Chapter Text
LOG ENTRY: SOL 203 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 5 | NO. 1
Urgh…
My back is fucked.
Why the fuck did I not bring more vicodin. I knew how bad the rover would be on me. Admittedly I’m not in the rover anymore but my back is fucked anyway and I regret waking up.
Rocky seems to know the split second I’m awake. “Awake, question?” he chittered, seeming excited. “Radiation testing time, question?”
“Sure” I groaned. He went silent. “You ok, Watney, question?” my computer printed out and I stared at it. It's a bit chilling to think that the first person to directly ask me that (on Mars), if I were OK, not in any medical or engineering or botanical context, had to be an alien.
But y’know what I can roll with it. “There are some things I don’t need to be alive, but I sure wish I had” I explained, “Coffee, and vicodin.”
“What are they question?” he seemed interested, loading twenty… things (my eyesight is really crappy in mornings) into the squarelock.
“Coffee is a drink - a liquid that humans eat - that helps me be more awake faster. It’s a liquid some if not most humans consume. I ran out of it long ago. Vicodin is a medication that reduces back pain. Human backs aren’t meant to move rocks in heavy spacesuits even in this lower gravity. I forgot to take it from the Hab” I explained.
“Ok. I do not know how to make coffee. Will try solve other problem later today” he responded. I was too out of it to ask how. Or why. “What is last word, question?”
“The Hab? Place I live in temporarily on Mars. It was intended for six astronauts for 31 sols, 40 max in emergencies. It’s… been 200 sols with only me since sol 6, and it’s showing its age but as long as I keep fixing it, it’s fine. It also has long-term life support - uh… keeps me at the right temperature, keeps my atmospheric composition good, and provides me with the basic stuff I need to live. I did some modifications to also grow plants in it for food” Thank god for all those word learning sessions I had done so far. He seemed to get this.
A minute passed.
“Are you OK, buddy?” I ask. Partially to be polite, but also because this guy has been alone for far longer than me.
“I not know. I may not be OK. The only option is to work towards not dying of radiation first. Deal with other… smaller priority problems later”
“Oh fuck. I’d forgotten about that” I remembered what the stuff in the airlock was. Experimental radiation shielding.
“New word question?”
“Forget? To have known, but later to not know”
“Interesting. Eridian word is …♫♪♫. Some Eridians are like that. I am not. Do you know what to do now? Or have you forget more?”
“No, I remember now” I said. Time to get to work.
<~~~>
There was a fierce knocking on the door, interrupting the answers of “Three times ten to the power of…” and “C!”.
“One minute. Lightning round’s back in action after I find out who this is…” Dr. Ryland Grace opened the door to see a complete stranger who proceeded to march in. She looked to be in her mid-forties, wearing a well-tailored business suit. And she carried a briefcase. Following her were two men in dark suits.
“Excuse me” Grace found his words again, having backed up in surprise, “I’m teaching. Can this wait five minutes until the end of class?”
“Are you Dr. Grace?” the woman disregarded his question.
“Yes, but” Grace gestured over to the others in the class as noise levels began to rise again, “Look, just give me five minutes”
“Are you aware of the Ares 3 first contact situation?” she interrogated him.
“I mean, yeah, who wouldn’t?” Grace’s brain raced through his memories, trying to see if he knew the person.
His brain failed to put a name to the person. Thankfully, she provided an answer to that.
“My name is Eva Stratt. I’m with the Eridian taskforce” she supplied, before retreating into a corner of the room to wait the few remaining minutes until the bell rang.
Grace tried to get back into the lesson, but his class was distracted, and so was he. “Class dismissed!” He gave up, and then turned back to Stratt. “Alright. Can I help you? And what’s with the Eridian Taskforce?”
“The Eridian taskforce is an international body set up to deal with the Eridian first contact and Petrova-line situation. I’ve been tasked with ensuring both go well. They’ve given me some authority to find a solution” she said, as kids rushed out of the classroom. She had a slight accent - European? Grace asked himself.
“Who’s ‘they’?” Grace asked, his ears tuned to hear a voice no matter how noisy it was.
“Every member nation of the UN” Stratt said, the kids leaving.
“Wait, what? How did - ”
“Unanimous secret vote. It’s complicated. I’d like to talk to you about a scientific paper you wrote”
“Secret vote? Nevermind” Grace shook his head, “My paper-writing days are over. Academia didn’t work well for me”
“You’re a teacher. You’re still in academia.”
“Well, yeah” he shot back, “But I mean, you know, academia. With scientists and peer review and—”
“And assholes who get you kicked out of your university?” she raised an eyebrow. “And who get all your funding cut off and ensured you never got published again?”
“Yeah. That.”
She pulled a binder out of her briefcase, opening it and reading the first page. “ ‘An analysis of Water-Based Assumptions of Recalibration of Expectations for Evolutionary Models.’ “ She looked up at him. “You wrote this paper, yes?”
“I’m sorry, how did you get—” He didn’t get far.
“A dull title, but very exciting content, I have to say.”
Grace set his valise on his desk. It looked like he’d be a bit late for his next class. “Look, I was in a bad place when I wrote that, okay? I’d had enough of the research world and that was sort of a ‘kiss-my-butt’ goodbye. I’m much happier now as a teacher.”
Stratt flipped a few pages. “You spent years combating the assumption that life requires liquid water. You have an entire section here called ‘The Goldilocks Zone Is for Idiots.’ You call out dozens of eminent scientists by name and berate them for believing a temperature range is a requirement.”
“Yeah, but…”
“Your doctorate is in molecular biology, correct? Don’t most scientists agree that liquid water is necessary for life to evolve?”
“They’re wrong!” He crossed his arms. “There’s nothing magical about hydrogen and oxygen! They’re required for Earth life, sure. But another planet could have completely different conditions. All life needs is a chemical reaction that results in copies of the original catalyst. And you don’t need water for that!”
He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out. “Anyway, I got mad, and I wrote that paper. Then I got a teaching credential, a new career, and started actually enjoying my life. So I’m glad no one believed me. I’m better off.”
“I believe you,” she said.
“Thanks” he replied, “But I have to get to another class. Can you tell me why you’re here?”
She put the binder back in her briefcase, and replaced it with some shiny and likely expensive tablet. “You are aware of the Ares 3 Eridian first contact situation, I assume”
“I’d be a pretty lame science teacher if I weren’t.”
“There’s been some recent developments,” Stratt responded, showing him a picture on the tablet.
“I don’t know morse code” Grace replied, looking at an unusual amount of rows of rocks. Watney’s morse code messages were usually shorter, he thought.
Stratt took a quick look at the tablet, swiped on it once. A translation appeared, and she handed it to Grace:
“PETROVA LINE CONTAINS SUN BLOCKING PHOTOTROPHIC SINGLE CELL LIFE FORMS
(MORSE CODE PATTERN UNREADABLE)
SOLAR OUTPUT OF ERIDANI AND OTHER STARS HAS DECREASED OVER LAST FEW YEARS
SOL DID NOT
ALIEN CALLED ROCKY HERE TO FIND OUT WHY
THEY DID NOT KNOW RADIATION SO 22 DIED
ALIEN SHIP DAMAGED FROM CRASH LANDING CANNOT RETURN NEEDS (MORSE CODE PATTERN UNREADABLE)”
“This was taken on Sol 202. Six hours ago” she supplied.
“Alright” He handed the tablet back, “Interesting. What does this have to do with me?”
