Sol 12
AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY EIGHT
ARES III SOL 12
“Spitfire,” Starlight Glimmer said, the sound of fraying nerves popping through her low-toned voice, “if you try to put me back in bed I will bucking well use my last ounce of magic reserves to throw you through the airlock. Without opening it!”
“Spitfire, please, back off a bit,” Cherry Berry said, stepping between the other two ponies. “And Starlight, I know you’re tired, but we shouldn’t argue in front of Mark.”
Once nudged to neutral corners, the pegasus and the unicorn mumbled brief apologies. Cherry let out a sigh of relief. I’m so not cut out for this, she thought. I fly the ship. That’s all I do, I fly the ship. I’m not a leader!
She so wanted another cherry just then. She’d had one fifteen minutes before. She now had fifty-two left, and once gone there would be no others, and she’d had her one for the day, but how she so very badly wanted one. In truth she wanted a whole basket, enough to wash the stress of being a fake leader away. But even one would steady her nerves.
But no. There would be bad days in the future when there were no cherries left. And they wouldn’t keep forever in the human’s ice box, so sometime in the next week or two she would probably have to scarf them all anyway. So she needed to learn to handle life without cherries.
Life without cherries. It hardly seemed worth the effort.
Focus. Everypony’s looking at you, even Mark. They’re waiting on you, Cherry. “What did he say, Starlight?”
“He says alfalfa and potatoes,” Starlight said. “He’s a farmer- at least I think he said he’s a farmer. He said he had parts of plants and tinkering. For some reason he thinks that will make it work, but our alfalfa sprouts and seeds and his fresh potatoes are the only viable crops he can find.”
“So, is he going to go out and plant them today?” Cherry asked.
“No. ‘Need plan,’ he said, so I’m guessing he’s going to stay in today.” Starlight Glimmer’s mouth curled into a frown as she added, “He also said he’s working on a plan to move the ship.”
“What??”
“That ship’s not going anywhere!” Spitfire insisted.
“It’s half buried in the ground!” Fireball added.
“And there’s a break in the rear quarter that could make the whole back of the ship fall off!” Dragonfly finished.
“That’s what he said!” Starlight snapped. “And it makes sense, too. We can’t keep going miles back and forth every day, especially if we’re going to limit EVAs to eight hours or less. We lose over an hour just for the round trip!”
“But it’s impossible without magic!” Spitfire insisted.
“Then we’ll just have to use magic,” Starlight Glimmer said, smiling. “Both the emergency mana batteries still work. They’re up to just over one percent charge now. If we all spend the day here doing nothing, and if I push magic into one of them-“
“What is WRONG with you??” Spitfire shouted. “Are you TRYING to kill yourself? Every day you cast that spell to talk with Mark, you get mostly nonsense back, and end up flat on your flank! You need to rest, for Faust’s sake!!”
“Spitfire,” Cherry Berry said, bringing the Wonderbolt to attention.
“No, let her talk,” Starlight Glimmer said. “She has a point. But I can’t rest.” She forced herself to stand a bit straighter, to pretend she wasn’t as tired as she obviously was. “Look at all the things our host has! Machines to make this place livable! Cameras and recording devices and computers unimaginably superior to our own! Power tools and spare equipment-“
“Yeah,” Dragonfly butted in, “and the only time he was ever angry at me was when I found his tools and began poking through them. I just wanted to see what I could recognize.”
“And what do we bring to the table?” Starlight asked. “A pile of alfalfa seeds, a broken spaceship, and magic. Dragon magic. Changeling magic. Pegasus magic. Earth pony magic. And unicorn magic. That’s all we have. Spitfire’s right that we don’t have much, and that we risk hurting ourselves if we use it. But if we don’t use it at all, we die. That’s all there is to it.”
The group went silent, so silent that Mark got out of his chair and walked over to them, an inquisitive look on his strange flat face.
