AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 47
ARES III SOL 50
“Dinner time!” Cherry Berry called out.
By now mealtime on rations had become a routine. The meals followed a rotation: Fresh, Halves, Nibbles, and Leftovers. A Fresh meal was a meal pack opened, roughly one-quarter of it plated and set in Mark’s ice box for later, and the rest eaten. Halves was half a meal pack plus the remnant of Fresh. Nibbles was a nibble out of a meal pack plus the rest of Halves. Leftovers, of course, was the end of the cycle, when no new meal pack was opened.
This didn’t apply to Fireball, of course- he got full rations of all the quartz and quartz by-product he cared to eat. The tradeoff, of course, was that Fireball was expected to do more heavy labor than anypony else. But since the explosion- or, as Spitfire called it, the “cave poot”- Fireball hadn’t been eating his limit as he had before. In fact, Cherry had made herself his “dinner buddy” to make sure he ate the equivalent of a full ration.
It also didn’t apply to Dragonfly, for different reasons. Dragonfly’s meal was her fellow crew members- that is, such love as they could donate to her. Thus, before anypony else ate anything, the crew of Amicitas gave Dragonfly a long group hug before each meal, focusing on their love and respect for their fellow astromare.
Under normal circumstances Dragonfly was the first to report for meals, changelings being by nature shameless when it came to their food source. But this time, even after the other four crew and Mark gathered by the galley, Dragonfly didn’t show.
The Hab was not particularly large, and it had no interior walls. It took no time at all to spot the changeling perched on a chair facing the wall next to Airlock 2. “Dragonfly, it’s dinnertime,” Cherry said. “What are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” Dragonfly said.
“Time out,” Mark said.
“Time out?” Cherry thought about this for a moment. “What did you do, Dragonfly?”
“Mark caught me using his computer,” Dragonfly said sullenly. “He made me sit here, and every time I tried to get up he sat me back down again. I don’t know why.”
Cherry couldn’t help giggling. “He’s put you in the corner,” she said. “It’s a punishment for very little fillies.”
“Be glad he doesn’t have any paper,” Spitfire added. “You could be wearing a dunce cap.”
Dragonfly blinked, leaning over the back of the chair. “What’s that supposed to do?” she asked. “How is this a punishment?” Her ear-fins flipped back. “Wait a minute, did you say this is a punishment for larvae?”
“If you don’t want to be punished like a child, don’t act like one,” Cherry replied. “Mark, Dragonfly go?”
Mark shrugged. “If she learned her lesson- er, if she know not do again.”
Cherry looked at Starlight. “What’s the Mark-word for ‘incorrigible’?”
MISSION LOG – SOL 50
Apparently I have a hacker in my midst. (Hackers in the Midst, the new nature documentary about computer criminals in their natural habitat, coming soon from National Geographic!)
After we got back from today’s seeding of the cave (four hundred square meters of alfalfa, with about two hundred reserved for potatoes later), I went back out to clean the solar farm. When I came back I found Dragonfly with my computer open, going through my files. I don’t know where she learned how to do it or how long she’s been doing it, but I put her in the corner until dinnertime. I was afraid the other ponies might get upset, but they seemed to find it funny.
The odd thing is, she was watching something I’d missed on Lewis’s playlist of 1970s trash TV. Specifically, Superfriends. I’d thought Lewis didn’t have any cartoons apart from parts of The Electric Company, but if I’d picked one horrible cartoon for Lewis to have in her collection, Superfriends would definitely be it. And Lewis was wise to hide it in a subdirectory, because I would have given her all kinds of shit over it.
After dinner I introduced the ponies to it. And for the first time the ponies, bughorse and dragon all turned their noses up at it. A bit of whiteboard talking explained why. It turns out superhero comics exist on their homeworld, and none of them are fans. Starlight tried to watch with polite interest, but she was the first one to get restless. The others just didn’t care.
I can’t blame them. This isn’t like the Marvel cinematic universe movies from when I was in high school and college. This is pure crap.
The biggest issue I have with Superfriends is that it’s been made so kid-friendly that there’s no conflict- as in none at ALL. Here you have DC Comics’ greatest heroes (plus Aquaman), and they never actually fight anybody. There isn’t an actual bad guy in the entire first-run series. They’re all natural disasters or bumbling scientists.
And even then half the problems are caused by two teenagers with a mental age of about nine and their Scooby-Doo knock-off dog.
