My Little Pony: My Little Pony The Martian

Log – Solar Day 17

Forget it.

Even after a few hours, I was still very confused.

Okay, Mark, cheer up. Generations of historians, scientists, and flat-Earth believers have been waiting to pick apart your tirade. This is also an excellent case study for future psychologists, so don’t let them down.

Without further ado. That trouble I mentioned earlier is water. NASA sent a water recycler to Mars, which can filter and purify sewage - not only urine, but also bathing water, cleaning water, excess water brought by breathing and sweating - and completely purify it, and output The water is not only drinkable, but also completely pure. Although this equipment is bulky and expensive, it is much easier than transporting two liters of drinking water per person per day, along with emergency backup water reserves, toilet water and cleaning water for the 31-day planned mission.

I mentioned yesterday that it stands to reason that there is a lot of water under the surface of Mars. But the problem is that not only is it difficult to extract, the water is also mixed with perchlorates. A large part of the research plan of the Ares project is related to experiments on the use of local water resources on Mars to pave the way for possible future colonization and environmental terraforming. And what I mean by talking all this nonsense is: we still don’t have water.

NASA actually prepared 50 liters of water for each of us, about half of what it would have been without the water recycler. This gives us a total of 300 liters of water, which is equivalent to about 80 gallons. It sounds like a lot, but when you think about it, it's only twice the size of your home water heater tank.

A typical topsoil of the earth contains about 40 liters of water per cubic meter – and that’s not all, as the plants continue to absorb water to make food for me and my guests, and it has to be replenished regularly. But just to create Martian soil would cost 368 liters of water - far more than we have in storage. There are many other issues that prevent me from growing food, but this is the most important one right now.

Still? It must have been, because now the problem is gone. The truth is I can have as much water as I want, as long as I have the patience to take 12 ounces at a time.

The key to solving this problem involves a word that I will try to avoid using below because NASA will probably think I am joking. To be honest, I don't really believe it myself.

The word is: magic.

I played "Dungeons and Dragons" a lot when I was a kid. (Yeah, Mark Watney, M.A. in Botany and Mechanical Engineering, a tech geek—who would have guessed? Just think about it.) One of my favorite characters is the priest, who has a man named "Watermaker." mantra. I had always thought this setting was retarded and had never used it. Our host also thought it was fun to beat up monsters with a staff, but it was not fun to be careful not to run out of supplies and die on the way back to the city.

(By the way: It still feels boring when I think about it now.)

But as a child at the time, I didn't have the imagination or training to understand how useful such a spell could be. For example, imagine a space suit with this spell on it for life support? It would be even better if there was a mantra called "Create Breathable Air"! No more carrying a big tank around, and there’s no need for complicated piping systems – just turn on the switch and it’s ready to go!

Can you imagine it? very good. No need to drool over it now, because I have five of these space suits on hand in the Hab.

Under any ordinary circumstances (ordinary by the "I'm going to die on Mars if I don't think of a solution" standard) maybe I would be mildly surprised. But this is actually the most casual discovery I made today. Having told you so much, I think I can explain everything coherently.

After I finished my work last night, I poured 48 liters of water into the soil in the residential area. Then I added some more to make up for the leakage at the bottom and sides. It seems that my homemade temporary planting box is still not sealed enough. I sucked up the water that came out, which was full of nasty perchlorates, and poured it into a water reclaimer to purify it. Whether it's to prepare the soil or reduce perchlorate levels in residential areas, I have to do it.

This morning I began transforming Martian soil into a suitable substrate for plant growth, a process that grossed out my alien roommates. I first skimmed off the top soil of the planter box, including the healthy alfalfa seedlings that would grow to be enough for a skinny donkey to snack on, and then placed them in the far corner. About three-quarters of the Earth's soil left in the box was lightly sprinkled on top of the Martian soil that was moved in yesterday. So far so good.

Next comes the compost. Even with their frugal eating, my four-legged friends still produce a huge pile of waste (now you know what that bucket is for?) that can be composted. Of course I played a part. I was mentally prepared for the smell, but when I started stirring the shit, I almost threw up. After mixing Xiang, Earth soil and Martian soil with a shovel, the smell faded a little, but it was still long-lasting. Air conditioners can only remove particles above a certain size, and those mercaptans that make your flight stink are apparently too small.

Fortunately, Berry was there to help with this disgusting task. The other aliens made a comment or two, but remained quiet most of the time, probably resisting the urge to spit out their breakfast. Berry didn't say a word, but when a certain pile of fermented compost overflowed with a very strong stench, she snorted and stamped her hooves like a frightened horse. It's so cute, I wish I had a camera.

(And it wasn’t so cute when Berry forced me to use three times the amount of water in the shower. I wish I hadn’t taught them how to use a shower in the first place, and I worry about when the few cleaning supplies will run out.)

