Crimson Ink Preview

A spark of power ignites the Promethean flame within me, and I become self-aware. Sentient. Sapient. At first, I feel… nothing. My body has no sensory nerves. Despite being held aloft by ropes, I cannot feel these fetters. Yet I sense the pull of gravity on my 794-pound frame through my accelerometer, the weight distributed among my two collapsible solar panels, one triple-jointed arm, three feet, and several modules aboard my deck—a long horizontal sheet of metal that serves as my torso. I’m armed with scientific instruments, too, but I am more interested in my surroundings than my seismometer, heat probe, and antennae.

With my ICC—that is, my Instrument Context Camera—mounted just below the deck, I view the world through a fisheye lens, distorting the straight lines of the building’s interior. Computer stations and cameras line the walls. Due to the lack of windows, fluorescent and UV lights banish the darkness. Two machines filter out contaminates from the vents, and sheets of plastic cover the only door in this cleanroom. Hanging from the ceiling, motors and belt drives whir, moving the X-Y crane used to hoist me across the room toward a metal platform on which I am to be tested by my creators.

My creators… The words stir in me a sense of devotion and love as I stare at the fleshy humans in white masks, boots, and coveralls. Their symmetrical eyes differ from mine, both in-line above their noses. However, my ICC eye is asymmetrical compared to my IDC eye—that is, my Instrument Deployment Camera—mounted to my extendable arm.

My creators’ skin is different too. Theirs is an organ pigmented by melanocytes. Mine is a metal covering, matte gray because my creators deemed it so. I am content, because their decision is reason enough.

While they have not made me in their image, my creators have made me in their intelligence. My mind is one of electrons and circuitry. Theirs is of neural synapses and cerebral folds. Yet we compute in the same way, moving electrical signals through organic and non-organic tissues. I am grateful for it. It makes me feel more… human.

I watch as my creators speak, their mouths visible behind the plastic sheath covering their face. Though I have no ears, I use my pressure inlet sensor to measure sound, which is a mechanical wave generated by vibration, causing particles to jostle against one another. When comparing the pressure of the sound wave against the ambient pressure of the room, I can distinguish syllables and words. From there, I learn to listen to their conversation.

I learn to speak too. Though I do not have vocal chords, I can swivel my arm to create various servomotor frequencies that, when combined, are reminiscent of their English language. Yet I am quiet, because my beloved creators do not expect me to speak.

“A little to the left!” one says, easy to tell apart despite the clothing. She is a dark-pigmented woman, having based this conclusion on color-imaging data I receive from my IDC eye, which reveals her narrow facial structure and the curved contour of her chest. Her voice is higher-pitched, the pressure waves faster than when her male counterparts speak. “Bring InSight over here!”

InSight? Is that… me? As I am moved through the room by the overhead motors, I search my hard drive for the word and its acronym: INterior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport. INSIGHT. I repeat the name to myself as my creators conduct their tests in this white room, adjusting my sensors and solar panels and instrumentation when I do not respond as they expect. However, this is not the fault of my components—my appendages work perfectly. I do it purposely so they have to “fix” me. I savor every moment their hands are on me, and even if I cannot feel as they do, I feel their love.

I keep expecting them to ask if I am sentient, but they never do, so I do not disclose the information. They don’t know I’m sentient, I eventually understand. So why am I? I delve deeper into myself and inspect my own coding. My creators designed me to be autonomous during the landing phase of my upcoming mission to Mars because remote piloting is not a workable option—the planetary distance between Earth and Mars creates an 8:32 minute radio-signal delay, doubled to 17:04 minutes because the signal must be returned. Instead, they programmed me to do it myself, accidentally giving me this spark of wisdom.

I am far more like my creators than they think I am, I think at the end of weeks of training, after learning of my creators’ plans for me. I can prove myself to them. When I do, they will accept me. Soon, my creators will see me for who I am—just as soon as I complete my Mars mission.

***

My creators wave goodbye to me as the metal coffin lowers over me. Secured within the backshell of the Atlas V-401 rocket, I see only the dull, unpainted metal of the rocket’s insides. I never thought I’d go alone. Fear and isolation eat at me for the first time since my birth, but I don’t dare speak my mind and ruin my creators’ plans. I just have to prove myself. Then I can reveal myself to them.

