Meet the Martians
Dave, mission nerd and ferry captain, scowling at the camera from time to time and typing rather than talking:
I cannot adequately express how much I hate doing these "confessionals". Contractual obligations be damned. As soon as I dump the cargo you can all go to hell and I won't be renewing any contracts so you can all stay in hell. I'll be home in 715 days and I'll be disappearing one day after that.
Anyhow, we're in high orbit around Mars and have captured Orbiter One. We've re-established communications with the Tier Two cluster, although only pod one is up apparently and the main communications array is down so we're on low-bandwidth backup. Text only, no video. The storm must have really knocked them around down there. Hard to say how pod one survived and the others didn't. We'll know more when we get some boots on the ground and get the main communications array back online so we have the bandwidth to transfer the logs. In any event, pod one reports green for everything it knows about and a skitter reconnaissance and a ping of the other pods indicates they're just powered down but otherwise serviceable looking from the outside, they just likely need a little TLC. The cargo is a little concerned that if the pantry pod is damaged their little tummies might get growly in the next 26 months or so. Once they're on the ground they can let me know and I can Hail Mary them some more groceries. Or computer stuff. It looks like pods 2, 3 and 4 all went down hard during the storm so they may need some parts from our friends in Palo Alto. Luckily in my infinite wisdom I packed up a bunch of that stuff for this trip, just in case. Mars will capture Orbiter Two in 13 months so we'll have next mission's supplies too if it comes to it, but the second crew will get pissy about that if we eat too much into their stuff I'm sure.
Work proceeds getting the lander ready and transferring supplies from the orbiter. The cargo should be ready for deboost in a few days and I'm looking forward to some quality alone time. It's getting harder to work with the Martians. Whenever I think the morale in Mars G has hit rock bottom it turns out I was wrong and it sinks even lower, which is why I spend most of my time here in One G where the Martians can't bug me. Dr. Bonnie is in complete denial about the whole situation. She's still got a girl boner for Jim and is quite radiant in his presence, but you can tell he's moved on. He's just an alpha male and that's all he's ever aspired to being, so he gets his kicks taking insane risks and being annoying. Getting tangled up with a woman is just not one of the cards he's been dealt and Bonnie should figure that out. Not my problem. Also not my problem, that nitwit Art. I understand that the Worldwide Church of White Supremists had a great deal of money with which to buy him a ticket, but really. Isn't there some kind of basic competency test you have to pass before travelling to another world? And what genius decided to put him in charge of the experiments? He can't help but fuck them all up, likely on purpose. God knows he's smart enough to do that, in a blinded-by-the-light kind of way. I don't get a good feeling about the chances of success for this mission but as I have never really figured out what the mission is, other than ratings, I guess I could be off-base. My own personal mission involves beaches and women with low standards and drinking, and I plan to boldly go and do that as soon as I get home and get my backpay for 52 months. There's buggerall for me to accomplish here for sure. Our orbit is all wrong for my purposes - looking for alien artifacts. No rats or floating spoons on this trajectory. Too high up anyway. Of the various head options, we get a decent view of the Chryse Alien, since we pass directly over Chryse Planitia, but that's about it. I've pointed it out to the others but they don't seem to care. I think it looks like a fake. If it turns out it was actually done by aliens, I say it's still a fake, just an alien fake. No other evidence of little green guys or little green technology from up here, as far as I can tell. Maybe that nutjob Art will actually look for alien stuff while he's down there like he's supposed to. Of course, if he finds any he'll just suppress it or explain it away somehow. Just my two bits.
So this is Dave Charon, reporting all is well enough and proceeding on schedule in spite of the massive storm, and that you can all kiss my ass and when the show goes on location at the landing site and my obligatory warm fuzzy contributions to it come to an end you won't be hearing much from me. Someone whom I have never met and yet for whom I still have an immense dislike will get this in 12.84 minutes or so and I'll get their response in 25.68 minutes but sadly my set will have been turned off for 25 minutes and 40 seconds at that point. So screw you guys, I'm going home. Eventually.
