i dreamt i had to go 'a mars

afternoon of 12/18/2008

I was having Saturday brunch by myself in Burton-Judson when R------ R--- stopped by the Michelson table. After some small talk he reached into his bag and pulled out a larger-than-usual, hideously colorful plush microbe. It had a big disoriented grin and orange and green yarn cilia all over the place.
"So, if you can just give me like $5 whenever you have a chance, we're good," he said.
"What?!" I asked.
He sighed, exasperated. "Look, apparently it's some kind of tradition. You always buy the captain a microbe. Don't look at me."

I handed him a crumpled five and he headed out to the RI. I finished my pineapples and grapes, thinking about my inexplicable luck in the previous year; R------ and I, both physics majors working for the same PI, had been invited along on the massive (a crew of at least two or three dozen people, including several Chicago professors and a few of their group members) manned mission to Mars departing in a few months. I was working on some sort of SB/PhD where I didn't have to worry about the Physics GRE or an undergrad thesis; I'd overcome my exam panic and was entirely on top of my coursework and my research. It was snowing gently outside, the dining hall was warm and smelled wonderful, and I was going to a friend's apartment party that night. I don't think I could have been any happier as I threw on a jacket and a backpack and crossed the Midway towards the RI.

I put my backpack down in my office in LASR, and headed over to the huge open room where the Mars rover R&D was being done (I'd done a great deal of work on an important instrument one of them was carrying). Our PI (ostensibly S---- W----- but looking more like K---- B----) was up on a ladder, leaning his upper half into the aquarium-like tank containing my favorite rover.

"What's up, Kat?" asked W-----.
"Just here to work on my poster," I said. "What's wrong with the rover?"
He flipped a hold-button-esque switch on the machine's back and straightened up.
"Well, you know about the dust storms?" he asked, rhetorically. "It could change, but they're enough to stall out our engines and they're hard enough to predict in advance that as of right now the plan is we reach Mars orbit and then take a vote amongst the crew as to whether we try to land or not."
I nodded. He climbed down from the ladder and lowered his voice to a grave whisper.
"When we take the vote," he said slowly, "everyone on the ship votes. That includes the robots. You cannot tell them, though, that we don't count their votes."

He paused for a moment, then gestured dismissively at another tank in the room. "Except that one," he added. "He photosynthesizes, so it's almost like he's alive."