Chapter Text
PRETEXT (otherwise nothing else will make sense):
SOL 189 - The Hermes was on an irreversible return course for Mars, following the Rich Purnell maneuver. NASA started to work on new science experiments. They also chose to take advantage of the Hermes having to take a course near Venus by having it fly into the weak Petrova line and run science experiments on it with new equipment they’d send up on the resupply.
SOL 187 - A previously unnoticed large asteroid was noted to have a fly-by of Mars orbit.
SOL 189 towards midnight - NASA sends a message to Pathfinder outlining the changes to get to Ares 4 MAV using a 3200km overland journey, with a target launch date of Sol 549.
SOL 190 (early morning) - The asteroid changes velocity, putting it on an impact course with Mars.
ACTUAL FIRST CHAPTER:
LOG ENTRY: SOL 190 - TIME 9:30 AM
Alright. Another day on this red planet. Woke up… depressed.
Let’s face it. I’m fucked. At this point, it’s a suicide mission. There’s no way NASA realistically will save me.
The least I can do, however, is give them the best bonus Mars time I can, like Oppertunity. That bad analogy JPL once made is now my reality. And thus on the miniscule chance someone somehow sends me a rescue probe, be ready to take it.
Well. Nothing much to say. I might as well go to the rover and check if I have any overnight messa-
HOLY FRr-!#cK
WARNING: INACTIVITY DETECTED >30 MIN. LOG AUTOSAVED.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 190 (2) - TIME 10:10 AM
I’m fucked even more! When the fuck did Mars decide to have a, I dunno, magnitude one trillion Marsquake!? I smashed my head into the keyboard!
SOMEHOW the kludged together piece of Hab canvas I duct taped over what used to be Airlock One held together. Otherwise I’d be dead.
I have to say. The Hab, being basically an inflatable tent, didn’t give two shits about the surface of Mars deciding to no longer be stable. Yes, some crap is broken. The Hab computer has so many alarms going off at once I don’t even know where to begin. A good chunk of them are in regards to life support, which has me somewhat worried. But the air is still inside!
And I’m not in an EVA suit yet. Why? Because shit fell on me, and I hit the laptop headfirst, so I need to work on keeping my blood inside myself or I might bleed out. Also, it’s hot. Like really hot. If I got into a suit, I might have heatstroke.
If you find this after my death, I’m sorry. I will try everything. Maybe. If there’s a second Marsquake, I don’t know if I’ll survive.
Time to try to unfuck this…
<~~~>
“Oh shit” thought Mindy, reviewing data from the Martian satellites. There was a strange shape there that wasn’t there before. And it was HUGE. She dialed Venkat’s number so fast her head spinned.
“Morning” he said, “How’s Watney?”
“Uh… There is a large object that appears to have impacted Mars’ surface at speed, roughly twenty-eight kilometers away from Watney. It looks artificial, and is giving off so much Petrova-frequency light that it is ionising the air in a kilometer radius. Like, it’s hot on Mars right now. Watney’s solar panels look to be in a bad state, a lot of them are toppled over. There may be non-visible damage to the Hab even though it’s still inflated”
There was a pause as Venkat took this in. “Shit” he said, “Any sign of Watney?”
“Not yet” she said, “If he’s still alive”
“I’ll be right there” Venkat said, “Don’t tell anyone yet”
<~~~>
LOG ENTRY SOL: 190 (3)
Sooo…
Where do I even begin?
Let’s begin with the fact that Mars is fucking hot right now!
Like seriously. Mars, what the fuck?
You know you’re in for a rough time when the heaters of the Hab are off, and the temperature is fucking rising. The Hab doesn’t have cooling; we didn’t expect that to be an issue.
All my weather stations are kaput, understandably. But the weather array on the Hab itself has a thermometer. Which is reading 38 degrees celsius. Uh oh.
Step two: Ignore Mars deciding to no longer be Mars. Worry about other crap.
My only way to get off this rock is the Ares 4 MAV. Hopefully whatever shit happened here in Acidalia Planitia didn’t get to Schiaparelli Crater, or I’m stuck here to die, guaranteed.
Also, all the solar panels attached to the Hab are broken. It’s saying that they’re producing zero watts. If they’re cracked, I’m dead. But as long as Mars stays hot, I can run on expendable CO2 scrubbers, oxygen tanks and no heaters - which means the batteries for now will last me near forever. The CO2 scrubbers and oxygen tanks? Less so.
Uh, did I mention I’m not using Hab’s normal life support? That’s because the atmospheric regulator’s AREC (external component, basically cools the air) is reading “WARNING: High temperatures. Cannot freeze separate air at this temperature. Shut down until temperatures are lower”. So the oxygenator and atmospheric regulator don’t work.
Yeah no shit, Mars is hot right now. HOW!?
I still don’t have any answers. Hopefully it’s temporary, and temperatures start dropping back down. Because fun fact, I can’t do an EVA in this temperature! The cooling system of my suit would get overwhelmed as it relies on an external temperature less than 10C. To say the least, the heat is overwhelming me right now. I’m going to go back to lying on the floor, shirtless. Because Mars’ dirt under the Hab is still cool.
Yeah. Weird shit is happening today.
<~~~>
“You’ve got to be fucking me!” Annie Montrose, NASA’s head of PR, exclaimed.
“Not helping, Annie,” Teddy Sandars, director of NASA said.