“Over the last few hours, the Petrova Line has been traced down to nearly the sun’s surface” she provided, “Does that sound like a water-based life form to you?”
“Uhh” Grace said, “I’d say no, but I’m also not exactly the best person to ask.”
“If you weren’t the best person to ask, I wouldn’t be here”
“Right…” he said, trying to think of where this could possibly be going.
“That’s why we need you to lead the team looking into Astrophage”
Grace stared at her blankly as his mind considered the last words as an illegal operation, and rebooted. She waved her hand in front of his face. “Hello?”
“You want me… to look into Astrophage?” he asked, reboot complete.
“Yes”
“The whole world put you in charge of this, and you come directly to a middle school science teacher?”
“Yes.”
Grace slowly turned, shaking his head, and began walking towards the door. “You’re lying, insane, or a combination of the two. I have to get going now.”
“This is not optional” she said to his back.
“Seems pretty optional to me!” he waved goodbye, and then practically ran into a human wall of four other men in dark suits waiting just beyond the door, one of which flashed an FBI badge.
“Huh?” Grace asked, somewhat confused.
“Not optional,” Stratt confirmed, “You’re coming with us”
“Fuck”
LOG ENTRY: SOL 203 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 5 | NO. 2
So Rocky has given me a bunch of really thin Xenonite containers with Astrophage of various thicknesses inside them. He since went to sleep - told me this was outside his normal sleep cycle, but his body needed additional time to heal. “I hope this is not radiation sickness” he told me, “It would be earlier than my crewmates…” he suddenly went limp and stopped moving in front of me like a dead bug.
Time to test 'em!
Helpfully, he inscribed Earth numbers into each of them. Numbered 1 through 20. I guess this way, I can tell him which one blocked how much rads.
Now I don’t have a really scientific way of doing this. My only solution is to set up a control with a radiation sensor from my suit, and then put the other three I have for periods of time under different Xenonite containers that have different quantities of Astrophage, and see how much radiation each blocks.
In the interest of minimising the time until Rocky is no longer exposed to radiation, I can’t do any long term testing. The best I can do is give every container roughly thirty minutes sitting on a sensor. Thirty minutes is just enough that I can average out some random errors in the data.
The results are interesting. The rad sensors under containers reported trace/no radiation for all the containers, except Eight (which I think was faulty, it blocked nothing. Come to think of it, it slowly turned less transparent as time went on. Dunno what to do with that info, but I filmed it), One (which I think was Rocky’s control - it seemed to have no astrophage) and two (which had such a thin film of Astrophage inside I honestly couldn’t believe it managed to block 80% anyway).
All the tests were over in four hours. Rocky still wasn’t up, so I repeated some tests randomly assigning different sensors to different astrophage containers.
These things need a better name. Rad shields? Yeah, I’m just going to go with radiation shielding. Cause why not. And nobody can stop me. And that’s what they do.
Astrophage sure as heck is a great fuel at blocking radiation. I guesstimate that less than a millimetre of it can stop everything. This blows my mind.
I did some more testing. Does it somehow reflect radiation? No; I sandwiched a few containers with rad sensors. If radiation were somehow reflected, the sensor on top would be exposed to both incoming radiation and reflected radiation. For context, Mars acts like a big ol radiation shield underneath - a planet sized piece of anything will usually stop most electromagnetic radiation.
So it’s probably absorbing everything. Converting it to what? Heat?
You know what’s even weirder? I tried to figure out the temperature of Astrophage. But this stupid thing does not emit any form of infrared light. Like, at all. The only sources of IR light are some droplets of opaque xenonite that must have been formed by accident or defect in one of the containers. And those are hot: 96.4 celsius. When I robbed some more of my suit spare parts for thermometers normally used to gauge suit coolant temps, it looked like Astrophage through just conduction was putting out that 96.4; very interesting.
For landlubbers out there, there are three ways in which temperature gets from X to Y:
1: Radiation, where anything hot emits some energy in the form of electromagnetic waves, usually infrared (that’s why infrared cameras “see heat”).
2: Conduction, where a hot thing is vibrating (yeah, temperature is just how much the atoms in something vibrates) and making a colder thing vibrate too.
3: Convection, which relies on hot water having lower density than cold water, and thus rising (interestingly, this relies on gravity).
Only radiation works in a vacuum, it’s how the sun warms the Earth. So Astrophage just floating out there in the vacuum of deep space hypothetically would be practically undetectable except by how it blocks radiation and other electromagnetic waves.
Here’s something even more interesting: Even when absorbing a lot of energy, Astrophage constantly maintains that 96.4 celsius. I got really excited at this. Based on its insane energy density, there’s a chance it could be energy to mass conversion. Or something more exotic?
It’s annoying that the resident Astrophage and Eridian expert is currently passed out on the other side of a xenonite partition. Even though he’s woken me up a few times, I’m a bit reluctant to attempt to wake him up - as if I even knew how to.
So yeah. That’s the findings of a couple of hours of experimentation.
I attempted to maintain some degree of productivity while waiting on the radiation sensors to collect data. Annoyingly, my brain’s gotten used to either running at 10% power most of the time (to be able to survive the brain-numbingly boring sols where nothing tries to kill me) or 1000% (to be able to survive moments when Mars tries to kill me). No inbetween. Yet even though I barely could focus on what I was doing, I did optimise my program quite a bit. I’m not exactly sure of what coding fuckery I have committed, but the bit of the program that previously was a bit slow is now pretty quick. I think this is called an index? But I abused it to handle sound patterns instead of text.
Johanssen/NASA are going to have a fun time deciphering my code. My comments likely won’t help either. Here’s an example of one of them:
#TODO UNFUCK THIS
Yep. I have no idea what the fucking problem was, so I can’t fix it, so that TODO will stay there till the end of time. Good luck, whoever gets this.
That’s all for this log, people! I’m going to attempt to unfuck my back a bit by lying down instead of sitting up.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 203 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 5 | NO. 3
Rocky awoke about an hour after the writing of the previous logs. I slowly said my goodbyes to the semi-comfy tent floor thing I had, having taken a nap.
He got really excited when I told him about which radiation shields worked and which didn’t.
“I will likely use radiation shield 9. It needs a slightly thicker layer of Astrophage compared to the others, but I can make it in less time, and I can take the Astrophage back out afterwards if I decide to use another version” he informed me. Turns out that most of the other designs used Astrophage mixed with transparent xenonite, with the exception of 16 and 17 (and 9). I looked at them again and they all looked just as dark. Huh.
Hypothesis: Astrophage lets nothing pass through it. If visible light doesn’t pass through it, nothing including radiation can get through it.
Experiment to prove hypothesis: Ask the alien.
“Rocky, does Astrophage block light going through it?” I asked.
“Yes” he said, more energetic after his sleep, “Astrophage use light to make energy to travel distance.”
“I think it might also convert radiation to energy” I said, “Any way to measure how much energy Astrophage has stored?”
“I am not a scientist Eridian. I know how Astrophage works only well enough to use it as fuel. Not how to test for that”
Dang. I was hoping to learn some more about Astrophage before I die. Or not die… if Rocky’s willing to let me take a tiny amount of it and I can convert it to energy for the rover, I could get to the MAV in no time.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 203 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 5 | NO. 4
Rocky built rad shield plating design 9 into his little area just in front of the xenonite partition. After some thinking, he also made a movable rad shield for the partition in between us. Sort of like radiation curtains.
While Rocky can somehow hear through Astrophage, I definitely can’t see through it. So I can no longer see him, which is mildly disconcerting.
