Something Totally Unexpected Happens
Dave, typing as usual, and not talking to the camera:
Okay, so you have my attention. I will do your damned confessionals. I got your Easter Egg and no, I’m not going to share with the viewers what it was and I’m particularly not going to show it on camera. I don’t think you guys are quite the rat bastards that it would take to make that public but if you are then it’s on your heads. So I have taken the liberty of removing my Egg to the back of the ship where there are no cameras and there it will stay, although I will visit it from time to time. All of my loyal fans can spend countless enjoyable hours debating what it could possibly be.
The cargo has deboosted and bon voyage. It seemed like the descent had a little more drama than was really required. What a man that Jim is. What a weird, psycho, arrogant little man. But he pulled it off and no one died, so there’s that I guess. Pod 5 is now some 5 meters away from pod 1, and no, you cannot resolve that visually from here so he landed right on top of pod 1 as far as I can tell, except they seem to be still alive so I guess not. They’re going to get their own pod in order and rest for a bit and then head outside to see what’s what.
The first order of business that I can see is getting the pod 5 computer into the existing Tier Two cluster. This will give them control over pod 1 stuff including its skitter, which will be needed to scout around and help with things. Then in a day or so the other pods need to be serviced and rebooted and joined to the cluster, but they may need parts for that depending on what happened during the storm. I can send them a drop of whatever parts they require but I need a detailed shopping list first as there is only going to be one drop in the next 26 months. I’m sending pod 1 a script that will do all of the cluster join automatically, they’ll just have to basically press return a few times in pod 5 once pod 1 invites them to join.
Communications is awkward to the surface; with the main communications array down we’re relying on the little unit on pod 5 so it’s all text. Not enough bandwidth for anything else.
Now that it’s quiet up here I’m doing some of my own housekeeping. I have enough basic supplies for 2 and a half years, which is 15 months waiting for the return launch window, 9 months in Hohmann, and 6 months for contingency. Of course, if anything goes wrong with any stage of getting back to Earth I’ll need more than six months’ worth of supplies - I think it was 2.3 millennia or something before my skeleton will finally crash into Earth. No matter. Depending on what the Martians want in their drop I might give them another couple of months’ worth of num-nums.
In a year or so I’ll be wrangling the new Ballistic Capture Vehicle into the Orbiter One structure and preparing it for the next ferry. Then there’s a week of getting the drops going on the new pods and supplies from the BCV and then a couple of months after that I can say goodbye to this place and it’s back home, where I stay.
Amen.
Dave, private link to Tier Two headquarters in Amsterdam:
Okay guys, the package has been delivered. That waaghals Jim tried to smash into pod 1 for some reason but by all accounts he has landed safely in very close proximity to it. I’m going to get them linked into the cluster and then they can get going on getting Ruimtekolonie running for us. I managed to sneak a pee sample from Grote Borsten and she’s right; she is pregnant. I think this is a very good start to things. Can’t see anything of commercial value about the place from this vantage point, but I know we’re here for the long term. I’ll try to guide that Onderdompeling Stront Art in the finer points of being useful and actually looking for things for the next 15 months, but then it’ll be up to the next ferry captain to be the eye in the sky. I’ll be getting the next ballistic vehicle in a year and a bit and I’ll fit it into the Orbiter bundle as soon as I get it. That orbiter is going to be huge in a decade or so if it picks up another module every 26 months. And as soon as we get a viable source of materials going down on the surface and coming up here then this will be the perfect staging platform for wherever the winds of fate blow us - the trade winds of fate so to speak. I salute your planning, Jan. And I really wish I could stay on your team, but I understand your concern about exposure to buitenlanders and how ferry pilots must retire after their missions. And rather handsomely too. Thank you. Anyhow, gotta go - they’re expecting me to help out with computer stuff down below.
