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The Maretian

by Kris Overstreet

Chapter 57: Sol 95

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AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 94
ARES III SOL 95

[08:16] WATNEY: Good morning, Earth! This is Mark Watney, but not for very long. It’s been exactly thirty sols since I personally inspected the cave farm last, so I’m taking Rover 1 out there today with two of my guests. But don’t worry. I’m leaving another of my guests to talk with you and answer your questions about them. My beautiful assistant Dragonfly is the second-best at speaking and typing in English. Unfortunately the great wizard Starlight the Untranslatable Last Name, who went with me to Pathfinder, is the one who’s best at English. She’s restricted to the Hab because of that broken limb, which the inflatable cast just fits on. It's a bit long for her, but it works. Getting her suit on for the group photo three sols ago was a pain for everybody but especially her, so we’re not doing that again just for this chat.

I’m really hoping you guys come up with a procedure for me to repair the Hab radio. Here’s the low-down on what’s left. The actual radio unit inside the Hab is intact. The dish, as you probably know, sheared off its mast on Sol 6, taking the rotors with it. I have twenty-seven antenna fragments remaining, of various sizes, from the antenna farm. The cable that led from the farm to the dish mast snapped about thirty centimeters from the mast. The cable from the mast to the Hab is intact. The beacon system is fully functioning, as are the rover radios.

In addition, the alien ship has two communications systems. One works on principles that don’t operate well in this universe and which I don’t want to explain until you can receive photos. Sensitive stuff. The other is an old analog voice-only radio with five preset channels, all in or near the commercial FM bands. I tried using the alien ship’s antenna with the Hab, but it didn’t work.

I’ve used two of the #7 spare power cables and three voltage adapters to connect the alien ship to Hab electricity. That’s enough to run its airlock, remaining lights, and a little heat. I have a #3 power cable running to the MAV fuel plant for use in powering it to bottle CO2 for feeding plants and other uses. Four #2 lines, a solar farm multi-plug adapter, and a #8 line are being used to power a salvaged airlock and some heaters in the cave farm. All other electronics repair resources remain unused at this time.

That’s all I can think of. If you want to know about anything else, ask my beautiful bug assistant. Back around 13:00! – Mark

[08:34] JPL: Thanks, Mark. For future reference it might be a good idea to repeat the Pathfinder procedure on Rover 1 so you can use your modified Rover 2 for your long-distance EVAs.

We notice you don’t list the antenna farm lattice base in your inventory. I assume the dish smashed it into little bits when it sheared off, leaving nothing salvageable. Also, you don’t mention the MDV radio. We know the MDV was breached during the Sol 6 storm. Do you know if the MDV radio was broken? Can you take pictures of the damage if it is?

Based on prior image analysis our first response is to remove the radio from Rover 1, since you’re using it for spare parts, and set it up in one of the pop-tents attached to the Hab. The antenna cable can be run through a patch kit valve and sealed using the spare antenna gasket from the rover repair kit. The procedure may require depressurizing the Hab, but we’re testing to see if we can eliminate that step without risking another breach. I’ll have more for you on that tomorrow.

Anyway, I’m assuming Mark won’t read this until this afternoon. Is Dragonfly on? Please respond.

[08:54] WATNEY: Hello to Earth! I am Dragonfly. I type slow, so please be kind. I make some answers before time this morning so I can ctrl-C ctrl-V them here if they are what you ask about. (Why is it ctrl-V and not ctrl-P? C is for Copy, why is V for Paste?)

[09:06] JPL: Hello, Dragonfly. I am Venkat. My friends tell me Mark drove off around 08:23. We know Mark likes to play pranks, so we had to be sure this wasn’t one. How do you like living with Mark?

[09:22] WATNEY: Mark is good. He is very patient and kind. He has funny television shows. What is pranks? Is it a game? What are the rules?

[09:35] JPL: A prank is a kind of joke. You try to make someone else scared or confused. They can be mean, but Mark isn’t a mean person.

[09:42] HERMES: That’s what you think! – Martinez

[09:49] WATNEY: Ooooh! I know lots of people who like play pranks at home! Mark doesn’t do that to us. Spitfire played a good prank on him a few days ago.

