MISSION LOG – SOL 475
Today’s message from Hermes:
“Good morning, Mark. Hope you had a good drive today. It’s not going to be easily apparent from where you are, but you entered the dust storm today. For the next day or two you’ll only see a small reduction in efficiency. We’re hoping it stays that way.
“You’re mostly on the right track. If you see any craters that stretch across the horizon, pass them on the east side. That will keep you out of the worst terrain of Thymiamata.
“Good luck, and stay safe.”
Well, she’s right. Looking outside the day is just as sunny and clear to look at as before. But the wattage coming from the solar cells is down just a hair- about half of one percent down.
We’ve been pushing hard the last couple of sols, trying to squeeze a couple extra kilometers out of each drive. For all we know those couple of kilometers might be the difference between life and death.
Cold food today. The ponies decided to go to an all-alfalfa diet for the time being, since they loathe cold potatoes with a passion surpassed only by my undying hatred for the root vegetable in any form, at any temperature. Sorry, Mom, but I’m going to snub your potato salad next Thanksgiving we have. Besides, your dressing is better anyway.
Compared to the triangle of huge craters at the headwaters of Mawrth Vallis, the cluster of craters in Thymiamata are much smaller. That said, they’re still over ten kilometers wide, a couple as wide as twenty kilometers. With Mars’s too-close horizons, a crater rim wall for any of those really would go from horizon to horizon if we hit dead-on. Fortunately we’re only seeing the rim walls from a long way away… and, yes, we’re passing them all on the east side.
Although the region has a name, none of the local features do. So I’m naming craters as we pass them based on what the crater rims look like from the Whinnybago. So far I’ve got Headstone Crater, Cenotaph Crater, Crypt Crater, Sarcophagus Crater, and Duckie Crater.
Somehow I don’t think the astronomers are going to endorse my suggestions.
Mindy looked up at the sound of stomping feet on the carpeted SatCom floor. Randall Carter was making a beeline for her cubicle. “Are these pictures legit?” he asked, waving a couple of printouts clutched in one hand.
“You’re getting the raw data every time any of the probes cross over Arabia Terra,” Mindy said. “Is there something wrong?”
“Something’s very wrong,” Carter said. “Show me any photos you have from any single satellite observing Arabia Terra, each one day apart. Include today.”
Mindy ran through the mental list she kept of which orbiters had and hadn’t yet crossed Arabia in their orbits during local daytime that sol. “Close up view or wide area?” she asked.
“Not planetwide, but get me all of the storm if you can.”
“Okay.” She knew exactly which orbiter to pick. She called up the image archives, selected each day’s targeted view of Arabia Terra from three days ago until today, and brought them up on her screen. “Here you are.”
“Cycle through them, in chronological order,” Carter said.
“Okay.” Mindy stacked the windows on her screen in the proper order and then clicked through them. First to second; small movement of the storm. Second to third; small movement. Third to fourth…
Whoa.
“Is that supposed to happen?”
“No,” Carter said grimly. “High-level Martian dust storms like this one do not suddenly double their land speed and, at the same time, intensify strongly. Did the ponies do another thruster test or something?”
“They’re not scheduled to,” Mindy said. “But they’re not broadcasting right now, and they couldn’t send us uploads of their logs even if they were broadcasting. So I can’t confirm that.”
Carter growled with frustration, tossing away his printouts. “Print out each of those,” he said. “Then come with me. Time to see Dr. Kapoor.”
“This,” Teddy said, his hands clasped on his desk blotter, “is our nightmare scenario made real.”
“Possibly not,” Venkat said. “Yes, the storm is growing thicker and stronger, and above all larger. But it’s still only about a thousand kilometers across. It’s now moving at eight kilometers per hour. If the storm stops growing and keeps moving, it will pass over the Whinnybago in five more sols. No danger.”
“How confident are you that the storm stops growing and keeps moving?”
“Not in the least,” Venkat said. “You said it yourself. Nightmare scenario. Kobayashi Maru.”
“Do you mind not speaking geek when I’m in the room?” Annie snapped. “The fuck is a kobawhatever maru?”
Teddy and Venkat stopped to stare blankly at the director of media operations. On the couch, Mitch Henderson did likewise, as did Randall Carter and Mindy Park, who had been dragged along behind Venkat to this emergency meeting. “You must have watched Star Trek,” Teddy said.
“Watched it, yeah,” Annie said. “Once. I don’t worship it like some people.”
