Sol 108
AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 107
ARES III SOL 108
[08:09] JPL: Good morning, Mark. Venkat Kapoor here again. First, I want to let you know that we’re working on some science experiments for you to conduct after your harvest is done. This will be chemical analysis of your cultivated soil from both the Hab and the cave, with surface samples from about one kilometer southeast of the Hab and just downslope of the entrance to the cave to use for controls, plus some other mineralogy and some medical self-checks.
Although one of the JPL techs offered his grandfather’s collection of Jimmy Buffet songs on MIDI, after consultation it has been decided that even low-quality music files are just too large for the limited bandwidth we have. We’ll send a flash drive full of music from around the world of every type except disco on Slepinir 1. Until then, enjoy your boogie fever.
After consultation, the botanists here believe the hay harvest will keep best in the alien ship. It has pressure, some heat, and an atmosphere dry enough to inhibit rotting. Please consult with your friends on this.
Speaking of your friends, I have a number of requests from various departments here for Starlight Glimmer. I’ll begin with those once we confirm you’re up and awake.
[08:25] WATNEY: Good morning, Dr. Kapoor. I know I’ve made some questionable decisions lately, but I just want you to know that I have the greatest confidence and enthusiasm in the mission.
[08:39] JPL: Nice try, Mark, but it’s “greatest enthusiasm and confidence.”
Good morning, Starlight. First, a couple of questions for our media division, following up on your radio interview yesterday evening. Is it true that your people generally thought the world was flat until a few years ago?
[08:53] WATNEY: Good morning, Dr. Kapoor! It’s a bit of an exaggeration, but not much. Scholars knew the world was a globe since not long after Chaos ruled the land, but most ponies tended to stay where they were born. And even some scholars thought the sun, moon and stars were part of a sort of dome, beyond which there was nothing. Only after Princess Luna returned, and after Twilight Sparkle became a princess, did we hear the full truth.
[09:07] JPL: Did nobody have a theory that planets, moon, sun, etc. were more than just lights on a wall?
[09:31] WATNEY: No. Why should they? Princess Heavens raised the sun every morning and lowered it every night. You could go to our capital and watch her do it. If she could do that, why not explain anything in the sky as magic lights?
[09:47] JPL: I’m sorry, did you just say your princess raised and lowered the sun?
[10:02] WATNEY: Yes and no. What she really does is grab the sun with her magic and use it as leverage to accelerate the rotation of our world. Since she came back, Princess Luna really does raise and set the moon, though, since it’s so much smaller. She also keeps track of the little stars close to our planet.
[10:15] JPL: This wasn’t in any of the reports you sent. Could you write a new report about your solar system, how it works, and why it works?
[10:31] WATNEY: Sure! I didn’t mention this because it really doesn’t apply to your world. Also, we don’t know what makes our system unstable, so I can’t explain why it is this way.
[10:44] JPL: Thank you. Another request, from Astrodynamics. They’re responsible for plotting orbits and planning how we fly ships. They want to know the following information: the recharge rates of the kind of batteries that you use for your Sparkle Drive; the specific equations for energy input to drive performance; the upper limit on cycles per second; and the limitations on programming the drive for specific coordinates.
[10:58] WATNEY: I can write that for you, yes. Are you going to make your own Sparkle Drive?
[11:11] JPL: I don’t think so. We’re still exploring options for when you rebuild yours, I think. Astrodynamics didn’t say why they wanted the information.
[11:25] WATNEY: We’ll let you know when it’s done. Anything else?
[11:39] JPL: No, thank you. I’ll begin the mail upload to you now; please tell Mark to start your daily uploads as soon as the mail finishes. Venkat out.
ESA:To Starlight Glimmer. Message begins. Quote. The most popular story Tgapt has in her show is how she defeated the attempt by Chrysalis to conquer Equestria, with some slight assistance from yourself. The only thing lacking in my performances is your presence. When you return Tgapt is counting on you to be part of a special show for our fans! Tgapt would have rescued you already, but Twilight Sparkle insists on being the one to do it. Otherwise you know Tgapt would already be there! So stay well until we arrive! End quote. Over.
AMICITAS: Was going to ask what Tgapt was, but we can guess from context. But since when did Trixie defeat Chrysalis? Over.
ESA: In my nightmares. I told her about them, because why not? By the way, you were the hero in the nightmare- Trixie was comic relief. – Chrysalis Out.
INTERVIEW #2
What is your name? Cherry Berry.
What did you do on your ship? I am the commander and pilot.
How did you get into space flight? At home only pegasi fly. But I wanted to fly. I worked hard and began with balloons, then other things. When the space thing happened, I found a program which would let me fly rockets.
Who do you have waiting for you back home? My parents and aunt Celebration, my friend and landlady Gold Harvest- we call her Carrot Top- and all my friends at the Bug-Pony Space Program.
What are your impressions of humans? You look really silly. And you talk down to people a lot.
Do you look forward to visiting Earth after your rescue? Thank you, but I only want to go home.