[09:50] JPL: Hermes, you will have your chance to talk with our visitors. Please leave this conversation to us for now.

[09:58] HERMES: Roger. But Martinez is right. You weren’t there the day he had all our name labels changed on our uniforms when they were in the laundry. We had to report to the sims wearing each other’s coveralls, and Mark was there with the camera. – Lewis

[10:02] JPL: Dragonfly, which of the aliens are you? We only know you by satellite pictures. Here is what we’ve been calling you based on those:

TALL BOY – only one with two legs instead of four

ORANGE LEADER – always out in front

WHITE BOXY – almost always has a large box with her

WHITE HEN – usually very close to White Boxy or someone else

ORANGE RANDOM – could do anything

[10:19] WATNEY: Okay! I can ctrl-V now!

OUR CREW

CHERRY BERRY – Boss. Pilot. Earth horse/pony (don’t know which word is right). Best space pilot from our home. Works hard. Loves cherries a lot!

STARLIGHT LIGHT-THAT-DOES-NOT-STAY-THE-SAME-AND-IS-ALMOST-NOT-THERE (we don’t know the word) – Science and magic. Not a pilot. Unicorn. Keeps working on one thing until it is done and can’t see anything else. Helped make the engine that got us here. Her leg is broken now.

FIREBALL – Pilot, space walk boss. Dragon. Really grumpy. Eats shiny rocks.

DRAGONFLY – That’s me! Was pilot, now engineer. Mark calls me bug-pony- not what I am, but we don’t know the word for what I am. I fix things on our ship if they can be fixed. Was a fighter for my ruler before I went to space.

SPITFIRE – Pilot, medic. Pegasus. Used to be boss of top pegasus flying team and high in pony guard. This is her first time in space.

Typing this: I think Tall Boy is Fireball. Orange Leader is Cherry. White Boxy is Starlight. White Hen is Spitfire. I looked up "hen", and I really won't call her that! And I think I’m Orange Random. What is random?

[10:33] JPL: Thank you for having that written in advance. For Starlight’s name try twinkle, glimmer, or shimmer. You use the words unicorn, pegasus and dragon. Did Mark tell you these are myths- not-true things- on our world? Also, given the group picture we took, you are definitely not horses. Pony and ponies are the better words.

[10:35] JPL: Wait- why do you use the word magic?

[10:51] WATNEY: More ctrl-V!

THE KINDS OF HORSES/PONIES

EARTH HORSES/PONIES – No horn, no wings. Earth ponies are very strong and good with plants and animals. They grow the crops. Their magic is mostly in the hooves.

PEGASUS’S – Wings, no horn. A pegasus flies through the air and makes the weather. Their magic is mostly in the wings.

BAT HORSES/PONIES – Bat wings, no horn. Rare. They come out at night. Don't know much about them.

UNICORNS – Horn, no wings. Unicorns make magic with their horns. They make difficult things.

ALL-CORNS – Horn and wings. Most power ponies. There are only five and they rule the pony lands. Starlight’s boss at home is an all-corn.

BUG-HORSES/PONIES – Not really ponies. We have wings and horns but only our ruler is as power as an all-corn. We used to hide and steal love from ponies, but those were the bad days and things are different now. Our ruler was first in space!

OTHER TALKING PEOPLE THAT ARE NOT HORSES/PONIES: dragons, griffins, hippogriffs, yaks, buffalo, cows, minotaurs, many more that I could not find name for in your dictionary and that Mark could not name.

Typing: So my friends are ponies. Go- whoops! New question, more ctrl-V!

WHAT IS MAGIC?

Mark tells me you do not have magic and do not know what it is. Magic is like gravity or electric. It is a thing that moves other things. In our world it is everywhere. Here it is only where things are alive. There is magic in space at home; here there is not, and that is why we crashed. Most of our ship ran on magic. Now we only have magic when all of us are together to fill our battery about 4% each day.

Magic can do many things. Earth horses/ponies use magic to make plants grow faster and to take care of animals. Pegasuss and bug-ponies use magic to fly. Unicorns use magic to lift things and cast spells that change one thing into a new thing.