Seriously, where are Wendy and Marvin’s parents? When is the call going to come in to Child Protective Services? “Yes, officer, there are two children hanging around superheroes. They’re allowed to go into horrible danger every day! Volcanoes, train tunnels, alien spaceships! And their legal guardians are nowhere in sight!” It’s like Superman and Wonder Woman went to the Albus Dumbledore School of Child-Rearing.
With Batman it makes some sense. There’s Robin, who’s about the same age or slightly older than the kids. We already know Bruce Wayne is into child endangerment. But Jon and Martha Kent didn’t raise Clark that way! And Hippolyta didn’t… um… sculpt Diana that way… I guess?
Anyway, the kids are just too stupid for words. This show is just plain bad, and not so-bad-it’s-good bad.
And don’t get me STARTED on Aquaman…!
Anyway, we did language lessons for an hour, and then we returned to our regularly scheduled programming. We finished up Partridge Family today. Tomorrow night I finally get around to Six Million Dollar Man.
Oh, and since you’re wondering: the planting is going just fine. Tomorrow we plant one-quarter of the Hab in alfalfa. The rest of the Hab, and the pop-tents, will go for potatoes. Taters will do fine in shallow soil, and the alfalfa I’ll maintain here is more for soil nitrates than for the food it’ll provide the ponies. The soil just isn’t deep enough here for alfalfa to prosper anyway.
After tomorrow the farm project will be complete except for tending the crops. I’m thinking about what comes next. I need to talk to Starlight about a few things before I make plans, though.
And then I need to talk Dragonfly into giving the others typing lessons.
I think about a grown Changeling facing the wall as punishment after poking her nose into everything and I can't stop smiling. I'm glad Mark likes her.
Plant, plant, planty-plant, planty-planty-plant!
Dragonfly being in timeout is oddly adorable, although I wonder how much she's actually learned. I feel like she might be edging out Starlight in terms of language comprehension, but I'm not sure.
So how did they end up sealing the air leaks in the cave? Also, has Mark pointed out the issue of the non-budding alfalfa?
Here comes the spud floor. And a time skip?
8709050
Now introducing a sequel to The Martian
"The Changeling:
Feed her home"
8709071 Starlight cast the same spell at the back of the cave as she did at the front of the cave to form the seal around the airlock. It seems to have worked, since they're planting seeds in the cave.
I just realized you've been maintaining your goal of posting a chapter per day for a month. This realization came to me when I realized I was checking every day for the new chapter.
Thank you, and congrats! Please keep up the good work!
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Yeah, but with an average temperature of -55^C, they'd freeze pretty darn quick--and "darn" isn't the word I'd want to use.
I think they'd be dead very fast with that extreme change. Just from the water in them freezing and expanding, rupturing the plant cell walls alone.
I have to wonder how the ponies, dragon and changeling, would react to some of the older Batman Movies.
8709091
Poor Aquaman--he could be a decent superhero if only people thought of good ways to use his powers. Wasn't too bad in Superman: the Animated Series. Still remember him and Lois riding a motorcycle as they're being chased by Luthor's goons...
"You can fly--right?"
"Fly?..."
"...!..."
And then they go over a cliff into the sea full of great white sharks.
"Lucky those sharks were there!"
"Yeah...'Lucky'!"
Somehow I see Dragonfly as the only astromare who can make his/her own fingers for working the keyboard.
Fed by hugs.... juuuust in case we forgot that this is goddamn adorable in addition to all the near death and bleak environs. I look forward to Mark finding out about that.
My hatred of lab reports prevented me from advancing much in the sciences during my college years. Even so, the two questions I asked during the movie (I've yet to read the book... I'm gonna) were: 'is Mars' soil non-toxic enough to be usable?' and 'could the wind there be that bad when the air is so thin?' Given what I've seen here, those were pretty decent questions to ask. Now I'm wondering how that alfalfa is going to surprise Mark. I know less about magical plant life than I do actual plant life (though not by much) but I get the feeling that it's going to go better and worse than anticipated.
There are good DC cartoons, although you really have to pick and choose to find them. My top three, in no particular order, are Justice League, Teen Titans and Young Justice.
Batman: Brave and the Bold is also up there for totally different reasons. Given how off the wall it can get, I don't know if it would be more or less relatable for the Equestrians.
Dang... knew he felt some guilt over the perchlorate explosion but he's more torn up than I thought. Kinda feel bad for the guy.
8709147 I'll have to re-check the book, but I think Mark used one of the spare space suits to smuggle the not-yet-sprouted seed crop of potatoes to the rover while he was dealing with Hydrogenville. But as a general rule, it's not going to be an issue- especially since no grown, living plants are going to be transferred between the Hab and the cave. The cave crops will be grown from seed and spud.
