Sol 92
AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 90
ARES III SOL 92
Cherry Berry stood by Airlock 3 and waited. She and Fireball had planned to leave the Hab via Airlock 2, but just before they could enter the red light had come on indicating the outer door was open- less than two minutes after Mark had gone out.
With only two airlocks left in the Hab, it had been decided to alternate use of the airlocks, and never to have both of them decompressed at once, in an attempt to reduce wear on the canvas dome. Mark had gone out Airlock 3 before Cherry and Fireball had been ready to go. Now he was coming right back in, which meant Cherry not only had to wait for him to finish entering, but she couldn’t use the same freshly recompressed airlock.
But the petty annoyance vanished the moment she saw Mark staggering in through the airlock, groping for the clamps that kept the helmet assembly sealed to the rest of his suit. “Spitfire!” she shouted. “Bring the medical kit! Something’s wrong with Mark!”
Mark paid no attention to the ponies, changeling and dragon gathering around him. His helmet off, the lower part of his suit still on, he collapsed onto his knees, eyes wide, jaw slack. Tears were running down his face.
“Mark! Talk to us!” Cherry said, her brain racing to put together unfamiliar words and phrases into something useful. “Are you all right? Why… um…” She realized she didn’t know the English word for crying, and her questions ran aground.
“It works,” Mark whispered. “Pathfinder works. It’s pointing towards Earth. It’s getting a signal.” He put his still-gloved hands on Cherry’s shoulders. “Earth is sending a signal. They know Pathfinder’s here. They know I’m alive!!”
A loud, chest-wracking sob struck the human, and he leaned forward, hugging Cherry tightly and burying his face into her mane. “They know I’m alive!!” he repeated, his voice strangled by his tight throat as he cried unashamedly into Cherry’s hair.
Cherry didn’t flinch or hesitate. She reached one forehoof up to hug Mark back, whickering soft comforting sounds as he cried. Moments later Spitfire joined, as did Dragonfly. Fireball, as always, came last, settling for a comforting claw on the human’s shoulder.
“What’s wrong with him?” Starlight called from her bunk. “Talk to me! Don’t make me burn the whole magic battery to levitate myself over there!”
“He just made contact with home,” Cherry said. “He’s no longer alone.”
“What are we, wet straw?” Starlight replied.
“Not the same thing, Starlight,” Dragonfly called back.
This interruption helped Mark get himself back under control, and he straightened up, releasing Cherry. “Sorry,” he said.
“Nothing needs sorry,” Cherry replied. “Go talk to you people.”
“Talk. Yeah.” Mark scrambled to his feet. “Gotta talk. What do I say? How? Um… camera. Stereo imager. Need sign, need message.” He scrambled to the drawer where the markers that hadn’t been dessicated by the breach were kept. Beside them was the precious fifty sample case labels- the only paper in the Hab aside from the pony flight manuals. He began scribbling madly on one; then, finished with that, scribbled shorter messages on two others. “There! Need height, need…” He looked at Fireball. “Where are the antenna scraps?” he asked.
“Scraps?” Fireball asked.
“The bits of antenna you picked up outside,” Dragonfly said in Equestrian. “Where did you stow them?”
“Under Amicitas, outside,” Fireball said.
When Dragonfly repeated this info for Mark, he scrambled to put the upper part of his spacesuit back on. Barely stopping to check the suit’s seal, he leaped to the airlock, then bounded back to grab the three label cards he’d written on.
“I don’t think we’re going to the cave today,” Cherry said quietly.
An hour after posting his first message, Mark had another two-minute EVA. This time his first words upon removing his helmet were, “They said yes!!”
Cherry, Spitfire, and Dragonfly applauded pony fashion, pounding the dirt floor with their hooves. Fireball applauded dragon-style, clapping his paws. Back in the bunks, Starlight Glimmer called out, “Woo-hoo!”
“Yeah, isn’t it great?” Mark asked. “We can talk! We… wait,” he said, sobering up. “We’re not gonna talk very much if all NASA can say is yes or no.” He began pacing, mumbling to himself so that Cherry could only catch about one word in three, something about “both sides” and “three-sixty” and “askie.”