“How the fuck do I just go on the news and casually say, oh, we lost contact with Watney, again, because some crazy UFO decided to hit Acidalia Planitia?” she said, “How!?”
“We’ve got twenty-four hours” Teddy reminded her, “You’ll figure it out”
“Not helpful” she retorted, “Why the fuck do I not just quit right now?”
Mitch rubbed his eyes, tired, “What are the odds he’s alive?” he said.
“We won’t know until he does an EVA” Mindy replied, “Which, if the preliminary analysis of the satellite photos is correct, he probably won’t do right now”
“Why?” Venkat said.
“Because it would cook him alive” she replied, “Estimated temperatures are around forty degrees celsius, and his suit has no cooling systems that work with external temperatures being this high. It also has insulation, which would make everything worse compared to the Hab”
“Ok” he said, “Keep an eye for movement or any signals from him”
“The fuck do we tell the crew?” Mitch asked, “They just committed to going back to Mars by holding the Rick Purnell maneuver course for the last couple of days. It’s not like they can stop”
“Simple,” Teddy said, “May I remind you, we can just hold it from them for a few days”
“If the fact that we didn’t tell them the truth twice comes out, they’re going to hate us with a living passion” he replied, “But I don’t know how the fuck I could tell them, until Watney shows signs of movement”
“Then we’ll leave it at that. Watney looks like he’s alive, you can tell them everything. If conditions on Mars or the Hab exceed what looks to be survivable for a few days, give them the bad news - and then we can then look into trajectories to bring them back to Earth faster”
“Okay” Mitch said, hating himself for agreeing to this logic.
LOG ENTRY SOL: 190 (4)
Good news, bad news!
The source of the heat seems to be IR light of a very specific frequency scattered around in the thin Martian atmo. I don’t have direct line of sight with the source - which is probably good, as it would cook me alive. And… that’s it for the good news.
Bad news - my solar panels, are, as predicted, completely fucked. A lot of them are smashed. However, a few of them look to be only flipped, so perhaps I can rig some of them together to piss out the watts I need to keep something just warm enough to be survivable during the night?
And in other news, the quantity of infrared (IR) light is slowly going down. If the decrease is linear, in two sols it should be at zero. Wait, that’s probably also good news! …except that if it goes down to zero and my solar panels are fucked, I’ll die of freezing. Or maybe not: I could hug the RTG.
Meh. I need some fucking sleep. In case Mars suddenly goes back to normal overnight, I still have enough juice in the Hab batteries to keep the heaters running for a single night. Three if I don’t use the atmospheric regulator, oxygenator, etc. So I’ll be here in the morning. If there’s a second Marsquake, I’m probably dead anyway.
<~~~>
“The fuck!?” Venkat asked.
“I just said. The spectroscopy analysis of the object says it’s made out of Xenon” Mindy replied.
“How the fuck…” he said, “Are we dealing with a first contact situation here? And if there are aliens, how come they got Xenon to react to something to make solids!?”
“My questions exactly,” Mindy said.
“What’s the problem with it being made out of Xenon?” Annie asked.
“Because Xenon is a noble gas! It simply can’t be made to react with something to make a solid!” Venkat exclaimed.
“Oh” Annie said, “Then I better draft something up that aliens landed on Mars.”
“This has to be some kind of error” Venkat said, “Are you sure about this?”
“I had the satellite test its spectroscopy camera against all sorts of other things” Mindy replied, “The Hab, Mars’ surface, and Mars’ atmosphere. It looks to be in perfect working order”
<~~~>
LOG ENTRY SOL: 191
Alright. Yestersol was weird. I ended up having to sleep on the Hab’s floor, and even then I barely slept until I took a sleeping pill. Which are strong as fuck, making me wake up at eleven (and barely), and I’m not taking them again.
Unfortunately, the quantity of IR light blasting out from somewhere nearby has sort of plateaued. At a nice toasty -1 celsius (slight sarcasm - by Mars standards this is still hot). The Hab did eventually cool down, but it took a while. The heaters are running at such a low power to keep the temperature inside comfortable that I estimate the batteries could last me a week.
However, I want to ask NASA what on earth happened to Mars!
So I did an EVA. Unfortunately, Pathfinder is completely smashed to bits. Oh shit. I’m on my own, again.
I did go to the rover. Perhaps NASA sent me some kind of warning?
Hmm…
Holy shit!
They're coming back for me! And… oh shit. They didn’t really mention much else. Just “stand by for further instructions”, and a mention that I’d have to do some modifications to the Ares 4 MAV to launch on… Sol 549! I’m going to live… assuming I can drive the rovers 3200km overland.
After it got that message, Pathfinder went kaput. I mean, I can’t blame it. It survived dust storms and god knows what else. It never was meant to survive a marsquake stronger than normal earthquakes.
Hmm. Do we have an IR volcano situation going on around here? No… that sounds stupid. But I’m running out of ideas for what’s going on!
Since I do want to have my life support continue to work, I then set off to right the solar panels. Oh god. Only twenty look to be in a serviceable condition. Originally, I had a hundred.
Well. Fuck.
I did set those twenty back upright and re-wired them to the Hab. By this point, I was sweating like crazy. Martian surface EVA suits work under the assumption you will realistically only need heating. So I was SWEATING in that suit.
Well, I had to go back to the Hab. I can’t stand this suit for more than an hour or two if it’s so hot.
