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So I am officially the last person on the face of the planet.
It's like a bad episode of Twilight Zone. Except, you know in space. Does that make this more or less, like Twilight Zone?
Anyway, I am alone in the HAB and going to slowly starve to death. This really makes me wish I had been the type of person who made detailed lists of who and what they would do if they were the last person left alive.
Oh wait, I am totally that kind of person.
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Item 1 on the list of what I would do if I suddenly found myself alone on an empty planet: Run around naked
Go into space, they say. You'll be a national hero, they say. Nobody ever talks about the fact that you are monitored by cameras 24/7 and oh, by the way, NASA is a public domain organization and they can and possibly will publish all your logs, videos of you in your underpants, and anything else they damn well please for the general public to go through in agonizing detail. The ARES missions are totally the Big Brother houses for nerdy scientists.
Admittedly, I stayed with NASA after I realized that little fact, because, you know, SPACE. Ask any astronaut and they will eventually admit that they would sell their own internal organs if it got them back flying.
So NASA, if you are reading this log and wondering why all the cameras went suddenly dark, this is my explanation. I am totally turning off the cameras and running around the HAB naked. What's are you going to do, threaten to ground me back on Earth? I'd like to see you try.
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Being naked in the HAB is totally not as fun as it sounds. My nuts practically froze to our nice metal fireproof chairs. Even with the HAB's life support systems, it's not exactly the tropics. And running around naked in the low 60s is only fun if you’re a polar bear or a masochist.
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Item 15 on the list of what I would do if I suddenly found myself alone on an empty planet: Watch all the porn
You know how they say that you shouldn't go through your friends’ stuff, because you might invade their privacy?
Well, guys, I'd apologize, but I'm not really sorry. Three's Company does not make great spank bank material, no matter how much fun it is to imagine how much simpler things would be with, you know, polyamory.
Leather Goddesses of Phobos is also not good spank bank material, but I have totally been playing for 60 hours solid. Johansen, I want you to know that I have totally destroyed your high scores. And I'm putting in dirty words as the player names.
BWAHAHAHAHA!
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BOOOOOOOOORED! Grow faster, potatoes!
At least Beck has a decently varied porn stash. Bi solidarity, yo!
Also, I love the fact that Johansen renamed all her illegally pirated movies with random space jokes. It's like playing roulette to see if I end up watching a couple-decades-old episode of Doctor Who or really raunchy lesbian porn. Still wish somebody had included music, though.
The disco is killing me! Seriously, whoever comes back to Mars is going to find a tombstone labeled with the epitaph “Death by Disco.”
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Item 33 on the list of what I would do if I suddenly found myself alone on an empty planet: Steal a hotrod and drive around like a NASCAR driver
When I planned to drive around an awesome car if I managed to survive the rapture, I wasn't thinking about an all-terrain vehicle heated by radioactive isotopes.
So basically, I'm going to go after Pathfinder. And I'm using the RFID to do it. And as I learned from previous experience, I can't take the laptop out of the HAB, so this log is going analog for a bit.
Also, Johansen, if I die out there and you are reading this at some point in the future, Beck totally has the hots for you and wants you to ask him out on a date, and possibly have lots of super intelligent babies with you. Give the poor guy a chance for me, ok? (Your first-born child must be named Mark. Otherwise, I will figure out a way for ghost me to conquer space travel and come to haunt you.)
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Item 42 on the list of what I would do if I suddenly found myself alone on an empty planet: Make up an imaginary friend (You know, like Wilson from Castaway) I no longer have to come up with an imaginary friend, because I have a bunch of dicks as pen pals
Fuck NASA with a rusty chainsaw. They haven't even told my team what's going on. 'Need the crew to focus on their work' my ass. Like we aren't all professionals.
Like thinking I'm dead is less distracting than knowing NASA is working on a rescue plan.
I know why they're doing this. They think I'm dead either way and they don't want the crew to mourn for me twice. Well, fuck that.
I've already figured out how to grow potatoes on a different planet. I'm going to survive, and then I’m going to go to earth and spend twelve hours singing the most annoying karaoke songs I can find in Teddy Sanders office.
I will have my revenge!
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Item 33 part B on the list of what I would do if I suddenly found myself alone on an empty planet: Find a nice house to settle down in and start a huge garden
The MAV is not a nice house, and potatoes aren’t exactly what I had in mind when I pictured my dream garden, but since nothing I has really been going like I imagined, I’m totally counting it.