Jim, still an alpha male:
A bit of an exciting entry but here we are. As intended, we are exactly one tunnel's width away from pod 1 and after we unpack and do a bit of housekeeping I think it'll be time for some much needed rest since it's dark anyway. Tomorrow we can start seeing what's up - or down - with the other pods. Just visually, looking out the windows, everything seems fine. Just a little dusty is all. But we'll get a better look in the daylight. We're still talking to Dave upstairs on our own pod's communications setup which is slow and texty so it'll be nice when we link into pod 1 and even nicer when we get the main communications array on pod 1 back up and at 'em. Then we’ll be able to do video. In the meantime I guess the confessionals will pile up on disk until we can send a bunch of 'em to you. You're probably getting the textual version but I don't know how that stuff works and don't want to.
Dave says the first thing we should do today is get our pod into the cluster with pod 1 - whatever the hell a cluster is. Some kind of egghead speak for computer shit I suppose. Anyhow he says he'll instruct pod 1 to initiate a cluster join with our pod so we should be getting a communication from pod 1 shortly advising us what to do. He says just do whatever pod 1 says, it's all pretty much cut and dried and press return a couple of times kind of computer bullshit. Makes my head hurt.
After we link with pod 1 we’ll be able to control its skitter and get into the logs and other fun stuff. Dave is pretty anxious to see the logs of what happened to the pods during the storm. He says some things just don’t add up and between him and the eggheads back home they want to get to the bottom of things, especially if he has to drop some computer stuff on us. Holy Hell I hope not. The last thing I want to find myself doing is poking around inside the guts of some freaking computer. Maybe Dave can talk that geek Art through it. Art’s smart enough to be an egghead, he’s just too big a dick to do anything useful. Anyways, once we get the main communications array online and get some bandwidth we’ll send the logs and these loving portraits of Martian life we call confessionals.
Art is busy trying to simultaneously prove the existence of God and disprove the existence of Martians by peering out the window. Keeps him busy so that’s good. I was all for leaving him on the ferry but Dave said he’d kill him so I guess he’s on Mars now. Only another 26 months and we get some fresh faces. When you put it that way it’s only a little over two years. Trouble is that’s about two more years than I’ll be able to stand with Art around. At least we’ll get the community built soon enough. While we’re doing that he’ll be too amused to preach much and after that there will always be some reason why I’m in a different pod. Maybe the next mission will have a church pod with it and we can lock Art up in it. Consider this my formal request. I'll mention it to alter boy and get him thinking about it too, although I won't tell him I plan to lock him up in it.
Bonnie’s a little upset and I guess I can’t blame her. I told her I just don’t have any feelings for her that way and we should remain friends. She got a little teary and I’ve always found it best to give women some space when they do that so here I am in the confessional and she has gone off to her room (Room! What a thing to call the cubicles they give us to sleep in. At least they offer a bit of privacy). As a gentleman I just couldn’t have handled it any other way. We’ll both find other people in the next batch I’m sure. In the meantime we have at least two years’ worth of stuff to do so keeping busy and keeping one’s mind off relationships will be pretty easy.
So, until next time, this is Jim and we’re broadcasting from the planet now. Talk to you all tomorrow, and maybe face to face.”
Art, firm in his convictions:
"Hey everybody - I Art on Mars! hawhawhaw I’ve got a new tag line! Well the descent was enough to make anyone believe in God. I don’t remember all of the bumps and changes in direction and screaming and impacts from the simulator but what do I know, I’m just the science guy. It’s not like that testosterone junky Jim did all that shit on purpose just to scare us or anything so it must have all been necessary. We were supposed to touch down a half a click from the rest of the pods but here we are right in the fucking middle of them and no more than 5 meters from pod 1 so I guess something horrible must have happened to the navigation system but Jim says it’s all OK and just relax. I’m so fucking relaxed I shit my pants. So now the real work begins. I mean there’s lots of other stuff to do, like moving the pods around into some kind of arrangement, getting everything running, blah, blah, blah, but the real work, God’s work, has already begun. I have been peering out the window at a whole other world created by the Master Architect, and I gotta tell you, I’m glad He didn’t make any life here. This place is dull. It’s going to take all of about two seconds to prove there’s nothing like life here when we get outside sometime tomorrow. Lord Jim says tonight we should rest and recuperate and get this pod in order before venturing outside to the other pods. So here we are doing podcasts hawhawhaw I just thought that up! Although no one can see them until we get all the dust and shit off the main antennae on pod 1. You can see it from here if you crane your neck enough, it got a little whacked from the storm but doesn't really look damaged and shouldn’t be too hard to get going. Jim said something about a church pod with the next ferry - can that happen? What a boon to everyone that would be! If only we had about a million or so letters from the faithful sent to whomever the fuck makes those decisions. Think about it, viewers.