He’s now making a crapton of hull robot rails while we talk about my biology. Since he can hear right into me, I could give him a general description of all of my organs. He said that tomorrow he’ll explain Eridians too but since I can’t “hear” his insides, he will make me some xenonite models for demonstrations.
A slight wrench in this conversation is that I did have to warn him that I have been on a somewhat extreme diet all this time and how it affected me.
While he’s insanely curious about how I work as a human, I can see he’s no doctor. It’s just kind of obvious. When I tell him about how something has hurt, he’s empathetic but I can kind of detect that he retracts into himself a bit.
So I kept discussions about what happens to a human when you impale him and strand him on Mars to a minimum. After all it did fucking hurt, and I’m not that into reliving it for the purposes of a Eridian who doesn’t want to hear about it that much.
In other news, he’s now placing a lot of Hull robot rails outside, making them into a grid pattern.
“NASA orbiting satellites can see light frequency difference?” he asked.
“Yeah?” I replied, “Why?”
“Will use damaged non-transparent Xenonite panels instead of rocks” he said, “Larger, different color, but less height difference compared to rocks”
“Huh” I said. I think I may know where this is going.
As the biology discussion tapered off, on a sudden whim I decided to do some more coding shenanigans. I connected my laptop to a spare suit radio (I have no idea why I had it with me), wrote some code, and voilà: it now sends what Rocky said as text messages that get displayed on either my suit arm computer or the HUD.
Watney out for now.
<~~~>
“What the hell is that?” Mindy groaned, seeing a grid pattern of rails made of a material of a similar color to Xenonite after an accidental ten-second nap. She took a sip of her coffee.
Watney’s daylight time was awkwardly synced up with sometime during midnight at Houston. In a month or so it would start to sync up again with Houston daylight time, before it would get out of sync again. A constant cycle determined by the extra 36 minutes per Mars sol compared to Earth’s days.
Mindy unfortunately knew she wouldn’t even be able to begin to fathom a guess at what the alien grid structure was. Whatever it was, Watney was out there in the middle of it.
She wrote an email, called Venkat (“I’ll be there in a minute. Anything else? No? See you there”) and then reluctantly Stratt (“Understood” she had said, before ending the call).
A new picture loaded in from another satellite. Whatever Rocky was building, it had Watney interested; he continued to walk around the xenonite grid.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 203 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 5 | NO. 5
Yep.
It was what I thought it was.
I eventually went on EVA to check out how Rocky planned to do it. Since we now can have a rudimentary conversation without running into new words every five seconds flat while I’m in a suit, I was able to dictate to Rocky the optimal way to set up the rails so the hull robot could place xenonite panels in a grid format. I then dictated to him a morse code message - at some point, I’ll explain to him how spelling works, and we’d then work from there.
Now I don’t have to haul rocks around anymore. Thank god.
Uh…
Sorry people, I never fully explained what Rocky actually did. EVAs suck the life out of me nowadays with my rationing.
Basically, his idea was to use large xenonite panels that would be easy for his hull robot to move around instead of rocks. It’s that simple.
I’ll do my best to keep my logs up to a higher quality standard from now on. After all, we’re dealing with first contact!
…I need sleep.
<~~~>
“New image in two minutes” Mindy said, “Sorry. I deemed changing the MRO’s orbit too risky, so we still have the five minute gap.”
Stratt pulled back to make a phone call at that, either not caring to state her intentions, or not having time to. That left Mindy, Venkat and Grace staring at the timer on her screen, counting down until an image was expected to be received.
“It might be worth it to move the MRO.” Venkat eventually said, breaking the silence created by Stratt talking to someone in the background.
“Doing that would create a different four and a half minute gap that would have to be closed down by having EagleEye Three do orbital maneuvers every so often” Mindy replied, “It would significantly cut into the lifespan of that satellite”
“Fair enough” Venkat fell silent yet again.
“So who are you?” Mindy said to the other stranger standing awkwardly behind them, not entirely sure what to do.
“Dr. Grace” he replied, with a hint of nervousness, “Uh… Stratt wants me to lead the team doing Astrophage research. There’s no team yet though”
“Right” Mindy said, “Well, good luck”
“Why do you say that?” he shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“I had Stratt randomly show up in my life” Mindy said, “And then apparently they hired me? But it wasn’t optional. She’s a bit…”
“Intense?” Grace completed for her, “Yeah. I basically got kidnapped a few hours ago”
Both Mindy and Venkat stared at him.
“Yep” he looked at his feet, “And now I’m here. It’s not optional either”
“That’s a step too far,” Venkat spoke his thoughts.
“Well, I thought so too. Turns out when she says something will happen, it will happen. And everyone else goes with it - police, everything. She seems to have all the authority. I kind of get why - but I’m not sure what my purpose is here right now. I have a lab, they’re getting a team ready, but we don’t have any information”
Mindy shrugged, “If it makes you feel any better Stratt assigned me to only watch Watney and Rocky via the satellites.”
The computer beeped a few seconds later before anyone else could say anything, and a new image popped up on her screen. “Time to do my job” she remarked, pulling the keyboard towards her. She zoomed in. “Grid’s still there, Watney’s still there, and that looks like a morse code message. T, E, S, something that I’m going to guess is a work in progress T”
“Interesting” Venkat said, “So he has Rocky make him his morse code messages now?”
“I’d guess that those rocks are heavy in an EVA suit” Grace unexpectedly provided some input, “Had a discussion a month back with my students about what Watney would do if Pathfinder failed. The most thrown-around ideas were using the Hab perimeter lights at night and morse code rocks.”
“Lights?” Venkat quizzed him, confused, then his face re-programmed himself as he understood, “Oh. That’s actually smart. We may look into that”
“Thank my students” he said simply, “One of them - Regina - then got obsessed with space. She’s come up with some ideas of an LED sattelite in orbit. Frankly, the solution is better solved with more backup radios”
“Wait” Mindy considered an alternate idea, “SuperSurveyor three. Low enough orbit to be visible from the surface under the right conditions, yet high enough to have a reasonable orbital period. It can change its orientation quickly with reaction wheels. Orientation could be used to cause flares visible from the surface at night. Unfortunately, Watney doesn’t know to look for satellite flares.”
Grace leaned back, surprised to have accidentally caused a productive conversation at improving communications with Watney, and also surprised at having his unscientific ideas be taken seriously. There was a screeching noise as the unoccupied desk behind him slipped a bit.
“We could try it anyway” Venkat said, “He once spent some time stargazing at satellites. If it ever happens again, we could send a test message back”
They looked behind them as Stratt left the building without any warning or explanation immediately after hanging up on what had become a heated conversation with some politician.
“So, do you think I’m free to go now, or do I have to stick around here?” Grace asked.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 204 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 6
Another day, another sol. Rocky’s doing… something, there’s a lot of noises that I can’t quite place coming from behind his non-transparent Astrophage rad curtains. We’ve been continuing work on adding new words to each other’s vocabularies.
It’s kinda worrying to me, to be able to hear Rocky, but yet at the same time not be able to see him through his radiation curtains. I thought I saw a person - Johanssen? Lewis? Maybe Beck? - out of the corner of my eye. That’s never a good sign.
“Rocky” I said, “Human weird thing. We don’t like not being able to see stuff” I said.
The new machinery noises behind the rad curtains stopped abruptly.
“Like how Eridians observe each other sleep, but not during sleep, question?” he asked suddenly.
