Interview

"Welcome back to Today on NBC, I'm Stefani Germanotta." The camera widened to show Mark and Mindy sitting on the couch with Miss Germanotta, Mindy gently cradling a nine month old Ares. "Our guests this morning are the Watney family." She turned to Mark and Mindy. Ares bounced in his mother's lap and held out his hands toward Stefanie.

"He just loves you," Mindy said as she handed Ares to her.

"I'm rather fond of him," Stefanie said as she sat Ares on her knee. "Well, Mark you've been on a whirlwind tour of the powerful and influential the last few weeks, are you happy to be home?"

Mark chuckled and smiled. "Well, New York ain't home, but yeah. I hate being away from Mindy and Ares, though what I've been accomplishing is worth it."

"Your meeting went well with the Pope, The Dali Lama, and their friends?"

Mark nodded. "I wanted them all in the same room so I could try to convince them that they have to work together, that the never-ending violence in the name of religion has to stop."

"Good luck with that," Stefanie said snidely.

"I understand your skepticism," Mark said. "But we made real progress." He sat back looking thoughtful. "Just the pictures of the twenty of us together are doing a lot."

"The Pope and the Imams seemed to have made a real friendship," Stefanie said.

"They found that they are more alike than different," Mark said. "I told them when you are absolutely alone, fifty million miles from home, all this political and religious bullshit… sorry but that's the word I used, and it's just that, bullshit. I told them it makes no fu… sense. I used that word too. I was relatively blunt. Well, I took them for a walk in the desert." He snorted. "I have to pat myself on the back for choosing Alice Springs. Hotter than hell, desolate, perfect. We drove them out to Uluru, Ayers Rock, and then a few miles further out into the desert. I got them out of the bus, handed them a little walking stick with a seat attached." He chuckled. "They're very cool, apparently they sell a lot of them in Alice Springs. Anyway, I told them to walk off a thousand steps, each in a different direction. We had a portable air horn, and I told them I'd give them an hour to meditate on what we talked about. So I waited an hour and a half." He winked at Stefanie. "'Cause I'm like that, and I set off the horn. Just that ninety minutes changed them."

Stefanie leaned forward while bouncing Ares on her knee. "How?" she asked.

"I had told them about an average day for me on Mars," Mark said. "I told them that I would go out into the Martian wilderness and just be. Just to look around and marvel at the fact I was alive in the middle of this desolate, spectacular beauty was a very spiritual experience."

He smiled. "A couple of the evangelicals were a little freaked out when they returned, and the Dali Lama thought that was hilarious. We had dinner and talked about what they had learned." He sat back and smiled. "They got my point, all of them."

"You and Mindy don't talk about religion in public," Stefanie said. "What would you like to say about that?"

"We have very similar beliefs," Mark said and shared a smile with his wife. "Neither of us was raised in a particularly religious house, and that has been a great blessing." he smirked at the irony of his statement. "Speaking for myself, I found that in the midst of my monastic existence on Mars I came to realize that I didn't believe in an active god, but that I did believe there is purpose and direction in the universe. I believe that we have a potential, and that the worst 'sin' is to not use, not live up to that potential. If there is a god then it's the prime mover, the force that tipped the domino that was the Big Bang." He smiled. "My friend, the director of Mars Operations Venkat Kapoor, says he thinks we are the experiential nature of the divine."

Mark looked at the camera with the red light. "If he's right, if that thing we like to call the soul is our little piece of god, that the thing that set all this in motion resides in all of us, then it behooves us to act like it." He held up his hands. "Look, look at my hands, look at yours. These are the hands of god." He pointed to his eyes. "These are the eyes of god, looking back at you in the mirror, and in the face of a stranger." He pointed to his ears. "And these ears are the ears of god, and they hear all." He tapped his chest. "And this, this is the will of god. You know when you're doing the right thing. It's just so obvious, so listen to that voice of the divine inside you, and do the right thing. It can be hard, but in the end it's what makes us human."

Mindy smiled and kissed his cheek while Stefanie just stared.

Wow," She said in stunned admiration. "Tell me you said that to them."

"Word for word."

Stefanie smiled and patted Marks hand. "Okay, well, we'll be right back with Mindy, and see what she's doing."

The program cut away to a commercial for the latest offering in Tesla's fully solar powered sports car line. While they were in the break Mark took fussing Ares from Stefanie and began pacing around the studio with him. He showed his son the cameras and their operators, the sound man and his helper, and the floor director. A thin blonde woman of about twenty-five, the floor director smiled and cupped Ares' cheek before announcing, "Thirty." Mark walked back to the couch and sat as she counted them down.

"And we're back with Mark, Mindy, and Ares Watney," Stefanie said. She turned to Mindy. "So, we know what Mark's been up to. Besides the huge job of being a mother I understand you're back in the Guidance chair in Mission Control."

Mindy nodded. "Yeah, NASA has been at the forefront of integrating family and our highly demanding profession since before I was born. They worked with us," she said. "Mark is essentially part time. His classes only really take four hours a day so he takes care of Ares most of the time."

"I understand our young man here is a frequent visitor in Mission Control," Stefanie said while reaching across Mindy and smoothing Ares' hair.

Mindy smiled and blushed a little. "He spends a few hours a day in a bassinette next to the console," she said. "The team kind of demanded it."

"Demanded it?" Stefanie asked.

