[07:56] JPL: Good morning, Mark. Bruce Ng here today. We want to go ahead and get Rover 1 online as another substitute Sojourner. We’re uploading a patch to Rover 2 which will let you disable direct connection to Pathfinder. It’s important that you do this, otherwise Pathfinder will attempt to talk to both rovers thinking both are Sojourner, and errors may result.

We’ve already sent you a zip file with the Rover 1 patch to let it talk to Pathfinder. Check the usr/bin/upgrades folder, copy the file to a flash drive, and run it on the other rover. For now, leave Rover 1’s radio turned OFF. We’ll switch over the chat and download functions tomorrow.

Since a large part of the day will consist of updating Rover 2, we’re not going to do much chatting today. Instead we want you to queue up the following, in this order:

* Your complete mission log from Sol 6 through today

* Two photos of each of your guests (ideally your oldest picture of each and a picture of each taken today)

* A description of each of your guests and their role on their crew

* A short history of your guests’ space program history- we understand Starlight Glimmer has written one

* The photos of your guests’ technical manuals

* Starlight’s translations of same, as you mentioned

* The other reports Starlight has written, as available

* Any documentation, aside from videos, you can provide on use of “magic”

Don’t worry about files being cut off. The software will restart any file upload tomorrow that it doesn’t have a record of receiving confirmation of delivery. Once the upload begins, Rover 2 will upload through Pathfinder until the queue is exhausted.

We know it will take you some time to collect the data and queue it properly. The Rover 2 upgrade will begin at 08:30 your time and is expected to last not less than five hours. No data will be uploaded until at least then.

If for some reason the upgrade does not synch properly with Pathfinder, turn off Rover 2’s radio, turn Rover 1’s radio on, open the Pathfinder interface, and select “Synch w/Pathfinder.” If that doesn’t work, we’ll check the ASCII dial for a message at 08:00 your time two sols from now and work from there.

There’s an email for you from Dr. Shields. She asked me to make certain you read it.

We’re almost done designing your resupply probes. Construction has already begun. We’ve decided to shoot for a launch date about eighty days from now. This would put the landing in the range of Sol 600. We’re planning on launching on two Red Falcons and, depending on availability, either a third Red Falcon or the Delta-IX being held back from Eagle Eye 3. The combined payload will include two new radios, spare parts for the Hab plus a 3D printer, and enough food to last all of you through Sol 1000. We should have the Ares-3B mission ready to pick you up long before then.

Finally, Dr. Kapoor has a request for your friends. Astrodynamics wants experimental confirmation of the power of the alien ship thrusters. The numbers you gave us for the ship’s main engines make them too powerful for you to test with the tools you have, but we think the maneuvering thrusters are just within tolerances to test on your mineral samples scale. We have a procedure ready for them to carry out that would let us test and verify your measurement conversions. Please ask them if they’re willing.

Have a great day!

[08:13] WATNEY: Thanks for the infodump. I’ll ask the ponies. But I have an alternative. The pony suits have MMU systems built into them. We can get the performance numbers for those and test a pony wearing the suit on the scale with a lot less risk of breaking the scale. Let me know if that works for Astrodynamics.

Good to know the resupply mission is moving forward. I know you’ll do the best job possible. But I have to say, I’m glad you’re not English. The last time a Mars probe was built even half as fast as this, it was Beagle 2.

[08:26] JPL: Pip-pip cheerio to you too, Mark.

One hundred sols, and I’m not dead yet. Only 850-something to go.

Today was update day for rover software. The Rover 2 update went without a hitch. Updating Rover 1 so it could take Rover 2’s place as pseudo-Sojourner and radio relay station was a little more problematic. Rover 1’s battery is still slung in its saddlebag on Rover 2, and even plugged into the rover charging station it won’t run with no battery installed.

Fortunately I had mission standardization on my side. I used Rover 2 to tow Rover 1 around the hab to an open power outlet. All the power plugs on this mission are compatible- even the battery socket plugs. So it was easy for me to run a cable from the Hab into Rover 1’s battery compartment. Now Rover 1 thinks it has its battery back, so everything powers up.

