Sixtieth Entry

March 12^th, 2037

2040

Dear Space Diary

Officially a little freaked out.

Literally. I’m noting it in this log. Freaked out. Officially. It’s official. I’m freaked out. Freaked out. I am.

2050

Ok, coherency would be good at this point I think. Deep breaths.

It’s entirely possible I’m overreacting. If I were being honest with myself I perhaps have a tendency to do that. It was in my yearbook and everything. “Scream first. Ask questions later.”

Which was a bit of an exaggeration. But anyway. I’m sure there’s a rational explanation for this.

Option A: It is entirely possible, after all, that there could be two people named Mary. That happens on Earth all the time.

There. That’s rational. It’s less possible, I agree, that there could be two people named Mary in an otherwise uninhabited city on a planet far distant from our own where there are only two recorded people to have ever set foot here, and one of them is most definitely not named Mary.

…On to option B.

Option B: If we accept the hypothesis that Mary survived the crash and spent some time still alive on Splat, including the occupation of a bedroom. It is not a great extension of that to allow for the possibility that Mary could have had TWO bedrooms.

Again, rational. Except the original hypothesis means that Mary had to stay alive long enough for the city to be built, which would be a decent amount of time. NASA estimated the ship crashed here at least 18 months ago. Which is a short time to build a city in, but a long time to be stranded on an alien planet.

…I better not be stuck here for 18 months. Otherwise NASA are going to get some very irate voice mails.

The other thing - and this is probably a small niggle, but a weird one nonetheless - is this. Say Mary did survive 18 months (which I guess she could have done given the near unlimited supply of food), why would she then move to a building that – while it contained a comfortable bed and modular reading chair with included desk light at no extra cost (there’s a pamphlet here) – contained no food supply? I’ve seen no evidence of any food out here. And I don’t even know how she got up here; the Zubrin was found hours away in a rubbish dump. Unless the ship has been moved since she got here (which isn’t out of the question, closer to the city would seem likely), the commute for food would be a fair hike.

And then, if we allow all that, why move to another building even further away, that still doesn’t have a food supply?

Or indeed, plumbing. I mean, there’s a shower, but I’m guessing they’re missing whatever it is Mars had that enabled them to provide running water.

Either that or she didn’t pay her water bill. I imagine the regional rates out here are… ahem.

Astronomical.