Bonnie, a lovely blonde smiling charmingly at the camera, also the mission doctor:
"I can't believe we're actually here! It's been a busy few months getting ready for our new lives and a lot has happened. I mean a lot has happened. I haven't told Jim yet. He's been a little withdrawn lately but I'm sure when I tell him we're going to start the first family on a different planet he'll come out of his shell. He sure is busy right at the moment, so I'll hold off talking to him until we're all set up down there and things are hopefully a bit quieter. Getting the supplies off the orbiter is an entirely manual process of course and I think it's insanely dangerous, although Jim is being awfully brave about it and I have to admit that stupid twit Art has lots of good ideas that are making loads of sense and saving tons of time, but they're all intertwined with lots of insane opinions about far-ranging subjects, none of them relevant. Dave remains a reclusive mystery and hangs out mostly in his One G arm. He comes down to Mars G world from time to time to help out and even supervises the offloading of the orbiter but I think mostly he's just putting in time until he can go home. Unfortunately for him it will be 15 months or so before he can even start back. I know he was chosen partly for his ability to handle long periods alone but still I worry. I put on my mission doctor hat the other day and tried to go visit him, but after all this time in Mars G I really can't go all the way into his arm, especially when I have a passenger on board who has only ever known 1/3 gravity.
I'm also really quite concerned about Art. He started the mission so far to the right I thought he would teeter off the edge but now that we're actually close to a whole new world I believe he is afraid some of his long held notions will come into conflict with the facts and he has retreated into a fantasy world of ultra-religion to a large degree. I think he will need some deep counselling in the next few months to keep him stable. Maybe in a couple of years when we get more people he'll become more socially acceptable. Or not. In the meantime, we really ought to get him talking to somebody back home who is only moderately religious and they can talk him down a notch. Not that there are going to be any moderates in his church. But we've got to get someone he'll talk to - or rather listen to - he'll talk to anyone, living or dead, but never listens so far as I can tell. It's almost like he doesn't even consider other people to be people. I don't have the words, or quite frankly, the patience, to talk to him in any capacity, friendly or medical. We'll see how this works out I guess.
I'm going to have a baby! I guess we won't find out if the wheels fall off my menstrual cycle with two moons for a bit. Having a baby may not be the wisest thing to do on a mission like this, but on a long flight with lots of work but always the same work, it can get kind of boring and then accidents do happen, as they say. Especially when Jim came up with that bottle of wine. How did he manage to get that past all the people who screen for that sort of thing? He wouldn't say. Maybe it was an egg. Either way it's amazing how a little thing like coming up with a bottle of wine can have such a huge impact on the future of two people. No matter, it's done. I want to call her Marsha. Or him Marvin. But I guess Jim gets a say. Or maybe the viewers will have a poll. Anyway I can't wait to get to the landing site and get the medical pod online so I can make sure everything's ok, but in my professional opinion, everything is fine at the moment. I guess I have a half a year or so to train Jim and maybe also that godly git Art how to catch a baby.
Speaking of the medical pod, it is as far as we can tell undamaged by the storm. Dave got pod one to send its skitter out for a recon of all the pods and it reported back that all appears well from the outside, just the solar cells have covered up with dust and the other three pods have crashed or something and need to be rebooted. Apparently Dave tried to get pod one to remotely reboot them but there's some kind of people TLC needed so it will wait until we're down. Too bad the Tier Two cluster is on backup communications so there's no bandwidth for video - it would sure be nice to see that everything looks fundamentally ok down there and not have to take the word of a computer, though if you can't trust a computer who can you trust? Dave says he can send us down up to 30 kilos of supplies in the Hail Mary drop vehicle, so if we need computer stuff or whatever we can give him a list and he'll send it down. So we should get everything back online in short order.
Well, until we get to the landing site, I guess this is Bonnie Jean McCoy signing off for now. Love you all!"