“Kobayashi Maru is a no-win scenario,” Venkat said. “In the story it’s a simulation rigged so that everything you do, everything you can think of to do, is the wrong thing to do. No matter what, you die.”
“The difference is that this is no simulation,” Teddy continued. “Venkat, is there anything we can do to help?”
“We’re feeding updates and guidance through a daily Hermes radio message,” Venkat said. “That’s all we can do. Mark’s only options are to keep trying to get around the worst part of the storm or to hunker down and hope it passes quickly. Right now his options are limited to backtracking north or going south. Going west takes him into the broken terrain of Margaritifer Terra, and going east requires him to negotiate the badlands of Thymiamata. Both would slow him down greatly, and the western route takes him directly away from Schiaparelli.”
“What I want to know is,” Annie said, “if this is a rigged game, who the fuck is doing the rigging?”
“Mars is,” Mitch said from the couch. “The planet’s not even trying to hide it behind coincidence or natural phenomena or human error. It wants them dead and doesn’t care who knows it anymore.”
“That,” Teddy said quickly, “is something NASA cannot even hint at. Annie, shut down any hints or suppositions that Mars is out to get Watney and his friends.”
“Why? Sounds like the plain fucking truth to me, at this point,” Annie said.
“It doesn’t matter how true it is,” Teddy said. “It’s unscientific. There’s no way to disprove it. And whatever else we are, NASA is a scientific institution. If we can’t test it, we don’t discuss it.”
“Even if we believe it?”
“Especially if we believe it,” Venkat said.
Scientists versus reality. Fight!
Make sure to get your rest while your out doing whatever you do!
Mars must have the Nightcore version of "Awoken" blasting at full volume
This may be the first time I've seen a story where the scientists, in a situation where it's clear that there really are forces beyond their current models of understanding, balance perfectly between adhering firmly to the tenets of the sciences that brought them this far, and keeping an open mind, but not so open that their brains fall out.
That's some solid writing in (THX) 1138 words.
img00.deviantart.net/8815/i/2013/202/6/9/spurdo_sparde_vector_by_kevinino-d6ehtjk.png
F U G G
Hydrate!!
Wait. Kobayashi Maru is from Star Trek?
In NASA related news today (well yesterday now) ISS sprung a leak. Vented some air, they patched it and moved on.
As if we needed any more proof that Mars actively wants everyone dead. Now NASA has to come to grips with the reality of planetary-scale consciousness. Best of luck with that.
“Planetary scale consciousness” wonder if we can get a howdy from Mother Earth.
I'm just wondering if anyone heard my reenactment of Dragonfly's dream a couple of days ago, where I did her voice and Mars' voice.
Also,
I think this should be "do".
9143255
link please?
9143223
Yes.
The Eureka Maru, however, is from the lesser-known series Andromeda. It's the only other x-Maru ship name I know of, anyway.
9143270
I'd love to give you a link, but I'm on my phone and away from home. I know I put it in the comments for the chapter with the dreams in it. I'll get you a link as soon as I can, but I'm really proud of what I was able to create a few days ago.
9143255
"None" is the singular contraction of "not one," and correctly goes with "does" here. Sorry.
9143189
Note to self: Never let starlight hear 'Crawling in my skin'.
And I feel the line of discussion on 'mars is actively malevolent' bears its own, more in-depth conversation behind closed doors.
"There's a saying: First time's coincidence, second time's suspect, third time's enemy action. That 'planet' has produced well above the mark 'enemy action' in terms of the ways natural phenomena have tried to kill our people. Physically unnatural windstorms, Dust storms with laser guided accuracy and homing. Unnatural intensity shifts and timing that seems to take advantage of a vulnerability. Every manner of things that can go wrong. This thing isn't Mars, this is the soul of a malevolent Murphy. Somehow, that entire ball of rock is in some metaphysical sense, 'alive', and it doesn't like us. We need to stop treating this as a mere escape, and start treating it as escape from a hostile force. Because that planet is a very, VERY hostile force."
9143296
This. When your models break, the scientist comes up with an alternate hypothesis. “Mars is out to get them” is falsifiable by comparing the accuracy of your baseline models against the accuracy of models now, and developing a metric for ‘malevolence’. Probably something like average damage (needs another metric) times probablility (based on observed behavior before magic became involved).
Interestingly, Equestrians live on a pretty darn hostile world before they bucked it into obedience. Especially if you treat G1 as ancient history instead of an alt universe. So just because Mars is angry and hostile doesn’t mean equiforming is impossible, just that they need to beat the spirit of the planet in a long running war. And that’s something ponies can do.