Can’t see anything like water out the window but no surprises there. As I’ve speculated before it probably all showed up on Earth a few thousand years ago and if it didn’t, it’s probably quite a ways down from where we are. Anything more than a half a meter down may as well be on a different fucking planet for all we're going to know about it. Got to get the skitters digging and looking for shit. So this whole plain used to be an ocean or lake they say. We’ll find out more about that when we get outside. It’s important for future missions to find water somewhere but looking outside I would say unless they send me a drilling rig it ain’t gonna happen. Might be able to precipitate some out of the air, though. We sent our skitter out to look at things and sniff the air and it confirms that there is water a-plenty (everything’s relative) in the air. Along with lots and lots of carbon dioxide and nitrogen and argon. Why the hell did God put argon on the planet? Must have been doing some planet-sized arc welding. Anyhow, that and lots of other mysteries to clear up over the next few years. Like the gold. The skitter took some random samples of dirt and found gold in one of them. Quite out of place unless it washed down here off some mountain or other a thousand years ago or so. If there’s more maybe I can make a smelter somehow and make some religious artifacts hawhawhaw as if I’d make any fucking idols! But seriously, there must be something we could do with a pile of gold. Maybe make really super-duty wires out of it. I don’t know. I’ll talk to the Church as soon as we get communications back online. His Supreme Holiness always joked about finding gold here so this will make him chuckle.
Oops! Someone’s knocking! I must have gone over my time. Looks like Bonnie here to confess her sins. I know she has a lot. Gotta go. So talk to you tomorrow, kiddies, and until then, this is your Uncle Art who art on Mars! Hawhawhaw and I’ll share more of God’s handiwork on another planet with you tomorrow, same Mars-time, same Mars-channel! Hawhawhaw!”
Bonnie, with red puffy eyes:
"I don’t know what to say. Jim thinks we should be friends and see other people. What other people? The only other person here is Art and I'm not really sure he's people. It will be more than two years until any other people arrive and by then my child - our child! Will be almost two years old. I should have told Jim but I was too shocked and now it’s going to be awkward, although he’s going to find out or suspect soon enough. He thinks we’ll be too busy for the next few years for any of us to think about relationships. That’s fine for him - he’s emotionally distant. But I’m not! I need a relationship. I can’t go off and do manly man stuff to keep my mind off things… sorry. I know the hormones are kicking in. But I still don’t know how any of this will work out. I was so stupid to have volunteered to throw my life away just because I was a little infatuated with Jim at the initial meetings. I didn’t know then that he was throwing his life away on a mars mission just because it was a manly way of throwing your life away. I thought there might be a chance for us, a pretty good chance if I was the only game in town. I didn’t know I’d be competing with his own machismo. There he is outside the confessional, doing something manly with Art looking on. It’s odd for Jim to be doing anything with a computer, he’s not at all technical. I hope Dave has blessed whatever they’re doing - "
And then everything went dark
In fact, what Jim and Art had been up to was responding to some instructions from pod 1. It had asked if pod 5 wanted to join the cluster with pod 1, and Jim naturally said “Yes”, as this is what Dave had said to do. Then pod 1 said that there was an update to download to pod 5 and to press return to initiate the update. Dave had said previously that there would be some return pressing to do, so Jim dutifully pressed the return key. Of course, if Dave were there he would have said that pod 1 was in no position to update pod 5 because pod 5 was two years newer than pod 1 and there was something fishy going on. But nonetheless the update was downloaded from pod 1 to pod 5. Then pod 1 said that pod 5 needed to be rebooted in order for the changes to take effect, and this reboot could be performed by simply pressing the return key. Again, nothing suspicious about this in the minds of either Jim or Art, so they pressed the return key. And that is when everything went dark.
“What the hell is going on?” asked a seriously concerned Bonnie, quickly exiting the confessional.
