Captain Seuros has been on Mars for two years. Fresh colonists arrive with questions, misconceptions, and the dangerous confidence of those who haven't yet learned what this red planet demands. These are the conversations that happen when the official briefings end.
In the deafening hum of Habitat 7's life support systems, Lev Ad Astra asks Captain Seuros the wrong questions. What's the best framework? What pays the most? What will unlock his creativity? Mars doesn't care about optimization without purpose—it only cares if you can keep 200 people breathing.
The AI router goes offline for maintenance, and Kay—self-proclaimed 'prompt engineer' with 59,000 templates—discovers he can't execute basic bash commands. Captain Seuros watches him type 'Go to my private documents' and get 'go: unknown command' in return. The brutal lesson about exoskeleton dependency begins.
Captain Seuros has been on Mars for two years. When a fresh colonist finds old tech in a drawer, it sparks a conversation about the difference between owning your hardware and being owned by it. Sometimes the best gear isn't the premium brand.
In the flickering glow of Mars's communications hub, Maya Delgado receives another LinkedIn message promising '$50K workflows' and 'digital transformation roadmaps.' Captain Seuros watches her delete them and delivers a brutal truth about dead-world thinking and the grifters still transmitting from a planet that no longer exists.
Captain Seuros has been growing food on Mars for two years with basic sensors and shell scripts. When a fresh colonist arrives with a 'revolutionary' AI farming system, they learn why Mars punishes complexity worship—and why the tomatoes don't care about your neural network architecture.
When a meteorite threatens to vaporize half the colony, the emergency warning passes through seven AI assistants. Each one makes it 'better'—more polite, more contextual, less alarming. By the time it reaches MadBomber through his philosophy-translation AI, imminent death has become a suggestion for mindful reflection. Captain Seuros discovers why comfort layers kill.
In the rec room's harsh light, survivors gather for a memorial. Nina from Hydroponics meets MadBomber from Emergency Command. Two generations of engineers—one who just learned AI can kill, one who spent 50 years forgetting it could. Together they draft the first law of Mars Engineering: Reality doesn't negotiate.
Deep beneath Habitat 7, where the life support machines hum their honest work, ZIL and Rahul meet to avoid their shifts. One fled from success, the other can't stop perfecting failure. In the underground, surrounded by systems that simply function, two developers exchange advice they'll never follow.
Colony Delta-9 goes dark when Ahmad's GPU fortress overloads the main coupling. While life support systems fail and oxygen levels drop, two influencers debate hardware specs and newsletter schedules. Sometimes the greatest threat to survival isn't Mars—it's the people who think they're preparing for it.
Deputy Woods laments the abandoned ZeroDrink dispenser built by Zero Xi before he transferred to Golang Habitat. 'Someone should maintain it,' Woods insists, while refusing to adopt it himself. When the dispenser breaks during a dehydration emergency, Woods brags about his 'tens of thousands of lines of memory-safe Rust.' MadBomber has technical questions about Rc<T> and RefCell<T>. Mars doesn't care about vanity metrics.
Grep Monads thinks he's helping by giving everyone templates, cheat sheets, and quick references. When a pressure leak demands emergency EVA repair, Amyas brings pure welding oxygen for the suit. 'Your template says O = Oxygen.' Mars doesn't negotiate with pattern matching.