What will you do when you finally go home? I’ll take time off my job, fly my balloon, rest, and eat all the cherries. ALL THE CHERRIES.
What is your favorite disco song? “Rocket Mare.”
If there were one little thing (not a ship) you could have from home, what would it be? Cherries. Much-much cherries. It’s been eighty days since I had a fresh cherry and two weeks since the last cherry meal.
What message do you have for the people of Earth? With hard work and friendship nothing is impossible. Also, send more cherries.
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The cherries are gone, why are all the cherries gone?
Ya know, I think Cherry wants something but I'm just not sure what... If only she made it a bit clearer.
Oh, Starlight, please, do tell humans more about your world, and don't forget to tell all those surely-not-afraid-of-aliens people that your species is ruled by the two immortal beings capable of moving the moon.
Also, mind-controlling soul-sucking parasites with basically no self-preservation instinct and unquenchable enthusiasm for space exploration.
I'm sure humans will take it calmly.
Washington post next morning:
"We are doomed. Buy plushies."
8786348
then as the box open a wave of sadness as this play in the background of mark usb drive/mp3 player
8786350
then everyone go into there panic room
8786316
Maybe she want an apple NASA say
Unrelated, but I'm recording The Martian on my DVR this Sunday (it's on FX if anyone else was interested). Hopefully nothing goes wrong with the recording, so I can watch the movie for the first time ever!
8786290
Oh oh oh oh what would you do for a cherry!
8786368
hope you won't mind the little things that was not from the book
8786372
I've never read the book, to be honest. Will probably look into getting it the next time I got to the mall, though.
Stop. Just stop.
You don't have to keep trying to justify the gaps in logic from CSP. It's much easier to ignore the more farcical elements of CSP when you don't keep bringing them up.
Oh wow. I kind of want to know what happened to Grumpy Momma Changebug for her to tell
Trixieanypony other than Cherry about her nightmare.I'm not sure, but I think Cherry really wants fresh apples. Who doesn't like a nice, delicious, crunchy apple? They're so tasty!
This is a cry for help.
8786393
and when she get them tears of sadness happens
Nice fix on the flat Equus thing. You maintain the continuity with CSP but allow this story to escape having a straight up joke in its setting details. Good thinking dude.
Somebody at NASA just crapped themselves calculating the energy the pony rulers throw around every day. Which is hilarious. As is the inevitable denouncement of sun worshippers and pagan gods by certain sectors of the population once this gets out to the general public.
8786396
Not really. If you go back to CSP (Chapter 1), the two explanations actually contradict each other. It doesn't really 'fix' anything.
8784721
8783367
8707430
Also twenty years from now, "I must break you" has become the default phrase for dragons challenging another dragon to any sort of fight or competition.
8786350
wait till they start to talk about Discord in detail
wait wait wait..... is sending candy cherry count as sending cherry?
8786350
also key note here they won't do much here on earth really given the magicengery is life engery so bring the battle to the middle of no where with no life then there more useless than a fidget spinner as a weapon
i know this is beating a dead horse joke but
as the rover come to the hab mark was about to use it to download a song until it start playing disco music
8786384
maybe seeing throx turn green colorful
8786396
then the vikins come back to raid the ponies for its booty!
You know what, I figure I'm only going to get one thing which I've predicted in this story, being a musician and not a rocket scientist. So - called it!
I thougt one of the Rover updates was 15 Meg? Last I saw, there was a MIDI collection that was thousands of tracks that was 25 Meg or so.
The laptops contain most likely GM sound banks due to the audio chipset. Otherwise known as the computer version of a Midi Keyboard sample Rom chip.
Theyre having even more fun trying to work out teh ratio of planetary to moon to stellar energy flows. Local small stars? Depends on how small and how close. If theyre kilometer lumps, then its Reaver squashing time.
The Buffer suspense Is Real.
8786494
Didn't happen in this 'verse. 1) Changeling Space Program was started before that episode. 2) Depriving Chrysalis of her swarm would make CSP a non-starter.
Add to those, my thoughts...
3) I'm personally not a fan of the Skittlebugs. At all. I've never liked them. 4) The stone chair of anti-magic (unless you're a changeling for some reason) is just dumb. So dumb it hurts.
I don't get it. What did Mark get wrong?
also side note ya a usb drive to space now put minecraft on it and every game that you can play forever.... and also put some cartoons on it for them
I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry
*notices chapter number*
*breath in...*
Heh. 69.
8786524
i like to think of how it happen with his bro and him "am going to give my love to you" before she told trixie and then boom it happen now there only two Skittlebugs and given they see how they look like vs now i can see a 50 50 right there
8786531
I asked Google. It's something HAL said in 2001.
I was thinking of the weird requests the ponies may get (or the ones that NASA has blocked). Or the influence that Earth could have on Equestria. Then these came to mind.
i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/098/714/3ad.png
pre00.deviantart.net/968a/th/pre/i/2016/122/5/e/playpony__the_great_and_powerful_trixie_by_applestothe-da10wfl.png
It's only a matter of time in this universe
.
