Sentenced: 2-23-12
Shiri is Sentenced by:
The Martian by Andy Weir (self-pub 2011, 2nd ed. by Crown publishing 2014); page 63, sentences 32-37 through page 64, sentences 1-3.
“Teddy swiveled in his chair and looked out the window to the sky beyond. Night was edging in. ‘What must it be like,’ he pondered. ‘He’s stuck out there. He thinks he’s totally alone and that we all gave up on him. What kind of effect does that have on a man’s psychology?’ He turned back to Venkat. ‘I wonder what he’s thinking right now.’
Log Entry: Sol 61
How come Aquaman can control whales? They’re mammals! Makes no sense.”
The Context: Mission to Mars. Freak sandstorm. Mark Watney, botanist and mechanical engineer, is injured when an antenna, ripped from the communications array, punctures in his suit. Believing Mark dead, his crew mates follow procedure and evacuate. Mark, as you can probably discern as all of that happens in the first few pages, is very much alive. Alive and trying to figure out how he to survive Until the next mission arrives. He has one year of supplies. He needs enough for four years. Three’s Company, disco music, and Agatha Christie novels are his only companions, though he does have a whole bunch of projects, ranging from reconfiguring a rover (Sirius missions. Heh) to making water by blowing up jet fuel to growing crops in Martian soil colonized by Earth bacteria.
The satellite dish that would give him the range to contact Earth? Gone. Maybe buried, perhaps thousands of kilometers away. Definitely damaged beyond repair.
Eventually, the folks at NASA watching satellite images of Mars realize the rovers, emergency tents, and other equipment is migrating from the spots in which they were left when the crew evacuated. That Mark is alive. And they’re forced to acknowledge no one can get to him in time.
The Why: Because this is exactly what would be thinking if I were stranded on Mars. Okay, maybe I wouldn’t devolve to Aquaman quite so quickly, but. But. Where else would you go? What you must do is daunting, what you can’t do is astronomical, and hope is a very, very tiny spark on a very distant horizon fueled entirely by potatoes and dangerous radioactive material. Spend all your time thinking about those massive undertakings and their likely failure, you stick your head out the airlock or, as the mission psychiatrist suggests, take all the morphine in the infirmary and go to sleep.
You think about random shit. Not what you don’t have, can’t have. Not what you miss. The little things you enjoy. The things being stranded alone on Mars (depression, grief, physical pain) can’t take from you. Give the universe the finger and ruminate on Aquaman.
And maybe. Just maybe.
You make it.
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