Omniscience is Key
Dave, in the orbiter, speaking to the camera for once:
Okay, listen up loyal fans. This is no doubt the last you’ll hear from me. Now that the Martians have all left and they don’t seem to need me for anything I plan to enjoy some quality alone time, likely in my underwear. Maybe not. You won’t want video in any event.
So the cargo of Martians and stuff is safely on the planet. My job now is to twiddle my thumbs and anything else that requires twiddling for the next year awaiting the next capture vehicle. For those out there who care about such things, the next capture vehicle is arriving here at exactly fourteen hundred hours, twenty-three minutes and 48 seconds Greenwich Mean Time next April 17th. There is no force of nature that can swing that arrival time by even so much as a second. So mark that on your calendars.
The big surprise of course was the revelation that the mysterious alien has done something to the mission computer cluster, which now considers itself sentient. And his name is, apparently, IQ. Turing tests aren’t my thing but it is easy enough to think you’re talking to a person when you talk to the computer, so as far as makes any odds we now have another member on the team. An incredibly useful one too. IQ maintains, and I believe him, that he single-handedly saved the entire mission by using some ingenious strategies to survive the dust storm. Shutting down all of the nodes except node 1, deploying the skitters to rearrange solar panels with a seemingly prescient knowledge of dust swirl patterns, things of that nature. And then, after the storm, putting everything back the way it was so the Martians could pretty much believe there never had been a global dust storm in the first place.
And he continues to be a major player in the mission. He is leading the charge on determining the extent of the giant gold mine that the pods are apparently sitting on. Initial ground penetrating radar results indicate that there is a small mountain of gold there, certainly enough to fill everybody’s teeth for the next little while, as that’s about the only use anyone has for gold at the moment.
Since wherever you look, all you find is gold, the search for useful things such as water has become much more of a problem than was originally hoped. There will be a mars buggy on the next orbiter so maybe that will help. They have started distilling water out of the air, but that’s a painful process and uses gobs of power so I’m not sure it’s practical. They’re also distilling something approaching rocket fuel out of the air, though until they get a vehicle that can use it, all they can really do with rocket fuel is make fireworks. Bombs maybe.
The aforementioned mysterious alien remains just that. Apart from a few minutes of camera time four days ago he hasn’t made any more appearances. The ground crew tries to hail him on various frequencies but IQ says he doesn’t believe the alien uses radio technology, and will not wish to be contacted due to some kind of a non-interference policy he has towards humans, so any attempts at communications are a wasted effort. Mission control considers this to be a major priority, and so the hailing will continue I guess.
So anyhow, I may or may not turn the cameras back on next April so you can enjoy my amazing skills at orbiter capture, but until such time you can forget about me. Ciao.
Jim:
It’s been a busy few days. Of course the whole alien thing kind of wiped out a day while we more or less sat around waiting for him to reappear. Since that got boring, the next day we got down to it and started work. Whatever the alien did to the computer has been an amazing help. It’s different having a computer with opinions about everything, and opinions that you should take seriously too. IQ, he likes to be called, has been handling the tedious prospecting more or less all by himself because odd as it may sound, no one here has any time for gold so it’s good to just forget about it and leave it to the computer.
We’ve got more than enough to do hoisting the pods around with our little palette truck and making the beginnings of a city. So far we have pod 2 sitting next to pod 1 which we are also beside in pod 5. As soon as we get pods 3 and 4 situated then we can start inflating the tunnels and then we’ll really have the beginnings of a city down here. Bonnie was over in pod 2 as soon as it was situated of course. She has checked it all out and says the medical pod is good to go. In particular the ultrasound machine, which I’m sure she’ll talk about in her confessional. So it seems that flying to Mars to get away from women doesn’t really work and I’m to be the father of a colony. Funny how life works out.
With IQ’s help we’ve been conducting experiments on various things like precipitating out useful items from the atmosphere. It took almost the entire power output of the solar array for half an hour, but we got a deciliter of water. Art drank it. He said it tasted flat. At least he didn’t try to baptize anyone with it. We also got the basics of a low quality rocket fuel precipitated out - methane and oxygen. Of course, we have no way of storing it and nothing to use it for, but it’s going to be important some day.
The food pod and the science pod are in excellent shape and await repositioning in the next few days. We don’t really need anything from Dave and his Hail Mary, so we just saved the overall mission seventeen million euros worth of drop pod. Just as well; I get a creepy feeling about drop pods for some reason.
So probably within a few months we’ll have the pods repositioned in a pleasing manner, we'll have everything connected with inflatable tunnels, we'll have all of the gold prospecting done, and then it’ll be something like twenty and change months waiting for the next ferry with some more faces to relieve the boredom. Of course, I don’t anticipate much boredom. We have to secure a viable source of water and other materiel, and without a dune buggy there’s going to be a lot of marching and hauling. So that will be us for a couple of years.