8786570
uuummm dude when a leak ep of lighting dusk come out they gone to work just half a day and made 20 pics of it then 50 then 100 then 400 then 1000
8786379
I've also "watched the movie before reading the book" a few times. Good example would be The Abyss-- good grief there was a lot shaved from the book and that's not just the superfluous flashbacks to give the characters a history. I did read It years before watching the horribly mangled movie attempts however. Took awhile as the paperback clocked in at almost 900 pages (thick enough to stun an ox!).
And Mark is still stuck in the Disco Inferno. Stay strong while Stayin' Alive, Watney!
So much for diplomacy if Starlight is going to keep dropping bombs like this.
Looking forward to Dragonfly's interview, especially.
Best of luck maintaining and expanding the buffer!
8786393
hey dude dose cherry candy count as sending cherries or no?
Did nobody have a theory that planets, moon, sun, etc. were more than just lights on a wall?
No, they're light bulbs. Honest.
8786418
Yea let's bring in the magic user whose magic operates on rules so orthogonal to normal reality that even that the rules of magic that humanity is starting to learn about is violated.
8786396 The flat-earth thing is more or less how it was in our history. Scholars and the well-educated knew Earth was a globe from the time of ancient Greece, even having a roughly accurate estimate of its circumference. Columbus knew this, but he had tried to recalculate the circumference and got a number only three-quarters the actual amount. But most people got no education aside from whatever the local church doled out or what the family or trade master passed on. Furthermore, the shape of the Earth just didn't matter to most, because the only way most people would ever go more than fifty miles from the place they were born is if they went into the army, went to sea, or were forced to flee due to war or plague.
And meanwhile, right here on Earth, that same church I just mentioned was teaching, even to the educated, that the stars were a great dome centered on the Earth. Comets were clouds or projections against it, and the planets, Sun and Moon orbited the Earth, which itself was utterly immobile.
And so far as practical considerations for almost all humanity were concerned, the explanation was as good as any other.
8786531 Watney was quoting HAL from 2001 from memory. Venkat was nitpicking the quote. (He might have been cheating; after all, Venkat has access to Google and Wikiquotes, and iMDB, and Watney doesn't.)
8786611 Undertale was not the first source of "nya ha ha". It was old when Time for Beany / Beany and Cecil used it for the laugh of Dishonest John.
8786513
"We also had one that, after running a cult based on brainwashing and magical soul theft, went back in time and nearly destroyed the world trying to settle a grudge... Oh wait she's right here I'll let her give you the details."
8786659
'Well, except for the fact we know time travel doesn't work that way, due to the multi-universe idea. She only went back to an alternate reality while we were perfectly safe in our own. You know, because you can't actually destroy a timeline. She actually showed Twilight alternate universes that already exist out there. It must have been amazing! Here Starlight is now. '
'Oh, did I forget to mention that the multi-verse is a thing where we are from? My bad. '
NASA: Oh, like that thing we have in one of are old cartoons, DBZ. Where a character called Trunks couldn't actually alter his own timeline but instead witnessed a completely different one. Fascinating.
Cherry : I know, right? Our Princess actually visited one where she and her sister were completely evil, while a being called Sombra was a benevolent ruler. She ended up falling for that Sombra. It was just a really weird situation.
That is actually why I take the whole Starlight destroying the world with a grain of salt. It conflicts with a lot of other things in the series. Twilight's own experience with time travel conflicts with the Starlight thing, where Twilight was always meant to go into the past.
Not to mention EQ girls completely obliterates the idea of her having had any effect on the normal timeline.
One of my theories was that Equestria solar system was a large (Talking planetary scale here) spaceship that hit something while FTL. The sun would be the engine core. The moon was the engineering bay, and possibly command decks. The nearby "stars" are what remain of the ships hull with running lights at emergency power levels. The planet itself is the patched together life support, living quarters, and what ever it was they hit.
Considering that the thing is Older than their current recorded history, they are managing fairly well. ...
8786290
Cherry popsicles? Ooh, chocolate covered cherries.
Cherry statues.
Cherrybomb?
Cherry
Cherry Berry dear? I think you have a problem when it comes to cherry's.
I wonder if Pinkie introduced her to the cherrychanga.
8786670
The comics aren't canon to the animation. Also, Starlight broke Starswirl's rules using the power from Harmony, the Map specifically. I dunno who's talking in your example, but very little about time travel is known 'for a fact'. Anyway point is, it was a villain move and pretty crazy. None of them succeeded so that's not really the rubric in play here.
8786695
Give her a break. Eating cherries is LITERALLY the poor mare's destiny. She is, at this moment, further away from any form of cherry than she has ever been in her life. It's probably taking all her will power not to order Starlight to try the potentially Hab breaching cherry making spell again.
I'm calling bull on this. There are many MIDI files on the web you could find for a few kilobytes at most.
But let's just pretend that the size restraint is a real thing instead of a contrived thing. There is such a thing as slack space in the bandwidth that they could always be using to send whatever files they might not normally be able to send no matter the size or the priority.
C'mon, don't make them listen to Disco forever! :shudders: