[09:13] HERMES: Morning, Watney. Lewis here. How’s your morning?

[09:30] WATNEY: Good morning, Lewis. Things are just delightful here. I’m enjoying actual food again and sharing bits of it with my friends, so only half my meals right now are potato. We’ve got everything loaded except the batteries at the cave, Sojourner, and Cherry Berry’s new little mascot, which is already sprouting roots. Have I mentioned lately that what they call ‘earth pony magic’ is an absolute miracle to a botanist’s eyes?

The only cloud right now is that Starlight has cut magic use completely. She intends to leave here with twenty-one normal magic batteries plus the fifteen jumbos all 100% full. So Dragonfly gets only three minutes a day of magic field time, Spitfire doesn’t get flying time anymore, and the rest of us have been told where we can stuff any special requests for spells.

Today we’re going out to the cave for an hour to check on things, and then I come back for last inspections and diagnostics on all the rover equipment and the gear from the Hab installed in the Whinnybago. It’s make-work for two weeks, really.

So we’re relaxing and enjoying our elbow room while we have it. On Sol 449 we shut down the Hab and transfer to the cave. On Sol 450 we do the final loading, and just before dawn on Sol 451 we begin about fifty sols of driving. Once we start out, we’ll be crammed cheek to flank at least until launch day. I doubt it’ll be much better once we get on Hermes.

[09:43] HERMES: I’m sorry to add an extra cloud, Mark, but NASA just spotted what looks like the first dust storm of the normal Mars storm season. It’s early, and it’s currently in far eastern Arabia Terra, but it appears normal so far. No destructive winds, no electricity, just more dust in the atmosphere than usual.

[09:55] WATNEY: Believe me, Commander, I’m not going to complain if Mars wants to be only normally malevolent for a change. Is the storm moving or growing?

[10:07] HERMES: Barely any movement- a few kilometers a day. Too early to tell if it’s strengthening. We’ll keep you updated. Once you turn off Pathfinder we’ll need you to use the alien radio at least once per day to let us know you’re all right and to receive new information as we have it.

[10:19] WATNEY: Roger. Once we’re rolling, the radio will be on from one hour after sunrise to one hour before sunset. We’ll make at least one transmission per day after we’ve camped for recharging.

By the way, since you bring up the Pathfinder link, Cherry Berry wants to know if there’s any update to the flight sims for the launch? She wants to train as much as possible before we leave, considering that we have free time.

[10:32] HERMES: I don’t know anything about that. Out of curiosity, though, how does everybody rate? I know you barely scored adequate on the most simple scenarios when we were training.

[10:43] WATNEY: Starlight never took the sim. Fireball completed the basic sims- control recognition, etc. Spitfire and Dragonfly have successfully completed the flight-rated sim package. Cherry Berry has completed all the standard and advanced missions.

[10:44] JPL: Sorry, Mark, but we’re still tweaking the MAV modification procedures, and probably will be right up until Sol 500. Also, we want to keep Pathfinder open for last-minute updates before your departure, so no more big data transfers.

Speaking of, be sure to bring all the video and high-res images you have on storage media. The MAV comms check out perfectly, and the triple-redundant system will provide plenty of bandwidth to send all of it to us long before launch.

[10:55] HERMES: Standard and advanced? How many do-overs on the advanced sims?

[11:06] WATNEY: No idea. Probably a lot. There were some days that Cherry lost her English after two hours of sitting in the MDV.

[11:09] WATNEY: Roger. In fact, since we have time, I’ll get some more footage of all the Hab systems and the cave. Beck, Vogel, sorry about this, but I’m clearing your personal drives for extra storage.

Quick question: do you want us to leave early? We could be on the road in four sols if you think an early start is justified.

[11:20] HERMES: We understand. Vogel says all his family pictures are backed up in his Hermes account anyway.

[11:32] JPL: No, keep to your schedule of Hab shutdown Sol 449, cave departure Sol 451. If the storm intensifies quickly we’ll just have you stay there and write off the Hermes intercept. If the storm remains as it is, we should be able to guide you around its leading edge with no trouble. But our worst nightmare is having it blow up into a 2018-level global storm with you stuck halfway between the cave and the MAV. We don’t think an earlier departure reduces the odds of that enough to make it worth the increased risk and discomfort.

[11:54] WATNEY: Well, that’s a cheery thought to end this conversation on. But I have another. Follow along with my logic, okay?

As we know, the US is signatory to international treaty that says nations can’t claim territory outside of Earth. That means the whole of Mars is legally international waters, except for temporary installations like the Hab or ships like the MAV. When we leave the Hab, we’ll be in international waters for the entire trip to Schiaparelli.

Now, there’s no one in the MAV to give us permission to board. Technically you could, Venk, but you’re millions of miles away. So in practical terms I would still be boarding and taking control of a ship in international waters, without the consent of the owner and against the original intent of those who launched her.

By my reasoning, that makes me a pirate. A space pirate! Arrrrr!

[12:05] HERMES: Watney, my commission in the United States Navy is still active. It would be my regrettable duty, under standing orders from the Department of the Navy, to arrest you for piracy. And if I’m not mistaken, those orders still allow for summary execution if communication with higher legal authority isn’t operational. I’m pretty sure the mount for Hermes’ cooling vanes counts as a yardarm…

[12:16] WATNEY: You take the fun out of everything, don’t you?

[12:18] JPL: I’d explain to you how stupid that idea is, Mark, but now I kind of want to see all the aliens wearing eyepatches and peg legs…

Author's Notes:

Uh-oh.

Buffer still at 1, BTW.