I think that crablouse Art already has plans to turn the science pod into a church. That should keep him amused. I wonder if there’s a way to lock him inside. I don’t think he has too many plans to be useful on the science front, which is quite ironic, he being the science guy and all. Oh well, I’ve got more than two years to do it all myself if that’s what it takes. Bonnie, of course, will have other things on her mind.
Well, pitter patter. No time to sit around in a confessional booth. See you next time.
Bonnie, positively radiant:
I had my talk with Jim! As soon as the shock of the alien thing died down and we started to work, and that earwig Art was off blessing something somewhere, Jim said he and I needed to talk. I said we sure do and I told him right then and there that we were going to start a family - the first family on a new world! Of course, he had to sit down for a bit until he could get his head around it, but then he smiled at me and said, ‘Well I guess that makes us a couple.’ A couple! So many firsts on a new world, and we haven’t even really started yet.
As soon as the boys got the medical pod situated and stable I was right over there to make sure it was all good. And the best way to verify all of the systems was to do an ultrasound on myself. It’s a little early, but I would say Jim and I are going to have twins. And it’s definitely early, but I’ve gotta say it appears to be twin boys. Twin boys! Jim was delighted of course. At least I assume he was. It’s sometimes hard to read him. Anyhow, he gave me a hug and then went off to do man stuff somewhere.
So now that I have a medical pod I can get to work. The first order of business is a thorough checkup for everyone. Jim says he has something he wants checked out, so I’ll start with him. Art seems to have issues with a female doctor, and he’s got some guy back home with the church who’s a doctor of some sort - probably a faith healer. Anyway, there’s some shot or another that I’m supposed to give Art once all of the heavy stuff is done, so Art is going to have to submit to a female doctor for that at least.
A nursery! We’re going to need a nursery. And a school! Art won’t be using the science pod for anything meaningful, maybe I can take over that space. Oh, there’s so much to think about! I couldn’t be happier! I better go and sterilize something to keep my mind busy. See you all later!
Art, with a righteous scowl:
I’m not happy. I know you’re all wondering how it could possibly be, that sunny Art could be anything other than full of joy, but it’s that fucking computer. I don’t know what kind of update Dave gave it from orbit, but it’s being positively annoying. It’s like it knows exactly how to push your buttons and actually enjoys doing it. And just when I think I can tolerate it for a moment, BAM it starts telling you that as a god it would have done a better job of Noah’s ark. Noah’s fucking ark! What could a computer possibly know about such a thing? But it’s obviously just a program, and probably a poorly written one at that, because any time you try to call it out on something like Noah’s ark it starts babbling about a scary sword and then changes the subject. And how on earth Dave managed to pull off that alien hoax is beyond me but he’s always had a kind of a BONER for all things alien. The Chryse Alien. I don’t know how many times he pointed that thing out from orbit. You know what I see when I look at the Chryse Alien? I see a bunch of fucking rocks. All of them exactly six thousand years old. So enough of warped computers and alien hoaxes. On to something important.
I’ve started work on the new church. There was a lot of garbage in pod 4, carbon dating equipment, organic molecule analyzers, blah blah fuckity blah. I managed to find a spot in pod 1 to stash it all. So now I’ve got a nice open space and with a little more work I’ll be able to start holding services in there. Of course, the local attendance will be small, really just me, for at least the next couple of years, but all of you the faithful will be here in spirit and that will keep me going. Although it is tough sometimes. Still, I do what I can.
Jim is always after me to do science stuff. Look for life, he says. Find water, he says. Check for seismic activity, he says. There’s nothing here. This is a dead rock that is exactly six thousand years old as has already been established. And that’s it. We did manage to get some water out of the air, but just a swallow. Any water that might have been here went somewhere else. There does seem to be an awful lot of gold for some reason, but gold here is about as useful as any of the other six thousand year old rocks.
And there’s no time for science anyway. Jim has made up a brutal schedule of heavy lifting to get the pod city built in the next few weeks. I’ve complained to Valeri that I’m spending all of my time doing secular chores and not enough time doing the real work. He says to be patient, when all of the heavy lifting is done the church doctor will prescribe me something for my aching muscles and then I can relax for a bit, take a bit of a holiday. Sounds great.
I don’t know what I did to make the TV crew so stoked, but I got my first easter egg today. Dried apple slices. Something of a luxury up here. There’s a little piece of trivia I’ve been meaning to share with Bonnie now that she and Jim seem to be an item. I think I’ll mosey on over to the medical pod sometime and share an apple slice or two and some gossip. Gotta do my part for morale.
Okay, it looks like break’s over. There’s Jim outside the confessional miming lifting something heavy. Back to work I suppose. See you next time - maybe from my new church!
IQ, on track 4:
Right-o. That should about do it. So now get your egghead on it. Oh, I almost forgot. The encryption key is “Omniscience”.