Rabbit Hole on Mars - Day 5.2 (Nov 5) 555 words

Chapter 5.2

Frank the rabbit pulled a smaller magnet out of his pocket and placed it at the end of the other magnet. ie

“What did he just do?” Brian asked.

“Um, he relaxed the pronunciation of his name, from Frank to Frankie,” Scott said, “I guess to be more friendly before the world ends. Who ever is running this rabbit, they've got a sense of humor.”

“There's nothing friendly about dropping a rover on Mars without our knowledge,” Just Joe said, “This guy has intentions counter to our own and we have to be the ones corralling him.”

Donna asked, “If taxpayers didn't pay for it, who gets to tell whoever it is not to put their own rover on Mars?”

“We've got laws that we follow...,” Kantpis started to say.

“On earth,” Brian agreed, “But Mars has no laws. No rules. All you can hope is that whoever we roll into is friendly.”

“We have a threat to Opportunity. I don't care if a rover brushes the dust off Opportunity every morning and wears a friendly name tag. Twenty five days is making us aware of a threat and we have to be ready to react, but more importantly get on the offensive.”

“Ten minutes until Opportunity shuts down for the night. We won't have Bluetooth fully installed until tomorrow morning, Martian Time.”

Brian stepped up in front of the room, “Alright, before we break for the night let's cover the two things some of us are completely unaware of, Minecraft and Donnie Darko.”

Scott grabbed a block figure from his rover control station, “This is Steve. At the start of the video game Minecraft, Steve finds himself alone with nothing on a 3D simulated world. You control Steve and use him to find resources, build shelter and explore the world.”

“When does the game end?” Brian asked.

“It's really doesn't. It can go on forever.”

“So you're saying whoever is controlling Frankie the rabbit got bored with Minecraft and is now on Mars?”

“Makes sense to me at the moment, but I'm not sure until we can communicate with whoever controls Frankie.”

Kantpis thought outloud for a moment, “So we need a list of everyone who has ever registered to play Minecraft...”

“Haha,” Donna laughed out loud.

“...to narrow down who this person could be. I looked up Donnie Darko and it's a film from 2001. We'll figure out what online companies offer streaming of the film and compare that list to the Minecraft players. This is only the beginning of clues our rabbit friend is giving us to lead us to him here on earth. We get to him and take control of the rabbit, before the twenty fifth day to keep the world from ending.”

Just Joe asked, “This Donnie Darko movie makes no sense to me. He almost dies goes to an alternate universe with a bunny rabbit to save the real universe?”

Donna added, “Things happened to reality to cause an alternate universe. Either we are in one right now or the operator of Frankie thinks that he's in one.”

“I hate pop culture,” Brian said, “Everybody get some sleep and let's start over again tomorrow.”