You know the problem with spending a year completely alone, is that it gives you way too much time to think about the future. I’ve always had this nebulous idea about what I’ll do when I’m too old to be an astronaut anymore.
Probably take a position with the astronaut training program, a nice house with an engineering shop out back, and a huge garden. I’ve always tried carefully not to think about who I want to share my life in that house with.
In a perfect world, I’d have a loving spouse or two, who enjoyed sex, but didn’t care if I never really got the romo stuff. It's so hard to know if I’m demi-romantic or full on aromantic when I’ve always loved flying and space more than other humans. But after this, I think I’m ready to finally put down some roots and stay grounded.
And after a a few years we’d adopt some dogs and a couple kids I could spoil rotten and help raise.
And in our old age, we’d go traveling all around earth. See a world that is blue and green, bursting with life. Sometimes fantasies hurt, more than words can adequately say.
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Item 33 part B on the list of what I would do if I suddenly found myself alone on an empty planet: Steal a hotrod and drive around like a NASCAR driver
I am totally going to be the fastest person in manned space travel. And the ARES 4 MAV is now a convertible, so it totally counts.
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Item 101 on the list of what I would do if I suddenly found myself alone on an empty planet: Run into other survivors and have lots of awesome sex cuddles
So technically I’m not having sex, but hey, cuddles are awesome, and totally less painful with a bunch of busted ribs.
This is still the best day ever in my books. The HERMES is so much warmer than a radioactive rover, and I've actually had food and now cuddles.
Human touch is awesome, and so is being sandwiched between Chris and Beth. Chris is totally a cuddle monster, which totally doesn't surprise me in the slightest. Johansen, on the other hand, is basically a starfish and has managed to roll around until she's half off the mattress and has stolen all of the blankets.
And if I didn't get through my whole list of things to do as the last person on Earth, well, I've now got a whole lifetime to come up with a new list titled: What I would do if I suddenly found myself on a planet with a couple billion other people.
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Item 1 on the list of What I would do if I suddenly found myself on a planet with a couple billion other people: Give NASA a earful for that stunt of not telling my crew I was alive
Being back on earth is fucking weird. The months I spent on the Hermes were weird enough, hundreds of emails every day and Annie trying to get me back on social media enough to convince all the conspiracy buffs that I actually had been rescued from mars, without you know showing my emaciated body on screen.
NASA facilities on earth is way weirder than the Hermes, I am kind of like the second coming of Jesus, everybody trying to catch a peek or touch me, whenever they let me wander outside of the medical wing. Also, I’m pretty sure Vincent and Teddy Sanders are avoiding me.
Mitch comes to apologize as soon as medical clears me for visitors. Not that his apologizing for something he had been vocally against, actually makes me feel better.
Especially not when he quietly resigns a week later, no public explanation given besides stress. Coming back to NASA and giving them a piece of my mind had seemed so much easier in my daydreams.
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Item 15 on the list of What I would do if I suddenly found myself on a planet with a couple billion other people: Spend time with Family
By the time my six month stay in NASA medical and rehab is over, most of NASA has stopped staring at me like I’m some kind of saint. Remarkable the difference, a couple stink bombs in the community toilet and a bunch of hospital room karaoke nights can make.
People out in the real world, haven’t gotten the same chance to get inured to me. Annie set up various interviews, supervised outings and the like, once I was healed up enough, but it wasn’t like your average joe on the street got to actually shake my hand.
So of course the minute I am let out into the wilds of the real world things go absolutely insane.
Getting through the airport to fly from Florida to my parent’s house had been the worst, everybody crushing together, flashbulbs going off in my eyes, like the flickering lights in the HAB when a sandstorm was rumbling though.
I ended up in the airplane bathroom for the first hour of the flight, just trying to ignore the lingering panic and the new, rising fear spurred on by the roar of the airplane engine.
Finally, finally I’m home. Three whole blissful weeks scheduled to be with my parents.
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Item 15 on the list of What I would do if I suddenly found myself on a planet with a couple billion other people: Find somewhere to live
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One year post Earth landing, and I’m finally free from medical supervision. Beth and Chris have agreed to help me find a nice house, near theirs, one with a nice big yard and enough room for a family to grow in.
And tonight, after we are done house shopping I’m going to ask the two of them out on a date. Now that Beck isn’t my doctor.
Wish me luck!