Mission Day 2
"What's for breakfast?" Beck asked as he bounded into the Rec, ducking his head.
Mark shrugged, shoulders slumped as he leaned over the table. Martinez was looking none-too-enthusiastic, either, as he shuffled in, carefully pulling himself to a seated position.
"Watney? You guys feeling okay?" Beck looked concerned.
"Didn't sleep much," Mark muttered.
"Man, is the light gravity in here making you queasy, too?" Rick grabbed the edge of the table with both hands, grinning sheepishly. "My stomach doesn't know which end is up."
Mark nodded in agreement, looking pale.
"Think I'll try again at lunch," he said, pushing away from the table, catching himself mid air at the unaccustomed motion.
"Space nausea," noted Beck.
Thank you, Captain Obvious, Mark thought, too miserable to even give voice to his sarcasm, for a change.
"It's to be expected. Seems like there's always one or two per Ares crew." Beck tried to sound reassuring.
"It's weird, I barely even noticed any effects when we were still in orbit." Rick stood up, and awkwardly grabbed at the doorway for balance. The Rec had only a minimal .2G, just enough to keep them seated, but it was awfully easy to hit one's head on the low ceilings.
Getting around in .2G was new to all of them; the previous two Ares crews had needed a few days to acclimate, as well. Not a skill that was easily practiced anywhere except here on Hermes, after all.
"Well, don't go too long without eating," Beck warned. "Make sure you're drinking enough water, okay?"
Doctor Bossy-Beck.
Mark nodded anyway, as Beck passed him a water bottle. He opened the valve and had a sip. The water on Hermes tasted gross, he thought. Flat and lifeless, as though it had been processed with multiple passes through a reverse-osmosis filter, which indeed, it had.
"At least it looks like we've got some different meal packs in here, to pick from, for lunch," Johanssen noted, from where she hovered near the coffeemaker, as she flipped through the galley cabinet drawers. "Never seen this kind before." She held up a Mandarin Sesame Chicken packet for inspection, and went back to ruffling through the drawer.
Watney grimaced.
"Different does not, in this case, sound like an improvement," he noted, dryly.
"Here you go," Johanssen seemed to find what she'd been looking for, and passed a different foil packet down to Beck. "Breakfast of champions."
Beck took it, looked at it, and broke out into a grin. He looked back at her, as the two of them apparently shared a private in-joke where the punchline was Oatmeal with Apples.
Watney rolled his eyes. Who did they think they were kidding.
Beck added the hot water to his breakfast pack and sat down, just as Mark stood up.
"Alright, off to finish my prep work for the lab," he said, heading for the door, ever-so-slightly shakily.
"Come talk to me, though, if that nausea doesn't let up," Beck reminded them all, "I packed some dramamine just in case, no worries." He gave Mark a sympathetic smile.
"Thanks but no thanks," Mark grinned, "Not going to barf or anything. I'll be fine."
Mark finished throwing up, noisily, into the collection bag, again, as his head spun and his stomach twisted and heaved.
Space sickness. It fucking figures, he thought.
He'd logged plenty of days of microgravity in low Earth orbit and never had anything worse than a headache, for fuck's sake. And now, nothing had stayed down all day, not even water, though he kept drinking more of it anyway to try and stay hydrated. He felt awful. Shaky and weak. All he wanted to do was lay down, stay perfectly still, and just wait for it to stop.
Apparently, the differing levels of gravity aboard Hermes in motion were going to take some getting used to. The ladders between the different decks, in particular, were kind of a death trap, he thought, if you were even the least bit dizzy.
He'd been awake half the night, of course, with the stupid cosmic ray light flashes dancing across his retinas. That was annoying. But not as annoying as the pervasive nausea that had reared its ugly head as soon as he'd gotten up.
It showed no signs of letting up, anytime soon, either; personal time today was definitely going to consist of him huddled in his room. Maybe he would try for a nap. He was exhausted.
Misery, in this case, definitely preferred the privacy of its own bunk.
