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.