My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

"Good morning, Dr. Cabol! It's such a nice day today. How are you doing?"

Venkat looked up and saw Annie Montrose standing in the doorway of his office, smiling a warm, friendly, almost harmless smile. Alarm bells were ringing in his mind. "If you ask me that," he said carefully, assessing the situation, "I've been busy processing reports on MAV launches, reviewing various excuses they've come up with to explain why the construction of the new Ares 4 MAV is behind schedule, and sorting through the various reports, photos, and raw data that Mark and his friends have sent us. The outdoor temperature is expected to be over degrees Fahrenheit today, there will be thunderstorms tonight, and there is a pre-season subtropical depression in the Bay Area that may make landfall anywhere between Matagorda Bay and Morgan City, or it may not. All of this is piled up in April. Oh, and I have a NASA media relations director who wants to ask me for a big favor, so big that she doesn't think she can get her way by bullying me like she usually does."

"That's really hurtful," Annie said coquettishly. "I just wanted to ask if you remembered something - specifically, the cameras that come with all the Hab laptops and each crew station on the MAV."

“Of course I remember,” Venkat replied. “We use them to record low-quality video during launch and landing, one frame per second. This recording is what we keep in case of an accident, so that we have something to investigate later. So far, we have only used it to review Melissa Lewis’s behavior during the abort of Sol 6.”

"I'm glad you still remember." Anne's smile disappeared along with the sweetness in her voice. "Then I warn you, not only you, but every video news media, from CNN to the brainless Internet keyboard warriors filming reports in their parents' basement, also remembers it. Xiaowen, they are all now seriously demanding face-to-face communication with aliens. And I can't find any excuses anymore, because they all know that we now have a communication channel to transmit video signals. We have told them that we have sent them all the software patches needed for the launch in advance. We have also publicly announced that we will receive their video archives through satellite relays during their sleep. Once our condolence material package is downloaded, if we don't give them something to report, all the media will rush up in indignation and poke the entire NASA team and roast us on the fire!"

"Then there's more..."

"Xiao Wen, there are no more excuses!"

“Okay, okay,” Venkat said, giving up. “Well, I believe you told them that the turnaround time before launch day would be no less than twenty-two minutes. We can’t bend the laws of physics for a PR exercise like this.”

"Of course I fucking told them that," Annie snapped. "I also told them that astronauts don't have time for exclusive interviews. But we should at least give them a Q&A video. We can have the bigger ones submit the questions and the smaller outlets just sit and wait for the answers, but even with that pony posing like a fucking Playboy illustration, they're not going to be satisfied with just a few static photos!"

Venkat pondered over this question.

“Venkat, are you listening or not?”

"Annie, I have been putting up with you all these years. You should know this, right?"

"Of course you have to put up with me. There is no superior-subordinate relationship between you and me. My superior is only Teddy, and I only have to obey him. You can't fire me."

"Well, now it's your turn to put up with me. Just shut up and let me think about it."

Venkat was surprised, and probably Anne herself, that she actually kept quiet this time. He calmed down and weighed the pros and cons of various options. He carefully considered the available communication bandwidth of the MAV, the relay satellite and the storage capacity of the Hermes, and did his best to guess the mental state of the six refugees millions of miles away.

Mental state. Yes, this method can be used.

“Okay,” Venkat said finally. “Here are my terms. You’re going to work with Dr. Shields on this. If she says no, then there’s nothing to say—I’m going to call it quits. She’s going to contact Mark and the others and do a quick assessment of their recent mental state. We don’t want one of them going insane on camera, do we?”

"You are a very good thinker," said Anne disdainfully. "Anything else?"

"You'll need to have Dr. Shields insert some questions," Venkat continued. "We'll first have the team record a self-recorded video as a group. No questions asked—let them pace themselves. Then we'll have each team member record a separate video. Johnson on the Hermes will lead the interview so it's as close to real time as possible—right now they're about three minutes behind the lightspeed. We'll let her decide if she wants to follow up, but don't count on it."

"The key to the whole process is the participation of Dr. Shields. After she joined, the whole thing turned into a psychological test. If there is anything in the interview that is too embarrassing or threatens the subsequent tasks, we can seal it in the name of protecting the patient's privacy."

"good idea."

“In the end,” Venkat concluded, “this is all I can give you and the media. A group video, six individual interviews, and broadcast rights to the launch. And if any of them object, even Mark—no, especially Mark—I will support them, you know. Is that acceptable to you?”

Anne nodded. "That's a hell of a lot better than 'NASA's Most Deceptive Behavior of the Week' or something like that." She pulled her phone out of her purse and looked at it. She nodded again. "As soon as Erin's schedule is free, I'll talk to her."

“Very good,” Venkat said, reaching for a memo on his desk. “Now it’s your turn to do me a favor…”

When he looked up, there was no trace of Anne.

[14:41] MAV: Yeah, we've been reading these operating procedures you sent us lately. Do you have any backups for us? I can't find anything except those pony thrusters.

[14:57] Houston: We know. That's the tradeoff we made between backup systems and incremental velocity budget. We don't have the confidence in the Pony launch boost system that we would like to have. With the MAV trimming off two and a half tons of payload, we've achieved the point where you can have a Hermes rendezvous even with those boosters at 50% of their expected performance. And performing above that means saving fuel for the second stage to fine-tune the orbit during the rendezvous, or to provide on-orbit braking in the event that you need to use the Flash drive to fly directly to Earth.

[15:11] MAV: Got it. I understand the logic, but somehow the shadow of Apollo kept coming back to me as I was thinking. You should know that if anything breaks down, we're screwed.

[15:26] Houston: Believe me, I understand. Think of it this way. At least you are allowed to take kilograms of personal belongings with you. Just be happy. If it weren't for these pony thrusters, we might have to make you shave your heads to lose weight. There are other options.

[15:41] MAV: You guys are taking "you should have gone (to the bathroom) long before we left" to a new level.

[15:55] Houston: That’s not what I said this time.