[07:48] JPL: Mark, this is Venkat again. Thank your friends for the test emails they sent. We’re already receiving hundreds of thousands of emails for them. Like with your emails, we’re only sending up mission critical messages and the most interesting other items. Nobody will get more than ten emails a day. This isn’t because we think you’ll waste your time. It’s because that’s all the bandwidth we can afford to spare.

Right now we’re operating at a peak of 12.6 kilobits per second by relaying through Hermes. Direct transmission to Earth would drop that to about 1.5 kilobits. By the time Hermes begins aerobraking for Earth orbital insertion, that will be down to 0.8 kilobits per second. At worst, during the three week blackout window of the Mars-Sun conjunction (Sol 328) it’ll be down to 400 bits per second- barely enough to sustain this chat, with a minimum response time of about an hour per message. All of that assumes Pathfinder doesn’t break. We’ll never have more bandwidth than we do now until the replacement radio system arrives with the resupply mission, so we need to prioritize data transfer from your end.

With that in mind, we want you to ask Starlight Glimmer and one of your other guests to send us anything and everything they can that they haven’t already done from their ship-board library. Also, we want photos of Starlight and, if possible, Dragonfly using magic. We have our doubters here, as you already guessed, and any documentation helps. Unfortunately the video you took is useless until and unless we get you a radio that can link up with the communications satellites orbiting Mars.

I say ask them because we know you’re preparing for the cave harvest. That is top priority and mission-critical. Our experts on this end tell me they can’t think of anything else to improve on what you’re already doing, and they’re astonished at the results you’re getting based on your photos. If Cherry Berry can give more explanation for earth pony magic beyond “it just happens”, they’d be delighted.

Finally, our media department has a special request for your guests. While Hermes is still in range of voice communications, we want to set aside some time at the end of the transmission window each day for an interview. Obviously there’s no chance of a live interview with even Hermes being just over a six minute one-way lightspeed lag. Instead we’ll provide a set of written questions. We want your friends to read their answers on the radio so Hermes can record it.

We know their English isn’t the best and their accents are weird, but it’s important that the world hear their voices. We think that, the less the public thinks of them as adorably cute faces and the more they see them as real people with real feelings, the more strongly they’ll support our efforts to bring you all home safely.

That’s it for now. Let me know if I can do anything for you.

[08:28] WATNEY: I’ve passed on the word. Fireball is going to get the camera- hooray thumbs!- while I work on assembling the tools for the harvest. The plan is firm: Sol 109 – potato replanting in cave; Sol 110-111 hay harvest; Sol 112 restarting Hab farm with 90% potatoes.

We’re also going to try planting another fifty square meters of alfalfa seed in the ground downstream of the water outlet from the pony hydronic heating system. No idea how well it’ll work, but we agree with Dr. Keller about the protein issue. I tasted a few alfalfa leaves yesterday: not terrible, but I suspect it’s an acquired taste for non-quadrupeds. Anyway, I’m going to need to acquire it before long.

Reaction to the interview thing is mixed. Cherry is lukewarm to the idea. Spitfire just rolls her eyes. Starlight is interested, and Dragonfly is downright eager in a way that makes me worry. The last time I saw a smile like that was on Martinez just before you called us on the carpet over the thing with the public safety video. The only one who actively hates the idea is Fireball, and I don’t know if it’s because he thinks it’s stupid or because he’s embarrassed. His English is the worst of the group.

Anyway, send the questions. You’ve got at least two takers, and probably four if not all five.

And finally… yes, there is something you can do for me. Send me music. Send lots of music. Send any music at all, country, bluegrass, opera, Himalayan monk chanting, oh God, ANYTHING but disco! I have had it to HERE with fucking disco! And just in case you’re wondering, the Beatles aren’t as much of a disco antidote as you’d think. You said yourself the bandwidth is as wide as it’s ever going to get. So send me some low-fi, high-compression music files, whatever… but NOT DISCO. Okay? Thanks.

[08:37] JPL: I’ll look into it. No promises.

[10:49] HERMES: What’s this I see? A heretic who dares disparage the acme of Boomer culture? Next you’ll be claiming that house music was the coming of the Antichrist.

[10:57] WATNEY: Ha ha, Martinez. You have other options. With me it’s this or silence.

[11:04] HERMES: Guess again. This is Lewis. And you do not diss the groove.

[11:11] WATNEY: Last I looked there were about seventy-five million miles between us, so under the circumstances I can speak my mind. Disco is artificial, commercialized, decadent musical pablum. It is an assault on the ear. It is to good music what Red Baron is to good pizza.