8709193 The book was written after perchlorates were discovered on Mars but before we found out they're a global problem. As for the storm, Andy Weir himself admits the storm is impossible; he put it there solely to have a story to tell, to explain how Watney got stranded. Weir's other dealings with air- the airlock blowout and the Hermes braking maneuver- are also, well, highly questionable at best.
8709208 Young Justice left me cold. Justice League and Justice League Unlimited were excellent, and Brave and the Bold was delightful- somehow finding all the bits of Silver Age DC and leaving the suck behind. Unfortunately, none of them come from the 1970s, so they're beneath Lewis's notice. (And to be honest, Watney's lucky she didn't have The Amazing Chan and the Chan Clan or similar. The 1970s was overwhelmingly tripe, so far as TV animation was concerned.)
8709091
I was more curious about any fissures in the cave walls. Admittedly, it's a self-indulgent curiosity: I want to see Mark's reaction to Changeling goo.
8709147
Temperatures don't drop that quickly. First, the thin atmosphere would have trouble convecting away heat. Second, the air inside the containers would act as an insulator. Third, most plants can withstand a little frost with minimal fuss and alfalfa isn't just 'most plants'. Here's a quote from Iowa State University.
And as I type this, right now, Maretian has as many up votes as Changeling Space Program. (Of course, it has twelve downvotes to CSP's I-can't-believe-it's-only-three, but details details...)
I should probably try to work more on the next CSP chapter. After I work up my Everfree NW contest entry.
I just wonder if any of the cherry pits were viable?
º¹º
I was thinking, "Oh shucks, Moby Dick and Mightor didn't quite make it to the seventies."
Even worse would have been the much older Tom Terrific and Manfred the Wonder Dog.
I wonder how ponies would react to Felix the Cat?
8709161
He can survive the ocean depths like he's taking a stroll in the park. Everyone remembers that he can talk to fish, breathe underwater, and... that's about it. No one ever seems to remember that to do any of the other stuff he does, he also has to have superhuman strength, endurance, and durability, and be able to see in near-total darkness. Especially the superhuman strength, endurance, and durability: Depending on where you source your info, Aquaman is capable of surviving under more than 1,000 atmospheres, and once refused to sell a hit from Superman.
8709045
Planty-plantity, planty plant plant!
8709314
While the cherry pits were probably viable, there'd be no point; growing a fruiting cherry tree from seeds would probably take a decade (by which point Mark is doubtless planning on being gone, one way or another), and be an enormous waste of space and other resources that could be used on other crops.
Maybe Earth pony magic could shorten that, but probably not enough to be viable and besides, Mark doesn't know about it.
I could see this kind of flippant willingness to humiliate coming back to bite Cherry in the future, especially considering who she was talking to.
8708835 But, there's one little caveat with phosphorus: Mars has all that rust. All that iron oxide. And, iron phosphate forms readily when phosphate contacts iron cations, and is so insoluble it makes the phosphorus totally unavailable for plants. What they're adding may be getting all bound up by the iron.
8709377
...The most patient and cheery member of the team that has a vested interest in keeping everybody happy? between that and the fact that they have been friends for years he seems like the least likely member of the team to take offence never mind start any trouble.
8709377
except Dragonfly is super used to dealing with Chrysalis's idea of punishment, and Cherry is Chrysalis 2nd in command (functionally speaking), so its not likely to be a real problem, in the same way Mark finds "the ants are eating my skin" sensation from the burn damage not a problem in light of it making him realize he is getting to keep his nervous system intact.
Interesting video about wind power on Mars, could be an interesting future plot point. Hope you find this interesting Kris.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xtW7g4R_vs
8709863
Indeed she is...and Chrysalis is not here. 😜
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I don't mean anything serious, but I also don't necessarily think Dragonfly would just let it slide.
I wonder if Fireball is bound to the same 'dragon code' as Spike, indebting him to Mark for saving his life?
8710686 Since Spike's Dragon Code was obviously written in crayon, I rather doubt it.
8710729
Maybe fireball has his own. Also painstakingly written in crayon.
8710741
Nah... Too colorful for dragons to have craypns. He probably sketched it in naturally occuring graphite
And then, even when they did let supervillains show up, they weren't any better. Especially not Solomon Grundy, whose only attack was trying to hug people aggressively.
Seriously, Lewis, what the crap?