“Is that the deal?” Cherry Berry finally asked.
“That’s the deal,” Starlight said flatly, her temporary energy burned out, as she finally allowed her rump to touch the cool Hab floor. “No magic, no ponies. As it is, I think Mark would have a better chance at survival if we weren’t here at all.” She stared Spitfire in the eyes as she added, “We have an obligation to do everything possible to be less of a burden on him.”
Cherry Berry tried to keep her face blank, but in her head she thought: Wow. I think I know how she persuaded all those ponies to give up their cutie marks now.
Spitfire was the first to break eye contact, but only for a moment. “My official duty,” she said slowly, “is to ensure the health of the crew of Amicitas.”
“Precisely my point,” Starlight began again, but Cherry Berry put a hoof on her shoulder. It was time to stop this.
“Okay, that’s all I need to hear,” the pink earth pony said. “Spitfire, if any of us shows actual symptoms of magic exhaustion, you can make us take a break. But we’re going to use Starlight’s plan.” There. Decision made. Cherry turned to Starlight and said, “So what is your plan?”
“Life generates a magic field,” Starlight said. “The more life, the more magic. Growing crops means a lot more life and a lot more magic, so we want to help Mark as much as possible with that.”
“But how is he going to grow anything?” Fireball asked, waving a clawed hand at the airlock. “That isn’t exactly central Fillynois out there!”
“I don’t know,” Starlight admitted. “I’ll ask him when I get a chance. But he’s going to need a lot more compost to make it happen.” She looked straight at Cherry Berry as she said this, leaning a little forward on her forehooves.
“What are you looking at me for?” Cherry Berry asked.
“Earth pony magic,” Starlight replied.
“What? What does that…” The light dawned. “Oh no. Ooooooooh, no. Nononononono.”
“You’re an earth pony. You have a unique connection with the soil.”
“Growing cherries is not my special talent! Eating cherries is my special talent! That was why I left the family farm!”
“But you can still make things grow, right?”
“Well… kind of, yeah,” Cherry admitted. “But nothing like other ponies!”
“Better than any of us?”
Cherry looked around, sighed, and slumped in defeat. “But I hate messing with night soil!” she moaned.
“Twilight tells me you used to do it all the time,” Starlight said. “When you used to do all those odd jobs around Ponyville.”
“But then I was chasing a dream!” Cherry insisted. “My dream of flying!”
“Well, now we’re all chasing a dream,” Starlight replied. “A dream of not dying. So put on your big-horse saddle and get composting.”
“You did say,” Fireball chipped in, his voice dripping with amusement, “that we’re going to use Starlight’s plan.”
“Well… shoot,” Cherry Berry swore.
“Close,” Dragonfly said, and everypony, even Cherry, chuckled at that.
“But we need to keep at least two ponies here,” Starlight said. “I’ll go with Mark and take one battery with me. I think I can get the ship out of the hole if we can get a twenty percent charge to start with. But the other battery needs to be here recharging, and the more ponies present, the better.”
“Not it,” Dragonfly said immediately.
“Double not it,” Fireball added.
“You’ll need me to lower the landing gear,” Dragonfly continued, “and to fix the wheels if they’re broken.”
“I’m the strongest one here,” Fireball said. “I can help dig out the ship, at least. But I’d probably sterilize the cra... the compost.”
Starlight looked at the two of them, then at Spitfire. “I wanted Spitfire with me,” she said at last. “She’s not wrong about the risk. And… I’m not very good at judging risk.”
The Wonderbolt considered this, then shook her head. “They’re both right,” she said, shaking her head towards Dragonfly and Fireball. “You’ll need them to move the ship. I’ll help with the KP.” She smiled a little and added, “Usually I’m handing out the punishment details, not taking them.”
Cherry Berry let out her breath. Thank Faust for crises that averted themselves. If only all their arguments dissolved that easily. She so hated when these conflicts popped up. If she were in a flying machine, any flying machine, she’d know exactly what to do. Otherwise… otherwise she just wanted a princess to show up, or even Queen Chrysalis on a good day, to tell her and everypony else what to do.