[11:18] HERMES: Guess who went into your room and bundled your personal effects. And who has your personal data storage stick in her fingers right this minute.

[11:25] WATNEY: Blackmail, Lewis? That’s beneath you. Also, everything on that stick is replaceable.

[11:32] HERMES: Let’s see… Minecraft, Orbiter, Universal Sandbox IV… the collected Discworld on e-reader… ah, here’s the music section. “100 Best Sci-Fi Themes of All Time.” “John Williams directs the Boston Pops” about a dozen times. And about a hundred video game soundtracks.

[11:39] WATNEY: I have nothing to be ashamed of. John Williams was the most influential American composer of the twentieth century.

[11:46] HERMES: “The Weird Al Yankovic Penultimate Nursing Home Collection.”

[11:53] WATNEY: Five decades of priceless pop culture treasure.

[12:00] HERMES: And a directory labeled ‘Tom Lehrer.’ I know these songs, Mark. And I’m betting your sweet, innocent friends don’t know half of what’s in here.

[12:06] WATNEY: Don’t you have some commanding to do up there?

[12:13] HERMES: Take it back or explain to your friends what comes after, “All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon.”

[12:21] WATNEY: NNNNRG… all right, you win. There are a few disco songs in your collection that aren’t irredeemable trash. “I Will Survive.” “Hot Stuff.” “Stayin’ Alive.” Those are inspirational right now.

[12:28] HERMES: All obvious, Mark. And I doubt you’ve really listened to the lyrics of “I Will Survive.”

[12:35] WATNEY: Commander, don’t do this to me!

[12:42] HERMES: “He gives the kids free samples because he knows full well…”

[12:49] WATNEY: All right! The Hustle, okay? There aren’t any lyrics, it’s nice and simple, and it sounds like there’s a halfway decent piece of music buried under the bow-chicka-chicka. There exists in the universe one decent disco song. Are you satisfied?

[12:55] HERMES: Three. “Gotta Boogie” by Weird Al and “Dancin’ Fool” by Frank Zappa are both on your flash drive. So you must now admit there are THREE good disco songs.

[13:02] WATNEY: Has anyone told you lately that you are so evil the only reason you don’t eat kittens for breakfast is that NASA hasn’t sent you the procedure yet?

[13:08] HERMES: Not in too long. We miss you here, Mark.

[13:14] WATNEY: I miss you too, boss. All of you. Every day.

[13:15] JPL: We’re still working on the kitten omelet procedure down here. We thought we had it nailed down, but the engineer let the kitten wiggle off the post. You don’t want to know what we did to the engineer.

[13:18] JPL: Kapoor here. I did not write that! That was someone in Pasadena, and they should hope I never find out who it was!

[13:26] HERMES: Give me his name if you find it. I want to buy them a beer when we get home.

[13:33] WATNEY: Two beers.

[13:40] HERMES: I have some things to do, off-day or not. Mark, not all my music is disco. I had some prog-rock on there too.

[13:48] WATNEY: I know. And I may one day forgive you for “Dark Side of the Moon.” It’s like one enormous song except they break it in the middle with that “Money” thing. I get relaxed, get productive, focused on my work, and all of a sudden KA-CHING! Hypnosis broken.

[13:54] HERMES: Suck it up, music lover. Hermes Actual out.

Author's Notes:

Buffer is up to three, although Friday and Saturday will be quite short. At some point in the near future time-skips will happen again, once I decide how to handle the skip. It's fun seeing where little things go, but this is a lot of padding from a plot point of view.

Tonight is Wednesday night, which means KWLP on DementiaRadio.org at 9 PM Central. I need to finish putting together the brand-new playlist requested by voters on the Dementia Radio Facebook group... "Funky Dementia (comedy) Songs." In other words, tonight's show would be Watney's least favorite, with tons of disco.

In the book Lewis is mostly business, but she has a couple of moments. One is where she has a call to Earth to her husband, where they geek out over a 1970s 8-track in the original packaging. Another is when she reminds Watney through glorious use of sarcasm who the mission commander is. Here I give her some off-duty time to tease Watney.

If you've never heard of Tom Lehrer, you should have. He wrote a couple albums of twisted songs in the 1950s, did a little more work for a short-lived TV show in the 1960s, and submitted a few songs to The Electric Company in the 1970s. It's safe to say that the Amicitas crew have heard Silent E and the OU Song, among others... but definitely have NOT heard "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park" or "The Old Dope Peddler", which Lewis references here. And Mark hopes they never do, partly because he thinks the ponies are innocent lambs, and partly because he thinks Dragonfly and/or Fireball might get ideas...