"Sounds good to me," she said. "Hurry up with the bookwork, and let's bring our people home!"
Author's Notes:
Original plan: leave Kansas City about 8 to 8:30 AM, get home 9 PM, write another "tell me about X" chapter.
Detour after detour in Kansas (closing down a dozen miles of a major north-south highway with a twenty-mile detour in either direction? GPS sending you down roads they're just now closing because they're maintaining the railroad crossings? Turnoff doesn't exist?) cost me at least two, closer to three hours of driving time.
So this, what I can do in half an hour, is what there is for today. (I got home at just before 11 PM, after leadfooting it through the Ozarks of eastern Oklahoma.)
Chryssy's "Okay!" is directly inspired by Alan Shepard's call during the first Mercury flight's re-entry, during which he pulled over seven G's of deceleration.
Jump to top
Sol 338
View Online
AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE — MISSION DAY 343
ARES III SOL 338
Despite having spent the morning harvesting potatoes in the Hab and the early afternoon harvesting or replanting the surviving potatoes in the cave farm, everyone rushed to bring out the computers for the book reports. The confused, faltering efforts to tell stories about the current heroes of Equestria had proven one thing: storytelling was hard.
"All right," Starlight said once everyone was gathered. "Dragonfly, why don't you go first?"
"Fine by me," Dragonfly said, looking "I didn't make it all the way through Foundation, and I'm in no hurry to finish it. When I read the description I was expecting empires, space ships, huge battles, big darn heroes. And what did I actually get?" She tapped the top of her computer. "Math. Math and books and talk, talk, talk. Hardly anything really happens at all! Or if it does happen, it happens way over there somewhere so that it won't bother anybody. If this is what Isaac Asimov is like, I hope he didn't write very many books."
"Only about four or five hundred," Mark muttered.
"All right," Starlight shrugged. "So we won't go there. Fireball, what did you think of The Golden Spiders?"
"It was fun," Fireball said. "But a little confusing. Had to look up what `displaced person' meant. Then looked up immigration. Did you know humans don't want to let other humans move from one place to another? Make it hard to do so? Dragons not put up with that for long. Stupid idea."
"Preach it, brother!" Dragonfly cheered.
"Be quiet, you," Spitfire said. "Your queen number one argument for, wossword, in-meague-ray-shun."
"Spitfire, leave Dragonfly alone," Cherry Berry said quietly.
"Anyway," Fireball continued, "I figure out blackmail just fine. Know some dragons who do it. Nice roof you got, fresh straw, burn nice, too bad if someone sneeze, and not getting lots of gold make snout itch. So I got the idea. But what made it a good book was two main characters. Character who tells story is funny, smart. I like him. And his boss, the fat human, I think I like too. I want to know what makes his head run. I like the book lots. Is there more?"
"NASA sent over forty books by Rex Stout," Starlight said. "I think they were looking for long series or prolific authors or something." She turned to Cherry Berry. "Now for Ringworld. Cherry?"
Cherry had been blushing deeper and deeper as her turn approached. "Mark," she said quietly, "are all humans this obsessed with sex?"
"Um..." Mark shifted a little uncomfortably. "I didn't think Ringworld was all that-"
"A device that triggers sexual bliss on command?" Cherry asked. "A world where sex is used to seal every bargain? What kind of imagination comes up with that?"
"An imagination that wants to sell a fuckload of books?" Mark suggested.
Cherry blushed even more deeply. She reminded Starlight a bit of Big MacIntosh for a moment.
Mark apparently got the hint. "Oops. That was unintentional. My bad."
Cherry Berry coughed and moved on. "Most of the book is really interesting. Radically different aliens— like us— gathered together to explore a bizarre new world. Crash-landing on that world. Relying on each other to find a way home. It had action. It had big thoughts about luck and design and stuff. It had emotion. But it also..."
Starlight wondered why Twilight Sparkle wasn't here now to rescue them. Cherry's blush had to be visible across at least a few dimensions...
"Look, the ri-ri-the sex stuff is really distracting, that's all I'm saying!" the commander finished. "And there's no way I could read this book aloud without thinking about what's in it!"
"How about we trade books?" Dragonfly asked. "And maybe I could translate that one for my queen when we get back. You know she loves the racy books."
"I did not need to know that," Starlight said. "Moving on. Spitfire, how did you make out with Equal Rites?"