“Not quite like that” I said, “But I’ve been on my own for a while for humans. At some point we need to see other humans. It’s a need for good health” Yeah, we need more vocab, “Or at least another Eridian”
“Understood! Eridians also like this, but take more years for health problems to arise”
Thank god they also have similar mental illnesses. Would have been tricky to explain otherwise. He removed a section of the rad plating “curtains”, giving me a ten centimeter by ten centimeter peephole into what he was doing on the other side.
“Forgot Humans prefer light sense over sound sense” he said, “Bad of me. Will not happen again”
I should have said something along the lines of “It’s not your fault” or “How could you have known humans are weird in this way?”. Unfortunately, I was too busy staring at whatever-the-fuck-that-thing-was.
“Rocky” I said, “What the fuck is that?” I asked.
“Big arms” was his cryptic reply, “Will show later.” The noises came back, as he continued using some controls to make the arm move around. It looked to have quite some strength in whatever motors powered it.
This was a pretty big arm. Roughly slightly longer than a human arm? It matched up with how the hull robot’s arms looked, which mimicked the range of freedom an Eridian arm has, but it was a lot bigger than either Rocky’s or the Hull robot’s arms. He was seemingly testing it for something.
What the fuck is he up to?
In the meantime, we should have worked on more vocab, but my program was struggling to filter Rocky’s words over the racket he was making. So I worked on improving it a lot after invading Johanssen’s coding tutorials.
Lemme see…
For starters, I managed to code a really crappy AI. It’s bad because the laptops I have access to don’t exactly have a lot of processing power. I’m leaving it to train for a few sols, and perhaps it’ll be halfway decent after that.
Its aim is to try to predict what new words could mean. It does it in two ways and I think it’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had. Part of it relies on identifying patterns in Rocky’s sequences of musical notes that seem to link to different intents. Another part of it relies on comparing the new word to the other words in the sentence, and try guessing what word would make the most sense from an “English” point of view.
It’s going to take a while before it gets any better.
While I worked, Rocky did close the rad curtains again, and I guess that’s fine by me for the moment.
I also managed to get the program to run on my suit computers, I added functionality for it to receive its audio input via radio instead of the laptop microphones (essential for the suit thing), and generally optimised the code here and there.
Pretty productive night for me. I ate a ration, and noted that Rocky doesn’t seem to care as much if I eat in his hearing range or not. I have a theory that Eridians view eating in a similar way as we see shitting: not exactly something you’d do in public. However, he’s seemingly decided to ignore if I’m eating or not for the moment and busy himself with doing other things.
That was my last ration I had with me in the tunnel by the way. I think I have enough for a few more sols in the Rover - I must count soon - and then I’ll have to make a trip back to the Hab to get more.
I’m also running a bit low on water, but I have more water than food so it’s not really an issue.
That’s all for this sol; I conked out after that coding marathon to more neverending machinery sounds.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 205 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 6 | NO. 1
Fuck. Shit.
Remember when I packed for this expedition?
I took enough food for 9 sols at full rations, with the plan to use 3/4 rationing to extend that a bit further.
Have I been rationing?
No, this idiot hasn’t. Something to do with being busy with talking with an alien.
I’m pretty sure you’re looking at the thing that says “ERIDIAN MISSION SOL” and thinking, well, I gotta have 3 more sols of food, right?
Well, I had, long ago, decided that two of those 9 sols of food is for absolute emergencies. Like, to be used if I can’t get back to the Hab and I need to fix the rover or something.
That leaves me with only one sol of food left.
Y’know what the problem is?
The meal packet for today, upon being opened, welcomed me with a very vile odor. It somehow had gone bad. Shit. Since I was hungry, I opened the next. It too had gone bad. Thinking about it, it did occur to me that these two seemed to have a slight imperfection in their packaging.
Thankfully, the third one I opened was fine, so my growling stomach stopped growling.
You see the issue though? That was all the food I had for one sol; 1.333 sols if you consider that I should have been rationing.
It’s time to go shopping at the Hab.
Thankfully, Rocky understands enough for me to tell him when I’ll be back.
It’s time to hit the road, people! Haven’t done this in a while.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 205 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 6 | NO. 2
The one good thing about my software patches that allow my laptops to receive data via radio is that Rocky can talk to me.
The one bad thing about that is that Rocky can talk to me. From his ship. To the Hab.
The signal initially broke up about five kilometers out. “I fix…” was the last thing my laptop could translate before the interference made it impossible for the algorithm to pick out the words.
Well, I got to the Hab. Hab sweet Hab! Finally!
I was in the airlock when Rocky suddenly got a signal again to me, apparently having upgraded his radio to transmit harder. The problem? I did not have an upgraded radio. My suit had no way to talk back to him.
He got frustrated at some point: “Watney you not talk, question? Why, question?”
“Yeah Rocky, I can hear you but you can’t hear me” I said pointlessly on the radio before I took my helmet off.
He went quiet for a while after a few more attempts.
Unfortunately, because of my solar panel situation where I only have a few left, it would take a long while to recharge the rover batteries without risking running the Hab batteries too low to safely run life support overnight.
However, guess what? I’m on my own here. There’s no other 5 astronauts to use up life support overnight. So I turned it off and set the heaters to 1C, and dumped the Hab battery juice into the Rover batteries.
Do people even refer to battery charge as juice anymore?
Do I even say that?
I could now hit the road back in the same Sol. I packed up way more food, an actually good toilet box, and did my best to try to figure out what I’d forgotten.
Can’t remember. I’m in the rover, and once I’m finished writing this I’m going to unplug the batteries from the Hab and get going. It’ll be late when I get back to Rocky, but I’ll be back!
<~~~>
Annie Montrose walked into the meeting room. “Can we keep this brief” she said, “I have a press conference in one hour”
“It may be useful for that press conference” Teddy said, “Everyone, this is Dr. Parker. Dr. Parker, mind explaining what happened again?”
He stood up. “Hello everyone. I work for SETI, deciphering potential alien signals. Recently we tuned the entire network to Mars again after we detected an increase in weak radio noise from there” he said, “And this time we received something. It was exactly on the suit comms frequencies, so after denoising the signal we converted it to audio just like the Ares 3 spacesuits do”
“It sounds like this” he pressed play on an audio file loaded up on the smartboard.
“♫…♫♪!?♩♫\ ♪♩♫♪ ♩ ♫♪♩♪♩♫♪ ♩♪♩♫♪♩♪♪♩ ♫?♪~!♩♩ ♫♪♩!♩ ♫♪♩♫♪♩♫♩♩♩♩♫♫♪ ♩♫♩ ♫ ♩ ♫♪ ♩ ♫♪♩♫♪ ♩♫♪…~!♩♫♪ ♩♫♪ ♩ ♫ ♩ ♫ ♪ ♩ ♫♪ ♩♫♪ ♩♫♪♩♫♪♩ ♫♪ \?♫ ♪♫♪ ♩♫♩♩ ♫♪♩♫♪♩…?♫♪♩ ♪♪♫♪♩ ♫♪♩…♫♪♫♪♩♫]”
“Occasionally there are pauses where we think Watney is speaking; during the pauses there is a signal being emitted, but it’s far too weak to decipher into anything meaningful. We tried with everything we had, but even using the entire SETI network as a distributed supercomputer running the NSA's best denoising algorithms didn’t work."
“Holy fuck” Montrose said, almost dumbfounded, “Anything else we know?”