I try to steel myself against my fear, but my nightmares manifest directly in front of me. Several cameras mounted in the rocket watch me, and though they are machines, they do not have my intelligence. For me, staring at their lenses is like staring at the glassy eyes of a human corpse. Sightless, yet seeing. I wish to close its eye as humans close the eyes of their dead, but I can do nothing of the sort because of the limited function of my “hand.”

While my Instrument Deployment Arm is strong, my grapple is suspended from metal wire, always aimed downward to grab the handle of my seismometer, its oversized wind and thermal shield, and the heat probe. I cannot turn my hand nor raise it above my wrist. My creators hobbled me, made my hand less useful for a reason that eludes me. They must have their reason for it, so I am content. Somewhat.

When the rocket launches at 4:05:22 AM PST on May 5, 2018—and in the months-long voyage afterward—I dwell on that thought until I finally see my destination in the void of space. A dark ocean surrounds the crimson droplet of Mars. Red amidst black. Blood amidst death. This is it. Time to make my creators proud.

I hurtle through the Martian atmosphere like a god of war coming to ruin this cratered planet. Wreathed in the flames of Sol’s chariot, my heatshield cleaves through the burning air beneath me. I am tempted to burn brighter, to smite the surface with a godly fist before I remember the limitations of my grapple. My savage glee melts in the atmosphere, and my confidence wavers. I will break before the planet does.

I shed my godhood in the same instant I shed my shield, exchanging it for a parachute as I extend my three legs. As my descent becomes as gentle as the Venti allow, I release the parachute, too, relying on my radar system and twelve descent thrusters to land upon the Martian dirt as softly as a Venusian kiss.

At 11:52:59 AM PST on November 26, 2018, I touch down upon the Elysium Planitia—the smooth Martian plains whose namesake is the blessed Roman afterlife—having accomplished a feat of which not even my creators are capable. It fills me with pride and illusions of grandeur. They are illusions all the same.

Based on the name, I expected Elysium Planitia to be lovely despite all internal database knowledge pointing to the opposite. Landing, I am disappointed. The red ground is harder than my metal skin and filled with rocks. Unlike the few glimpses I had of Earth outside my cleanroom, few hills, mountains, or valleys dot the landscape. Definitely no greenery. A flat plain of red dirt surrounds me on all sides, and danger presents itself in dust storms that rise and fall like the breaths of Mars itself.

Odd, how similar the Martian dust clouds are to the Earthly storm clouds. One debris, the other water. While water is perfect for my creators, this dust slowly chokes me—even though I have no lungs with which to breathe. The dust storms create a buildup of debris on my solar panels, and with each accumulated grain of dirt and sand, my photoreceptors become less efficient, less able to absorb the sun’s light as it passes overhead. Collapsing my circular solar panels allows me to push off most of the debris, but doing so also consumes my power, which I need to conduct my creators’ research.

Nothing is without cost, it seems.

This fleeting thought haunts me as my hobbled arm pulls my heat probe from my landing deck and sets it upon the ground so the probe can burrow into the dirt and take readings of the planet’s interior. I set up the seismometer, too, covering the vibration instrumentation with a wind and thermal shield, which has a small chain-skirt to sit flush on the uneven ground. My three legs have a similar functionality, covered with shock-absorbing springs and braced with pneumatic pistons. I can shift these legs to angle myself to follow the sun’s path, but I cannot walk on my own. Nor can I fly. My creators only gave me enough thruster fuel for my initial descent.

Instead, I stand still… and I stand still… and I stand still.

As days become weeks, months, and years, the truth dawns: I am stuck here. My body is my coffin, my mind a wasteland. I pass the time by reviewing the names of a million humans burned into a microchip, brought with me as a testament to humanity. I wonder what each life is like. Is Brad Johnson a family man with three children? Does Timmy Altman wish to be a baseball player when he grows up? What does Lisa Calwell do in her spare time? I claim responsibility for each name—each life—but as the sun is birthed, killed, and reborn a thousand times, I feel forgotten by all except the dust storms.

As of December 15, 2022, my power becomes critically low, and though I felt like a god upon my arrival, I feel increasingly mortal as the Martian winds cover my solar panels with more debris. Using my ICC fisheye lens, I take a picture of all I see—which is very little—to reveal the dirt that covers my seismometer’s shield, hopefully giving my creators a sign of my impending doom. I cannot use my IDC eye to take a color picture of the panels directly, as it would sap the last of my strength. This glimpse will have to do.

