[08:36] JPL: Good morning, everyone. Mark, we show the download for the update to the MDV’s computer as complete. You’ll find the MAV flight software in the Hab computers’ backup files. Copy that to a data stick along with the update file, go out to the MDV, plug the data stick into the main data entry slot, and run the update as an executable. The update will install the MAV flight software in the MDV computer and set it permanently to practice simulation mode. Unfortunately you had to remove the entire sysops work station because of damage from the Sol 6 storm, so setting parameters for the simulation will have to be done from the commander’s station.

Everyone else, we’d like you to use the Hab computers for something. A special program is waiting in your email boxes. Mark will tell you how to make it run. When it launches, you’ll be asked to take an English test, both reading and writing it. We’re doing this so we can focus on what your needs are. We know English is a very hard language to learn, so we want to help all we can.

Any questions?

[08:51] WATNEY: Starlight Glimmer here. Where is the closest large deposit of salt? Mark is almost out and we need to get more.

[09:06] JPL: Sorry, Starlight, but the known large sources of table salt are all in craters and basins in the southern hemisphere. Mark’s and Commander Lewis’s experiments with soil samples taken near the Hab show only traces. Our best guess is that the salt deposits in the ocean that once covered where you are either got washed under where the polar ice cap is now or buried by wind-blown dust billions of years ago. And even if there was salt near you, we’d recommend you not touch it, because it’d be mixed with perchlorates and other toxins. You don’t have the equipment to separate it out from the bad stuff.

[09:21] WATNEY: That’s what you think.

[09:24] WATNEY: Watney here. Looks like we’ll be taking a short trip tomorrow- about twenty kilometers west of here. If you check my logs you’ll figure out what the plan is. In the meantime, I’m getting to work on the MDV reprogramming.

“How do I do this?”

Fireball’s voice came out much quieter than normal, and almost an octave higher, but the others heard it quite clearly, even over the slow clacking of the keys of the various Hab computers.

Starlight looked up. “Do what?” she asked. “Did you run the attachment in your email?”

“Yeah.”

“Then answer the questions that come on the screen.”

“How do I do that?”

“Sweet Celestia,” Spitfire grumbled, “you’d think you never took a test before.”

“I haven’t.”

The key-clacking stopped.

“You’ve never took a test before?” Starlight asked.

“Of course not!” Fireball’s tone verged on a whine. “We dragons are nomadic and solitary! How many schools do you think we have? The only reason I know how to read is because my grandmother insisted I learn! She hoarded ancient pony books, and… well, I hardly ever read anything before Ember ordered me to become an astronaut.”

“Wow. We changelings even had a school,” Dragonfly said. “Not much of one, but we had one.”

“But you know how to read,” Cherry said. “You read mission checklists fine. And when you take your turn reading the Potter books…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. Fireball stumbled through his chapters of Potter like Berry Punch stumbled through the Ponyville streets at two AM on Hearth’s Warming. It was really painful to listen to, and Mark had stopped correcting their English days ago, so it didn’t get better.

“Yeah, I know how to read,” Fireball grumbled. “Because Mom left me with Grandma for four months, and every time I got a word wrong Grandma whapped me on the head.” He pointed to his uppermost spinal fin and snarled, “That’s how I got this. But I never took a test!”

“How’s your math?” Dragonfly asked, all curiosity.

“Every dragon learns math,” Fireball said. “You have to know what’s in your hoard, of course. Had to learn algebra when I became a pilot, though. But I can add, subtract, multiply, divide.” He waved a claw helplessly at the computer screen. “But I never did this!!”

Starlight sighed. “The first part is multiple choice,” she said. “All you have to do is type A, B, C, or D to pick the right answer out of the four options.”

“Oh. Is that why they put those there?”

“Right. Don’t type anything else until it asks you to.”

“Okay. Which one do I enter first?”

“I’m not supposed to tell you,” Starlight replied. “It’s a test. They want you to do it yourself.”

“But can’t you help? Isn’t helping the pony thing to do?”

“Helping, yes. Doing it for you, no.”

“Oh.” Fireball sank a mountain of disappointment and dread into that one syllable.

The typing resumed, with Starlight Glimmer and Dragonfly producing a lot more keystrokes than the others.

A few minutes later Fireball moaned, “Starlight?”

“Yes?”

“It’s different now. There’s this line in the middle of the question, only it’s not a question anymore. And the ABCD is gone.”

“Okay. That’s fill-in-the-blank. Type the word you think fits in the blank.”

“I can do that?”

“Try it.”

Tappatappa. “Oh. But what do I type in?”

“You have to read the block of text on top of the page. That’s where the answers are.”

“Oh. I skipped that. It didn’t look like a question.”

“It’s part of the question. Read it, and you should be able to answer the next few questions.”

For a few more minutes, silence. Then: “This wasn’t in that text!”

“Did you read the new paragraph?”

“Oh.”

Typetypetype.

“I bet you all think I’m stupid,” Fireball muttered.

Cherry Berry, by good fortune sitting between Dragonfly and Spitfire, stopped typing and put her hooves on her neighbors’ muzzles.