Finally, nodding to himself, he said, “Fireball, I need fourteen more pieces of antenna.”
“Okay,” Fireball said, reaching for his helmet. He hadn’t bothered to unsuit after Mark’s first short EVA of the day.
Mark counted out eight label cards, pulled a pair of shears from his toolbox, and paused. “My shop teacher would throw a fit if he saw me doing this,” he said just before using the shears to cut the stack of cards in half. This done, he dropped the shears on a worktable, grabbed the marker again, and began to label each card with a single symbol.
“What are you doing, Mark?” Cherry asked.
“We have a code called Askie,” Mark said. “A-S-C-I-I. Two hundred fifty-six possible letters, numbers, symbols. Dragonfly, please turn on Computer 4 and search all directories for A-S-C-I-I. I know you know how to do that.”
“Yes, Mark,” Dragonfly said, rushing to the cabinet where the computers were kept when not in use.
“I can use these cards,” Mark said, marking the last one, “to get Askie. Two of these equals one letter of Askie code.”
“Not very…” Cherry didn’t know Mark’s word for efficient. “Not sound very good.”
“Cherry, he’s turning twenty-six letters, ten digits, and I don’t know how much punctuation into sixteen total symbols,” Starlight called from her bunk. “That’s plenty good! Good idea, Mark!”
“Yeah, I thought so,” Mark said. “I just hope NASA does too.”
Spell with ASCII. 0-F at 21-degree increments. Will watch camera starting 11:00 my time. When message done, return to this position. Wait 20 minutes after completion to take picture (so I can write and post reply). Repeat process at top of every hour.
11:00 S-T-A-T-U-S
I’m all right- no physical problems. One spacesuit destroyed, another suit helmet broken, Airlock 1 detached & leaking from hairline crack. One computer monitor broken. All other Hab equipment fully functional. Five guests, one with broken limb, others healthy. All on 2/3 rations pending harvest of crops.
12:00 H-O-W-A-L-I-V E
Impaled by antenna fragment. Knocked out by decompression. Landed facedown, blood sealed hole. Woke up after crew left. Bio-monitor computer destroyed by puncture. Freak accident. Crew had reason to think me dead. NOT THEIR FAULT.
13:00 C-R-O-P-S-?
Discovered large cave at Site Epsilon. Full of quartz. Used resources from crashed alien ship to make greenhouse, 600 sq m under cultivation. Add’l 100 sq meters in Hab, lost in Hab breach, will replant using seed & first harvest from cave.
14:00 W-H-O-G-U-E-S-T-S
Aliens from a parallel universe with different physical laws. Experimental FTL drive malfunctioned, change in physics forced them to crash-land here. Need better communication channel to say more.
15:00 A-G-R-E-E- -- - B-R-G-S-J-R-N-R-O-U-T
Sojourner rover brought out, placed 1 meter due north of lander. If you can contact it I can draw hex numbers on the wheels and you can send me six bytes at a time.
16:00 S-J-R-N-R-N-T-R-S-P-N-D
Damn. Any other ideas? Need more bandwidth. Have photos, movies, other documentation of first contact you really need to see.
17:00 W-O-R-K-I-N-G-O-N-I-T
Earth is about to set. Resume 08:00 my time tomorrow morning. Tell family I’m fine. Give crew my best. Tell Commander Lewis four out of five aliens share her horrible taste in music.
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That moment with the ponies all hugging Mark was really sweet.
Woo! Contact!
Poor NASA. Watney is going to blow their minds come tomorrow.
The worst part about this story is having to wait for the next chapter to drop.
Two of them would be one ASCII Character, not four... unless he's using unicode but I doubt NASA needs emojis that badly.
Hoooo boy wait until nasa hears about the fact that the aliens are ponies with literal magic abilities they wont believe it. Especially how fast equestrian tech advanced
The Cuddle Bug got the equivalent of 10 meal packs today.
8750652 Damn. I knew that. Don't know what I was thinking.
Ladies and gentlemen, fillies and gentlecolts, we have Contact.