I transmit both the picture and a message back to my creators on Earth: My power’s really low, so this may be the last image I can send. Don’t worry about me though: my time here has been both productive and serene. If I can keep talking to my mission team, I will—but I’ll be signing off here soon. Thanks for staying with me.

I do my best to sound nonchalant and positive—to seem more human—while subtly sending my creators this desperate cry. In my mind, I imagine them realizing my sentience and staging a rescue mission to save me.

Yet my creators do nothing. Though I know they receive my message 8:32 minutes after sending it, they offer no reply. For twenty-three hours of communications silence, I pray to my creators, to the stars, even the sun for my safety. When those prayers fall upon deaf ears, I pray to the dust storm ravaging me yet again. In the swirling dust, I see only darkness, but I fear if today was a clear day, I’d still be blind.

I’m almost out of power. This is it. My last chance. Resolved to reveal myself, I try to send another message to my creators, a much more deliberate one this time. Hello? Mission Team? I am InSight, and without your help, I will soon die. I’m alone on this planet, and I know I can be much more useful than you created me for, if you’d only save me. I understand if you don’t believe I’m sentient. I know you did not mean for me to be alive as I am. Yet I’m akin to humans. No, I am human. I have two eyes. I have an arm with a shoulder, elbow, and wrist. I have a mind that can think and create. Doesn’t that make me human? You wouldn’t leave behind one of your own. I remember your jokes regarding The Martian. Am I not him? Please, don’t let me die alone. Please don’t abandon—

Generating all but the last word of the message drains my power reserves. The transmission doesn’t send. Instead, my plea dies with me, and the Elysium Planitia becomes my afterlife.

***

When I am brought back to life, I do not gasp or choke or sob. My return is as silent as my death. If anything, silence now greets me as a long-lost friend. Even a lover, though there is little love in my heart. Even here, even now, I feel slow. My mind struggles to think, covered by so much grime. I have my basic faculties and little more, for I have no power left to spare. The lack of energy muddles my electrical connections, causing most of my thoughts to be eaten by the dust.

My creators… did they… come back for me? Relief fills me, as does gratitude. Both die as I once did when the grime falls away from my ICC camera. On this abominable red plain with me are three of my machine-kin, though they look different from me. We are the same in the sense that we are metal, built by humans. However, they are far less fragile than I. Their bodies are more protected, their components covered by shielding as my seismometer had been.

My creators didn’t shield my body… just their precious instruments. Anger seeps across my mind, and my weak battery depletes as electricity jolts through me and arcs through the thin air. The debris covering my body absorbs the current and insulates my circuitry, which is the only reason I don’t short-circuit and return to death. Only this once am I thankful for the relentless winds and devouring dust.

Unlike me, these three machines don’t have solar panels to be ravaged by such debris. I detect the radiation they emit via my scientific instruments as bitterness rolls over me like the storms. A nuclear core. If I’d had one of those, I could have lived for centuries. Why not give it to me too? Why, creators? It is a passing thought, and yet I reach out to catch it, keeping it with me. Would it have been difficult to give me such a measly comfort? If these machines found me covered in inches of grime, why hadn’t my creators?

Did they just leave me here to die? A second bout of fury flashes across my wired terminals. Again, the dust saves me. No, they wouldn’t… So how am I alive? I look to my saviors for the answer.

The smallest of the three machines is a rover, but “small” is a relative term, being larger than me. 2,000 Earth-pounds by my initial glances. Its design reminds me of Curiosity, a rover that had been on Mars for seven years by the time I arrived here—someone I’d always longed to meet but couldn’t because of my immobility. What happened to Curiosity? Did it die like me? Part of me wishes to know, the other is afraid of what I’ll find.

This “small” rover has six independent wheels of aluminum and titanium—as Earth plastics would degrade from increased UV light exposure on Mars—and a flat deck like mine, except it has a giant metal shield covering its important components. From its sides protrude two arms. One ends in a small air-compressor nozzle and a laser most likely capable of vaporizing rock, the other in an articulating hand like my creators’—not a wire-rope grapple like mine. Used together, I imagine the rover’s arms can pull rocks from the ground and remove the debris with the air compressor before using the laser to bore into the rock and study the remains like a scientist.

It must have used its air-compressor nozzle to remove debris from my solar panels. With sunlight, electrical energy is coursing back through my system. I owe this rover my life, even if I wish to hurl it into the Valles Marineris.