Spitfire tapped her computer. "This story," she said, "is home."
"Home?" Starlight leaned closer. "How do you mean?"
"More like, it home if we had humans run things instead of princess," Spitfire continued. "Some stupid stuff. Why can't boy or girl be wizard? Or witch? But then I think. Back home I know unicorns built in Cloud Valley, earth pony in capital. I think of pegasus want to teach magic. I think of earth pony who want to fly." She looked straight at Cherry Berry as she said this. "So girl want be wizard, is, um, like earth pony want fly. Thing."
"Metaphor," Starlight said.
"Whatever. So I understand that part. But the rest of it is... not like Hogwarts. Not like Middle Earth. Real people. Magic that breaks sometimes. Weird things happen just because. Monsters. Laundry. And pr-eye-vee. Had to look it up too. Means outhouse. Harry Potter only go bathroom to talk to Myrtle. No outhouse in Middle Earth at all." Spitfire smirked, saying the next sentence with great care and even greater amusement: "No one in Middle Earth ever goes to the bathroom."
"Or on the starship Enterprise either," Mark muttered.
"Huh?"
"Nothing, go on."
"Anyway, big adventure, big thought, and it feels like home." She paused a moment then added, "If home were flat and on giant turtle."
"I'm glad you liked it," Starlight said. "So we have two books left to choose from. Rex Stout's Golden Spiders, and Terry Pratchett's Equal Rites. And since I'm getting enough magic from working on the final enchantment for the new Sparkle Drive and the new repulsor system, my vote is for the murder mystery."
"Me too," Fireball said.
"I don't want to hear more about how mean people can be," Cherry said. "I definitely don't want a story with blackmail in it. I vote for the other one."
Spitfire tapped her chin. "You sure no Ringworld?"
Cherry the Red Faced Earth Pony made a return appearance. "Affirmative."
"Then yeah, I stick with mine," Spitfire said nodding. "I like mystery, but I like feeling home more."
Everyone looked at Dragonfly, who tapped her chin with a hoof. "Promise to stop bopping me on the head?" she asked Spitfire.
"No promise," Spitfire replied flatly.
"Spitfire, I told you to cut it out!"
Dragonfly shrugged. "Plenty of action in both books, right?"
"Gunfight," Fireball said.
"Magic duel," Spitfire added.
The changeling shrugged. "Then I'm good either way," she said. "Sorry, but I abstain. Let Mark break the tie. It's his books, after all."
Mark, feeling every gaze turn to him, shrugged. "Actually I've never read The Golden Spiders before," he said. "I was never much into mysteries. But there's a book a little later in the Discworld series which has tons of action, a bit of magic, and a murder mystery. Plus politics, heroism, and romance."
"And blackmail?"
Mark shrugged. "Well, yeah, a little bit," he said. "But if it helps, it's not exactly a person doing the blackmailing."
Cherry Berry's eyes made an attempt to imitate those of a certain mailmare. "How?"
Mark grinned, pulling the computer from Spitfire and scrolling through the library for a different title. "They may be called the Palace Guard, the City Guard, or the Patrol. Whatever the name, their purpose in any work of heroic fantasy is identical: it is, round about Chapter Three (or ten minutes into the film) to rush into the room, attack the hero one at a time, and be slaughtered. No one ever asks them if they wanted to."
The others drew closer as Mark began to read of dragons ("No dragons ever be that close together without a fight," Fireball complained), of a drunk watchman in a gutter, and of the effect of books on spacetime ("That's right! Twilight's told me about that many times!" Starlight said). The aliens listened, and commented now and then, and laughed at the silliness of the cultists and the lantern-jawed innocence of the six-foot-tall dwarf boy sent to the big city alone.
All in all, it was a good beginning— and a lot better than bickering about what it was like being around Equestria's greatest heroes.
Author's Notes:
I may go back at some point, if I'm really blocked for the day's entry, and make a stab at Rarity or Pinkie Pie Story Time. (The latter will be difficult, since the First Rule of Pinkie Pie is, "Do not talk about Pinkie Pie if you value your sanity.")
I read Foundation as a teenager, and liked it much more than Dragonfly did. However, I've never felt a need to re-read it afterwards, partly because... well, Asimov was one of the best short-story writers ever, but his novels tend to wallow. He either writes badly padded short stories or a cluster of short stories with a vague overarching plotline. That said, he still deserves better than Dragonfly's reaction, but this is what to expect when you ask an adrenaline junkie to read high-concept hard sci-fi.
