“All of these analogue environments have given us good information on the kinds of psychological factors that participants encounter in long-duration missions,” says Luke as the screen behind him begins to fill with bullet points.
Sergei is skeptical about this data. He respects research, but he himself fills out self-reports in as minimal and neutral a way as possible, and pretty much all the other cosmonauts and astronauts he knows do the same, so these books of data Luke is talking about will have been provided from the handful of people who are willing to chat about problems, and the person who is willing to chat about problems is always the person with the most problems, the person that everybody else on the team thought was a pain. If, preparatory to the Arctic experience, idiot Paul had been given a test to evaluate whether or not he would’ve left the rifle in the truck, he might very well have passed the test. Was there anything in Paul’s profile that indicated he would start fucking Jacqueline, and be jealous of Tim, and so leave his rifle in the truck when he thought Jacqueline was hurt?
“. . . and so we can identify seven major factors for psychological stressors in the kind of long-duration mission we will be facing with MarsNOW,” Luke is saying. “Increasing distance from rescue in case of emergency. Proximity to unknown or little-understood phenomena. Reliance on a limited and contained environment where a breach of seal means death. Greater difficulties in communicating with Ground. Decreased availability of technological advice from Ground. Diminishing available resources needed for life and the enjoyment of life.”
Sergei does appreciate how Prime is thinking seriously about these things. And, to be fair, they knew something about crew selection because look at himself and Yoshi and Helen. Could not ask for better. Yoshi and Helen would not leave the rifle in the truck.
“And all of this good information,” Luke says, “pretty much falls apart when we turn to sending three people to Mars.”
The list on the screen dissolves and is replaced with a GIF of an old sci-fi horror movie: three absurdly dressed astronauts covered in lurid green slime, with What is happening? in text below them.
This gets a laugh from the room. Sergei smiles. For the first time, Luke looks directly at him. Sergei decides that he will respect Luke. This is not the same thing as saying that he will trust him.
“I exaggerate.” Luke holds up his hand. “But three is a very tricky number for group data in general, and Mars has a lot of X factors. Happily, we have a solution.” The GIF is replaced by an image of the Eidolon simulators sitting in a valley of the San Rafael Swell. A small cheer goes around the room.
“Mostly the solution lies in us finding the right questions to ask,” Luke continues. “Not finding the individual with the right stuff, but finding the group of individuals that will combine to form the right stuff. Not asking them to deal with the environment we have created for them, but creating the right environment for them to deal with whatever they encounter. Eidolon is the next evolution in the analogue environment. The only thing more realistic than Eidolon will be the real voyage. In many cases, the two are going to be practically indistinguishable.”
Luke fiddles with his computer and backtracks to a discussion of Mars analogue simulations comparable (though inferior) to Eidolon. Sergei, who has read this data before, begins typing a message to his sons.
Talia is coming to Utah with the boys, but without Alexander. Sergei wonders if she will agree to have sex with him, if he asks in the right way. That part of their relationship had always been quite fine, and she is a generous woman. He will know when he sees her. He can always tell.
He would like to talk seriously with Dmitri about things. Words, though. You could be the father (or Father) that talks and talks and nobody believes anyway, or you could be the father that shows. It is better to be the father that shows, so that is what he will do.
MIREILLE, DMITRI, MADOKA, LUKE
Mireille thinks about hurling the plate of food in front of her. I am going to throw this plate right at the wall and then jump on a table and just start screaming.
But she has handled it all so well. She has been the incredibly supportive, funny, charming, lovely daughter. No other family member has performed so admirably in the past two weeks. The Russian boys are handsome, but the older one is snobbish and the younger one doesn’t give a shit, and they are both a little rude. Yoshihiro’s wife, Madoka, lacks charisma and most of the time has a sort of fixed-stare niceness like someone who has been forced into a beauty pageant at gunpoint. The little Japanese parents are adorable but shy, and the Russian wife is ex-wife, and only there as chaperone to the boys. Mireille is clobbering the competition.
Mireille tells herself that she needs to stop drinking wine; her alcohol-induced merriment is both masking and exacerbating her unhappiness, and having wrung as much mileage as she could out of being wonderful, she might now (accidentally) see what kind of numbers she could run up on being difficult.