This is our morning - crawling and rolling for life in the air, feeling the sweet and smelly breath of life. This time we saved a lot on lunch because we couldn't eat more than half a pack of food.

After the meal I sat and started thinking about how to get more water. Using perchlorate ice from the Martian permafrost currently appears to be the safest, but it would take a lot of work and have a low chance of success. Maybe I could dismantle a few hydrogen fuel cells in residential areas and boil them and there would be water, but then the power supply would be a problem, which is totally asking for trouble.

I actually have other crazy ideas, and now that the problem is solved, I'm not going to write them down in the journal. Sure it would get water, but it would also be five ways to get me and my friends to GG before Sunday. Luckily we don't have to actually do this, and I don't expect an idea like this to be used in the future.

As I was looking at the few options at hand, and roughly deciding that maybe I didn't need to fill the entire living area with dirt, Starlight came over and started our daily conversation. It's pathetic how much I crave a minute or so of bad English conversation every day (the Beatles lyrics these guys sing over and over every day don't count).

Starlight: Food, we have a problem. (Note: This statement almost made me laugh hysterically - in a completely malicious way.)

Me: I know. Thinking of a way.

Starlight (firmly): No! Not enough soil! There is not enough soil for everyone to eat!

Me (trying to ignore that - even if you can't do something, you have to do it step by step): Our water problem is worse.

Starlight (looking confused): Water problem?

Me: Right. We still have to find more water to grow things.

Starlight: That's it? How much do you want?

Me: Do you have any in your boat?

Starlight (a little unsteady on her feet again): Look at this!

Her horn stopped glowing and she called the other aliens over to form a small circle. This happens all the time, usually with a little shouting mixed in, but this conversation was over in a short time. Then they each pulled out their own suits from the neat little pile under the charging stand where I kept the extra suits. Fireball kept going back and forth to the chemical experiment table with the flask in hand.

About a minute later, there was a row of five flasks filled with water on the table in front of me. Well, not quite full, but about less than two liters total.

And I didn't see any of them near the water reclaim valve or any water source in the residential area.

There were no extra flasks on the experimental bench and he couldn't do it a second time, so Fireball found a plastic bucket. In the meantime I poured the water into the water recycle bin - this water can't just sit here forever, can it?

It took a little longer to fill the entire bucket, but soon Fireball had a lovely plastic bucket full of pure H2O, placing it at my feet and pointing at it. I took the bucket and slowly poured it into the water recycler, then placed it on the ground - Fireball immediately took it over again.

Now I'm a little curious. Ares 3's EVA space suits each carry two liters of water for the astronauts to sip. I guess the aliens' space suits have similar functions, and the water they just brought was what was originally carried in the space suits. But the water volume in the few flasks and plastic buckets just now has reached the total water storage capacity I expected for six extraterrestrial space suits - even including those large backpacks, it is far more than those smaller alien space suits. Possible water storage capacity.

The bucket was half full when I went over. The aliens took off the helmets on their spacesuits and pointed the necks of their spacesuits toward the water tank. Each of their space suits is similar in design to ours, with a small nozzle like a feeder. You can take a sip at any time by just turning your head slightly. The nozzles of the five suits sprayed thin streams of water into the buckets intermittently, each lasting about thirty seconds.

The language barrier is no longer as severe as before, and we can already understand each other's few words - such as the basic "yes", "no", "no" (which has done me a lot of good) and "draw." The other one is "how", so when I asked how they did it, Berry brought over her spacesuit and even unbuckled her backpack so I could see how it worked.

There are no storage tanks of any kind in the space suit. No water, no air, nothing.

There is no life support system in the backpack. In fact, it is similar to a simplified version of a thruster backpack, with armrests and hand (hoof) control devices that pop up when the wearer places their arms (hooves) in a specific position. And this thruster doesn't even have a fuel tank: the entire thruster is connected to a large piece of solid pink crystal.

Incredibly, the entire life-support system was housed in a small box on the front of the suit, about the size of my two fists.

While I was studying their spacesuits, the other four were still spraying water into the bucket.

I said something like this in confusion: "This is impossible, how could such a thing exist?"

The starlight lit up the horns and spoke a word. Translated: "Magic."

I tried to explain that magic didn't exist in the world. Magic is just something you don't understand how it works yet. But apparently the translator was turned off again, and Starlight wasn't listening, but was saying something to the other horses in a passionate tone. Berry looked a little unsure, but nodded anyway. Everyone put the spacesuits back again, and at the same time Starlight took out one of the boxes that had been removed from the spacecraft.

