[Dorothy writing in her diary]

I still can't believe Harper is gone forever.  I also miss Ophelia.  One of them I had known my whole life, and the other one I just met, and now they're both gone.  I suppose I am going to remember them every time I write in this thing.  Well that's a reason to write in it more, I guess.

The last few days has been a whirlwind, everything turned upside down.  The ship is destroyed, half the Earthlings are dead, but there's a new ship on the way with more Earthlings?  Maybe something like 100 of them?  And they have little goats, plus a lot more kinds of plants?

I am excited, but also kind of dreading it.  We had so many problems with the last batch of new people, and this one is twice as big.

Thinking it over, it starts to make sense why the Earthlings acted that way.  Our parents are used to just thinking about things, like "how do we grow more plants?", or "how do we generate more power"?  They're not used to thinking about problems like "how do we keep the newcomers from taking over?"  Those are people problems, and they've never dealt with any people except each other, who they've known all their lives.  They don't know anything about dealing with strangers.

On the other hand, the Earthlings don't seem to be great at how to deal with life on Mars.  It's like they're used to assuming that nobody needs to worry about the big picture, because it's so big that it will just keep going on its own, and all they have to think about is how to get the best position in it.  A lot of them seem to have good technical skills, but it doesn't seem like they are great at how to work together as a team, all working towards one objective.  Hopefully with Helene gone, they can get better at that?

In fact, Helene seemed to be really good at leading people, in some ways.  All of the Earthlings treated her like she was a big deal, and I guess so did I.  She always seemed to be cool and in control, never flustered, almost never even seemed to be surprised or bothered by anything that happened.  She just projected this unshakeable self-confidence.  It was infuriating when you disagreed with her, but it did seem to work at keeping all of her crew solidly behind her.  If she was leading you towards a goal you wanted to reach, it would have been inspiring to have someone who acted like that in the lead.

You know, maybe now that we're all committed to staying here (for a couple Earth years at least), it will be easier to get everyone to work together?  Maybe all of those skills at dealing with strangers, that the Earthlings have and we don't, will also come in handy when the Indian spaceship arrives in a few months.  We're good at different things.

I need to remember that in the future, that I need to make sure that I listen to both Martian and Earthling viewpoints, when making a decision.  Because, you know, it just might be me making those decisions, someday.