9143252
I can just imagine the reaction from the Earth-chan fans.
9143223
Yes, though for a long time it was just an off-screen event from Kirk's past mentioned on occasion to establish his character. He beat the unbeatable simulation by hacking into the computer that ran the simulation.
Lucky for them, Watney doesn't believe in unwinnable scenarios.
9143270
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/450571904462618624/483765620354056203/Sol_450_Dragonflys_dream.mp3
9143274
As far as Wikipedia knows, Maru is a common suffix for japanese ships.
9143281
Incorrect. An oft-repeated misconception, however:
"The underlying fallacy [is the idea] that since none is derived from not one, it always means that. But it doesn't. Sometimes it means no amount and most often it means not any."
-Theodore Bernstein, The Careful Writer (1965)
See also:
http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/questions-and-quandaries/grammar/is-none-singular-or-plural
https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/none-or-none-are
9143270
Got it! Home now. https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/450571904462618624/483765620354056203/Sol_450_Dragonflys_dream.mp3
9143349
Thank you!
The only thing this is really missing is maybe some small sound effects, perhaps ambient music, and of course, a girl voice for Dragonfly instead of me. But other than that, I'm really happy with it.
9143296
It's because the Equestrians brought magic to Mars with them; that's why it's malevolent now, right?
9143226
You forgot to mention the part the leak was initially stifled by one of the
RussianGerman crew member covering the hole with his finger.Edit: Wrong astronaut
If this were any other story I'd be worried this was setting up a heroic self sacrifice by Spitfire.
its a case of they KNOW mars is actively and purposefully trying to kill our heros but they cant actually say it else they sound like loons
9143322
Yeah, Teddy is wrong. Scientific "proofs" are based on statistics. At some point the mounting evidence against "Mars is not targeting Watney" can be so strong this hypothesis won't be tenable anymore. And if NASA diligently publishes their data they're not going to be the only one noticing.
9143332
Nevermind that Dragonfly, once she believes she isn't just crazy, can confirm that animism/all the people who talk to their tools are on to something.
9143362
I assumed Mars was always malevolent, and it's just that now it has the means to act on it.
9143392
So it's basically a case of intellectual cowardice? That's almost as bad on the list of scientific sins.
9143407
Yep. It's not an unrealistic mistake to make, it's happened before with entirely mundane things (the 'discovery' of Sprites for example). But it is a mistake, and a bad one. It's the kind of thing where ignoring it WILL lead to bad decisions that could kill people. We just have to hope that this time they Get Away With It.
I’ll take a brain medium rare please Hehe. Abs yeah mars wants them gone. Still got that portal two song stuck in my head
Damn right, they should!
9143351
Well, the Kobayashi Maru scenario is named after the ship in the scenario.
The scenario goes as thus:
You are Starship [Enterprise] on a routine patrol near the border of the Klingon Neutral Zone. Then, you get a distress call from a freighter called the Kobayashi Maru which is having major problems and has become disabled with life-support failing.
The problem complicates with the fact that said freighter is in the Neutral Zone.
"What do you do?"
You're pretty much given the choice of two bad solutions:
1: Ignore the freighter, it's in the neutral zone.
2: Enter the neutral zone and rescue the crew of the disabled freighter.
To the bleeding hearts, this seems like an academic choice. Damn the neutral zone and rescue the crew. But again, this is the Klingon Neutral Zone. Crossing the border is a violation of treaties and could be perceived as an act of war.
If you choose to make the rescue, the Kobayashi Maru goes silent just before you can arrive, and half a dozen Klingon D7 Class cruisers decloak and attack you immediately. You can't even open a channel to talk, they communicate entirely in the language of photon torpedoes.
To make things worse, your ship is apparently running on Halo's LEGENDARY settings, and crumples in three hits.
The purpose of the KM scenario isn't to beat it, but for the superiors at Starfleet Academy to gauge how new captains will perform in the face of ugly situations and how well they think things through. Essentially, it's a safe environment to test how 'Hard Men Making Hard Decisions' situations affects the cadet.
And the scenario is given to the captain 'cold'. They know it's the No-Win situation, as it is infamous, but they don't know HOW. So they're presented with the choices that they look like this:
1: Ignore the KM when it sends its distress call and maintain the treaty, but feel and seem like a cold as shit captain without a heart for leaving them to die in Klingon space. (Because you don't know it's a trap. Even though ten seconds into the situation you're going to smell the trap from a parsec away because of the infamy of the scenario and how obvious the 'its too quiet' nature of the situation is.)