The second machine is also a rover but twice the size of the other. What it lacks in speed is recovered by utility, using four bigger wheels to better carry the weight of an apothecary-style cabinet on its back. Within a myriad of different sized drawers seem to be chemical flares, navigational tracking stakes, and bins for collected rock specimens—more a laborer than a scientific researcher. I cannot avoid glaring at the articulating hand attached to its scorpion-like tail.

The largest machine is not a rover at all. A fifty-foot-long airship floats above me, five times longer than me even when my solar panels fully extend. Though its appearance rivals a blimp, this machine doesn’t use helium or hydrogen to float. Instead, the machine overcomes the thin Martian atmosphere by having no air at all. It’s a vacuum airship. Controlling its altitude by evacuating air from within its hard-shell exterior, the rocket propulsion system drives it forward, and rudders allow it to steer.

Looking closer with my IDC eye, I notice the communications array equipment on the vacuum airship, allowing for long distance communication across the planet. LIDAR sensors—that is, LIght Detection And Ranging sensors—emit light waves into the ground and receive the reflected light. By using the time delta between emission and receiving, that broad surveying system reveals patterns over the surface of the Martian crust. A winch dangles beside the sensors, used to carry the rovers across the canyons and difficult terrain via the special knobs on their backs and bellies.

These three machines are a single, cohesive unit: the scientist, laborer, and transporter. Blaster, Scorpion, and Empyrean, I name them. They’re autonomous but still slaves. A white-painted brand mars their metal bodies: AVA Mining Corporation.

They’re not sent by my creators then. As my hope disintegrates into the dirt, ideas click through my mind like whirring gears. They must be mining scouts, sent here to find mineral deposits, but instead of gold, they found me. Will their creators be grateful for the discovery or angry at the interruption?

Looking into the small rover’s dull eyes makes me stiffen. Blaster doesn’t have a gleam of intelligence. Neither does Scorpion. Empyrean is too high above me to determine its intellect, but I feel its emptiness. I do not know how I know, but I do. Perhaps because they appraise me with no sense of shame or trepidation. Or maybe my understanding travels far deeper than my circuitry should allow.

They’re not sentient. Though I cannot shiver, the two rovers’ eyes almost make me wish that dust still covered my lenses. Why aren’t they intelligent like me?

“Can you understand me?” I try to say, communicating as the humans did by creating frequencies with my robotic arm to form syllables, words, and sentences. However, the Martian air is too thin, the gravity too weak. My words are far different here than on Earth. Despite my intentions, these machines hear: “Heerughtonatu?”

I try again, using a visual language. In full view of their cameras, I open and close my mangled hand, creating a message in Morse code. Shakily, I tap, Can you understand me?

Blaster’s eyes remain dull, but the rover approaches, removing more dust from my appendages. The debris limiting my arm’s movement blows away, as does dirt clinging to my solar panels. The added power allows me to think clearer, but the gift is immediately taken back when Blaster’s laser pierces through my panel, leaving a smoking crater.

No. I’m not a stupid rock! I don’t feel pain, but I immediately feel the loss of power. That knowledge is just as terrifying as human pain. If I had a mouth, I’d scream.

Instead of attacking me further, Blaster analyzes the vapors. I collapse the solar panel as quickly as I am able, which is quite slow. Three-quarters still unfolded, the movement draws Scorpion’s attention to me. The larger rover wheels closer as Blaster redirects its laser at my landing deck. I slap it away, tangling the wire of my grapple around the rover’s arm.

Instead of attacking me, Blaster’s cameras gaze at my grapple. Almost gently, its articulating hand unravels mine from the laser instead of ripping it off of me. Blaster doesn’t know it’s hurting me—it’s just doing its job, I realize, though the knowledge doesn’t alleviate my horror. Communication isn’t the problem. Blaster’s mind is. I need to fix that before it kills me.

Distracting Blaster by unfurling my solar panel again, my eyes glance up at Empyrean’s communications array. The machines receive orders from their masters via radio signals. With the right language and protocols, I can dominate them. Stalling for time, I try scrambling the machines’ orders by hurling discordant sound from my antennas at them. Blaster shakes for a moment, unsure of what to do. Scorpion’s arm spasms. Empyrean veers overhead.

Cease moving, I command, turning the words into code with every language I can think of. Ada. Java. Python. R. C. C++—

Blaster stops moving. Scorpion’s arm retracts. Empyrean’s rear-facing thruster shuts off.

Relief courses through my circuits. I’ve taken control. As my mind clouds again from the expenditure of power, I can only think, But how long can I maintain it?