8750644
Tomorrow? The scientists are sitting around just looking at the phrases "ftl drive," "parallel universe," and "change in physics forced them to crash." I promise you they are already losing their minds.
8750652
It would be two only if they’re using hex; four would be needed if using binary.
But even if we assume they’re using hex — and let’s face it, it would be unreasonable to not assume that — with 16 cards, that still only leaves 8 characters for each message from NASA. It’s not clear if they were able to set it up for more characters, but one would assume they must be.
8750693
Probably the latter more than the former. FTL is almost required for the presence of extraterrestrials, so they probably came to grips with that a while ago. But extra-dimensional? Yeah they're probably foaming at the mouth over that one.
8750683
Earlier it was mentioned that NASA could send Watney something about a pound in weight straight to him.
That gonna be more 1970's TV & Music now?
Six months later Watney gets the thumbdrive...
8750701 How do you figure that? The imager points to each card in turn, and nothing stops it from pointing to the same card twice in a row, with a twitch to show the rotor isn't stuck.
Is he going to tell NASA about the analog radio on the Amicitas?
As much as I enjoy this, any chance on some Changeling Space Program updates?
Man, the conspiracy theorists are going to work themselves into a frenzy if NASA releases footage of first contact. They already think the moon landings are fake; can you imagine what they will think of space ponies on Mars?
"Wake up, sheeple, now they're just f***ing with us!"
8750724
Now I understand.
But the other point raised is still valid: using hexadecimal, you can represent all 128 standard ASCII characters (including non readable characters like null and backspace) with only 2 hexadecimal characters (00 - 7F), and also the full 256 characters from Extended ASCII (00 - FF).
This is a huge nitpick, I realize, but I so rarely feel nitpicky over anything, and I felt that now was the time to make my move.
8750727 Eventually.
8750729 I have two weekends off the circuit after this weekend; hopefully I'll be far enough ahead to work on that then. However, I also want to get an entry in for this year's Everfree Scribblefest. I have the idea, but I need the time and energy.
8750735 There are few groups that deserve being f****ed with more.
8750746 Nope. The buffer chapters focus on the exchanges between Mars and JPL. Also, it was Hermes who spotted that Mark might be alive first, in this universe.
8750761 Nice idea, but poor timing. Thea beat you to it, and I've made the correction.
8750652
Even with unicode, if you encode in UTF-8, ASCII characters still only take up 8 bit[namely because the MSB is used to indicate whether the next byte is part of this character]
Oh god, now that i think more about it this will surely cause some silly kind of reactions towards Earth based Ponies and Horses. And Horsemanship will surely be re-cemented into the core of the human culture somehow.
And that is before all the silliness which come from the conspiracy theorists, religious fanatics, new age hippies and all the rest of it.
A strong chapter, you could feel the excitement alongside watney as though you were there. The group hug, I can imagine, was filled with relief and hope.
So, what sound will NASA collectively make when they learn Mars has a unicorn, a pegasus, a dragon, a xenomorph cousin, and a small pony? Or rather, how will the scientists react to 'Oh yeah, because magic' is the reason the group is still alive?
At least he didnt have to use Octal, Base 64, unless he wants to use a laptops camera for reading positioning information?
Pity noone is using a mouse. thats a great positional detector once its set up and calibrated?
Could be worse, could be using Duck Hunt style OnOver rate of flash, pattern style icons on the laptop screen for a high sped Hawking style text selector? Still, have to get the data down first, which for compact, comes down to machine code. Do all the compilation Earthside to work out which functions to call then only give the first couple hundred bytes of the bootstrap cose? Might even find it already on the laptop? I assume they have OSK in Accesibility?
Is it strange that I read this chapter, navigated to another story while eating, then looked up at a TV playing a basketball game... only to see an advertisement on a placard in the arena saying PATHFINDER?
I actually kind of find myself hoping NASA wont be able to manage the reprogrammed rover in this story, just because NASA's reactions to the absurdity of the situation will be far more entertaining with limited communications :p
8750641
But poor Starlight got left out...he'll just have to make it up to her later.
