One Day Earlier...

Hearing the SatCon chime from his phone, Mitch could only assume that the daily update from Watney had arrived. Switching his armload of files to one hand, he used the other one to fish the device from his pocket. Then, he awkwardly one-handedly opened the update file, as he strode along in the covered walkway that ran alongside Building A.

ON COURSE FOR SOL 497 ARR, Watney had written in Morse, with SatCon translating for him. The second line, though, made Mitch stop dead in his tracks. Someone bumped into him from behind. A file folder full of SOPs went flying, and he nearly dropped his phone. HI MINDY, Watney had added. He stared at it, mutely, for several seconds.

What the literal fuck, Watney?

Mitch had become, unfortunately, re-familiarized with Morse code over the last year, and he knew enough of it that a quick glance at the reference image was assurance enough that this wasn't SatCon's idea of a joke.

Watney had actually written it out, in rocks. HI MINDY.

And then, unbidden, a faint memory suddenly came back to Mitch. Long-forgotten, it suddenly emerged from the mists as Mitch stood there, stock still, staring at the images.

Ten minutes later, Mitch was poring over archived outbound data packets from nearly two years ago, when Annie Montrose had barged into his office without even knocking, eyes wide and arms akimbo. She looked agitated. Well, more agitated than was usual, Mitch amended, absentmindedly.

He preemptively shushed her, shaking his head and pointing at his screen. He'd found it. It had been a whitelisted personal message for Lewis, written a week after the surface mission was scrubbed.

Commander Lewis,

When we were going through Mark's things, Richard and I noticed this picture, which I have scanned and enclosed. Can you help us to identify her? Her name and contact info would be much appreciated.

Caroline Watney

"I knew she looked familiar," Mitch muttered, as the newly-decompressed attached image file came on screen.

It was a black and white snapshot of Mark Watney and Mindy Park together, arms around each other, eyes locked together, smiling.

"Are you shitting me?" Annie mumbled, as they both fell silent and started counting backwards from nine.

"She was at the funeral," Mitch said, thinking aloud. "That's where I saw her again, and…" he trailed off. She'd been talking with Watney's parents. Of course.

Annie shook her head, briskly, as she tried to reorder her thoughts around this new revelation.

Mitch's phone buzzed; it was Sanders.

"Didn't take him long to connect the dots," Annie quipped.

"Of course," Mitch replied, into the receiver, "Yes, Montrose and I will be on our way, in just a…" he trailed off, as his cellphone buzzed again with a message and new image attachments. "That's Venk. Yeah-"

Sanders had already hung up, though.

Mitch felt his chest constrict, as he viewed the newest round of images.

Watney had decided, apparently, that their workday hadn't been exciting enough, and he'd managed to flip the rovers as he drove into Schiaparelli.

"Well, I, for one, had no idea you were such an old softie, Teddy," Mitch teased Sanders, as his boss glowered and Annie smirked. Sanders still hadn't forgiven him for the Rich Purnell maneuver debacle. But he had, at least in public, supported the extended mission. And he'd never let on, not to anyone, that he knew Mitch had been the insubordinate bastard that had forced his hand on the matter.

Teddy had, however, put forward his theory that Mindy Park herself had beaten him to Chicago, to tell Watney's parents before he had, on the day that they'd discovered him to be alive.

It was hard for any of them to imagine the shy and non-combative Miss Park doing any such thing. But the second rental car in their driveway hadn't gone unnoticed by Teddy; neither had the fact that the Watneys had already seemed familiar with the images he'd shown them that day. He just hadn't known who the culprit was, until now.

They had to agree that Mindy must have told them; not that Teddy was particularly angry about the impropriety. No doubt she'd smoothed the way for him. It had to have been easier for Watney's parents to have heard it from her first.

The past few days had been a rollercoaster, Mitch thought. But as of a few hours ago, Watney had righted the trailer, reconnected it to the other rover, and was now continuing his journey towards the MAV, albeit at a severely reduced speed.

This was probably due to an abundance of caution as Watney continued to make his way down the sloped side of the crater, and hopefully not due to mechanical problems.

"Well, okay then, we'll run this by Bob, then?" Venkat said. Kapoor had, apparently, channeled his inner Watney and presented his rather offbeat idea to the other department heads for approval.

"Not yet," Annie countered. "We'll have to touch base with Shields, first, right?" She looked at Mitch. "But I think we're all in agreement?"

Sanders found the entire situation hilarious; of course he was in.

NASA's High Council nodded their affirmative.

And with that, Project Elrond 2.0 had been given the greenlight.