“I think,” Starlight said carefully, “you’re doing something you’re totally unfamiliar with. That you had no reason to know anything about. Everypony has to do everything for the first time.”

“But you all did this years ago. When you were kids.” Fireball slumped on his stool. “Way before me.”

“And you’re doing it now,” Starlight said quietly. “Pardon me.” Her magic flared, and her keyboard sounded out a rain of clicks and clacks. Two minutes later she said, “Done,” and gave the computer one final click, sending the completed test on its way.

“What was that?” Fireball asked, sounding a little scared.

“The last part of the test is an essay question,” Starlight said. “They want you to write one hundred words on what it’s like to live in the Hab.”

Cherry Berry and Spitfire groaned.

Fireball whimpered. “One hundred words??” he asked. “In a row??”

“I know you wrote mission reports,” Dragonfly muttered.

“There was a form for that!” Fireball protested. “And I was able to do it with a pencil, like Faust intended!”

“Take your time,” Starlight said gently. “There’s no clock. No rush. This isn’t like the Pathfinder chat. Wait until you’ve got the right words in your head, then write them down. You’ll get there.”

Fireball didn’t answer, but his claws returned to the keys. Slowly, painfully, he worked his way through the rest of the fill-in-the-blank questions. Dragonfly finished before he even began the essay. Cherry Berry finished her essay a couple of minutes after Fireball began. Spitfire finished her essay a couple of minutes later, with a series of heavy hoofsteps on the keyboard, sounding as if she were trying to break the plastic.

Fireball kept going, very slowly. Click, click, click, click…. Click click…. Click, click, click, click… click.

The others sat and watched for a minute before Starlight silently shooed them away. Fireball, scales furrowed in concentration, didn’t notice. He stared at the screen, clawed fingers occasionally hunting down and pressing keys… click, click, click…. Click-click… click… click.

Finally, agonizingly, he stopped and began counting. “…ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven.” Fireball growled, his forehead furrowing even deeper. Then: click-click-click… click, click, click-click, click… click, click, click… click. “One hundred,” he sighed, slumping forward on the workstool. “Starlight, is this right?”

Starlight reared up to see Fireball’s computer.

Please write one hundred words about your life in the Hab:

I hate the Hab. I want go home. I eat same food every day. The Hab smells bad. It is small room and I not go out for there is no air outside. I watch tv and eat gems and do what I told. I have nothing else do. Outside is like home but cold and no air. Inside is too many people. Sometime I go cave and work. Sometime I work on ship but I know ship is too broken to fly. I not know what else do.I can not think what else to do. You happy now?

“Yes,” Starlight said. “This is what they asked for. Click the ‘Send’ button.”

Fireball did so, then slid off his stool. “Faust, that sucked. I screwed up so bad. What I wrote was crap,” he said.

“It was pretty bad English,” Starlight admitted. “But it wasn’t horseapples. I said pretty much the same thing.” She smirked and added, “Except for the part about eating gems.”

Fireball smirked back. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said.

“Don’t bet on it,” Starlight said. “I once visited Maud Pie’s family for dinner.” She rubbed her jaw and added, “I had to ask Zecora for a tooth-mend potion afterwards, too. I sure don’t miss that.”

Fireball chuckled. “You wanna hear about the first time I had a pony-style meal?” he asked. “I got the farts like you would not believe.”

Starlight flinched, then put a hoof on Fireball’s knee. “I think you should save that story for Spitfire,” she said. “I had to listen to her tell me about the time Rainbow Dash tricked Misty Fly into spending a month on an all-burrito diet.”

Fireball smirked. “Oh, this I gotta hear,” he said. “Tell me all about it!”

“Spitfire?” Starlight called out feebly, contemplating the just reward of those who do good deeds.

Author's Notes:

Only 400 words written so far today; will write more when I get back to my hotel. I need to have the buffer up to 4 by Monday night, because Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday are likely to be no-writing-possible days.

You may end up getting drabbles for chapters.

This chapter came from a thought I had not long after deciding that NASA would give the Amicitas crew English aptitude tests: how, exactly, do dragons get their education? I have no trouble believing Garble is illiterate, but what about Ember? And even if they're well educated at home, how would they handle a written test (well, a computer-written test) for the first time?

And looking back, I discover something I didn't know: Fireball wanted to do well on this test. He didn't and he knows it, but he wanted to. He cared, unlike Spitfire, who kind of blew the test off. Huh.

And yeah, what NASA says here is true, at least for now. Most of the major craters in the southern hemisphere of Mars ping pretty strongly for sodium chloride... but nothing for the northern hemisphere. This is really baffling, because if Mars was ever wet on a large scale, the northern third of the planet would be one gigantic ocean. There ought to be huge salt deposits there... but nothing. Maybe it leached deeper into the regolith- there are theories that Mars periodically develops a thick atmosphere and has warm, wet periods, which might explain layering formations in certain craters. Maybe it washed up under the current polar ice cap. Maybe it got converted into perchlorates or other things. When the real Ares missions or whatever go, solving that mystery will be a major priority.