Chapter Text
Mark sighed, reading through the day’s load of paperwork.
Honestly, he couldn’t really complain. Only mere weeks ago, he had been added to the Ares III crew, and yet it still felt like a dream.
He had spent months in the AsCan program, preparing himself for every possible outcome.
The program had been interesting to say the least. For the role of mission specialist, the program was crawling with mechanical engineers, but he alone was the only botanist.
Mark had managed to make some friends in the program. Being the only botanist, they had lumped him in with the chemists and geologists. He had studied a great deal of chemistry anyway for his doctorate.
When he wasn’t with that team, he was with the mechanical engineering team.
Over the months they all spent together, he had accumulated quite the group of friends.
The first day in the program, Mark had immediately hit it off with Karen Rhodes, the mechanical engineer selected for Ares I.
She was much older than him, and had essentially adopted him as her little brother.
The Watney family adored her, inviting her over for dinner once a month as soon as they graduated the AsCan program.
Other than Karen, the mechanical engineering group was very stiff. To get into the program on mechanical engineering alone was a difficult feat, and therefor they were very rigid and nervous.
Mark found them incredibly rude and boring, so he chose to stick with the chemistry division instead.
Nearly completely opposite to the mechanical engineering group, the chemistry group was pretty great. Officially, they were the natural sciences department of the AsCan program.
The natural science department was mostly chemists and biochemists, with a few geologists thrown in. Mark was the only botanist, and his friend Kyra Edwards was the only psychologist.
He and the rest of that department had been fast friends, especially Nguyen and Lawrence.
Nguyen, like Mark, was both part of the natural sciences group, and the mechanical engineering group. As such, they spent an unfortunate amount of time together, and decided to make the best of it.
With Lawrence on the other hand, they had simply just clicked. She shared his sense of humor, and the pair had once spent nearly three hours simply trading jokes back and forth.
Unfortunately for Mark, but fortunately for everyone else in the office, he was not sharing an office with any of the people he had befriended. Instead, he had been paired with a man named Chris Beck, part of the medical team.
“They put you with a medic to keep you out of trouble, Watney.” Molly had joked upon hearing of his assignment.
At this Mark had gasped, offended by the idea that a medic could prevent him from causing mischief. “I’ll have you know, it will take much more than some bossy doctor to keep me out of trouble.”
Surprisingly though, Mark did not run into his new cubical-mate for quite some time. Being part of the medical team ment he was away quite often, since their intensive training was at different intervals than the rest of the AsCan program.
It was six weeks after their cubical assignment that they finally did meet.
Mark was moving about his lab, a suspiciously green chemical mixture in one hand and a small plant in the other. Setting the plant down on the counter, he carefully added a few drops of water to the mixture in the test tube, sloshing it around to get the proper consistency. Once he was done with that, he poured the liquid in, and then placed the plant in the grow box he had set up only days prior.
He paused midway through shutting the door, feeling eyes on the back of his head.
Turning towards the door, he adjusted his safety glasses to place them on his head.
Standing in front of him, was a brunette man roughly his height. He had deep blue eyes, messy hair, and slight stubble on his chin. He smiled warmly at Mark, sticking out his right hand in greeting.
“I’m Chris Beck, and I’ll be your lab-mate”
Mark shook his hand vigorously, and the rest was history. From that moment on, the two had been practically inseparable; Chris attending the now famous Watney family dinners, and Mark occasionally visiting Chris’s home in Connecticut.
Chris was the closest in the entire AsCan program to Mark’s age, with Mark being 19 and Chris being nearly 21. Close ahead of him was Leah Andrews at 23 and Beth Johanssen at 25.
Chris was Mark’s first friend outside of his divisions, and had encouraged him to meet more new people. He had introduced him to his friend Laura Perez, as well as Rick Martinez. While Perez was in medical, Martinez was a pilot.
Apparently the two had met during Beck’s first (and only) tour as an ER surgeon, working at the hospital right off the base where Martinez was stationed.
