magic to fix it. I wonder if Buggy get huggy
Need to read Cuddlebug fanfic
We need more Cuddlebug action ♡