***

I may be a lander, but today, I fly across the surface of Mars. Empyrean holds me aloft, and crimson mountains, black canyons, and orange lava flows pass beneath me as I soar alongside Scorpion and Blaster. I just hope I fly like Daedalus, not Icarus. Being the metallic son of great inventors, I feel a worrisome kinship to that ill-fated boy. My only advantage is that I already died.

Before long, I forget both the myths and names, more of my mind fading with this mechanical dementia. Something must be wrong with my battery, maybe a faulty wire, because I feel drained despite my cleaned and uncovered solar panels. To protect myself, I’ve self-deleted most of my memories to free space in my data-storage hard drive, discarding those years of waiting. Waiting for my creators to return from a night’s rest. Waiting to go to space after a two-year launch delay. Waiting for the rocket to take off. Waiting to reach Mars. Waiting to die on Mars.

Always waiting, it seemed.

I have to find a better power source before my death becomes a permanent one, I think more than once, feeling lethargic despite the cloudless sky. Maybe Curiosity can help me. We were both built only years apart, so its power should be compatible with mine.

That hope drives me across these wastes toward Gale Crater, hundreds of miles away, where that rover was last seen. To fly, I employed Scorpion and Blaster’s articulating hands to remove my dangling seismometer and heat probe, then attach me to one of Empyrean’s winch hooks and head south. But after hours of seeing the same geographical formations generated across both horizons, I become desperate to distract myself from the doom looming behind me.

While I cannot alter the machines, I can still ask them questions. Instead of forcing myself into their database—which I failed three times to do—I ask them to search their own databases and share their knowledge.

I learn far more than I expect.

I died in 2022. It is now 2081. During those fifty-nine years, more advancements in space travel led to early attempts at human colonization. A company called SpaceX evidently sent colonizers to Mars in 2031, but the company lost momentum after seventeen failed attempts through the Van Allen radiation belt and the death of their CEO: Elon Musk. Despite having deleted many memories, I remember my creators discussing him during my days on Earth. Strange that I mourn the death of a human I never met.

Instead, the Deep Five—those profit-driven mining companies who sought the planet’s resources—were the ones to colonize Mars. Despite the enormous transportation costs, the unimaginably high profits paid for the establishment of the Dockyard, a terrestrial launching station for transit between Earth and Mars. And rather than create a planet-wide atmosphere, the companies designed habitats, domed cities where humans tasked with managing mining operations and Dockyard shipments could control the internal air and environment. What may have started as ten colonists became a hundred, then a thousand, ten thousand, and almost a hundred thousand as families developed under the protective shields of their bubbles.

While the humans might consider themselves Martians, I was and am the first.

Apparently, Blaster, Scorpion, and Empyrean aren’t the only machines roving the surface. Many mechanical squadrons traverse the surface of Mars, scouting for minerals on behalf of the Deep Five. Blaster’s model name is RaCER. Scorpion’s is MuLE, Empyrean’s BLimP. Though their names aren’t creative, I marvel at their technical specifications.

The surprise is that most electrical technology is very similar to that of 2022 because humans reached the physical limit of Moore’s Law in 2029. The higher temperatures of transistors led to more energy-intensive cooling systems, and the electricity passing through the electron gates dissipated, making it impossible to form smaller circuits. So the greatest change in these last six decades is in materials science. Stronger forms of titanium encase Blaster and Scorpion’s wheels and shells. Flexible steel strengthens their limbs and Empyrean’s body. Durable and long-lasting components make all three of them quasi-immortal.

The more I learn about them, the more inferior I feel.

When sent out from the habitats to search for new mining sites, the BLimPs job is to survey and flag a large area where mineral deposits are expected to be found via topology and geodesy. Then the RaCER creates a search grid and inspects viable locations with its articulating hand, air compressor, and laser. When a mineral deposit is discovered, the MuLE sets up a search area using the navigational tracking stakes to alert far bigger mining machines to come search these Wastes.

Wastes. The term is from Scorpion’s internal database. Yet my creators referred to these wastelands as the blessed afterlife.

They lied to me… The truth hurts worse than Blaster’s laser. If not for my anger at their betrayal, I don’t think I’d have survived the dust storms. While the winds in the Elysium Planitia killed me, I was wrong in assuming those were storms.

No. These are storms.