I had guessed it was some kind of battery, and what happened next confirmed my suspicions. She plugged into what looked like electrodes a few antennas from a damaged communications array (I don't know when she brought those in). Then she made a camera-holding gesture with her hoof. After doing this gesture twice I understood that she wanted me to film what she was about to do. I grabbed a handheld video camera and put it into recording mode. Starlight confirmed that I was watching and flipped a switch on the battery. At this time, the situation suddenly changed.

You've seen Jacob's Ladder before—the kind of thing in a mad scientist's lab where an electric arc climbs between two antennas. At first it looked pretty much the same, except that instead of arcs, there were joyful rainbows. When the first rainbow reaches the tip of the antenna, it bursts out and the scene inside the cabin changes color. The colors become more vivid, gradually leaning towards main colors and pastel-like colors. Even the mixture of Xiang and Martian soil has changed, becoming... more like Xiang.

The aliens smiled, stretched out their limbs, and all faced here, like sunshine. Spitfire spread his wings and took off into the air with just one wave, soaring through the hab module so fast that he couldn't catch up with his camera. Dragonfly followed closely behind, chasing each other around the cabin with Feihuo, making me dizzy: the reason why I felt that my mind was confused was because after the second circle, Dragonfly disappeared, and There appeared an alien that had never been encountered before - a blue Pegasus with rainbow fur, a dark Pegasus-unicorn hybrid, and an eagle that looked as bright as flames.

Then the fireball slowly rose into the air. I hadn't mentioned the little wings on his back before, because I thought they were evolutionary remnants, but those wings still allowed him to hover in the air at a rate of one beat per second. The whole time he was staring at me with that "I bet you can't do it" smug look on his pointed face.

Starlight squeaked, and as soon as I turned the camera towards her, I saw her disappear in a flash of light. I felt something touch my knee and then I found her in front of me. For some reason she just...well...jumped about four meters in an instant. She giggled and did it again, reappearing next to the box.

What now resides on this camera memory card is mankind's first effective demonstration of the possibility of teleportation. It's unbelievable.

Then the rainbow from the battery began to crackle and splash. After the pilots make a hasty landing, Starlight turns off the switch. Everything in the cabin instantly returned to normal, returning to the boring "NASA psychologist recommended" color that had not been enhanced by any supernatural special effects.

Starlight staggered a little, leaning on the box to keep her center of gravity. Several others also looked a little haggard, and their depressed expressions quickly overshadowed their previous joy. This scene just breaks my heart. After that, Berry walked towards Starlight, hugged her tightly, and heard her sobbing after a moment. Other aliens join in. Even though Fireball seemed reluctant, I saw tears glistening in his eyes.

Next, we took out the whiteboard and markers and conducted a very intense "you draw and I guess" session. Now I roughly understand what those aliens did before.

Although they look different, they all come from the same world, a magical kingdom full of sunshine, rain, dew, rainbow candies (I mean it), and all kinds of wonderful creatures living together. They drew unicorns, Pegasus, bug horses, and dragons, as well as griffins, seahorses (obviously not Pegasus), a hydra, a horse-headed manticore, a Minotaurs, and other things I can't even name.

Most of the time it was Starlight doing the painting. At one point, she filled an entire whiteboard with drawings trying to explain magic to me. She conveyed the name of their race to me through a translation spell, and the translation I got was "pony." Nothing wrong. But one thing that's clear is that ponies of all kinds have magic. Starlight's unicorns can cast spells, but Pegasus like Firefly rely on magic to fly and create clouds (or so she said). Earth ponies like Berry perform land-related labor, such as farming or mining—and their magic also makes them extra strong.

After I took pictures of the whiteboard contents (which was Starlight's request - for some reason she was particularly concerned about archiving such things) Starlight cleared two whiteboards and drew a Big and small circles. The big circle on one of them refers to the world they live in - the six-pointed star pattern on it represents magic - the small circle is a world similar to Mars, with some magic, and the space between the two worlds is filled with magic. .

On the other board, there are several stick figures and a tree painted in a large circle, plus several six-pointed star patterns. Apparently that means Earth. She added a few craters to the small circle and drew a stick figure wearing a space helmet. This is Mars.

Then she drew two big crosses in the space between the small circle and the big circle.

Finally, she drew a small spaceship taking off from the world on the first whiteboard, with a dotted line connecting to Mars on the same board. Then she drew a cluster of radiating lines and made a "pop" sound with her hoof. I guess that means teleportation.

When I nodded, she drew the spaceship on the second whiteboard near the Mars with stickman Watney. This time she still used the burst of black smoke she had argued with Berry Berry at first. She drew a magic six-pointed star, then painted it almost out, then drew a doodle that spiraled down to Mars.

After I took the photo, Starlight wiped the whiteboard clean and started drawing again. On one whiteboard she drew the insignia on her and Spitfire's uniforms (the ESA insignia); on the other she drew the American flag. Under each flag she drew a column of images: a single pony/human, a pair of ponies/humans, and a host of plants, animals, and people.