Mindy chuckled. "Um, well I once told a friend that I work in a building full of forty year old virgins, and that's not far from the truth, but what I didn't realize is that I'm also in with a bunch of frustrated parents." She turned to the camera. "So, all you folks out there that have been… less than well treated by the opposite sex, date a geek, date a nerd. I personally guarantee you won't regret it." She smiled and Mark. "Really."

Stefanie giggled. "And when you're not trying to hook up your coworkers?"

Mark laughed and Mindy playfully slapped his arm when he whispered, "Yenta."

"I've been managing the foundry systems during Brendon's off shifts, and directing guidance on the Hermes and the Lasso craft when needed," she said.

"And Elon Musk?"

"Elon and I have been finalizing the launch plans for Foundry Two and its service garage. We missed Hohmann for this time, so were thinking of a retrograde approach. Rather than launch at Mars for a close approach arrival we're aiming to have the foundry and garage arrive while Mars is in Conjunction or close to it."

"I've learned a little about this at dinner with you two," Stefanie said. "Isn't that the long way around?"

Mindy smiled. "Ah, but you forget Rich!" she said "Our astrodynamicist has got that covered. We're thinking of launching April to early March, and using Venus as a gravity assist. It results in a great saving in fuel usage to get to Mars, and that will let us have enough fuel to slow the spacecraft when we arrive at Mars. Elon really wants the foundry in operation when he gets there."

"What?" Stefanie said in surprise.

"Opps," Mindy said, and looked at the camera. "Sorry, Elon." She turned back to Stefanie. "Elon is hoping to go during the January February Hohmann of forty-six on his Dragon Twenty craft. I think he and his team have it ready."

"Will he be selling seats?" Stefanie asked.

"Yes, and they're sold already," Mindy said with a laugh. "Sorry, Steff. Maybe next time."

"Damn," Stefanie whispered, and Mark laughed.

"Well when he does get there he'll have plenty to do," Mindy said. "The new foundry will make triangles that fit together to become hexagons for geodesic domes. We're hoping for a real settlement when the Kore starts taking colonists in Mach of forty-eight."

How is the construction of the Kore going?" Stefanie asked.

Mark leaned in. "It's ahead of schedule by about a month. The fitting of the inner and outer hull segments went a lot faster than the very conservative estimate from JPL suggested. She's nearly a pressure vessel now. In about five months we'll be filling her with air and water."

"And that will come from the captured comet HB2031B?"

"Yes," Mindy said. "Rich and the comet capture team did a spectacular job. We'll be beginning deceleration into earth orbit in a few days. It'll be another four months before it's parked off the Malaysian Space Dock, but then the processors can start making air and water from it. " She chuckled. "The Lasso mission is one of the cheapest things NASA has ever done. Ten million for the spacecraft and fifteen for the launch, and it proves Rich's plan for Mars too."

Stefanie smiled. "We're really going to do it." It wasn't a question.

Mark nodded. "Yeah, Steff," he said. "We're really going to do it. We can sit here fat dumb and happy, or we can do what we're… destined to do. Mars will be our second home, but just our second, and definitely not our last stop. We need to fill the system with humanity. We need to explore the outer reaches, and we need to send probes to the nearest stars."

"You sound like Annie," Stefanie said.

Mindy laughed. "No, Annie sounds like Mark," she said. "He's a little outspoken on this subject."

Stefanie nodded. "I know," she said. "And, there's one more thing I know that our viewers don't, care to let them in on it?"

Mindy smirked. "What, oh, you mean that our second child is due in October?"

A murmur of chirped cheers ran through the studio as the normally quiet and professional television crew reacted.

In the green room a woman gaped at the screen. "That bitch!" Hannah said into her phone with a grin. "She kept it from us, successfully!"

"She is very smart and crafty, our Mindy, non, Andrew?" Janice said, standing in the conference room addressing the speaker phone on the table and the other occupant of the room.

Andrew chuckled. "Oui, Miss Perrin," he said. "Almost as smart as you are."

(*)

Twenty million miles from the earth small thrusters fired on one of the four landers attached to comet HB2031B. The gentle trust rotated the comet on it Y axis until the main engine lander was almost pointing at the Earth. Other thrusters fired on the main engine lander and the Y axis lander, halting the comets rotation. With sporadic pulses from all four landers the comet stabilized with the main engine pointed exactly in the direction the comet was traveling. Its current course and velocity would have it flying by the earth, missing it hundreds of thousands of miles.

The main engine fired. A VASMIR Five, the main engine produced two thousand newtons of force, and it began the gradual slowing of the seven hundred by five hundred foot snowball. As it slowed, the Earth's gravity would overcome the comets decreasing momentum, and it would fall into orbit. More adjustments would gradually bring it alongside the space dock.

A fleet of small, robotic craft would then traverse the two miles from the dock to the comet and begin mining the frozen gasses and water for use in the Kore. When the Kore was filled the remainder of the comet would supply the space dock with gasses and water for several years.

A few million miles in a completely different direction the Hermes approached Mars. She was coming back again to deliver a crew of scientists and explorers, and four of them would stay, building structures that would stand on Mars for millennia. Far in humanities future, when they were flung across the vast cosmos, the glass houses of Mars would be almost sacred sites. Preserved in their entirety, they would be left as evidence of mankind's limitless drive and imagination, and a testament to its will.