Quantinium

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  An operator is looking at two giant screens side-by-side, showing a complex series of tunnels just under the Martian surface – like a maze of interconnected plumbing, and beckons his supervisor to come over:

  "This is telemetry from Hellas at 20:50 CMT (Central Mars Time)… This is the data at 22:50 CMT."

  "That’s great, well done,” smiling falsely, “are we paying you to compare lava tunnels? Or should we move you to look at the ‘Canals of Mars’ instead?" – Martian-speak for getting fired.

  "This is data at 00:50 CMT, the tunnels are here," ignoring the remark, the operator points to the lower left corner of the second screen.

  "So what are we looking at, dude?" The supervisor is getting irritated.

  "These sections here and here are growing, the tunnels are boring through lava rock at about 100 meters per hour," says the operator, smiling broadly.

  "Well done you've wasted an hour watching drills on Hellas! You need to get back into what you should be doing and have a working lunch as payback."

  "Sir, we're not digging anywhere near this part of Hellas and our drills only cut at 1 meter per hour through glass. Hellas is a meteor impact crater and the sub-surface is mostly glassified rock."

  "You're saying, 100 times faster than we drill?”