In our world much runs on magic. Blimps run on magic. Televisions run on magic. Video games are half electric, half magic. Our ship was the first to run all on magic, no chemical rockets after liftoff.

Mark says you will not believe this. He took many pictures of using magic. He wants you to see them so you will know we are not lying. I lie sometimes but not about this.

Typing: What is your next question?

[12:06] JPL: Mark was right. Did he tell you there is no such thing as magic on Earth? How did your ship work?

[12:42] WATNEY: I don’t have ctrl-V for this. I thought it would wait until we send you our ship books with translate. I try to answer.

Yes, Mark tells us you have no magic. You are wrong. If you have life, you have magic. The more life there is, the more magic there is. I don’t know why you can’t use it.

We don’t know how to say the name of our ship in English. The name comes from an old pony language. Starlight’s translate magic doesn’t work on it. We use big chemical rockets to launch it from the ground. They fall off. Magic batterys then run main engines that push us into orbit and from one planet to another. We have magic talk that lets the ground see our ship on a wall and which lets us talk to one another with no light delay. Much faster than this.

Our flight was test new engine magic that goes much faster than regular engines. Blink-jump very short distances many many many times in a short time. There was an accident. We made the new engine wrong. It jumped from our world into yours. When we got here the batterys blew up except for two use-when-bad-thing-happens batterys and small-rocket-turn-ship batterys. We could not go back home. We could not stop from crash on Mars. When we crash, new engine broke.

Cherry wants to try use our ship, MDV, MAV base to try to make new ship that can leave Mars. We can make new new engine using rocks from cave. New batterys too. But don’t know if we can get off ground with them. New engine very bad use on ground.

[12:55] JPL: Can you tell us how much thrust- how much push- your engines and thrusters make? (A thruster is a small rocket that turns a spaceship.) Also, can you tell us the mass of your ship? If you can, we can do the math to find out if your ship can fly again.

[13:07] WATNEY: Mark here again. Dammit, I didn’t want to tell you about the magic until I had proof. It took a long time before I believed it, and I saw it first-hand. I didn’t want you to think I’d gone crazy up here. Also, the pony ship has a big hole in the bottom in its rear airtight compartment. It’s structurally unsound. I didn’t know they were still pursuing this.

[13:20] JPL: Please thank Dragonfly for talking to us. All of us here are looking forward to talking to him again. And right now we’re choosing to believe in Clarke’s Third Law. Just because we don’t understand it doesn’t mean it won’t work. If Dragonfly’s ship still has working or repairable engines, we want to explore that option as a backup plan. Do you have photos of the hole?

[13:32] WATNEY: Affirmative. I also have photos of the cave and its crops as of today. The crops are beautiful. So are the crystals. I can’t wait to send the pics to you. Also, Dragonfly is still here, and she’s a bit miffed. Emphasis on SHE. All my guests are female except Fireball.

[13:43] JPL: We’ll work on that. Add to the task list getting a conversion into newtons for the specific impulse of all the alien ship’s surviving engines and a decent estimate of the ship’s current weight. Also an estimate of MDV hydrazine fuel remaining and available water or other hydrogen source for the MAV. We can send that info to Astrodynamics and get an answer about the flight potential of any combination of the components. Also, sorry, Dragonfly.

[13:55] WATNEY: Will do in my copious free time. I’m going to go eat now.

[14:07] JPL: Bon appétit. Will spend the rest of today transmitting emails. You have quite a fan club down here, Mark. JPL out.

[14:19] WATNEY: Really? Can I join? How many UPC codes for the secret decoder ring? Watney out.

Author's Notes:

Can't really think of a note for this, except to say that Dragonfly is making use of the digital dictionary, and when that fails Starlight. She's still weak on grammar and participles/gerunds, among other things.

Wrote a chapter today, keeping buffer at 3. Any more writing today will be work on CSP.

EDIT: here's a thing to mention. I have Venkat get Dragonfly's gender wrong because, for some reason, I continually typo Dragonfly's gender as "he". I never made this error writing CSP. It might be because Fireball went by "dragon" in my early notes for so long... I dunno. Anyway, I do it, so I decided to have Venkat do it for once.

Next Chapter: Sol 96 Estimated time remaining: 24 Hours, 7 Minutes
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