<~~~>
“He’s on EVA!” Mindy exclaimed. On her monitor was a new picture, where Watney was just about visible in between his rows of solar panels.
Venkat rushed out of his chair and leaned on her desk, “Son of a bitch. Won’t die, no matter what. I’m going to call Mitch and Annie.”
“No problem” Mindy said, “I’ll keep an eye on Mars”
<~~~>
LOG ENTRY SOL: 192
The frequency of the IR emissions were bugging me. So I dug up all the data I could out of my computers.
Guess what?
It’s the same frequency as the Petrova line, the one in between the sun and Venus which took forever to figure out because it was so weak. The research probe for the Petrova line is due to launch in two years from now, so nobody has understood yet what it actually is. The current accepted theory is that the IR light is generated there, and gets reflected off of space dust; and that is what we see as Petrovalight.
Well wow. All of NASA must be having a meltdown right now. I’m certainly having one. We have a source of Petrova frequency light right here, and the only person anywhere near it is having a meltdown (literally) and doesn’t have comms.
I swear, I wish there were ice cream in the Hab. I think there is some on Hermes. Definitely going to argue for taking ice cream down to the surface on future missions if Mars is going to cook itself.
Hmm. I can’t stand being outside for long periods of time. I could go do science if I just push past the fact that I’ll be sweating buckets.
And by that, I mean do an EVA to fix the weather stations, and then try and triangulate the source. I’m guessing somewhere nearby me is a huge source of Petrovalight, so strong that just the reflections in atmo are half cooking me.
That leaves me with some time left in this sol to think on how to get to Schiaparelli with my limited supply of solar panels…
I better get started.
<~~~>
HERMES
Johanssen sat behind the console in the Rec of the Hermes.
“How much more until it transfers?” asked Martinez, who was reading something from the sofa on the Rec.
“That sequel you want won’t download any faster if you keep asking” Johanssen smiled, “But for your benefit, the data dump is 95% done”
“Phew” he replied, relieved, “I’m on the penultimate page, and the author’s an idiot that leaves you on a cliffhanger at the end of the book”
There was a beep, as Vogel slid down the last few rungs into the Rec. The data dump was complete. “All right. Data dump done. Vogel, you have a whole lot more telemetry updates here. Lewis, they beamed up some data on some new experiments they want you to do with our samples. Beck… I don’t know what to make of this, I don’t understand medicalese. Martinez, I’ll just save you the trouble and send the book direct to your eBook reader” Johanssen said, “And there are some private messages for all of us, which I’ll upload to our personal computers.”
“Phew,” Martinez said, looking forward to the next book. Because the mission time had been extended considerably, NASA had relaxed their schedules, giving them more free time together in order to still have some science experiments to do along the way.
Johanssen scrolled down, “Oh shit” she said, “We have another voice message from Mitch, for the entire crew”
Martinez practically exploded out of the couch, the ebook reader going flying. “Tell me he’s still alive”
Beck and Lewis abandoned their chess game, and quickly went over to where Johanssen was sitting. “Play it,” Lewis ordered.
Johanssen pressed play.
“Hermes, this is Mitch Henderson.” The message began, “We have some news. Again. However, I’d like to start by confirming Mark Watney is still alive. And the resupply is still on schedule.”
Johanssen started breathing again.
“Thank god” Lewis said.
Martinez visibly relaxed. If it wasn’t Watney, or the resupply, it couldn’t be too bad.
“However” Mitch said, “Fifty-four hours ago, a large asteroid that we were tracking, which was on a fly-by of Mars, unexpectedly changed its trajectory. We don’t know when or how as it was pretty much guaranteed to not go remotely close to Mars. It impacted Mars at high velocity, causing visible damage to the solar panels.”
“What—” Vogel stammered.
“And it gets weirder,” Mitch let out a small strained laugh, “It’s currently emitting enough Petrova light to significantly increase the surface temperatures of Mars. We’re closely monitoring it, and its emissions are currently going down. When they dropped down to what would be a semi-tolerable level, Watney did an EVA to right some of his solar panels. We don’t know the extent of the damage as it looks like Pathfinder was completely destroyed”
“...Aliens?” Beck muttered no-one in particular.
“Now to answer some other questions I’m sure you have. The object, now that we’ve looked at it with satellite cameras, looks clearly artificial. We did a spectroscopy, and it somehow came back as xenon. We currently don’t have an explanation on how that is possible, but it clearly is some solid xenon compound - we triple checked with all spectroscopy payloads in Martian orbit”
“How the fuck” Vogel said, dumbfounded. It made no sense to him, with him being the ship’s chemist.
“I’m sorry for once again not keeping you immediately up to date on what happened. We ourselves weren’t sure what we were looking at. Annie Montrose is going to try to play it as a strange asteroid that we haven’t been able to track properly due to its strange material. However, there is the possibility that this is first contact with an alien species. We’re all waiting to see what happens.”
“Beyond that, Pathfinder did confirm that it received the message that we sent overnight to tell Watney of the plan for him to drive to the Ares 4 MAV and launch on Sol 549” Mitch said gravely, “But we haven’t put together a full plan for rover modifications for him to make the journey, let alone sent it to Mars. Unfortunately, there is the risk that Watney will be unable to figure out how to make the journey. Then again, he’s proven himself to be an expert for surviving on Mars without external help”
Martinez looked at Lewis. She said nothing, did nothing.