2: Violate the treaties and risk starting a war over a freighter crew because you think you can get away with sneaking into the neutral zone, rescuing the crew, and getting out again.
Kirk, in his case, proved to Starfleet one particular quality. He doesn't like to lose, and will seek to win by any and all means, even if he has to CHEAT. From an academic and moral angle, this is scary. But at the same time, this places Kirk in a unique light. He's a captain that is going to try and pull a victory out of his ass, no matter what. And if you consider the period of Starfleet from which Kirk hails, this can arguably be one of the best qualities. The Enterprise's five year mission was pretty much: "You're out there on your own. Come back safe." A captain who can pull 'come back safe, no matter what' with ship and crew would be a valuable asset.
What makes this further unique to Kirk with the Kobayashi Maru scenario is that Kirk was the first person to have the balls, and the outside-the-box thinking to get in and reprogram the simulation so that he could win. I'm assuming that the nature of his reprogram was along the lines of anyone who's ever played a video game. "Godmode Shields, and BFG9000 Photon Torpedoes." seem like easy enough values to tweak and keep very well hidden until he's finished running the sim.
9143427
Bravo, excellent summation!
So Mars really is actively trying to kill them now. Well that's not good. Gonna take a small (major) miracle to survive this.
I always hoped the cave farm would survive, but now I'm hoping the Cave Farm survives so that it can be there to spite Mars.
Considering all the things Mars is trying to do now... should we expect Olympus Mons to erupt as well? If it's got magic to draw from I wouldn't be surprised at this point.
9143407
Seems to me more like shorthand for "We can not prove it to a sufficient degree in a usable timeframe, also, mitigation of worst case scenario is already our go-to option, so this doesn't change much." Or something like that.
9143380
Then by duct tape. I was listening when they called for the duct tape kit.
So, Mars is sapient. Great.
Wonder what Phobos and Deimos think of Mark and Co.?
9143178
Aristotle versus mashy spike plate?
9143525
SPINNY BLADE WALL!
Machiavellian
9143427 "Jim, their shields are still up!"
"...Are they?"
9143384 I wish you didn't have a point here
They're going to end up having to set off the sparkle Drive while still planet-bound aren't they? By the time they get to Schiaparelli, Mars will be volcanically active again.
Would hinting Mars that if it continue in that way it will be disassembled for raw material instead of just terraformed help?
9143529
That would require Spitfire to be a hero.
9143527
9143525
While you two deal with that, i'll look for a stalemate resolution button.
9143597
Would be needed for future megastructure project like a Dyson Swarm. So yeah, planet crackers would break and mine Mars to the core. More like from the core.
Oh boy. The genius loci is awake and angry. If you thought Mogo didn't socialize...
9143414
I don't think they're ignoring it. I think they're just making sure NASA's official position isn't "Mars is angry and throwing dust storms at the crew." They all know that that's the case, but they'll seem like an economy-sized box of nutbars if they say it out loud.
9143597
If by disassembled you mean used as an operational test for this Battlestation's destructive potential...
Maybe.
9143380
The German astronaut actually. I was quite surprised about that. I fully expected it to be the Russian while telling someone to get the duct tape.
9143786 They left the Hab on Sol 449 and left the cave on Sol 451. But they have to travel a vast distance across Mars to get to the Ares IV MAV, which will launch to rendezvous with Hermes on Sol 551.
If all goes well.
9143686
I suppose, they at least admitted it to each other. I still call it intellectual cowardice though. It's a controversial statement, but they have solid evidence and they have people who can analyze the data to quantify it. Just title the paper something like "The Malevolence Hypothesis: Evidence of Intelligent Hostile Action in Martian Weather Patterns".
It's not that hard to design a study. The null hypothesis is "These weather patterns are natural and are not targeting the astronauts specifically". You falsify this by running your climate models and comparing observed behavior to past data, for location intensity and behavior or Martian storms. Then you work to build a model where the observed storms happen, noting how far you have to push the parameters and where as a demonstration of how aberrant these storms are and they require unusual to impossible conditions to occur. And yeah all this is easy to say, much harder to actually do. But it is very much doable.
I really hope Gaia/Earth-Chan is more pleasant than Mars once she gets her hands on some juice. Though come to that, Earth already has a magic field from being covered in life. Unless something about Equestrians processes raw life force into a usable form, Earth is already intervening as much as it wants to.
I still think that the reason Mystics go to the desert in this universe is so things are quiet enough to sense things.