I first read Ringworld when I was five. The sex stuff sailed straight over my head; all I cared about was spaceships, floating castles, monomolecular indestructible wire, and weird aliens. Again, the book deserves better than Cherry's (reader-inspired) prurience.
I own the entire Nero Wolfe series (well, the Rex Stout written ones— the Goldsborough pastiches are markedly inferior) and reread them frequently. I'm not fond of most detective stories, mostly because the detective characters tend to be one-note cardboard cutouts. And although Rex Stout does use a lot of cardboard in the supporting cast, Archie Goodwin and Nero Wolfe constantly produce unexpected depths to their outward personalities. I highly recommend the series as a whole, with The Golden Spiders and The Doorbell Rang being my picks for the two best books in the series, with Some Buried Caesar a close third.
I'm fairly sure I don't need to explain Discworld.
Jump to top
Sol 340
View Online
AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE — MISSION DAY 345
ARES III SOL 340
"Mark, tell me: do you think we'll have any cherries for the trip?"
Cherry Berry knew the answer, but she had to ask anyway. She'd coddled and cared for the saplings, urging them to grow taller faster than anything on Equestria. But, despite it all, they were still only months old, not the two or three years it took an Equestrian cherry tree to begin bearing fruit. And that was in Equestria, a land lousy with magic, and not a cave on an otherwise totally unmagical barren wasteland of a planet.
But age was only one of the problems, as Mark pointed out. "Not unless Starlight gets her transmutation spell going without punching a hole in the rover," he said. "I know you've put your heart into them, Cherry, but facts are facts. The plants are too young. If they're all the same kind of cherry, the odds are good they won't be fertile with one another. We haven't got any bees, so we'd have to hand-pollinate every last flower. And it would have to happen in the next fifty sols."
"Fifty sols?" Cherry asked. "We have a hundred and ten before we leave, right?"
"We need time to test the finished rover and fix any problems that pop up," Mark said. "In order to test the rover-trailer combo, we need to pull the life support out of the cave, at least for a sol or two at a time. Once we start doing that, the cave will cool down in a hurry. That will hurt the plants. So whatever we're going to grow, we have to be done before we get serious about testing the rover. The next harvest will be the last one."
Cherry looked through the airlock window into the cave interior. The cherry trees now brushed the ceiling, limbs mostly running up the ceiling towards the solar relay crystals. In the long term— if there was going to be a long term— that would mean trouble for the sun-loving alfalfa. Once a week Cherry carefully plucked enough fresh, healthy leaves from the trees for a couple pots of cherry leaf tea, which she prepared with all due care and caution to give everyone a change from drinking plain water. She'd have to figure out a way to dry the leaves properly for long-term storage for the trip...
She absent-mindedly wiped away tears with a hoof. "Could we move your machines from the Hab here to the cave?" she asked. "Just leave it running?"
Mark shook his head. "Part of the atmospheric regulator has to be outside for it to work properly," he said. "And it and the oxygenator both work to remove carbon dioxide from the air. The plants need CO2 added every so often. The water reclaimer won't automatically water the plants, even if we figure out some way to pump water from downstream to replace what it puts out. And I don't think all the heaters in the Hab put together would be enough to keep the cave warm enough for plants to grow."
Cherry blinked. "You didn't even have to think about that."
"Because I've been thinking about it for months," Mark replied. "I'd love to have this farm go on forever as a lasting fuck-you to this goddamn planet. But I don't see any way of doing it that doesn't risk our own chances of getting out alive."
"I understand," Cherry said. And she did. She just didn't like it. "Could you ask Dragonfly and Spitfire to step in here, please?"
As Mark opened the inner airlock door and left, Cherry looked through the open doorway at Starlight Glimmer, who stood by the life support box holding a broken piece of antenna in her magic and writing things in the dirt as she watched the indicator lights flash. It looked like a second all-day session on the water telegraph getting the details straight for the new Sparkle Drive main crystal, which Starlight had decided to enchant two days from now rather than make more batteries that they probably wouldn't be able to haul with them.
Cherry hated to interrupt her now, but between the Sparkle Drive and the new booster system, Starlight would probably be tied up with that for days. Anyway, Cherry had another bit of business to take care of.