“I’m going to do my best to keep you up to date with all events” Mitch added, “Send any questions you have, and we’ll do our best to answer as soon as we have the answers. If there are any concerns regarding the Hermes’ use of the Rich Purnell Maneuver to inspect the Petrova line, please voice them immediately; there is ongoing discussion on the safety of sending a manned vessel into the Petrova line after the recent events”
“Take some time to take this in. Science schedules are cleared for the rest of today and tomorrow. Henderson out.”
“Xenon?” burst out Vogel, “How–” he stopped himself.
“Jesus” Martinez almost laughed, “Well that was unexpected”
“Think Watney would go and attempt first contact if the Petrova light emission stops?” Beck said, “Would be funny if the first thing aliens learn is his hate for disco”
Lewis had to laugh at that one, “Trust Watney to survive this shit” she said, “I don’t even know what to say anymore.
“I do,” said Vogel, “I’m going to ask them for all the raw data from Martian satellites they can fit into our next data dump.”
“Good idea” Lewis said, “Ask them to also start beaming up satellite pictures to the Hermes.”
<~~~>
LOG ENTRY: SOL 192 (2)
It now occurred to me NASA would be shitting bricks, but it’s too dark outside to do an EVA to leave them a morse code message using rocks.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 193
Temperatures aren’t dropping meaningfully. The suit’s insulation means that if I’d go out right now and start hauling rocks to make morse code messages, I’d end up sweating like crazy.
So guess what I did?
You guessed wrong! I went out and I hauled broken solar panels into a morse code message; specifically, “PF BROKE WILL GET TO MAV SOL 549”. Hey, if I have 75 broken ass solar panels, I might as well save my back, since these things are so much lighter than literal rocks.
I still ended up sweating like crazy. So I tortured myself further by driving out to the weather stations to try to fix them.
Guess what? Two were broken beyond repair; I put them onto the rover to take back to the Hab. But two were in working order; just not upright anymore. So I can do… triangulation!
Rough estimates put my source of Mars-baking Petrovalight at north-west from the Hab. One day, I’ll go there and see what there is to see. Right now, I’d probably get cooked the second I’d get line of sight. However, I failed to get a good estimate for distance.
At the end of all that I was still sweating like crazy, so I made a little invention just for me.
I dragged a decent quantity of the dirt around in the Hab so I’d have a few square meters of space. Then using metal struts from the unused bunks and spare Hab canvas, I made a ten centimeter tall watertight container, 1.5 x 1.5 meters. With a pipe attached to the bottom.
I then liberated almost all the spare water pumps I could find in the Hab. Put them to pump water out from the container into a larger tank, which I would then feed into the water reclaimer over time.
Then, I did some stress testing. I jumped up and grabbed onto one of the support struts that help the Hab keep the ceiling up when it was in construction. They have minimal load on them right now as air pressure keeps the ceiling up; I certainly became the load when I held on to it and did a pull up. It didn’t budge.
Whew. Muscles are getting weak if I’m out of breath from one pull up in one third of a G. Unfortunately, that’s what minimal exercise to conserve calories and constant rationing will do to ya.
I did consider hanging Lewis’ space suit by the ceiling since it stores half of my water. Then decided against that; that thing is fucking heavy and I could barely drag it with all the water in it, let alone lift it up to the ceiling. So instead, I used one of our fifty liter water storage bags. The original intended way to store water. Connected its water output to a hose and voila! Shower.
Time to blast out all the sweat I’ve been accumulating since my last shower on the Hermes-...
Dang it. I need more pressure. That was barely anything!
So I went back to work and improved the design.
By that I mean I got sidetracked, remembering I left the RTG in airlock one. I took it into the Hab. Funnily enough, with Mars being decently hot outside, it kept the Hab at a decent temperature. All the heaters turned off. Good. I’ll leave it in the Hab from now on to help conserve some power; every bit helps.
THEN I remembered what I was doing and took the water pump out of the water reclaimer (with one person and no plants, I can live without it turned on for a lot of time) and used it to suck water out of the ceiling water bag. Win-win situation: by increasing its voltage a bit, I got five liters per minute out of the Ceiling Bag, with gravity and the pump working together to give me a half decent shower.
Which I used immediately afterwards.
I have no words. After nearly two hundred sols of being NOT clean, this was pure bliss. Why the fuck didn’t I do this earlier!?
I did also eventually misuse the RTG again to warm up the water as once it turned night the water reclaimer managed to empty my waste water tank; and Mars cooled a bit from the sun not warming up stuff.
I’m only a bit proud of myself. Or a lot. Let the length of this log and how much of it was spent explaining the making of The Martian Shower gauge.
PS: I also invented mud; both in terms of the color of used water and in terms of water getting onto my “farmland”. And then made a shower curtain out of spare Hab canvas to stop the mudmaking. Getting dried was also kinda awkward; the towels we have are fairly small.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 194
Unexpectedly the IR emissions went down by exactly a THIRD overnight.
Like no shit, half-way through the night they dropped, in the span of ten seconds, to two thirds of what they were before. No fucking clue why.
I wonder what NASA is making of this using satellites. They can probably see whatever alien or freak natural disaster is causing this. Although the Petrova frequency was originally being emitted between Venus and the Sun, I don’t get why so much of it is happening here.
