144th Entry

March 26^th, 2037

1510

Dear Space Diary

Little weirded out. NASA was… helpful? And even stranger, polite.

Clearly, they’re up to something.

I’ve got to talk to the Marys.

1540

The Marys were dismissive of my concerns. I’m slightly hurt. Well, not really, but I definitely made it sound like that in order to win the argument. Underhanded I know. I do regret it, if only because it didn’t work.

Anyway, they were of the (I guess understandable) opinion that getting home was the highest priority. Therefore my objections were demolished with the following arguments:

a) NASA is not inherently evil, although the person running our mission quite possibly is.

b) While the person running our mission might be evil, it doesn’t mean they want us dead.

c) Even if the person running our mission is evil, and does want us dead, that’s a problem to tackle later. Such as when we’re on the comfort of Earth, for example, and not trapped in a spaceship with little to no hope of rescue, apart from aforementioned potential evil person in points a, b, and c.

d) They outnumber me and therefore they win by default. Yay for democracy.

It’s hard to argue with all of the above. Particularly D.

But I remain concerned. NASA being bright and bubbly is a bit of a dramatic shift and it makes me wonder what they’re hiding. It sounded pretty artificial.

1553

Also, I never told them Mary 3.0 threatened to punch me. How did they know about that?

I’ll send them the info, I guess. The Mary’s are right, we can cross that bridge when we come to it. On Earth. And if they can fix the engines, and they do fix the engines… Well there’s not really an if. If they don’t, we get back to Earth in 30 years and can retire.

But I’d like to live a little first.

1557

Alrighty, let’s go through this questionnaire.

SPACESHIP (WARRANTY) REPAIR REQUEST

Hmm. Good start. I’m sure as hell not paying for this. Although I am apparently fabulously wealthy now.

Ooh, I’d forgotten about that. I should probably buy a yacht or something. Rich people do that.

Enough distraction, back to the questions. I’ll just go as many as I can, and then go see Mary for the technical bits.

WHEN DID THE PROBLEM FIRST OCCUR?

Yesterday.

Easy.

WHAT STEPS DID YOU TAKE TO RESOLVE THE ISSUE?

Um… Insufficient information available to perform additional technical support.

There, that sounds nice and professional.

DID YOU TRY RESTARTING THE MAIN COMPUTER? (WARNING – RESTARTING MAIN COMPUTER COULD DISABLE LIFE SUPPORT, CAUSING SUB-ZERO TEMPERATURES, LACK OF OXYGEN, AND MEDIUM TO EXTREME DEATH.)

…No.

These questions are easy. Might not even need Mary at all.

PLEASE CALCULATE THE THRUST TO VELOCITY RATIO FOR THE LAST 36 HOURS, ENSURING TO FACTOR IN ALL RELEVANT LOCAL GRAVITY FIELDS TO 19 DECIMAL PLACES (OR MORE), THEN DIVIDE BY WEIGHT OF CRAFT AND ENGINE STAR POWER LEVELS (DELIVERED, NOT PROJECTED ).

…Mary?