My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

Log – Solar Day 19

It's a bit cold this morning. The habitat is designed to continue operating with only half the solar panels available and eight of the twelve renewable fuel cells damaged, so that it can survive in the event the resupply mission fails. However, there is not enough energy for me to power an aerospace laboratory or a spacecraft the size of a space shuttle, so soon after the alien spacecraft was connected to the power system in the residential area, we entered a low-energy mode, and the Martian environment and The thermodynamic synergy immediately brought the temperature inside the cabin down. Even with the heat from the air conditioner and oxygenator, we woke up to temperatures nearly freezing.

I did an EVA and cut off the power supply to the spacecraft for a while so that I could warm up the place and make breakfast. Aliens—wait a minute, I’ve decided not to use the term “alien.” They were three ponies, a dragon... Dragonfly didn't know what kind of creatures they were. Starlight tried five times to tell me the bug's species, and each time the answer was different - "Bug," "Elf," "Changer," "Swap," and "Doris." Okay, I made that last one up, but you know what I mean.

So the ponies had another meeting at breakfast, and I'm pretty sure they started arguing again, but this time it was Berry versus the other four. For a while I thought they were going to mutiny, but eventually they quieted down and started scribbling on the whiteboard in their own language.

I haven't gone into detail about their way of writing before, except that they more or less used Arabic numerals and words that looked like Greek letters. Well, now it seems that their alphabet also has twenty-six letters, just like the Roman alphabet. The letters themselves are similar, but not exactly the same, so every time I watch them write, I have the illusion that I can read them just by squinting. I tried it, but it didn't work.

Anyway, Starlight and Dragonfly write the most, and Berry occasionally asks questions. Spitfire hadn't spoken since they started writing. Fireball was calm most of the time, but towards the end he talked a lot and sounded unhappy. Funny enough, he didn't look annoyed, but worried. I've never seen a dragon so worried before. I'm curious what Dragon has to worry about, considering how tough he usually appears.

OK, I figured it out soon. After the meeting, Starlight and Spitfire walked over to me. Apparently it’s time for daily spiritual communication again.

Conversation transcript:

Starlight: Good day.

Watney: Good morning, Starlight. What were you talking about just now?

Starlight: Requires stone.

Watney: OK, we can...

Starlight: This is important: the rocks. gem. crystal. rock. (Note: Through the translation spell, I vaguely heard Starlight saying the same word four times in their language, and the translated content was different each time.)

Watney: For what?

Starlight: Berry needs to repair the ship and needs engine crystals. I want more magic and need to make gem batteries. Fireball is almost running out of gems.

At this point she stopped her spell and showed me another whiteboard with a large, beautiful picture that made me feel like my drawing was only at preschool level. The painting is probably their warp drive, or a large piece of crystal surrounded by various instruments; next to it is a cross-section of the magic battery that the ponies took from the spacecraft. There's also a cute little purple and green dragon - definitely not Fireball, since he's red and white with golden rounded back spines - eating a bowl of cartoon gems.

We wiped the whiteboard (of course after I took the photo - otherwise Starlight would kill me to wipe it) and started drawing and guessing. Berry and Dragonfly went out to check the system of the spacecraft, while Fireball and Spitfire continued to go into the house. Move soil.

I tried to illustrate the pictures using what little of their vocabulary I had learned, but Starlight kept looking at me with a funny expression. Eventually she made a eating gesture with her hoof and mouth, repeating a word I didn't even want to try to copy, the vowels of which sounded somewhere between a short U and the sound a horse makes when begging for candy or apples.

I couldn't even pronounce similar sounds, but Starlight had no difficulty at all. Don't panic, it's a small scene. First, I came into contact with sufficiently advanced technology, then with sufficiently miraculous magic, and now with a sufficiently impressive nasal cavity. My plan to learn pony language is probably on the way out.

Everything seems to be going wrong at the moment, especially the fireball. Now his food reserves, even at the lowest standard, can only last up to 25 days. His food packets are specially treated and contain small gems that look a bit like onions on a meatloaf or sprinkles on a cake.