On the whiteboard with the pony logo, a large magic star is added next to the single pony. A pair of ponies has a slightly larger magic star, and next to the group of ponies and various creatures is a huge star.

Single stickman on white board with American flag holds an asterisk. The two stick figures have a star so small that you have to squint to see it, while the stars for the crowds, flora and fauna are about less than the size of a single pony's star on another whiteboard.

In addition to the drawings on the whiteboard, I also took other pictures; for example, there was a picture of a magic star flowing through wires into and out of the electrodes of the box.

There are many other paintings, some by other aliens, and a few by me, but not on this computer, so there's no need to describe them here. Those were discussions of some details about the content of previous paintings.

But there is one piece worth mentioning - it was painted by me, and it solved some of my doubts. The above is a standard three-dimensional (x-y-z axis) rectangular coordinate system, but with a fourth dimension in other directions, the w-axis. Starlight nodded as I drew the shaft, smiling and nudging her nose with a hoof. (Obviously at least some of our metaphors are universal.)

In other words, Starlight and her friends are not from another world on the other side of the galaxy. They also come from Earth - not our Earth, but another one in a parallel universe. In that universe, the so-called magic is one of the basic forces of nature, with relevant laws and regulations that can be studied and utilized. Starlight's race built ships that ran almost entirely on magic, with only some electrical power systems as backup.

But for some reason, through some method, their spacecraft malfunctioned and jumped to our universe. And the laws of physics in our universe are somewhat different—very different, in fact.

But the operating mechanisms of the two worlds are not completely incompatible. Obviously energy such as magic can also exist in the world we live in, but it is much thinner than the world they are used to. In their world, magic is a universal constant; in ours, the only source of magic is life.

On Mars, the space outside the habitation module is deathly silent. There is no magic at all...except for the private space we carve out with every move we make in the cabin.

During the minute and a half that the battery was running, the space in the cabin more or less reached conditions similar to the magic fields they were used to. According to Ting Ting, the one-and-a-half minute spectacle took up two full days of energy.

I also asked about group hugs. If I heard correctly, they were homesick. This was the first time they realized how far away they were from home and how different the universe was. They had been so busy trying to figure out how to survive or communicate with me that they forgot about it.

Sorry, I've never thought of it this way before. I've been within two astronomical units or so of Earth. Except for gravity, everything is the same as it is on Earth, and I haven't lost any important bodily functions. No wonder my guests are restless half the time. No wonder they are.

Now I understand why Starlight seemed a little unstable after her brief exchange with me, and everyone was worried about her. She is the magic expert on the team and uses magic to accomplish just about everything. Apparently casting magic without a source of energy is like running with a sprained ankle, only worse.

There is good news though. Although they cannot communicate with their home planet, their contact methods are not completely interrupted. If that were the case, their life support system would be useless, and they might GG before crashing. The water and air they used were automatically transmitted from the mother world through some crystals. Fortunately, this process was powered by one end of the mother world, which is rich in magic energy. This side consumes no magic at all, but there are facts. There is an almost endless supply of water and gas.

Their ships also have similar systems. When the spacecraft crashed, the engine compartment was broken open, and the pressure change caused by the rapid leakage of air was detected by the other end, cutting off the transmission connection. Their spacesuits have a similar fail-safe mechanism, which is why they have to stop every 30 seconds when using water. If this time is exceeded, the other end will think something is damaged and shut down the system. Since they couldn't notify the other end, the corresponding space suit couldn't be used.

I also asked about the box. Their craft carries dozens, perhaps hundreds, of these cells to power the main engines. Those were damaged in the crash. They only had two functioning emergency batteries, and none of them had been charged since they were removed from the ship. But two are always better than nothing, and this was also extremely proved when the Starlight Transport Spaceship was used. This means they can still use magic for short periods of time if necessary.

That’s all we said today. It's past dinner time now. Even if it's just doodling and drawing stick figures, drawing still takes a long time. Next I have to spend some time learning their language with Starlight. The minority obeys the majority, so it makes more sense for me to learn their language than asking them to learn English. Not that I'm looking forward to it, though. I got low marks in French classes in high school and college, and I have almost forgotten them now. All I really remember are the swear words, except for "shit!" Most of them had to do with religion.

But the magic is still a bit out of my mind.

The skeptical Mark complains that such a thing doesn't exist at all, but the scientist Mark wants to understand the principle, the technical geek Mark wants to use magic to do things, and "doesn't want to die on Mars" Mark has to make it last no matter what means he uses. Help arrives, so Skeptic Mark gets out of his way.

That's it. The amount of information I got today was a bit large, but I was confused anyway.