Look at Spitfire. She was backing down to prevent conflict and taking responsibility. She’d been a leader for years. She knew how to handle fractious ponies. Okay, there was her short temper and lack of patience with civilians… and all four of the others were either civilians or Dragonfly…
Or Starlight Glimmer! She knew what needed to be done, and she could persuade the other ponies to do it! Okay, so she once persuaded a whole village into giving up their individuality and making her their supreme leader… and she thought magic was the solution to absolutely everything, like the time she swapped the princesses’ cutie marks… or brainwashed Twilight’s friends… or almost destroyed all of space and- yeah, maybe not…
And what about Fireball? He’s big… and loud… and large… and really surly and grumpy all the time… and, well, not Fireball then.
And Dragonfly? Intelligent, experienced, tough… flighty, adrenalin-addicted, so self-centered it was a miracle they didn’t need to account for her ego in orbital trajectory calculations…
Oh, buck me, I really am stuck with this job, aren’t I?
“Okay, if we’re agreed,” she said, “I’ll go get the markers and show Mark what we intend to do.”
“Tell him about the landing gear!” Dragonfly insisted. “We never dropped them, and the wheel well covers are reinforced for re-entry heat. They’re probably still good!”
New crisis, Cherry Berry thought. How do I draw a picture that says our spaceship probably doesn’t have a flat tire?
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Poor Cherry. Doomed to be the adult to a crew full of children.
8655105 "Look, Tim. I know you don't like going to school. The teachers hate you, the kids hate you, the food stinks, and the building has a perpetual draft. But it's only for nine months out of the year, and not even for the whole day. Besides, you have to go. You're the principal."
Yeah, Cherry just needs incentive.
"Yes, they're very nice." The human tried to come up with another word out of his limited vocabulary and failed. After all, the word 'orchard' had not been very high on the linguistic priority list, and with fifty cherry pits, the last thing he really expected in their impromptu greenhouse was fifty cherry trees in full blossom. "Very nice," he repeated, deciding that the only way he was going to explain this further was with profanity.
Charismatic Starlight is really nice to see, and this was a great observation! Since spaceflight is no longer really happening for the time being, in Cherry's position I'd put Spitfire in charge, but that's me.
I just had a thought. I am pretty sure there are some gems in Mars that Fireball can mine. Maybe he can eat some of the saphire from broken electronics (a lot of very hard glass in modern electronics is just transparent manufactured saphire, also known as transparent aluminium.)
And I am sure that, as soon as news reaches earth, there will be company after mining company killing each other for a chance to donate gems to him. After all, can you imagine the free marketing that having a literal dragon eat your gems would give?
Imposter Syndrome is definitely a thing. I and many of my fellow grad students suffer from it regularly. That an astronaut, especially someone like Neil Armstrong, would also suffer from it does not surprise me in the least.
Charismatic Starlight makes me think of her little speech in To Change A Changeling. And "Magic Solves Everything!" Starlight is one of many reasons why A Royal Problem is one of my top 5 episodes of the series. Best pony or not, Starlight is fun to watch.
Chasing a dream. A dream of not dying.
Hilarious.
Nooo! Don't give up! Hang in there! Earth has cherries!
No, no... he's a farmer scientist!
It's on a low gravity planet! Well. Not that they'd know the gravity on Mark's home planet, I guess
Haaarsh!
Hah!
Remarks and corrections:
> “It’s half buried in the ground!”Fireball added.
