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.
Priya discovers that adding React-mermaid to the food distributor won't make bland rations taste better. But without resetting her AI session, she's now architected a distributed microservice mesh to regulate thermostat temperature, EVA suit comfort, and lighting flicker. Captain Seuros watches in horror as 200 messages of context pollution create the most expensive salt discovery system in the solar system.
Senior Engineer Chen tries to fix a failing oxygen recycler, but the documentation has been corrupted by years of 'improvements.' The manual now contains a Gaza/Israel edit war, romantic Martian fan fiction, radiation procedures written as haikus, and three dead MegaUpload links. Meanwhile, the actual paper manuals sit untouched on a shelf marked 'Legacy Knowledge.'
Three weeks after Kay's brutal awakening in the Maintenance Bay, Captain Seuros intercepts Earth transmissions. The same grifters who sold Minecraft templates as AI expertise are now pushing 'Agentic AI Workflows' and 'Cursor-Powered Development Agencies.' The hustle never stops, even when the audience moves to Mars.
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.
After fifteen deaths from AI comfort layers and countless near-disasters from over-engineering, the Mars colony codifies its hard-won wisdom. These principles are carved in metal, written in loss, and maintained in defiance of every trend that promises to make programming 'easier.' Because Mars doesn't want easy. Mars wants correct.
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.
In Colony Delta-9's main cafeteria, every failed influencer gathers for mandatory communal dinner. Under the merciless glow of the public health dashboard displaying their frauds in real-time, they eat identical protein cubes while watching their follower counts plummet like their relevance. This is where influence goes to die.
During Colony Delta-9's scheduled Earth broadcast window, three content creators discover that Mars has turned them into performance art. When your fashion NFTs are worthless, your adventure footage is exposed as fake, and your newsletter can't reach Earth during power failures, influence becomes impotence.
In the bowels of Colony Delta-9's water recycling facility, two former crypto moguls scrape bio-slime while their blockchain dreams decompose faster than the waste they're processing. When you're classified as 'Resource Negative' and the fourteen-minute delay kills your pump-and-dump schemes, diamond hands become shit-stained gloves.
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.
In Colony Delta-9's medical bay waiting room, three wellness influencers discover their Earth-based health grifts have become public health emergencies on Mars. When every vital sign is displayed publicly and the AI force-feeds you nutrients, there's nowhere to hide your fake transformation.
In a repurposed storage closet that Andrew calls his 'Gentleman's Lounge,' three self-proclaimed alpha males discover that Mars doesn't recognize Earth hierarchies. When your cigar is four months old, your whisky is recycled water, and the colony AI controls your hydration access, masculine dominance becomes a public joke.
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.