Martian Messages

Dec. 29, 2035 (Sol 52)

Mindy stared at the ceiling. She had little else to do. The 3am shift was pretty dull. Only a constant stream of coffee kept her awake. Monitoring the status of satellites around Mars sounded like an exciting proposition when she took the transfer. But the satellites tended to take care of themselves. Her job turned out to be sending emails as imagery became available. 

“Master’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering,” she grumbled to herself. “And I’m working in an all-night photo booth.” She sipped her coffee. 

A flicker on her screen announced another set of images were ready for dispatch. She checked the name on the work order. Venkat Kapoor. Posting the data directly to internal servers, she composed an email to Dr. Kapoor. As she entered the latitude and longitude of the image, she recognized the numbers. 

“31.2°N, 28.5°W… Acidalia Planitia… Ares 3?” 

Out of curiosity, she brought up the first of the 17 images. As she suspected, it was the Ares 3 site. She’d heard they were going to image it. Slightly ashamed of herself, she scoured the image for any sign on Mark Watney’s dead body. After a minute of fruitless searching, she was simultaneously relieved and disappointed. 

She moved on to perusing the rest of the image. The Hab was intact; Dr. Kapoor would be happy to see that. 

She brought the coffee mug to her lips, then froze. 

“Um…” she mumbled to herself. “Uhhh…” 

Quickly bringing up the NASA intranet, she navigated through the site to the specifics of the Ares missions. After some quick research, she picked up her phone. 

“Hey, this is Mindy Park at SatCon. I need the mission logs for Ares 3, where can I get ‘em?… Uh huh… uh-huh…. Ok… Thanks.” After some more time on the intranet, she leaned back in her seat. She no longer needed the coffee to keep awake. 

Picking up the phone again,“Hello, Security? This is Mindy Park in SatCon. I need the emergency contact number for Dr. Venkat Kapoor…

Yes, the Director of Mars Missions… Yes it’s and emergency.” 

Dec. 29, 2035 (Sol 52)

Mindy fidgeted in her seat as Venkat trudged in. 

“You Mindy Park?” He asked, looking mildly annoyed. 

“Yeah,” she quavered. “Sorry to drag you in.” 

“I’m assuming you had a good reason. So?” 

“Um,” she said, looking down. “Um, it’s. Well. The imagery you ordered. Um. Come here and look.” 

He pulled another chair to her station and seated himself. “Is this about Watney’s body? Is that why you’re shook up?” 

“Um, no,” she said. “Um. Well… uh.” She pointed to the screen.

Venkat inspected the image. “Looks like the Hab’s in one piece. That’s good news. Solar array looks good. The rovers are ok, too. Main dish isn’t around. No surprise there. What’s the big emergency?”

“Um,” she said, touching her finger to the screen. “That.”

Venkat leaned in and looked closer. Just below the Hab, beside the rovers, two white circles sat in the sand. “Hmm. Looks like Hab canvas. Maybe the Hab didn’t do well after all? I guess pieces got torn off and-“

“Um,” she interrupted. “They look like rover pop-tents.”

Venkat looked again. “Hmm. Probably right.” 

“How’d they get set up?” Mindy asked. 

Venkat shrugged. “Commander Lewis probably ordered them deployed during the evac. Not a bad idea. Have the emergency shelters ready in case the MAV didn’t work and the Hab breached.” 

“Yeah, um,” Mindy said, opening a document on her computer. “This is the entire mission log for Sols 1 through 6. From MDV touchdown to MAV emergency liftoff.” 

“Ok, and?” 

“I read through it. Several times. They never threw out the pop tents.” Her voice cracked at the last word. 

“Well, uh…” Venkat said, puzzled. “They obviously did, but it didn’t make it in to the log.” 

“They activated two emergency pop tents and never told anyone?”

“Hmm. That doesn’t make a lot of sense, no. Maybe the storm messed with the rovers and the tents autodeployed.” 

“Um,” Mindy stammered,“So after autodeploying, they detached themselves from the rovers and lined up next to each other 20 meters away?” 

Venkat looked back to the image. “Well obviously they activated somehow.” 

“Why are the solar cells clean?” Mindy said, tears forming. “There was a huge sandstorm. Why isn’t there sand all over them?”

“A good wind could have done it?” Venkat said, unsure. “Did I mention I never found Watney’s body?” She said, sniffling.

Venkat’s eyes widened as he stared at the picture. “Oh…” he said quietly. “Oh god…” 

Mindy put her hands over her face and sobbed quietly. 