“Nothing” Dr. Parker said, “Watney doesn’t seem aware that we’ve managed to listen in using SETI. We know he’s aware of SETI, he once mentioned that he was hoping SETI would pick up Pathfinder’s signal in one of his older messages”
“Got it,” Sanders said, “Anything else?”
“No”
“I’ll be getting together a team of xenolinguists soon” Stratt provided, “If that helps with the press conference”
“Thanks” Montrose said, “It’ll help keep everyone focused on the situation rather than if NASA should be the one to handle it or not”
<~~~>
“Hey crew, stop what you’re doing and listen to this” Johanssen’s voice unexpectedly rang out over the Hermes intercom, unexpectedly sounding almost slightly cheerful compared to the last few days.
“♫…♫♪!?♩♫\ ♪♩♫♪ ♩ ♫♪♩♪♩♫♪ ♩♪♩♫♪♩♪♪♩ ♫?♪~!♩♩ ♫♪♩!♩ ♫♪♩♫♪♩♫♩♩♩♩♫♫♪ ♩♫♩ ♫ ♩ ♫♪ ♩ ♫♪♩♫♪ ♩♫♪…~!♩♫♪ ♩♫♪ ♩ ♫ ♩ ♫ ♪ ♩ ♫♪ ♩♫♪ ♩♫♪♩♫♪♩ ♫♪ \?♫ ♪♫♪ ♩♫♩♩ ♫♪♩♫♪♩…?♫♪♩ ♪♪♫♪♩ ♫♪♩…♫♪♫♪♩♫]”
“The fuck?” Martinez asked from the bridge over the intercom, surprised.
“What kind of music is that!?” Vogel exclaimed from his lab, adding to the chatter on the channel, “Did Houston get something mangled in the data dump?”
“Johanssen, keep this channel clear of music please” Lewis ordered over the intercom from the geology lab, where she was carefully having to recover a Mars pebble that had fallen into the wrong sample container.
“Beth?” Beck asked from across the Rec where he’d abandoned his task of checking some of the food supplies, “What was that?”
“Sorry” Johanssen replied both to Beck and over the intercom, “That was Rocky. They’re talking over our suit frequencies, analog. SETI managed to pick up on it recently”
“Holy fuck” Martinez eventually said, breaking the ice of silence, “That’s an actual alien speaking”
“Depends on their translation on their voice to radio” Johanssen said, “But SETI mentioned that because it’s exactly mirroring our analog suit radios, just a few orders of magnitude stronger, they think that this is how Rocky sounds if he were to be recorded”
“Interesting,” Lewis said, as she returned to work, “Anything else?”
“We’re mid data dump, I was checking stuff while it was being downloaded. It’s mentioned that we’re getting more audio files later” Johanssen replied over the intercom. “Oh, and a request from Houston. Next time they pick up Rocky’s transmissions, they want us to aim the Hermes’ primary, secondary and tertiary high-gain comms antennas towards Mars. We’ll keep comms with Earth using intermittent low-gain omni antenna transmissions. This may interrupt the normal data dumps.”
“They better not mess around with the next eBook I requested” Martinez joked, earning a stare in the bridge from Lewis who had floated over to use a computer, “I mean - well, talking to aliens is more important. I’m joking. I’m joking, okay!?”.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 205 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 6 | NO. 3
Well, it took me an entire sol, but I’m back! I was kind of zoning out at the driving stick, but when I got within 23 km I experimented with talking with Rocky. Initially he could barely make out my words (while his signal booster made it so I could understand him perfectly) but after a few more kilometers the signal got more solid, and he made sure that I got to him in one piece.
Strange how human brains can normalise anything, including coming “home to your alien friend”.
Friend?
Rocky has something to show me, but I need to conk out first.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 206 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 7 | NO. 1
One Martian week since the Eridian Expedition went off. What was I calling this again? I know I named the rover missions Sirius.
Am I losing my memory? Do I have to go back through my logs to see if I’m now completely batshit banana crazy and nobody can tell me because Rocky knows this as the only human normal he knows.
…did I turn off the Hab life support? I worried about that like you’d worry about leaving the oven on. I’m pretty sure it’s off, but I can’t be sure.
Rocky’s hypothetically going to wake up soon. He put Xenonite human numbers on the partition showing that he’d be back (in theory) between 6 and 9 am. It’s now 8:50, and he’s not up yet.
He did also leave me a bit of a peephole to see inside and yep he’s definitely sleeping.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 206 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 7 | NO. 2
Today’s report:
- Added 527 words to our shared vocabulary when Rocky for a short period of time stopped the racket.
- Watched as Rocky built a third large arm when he occasionally opened up a rad curtain peephole.
- Hypothesised on what on Mars he’s building.
- Asked what he’s building.
- He said he does not know how to explain in words, but he excitedly showed me anyway. Looks like a whole bunch of arms to me buddy. They’re not that special compared to the first.
- Improved translation program.
- Continued rad shield mark two design testing on his request.
- Slept a lot.
- Got pissy when I realised I’d forgotten the Vicodin again in the Hab. FUCK!!!
- Obsessed over my food supplies to make sure they all looked as sealed as possible. One looks like it might be bad. I’ll open it tonight.
- Spent more time than I should thinking about what will happen if too many of my food supplies have gone bad.
- Had Rocky create a second Morse code message for NASA
<~~~>
“New morse code message from Watney, using the Eridian xenonite grid system” Mindy said.
“Read it out” Venkat replied, driving.
“WATNEY GOT ADDITIONAL FOOD FROM HAB SOME SUPPLIES WENT BAD” she read out, “Do we trust Rocky to relay Watney’s messages for us?”
“It’s not like we can do anything about it” Venkat said, “Send the email with the pics”
“Already done,” Mindy replied, “When are we going to go public on Watney’s long morse code message?”
“Now” Venkat confirmed, “I’m driving to a press conference. We got permission from Stratt, who withheld the information on a request from several countries. I have to go now. Bye” he ended the call.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 207 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 8 | NO. 1
Holy crap.
Rocky this morning removed all the rad curtains. “You observe” he said, “I show you what I have made”
Okay? I got ready for a surprise.
He disappeared off into another part of the ship. When he came back, it occurred to my coffee-deprived that something was very wrong with Rocky: he was a lot bigger.
…wait a second! That’s Rocky in an Eridian mech suit!? That woke me up fully fast.
“Amaze!” I exclaimed, “What is the purpose?"
Rocky controlled it to walk back and forth, did a 360, showing off his creation from all angles. At its base it had 5 large arms, just like Rocky himself. Rising above the base was a sort of pillar, on which Rocky sat, his arms surrounding it. Looking closely, I saw that each one of his arms was covered in a xenonite “exoskeleton” covering Rocky’s natural exoskeleton. They had what looked like a few pistons that worked both as sensors and force feedback actuators.
The large arms were clearly on a 1:1 control system. When Rocky moved his arm, the large arm matched his movements near perfectly. While I could detect a tiny amount of input lag, it was pretty good.
“It is for me to be able to go on the surface.” he said, “And maybe see NASA rover and NASA Hab, question? Please, question?”
“Of course!” I responded with a grin on my face. Maybe there’s no real way I could see the inside of his ship, but he could definitely get to see my tech, seeing that it looks like my NASA stuff is his only way off this planet.
“Not understand words” he said, stopping his movements and staring at me without eyes.
“Synonym. It means yes. Much yes. As if there was no possibility of the answer being no”
He chittered in happiness at that. However, I had technical questions for him. “How are you powering it?” I asked.