Houston
The new Hermes-related website really was pretty cool, Mindy thought, as she clicked through all of the different menus. It even had a timer in one corner, showing how long Hermes would take to reach Mars orbit, how fast it was travelling as it continually accelerated, and what the different astronauts would be working on, depending on what part of the Mission Day it was.
Watney's schedule just happened to be the most interesting of any of the Ares III crew, she thought, that's why she kept going back to look at it multiple times.
And anyway, she was a NASA employee, too; the least she could do was check out the Ares Program website occasionally, in support of the flagship program that supported all of their jobs, practically.
Her lunch break would be over in fifteen minutes; another cup of coffee would be nice, she thought. She made the quick trek to the break room to refill, and helped herself to an apple on the way back, to munch on while she checked her mail.
Another email from her mother. She hadn't heard from Mindy in over a week, oh dear. Le sigh. She'd better go ahead and make herself a reminder to call her tonight, before the situation had a chance to escalate. Her mother could make an international incident out of practically anything, but she particularly hated having to remind Mindy to call.
Mindy didn't particularly want to talk to her, mostly because she knew that the topic du jour was guaranteed to be When Are You Coming To Visit and she wasn't likely to be satisfied with anything other than Mindy's promise to be home for the holidays, if not sooner.
She just didn't see it happening. She was too busy with work, trying to look good for the new job opening, and airline tickets were at their most expensive, that time of the year, and yeah… the truth was that a visit to her mother had become so unpleasant over the past few years that she just wanted to avoid it, whenever possible.
After all, When Are You Coming To Visit, Mindy thought wryly, was merely a preamble to her mother's second favorite topic of conversation; namely, Why Are You Not Married, followed by All My Friends Have Grandkids Already. Just about the only enjoyable thing about a visit to her mother's was the food, but more often than not, if she indulged, she'd get a round of Shouldn't You Be Watching Your Figure?
Ugh. She needed a good avoidance excuse. A really good one, something that would get her off the hook. Maybe something she could use as an excuse more than once. Hmm.
She thought for a minute, staring blankly at the screen.
A puppy! She'd go by the animal shelter and pick out a dog! Then she could say that she had nobody to watch the dog. No travelling for her! So sorry, maybe next year, she could tell her mother. Perfect!
But then she'd be locked into taking care of a dog. And she didn't even like dogs.
Scratch that, she thought.
What would make a better excuse than a dog, she wondered, idly.
And then it hit her, out of nowhere.
She could buy a house.
Yes! A sweet little two- or three-bedroom, with a peaked roof and one of those silly wrought-iron stars in front that Texans seemed to be so fond of. She had no idea what those things were about, but she'd always liked them anyway.
Real estate was a pretty good investment these days; any number of her coworkers were becoming homeowners. She had good credit, a decent income. What was she waiting for, anyway? A girl didn't have to have a husband to have a house!
A whole house, she mused, smiling, to decorate just the way she wanted. Just the way she liked.
What if…?
And oh, this idea just kept getting better.
She'd build a house!
She could afford it, if she scrimped a little bit. She'd seen the billboards from the highway on her way to work, for a builder, advertising new brick homes. A plane ticket to Florida would certainly be out of the question after she coughed up the down-payment for one of those, she grinned.
If she had her own house, she could just toss the annual visit squarely back into her mother's court! Oh, I'm so sorry Mom, I just can't. I'm hosting Christmas dinner here, though, if you'd like to fly out? As if! The chances of that happening were statistically zero. She'd be able to avoid her for years on end!
Giggling like a loon, she typed in the web address for the builder from the billboard and clicked on a map to see which neighborhoods they were building in, currently. They had any number of subdivisions to choose from, located all over Greater Houston, everywhere from Galveston to The Woodlands.
Holy shit, and there it was! There was one neighborhood, right there, that was so close to JSC that her morning commute would be ten minutes, if even that. The starting prices for the homes didn't even make her flinch. Mindy tried to imagine her life, minus the hassles of Houston rush-hour traffic. Yes. Yes, a thousand times yes. The floor plans looked interesting, too. They had an adorable little three-bedroom blueprint with, she blinked, walk-in closets in every bedroom. Hells, yes.
Mindy made the spur-of-the-moment decision to drop by there, after work, and take a look.