He also had a few gems as snacks, and you could tell he was trying not to eat them. There are ten left, all bright blue. I think it's sapphire, but I'm not sure. The smallest of them is about the size of a sale-price hamburger, which on Earth would be enough for me to buy a building in River Oaks or a similar luxury neighborhood. But here it's just food, and only dragons can eat it.

Starlight believed that once his food and gems ran out, he would begin to suffer from various illnesses due to malnutrition. While he can eat other food packs - in theory he can eat almost anything - he needs to eat at least a few gems to stay healthy.

I didn't want to question the veracity or science of it, especially after weeks of watching him eat it. His crumbs still stink and are no different except they are powdery inside and drier. It's not scientific at all, but if NASA wanted to figure this out, it might have to send in a wizard instead of a botanist.

Now that I think about it, I don't think there are wizards in NASA's astronaut reserve. This matter needs to be carefully considered. Attention future historians and scientists who are reading this diary (knocks on the blackboard). I am 100% sure that under the current situation hundreds of candidates with master's degrees or above in applied magic or related fields will enthusiastically sign up. Without further ado, let’s start printing the application form.

But I have no control over this issue. The ponies need gems to feed Hercules (the dragon). They need larger gems to rebuild the magic battery. It would take at least one giant gem to repair their warp drive. It really baffles me - piloting that ship now seems as dangerous as piloting a cardboard box. But maybe they were thinking of contingency plans, and you can’t blame them.

The situation is that Mars, at least in theory, has many crystal mineral deposits. Mars rovers and orbiters, as well as the Ares 1/2 mission, have discovered traces of a large number of rare and semi-rare gemstones, but so far the only minerals we have found larger than grains of sand are hematite, magnetite, gypsum and Peridot. Starlight rejected them all. Fireballs can eat peridot, but its texture is too brittle to be used to craft technological equipment. Plaster is even worse - you can crush it with your fingers. According to Starlight, hematite and magnetite cannot be used for magic charging due to electrical interference.

After spending an hour flipping through the electronic Geological Reference Manual provided by NASA, she pointed out that quartz and ruby ​​were the perfect materials. Here comes the problem. Ruby has never been found on Mars, and during our on-orbit exploration we have only found traces of quartz and feldspar near the eroded sites of ancient volcanoes.

The problem is (assuming I remember the briefing accurately—I was Lewis's candidate geologist, after all)—most hard gems and crystals are found in metamorphic rocks or lightweight, slowly cooling granite. Both are typically found only in mountainous areas, while Ares 3 is located in the flattest region on the entire planet.

Except for the crater ridge, you can see 3.4 kilometers away from the residential area. Even the mud volcano that Starlight and her friends crashed into is below the horizon, too low to be seen from here. The nearest known quartz discovery site is in the Arabian Highlands, 2000 kilometers away, and the most suitable locations for mining are in the two volcanic regions of Tharsis and Ilythion...each of which is more than half a planet away from here.

Apart from the mountainous areas, the residential areas actually lie in ancient alluvial plains of unknown depth, buried underneath early volcanoes that existed long before the emergence of multi-cellular life on Earth. There are some rocky outcrops around the nearby crater, but it's starting to look like layered sedimentary rock - not conducive to gem formation. The only chance we can find valuable gems here is in meteorites, produced by collisions in the early formation of the solar system.

It's perfect. As I type this now, a certain song on Johansson's Beatles album is on loop. I think you can guess.

The alien ponies need diamonds... (Meme derived from the Beatles song - Lucy in the sky with diamonds - "Lucy is flying in the sky with diamonds")

I'm done. I found Baker's data disk, let's see what's in it...

...Medical Journal. Folders after folders of medical journals. Damn it, Beck, you're a nice person, but your life is so boring.

So all we have on hand is Lewis's data disk. Maybe it was because she was our mission commander that I was a little reluctant to open it, but having had enough of the lads in Liverpool I decided to take a chance.

food. water. gem. Now it’s entertainment again.

Mars, can't you give us some charity?