“Astrophage fuel and three generators. Suit can work with single generator if something goes wrong. Third generator is not necessary except in emergency and will be used to give power to your rover and Hab” he said, “Also, I have tools both inside and out to fix things” he experimented with manipulating one of his xenonite hand-held printers, “But need make bigger tools for big arms”
“Amazing!”
“Word is amaze but verb, question?” he asked. I nodded. “Head movement up and down means yes, question?” “Yes” I said, “To both questions”
“Need to improve design” Rocky then said, pulling a lever under the chair that made the large arms lock in place and the restraints release him. He unplugged a cable I just noticed from a port on his control exoskeleton system, and released it.
“You engineer too, question?” he asked. Right. I’d forgotten we’d discussed that.
“Yep” I said.
“And you lived on Mars longer than me. What you suggest I make to ♫ ♪♩♫ it, question?”
“The new word you said is likely to improve. To make it better” I responded, typing it out on the laptop, “Well. Food supplies. More than you need, just in case something goes wrong. You said you can get Astrophage out of your radiation shielding - make it so that you can get it to the generators in case of emergency. Make it withstand high acceleration for launch. Redundant life support. Extra ammonia in case you have a leak”
“All of this I had already planned for except second idea,” he said, “Astrophage will run out faster than I have food. However, Astrophage has had problems before. Will include extra tanks, separate from the generators and life support.”
“Maybe an airlock?” I suggested.
"Amaze idea!” he said, “Could be useful if I want to make something”
“Or show it to me” I said, “Make your airlock equalise to surrounding air”
“I work now” he said, “Any more ideas?”
“A docking port perhaps” I said, remembering how in Kerbal Space Program I had designed my rovers with docking ports to attach to habitats for easier resource & crew transfers, “On the NASA Hermes, rovers, and Hab there’s not a lot of space. An airlock large enough for your mech suit would use up a lot of space”
“Not understand many words” he complained as he 3D printed transparent xenonite.
“Hermes is the interplanetary spacecraft which my crew is coming back on. Mech suit is what I’m calling your suit - it’s a system where a human inside controls large external legs and arms and hands, just like what you are building. Docking port - uh… system for attaching your mech suit to another Eridian compatible environment using pressurised tunnel”
“Will want to see human mech suit” he responded, satisfied with my explanations, “I work now. Is it OK if I close the radiation shielding?”
“Sure,” I said, resigning myself to not being able to see Rocky’s cool new mech anymore.
I can’t lie, that thing is as cool as fuck. Some idea that came out of that Eridian engineer’s head.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 207 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 8 | NO. 2
Rocky opened the rad curtains back up at Martian sunset, which I was watching through the transparent xenonite. Ever since the Pathfinder expedition, I had noticed that the sky turned blue for a second as the sun set. And somewhere on Earth, the sky was also blue. I guess it made me feel connected? But also lonely, once the Martian sky turned dark the second the sun was below the horizon.
He had built a transparent bubble like thing on top of his suit. I think it’s a pressure vessel. On the top there was a cylindrical hatch that he closed, sealing himself in. I could see something that could only be an airlock now integrated into the frame.
“Have not put radiation shielding in yet” he said, moving the mech arms around after plugging his control exoskeleton in, “But I want to test it”
“Sure,” I yawned.
“Have built large external airlock and test docking port on the outside of my ship” he said, “On other side of ship. This side has more damage and I considered it riskier. You come and observe?”
“Wait, you’re ready to go!?” I scrambled up to my feet.
“Yes” he said, “Put on human suit. I observe for safety”
“I won’t forget the gloves this time,” I griped.
“Safety,” he reminded me anyway.
EVA AUDIO LOG TRANSCRIPT: SOL 207 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 8
WATNEY: I’m outside the ship now!
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Walk to other side. 180 degrees around. You will see a second xenonite tunnel.
WATNEY: Yes. Walking now
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Moving Eridian mech suit to tunnel on inside of ship now. I have made a radio that fits inside.
WATNEY: Sounds good
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: In position at airlock. Waiting for you
WATNEY: My suit relies on my muscles to move, and it’s heavy.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Muscle atrophy because stranded on Mars, question?
WATNEY, PUFFING: Yeah, some of that. Also (heavy breathing) I haven’t exactly exercised that -
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: In airlock. Cycling now!
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Hello!
WATNEY: Amaze! (x3)
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Slight problem. Hard to hear. I can hear you because you make noise, but is hard to hear stationary objects like rock. Can I ♫♪♩…♫♪ you to not let me get stranded, question? Can I ♫♪♩…♫♪ you to not let me hit a rock or anything else, question?
WATNEY: Of course. Also, the new word is trust, but I can’t really put that into my computer right now.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Thank. Can I come observe the rover?
WATNEY: Sure
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Word, question?
WATNEY: Sorry. Word is synonym with words of course
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Understood. You move very slow in that suit. What is your suit tolerances to external localised pressure
WATNEY: What the fuck!?
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Understood. The original idea of picking you up likely bad. Alternative solution found. Sit or stand on external arm
WATNEY: Okay… I trust you… Just be careful, if I fall off my suit might break.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: I could fix it.
WATNEY: My suit? Maybe. But I would no longer be alive.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Understood. Will be careful careful careful.
LATER: WATNEY: Slower! And you’re drifting too much to the right.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Word, question?
WATNEY: Oh shit. Uhhh. Right is direction in which I point.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Understood. Turning to the right.
WATNEY: No!
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Stopping movement. Not understand. You point in direction we want to go?
WATNEY: Uh ok. I will point in the direction we need to go to get to my rover. Also, give me a second, I need to remotely turn on its lights so I can see it.
WATNEY: Seen it. Let’s go.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Starting movement again.
WATNEY: You could make an attachment to this so I can ride on it, but I’m not sure what the use would be.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Big use. You move slow. Your rover move slow. Also. Next time I will bring many cameras and lights. I was too busy thinking of how to make mech suit to think that it would be hard to hear surface.
WATNEY: You could also bring a LIDAR.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Question!?
WATNEY: I’ll explain when we’re back inside. Too many new concepts to explain out here. I have one spare on the rover I’ll grab though.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Yes yes yes
WATNEY: Well, so here’s my rover. I sometimes call it the Watneymobile because I had to modify it to go further to get Pathfinder.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Last word - that old radio that’s now broken, question?
WATNEY (quietly): Yes.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Bad bad bad
WATNEY: Hey, it’s OK. The MAV has a radio. We can go there to talk with Earth.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Understood.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Could walk to the Hab?
WATNEY: Uh…
WATNEY: Bad idea. I’d have to drive the rover, it has the navigation system that allows me to find the Hab. And because the Hab doesn’t have many solar panels left it would take a long while to recharge the rover, so we’d have to stay there for a sol or two. And I’m not sure if we want to trust your mech for that long on its first use.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Did not consider that word… wait… TRUST… could be used for not alive things
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Remember I can make generators produce power for rover? What prime sequence do you need?
WATNEY: What in the actual fuck.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: I repeat. What prime sequence do you need for rover power?
WATNEY: What the fuck is a prime sequence for rover power!?
ROCKY: …♫♪♪♪♪♪♪♪ (Possible: Eridian frustration noise)
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: I let you select prime sequence back on my ship.
WATNEY: Okay…
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Question. Am I allowed to touch rover?
WATNEY: Uh. Minimal force, ok? Less than a kilogram in this gravity force.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Understood. Have observed rover inside. I hear that it is very small for a human. Also? Need to talk about last word later. Not done with units.
WATNEY: Okay
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: We come back now?
