Interstellar → Chris Beck

S O L 2 5 9

STRESS—THE UGLY six letter word that Maia seemed to know much better than anyone. She knew being an astronaut had its fair share of stressful occurrences, but most of it was normally temporary.

For Maia, however, it appeared as if her stress had come to grow permanent. Since learning of Mark's status on Mars, and since picking up the supply probe during their very brief stop at Earth, Maia's stress level had spiked tremendously. She wasn't sure why that was; all she knew was that she had never felt so horrible in her life, and she had been working her ass off to keep the fact of it from the rest of her crew-mates. There was a numerous amount of assignments that needed to be completed in order to keep the Hermes functioning properly throughout the duration of the mission, and Maia couldn't afford to allow her stress to distract her.

Maia had several theories as to why she was so stressed out. One of those theories had everything to do with Mark. She was terrified—absolutely terrified that their trip back to Mars would be done in vain. She'd been informed multiple times that Mark had all of the essentials needed to survive until the Ares III crew arrived back at Mars, but Maia couldn't help but be a bit pessimistic. There were so many things that could potentially go wrong—so many things that could take Mark away from her again. She didn't want to wake up one day to the news that Mark had perished, especially knowing it wouldn't be a mistake that go around. She just hoped she wouldn't have to deal with that pain again. The mere thought of it happening made Maia want to jump out of an airlock without a suit on.

Other factors Maia believed contributed to her stress were the assignments she needed to complete. It was her job to make sure the mechanisms of the Hermes remained in order, considering the fact that the spacecraft was functioning far past what it was intended. After every mission, all of the systematic functions of the Hermes were usually updated or replaced, but considering their mission was being prolonged an additional 533 days, it was nearly impossible to tend to the systems the way NASA would after an Ares mission had concluded. Maia was the system engineer, and with Mark gone she also held the title of mechanical engineer. This meant she had a lot more to do in her department than the rest of her crew-mates.

Maia continued twisting the screwdriver she held in her hand. Her focus was on nothing else but the contraption in front of her, though she wished that weren't the case. She'd been on her way to the gym for a workout session when Commander Lewis had stopped her and informed her that Martinez had once again broken the coffee machine. Maia was less than pleased with the fact of it. She'd finished an entire day worth of Hermes system checkups and updates, only now she was being forced to deal with yet another one of Martinez's very idiotic slip ups. She was definitely banning him from ever using the coffee machine again.

Maia shifted in her seat, sending a very dull pain shooting through her upper abdomen. Her face contorted slightly, though she didn't linger on the pain too long. She had been dealing with it for the past several weeks, along with quite a few throbbing headaches, but she figured it was just because of the stress. She figured everything going on with her and around her was because of the stress. It would explain quite a lot to her if that were the case.

About five minutes later, Maia had finally finished her work on the coffee machine. She sat the machine upright and began tinkering with it. NASA was very specific about the technology their astronauts used, so just about everything on board the Hermes required a password of sorts from the Ares crew members. It was very convenient, especially when it came to food and drinks. If the Ares crew members didn't have to manually enter their meal into a log, it was done electronically, not only for NASA's knowledge, but for Beck's as well. As the crew medical officer, it was Beck's job to keep track of his crew-mates's health, and the electronic logs helped him do just that. There was just one log he wouldn't be receiving anymore, and that was Martinez's caffeine intake log.