Mark hit it off with Rick just as well, the three bonding into a devious trio.
“Oh lord, now there’s three of them.” Rhodes laughed, watching as the three of them chatted vigorously, planning new ways to prank some of the older AsCan members.
Later that same month, during one of their training events, each mechanical engineer was paired with a SysOp member to practice repairing and modifying the ship systems that they would deal with on the hermes.
Mark had pulled out his NASA issued laptop, checking the status of the partner assignments on the excel spreadsheet.
Nothing, nothing nothing… aha!
The computer re-loaded, showing the name of his partner. Beth Johanssen.
He vaguely remembered her, the short brunette woman that had sassed the instructor on day 3 of training. he liked her already.
The two got on like a wildfire, making fun of eachother good-naturedly throughout the entire training process. They challenged one another’s intelligence, pushing the other to be better than they believed was possible. They were a practically unstoppable duo, attaining the highest score on nearly every assignment that group had.
Mere months later, Mark was delighted to discover that nearly all of his friends had made the astronaut program.
“Hell yeah! We’re astronauts!” He had texted their groupchat excitedly, before calling his parents and sister, breaking the news to them.
Being an astronaut meant the world to him, and it was clear to see. He absolutely loved what he did, and he wouldn’t trade his job for the world.
Once they made the program however, that’s when the real training starts.
The training was intense; long, hard days full of exhausting work and tests upon tests. If they weren’t doing exams and tests on data, they were doing medical evaluations, blood tests, or something of the sort. They did isolation testing, worst case scenario tests, cannibal situations; anything NASA could think of.
This went on for over four months, before the first three crews were announced.
Mark searched the list, first reading the list for Ares I. Rhodes was on there! Woo! He made a mental note to swing by her cubical to congratulate her, after he was done. Lawrence had also made Ares I.
He scanned the list, seeing familiar names. He started racking up quite the list of people to congratulate.
When he finished with Ares II, his heart began to sink, wondering if maybe NASA had changed their minds, and he was only going to be CapCom this whole time.
But, as if his prayers were answered, he saw his name, the final name on the list for the Ares III mission. “Mark Watney - Mission Specialist - Mechanical Engineer and Botanist.” the list read.
He was so excited to be going to space, he nearly forgot to check the rest of his crew. He was relieved to know that Beck, Johanssen and Martinez were on his crew, but somewhat bummed that their mission was an international mission, meaning the other mission specialist role was taken by a German space agency astronaut.
He checked the commander of his team, noticing that it was a fellow member of the natural sciences team, Melissa Lewis. Huh.
He had never met her personally, but he had heard she was a badass navy officer, and he trusted NASA’s judgement.
That night, Mark and all his friends had met around the cafeteria table, and celebrated their roles on the missions.
“Lucky son of a bi-” Nguyen had begun, before he was shushed by various other astronauts. “You’ll get your turn Zach.” Mark laughed.
And that brought Mark to where he was now, staring out the window of his cubical, reading his daily load of paperwork.
Watney sighed, rubbing his eyes tiredly.
He heard footsteps, then Chris’s face popped into view behind the doorframe of the cubical.
“C’mon Watney! The bus is about to leave us both if you don’t start getting ready to leave.” the brunette huffed.
Mark only chuckled, running a hand through his blond hair. “Yessir Doctor Bossy Beck.” he laughed, watching as Chris’ expression dropped into a scowl.
“Never call me that again”
“No promises!” Watney smirked, shutting down his laptop to begin boarding the bus.
They were headed to Cape Canaveral. Their launch date was slowly impending, and they were to begin quarantine as soon as they reached Kennedy Space Center.
Mark smiled to himself, settling on the bus next to Martinez, watching as Houston slowly disappeared from his view, slipping on his headphones.
As he watched the landscape around him, a familiar song by David Bowie began to play, and Mark couldn’t help but grin at the thought of what the future holds for him.