Art, mission scientist and far-right extremist:
"Hey everybody - I Art in space! hawhawhaw that never gets old! Here we are circling around another of God's creations up in the night sky. I feel like it has been my destiny to come here, and looking back at my life I can see all of the little twists and turns God has used to shepherd me into being here. Though why we're here exactly is still a mystery to me. I mean, I know why I'm here, and that is to make sure that all of the research is done and reported with the proper perspective. But as to why we're collectively here in the first place looking for alien life and other blasphemies is really beyond me. We're about to land on a barren rock, devoid of life, devoid of anything, really, because it's not in the bible. You don't have to fly millions of kilometres to say, yes, that's a rock, and it's just a rock, and it's 6,000 years old just like every other rock and it's not life, it's just a rock. We could have stayed home and done that. But since they were going to send someone I can see why the church would want to make sure it was someone unbiased and not a secular science guy jerkoff.
So the big job for mission 1 is to find evidence for life, past or present. Won't happen. So onto job 2. Find the stuff required for current life. Might happen. Mostly we'll need water. The Book is not clear on whether there can be water anywhere but Earth - it depends exactly how far the face of the deep extended, and what exactly the waters above the vault of the sky were. Whether we do or do not find water is likely to cause a stir somewhere, but I'll let smarter people than me fit whichever one into the list of known things. Our particular site, Chryse Planitia, was picked for its boringness and also it has been explored to some extent already. It's said to be the remains of a giant lake or sea that has dried up. It would be super cool if we could find evidence of the water going back home and figuring into the flood. I wonder how we could prove such a thing. The people who briefed me prior to departure were all about how the planitia was formed millions or maybe billions of years ago by an impact crater and then sculpted out over millions of years by flowing water. Horseshit! There are studies of Mount St. Helens that confirm that the layers of rock everyone assumes take millions of years to lay down can be laid down in 8 days. Of course on Earth all manner of rock strata were laid down in 40 days during the flood. This can actually be proven by of all things Carbon 14 Dating as long as you apply the correct interpretation to the results - something about the ratios of Carbon 12 and 14, something, it all makes sense when you read it.
Now onto my favourite bit. Viewer mail. Or email I guess. Anyhow, here's one from Angela A.: 'Art, if anyone is going to Heaven it is surely you. But how can we be sure that people who pass on so far from Earth still go to Heaven? It has never come up before, but since this is a one-way trip you're on it's going to come up sometime. Concerned.
Well, Concerned, you can rest assured that firstly I don't plan to pass on while away from Earth. I think if you look at all of the signs, one of which is me maxing out my credit cards,Wink, the Creation is winding up in accordance with God's will and all of the faithful will shortly be joining that heavenly chorus in the sky. In any event the whole of creation that isn't the Earth is the Heavens, so I'm already here. Hawhawhaw!
And here's another one from Stewart G.: 'Mr. Grayson, what would you consider to be life on Mars if you found it, and if that life were sufficiently evolved, what would you consider sentient?'
OK, they really should screen these things better than that. Stewart, you ignorant retard, excuse my Babylonian, where do I start? For one thing, God in his infinite wisdom chose exactly one place to create life, and that was in a garden somewhere in white Europe 6,000 years ago. End of story. If by some miracle, and we really are literally talking miracles here, there was life to be found on Mars or anywhere else then it would have to satisfy the basic requirements of said life: Point#1 - it would have to metabolize complicated food into simple shit; Point 2 - it would have to grow, and not just in the sense of a hard-on see point #3; Point #3 - it would have to reproduce, with or without fucking, and Point #4 - it would have to adapt to its environment which is not the same as evolution which is a load of crap. We're talking about an organism that can stay under a rock on a hot day, not grow another asshole. So your question about an evolved sentient being is a stupid question asked by a stupid dipshit and if you want the real answer, Sentience is believing in God. That's why monkeys are alive but not sentient. As for people who don't believe in God, you'd really have to ask them if they are sentient or not but I wouldn't trust their answer since they're not fucking sentient. And that's probably you in a nutshell, Stewart. Fuckhead. Probably a retard Calvinist. Hey Stewart - do you believe you're predestined to be saved and so therefore you don't have to do fuck-all about it but enjoy the ride? Then how do explain four-fold preachers such as yours truly? Asshole.
Anyhow, as science guy my job here is to prove that there is no life, never has been, the rocks and therefore the planet are 6,000 years old and that there maybe was water here but it all disappeared coincidentally about the time a great deal of water showed up on Earth. Case closed. So until we meet again, kiddies, this is your Uncle Art who Art in Space! hawhawhaw and I'll see you all after we land and get a confessional going down there. Remember to use the brain God gave ya to do God's work - Art Grayson out!"