Another missing space. If you got anything like notepad++, you can copy the whole chapter as it is shown in Fimfic in there and then detect them with this regular expression:
(something not whitespace, followed by any double-quote character, followed by something not whitespace)
8655133
There are a few issues with this. First, everyone already looks to Cherry to be the leader. She's started the mission as the leader, having been the most experienced of everyone on board, and that position doesn't change just because the situation does. Second, Spitfire, despite her leadership experience, is still the newbie of the group. Simply naming her leader won't magically make it happen, especially since she's unfamiliar (and in Dragonfly's case, potentially hostile) with everyone else on a personal basis.
If Cherry wants to hand off the mantle of leader, she'll have to spend some time working Spitfire into that roll. This isn't just so that the others will treat her as a leader (no arguing and/or second-guessing every command) but also so that Spitfire is familiar with those under her and how to handle them effectively. Even then, it's likely that the other three will still defer to Cherry before they do Spitfire simply out of habit.
8655138 A spell still needs power, and as things are the spell takes a lot more power that the current life forms in the Hab can sustain continuously.
I loved the book, and the movie. Glad to see you're doing them justice (and even making them better). Hope you are able to keep updating at a fast pace and not burn yourself out!
P.S.- any idea when you'll update Changling Space Program? I positively LOVE how that one is coming along, so keep up the good work!
Should this be "doing nothing,".
At least the landing gear didnt have the final emergancy deployment method the Shuttle did.
Explosive charges.
When they absolutely positively needed that gear Down.
Oh. Right. As was pointed out to me in last chapter's comments.
Still, she's the best they have available. And Starlight's right; in this situation, every hungry mouth should pull its weight.
Also, how exactly did Starlight manage to almost destroy all of space? (Time I know about, but space?) Or is CSP getting to that?
And I can only imagine what Mark will make of this, or of the ensuing game of Pictionary.
Definitely looking forward to seeing the excavation, and whatever may go wrong when it happens.
8655346 Cherry got the story only second or thirdhand, and it grew in the telling. Granted, it was pretty big in the first place- time travel leading to multiple instances of Equestria being destroyed?
8655341
Well, they very well might! No reason not to use charges to open things, hell, most hatches can be blown off of real spacecraft for escape purposes in the event if a pad fire. Wouldn't want an Apollo 1-esque tragedy after all.
8655116
It's funny because Tim from The Martian is a sarcastic asshole at JPL.
Thx for tip about imposter syndrome. I’ll use it in my first classes tomorrow. (I’m a science teacher.)
How likely could you eat alien food?
Here are the main issues:
* Carbon based life?
* Basic energy
* Poisons
* Amino acids
Is it carbon based? The chemistry for life as we know it is easiest when using carbon. While silicon is a possibility, the odds are against it developing first on a given planet. So this actually isn't much of a concern.
If you were on an alien world, you would be able to get energy from various sugars/carbs/alcohols that carbon based life uses for storing energy.
The problem is identifying the food that contains poisons. For example there are many different "sugary" sugars, some you can eat (sucrose, glucose, fructose) some are indigestable (Saccharin, Erythritol, Aspartame) and some are poison(Ethylene glycol). Same goes for any alcoholic beverages. On earth there are plenty of things that provide no nutrition or are poisonous. Identifying what is digestable would be hard. If you know your mollecular formula for sugar and you were talking to aliens, then you would be ok (assuming they know about molecules).
So, you could probably survive for a while if you didn't poison yourself. The last problem means you would be screwed... eventually. Amino Acids. The human body can't produce 9 essential amino acids. The odds that alien food would have all of them is virtually nill. Life on earth uses 20 different amino acids. We've found in nature (in meteorites, etc) over 40, and labs have been able to create over 1000. The odds get even worse as each amino acid has a left and right hand version.
Conclusion:
If you don't poison yourself you could live a while eating carbs, but you will die months later from malnutrition once your body uses up its reserves of nutrients and starts eating itself.
8655116 That's a good point, Cherry's cutie mark probably means she will be better at growing cherry trees than anything else. But cherry trees are pretty water and soil intensive per pound of food, I believe.