Right now, it means my Hab heaters are back on, and at night the AREC remembered how to function. Which means I have ‘regenerative’ life support - by which I mean the atmospheric regulator is working, thus the oxygenator is working, thus I have long-term life support again.
Freeze-separation was a bit slow. I say “was” because during the day it barely can get the air to low enough temperatures to liquify nitrogen, oxygen and carbon dioxide. Which is kind of necessary, given how my life support works.
I’m going to take another shower. It’s still hot outside.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 197
I was enjoying my cup of Martian coffee (caffeine pill dissolved in reclaimed water) when the IR petrovalight just died. Like, I was looking at the graphs on the Hab computer I set up, and I just saw them start dropping. In ten seconds, petrovalight readings were down to nothing.
What. The. Fuck.
Time to go investigate, and chance my luck on getting cooked alive!
<~~~>
“Venkat,” Mindy said, then lightly poked him, “Wake up!”
“Yeah…” he yawned, waking up from the chair behind Mindy’s desk.
“Petrovalight levels just dropped to near zero. And Watney immediately went out on EVA” she informed him.
“What!” Venkat said, coming more awake, “Email it to…”, he added, before forgetting what he wanted to say.
“Already done,” Mindy said, having already emailed the image and data to the list of interested parties.
“...the Hermes crew” Venkat remembered, “Mitch said they requested us to send them satellite images of Watney when he goes out on EVA or changes things”
“Uh. Yes, sir” Mindy said, realising she’d never done that before. Email an astronaut in deep space; that was new.
“I’m going to go get coffee,” Venkat said, clearly needing it despite it being nine pm in Houston.
<~~~>
AUDIO LOG TRANSCRIPT: SOL 197
I’ve gotta say I’m excited. Recording this just in case the IR light comes back on, full blast, and cooks me alive. Driving the rover with both rover batteries, but no solar panels. Why? Because I didn’t have time to turn the RTG from a water boiler for my shower (and a heater for my Hab) back into a rover heater. So if I’d stop to try to recharge, the heater would just eat up all my power.
Plus I’m sick of living in the Rover from the Pathfinder expedition. Even though I’ll have to do it again to get home. If the anomaly/asteroid/whatever-the-fuck-it-is is too far from me for me to make a battery powered only trip, first contact can wait for Ares 4. Or 5; by stealing the Ares 4 MAV am I now officially the sole crewmember of Ares 4?
Plus, with all the earthquakes and Mars-baking IR heat from just reflections off of the atmo, I’m going to make the uneducated guess it’s not that far.
<some time later>
Okay, maybe it’s not. I’m twenty kilometers away from the Hab and starting to lose the Hab beacon. I’ll drive until I’ve got ten percent left in the rover battery no1, then turn around.
<8km further>
Holy—!
Jesus. What the fuck is that!
Christ. That’s no asteroid. How the fuck did it survive impact? It’s nearly in one piece- but I think I can see three large breaches. I'm going to turn on the camera now. Ladies and gentlemen, this may or may not be your first contact with an alien species, starring your madman lead actor of Live Another Sol, Mark Watney!
The camera shows a huge strange alien vessel, roughly 200m long, made up of blotchy tan flat panels, looking like it’s on its side. It appears partially buried, with a long trench behind it formed by impact. The ground around it looks scorched both from the impact and the following Petrovalight emissions.
I’m honestly surprised I survived that. Did it try to land near my Hab intentionally? It looks to have crash-landed, but I’m not sure how that led to so much Petrovalight being emitted.
Okay let’s slow down a bit. Flat panels. If this is an alien ship it’s probably unmanned; assuming the aliens like to have an atmosphere. Hmm. Actually for all I know they can live in a vacuum.
I’m going to go approach this thing and do mad science on it. Sorry NASA, I have no idea what the first contact protocol is, but I’d like to know just how it stayed intact after such an impact. After all, I felt the impact a few sols back, and I can tell it hit the ground hard!
AUDIO LOG TRANSCRIPT: SOL 197 (2)
Okay. I’m on EVA now. Got my lil’ shoulder mounted EVA camera 2 turned on. Hey there, buddy! Yep, I’m talking to the camera. I’ve been talking to the camera so many times on EVA.
Also, if anyone watches this out of context of all my other recordings, EVA camera one is the other camera, the one mounted to my chest which I can be detached and hand-held. I broke it about a hundred sols ago and haven’t gotten around to fixing it.
Approaching the alien probe or ship. Whatever it is.
Hey, how come NASA didn’t track this thing? They could've warned me I would have to get ready for a first contact situation with an alien species.
Oh shit.
A robot rises out of the hull through an airlock.
Aliens? No, that looks more like a robot to me. Unless the aliens are robots, which could be a possibility.
Shit I’m excited. I’m going to wave at it. Perhaps it’ll react, or maybe it will incinerate me with some more of that Petrovalight.
Watney waves.
After a moment, the hull robot waves back with one of its many arms.
Wow.
Also, what the fuck do I do now? I’ve watched so many first contact movies where everything goes horribly wrong, I don’t even know what to do or not do.
Hmm. It’s going back into the hull. I’m just going to stand here, be non threatening, and watch. For all I know the aliens could be terrified of me. Or, if they crashed, perhaps they need rescue?
<TEN MINUTES LATER>
The hull robot re-emerges from the airlock. It’s carrying a cylinder.
I’m going to wave at it again.
Watney waves. The robot immediately copies. It then throws the cylinder about fifty meters away from Watney with unexpected force.