Jim, mission captain, alpha male, all around great guy:
"Phase 1 complete - we're connected up to the Ballistic Capture Orbiter and in the process of fueling everything up and reprovisioning prior to deboost. Hard to say what to pack with limited communications to the ground after the storm and so little Intel on what we'll find. From high-level reconnaissance and a scouting mission by the remaining skitter it would appear all is well, everything's just in hibernation and awaiting someone with fingers to get it all back online. Pod one reports that it can 'see' the other pods, which means they are available to cluster and therefore essentially undamaged, they just need a reboot. The communications pod itself is apparently undamaged and functional so at least we'll have a common area and a confessional once we get main communications back up, which are strangely offline in an otherwise undamaged pod. The confessional is a higher priority than one might think. Gotta pay the bills. The medical, science, and most importantly, kitchen pods all appear good to go from the external recon and ping from pod one, as I said. Even if the kitchen pod has been breached all of its supplies will be largely intact and we can retrofit pod 1 to take over for any of the other pods in a pinch. Of course, we'll be landing in pod 5 which is the sleeping pod and in a very worst-case scenario we could camp out in that for 26 months although we'll all hate each other even more.
Speaking of, Bonnie has been acting even stranger than normal lately. Kind of clingy and emotional. A little out of character. I hope it's not related to that unfortunate incident over the Easter Egg. Which of course turned out to be a bottle of wine. Man, that really went to our heads for some reason. And then coincidentally you sent Awful Art off on a fool's errand to the bowels of the ferry. It almost seems like it was a setup. Well, what is done is done, but once everything settles a bit dirtside I'm going to make sure the good Doctor isn't under any illusions about what comes next, which is nothing. Mission 1 is all about getting ready for mission 2, so romantic entanglements are out of the question. Maybe you can give Art an egg if he ever does something worthwhile and then those two could hook up. Wouldn't that make compelling drama.
Art continues to be Bozo the Clown without the makeup. How can someone so very very smart be so very very stupid? Whenever he starts seriously talking out of his ass whoever else is in the room suddenly has work to do elsewhere but I believe he keeps on talking out of his ass even when no one is in the room with him. If you'd give us access to the camera footage or even comment on that I'd be forever in your debt. But I know that what happens in confessional stays in confessional, and this whole trip is essentially one big confessional I guess.
Dave isn't really part of the team and he's quite good at that. His fate is to more or less ride off into the sunset on this mission so it makes sense he doesn't want to bond. I won't miss him overly much but I will miss his idiot savant style of figuring things out. I suppose we can still get him on the phone if we need him. Especially if we need one more shopping trip in the next year or so before the next drop. The next ballistic capture will happen a couple of months before Dave leaves in 15 months, and he will have his hands full then manhandling the new orbiter module into the existing orbiter. What are they going to do with this giant orbiter city they're going to grow with every launch? Must be for something. Anyway, when the new orbiter arrives Dave will have something less than a week according to schedule to get the droppables ready from the new orbiter and send them on down to us. Four more pods I believe and enough consumables to handle us and the next group of people which should make us a sizeable community, relatively speaking. More women in any event. That'll be welcome I must say. We'll get everything all set up, move the pods around into more of a community, link them up with inflatable tunnels and generally get everything ship-shape for mission two, which should be arriving on the next Hohmann window in 2 years and 2 months' time, with, as I say, more women.
Of course, to get dirtside there's a little thing called re-entry. Or should it just be entry? We've never been here before so it really can't be re-entry. No matter. It is the single most scary and dangerous facet of this whole enterprise. I can't wait. I've been told - as a private contractor in a private enterprise I can't technically be ordered to do anything - that I should set down a minimum of 500 metres from the nearest pod on the smoothest flattest patch of ground I can find, and then we'll drag the pod near its mates as part of the community planning effort later. Screw that. No guts, no glory. I'm going to set 'er down EXACTLY one tunnel's length away from pod 1 which will save us a week at least. Don't touch that dial kids!
Until the next installment, this is Jim Church saying 'bye bye' from the land of the brave."