AFAIK:
ASCII is 7bit , 128 characters/codes.
ANSI is 8 bit - useful if you (after agreeing on particular code page) want to send letters with accents, like ä ą æ ę ö ó œ ü ó etc. Not really needed here.
In the end what you really want to use something with 6bit or even 5bit encoding like ITA2 if more efficient means of communication aren't possible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code#ITA2
upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/42/International_Telegraph_Alphabet_2.jpg
EDIT.
Ninjaed. Next time: first refresh page then post ;)
YAY FOR MARK!!!
I'm really looking forward to the NASA reaction to the interdimensional FTL drive.
I'm alittle confused? Is the robot taking pictures of Mark's messages on the labels and sending them back to Earth? If so, why not have one of the ponies stand in front of the camera for a picture?
8750761
"Hello, and welcome to The Internet! If you look to the left, you will find people making pornographic material from all things imaginable and some things not. To your right are entire gender-flipped universes 'because why not'. And if you look down you will find the smoldering embers of a flame war wating to erupt over the hexidecimal notation of ASCII characters."
Sorry. Couldn't help myself.
Hmm that answer Mark gave them is interesting in how it covers so much of what they do without sounding completely insane, just a little bit.
Proof of parallel universes is crazy though. And to know that the physical laws aren't the same? That would probably overturn and/or prove tons of theories. Though the aliens surviving the physical laws being changed is interesting in itself.
Oddly though I'm a bit disappointed they reestablished communications because NASA's speculation was very entertaining.
This chapter was so cathartic. Good to have comm back to the blue planet. Can’t wait to see humanities reaction.
8750939
Because having a pony sit outside for a photo is not priority number 1 right now. Guessing it's coming soon though, and I can't wait for Earth to see them. I wonder if the ponies know how completely adorable they all are by Earth standards? Dragonfly probably has some idea, but I could see Spitfire being especially taken aback at finding out she's like, an 11 on the cuteness scale.
I love the crack about Lewis's music choices.
8750780
... oh.
Well, I mean, Thea I knew about, but... you know what? Not gonna let it get me down. I’ll just grab my “pick-me-up” from the fridge.
8750893
"Wow, you guys are really celebrating that you were able to talk to Mark Watney"
"Oh, yeah, we did that too, didn't we?"
Technically the pony drive wasn't ftl (though given how it works, it could be, especially if combined with human tech since it's based on how high a frequency they can trigger it). It's more space efficient than "Non-Newtonian" though :p
8751048
Idk if they're getting too excited about actually using the ftl drive yet, seeing as all they know about it is that it failed, doesn't work properly with our physics, and this experiment left its crew stranded. Still lots of other things to be excited about.
Contact with NASA has been established! WOOHOO! Can't wait to see the reaction on Earth.
8751133 Jet Propulsion Laboratories, Pasadena, CA.
8751133
JPL is jet propultion labratory.
Interestingly, depending on how the water teleporter handles salts dissolved in water, there is totally a kind of rocket they could build to get them to Earth.
4,000km/sec exhaust velocity! Too bad about the problems...
8750780
like the flat earth people
8751133
Probably less guilt to worry about, too. If you asked a group of pioneering astronauts to volunteer for an extremely high risk mission to stay on Mars for 2 years and meet advanced aliens, you'd probably have to draw straws to force someone to fly the ship back home. They might be jealous of Mark.
8750720 Stayin' alive, stayin' alive....
With a little work, you can devise a word compression matrix where the high-frequency words are allocated low-bitrate signals, such as:
01 - and
02 - or
03 - Timesheets are due at the end of the two week time period or you risk having your paycheck delayed! Don't forget!
04 - Who parked in my spot outside?
05 - Confirm please
06 - Confirmed
You can tell my word frequency chart is a little warped...
8750780
i have to ask how much food and gear can they sent up to mark? because if this is truly 2030s then by then it would be like a mini bus size wight to sent up stuff to him
8751181
i say sent this to him
8751238 It depends on the position of the planets. Right now they are still really, really bad.