WATNEY: Yes
WATNEY: ROCKY PLEASE be careful!
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Is fast motion problem, or risk of breaking suit problem?
WATNEY: Humans can move way faster than this. But I might slip. (Yawn)
WATNEY: More right
WATNEY: More right
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Tomorrow you show me more rover, question? Today was worried about you no sleep but was excited to test suit.
WATNEY: Sure
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Testing docking port now.
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: Docking port works!! Amaze!
(TRANSLATED) ROCKY: I know where to go to get to airlock now. You walk back.
WATNEY: See you on the other side (Wave)
ROCKY: (Wave)
<~~~>
Mindy now had a “Dr. Parker” in the desk to her left, the one that previously never had been used.
“That’s weird” she said, with him mirroring her less than a minute later.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“The rover headlights are on, and there’s something large that’s causing a lot of light distortion. I can’t see what it is, but it’s causing a large shadow. And… it’s moving?” she asked in disbelief, comparing two images.
“Interesting” Dr. Parker said, “SETI is starting to pick up a lot of radio chatter from Rocky"
“Do you think these are connected?”
“I think there are no coincidences here” he smiled, ear to ear. Mindy had to remind herself that for this man, it was a dream come true: so many years of listening for alien life, and now SETI finally had an alien to listen to. “When’s the next image?” he asked as Mindy dialled someone on her phone to report the occurrence.
“Thirty-five seconds” she said, “Super Surveyor Three. I changed its orbit recently to get more images of Watney, and as a side effect of its polar orbit we’re about to get some quality night time images”
LOG ENTRY: SOL 207 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 8 | NO. 3
It’s late as actual fuck but I was (and still am) too jazzed to sleep. So I did an audio transcript. Thankfully half the job’s already done by the translator program having text output. I also ran my suit voice recording through the logging software’s dictator, so all I have to do is correct it.
If you somehow missed it, Rocky had the mech suit ready to do a maiden voyage way faster than I was expecting. This Eridian works fast.
He’s definitely not fully finished it but the core functionality he needs is there.
Hjkddkkkkk
…Classic Post Eridian Mission Sol 1 Watney. I fell asleep on the laptop keyboard. Must mean the adrenaline is giving out. Good night!
LOG ENTRY: SOL 208 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 9
I slept in. Rocky let me, the alarms which I had forgotten to program in let me, and he wasn’t done until a whole lot later.
I feel like there’s a crapton of stuff I’m just forgetting here and there. It’s been information overload recently over the last 10+ sols, so my brain just… it doesn’t… remember shit from a few weeks ago.
Anyway! On to the important stuff!
Rocky finished the rad shield for his mech overnight. The bubble in which he’s contained is now non-transparent and black, with a thin layer of Astrophage within.
He also has a bunch of cameras attached to the outside. After showing that to me through our transparent xenonite partition:
“Show LIDAR, question?” he asked.
“Uh” my brain mentally pawed around some sleepy neurons for memories, “Uh…? Oh. LIDAR. The fuck? Ahh…”
Took a bit to explain that LIDAR worked by sending out a laser and then seeing how long it took to return. LIDAR stands for Light Detection And Ranging. I don’t think Rocky can make one, and it doesn’t look like he’ll be able to have his electronics interface with mine. Again, he doesn’t have computers (has he mentioned this to me before? It feels new). His brain can do most engineering/math-related functions that I’d have to use a computer for, and he seems to have perfect memory. So yeah… he said that was a low priority, for now.
I thought LIDAR would be the optimal solution for him to be able to detect obstacles, but fair enough. Other stuff is of a higher priority.
We then both went on EVA. This time, Rocky could use his cameras to navigate around the fairly long alien ship he crashed in, so he didn’t need me to guide him. He found the rover easily too, beelining for it.
“You show me rover, question?” he asked me, just as I was staring up in the skies and wondering what on Earth NASA SatCon would make of this.
“Sure” I said, “The airlock’s in the back”. Here’s when we ran into a tiny problem.
You see, rover airlocks are designed to be as small as humanly possible. One human (me) can get in, me plus some crap can get in, two astronauts can get in if you’re OK with there barely being any space left. Rocky technically could get in, but his mech suit is just too damn big.
“Alternate solution” he said, as I stared angrily at the airlock. Thank god Hab and Hermes airlocks are larger. “You go inside. I hear into the rover.”
“Wait!” I said. I’d never really tested Rocky’s hearing ability, “You can hear the inside of the rover through your mech?”
Rocky paused and looked at me. Okay, he doesn’t have eyes, and I can’t see through the Astrophage he uses to protect himself from radiation, but he definitely stared at me. My human brain refused to accept anything.
“How do you think I observe rover 1 sol ago, question?”
Right. “I’m a dumbass. Sorry, I’d forgotten”
“Humans forget many things when need sleep”
Huh. That actually might be true.
“However, if you go inside the rover, you can explain what the things are,” he said. I have the audio link up so I can hear him even though my brain can’t really decipher his words without a translator. He’s a bit excited for some reason. Why? There was nothing special in the rover. But you know what? I’ll do it for him.
You know what though, while he chattered around waiting for me to get inside, he did manage to instill some excitement into me about showing him the rover.
Excitement broke the second I stepped into shit.
I’m really fucking pissed now. Turns out I had putten a bag of shit from genuinely forever ago into the airlock and never dumped it out. Very stupid.
Well, it’s on my suit boot now, the bag having burst. Not like I have to smell it if… if the dumbass writing this didn’t immediately remove his helmet.
The Rover tour was over in five minutes. Here’s the driving seat, the rover computer readout. Here’s the really simple life support assembly. The big box of plutonium. Yes, it warms me up using radiation… Rocky got very nervous at that. My shenanigans involve cutting away bits of insulation to regulate temperature. And a box with a good lid for shitting purposes that I grabbed from the Hab last time I was there - which I now realise I forgot to take back into the tunnel.
I could feel the disappointment. I can't really explain how I’m picking up in his voice.
My rover doesn’t really have any cool shit in it. Yeah… What can I say. It’s just where I wanted to rip my own face off for 20 sols while I got Pathfinder.
What else can I say? We went back into his ship. Rocky continued to upgrade his mech suit. I got frustrated at my program struggling to pick out his words when he’s building, so I’m going to get started on that.
See you in a few.
<~~~>
An image streamed in later than normal on Mindy’s new desk in the Ares 3 Mission Control. When Mindy did finally get a look at it, it immediately turned into an “All Hands on Deck” situation.
Watney was out on EVA with a five legged alien. Likely Rocky, everyone thought.
“We’re downloading full res images soon” Mindy answered Annie's question before she could say a word, “But for now we’re just trying to get as many low-res images across as possible.
“Someone leaked that something big is going down” she said, pulling up a news app on her , “We can be expected to be stormed with reporters soon”
“Security! Lock the doors!” Sanders yelled to a guard in a corner, who gave him a thumbs up before talking into their radio and walking to said doors. He then attempted to stop Stratt from entering.
Thirty seconds later, Stratt arrived at Mindy’s desk, apparently not interested in being a stoppable person. “What’s the situation?” she asked, calmly. No excitement was detectable in her voice.
“Rocky appears to be on EVA” Mindy filled her in.
“Getting comms chatter on SETI. Estimated decoding time to audio - eight minutes” Dr. Parker responded.
“Going to call the president, one minute,” Sanders said, retreating from the situation at Mindy’s desk that was attracting increasing attention from the rest of the Ares 3 Mission Control. Mitch got wind of what was happening.