Oh come on! I know that you want to look non-threatening and all, but I’m in a freaking EVA suit! These things are heavy. I'm going to go get the cylinder now.
Watney spends the next minute walking to the cylinder. The hull robot doesn’t appear to show any reaction.
Wait, how do I know that this isn’t some kind of crazy test? How do I know that this won’t kill me? Oh. The hull robot is pointing at me, then miming me picking it up.
FUCK IT’S HOT!
Jesus. I should have taken the hint from the fact that the aliens literally warmed up Mars itself over the past few sols. Going to give it a few more minutes. Hull robot is miming me picking it up again… I know. I know. But I have to wait for this thing to cool down!
<TWENTY MINUTES LATER>
Okay. It’s cooled down enough. I wonder what the aliens are making of me just sitting around here and wasting time.
Y’know, in the name of not getting eggs planted in me, I’m going to do this outside. EVA suit gloves have decent dexterity, and the suit should protect me if there are any toxic chemicals - or alien eggs - within. Unless there are chemicals that break my suit.
Watney picks up the cylinder
It’s… not that heavy. Also looks to be made of the same material as the alien ship. It’s tan and blotchy. Doesn’t look like any metal I know. Hmm. There’s also a hole on the top, probably to allow any alien atmo to vent and equalise with Martian atmo. There’s a seam running through a part of it; perhaps it’s a lid?
Watney pulls on what looks to be the cylinder’s lid.
Hmm. Pulling doesn’t work. What about unscrewing? Nope. Hull robot, any ideas?
Oh hang on a second. Aliens probably don’t follow the lefty-loosy righty-tighty convention. Let’s try the other way - success! Got the lid off. Now to look inside this thing. Hull robot is not moving. I suppose you could interpret that as creepy, but I suppose if it’s a robot, then the alien inside may just be watching me through a camera or something.
Also, I call it the Hull Robot because it’s attached to the hull. Thought that was worth saying. Looks like there are tracks for the robot to move along, but a good part of them are damaged or caked with Mars crap. Some around the airlock do look clean.
Okay… put the lid down. There’s a bunch of stuff inside. Uhh… scratch my idea of using suit gloves. I’m going back into the rover. This stuff looks to be a bunch of beads of the weird tan material, linked with rigid super-thin filaments. I’d probably break it if I tried in my suit. See you from inside the rover!
<~~~>
“Venkat, we may have a problem,” Mindy said.
“What?” he answered, still operating on insufficient sleep.
“Watney’s approaching the alien ship. A satellite that was meant to take a picture earlier had a minor malfunction, so we only know now”
“Fuck” Venkat swore.
“Fuck indeed” Mitch replied, also being there, “Start sending everything you get - all satellite pictures - up to the Hermes. Priority messages to be sent now, not on data dumps”
“Teddy - listen. I know what you’re doing is important, but Watney’s about to initiate first contact if there are any aliens. Yes, I know, - okay. Understood” Mitch and Mindy heard a very one sided conversation from Venkat, who had called Teddy Sandars, “Oh gods. Why did this happen to me?” he said rhetorically.
<~~~>
HERMES
“Message from NASA” Johanssen’s voice sounded through the Hermes via the intercom, “Watney’s just gone and initiated first contact with what may be aliens. They’re sending us the sat pictures now”
“How long until we receive them?” Commander Lewis’ voice came in over the intercom too, having stopped taking photos of the Mars samples they had.
“One minute and thirty seconds, they prioritised the transmission,” Johanssen said. Martinez overheard that from the other side of the Rec and once again abandoned his book.
It didn’t take that long for everyone else to get into the Rec. They all were worried for Watney. But also excited for the potential to make first contact with aliens.
<~~~>
LOG ENTRY: SOL 197 (2) (INSIDE ROVER)
Well…
I decided to first try to figure out what the cylinder was made of. So before I got into the rover, I gave the cylinder a good blast with a ChemCam to see if I could do the normal thing of vapourising it a bit and analysing the gasses that would come off. Nothing.
I also then did a better test to see if it’s radioactive using an actual Geiger counter we had for some reason (and I brought). It’s not. Also, I’m not an idiot; if it was dangerously radioactive, my suit would have told me with an ear-splitting alarm.
Next, Toxic? Uhh… No. How do I know that? Because I’m an idiot, taking the cylinder inside the rover and removing my spacesuit to get comfortable before I thought it might be toxic. It could be a long term poison though. But I proved it probably isn’t by running some tests using the rover's toxic gas detector and atmospheric composition measuring tool (the same one I used to figure out that I’d turned the Hab into the Hindenburg).
Okay…
More science! Conductive? No. Strange; it does kind of look like a metal.
How breakable is it? Well, I took a hammer to it. Nothing. I did various other things to it. Not a scratch. I took the fucking rock drill to it. The rock drill broke, with the cylinder proudly showing an undamaged surface. This is some amazing cylinder thing.
Fuck it. I dove into every chemcam setting. Half of these don’t even make sense to me. But eventually, I found a mode that uses x-ray spectroscopy. It’s less accurate than the other modes that vaporise stuff and then analyse it, but better than nothing.
It’s made of fucking Xenon.
Johanssen, the fuck did you do to this thing!?
I double checked the ChemCam worked by trying it on other stuff. It does. Sorry, Johanssen.