Yeah, I could have just put the battery back. But anyone who thinks that’s the simple and sensible option has never tried to lift a rover battery by themselves. Rover 1’s battery is staying put until I get a damn good reason why it should go elsewhere. I may revisit that decision once Starlight’s leg is healed, but until then, hotwiring Rover 1 is the smarter option.

Anyway, once I had Rover 1’s computer online and working on its own software update, I swept off the solar farm and went back in to take some pictures. NASA wants fresh pictures of my guests without their suits on.

Apparently the people back at NASA forgot that the population of the Hab has gone from 2/3 male on Sol 1 to two-thirds female on Sol 100. And actually that’s a bit unfair, because Commander Lewis wouldn’t have wasted any mission time primping for a camera. My guests, on the other hand, freaked.

I should point out that hygiene has been reduced to the bare essentials. Soap, cleaning wipes, and the like were supplied for six humans for thirty days plus a ten-day supplement. There’s no way that’s lasting past Sol 900 with one human, three ponies, a dragon, and a Dragonfly. But we’re making it stretch as long as we can, which means decon showers only when we can’t stand it any longer, my using the electric razor only every third day, and Starlight using a spell every day to sterilize the sanitary sponge.

So to be blunt, none of us looked like fashion models. I looked less like an astronaut and more like a hobo. And the ponies looked like hobo horses. And as soon as they got the idea that they were going to be photographed and shown on Earth, all three of them went nuts.

Fireball and Dragonfly weren’t quite as bothered. Yes, Fireball was first to the suit inspection mirror, but after taking a minute to brush his claws through the spines on his head, and another minute flexing his arms, he was done. And Dragonfly barely looks any different now than she did when she first arrived.

But the other three made up for it. Cherry and Spitfire got themselves jammed in the decon shower stall trying to race each other in. Starlight screamed for someone to bring the magic battery over so she could levitate herself (which is apparently a thing she can do) into the shower after them.

And then, of course, they all wanted a haircut. I confess I wanted one myself, considering I was shaggy enough that my hair didn't fit under my spacesuit headset anymore. But, as it turns out, there are precisely two pairs of scissors available: the metal shears in my tool box, and the shears in Dragonfly’s tools.

Needless to say we put up a fight. Dragonfly lost first, because Cherry gave her a direct order to yield up the clippers and backed it up with some of the most impressive untranslatable invective I’ve ever heard- and I grew up in Chicago. I’m sure that in among the angry horse noises was the F-bomb, the S-bomb, one or two Q-bombs and a Silent-J-bomb. I asked Starlight for a translation and she said, “You don’t want to know.” When I insisted, she said, “I don’t want you to know.” Fair enough.

(Note: pony shears have finger loops just like human scissors. Why? And more importantly, how? Starlight shrugs and says, “Always been that way.”)

I fought rather better, because Cherry isn’t in my line of command. Neither is Spitfire, even if she uses her broken English as effectively as any drill sergeant. She and Cherry tag-teamed me with lectures, demands, and cajolery. They would have been more effective if their English was anywhere close to as good as Starlight’s or Dragonfly’s, but as it was I couldn’t take them seriously.

But I lost, because I forgot I had a telekinetic working against me. I didn’t hear the snaps opening on my toolbox, so the first I knew that Starlight had my metal shears was when I saw them floating past me on their way to the bunks. I could have taken them back, but what would be the point? I can lecture them about it later. In the meantime, I’ll just steal the whetstone from Fireball and spend a few minutes with the shears when I’m not busy.

I don’t think it’ll take much. Horsehair is notoriously thick and coarse, but what the ponies have isn’t horsehair. Oh, they have fur- short, bristly fur that grows, sheds, and grows back to a consistent length. And that stuff is coarse. I know because I have to dig tons of the crap out of the atmospheric regulator’s filters every time I service the thing. I need to remember to have Bruce Ng send a backup filter or two with the resupply. I only have one spare.

But the stuff in their manes and tails is almost human hair, if you discount the fact that Spitfire and Starlight have two different colors of hair in their manes and that Starlight’s hair is of colors not found in nature outside of mollusks. Cherry’s grows in in long, poofy curls that remind me of macaroni and cheese (right down to the artificial-cheese-substitute coloring). Spitfire is happy with a spiky bob cut that really does make it look like her head is on fire. Of the three Starlight fussed the most over her hair and tail, trimming, brushing, trimming some more, brushing some more until it took on this elegant wave. I would have sworn you could not do that with hair without gel, or possibly crazy glue.