8657179 Most fruit-bearing trees are. Most of the fruits you'd see picked off trees- pears, apples, peaches, etc.- are members of the same plant family as roses, and they're all thirsty buggers.
How does that work exactly?
8657589 The only thing Cherry Berry is more passionate about than flying is eating cherries. She's totally uninterested in growing them, though she has done odd jobs on Ponyville farms and knows her way around them.
The last time she visited Aunt Jubilee to help with the harvest in Dodge Junction she spent three days in bed with indigestion from overeating.
I have the opposite of that. I feel responsible for the creation of the cosmos...
8655161
Actually, considering the map knows Starlight was needed. Magic in this case was the best and only choice that could be used.
Watching them play Charades is so amusing.
8664109 Even if you had, I've been awaiting it.
Anyone who wants to complain about ponies speaking idiomatic English, and Mark Watney speaking very idiomatic English, but being mutually unintelligible on the premise that their languages are different, here is my explanation:
(1) "Wow, we speak the same language!" is SO overdone, and not particularly fun.
(2) Most of my readers, if not all, will be native English speakers, and will make a better connection with idiomatic English than highly stilted English. (Horse puns aside, that is.)
(3) So, if you want to be nitpicky about it, I will say that what the ponies actually are saying is being adapted into English for your enjoyment, much as Tolkien pretended the whole Lord of the Rings was a translation of a millennia-old text. The alternative is for me to make up a Welsh-like pony language and write all their viewpoints in nothing but that, a language which will be comprehensible to precisely one person, so nobody will want to read it.
And finally yes, other languages do have puns. English, with its grammatical kleptomania, is rich in them, but not as rich as, for example, Japanese, where one word can have as many as a dozen utterly different and incompatible meanings depending on accent of syllable or which characters it's spelled with.
8664138 Addendum: Jim Henson actually made up three or more languages for The Dark Crystal. I think the gelflings Jen and Kira were going to be the only ones who spoke English, if any characters spoke it at all. They tried it with a test audience and it bombed spectacularly, so they went back and dubbed all the characters except the Podlings into English without reshooting a frame. Moral: even a genius sometimes has to bend to the comfort of his/her audience.
It rhymes!
... They're doomed.
8656942
Dextroamino and levamino acids are biologically incompatible. Hope you don't land on a dextro world I guess
So much character and backstory in three sentences!
Damn that a challanges and problems i would never hope to solve... Any kind of miracles are welcome at this point.
This is the third time I've read this chapter, and still this bit is a bit iffy to me. If discipline and settling conflict is an issue, then I think field promoting Spitfire to mission commander makes sense while they're on the ground. Especially since she's probably the most useless otherwise, and that would balance the workload a little more.
But if morale and harmony is more important then no, Cherry or Starlight make more sense. And Cherry would probably see it, if she looked at it that way.
I'm already dreading the potential chapter where Cherry Berry eats the last cherry in the freezer with sorrow
Everything Mark has more is a boon. To bad he has also to invest a bit more...
I wonder if a Alien race would have aided the human when they where in range, or assistance would be given when the MLP Astronaut would have given the aliens the puppy eye combo of doom and diabetes
11286614
Indeed a cruel dat with many non Cherry days coming after...
On a unrelated note, your pictures of a really fluffy loath of breed on bed pretending to be a cat is really cute
God I love Starlight, and the immense comedy that the Equestrian tendency towards forgiveness lends her presence.
Not at all knocking the forgiveness, of course, it's almost always justified. It's just innately funny to have a former dictator and mad wizard on your crew.
New crisis, Cherry Berry thought. How do I draw a picture that says our spaceship probably doesn’t have a flat tire?
1: spaceship with oversized landing gear
2: spaceship hit the rock
3: drawing of gear folded inside spaceship
4: drawing of gear with checkmark beside it.
Working the problem, one at a time.
👍
And if a problem is to big, work into smaller once more manageable
11614285
Nice
11545343
The overall humor sure is worth a reading or 20