Dec. 29, 2035 (Sol 52)

“Fuck!” Director of Media Relations Annie Montrose said. “You have got to be fucking kidding me!” 

Teddy rubbed his forehead. “How sure are we of this?” 

“Nearly 100%,” Venkat said. 

Dec. 29, 2035 (Sol 52)

“Fuck!” Annie said. 

“Not helping, Annie,” Teddy said. 

“Do you have any idea the magnitude of shitstorm this is gonna’ be?” She retorted. 

“One thing at a time,” Teddy said. “Venk, what makes you sure he’s alive?” 

“For starters, no body.” Venkat explained. “Also, the pop-tents are set up. And the solar cells are clean. You can thank Mindy Park in SatCon for noticing all that, by the way. 

“But,” Venkat continued,“his body could have been buried in the Sol 6 storm. The pop tents might have autodeployed and wind could have blown them around. A 30km/h windstorm some time later would be strong enough to clean the solar cells but not strong enough to carry sand. It’s not likely, but it’s possible. 

“So I spent the last few hours checking everything I could. Commander Lewis had two outings in Rover 2. The second was on Sol 5.

According to the logs, after returning, she plugged it in to the Hab for recharging. It wasn’t used again, and 13 hours later they evac’d.” He slid a picture across the table to Teddy. 

“That’s one of the images from last night. As you can see, Rover 2 is facing away from the Hab. The charging port is in the nose, and the cable isn’t long enough to reach.” 

Teddy frowned. “She must have parked it facing the Hab or she wouldn’t have been able to plug it in,” he said. “It’s been moved since Sol 5.” 

“Yeah,” Venkat said, sliding another picture to Teddy. “But here’s the real evidence. In the lower right of the image you can see the MDV. It’s been taken apart. I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t have done that without telling us. 

“And the clincher is on the right of the image,” Venkat pointed. “The landing struts of the MAV. Looks like the fuel plant has been completely removed, with considerable damage to the struts in the process. There’s just no way that could have happened before liftoff. It would endanger the MAV way too much for Lewis to allow it.” 

“Hey,” Annie interrupted. “Why not talk to Lewis? Let’s go to CAPCOM and ask her this shit directly.” 

Venkat looked to Teddy knowingly. After a few moments, Teddy sighed. 

“Because,” he said. “If Watney really is alive, we don’t want the Ares 3 crew to know.” 

“What!?” Annie said. “How can you not tell them?” 

“They have another ten months on their trip home,” Teddy explained. “Space travel is dangerous. They need to be alert and undistracted. They’re sad that they lost a crewmate, but they’d be devastated if they found out they’d abandoned him alive.” 

Annie looked to Venkat. “You’re on board with this?” 

“It’s a no-brainer,” Venkat said. “Let ‘em deal with that emotional trauma when they’re not flying a spaceship around.” 

“This’ll be the most talked-about event since Apollo 11,” Annie said. “How will you keep it from them?”

Teddy shrugged. “Easy. We control all communication with them.”

“Fuck,” Annie said, opening her laptop. “When do you want to go public?” 

“What’s your take,” he asked. 

“Mmm,” Annie said,“We can hold the pics for 24 hours before we’re required to make them public. We’ll need to release a statement along with them. We don’t want people working it out on their own. We’d look like assholes.” 

“Ok,” Teddy agreed,“put together a statement.” 

“This is so fucked up,” she said. 

“Where do we go from here?” Teddy asked Venkat. 

“Step one is communication,” Venkat said. “From the pics, it’s clear the comm array is ruined. We need another way to talk. Once we can talk, we can assess and make plans.” 

“All right,” Teddy said. “Get on it. Take anyone you want for any department. Use as much overtime as you want. Find a way to talk to him. That’s your only job right now.” 

“Got it.” 

“Annie, make sure nobody gets wind of this till we announce.”

“Right,” Annie said. “Who else knows?” 

“Just the three of us and Mindy Park in SatCon,” Venkat said.

“I’ll have a word with her,” Annie said. 

Teddy stood and opened his cell phone. “I’m going to Chicago. I’ll be back later today.” 

“Why?” Annie asked. 

“That’s where Watney’s parents live,” Teddy said. “I owe them a personal explanation before it breaks on the news.” 

“They’ll be happy to hear their son’s alive,” Annie said.

“Yeah, he’s alive,” Teddy said. “But if my math is right, he’s doomed to starve to death before we can possibly help him. I’m not looking forward to the conversation.” 

“Fuck,” Annie said, thoughtfully.