My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

AMICITAS Mission Three – Mission Day 293

ARES 3 solar day 289

[08:02] JPL: Good morning everyone. Due to yesterday's maintenance, you are all waiting for your suit patches to be cured except for Mark (of course I know this because I do read all the reports you send), and I hope you can all take the opportunity. Let’s enjoy the last solar day’s vacation and prepare to restart the rover’s renovation work.

However, I would like to make a request here, that you please take some time today to discuss with each other which parts of the renovation may require our guidance. Please get your questions to us as soon as possible, as our communications will be cut off soon.

According to our current estimates, the communication blackout period will roughly begin in less than thirty solar days from now, when (from your perspective) the Earth will move behind the sun. The signal outage will last for at least two weeks, and more likely closer to three weeks. During this period, please maintain normal power supply to the pathfinder, so that we can immediately send a signal to the detector to establish a connection as soon as the conjunction ends. If we are unable to restore communications within four weeks, we will contact you via the Friendship radio system starting at 9:00 a.m. residential zone time every day until we receive a reply.

Disturbances in solar activity and the vast distances between Earth and fire have begun to cause our communications connections to become fragile and unstable. The rate of packet transmission failure has exceeded 10% due to noise in the process and continues to rise; considering that our data transmission rate is not high to begin with, we are being pushed to the critical point of disconnection. Things will only get worse before they get better.

With this in mind, tomorrow will be the last day we have open two-way email service, after which the Pathfinder link will be restricted to carrying text conversations and scientific data transmission only. We will resume email service after Pathfinder has reestablished a stable connection for two consecutive weeks.

In particular, Tingting received an email that we really wanted her to answer, which contained the most frequently asked questions by reporters at the press conference we held yesterday about her recovery. Journalists, and people around the world, will be eager to get answers to these questions. (We have eliminated those questions that were obviously mindless.)

Finally, I would like to mention that MAV’s transformation plan is still being formulated. If it feels like we're stalling for time, please note that you won't need this much until Sol 440, as that's when the MAV would normally be refueled for liftoff into orbit. We are conducting test simulations as comprehensively as possible to ensure your safe and smooth connection with Hermes. Just wanted to let you know that we are doing our best.

[08:35] Watney: Front desk, I have a complaint. There is a bedbug in my room. She was about one meter long from head to tail and weighed kilograms. She insisted that she had reserved a bed, and she kept trying to insert a straw into my ear. I urge you to take her away. At least please take away her straw.

[09:07] JPL: We're sending people over to deal with this. They should arrive in about two hundred and sixty solar days. In the meantime, please remind Mr. Fireball that you have booked a non-smoking room. Please enjoy another sunny spring day on Mars, with the maximum temperature expected to be a mild and pleasant minus degrees Celsius. We invite you to relax from your straw-in-the-ear anxiety by experiencing our planet-sized, massive Zen Sand Garden.

[09:40] Watney: Venkat, you old fox is pretty smart.

[10:22] JPL: Mark, you have to know that people who are not smart enough cannot be managers.

Sender: Tingting (email address hidden)

Recipient: (mailing list)

Subject: Re: Questions about your hibernation

Hello everyone! I will try to answer all the questions in the following statements.

Yes, I'm glad to be back. But I also felt very nervous. I crawled into a cocoon because I thought there was no way I could control myself anymore, so I gave up trying. There was still a risk that this would happen again, but they reminded me that I and my team members—and I and my friends—were there to make sure it didn't happen again.

As for my attitude towards the whole thing, I mainly feel ashamed. And not just to escape what I did to Mark. Losing control like that is one of the most shameful things a changeling can do. This situation would not only endanger ourselves, but also the entire hive. For those of us changelings trained for infiltration missions, strict self-control and intense concentration are the first lessons that are repeatedly emphasized. Even though we don't have to do this anymore, I still feel ashamed growing up in this environment.

