[08:02] JPL: Good morning, everybody. Since all of you except Mark are waiting for your spacesuits to finish curing after the maintenance yesterday (I know this because I do actually read all your reports), I hope you all enjoy one more sol off before you get back to work on the rover modifications.

However, I ask that you spend at least some of your time today brainstorming to see what parts of the modifications you might want advice on. You need to get those questions in quickly, because we’re about to lose contact.

We currently estimate an effective communications blackout beginning less than thirty sols from today as (from your point of view) Earth passes behind the sun. That blackout will last at least two weeks and probably closer to three. Please leave Pathfinder powered up during that period so we can ping the probe for a link once the solar conjunction is over. If we can’t connect in four weeks, we’ll begin contacting you by the Friendship radio system at 0900 Hab time every day until we get a response.

The sun, and the distance between Mars and Earth, is already making this connection ratty and unreliable. Data packet transfer failure is over 10% due to noise in transmission and rising, which considering how low the transfer rate is in the first place is getting critical. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.

With that in mind, tomorrow is the last day for emails in either direction before we restrict Pathfinder to chat and science data transfer only. We’ll restore email service after two weeks of continuous Pathfinder link up-time.

Dragonfly in particular has one email we’d really like her to answer. It contains the most asked questions by the reporters gathered at the press conference we held yesterday about her awakening. It would help us very much to give the reporters, and the world, the answers to those questions. (We’ve excised the more thoughtless ones.)

Finally, we’re still working on MAV modification procedures. If it seems like we’re dragging our feet, remember you don’t really need them until Sol 440 at earliest, because the MAV won’t be normally fueled for orbital liftoff before then. We are being as thorough as we can with our testing and simulations here to give you the best odds for a safe and uneventful docking with Hermes. Just wanted you to know we’re doing our best.

[08:35] WATNEY: Front desk, I wish to make a complaint. There is a bedbug in my room. She’s a bit more than a meter long head to tail, weighs thirty-five kilos, insists she has a reservation, and she keeps trying to stick a straw in my ear. I insist you remove her. At the very least take away her straw.

[09:07] JPL: We’re sending someone up now to take care of it. They should arrive in about two hundred and sixty sols. In the meantime, remind Mr. Fireball that you booked a non-smoking room. Enjoy another sunny spring day in Club Mars, where your forecast high temperature today is a balmy -4 Centigrade. We invite you to enjoy our planetwide Zen sand garden as a means of relaxing away your straw-in-ear anxiety.

[09:40] WATNEY: Clever. Clever Venkat.

[10:22] JPL: You don’t get to put Director in front of your name if you aren’t clever, Mark.

From: Dragonfly (email redacted)
To: (list)
Subject: Re: Questions About Your Hibernation

Hello, everyone! I’ll try to answer all of these questions in my statement.

Yes, I am glad to be back. However, I’m also anxious. I went into the cocoon because I didn’t think I could control myself anymore, and I gave up trying. There’s still some danger it could happen again, but I have been reminded that I have a crew- that I have friends- who will watch out for me and help make sure it doesn’t happen again.

As for how I feel about the whole thing, I’m mostly ashamed. And not just because of running away from what I did to Mark. Losing control like that is one of the most shameful things a changeling can do. It endangers ourselves and the rest of the hive. Strict control and concentration is drummed into those of us who are trained for infiltration duty from the first day. Even if we don’t have to do those things anymore, that was how I was raised, and I still feel the shame.

I’ve read the story you mention, and yes, “changeling” is definitely the English word for my species. Replacing children was one of our tactics, although we would replace anyone who we thought would be the recipient of a lot of unconditional love. You may think it’s not a nice thing, and I agree, but starving to death or reverting to mindless monsters is much less nice. But thanks to the wisdom of our current queen, Chrysalis, we don’t have to do those things anymore.