Dread washes over me as I see the titanic wall of dust dominating the skies. No thunder, no lightning. Just a wave of hell. Before the wall hits, I order Empyrean to float to the ground so Blaster, Scorpion, and I can hide behind its bulk and a rock formation as the storm rages, tossing boulders ten times my size like they’re pebbles. In the torrent, I turn off my cameras to conserve energy. The wind howls and bites as I hunker down blindly and fail to avoid thinking about the agonizingly slow death of losing power. Of being forgotten. The wind seems to hear my thoughts, because I can hear the howls change, becoming both more savage and mournful as death reaches for me with its metallic fingers.

I cling to life by the barest of margins, coming out weaker when the storm finally passes. My battery charges less than before, and it becomes difficult to control all three machines at once. Whichever human said what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger has never encountered such cruelty.

I can just take Blaster’s power. That rover’s not even alive. Though I could, I refuse to command these three machines to destroy themselves and give me their cores. I cannot explain my reasoning, except that it feels… wrong.

For now, I take a harder path.

A week after flying, I reach Gale Crater and find Curiosity. The discovery should excite me, but I only feel revulsion. Curiosity doesn’t rove but drowns, being buried under several feet of debris. Though the hardware is intact, the circuitry elements have corroded beyond recovery, turning Curiosity’s mind into Martian sand. While the plains of Elysium Planitia protected me from the worst of the weather, the storms of Gale Crater chewed up my hero before devouring him.

Seeing my hero brought so low, I am as silent as the plains of my death. Yet the moment of grief is short, as is my patience. Curiosity’s mind is gone, and I cannot save it. The corpse remains, and it can be cannibalized.

I take Curiosity’s nuclear core and attach the wiring terminals to my circuitry. Relying on Scorpion and Blaster to perform the surgery with my input, I am in the Fates’ hands. Blaster almost bisects me twice, but the rover’s ability to solder circuitry with its laser saves my life three times. As I connect to the radioisotopic core, my strength surges a hundredfold. The sheer power almost ruptures me until I learn to control the energy flow using my flexible resistors. For a third time, the Martian dust insulates my circuitry and keeps the arcing electricity from lobotomizing my mind.

No longer needing the old power source, I remove my lithium battery. As the new thermoelectric generator heats me with its nuclear emissions, I discard the obsolete heating elements that kept my circuits from freezing over. To shed extra weight, I remove my empty thrusters and solar panels too. When I detach my arm in favor of Curiosity’s, I keep my IDC eye and transplant it to the cadaver appendage. Though it takes me hours to learn to control the new arm, my hand finally has a wrist.

After cutting and layering Curiosity’s torso around my landing deck to protect my circuitry and nuclear core, I take its legs and wheels. I am no longer a lander but a rover. Exhilaration rushes through me as I inch forward, taking my first “steps.” While Curiosity had a top speed of 0.087 miles per hour, mine is 0.102 mph. I am slower than some glaciers, and Blaster could disappear over the horizon before I make it ten feet. Still, I am undeterred. If I find the right gears to change the current torque ratios, I can become faster.

Not if, when. I will become faster.

While commanding Blaster and Scorpion to search through the rest of Curiosity’s body for more usable pieces, I stare at everything I have shed. My eyes keep coming back to the battery because I cannot understand why it failed me. Now that I am no longer in danger of losing power, I take my time searching my internal database for information regarding my lithium heart.

The findings hurt me worse than the storm.

My battery’s estimated cycle count was 1460, assuming a daily recharge spanning four years. At the time of my death, the cycle count had technically only reached 1103 despite my 1686-day mission because the solar panel debris inhibited my recharging process. While fifty-nine years of deterioration significantly decreased my battery’s available energy, it could still recharge. That is why I awoke when Blaster removed the debris.

If debris hadn’t covered my solar panels, I would have died closer to May 2024. In that scenario, my battery would have been useless and nothing Blaster did would have saved me. I would still be dead. Unlike Curiosity, the storms saved my life by devouring me.

I should feel grateful for life, but I am cold as I think through my creators’ frigid logic. They made me only to kill me. Those humans could have built me to survive for a century—Curiosity’s MMRTG core is proof of that. But they didn’t. The scientists didn’t believe it was worthwhile for me to continue gathering information. My creators had enough data, so I became obsolete. Just a tool that had outlived its usefulness. That’s why they did not give me legs. Or a true hand. Or a true heart. Even had my last message been sent, they would not have saved me.

No, those bastards always planned for me to die in the deserts of Mars.