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Relationship advice from a doomed machine on a one-way trip to a (probably) lifeless planet.

Q: My boyfriend has been dropping hints about wanting a “more open relationship.” If I’m completely honest I have to admit this creeps me out a little, but I love him and don’t want to lose him. What should I do? —Allison F., Grand Rapids, Mich.

A: This is an excellent question, Allison, and it reminds me of something that happened the other day here on Mars. Maybe this will be of some use to you.

I was performing my usual sequence of boot diagnostics when suddenly, without warning, the solar wind blew in. I don’t know if you have any experience with solar wind, Allison—I’m guessing you don’t, because you’re back home on earth, safe and sound. Let me tell you about solar wind. Solar wind blows in at about six hundred kilometres per second, peeling chunks from the Martian atmosphere like you’d peel the skin from a tangerine, and if you’re not paying attention, if you’re performing a complicated matrix of computational chores or something, it can catch you unaware and really knock you back on your treads. When something like this happens your first thought is to look around, as if someone will be there and you can say, “Wow, did you feel that?” Or, “Hey, are you O.K.?” And then you realize that you’re all alone three hundred million miles from home and unless things take a very unexpected turn you’re going to remain that way until your plutonium core depletes and you slowly freeze to death in a sand pit.

Q: My wife and her mother talk on the phone at least three times a day, and sometimes I walk into the room and my wife will stop talking and wait for me to leave before she continues. I know they’re close, but it makes me uneasy to think my wife may have things to say about me that she doesn’t want me to hear. Should I bring this up with her? —Frank D., Philadelphia, Penn.

A: Boy, that’s a tough one. Women, huh? As the old saying goes, “Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.” But the thing is, Frank, that’s just an expression. It’s not literally true. To take just one example, I’m living quite without women, and also men, and if you really want to pull that thread, the fact is I’ll never again know the affectionate touch of the human hands that built me. I’ll just continue doing their work in a silent, diligent fashion until the tiny distant speck that is earth winks out of existence for the final time and I slowly freeze to death in a sand pit.

Q: My son is seventeen and feels he should be allowed to stay at home by himself when we take family vacations. My husband and I don’t know how many more trips we’re going to take as a family, but we’re reluctant to force him. Should we let him stay home and hope for the best, or insist that he join us as he always has? —Denise P., Santa Fe, N.M.

A: Kids are a joy, Denise, as you know. But they can also be a trial, can’t they? At seventeen they’re just beginning the painful process of entering adulthood and trying on adult roles. What you don’t want to have is a sulky adolescent moping in the back seat, doing his best to sabotage the vacation you and your husband have worked so hard for. Who wants that? I sure wouldn’t, even if I were hurtling across the blackness of deep space toward a lonely exile on a cold rock. You only get one vacation a year and you want to cherish and protect it, because life is short and you never know when you’re going to end up freezing to death in a sand pit. Spirit froze to death in a sand pit, did you know that? It took months.

Q: My mother is eighty-six and we’ve always had a rocky—

A: Months, it took. They kept pinging her from Pasadena, but eventually—

Q: Hey, it’s Allison again, from Grand Rapids? Look, I get that you’re a little upset, but I don’t think you answered my question.

A:—hang on: Eventually they gave up and they had a little goodbye ceremony at JPL. You know, one of those office things? Somebody runs out and gets ice cream and a sheet cake from Ralph’s and then that creepy guy nobody talks to, the one with the big glasses and the combover, he tries to strike up a chorus of “Auld Lang Syne,” but nobody really wants to join in and he sort of trails off halfway through the first verse, and eventually everybody starts sneaking looks at their watches and then one by one they drift back to their cubicles. And that’s it. That’s what I’m looking at, and that’s if I’m lucky. That’s if I don’t topple into a crater and go lights-out. That’s assuming I don’t burn up, or discover water and fall in before I even get the chance to tell anybody. I got a hundred and ten watts onboard, you think that isn’t enough to fry every chip I got? Look, you gotta get me out of here. I know you only punched my ticket one way and I’m not built for the rigors of takeoff, even assuming you could get some sort of rescue vehicle up here in time, some sort of space gantry or something—I don’t know, I’m just spitballing. But there has to be a way. You’re the best minds humankind has ever produced. You put a man on the moon, and you got me here. There has to be a way to get me back.

Photograph by NASA/JPL-Caltech.