8710478
oh so something more like pranking her, yeah that i could definitively see him doing.
I saw the movie at last yesterday... I found quite a bit of it too melodramatic.
Too many things went wrong at too many predictable junctures. By the time it got to the supply rocket, I was thinking "It's gonna start shimmying or something and blow up just when they think it's fine, because this is that kind of movie and there's an hour left on TV." Sure enough... *sighs* They couldn't even have it fail on the way to Mars, or the payload misfires and lands on the opposite side of the planet... something that at least wouldn't be utterly predictable.
I don't know why critics gave all that cliche stuff a pass when they ripped apart movies like "Armageddon" for it (of course that movie was also preposterous... but THIS movie is TRYING to be serious sci-fi, and still relied too heavily on Murphy's Law. It didn't help that so many of the failures were telegraphed so far ahead of time and so obviously, it wouldn't take much retooling to make it a farce of disaster movies in general. All in all, I found it a rather uninteresting film and story, and quite overrated, much like "Gravity".
I use for comparison, "Apollo 13", which of course was based on the real event, and "Castaway". But notice, tension was maintained and held audiences despite not having things break and explode and fail every 15 minutes in both these films. That's how a real event happens, and a good storyteller can craft a narrative around the single conflict event. And even when additional things do go wrong, they feel believable when the situation is risky to begin with... not when a rocket blows up because it has so for the plot.
8712933 It's explained better in the book. NASA cut too many corners, and it resulted in two failures. They didn't test the protein bars under shock, so they liquefied and became an unbalanced load in the probe. They didn't do the full inspection of the rocket on the pad, and one of the bolts that held the probe in place inside the fairing was faulty and sheared under the imbalanced load. The imbalance caused a second, good bolt to shear, the three other bolts couldn't hold the mass, and the probe tore itself apart.
This sort of thing happens often enough with launches, which is why NASA has a long inspection process in the first place.
"Superfriends"... I lived through that. It was somewhat enjoyable at time when I was very little and didn't know any better... but even back then, I found most of the episodes pretty stupid. I only really liked the one where there was this weird gas that transmuted things, and that was mainly that I found the concept interesting and it had weird side effects. Mad scientists stuff, I liked.
Hee, reminds me of the early DBZ: Abridged scene where they referenced Superfriends a couple times in the Saiyan Invasion Arc. "We could use WHALES, GUYS!" "Oh god, it's Aquaman." XD
What you consider filler is what I came to this fic for.
This and the chapter you said you would cut outright if this was a book were my favorites thus-far. Character development is more of a plot advancement, to me, than introducing a technical challenge and overcoming it.
Okay, we're getting to the point that you KNOW I have to ask... is Mark going to end up making a joke about him and the ponies being a bunch of space pirates? Because that would just be hilarious...
8709316
wat?
I just want to note; Aquaman is actually a pretty good character. But Superfriends has completely ruined his reputation for decades.
i watched that old Super Friends cartoon when i was a kid. one of the more amusing episodes was called "the day the world turned upside down".
it started with a mad-scientist (yep) and his invention, a super-computer he called "The Geek". it could operate every machine in the world, so "nobody would ever need to work again".
what went wrong, you ask? a MOUSE got inside the computer and messed things up! they needed a guest appearance from Plastic Man to get the mouse out without damaging the computer...once they finally got past the robot guards.
But the two kids, Warren and Wendy, and Wonder Dog, got inside first-thanks to the dog digging under the fence!
"holy dog days! why didn't WE think of that!"
yes, it was THAT silly!
edit: oh, i forgot to mention: that super-computer used vacuum tubes! and it was capable of replacing worn-out tubes by itself...
Mark prefers marvel to dc? Good taste.
Heheh, Dragonfly in timeout is just adorable.
And the award for pissing off everyone goes to... Mark!
this entire chapter. (ok maybe 90-80%) is comedy GOLD.
'Cave Poot"
Dragonfly in Time Out
the so bad its... still bad StupdorFriends
8709015
8709045
8709333
♫Plant this plant, plant this plant
One two, three, four
Together we can plant this plant
One, two, three, four♫
...
I'll better stop now.
This seems incompatible with sol 511
Hah!
In her defense, she is a natural born-and-bred infiltrator
Ouch
Hah, nice.
The marketing campaign of the movie actually showed this in a psych interview with Mark before the mission. I thought it was a nice touch to include it in that way.
Where did Mark learn what a changeling is? Dragonfly keeping it to herself is a whole thing later in the story.
10219260 Two years before anybody, me included, caught that.