Autumn on Mars
A science fiction novelette by Matthew Crane.
Mika’s Martian Travel Guide, Part 2: How to keep up Hope.
As Explorers we must always be ready for everything that we are not ready for. Anyone out here that isn’t prepared for something will be in trouble. So before we left this morning I started coming up with plans for all the problems I thought we would face and think about what in the Rover would be perfect to solve them with.
I had never expected that the Rover would be our problem.
An Enbilulu Rover is still a great Rover for exploring in. But it’s only great when it’s running and at the moment it is not running at all.
There’s a very good reason for this in. You can find this in the Rover’s chunky Operator’s Manual that I don’t think anyone has ever used before. I think normally people would use the computer copy but Trip doesn’t want to turn the computer on so we’re stuck with the book. Luckily we and you will always have a book to check though because of Science Corps Directive 43-A which sates:
All manually-operated Science Corps equipment must include a physical copy of any and all on-site documentation. This documentation must be easily accessible, and stored in such a way as to still be accessible when the equipment is depowered.
The Operator’s Manual has a list of the first 2019 Science Core Directives at the back and there’s a lot of interesting entries hidden in it. It really makes you wonder about all the really badly thought through things that people have done before. I hope that we never end up in one of these books. There’s a lot of the more boring regulation ones though so you should bring something else to read.
I found out why the Rover had stopped working by checking in the book.
Science Corps Directive 119-D:
The electronics of all Science Corps ground exploration vehicle must be designed to enforce the 2 hour continuous operational time limit. Control of the vehicle will not be available to the operator until a level 3 vehicle integrity check (as outlined in Hatkinson Report 5-1) has been performed by a licenced Science Corps land vehicle engineer, or automated system.
I think that you know already that we don’t have any engineers. Trip knows how to get into and use the Rover but when I asked her if she could get control back again she just sat there quietly. So she doesn’t know and doesn’t look happy about it. I am also not an engineer. But we still have the rover’s computer system. The screens around Trip’s seat say it will take 42 minutes to finish. I don’t think this made Trip any less sulky though. Or more relived or talk. It hasn’t even stopped her from staring like she was asleep but also scared.
Except Trip doesn’t get afraid of anything. She doesn’t look like she’s feeling good though
That happens to bring us to what you’ll be learning in this part of the Guide: How to keep up hope when things are going wrong:
I can understand why my sister isn’t happy about this. We aren’t engineers and we didn’t bring any engineers with us (You should definitely bring engineers with you) and the people who are probably following us for taking the Rover probably have engineers. If they are and they do then they’ll eventually catch up to us. I knew this all along but my big sister doesn’t like to think about things like that. She can be very dumb sometimes.
If you want to forget about something the best thing to do is to do something else. I’ve been told many times that it’s a fact that doing exercise makes you feel happier. It always seemed like one of those things that adults say to get you to do something you don’t want to. But it was the best idea I had and after putting Trip’s helmet back on and taking her out of the Rover I did get her talking again so it’s probably not completely rubbish.
Further tests have shown me its probably very true. Trip likes Tag. She’s very good at Tag. I’ve never really liked that kind of sports but me chasing Trip around and Trip chasing me around seemed to cheer her up a lot. SC thermal spacesuits aren’t really built to let people run in them for long though. The air fans just don’t keep up when you’re breathing that much. So we stopped.
My next tip for keeping up hope is to talk about your plans. Trip told me to plan out a route for us earlier when we were driving and I went over what I had: Where we’re going to go when the Rover starts again. After this she’s been very reassured. I will be including the plans in the appendixes part of this book. That way you can be inspired by our plans. Knowing that we made it will make you feel better about your own plans.
That’s another way to keep up hope. Remember that other people have also tried things and either it’s gone well or you can learn from them. Explorers like us can’t always rely on that though as we are out where no one has ever been before. It’s better to try and think more about them overcoming challenges in general in those cases.
In our case I told Trip about something I read last week about an old man who climbed the highest mountain on earth. It was pretty funny because on earth they can climb mountains without oxygen if they’re crazy, be we never will.
The final way I can think of is that should remember why you want to be there. If life is a daydream then you should stay dreaming.
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