Interstellar → Chris Beck

F A R E W E L L

MARK WATNEY STOOD with his attention plastered onto a small piece of paper holding instructions. It had become his task—thanks to NASA—to provide the world with introductions of his fellow crew-mates, as well as provide them with a tour of the Hermes, the spaceship in which the Ares III crew would take residency for the next 150 days before finally arriving on Mars.

"I don't even know what language that is," Mark muttered to himself, flipping the small paper over in his hands. "Is that Armenian? Ah, fuck me."

Mark folded the paper up and placed it back inside the black box it had come in. He pulled out the camera and began tinkering with it, not even bothering to pull out the instruction paper again. It had annoyed him and he didn't exactly have the time to deal with something he believed to be so irrelevant. He would have to make do without it. If worse came to worse, he was a mechanical engineer; he could locate the device problem and correct it without too many complications.

"Okay," Mark said cheerfully as he finally managed to get the camera working. "Hi, kids! Uh, this is Mark Watney—astronaut. We're about six hours before our launch here on the Hermes, and I've been asked by the good folks at NASA to introduce you to some of our crew mates here, which I'm happy to do. So. . .uh. . .hello, Earthlings. Mark Watney here. I'm your personal guide on this tour of the Hermes."

Mark removed the camera from where he had placed it on its stand and began his venture through the enormous ship in search of the six remaining Ares III crew members, only stopping occasionally to explain the contents of the many rooms he passed by.

Soon enough he located Martinez.

"This is Pilot Rick Martinez doing the pre-flight checks," Mark explained to the viewers as he slowly inched himself toward the man in the pilot's seat. "As you can see, he's using some pretty sophisticated math to get us to Mars. You got enough fingers there, Rick?"

Martinez chuckled and glanced up at Mark. "Nah, man. I'm just balancing my checkbook."

"Seriously, though, Rick," Mark followed. "How do we get there?"

Martinez looked up from his checkbook and peered out of the spacecraft window. "Well, you basically point the bird in that direction, wait a hundred and fifty days, and thirty six million miles later we should be at Mars."

Martinez paused and looked from his left over to his right and then back again. "No, wait—that's Uranus." He chuckled and pointed his finger to the right, "Okay, that's Mars."

Mark laughed in response to Martinez's witty remark and shook his head. "I'm out of here."

Next he would move on to find Commander Melissa Lewis, who sat at her desk working on a copious amount of paperwork.

"Hey!" Mark exclaimed happily, attracting the Commander's attention. "I'm here to bring the world crew introductions, so go on and. . .introduct."

Commander Lewis shook her head, a small laugh escaping her. "I'm Commander Melissa Lewis."

"Y'know, there's a big year ahead of us," Mark said. "Maybe you can tell us what inspired you to take it all on?"

"Uh, sure," she answered. "Laura Clark, Christa McAuliffe, and, of course, Eileen Collins."

"And you're not gonna get a better answer than that."

Mark would then move on to find Beth Johanssen and his younger sister, Maia Watney. Both sat in front of computer monitors, just as he expected. They were the crew's "computer nerds" and both shared the title of System Operator. NASA admired both of their work so much that having the two of them on the Ares III crew became a sort of necessity to the organization.