I’m no chemist, that’s Vogel’s speciality. But Xenon isn’t supposed to form solid stuff. Also, this mode only reads what the surface of the material is made of, so it’s not ‘filled’ with Xenon. It’s made of Xenon.
Is my memory completely dead, or isn’t Xenon one of these things we call noble gasses that don’t react to anything!?
This mode on the spectrometer can’t do stuff lower than aluminium. So that Xenon could be combined with some other stuff. Carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, whatever. It took a lot of digging into the manuals to find that out, and I wish Johanssen could've done it for me. Because she’s actually trained for this spectro-crap. Which I’m calling crap because the cylinder is made of Xenon and that’s breaking the laws of chemistry or something.
What do you even call noble gasses that react to stuff!? Ignobles!? Vogel, send help. I’m done with this.
Okay… let’s try something else. Getting the stuff out of the cylinder. It’s also made of Xenon.
Right. Because how could this get weirder?
I took a crapton of pictures. Just in case I break these weird things inside the cylinder. They have some whisker thin poles or filaments or whatever which look to be incredibly thin. Except it feels rigid when I pull it out of the cylinder.
Wait. The hull robot THREW the cylinder. And this stuff inside looks to be still in one piece. Maybe it’s not that weak.
Hmm…
I pulled it out. Actually, there are two …structures? here. One of them looks a bit like an abstract sculpture: a marble sized sphere and a BB-sized sphere with an oddly parabolic shape connecting the tops of the spheres.
No idea what all that means.
The other structure… looks like it’s got a flat base, with many little spheres held in positions above it using the same tiny whiskers. The entire thing’s also made of weird material. Which I hereby proclaim to be called Xenonite; Vogel & NASA, make of that what you will.
What on earth am I supposed to make of this!?
Okay, Mark, think.
What do all the aliens do in your sci-fi movies?
LOG ENTRY: SOL 197 (3) (INSIDE ROVER)
Step one: Be a genius! One of the structures is a starmap! It took me a while to make the rover computer display the starmaps the MAV and MDV use for orientation, but eventually, I figured it out.
Two of the spheres are of a slightly different color. One of them is Sol - like, y’know, the sun you probably have lighting up your room if it’s day. Our sun. The other… I think it’s 40-Eridani.
Aliens are from 40-Eridani?
The other thing I realised is that the smell of ammonia is back again. Context; when I burnt hydrazine, some ammonia stuck around and gave the Hab the perfect air freshener. I lived with it so long that I didn’t realise the cylinder smelled of ammonia!
Yet it doesn’t seem to be releasing ammonia or anything; I used the ChemCam with its laser turned off to gauge that - honestly, I’m not really sure if I set it up correctly. Best guess? The aliens’ atmo is made up of it.
And now I’m back to having no idea what to make of the other abstract sculpture.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 197 (4) (INSIDE ROVER)
Side comment: this stuff is ridiculously strong. Like, off the charts strong.
I tried to break the starmap (intentionally). I nearly broke my fingers in the process by pressing down on it too hard. Chalk up a win for the weird alien materials. The little whiskers holding up the spheres are way stronger than anything that thin has any right to be - they’re still perfectly straight, and they didn’t even bend a bit!
LOG ENTRY: SOL 197 (5) (INSIDE ROVER)
It was when I scanned the thing for Petrova light emissions (call me crazy, but I’d like to know if this material is about to cook me alive) when it hit me. The weird sculpture thing does kind of look like the Petrova line.
Although what that’s supposed to signify, I have less than no idea. I’m just a simple Martian with no comms to Earth. How am I supposed to deal with this alone!?
Anyway, now with the alien message probably deciphered correctly (I hope), time to figure out what to tell them!
Hmm.
I’m going to take a trillion more photos of this before that, and also eat something (potato - yum…). Because it’s starting to get a tiny bit late.
I do also have to keep in mind if I stick around here too long, I’ll have to swap batteries to keep the rover heater on. Next time, I’ll bring the RTG and solar panels. It was insanely stupid to not do that this time.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 197 (6) (INSIDE ROVER)
A trillion more photos have been taken. Also, the sphere representing the 40-Eridani system isn’t a sphere. It’s a replica of the other weird sculpture, which I think is a Petrova line.
Hang on a second. There’s a bunch more Petrova line sculpture things all over this thing, with the tiny hair width Xenonite bridging inbetween… some of them.
And if I squint really hard, even Sol has a petrova line, but it’s 10x smaller than all the others.
I wonder if the aliens are trying to send us a message. “Hey, the petrova line is dangerous! Stop it before it gets any bigger!”. Or perhaps it's some kind of phenomenon showing that there are sentient beings in the solar system? I have no idea.
Or perhaps they’re here to figure out why ours is so small. I have no bloody idea.
Do wish to point out only 40-Eridani and Sol are made of the slightly different color of Xenonite. It’s noticeable. Even in pictures.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 197 (7) (INSIDE ROVER)
I’ve been logging so hard this day, I’ve logged more logs in one sol than the last few months.
Anyway, let's say I want to have a conversation with the aliens. What do I have to tell them?
1: First of all, this is Mars. Earth is a few clicks this other way. There’s just me on this rock.
2: My atmosphere (Call me crazy, but if I want to talk to the aliens, I have to get them to realise I can’t survive in ammonia. And I don’t want any pressure related surprises.)
3: I’m alone and don’t have contact with Earth
4: Base units - for the eventual complex astrophysics conversations. Like distance, temperature, etc.