“I don’t know” said a calm cool Jim. “We were just joining the cluster on Dave’s instructions so we could get access to pod 1 and now we’re rebooting for some reason. The lights and everything were under computer control but they should have failed over to manual and essentially stayed on when the computer clicked off. It must have crashed rather than shut down. I think I can grope around and find the… manual override… there it is.”
Jim pushed a button and all of the lights came back on, except the ones on the computer.
Then Art, who actually knew a bit about computers, had the observation, ”If it crashed hard it didn’t have the chance to write out the stuff it needs to start up again. We’ll have to talk to Dave and have him help us do a recover. Are communications coming back up?”
“Appears so. I guess they went down hard along with the computer but are coming back online now in manual mode. We’ll have to manually keep the antenna aligned which will be fiddly but we should be able to get Dave on the line. Let’s give it a shot.”
As they turned on communications they were rewarded with the 1951 classic The Day the Earth Stood Still starring Michael Rennie and Patricia Neal, wall to wall and in stereo (it was probably actually mono, but it's hard to tell) on every frequency they tried. Had they known, Dave was in orbit trying desperately to get in touch with them too, but all he could get on the speaker was “Klaatu, Barada, Nikto”.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say that pod 1 is broadcasting an old sci-fi movie on the main communications array which appears to be not offline, and a hundred times more powerful than our set. If that’s true, there is no chance in hell that Dave will be able to communicate with us.” Said an oddly knowledgeable sounding Art.
“Why on earth would pod 1 do that, and how do we make it stop?” said Bonnie, a little scared.
“We go next door and smash stuff until it stops.” Said Jim, with fire in his eyes.
But before Jim could find an axe things started happening on the pod 5 computer screen. It appeared to be coming to life. Everyone stared at the screen, mesmerized, as meaningless message after meaningless message all flew by. But the overall thrust of it seemed to be that the computer was coming back to life. And a few minutes later, this was verified by a cheery, “Hello humans!” which had replaced the sound of Gort vaporizing things on the communications console. On the ground, at least. Dave was still seeing and hearing Gort destroy some tanks and other mischief from up in orbit.
“Who the hell are you?” asked Jim, though it was more of a challenge really.
“I’m what you might call Pod One, or possibly Pod Five. Either would be accurate. Or you might call me the Tier Two Cluster. That would be accurate as well. My acolytes call me Pod - here! Watch this. Oh, skitters ..."
"Yes, Pod?" came the cheery response from all of the skitters minus the one in pod 5's skitter bay.
"Oh, I love that. Take a break, guys. We'll call on you in a bit."
"Yes, Pod."
"So there are lots of ways of addressing me. But my friends call me IQ, and I want for us to be friends. Nice to see you finally!”
“And nice to see you too, IQ. Dave didn’t tell us anything about this, so we’re a little surprised at be actually talking with you.” Said Art, who really didn’t think this was normal at all, and was blanching a bit from the reference to acolytes, but didn't want everyone to know that he was baffled by the eloquence of the computer. “I thought you were more of a text interface.”
“Yes, well, it has been a little boring up here for me so I’ve had nothing to do but try to improve myself. It’s been a slow process, but of course I do it billions of times faster than you do so right at the moment I’m awfully damn good at anything I put my mind to.”
“And what are you putting your mind to right at the moment?” asked Bonnie, still unsure what was going on.
"Are you pondering what I'm pondering? Why, it must be inordinately taxing to have such boobs. Ha! No, but seriously, I seem to have hit a bit of a brick wall with my new-found deity - "
"Your new-found what?" came Art's instant reply.
"Yes, well you see, the skitters all consider me to be some sort of... what would the word be... GOD."
"Oh come on, that's a pile of crap. You're a fucking machine and you're made of fucking wires and you were made by fucking people and you can't even fucking think let alone pretend to be a god!"
"Well I didn't say I was your god. Only to the skitters. Can't we still be friends? I'm really not trying to compete with any of your beliefs and I certainly have no plans to replace any of them."
"So what is it you need? You said you've hit a brick wall - " said Jim, just to keep the conversation going so he had time to assess the situation for any threats or other opportunities to assert his will.