Should humans fear changelings? I wish you wouldn’t. That was why I didn’t tell you all about us before. I wanted to wait until my queen or the pony princesses could handle it themselves. I’m no queen or princess. I’m just a high-ranking drone whose duties, as I’ve been told many times, should never include diplomacy. Unfortunately, what happened, happened, and now I have to clean up after myself.

Yes, we could replace your leaders. We could infiltrate your military and sabotage your defenses. If there’s sufficient magic on Earth for us to survive, it probably wouldn’t be all that difficult. But we would need a reason to do that, and “Because we can” isn’t enough.

This is not our home universe. We would never be more than visitors, and probably not for long. And it is not in the least bit easy to get from one universe to another in the first place. Invading your world doesn’t make sense, especially since (if we wanted to do that sort of thing) we have a world which includes a species so foolish and naive that one of them spent the night next to a starved changeling she had reason to believe would awaken while she slept. Ponies, to be blunt, are an easier target than humans.

(At least, I think so. I’m going by your old television shows for this. I hope Mark isn’t an average human, because he’s a little easier target than a pony. He thinks he’s on guard because he’s seen some movies, but it doesn’t work that way).

Also, there’s a matter of numbers. My hive has about thirty thousand drones. There are millions of ponies. There are billions, B, of you humans. I would ask my mother to write me a note excusing me from invading your world, except my mother is Queen Chrysalis, so I would have to ask Epstein’s mother instead.

In any case, although I wouldn’t mind seeing your world, I very much want to go home- straight home. I’m better than I was, but I am not well and don’t expect to get well so long as I’m on Mars. I don’t belong here. And as much as I like Mark, if I woke up tomorrow and one of the airlocks opened up onto my home world instead of Mars, I’d be, “Later, stink-monkey!” and gone so fast you’d think I was Rainbow Run.

Speaking of Mark, none of you asked this, but I want to say it: Mars is a terrible, awful place. Yes, it’s another world, but after a hundred sols of everything about this other world trying to kill you, the thrill wears off. You know it is dangerous. Your NASA knows it is dangerous. And despite that you find people that volunteer- that compete with one another- that give up everything else in their lives for a chance to come here for thirty days. These people, people like Mark, are the bravest people I’ve ever met or seen, ever, and I’ve been in combat. I don’t care how much you appreciate them, it isn’t enough.

Maybe that’s a difference between your world and ours. You take your time, do everything safely, and you send the absolute best among you to the stars. We send our crazy people (like me) and hold them back just long enough that they might, I said might, not get themselves killed right away. We get away with it because we have a kinder world, with magic and rainbows and happy endings even for those who don’t deserve them. You have to work for your happy endings, and I think you do a better job than we would.

Sorry. I talk too much- it’s a changeling flaw, and it’s got infiltrators caught many times before.

To answer the rest of your questions: every time we visit the cave we’re making a magic environment for a few minutes a day to help keep us healthy. (I’m not the only one who suffers without magic, just the worst affected.) The others are still feeding me, three hugs a day, nice square meals. This should be enough for me to build up a reserve that will last me when we leave the cave behind, plus the little magic we generate ourselves can be used to recharge the batteries for more doses of concentrated magic during the trip.

And to whoever asked about all the homemade bug-pony dolls kids have made, I say: kids, take care of your changelings. Yes, we’re scary. But most of the time- not always, but most of the time- the scarier a thing looks, the more scared it is inside.

And no, sorry, but your dolls won’t share the love they collect from you with me, not if they’re doing their duty to the hive. But I appreciate the wish.

Thanks to everyone who was worried about me, and I’m sorry for disappointing you. I’ll do better next time.

Dragonfly

Author's Notes:

My Venkat is considerably more sarcastic than the book. But then, we see a lot more of him interacting with Mark than we do in the book, too.

I'd intended to get ahead on writing, get Peter is the Wolf script done... and my day got eaten trying to diagnose my uncle's computer. Final diagnosis, after three hours of futzing; it's borked. So tomorrow I drive to Houston to buy him a replacement, and then I spend tomorrow evening setting it up.

Get ahead? Get a buffer back? The universe laughs at my intentions.