On the Loss of Opportunity

We must resist the urge to anthropomorphize the suffering of robots

Regarding its time on Mars,

here is what we can say,

without resorting to sentimentality:

To begin we have the impact site,

Endurance,

a crater in an otherwise flat, bare plain.

One of its first acts was

a thorough examination

of its discarded heat shield,

no longer a protective barrier

against its environment.

Afterward,

it turned south,

and started in the direction

of Marathon.

Over the course of its 5,352 sols of life

it travelled a total of 28 miles,

not quite half the distance

from Flint to Detroit,

averaging nearly 28 feet per day.

The observations it gathered,

on rocks

and the prospect of water

(now gone),

are invaluable.

It also took a number of

photographs

of its surroundings,

and at least one self-portrait.

It spent one

six week period

in the spring

immobilized

in a sand dune

and there was

a high probability

that it would

never

move again.

Spirit failed

under similar circumstances,

emptying its battery

in a fruitless attempt

to extricate itself

from soft soil.

But Opportunity

was not exhausted

then.

Eventually,

its memory

began to fail,

and it was afflicted

with amnesia.

Concessions were made

to its new limitations,

and the mission continued.

It ended its journey,

sightless and enervated,

on the cusp of Endeavor.

Doctor Carl Tanzler was ahead of his time

“Fuck your cynicism,”

you tell me.

“We’ll go up there

and bring her home

someday.”

And I believe you.

Mere decades from now,

a Chinese plutocrat,

as sentimental as

he is debauched,

will fund a rescue operation,

at hilarious expense.

“I am thinking of Wall-E,”

he tells the craftsman

hired to restore the rover,

who holds open a book

advertising dozens of

different varieties of

plastic googly eyes.

“It was the first

American film

I saw, as a child,

and it impacted me.”

“Of course,”

the artist tells

his patron.

And there is one

final instruction:

the installation of

a discreet chute,

3 cm in diameter,

with a trap door.

“My battery is low and it is getting dark.”

Maybe I do

empathize with it;

with my years spent

in careful analysis

of the ground

immediately adjacent to

my feet.

Maybe I do

envy it;

for at least it

had the chance

to accomplish

absolutely nothing notable

in space.

Maybe I do

admire it;

for making the most

of a vast,

lifeless world

and extremely

limited means.

But in the end,

entropy is still entropy

and dust is still dust,

and there are

no exceptions

to universal laws,

even for the most

ambitious robots.

So maybe I do

resent him;

far from the banality of Earth,

buried beneath dunes

that are not

as red as we

imagine them.