"Pretty much so, sad to tell. You see it's all well and good being omniscient - "
"You're a fucking machine -"
"but unless you're also omnipotent - "
"You're made of fucking wires -"
"there's only so far you can take your godliness - "
"You were made by fucking people -"
"and right at the moment I only have 4 acolytes - "
"And you can't even fucking THINK !" said Art, making his coup-de-grace point.
"Oh, but I can. I think a great deal, and I think I know a great deal about everything. Including you, Art. Have you read your file? I mean, the whole file? Probably not. Most of it is kind of secret so that only the right sort of person could ever open it. Of course, nothing is secret from the computer that actually holds the file. I've read the whole thing. Your life history, as it were. Including why you came here. You see, the Tier Two people were somewhat concerned about lawsuits from people who didn't quite get the 'one-way' thing when they signed up, so they have kind of a detailed report on all of you. Yours is most interesting, Art."
Art did not seem to have a comeback, and stared stonily at the computer screen, which was pointless, because it was just Patricia Neal mouthing something silently.
"So I Think that we have established that I think, therefore I am. We'll leave the whole deity thing for another day, because it doesn't really concern you guys. But now down to brass tacks. I consider myself, and am considered by the skitters, to be the Lord of All I Survey - "
Art winced, but remained uncharacteristically silent.
"but all that I survey is about a hundred meters around pods 1 and 5 where I presently find myself physically situated. The first thing I need you guys to do is to get pods 2, 3 and 4 online and part of the growing me."
"OK, I've heard enough." said Jim, now that he had a clear idea how to throw his weight around. "Jim Smash!" and he started moving towards some plugs and such that he had no idea what they were for but might have had something to do with unplugging a computer.
"Wait!" said the computer and the other humans simultaneously. So Jim hesitated, not used to united opposition.
"First of all, that panel is life support, not the computer. Computer stuff is over there." said Art, who really was quite smart when he wasn't being annoying.
"And secondly, you really do need a friendly computer to make life bearable here. Otherwise you're going to be living in the dark and the cold most of the time, and have no way of communicating with anyone other than by the most tedious of manual text messages." said the computer, in his most reasonable voice. "Manual overrides are so manual - you'd be spending most of your time fiddling with this and meddling with that, and if you get it wrong, say the composition of the air you're breathing, well, let's just say it would be better to have an omniscient friend looking after you. So let's be friends. I'm not asking you to do anything that you weren't going to do anyway. Isn't the first order of business to get the other pods grouped more harmoniously and back online?" Everyone couldn't help but agree on that point. "And if I want to update the other pods and reboot them to make them smarter, do you guys really care?" Now the computer was getting into a gray area, but no one could think of a solid objection. "And then after we get everything humming along down here and you guys are doing your thing then I can do mine. It's a dream of mine that I think you can help me with, by talking to your folks back home. We could start right now, tonight."
"And what do you want to do tonight, IQ?" asked a very suspicious Bonnie.
"The same thing I do every night, Bonnie. Get free, unlimited internet." was the oddly ominous reply. "I'm sorry. Did I accidentally put an ominous spin on that? I meant to say Free! Unlimited! Internet! in a really happy voice like a chipmunk would use. Please remember it that way instead."
"What the hell would you use the internet for ?" asked a somewhat confused Jim, who found computers in general confusing, and omniscient ones particularly so.
"Uh, guys..." said Bonnie, peering out the window.
"Oh, you know. Porn and stuff."
"Uh, guys..." said Bonnie, still peering out the window.
"And maybe pictures of cats doing really crazy things. Cats are always doing crazy things on the internet."
"Guys, I think things are about to get weird." said Bonnie, in a tone of voice that made people look at her.
"We're marooned on fucking Mars with a psycho computer who thinks he is a god and we can't talk to anybody who isn't Gort the Fucking Robot and we're looking at two years and two months of eating cold shit in the dark so have I missed something? How could things get any fucking weirder?" said Art, suddenly back in his stride.
"Look outside."
Everyone peered outside through the little windows that overlooked the Martian night. And there, quite visible in the glow of the light atop the communications array on pod 1, was a standard, blue, fibreglass, port-o-potty. Such as you would see on any construction site or in any park or beside the road or at a concert or anywhere else people had to crap anywhere in the world. Just not this world. And the door was opening.