“CAPCOM, advise Hermes crew to rotate all three primary comms dishes to Mars. Have Johanssen activate the SETI program sent up on the last data dump” he said over the radio, before walking over to get a look.
Someone changed the main large screen in front of the room to display Mindy’s screen, and a buzz started to fill the room.
“Would that be a spacesuit?” Grace remarked, appearing from somewhere.
“Possibly” Mindy said, as she typed in commands for satellites to take additional images with different cameras.
“This is going to make for a hell of a press conference in a bit,” Montrose said.
“Yeah… I assume I’ll have to be there?” Venkat almost groaned.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 209 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 10 | NO. 1
Sols are ticking by faster now.
Not much to report this sol. Was in a bit of a funk for most of it, staring out into the void that Mars can be.
Rocky tried to get me into Eridian prime sequences but that was just too many new words for one sol, so we put it off by talking about… something else. I could search the laptop logs but honestly I just don’t feel like doing that.
I miss Earth.
<~~~>
“I’m starting to hate daily press conferences,” Venkat whispered, having forgotten it was not the first time he said so.
“And I’m hating the hourly ones. Have you ever had someone attempt to get you in for two press conferences per hour?” Montrose shot back. Venkat wisely remained quiet as they sat in the waiting room as the minutes ticked down until it would be their turn on the cameras again.
…
“How did I do?” Venkat later asked as they were freed from media hell.
“Eh,” Montrose said.
“You said that last time,” he noted.
“Well, you asked, and I answered. Same answer, again” she said, as they walked into the meeting room. Feeling like history was repeating itself, he looked at Sanders expecting to hear the “Don’t say bring him back home alive…” again.
Instead, he said “No comment” after noticing Venkat’s look.
“Alright everyone” he said, “Montrose, how’s PR going?”
“Better than expected. The online movement that was pushing for another agency other than NASA to take over this situation is declining, being replaced by uncontrolled speculation. There are a few conspiracy theories going around too, but that’s nothing new. Overall support is on the rise, and that’s good.”
“Bruce” Teddy picked him next, looking up at the screens where he had just joined the video call, “Updates on the orbital probe?”
“All good here” he said, “We’re on schedule”
“Actually,” Stratt said, “Bruce, could an Orion be brought up to Hermes’ velocity using the Taiyang Shen or another booster?”
“Uh” he said, the question being the last possible thing he expected to hear, “Hypothetically maybe. But the Orion capsule is heavy and it would eat significantly into the amount of supplies that can be safely delivered”
“Stratt, what is this about?” Sandars demanded from his seat.
“There’s a high chance that Rocky may need a ride home on the Hermes. Should that happen, the most qualified person for Astrophage and Eridian biological research would be Beck. However, Watney would also be onboard and will likely need most of his time. Additionally, Beck is not trained in microbiology. So I had a few teams look into the feasibility of launching another person to the Hermes during the fly-by”
“That’s very risky” Sandars said, “We can’t tolerate putting additional lives at risk here”
“And you’re not in charge of the decisions,” she said. Sandars looked at her angrily, then fell silent. “Bruce?”
“I’ll have my team look into it” he rubbed his eyes, “Strictly speaking, using an Orion would lower risk - we already use it to get crew to and from the Hermes”
“Thank you,” she replied.
“Stratt, any other update?” Sandars said, managing to hide away all his thoughts.
“We’re nearly done assembling teams for Astrophage and Eridian research. Dr. Grace will meet them tomorrow. The xenolinguists report no progress so far due to the high complexity of the language Rocky uses as of now and the fact that they have no context. They’ve identified distinct words, but there’s no way to know what those words are yet. Additionally, the sun and Petrova line both have unchanged intensity.” Stratt spoke, short and to the point.
“Got it. Mindy?”
“Nothing new - neither Watney nor Rocky have done any EVAs recently. No new morse code messages. The MRO ran into a power fault, but given its age it’s to expect that that probe runs into more significant problems over time. Watney’s occasionally moving around in the tunnel. There’s no way to know what exactly he’s doing inside at this time.”
“Okay. Mitch, how’s the Hermes going?”
“There’s no major issues yet. The team working on ensuring it functions until the end of the rescue missions have some suggestions for a few filters…”
LOG ENTRY: SOL 210 | ERIDIAN MISSION SOL 11 | NO. 1
Rocky started the sol by nervously opening the rad curtains.
“Theory about last sol. You no have any meaningful positive emotion” he stated, “How do I help correct?”
“Uhh” I said, “I dunno. Get back to Earth I suppose?”
When did I explain emotions and human mental health and crap to him? The translation program says that the new words were added yestersol, but I don’t remember that. Come to think about it, the entirety of yestersol was a bit of a haze. Like, the entire thing.
Shit.
Poking around in half-concrete memories, it seems like I had hallucinated people and for some reason didn’t want to say anything about it. I then sulked for a while because they weren’t real, they could never be real. You’re welcome, NASA. I’m coming clean about it now.
“Human thing” I said, “I think I was lonely. No other humans - people”
“Understood,” Rocky said, “Unsure how I could fix the problem. Insufficient Astrophage to get to Mars orbit.”
“No, it’s fine” I insisted immediately, “You just being here and talking to me has helped a lot"
He nervously paced around for a minute. “Hypothesis” he said, “You’re ♪♪!♪. Saying not what is true.”
“Lying” I said, some bile in my throat. My breakfast potato was threatening to return to its miserable existence outside.
“Yes,” he said, “I am not a human doctor. But it appears like you have gotten worse over time even with talking to me. Yesterday, you seemed to be hearing other humans”
Fuck.
“Yeah” I said, dejectedly, resigned, “Hallucinations. Lies made up by my brain because humans need other people. Talking to people on Earth using Pathfinder helped a lot, but I can’t do that now.”
“Need to talk to humans” he said simply, tapping his carapace, seemingly in thought.
“Don’t you have to talk to Eridians too?” I interjected.
“No. You need to talk to humans. Need need need.” he repeated. Well, that’s not going to change that much, buddy. Even though I’m half-glad to just accept the fact that I desperately need to talk to other humans again.
Sciencing my shit out here alone… it’s just… look, I know I sounded like I was fine in previous sols. The truth is that it eats away at you, to not be able to talk to someone else. Especially when it gets taken away from you again. At some point, the feeling will break you one way or another. I think solitary confinement is supposedly torture, and that’s why it’s now banned?
“Unless you could make a radio dish and antenna for me to attach to Hab, I don’t really think we can talk to Earth and NASA until later” I said, looking down at the floor. Then frowned. Rocky continued to tap away at his carapace.
HANG ON A FUCKING MINUTE!!!
The Hab has the electronics to handle long distance radio comms. All I need to do is wire up some kind of radio dish and antenna array to it. There’s a lot of science involved, but I have an alien that can travel the stars, make mech suits, understand complex alien language, and reverse engineer my short range suit radios.
…It might be possible.
It’s probably possible.
I looked up to Rocky with a stupid grin on my face. He froze, not knowing what to expect.
…
HE THINKS IT IS POSSIBLE!!!
He’s really fucking determined to do it!
We got a lot of work to do. He told me to write this down (“In case I forget more”. Heh. Like I ever do that. Wait, he’s noticed? Oh shit.) while he prepared some stuff.
It’s time go!
(Autocorrect, what the fuck… oh I turned it off) (Wait it autosaved and now I can’t delete/edit that! Dang it!) (Why can we not delete logs, NASA!?)