5: The fact that I have to go back to the Hab and then come back next sol.
6: Visible light spectrum? My range of hearing? I dunno how to show that right now though. The aliens probably will pick up on it if I use my suit lights a few times. Maybe.
The alien basically gave me sculptures and stuff so I would be able to understand them without language. What could I give it back?
Well, I could make my own sculptures… using the 3D printer… which is back at the Hab. I didn’t think I’d need it here today. Also, I’d have to consider if the plastic it uses to print would melt or not. After all, the cylinder was fucking hot, whether they did that to sterilise or simply because that’s their favourite temperature I have no idea.
Okay. Atmosphere is possible. I misused a Mars atmosphere sampling tank, took a sample of my rover air, sealed it, and put it into the cylinder. Hopefully nitrogen and oxygen aren’t toxic to the aliens. Then again, they probably are less stupid than me and will run the proper tests before risking killing themselves.
But how do I tell them about the temperature? How the fu—.
Okay. I just looked up in exasperation (it’s been a few minutes) and I realised the rover has an analogue thermometer. I don’t know why. It looks to be mercury based and has the thing to show max and min temperature. I ripped it out and put it next to the sample of rover air, and painted a good strong line at my favourite temperature of 21C using a sharpie.
What about the fact I really have to go soon? Like, it’s going to get dark in a few hours. Huh. My only idea is to leave some stuff behind. A camera is probably a good idea; so I prepped one to be powered by a spare ChemCam battery to keep it going overnight. This way, if there are any surprises to be had when I come back, I’ll have a recording. Hopefully they’ll understand that the rover is a temporary habitat for me.
Alright. So theoretically, I’ll be able to tell them my atmosphere, give them an idea of temperature, and show them I’m going to be sticking around by leaving a few things on the surface. I’m also going to throw in a tape measure to give them an idea of distance.
Going to put all this stuff in the cylinder.
LOG ENTRY: SOL 197 (8) (INSIDE ROVER)
I wondered how to give the cylinder back to the hull robot. Well, it seems like it’s been busy, using some torch that emits Petrovalight to repair the hull and the tracks it slides along. I didn’t have a chance to observe as the second it realised I was outside again with the cylinder, it zipped down to a little extension it made down to “ground level”, and started doing “give me” hands. With all five hands. That did look creepy.
Good. The top bit of the ship is nearly 10 meters up! No way I would have been able to throw the cylinder that high in an EVA suit (even with Mars gravity) and I’d have risked breaking the stuff I put into it.
The robot made grabby hands, so I gave it the cylinder. It immediately started rushing to the top of the ship, and disappeared, presumably into an airlock of some kind.
In the meantime I set up the camera. Five minutes later, the robot re-appeared. I waved at it, then walked off to wrap up a few more things. Specifically, a morse code message saying “PROBABLE ALIENS”, and ‘below’, “40-ERIDANI”. That should stir stuff up at NASA, and give Annie Montrose an aneurism. Good? Maybe? Being the person who used to do the media stuff for Ares 3, I’ve come to the conclusion she can really get up your ass occasionally.
I’m glad I’m not in her shoes right now. She’ll have to somehow explain that I found aliens without any photos to feed the media. It’ll be a shitshow.
I did also have to swap the used battery from the rover with the fully charged one. Again, I’m 28km away; each battery has a range of 35km, and most of the remainder of Battery 1 was used up by the rover’s heater over time; enough so that I decided to swap now instead of using up the last bit first.
<~~~>
Today’s been weird, Mindy thought.
Mitch Henderson? Teddy Sandars? Annie Montrose? A normal day in her life nowadays whenever something major was going on at Mars. And Venkat would occasionally stick around for the odd hour whenever Watney was doing something.
The president watching her manage the satellites while conferring with a whole bunch of other people including aforementioned NASA top brass? Now that was new…
<~~~>
LOG ENTRY: SOL 197 (9)
It’s been a long sol. I’ve made nine fucking logs! Who knew first contact with aliens would be so tiring!? All I want to do is crash face first into bed.
And there’s still stuff to do. I want to hit the ‘road’ nice and early tosol (Martian tomorrow) morning, so I’m going to move solar panels to the rovers - now. I’m also going to move all the science equipment I think could be useful and I can carry, and a 3D printer, a few spare laptops, you name it.
Also: Oxygen, carbon dioxide scrubbers, nitrogen, the spare life support assembly from the other rover, a bunch of stuff I could use to make props - everything! And I have to get a pop tent and clean it out, because if I’m going to stay around for a good few sols, I’ll want to commit fewer war crimes against my spine. The Pathfinder trip and lugging dirt around has nearly done it in.
Fuck, I’m tired. But at least I left the shower in a usable state. It’s the small things in life that matter, am I right?
That, and the fact that the sooner I get all the crap I just mentioned, the sooner I can continue to “talk” with aliens. That’s some solid motivation right there.
I do have to keep in mind that at some point I’ll have to start preparing to go to Schiaparelli to get off this rock, that’s why I’m rushing ahead with communicating my atmospheric composition, stuff to talk about science, and so on. But I think NASA would welcome me doing some groundwork for future missions to that xenonite ship.
Plus, maybe he’ll give me a hand later on? If they made that ship, they could probably help me out with my rover. Is that too much to ask for given how much trouble they gave me by crashing nearby?