I read the story you mentioned and yes, "changeling" is definitely the English name for our race. Substituting children is one of our strategies, but anyone we think will receive a lot of unconditional love is a possible replacement target. You might think that's not a good idea, and I agree, but starving to death or turning back into a mindless monster is obviously much worse. But thanks to the wisdom of our present queen, Chrysalis, these things are long ago.

Should humans fear changelings? I hope you won't. This is why I didn't tell you all about our situation before. I want to wait until my queen or one of those pony princesses takes care of it. I'm not a queen or a princess. I was just a slightly more senior worker who had been told many times that my role should never involve diplomacy. Unfortunately, a lot of things happened that shouldn't have happened, so now I have to clean up the mess I made.

Yes, we can subcontract your leaders. We can infiltrate your military and disrupt your defenses. If there is enough magic on earth to support our survival, maybe there will be no difficulty. But it takes a reason for us to do it, and “because we can” doesn’t count.

This is not our home. We will always be just visitors here, maybe not for long. And traveling from one universe to another is not easy at all in the first place. It would be unreasonable to invade your world, let alone (if we really wanted to do such a thing) to have such a naive and stupid creature in our world, one of which is a creature that she thinks will wake up in her sleep. The hungry changeling stayed next to him all night. Frankly, ponies are much simpler targets than humans.

(At least that's what I thought. I was judging by those old TV shows of yours. I hope Mark doesn't represent the average human being because he's an easier target than ponies. He thought he'd seen some movies Know how to be vigilant, but it’s not that simple).

There is also a quantitative difference. There are about 30,000 workers in the insect nest where I am. And there are millions of ponies in the world. But you humans are numbered in billions, billions. I would ask my mother to write me a note not to invade your world, but my mother is the Queen of Chrysalis, so it would be better for me to ask Epstein’s mother to do it for me.

Anyway, while I wouldn't mind seeing your world, I really want to go home - straight home. I'm in better shape than before, but I'm still not healthy, and I don't expect it to get better as long as I'm on Mars. I don't belong here. And as much as I like Mark, if I woke up tomorrow and found that an airlock opened not to Mars but to our world, I would immediately say, "Goodbye, stinky monkey!" and run like Rainbow dash so fast.

Speaking of Mark, you didn't ask about this, but I'll say it anyway: Mars is a terrible place. Yes, this is another world, but after a hundred solar days, when everything in this world wants to kill you every day, the excitement has long since worn off. You know the danger here. Your NASA understands the dangers here. Still, you found the will—and the competition to get the chance—to give up everything in your life just to be here for thirty days. These men, these men like Mark, are some of the bravest men I've ever met, and I've been in combat. No matter how much you thank them for their efforts, it is never enough.

Maybe this is the difference between your world and mine. You will take your time, put safety first, and carry the best of humanity to the stars. We'd send crazy people (like me) up into the sky and then hold them down long enough that maybe, and I mean maybe, they wouldn't risk their lives right away. We are given a free rein because our world is more tolerant, and even the undeserving ones get their magical rainbow happy endings. You have to work hard for your own happy ending, and I think you can do better than us.

Feel sorry. I talk too much - this is a changeling flaw that has gotten us caught many times during infiltrations in the past.

To answer your remaining questions: Every day when we go to the cave we spend a few minutes in a magical environment created to ensure our health. (I am not the only one affected by the lack of magic energy, but my situation is the most serious.) Others are still providing me with food, three meals a day and hugs, which is absolutely enough. This should be enough for me to accumulate a certain amount of reserves to support my survival after we leave the cave, plus a little bit of our own generated magic to recharge the battery, so that we can have more high-concentration magic on the way. can be used.

And to someone who asked about those little bug horse dolls that kids make, I say this: Kids, take care of your changelings. Yes, we are pretty scary. But most of the time—not always, but most of the time—the scarier something looks, the scarier it is inside.

And to explain, I'm sorry, but the dolls you make will not share the love they collect from you with me. After all, they are not performing the task of the insect nest. But I appreciate your kindness.

Thank you to everyone who worried about me and I'm sorry to disappoint you. I will do better next time.

dragonfly