And then came the part I hadn’t considered- hoof care.

Each member of Ares III had a personal hygiene kit- personal heads for the electric toothbrush, personal comb or hairbrush, and personal nail clippers, among other things. This last point is important, because untrimmed fingernails or even toenails can pose a risk to the structural integrity of spacesuits.

But the ponies were only expecting to be in space for five days. They had nothing.

Starlight offered to do the other ponies’ hooves for them using her magic, but after watching her use her magic laser to trim the edges of her left forehoof (the unbroken limb), the others were less than eager. I have to say, if I saw smoke rising from someone’s fingers and had them offer to perform the exact same manicure on me, I would be just a tiny fucking little bit reluctant.

Dragonfly, whose hooves apparently don’t grow like that, pleaded ignorance. Fireball, the only one besides me with thumbs, pleaded ignorance.

So yeah, apparently in addition to being the Ares-III botanist and engineer, I’m now the mission farrier. And I spent over an hour learning how- very carefully- to trim alien pony hooves with one of my knives. I took a lot of photos, of course. NASA wants to know about pony anatomy? They should be glad I didn’t ask the girls to moon them.

Spitfire’s were in the worst shape. She told me that back home she spent as much or more time in the air than on the ground, so she wasn’t used to the almost constant wear on her hooves.

Dragonfly took one look at them- two splits and one inward curl- and demanded to see her spacesuit at once. That led to impromptu inspections of the other pony space suits, particularly the inside soles of the hoof-boots. She then demanded two of my meal packs, and I quote, “Packs with most white bread-like stuff in them. Like pasghetti.”

It turns out that at least one layer of the pony spacesuits is made from bug-pony goo- and almost everything that looks rubber on the suits originally came not from a tree but from bug-pony puke. The pony hooves are beginning to cut through the soles. Fortunately Dragonfly can fill the hoof-grooves with fresh goo that will bond and seal to the old stuff almost like a single pouring. But it’s going to cost me almost a day’s rations for her to do it.

Of course I said yes, but not until after the photos were done.

Surprisingly, although Cherry’s hooves were in the best shape, her spacesuit boots were in the worst. She does more EVAs than anyone else, even me, and there was a crack through the inside sole of each of her hoof-boots. The outer soles were beginning to crack, too. Dragonfly reversed the rank-pulling and declared the suit unsafe for EVA until repaired.

I don’t blame her one bit. Damage to the boots of an Ares spacesuit of that degree would be borderline cause to abort the whole mission. At the least the astronaut involved would be restricted to the Hab until launch day. Fortunately the Ares-III surface operation suits (unlike our flight suits) were specifically engineered for high-wear, high-damage hostile environments like the Moon. JPL even risks the wrath of Pele by bringing in fresh lava from Hawaii to stress-test the suits. Mars is a picnic by comparison.

Eventually- long, long, long after Rover 2’s update had completed itself- the ponies finally permitted me to take photos. And then, once I had several shots of each to choose from, they sat me down, cut my hair (surprisingly well, considering Fireball and his thumbs played no part), made me shave, and took several photos of me.

And NASA will have those photos, along with the rest, sometime tonight. They’re all in the upload queue.

Mark Watney, the face that launched a thousand ships.

Well, four, anyway.

I damn well hope at least four.

Author's Notes:

3,700 words written today on my Scribblefest entry. I'll edit and post it tomorrow. The weakest part of it is my title: "Athletic Supporter."

No, I really couldn't think of anything better. Maybe something will come to me before I edit and post it tomorrow.

And yes, you people inspired this chapter.

In the book wear and tear on the spacesuits, aside from violent accidents like the Airlock 1 blowout, simply doesn't happen. Considering how much trouble is gone through to make space suits and how comparatively easy it is to breach one through wear and tear, I'm choosing to assume that, for all their idiocy in using safety glass visors and one-use CO2 filters when filterless systems were available, the makers made up for it by making it as durable as possible. The ponies, of course, had no reason whatever to go to that extreme, since their off-Equus landings never lasted more than a day or two.

If something happens to Dragonfly, the ponies are in real trouble.

A Silent-J bomb is like the F-bomb, if the F-bomb were a cluster munition.