Okay so I've been thinking about this post by @graceamazerocky non-stop for the past 48 hours and it has not gotten any less hilarious. So now it's headcanon time.
Imagine this: You are Mark 'The Martian' Watney, the first human being to ever be alone on a planet, technically the coloniser of Mars, space pirate. After your incredible/harrowing space adventure, you've returned to Earth, taken a job training future astronauts. You are still one of the most famous people to have ever lived, so dating can be a bit tricky.
But one day you meet an amazing woman, a scientist, and the two of you fall in love. As part of the 'getting to know each other' stage of dating, she tells you about one of her ex-boyfriends. They met in grad school and dated for a few years, but it didn't work out and they had kind of a messy break up, after which he apparently crashed out hard, ending his career in science by writing a paper that gave a giant middle-finger to his entire field. She thinks he's a teacher now, but they're no longer in touch. Other than it being an interesting anecdote, you don't think much of this.
Then, the Petrova crisis. The Sun dimming. Humanity facing extinction. You aren't directly involved in the global response, but you and your girlfriend are both scientists, and this is basically all anyone is talking about, so you are following the development of the situation with keen interest.
When the Hail Mary mission is announced, your first thought is to volunteer (surely you would have to be one of the best-suited people for a long-haul high-stakes space mission like this?) but your second thought is that you really don't want to face dying in space again. You talk it over with your girlfriend. You have an argument that turns into a fight, that ends when you both get tested for the coma-resistance gene and both receive negative results. She finds you sobbing in the middle of the night from a complicated mix of relief and regret and holds you until you calm down. A week later, you propose.
The names of the crew and backup crew are announced. You know at least some of them, by reputation if not personally (astronauts being a pretty small community). You reach out, and offer a mix of congratulations, condolences and advice. You are one of the only people on Earth who truly understand what it is they are facing. You wish them luck.
Two of them die in an explosion. The news is devastating, not just to you, but for everyone on Earth. Despair gives way to hope with another announcement: Dr Ryland Grace has volunteered to join the mission.
‘Holy shit,’ says your fiancé. ‘That’s my ex.’
‘I thought he was a teacher?’ you say.
In your mind, you re-categorise your fiancé’s ex from ‘crashout-failed-scientist-turned-teacher’ to ‘space-hero’, and joke that she must have a type. She laughs, but her eyes are wet. You hold her hand and watch the rest of the broadcast in silence.
You try to reach out again, but are told that Dr Grace is not available. You are quietly relieved, since that conversation would almost certainly have gotten awkward. You invite your old crew and their families over to your place to watch the launch of the Hail Mary. Not all of them can make it, but you share a few drinks with those that do. When the ship successfully leaves Earth’s atmosphere, you give a toast to Yao Li-Jie, Olesya Ilyukhina and Ryland Grace, followed by a minute’s silence.
Life on Earth gets colder and harder than it has been in living memory, but you know how to survive on an inhospitable planet (even when it seems hopeless, you just keep solving the problems in front of you). You make it through starvation, conflict and a thousand other tragedies. Many nations band together and share resources. Scientists pour years into finding new ways to keep the environment as stable as possible, to maximise food production and prevent natural disasters. You get married.
At long last, the solution arrives (along with a whole host of new discoveries that will fuel scientific research for decades, such as the fact that ALIENS ARE REAL). The space program has languished, but not died, and when a mission to Venus is planned, you are called in to train the crew. As part of your work preparing for that mission, you are given access to the video logs that Grace sent back to Earth along with the planet-saving taumoeba.
So you, Mark 'The Martian' Watney, the first human being ever to be left to die in space, gets to witness the second human being ever to be left to die in space mention you by name to an alien, not for any reason to do with your aforementioned incredible/harrowing space adventure, but because this crashout-failed-scientist-turned-teacher-turned-space-hero is still so upset that you got together with his ex (your wife) that he needs to vent about it to the alien (his friend).
And that’s how The Martian ends up becoming the first human being ever to be personally hated by an alien.
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