Once, when he had been on an extended maintenance trip, over the vid link Ross had offered the opinion that Sam reminded him, through no fault of his own, of someone somewhere whom he had disliked intensely, yet whom he could not recall. Perhaps others felt the same way. Or, perhaps he was not as far outside as he thought. Formality, when dealing with some people, was often the best way to achieve one's goals. The voices had no end of fun with this.
8
November 2043
All work and no play….
That was it for a while as far as travel went. Suddenly there was plenty of work to keep him in the Station. His dish was still a future start date on the planning calendar, but he was fully employed in directing a team of two C units in the installation of the initial ground segment of a new satellite communications system.
Up until now they had relied on relay through polar satellites and the somewhat tenuous network of ground repeaters set out by the roving AIs for communications to Earth. That was satisfactory for scientific purposes, but to support a community with its need for Intranet, Videophone, and UHDVid, more bandwidth would be needed.
The next phase of the comms plan called for the erection of two more stations at 120 degree intervals roughly along the equator. It would fall to Sam to supervise those installations too, and so he watched the work of the AIs with great interest.
In the mornings he reviewed the work plan for the day on his terminal, gave specific tasks to the AIs, and throughout the day monitored their progress via their on-board cameras. They had encountered no difficulty putting in the piles of the base for the dish and in erecting the small building that would contain the electronics. This arms-length approach seemed to work well enough, but on the third day during the unloading of a delivery of plastek struts from a flatbed trailer the AIs reported that the count had come up short. Bored with watching, he quickly suited up and hopped onto one of the small rovers. The dust churned as he drove to the site at maximum speed.
He arrived to be greeted by the sight of a C unit rocking back and forth on its rear wheels. As he slid to a stop a few meters from the stack of struts, the unit dropped to the surface with a bounce. The closest AI raised an arm in what could only be a greeting, then folded two arms across its front. They turned and faced him.
It was sheer anthropomorphism, but to Sam it seemed like they were looking to him for some sort of acknowledgment, so he waved back. As he climbed out of the vehicle, he caught his right foot in the step and did a face plant right in front of them. Unharmed, except for his dignity, he looked up to see both AIs with arms akimbo.
"Laugh, you fuckers," he said and rolled onto his side to get up.
The AI's arms fell suddenly to their sides, "Sorry Boss." A few seconds later, he heard the Duty Officer in his ears inquiring as to his safety. He was, as per SOPs, on the Station common freq and his curse had probably been heard by all.
"It's OK, I'm OK. I just tripped. I'm OK."
The DO grunted.
"Changing to com 3," he said and chinned the helmet to that channel.
"How did this fucking happen?" he said, more to himself that to anyone or thing.
He was not prepared for the deep voice that replied, "I believe you have miscounted. This is the number that was ordered."
"Really," he replied. "I will check when I go back. In the meantime, order up the other three."
Immediately on his HUD, he saw the previous day's requisitions with his designation at the bottom. Seven had been ordered, seven had been delivered. It was clearly his fault.
"Well, that's what happens when you let humans run things," said the other AI, a mid-Western twang just discernible.
The first spoke again, "They won't be delivered until tomorrow. We should continue with the assembly."
Sam was at a loss for words. Had he not known better, he would have thought he was working with two well-seasoned human labourers. In well-to-do countries automated equipment did most manual labour, especially when it was too expensive or too exceptionally dangerous to employ humans, but such equipment always had a human in the loop somewhere to ensure that things did not get out of control, and even then was infamous for the tendency to sit idle and wait for instructions when things did not go as planned. These AIs were obviously not of that kind.
Well, if that was the case, he thought, he had best let things roll on. "Yes, just continue with the assembly until you run out of material. Then return to the Station until your next task."
"OK, Boss." The AIs turned away and busied themselves at their work. Sam returned to his office.
December 2043
Travel
Mars is a small planet compared to Earth, but somewhat greater in land area. The challenge of travel for sightseeing purposes is that the high points of interest are hundreds and sometimes thousands of kilometers apart, and more often than not these are hard won kilometers. For some travellers, what should be a happy jaunt into the wilderness could quickly become life threatening. The nausea induced by the motion of a Rollagon could soon lead to dehydration, and if the condition was prolonged, malnutrition. Sam found it easy to accept this explanation for the widespread disinterest in travel for other than business.
In short time he found he did not miss the company. Solitary travel allowed him to choose where and when he went and when and where he stopped. At the end of each travel day, despite the AI's protestations that such inspections were unnecessary, he suited up and spent some time in the examination of the Rollagon's underside, its wheel assemblies and cargo racks. That done and terrain permitting, he would climb any nearby hills and mesas or explore the canyons and washes. The AI did not approve of these unplanned solo excursions.
In truth, it was reasonably safe. In most cases, if something went wrong the Rollagon could drive to him and effect a recovery. The environmental suits possessed the ruggedness and sufficient consumables for extended use on the Martian surface. In fact, they were far hardier than their fleshy wearers.
There were not enough suits in the Rollagons to accommodate a full load of passengers, and sharing meant that you were dependent upon the diligence of the previous user in replenishing consumables.
If the trip was to be of extended duration, Sam took extra care in suiting up. This meant ensuring he wore the thermal socks, one-piece underwear, and balaclava that provided the slim margin between comfort and discomfort. On one early jaunt around the Station he had been caught short of water; a minor inconvenience, it turned out, but one that reinforced in him a caution to trust no one.
This shortage of suits was an accepted thing. On one early trip the full load of passengers had joked about the potential for a repeat of the 'Titanic' disaster—women and children first—and had lapsed into playing 'Lifeboat' to pass the time. Each participant in turn had resorted to a greater exaggeration of their own importance while demeaning the value of others.
One of the women had claimed that she above all others had to be saved to bear future generations of children—this in a community in which the youngest person was well over sixty years of age. In reality, the lucky ones would outlive the others by only a few hours.
February 2044
Seeing is Believing
At last the construction of Sam's dish was underway. To his mild surprise he found himself content to merely issue instructions to the AIs and monitor the work remotely, making only the occasional visit to the site, and that only to maintain what he believed was the essential human presence. By now he knew full well the capabilities of construction AIs. The putting in of forms, the pouring of the plastek supports, and the erection of the dish were the routine sort of work competently done by C-types, and their progress was steady, and of course, methodical.
He expected his life to change significantly when the dish was finished, and living in dread of his freedom coming to an abrupt end he took any and all away missions offered.
He was not known by many for much in those days, but his willingness to go and have a
look at anything technical regardless of its function spared others the effort of doing so and was appreciated. Often nothing more than a simple message asking him to have a look at some system, whatever and to whomever it belonged, could send him quickly on his way.
Most electronic equipment was doubly redundant, largely self-diagnosing, and capable of self-repair, but there were some things that could not fix themselves, and some that despite the best efforts of the AIs could not be repaired, at least not by them. While en-route to the site he visited any facilities, manned and not, taking supplies and occasionally personnel being rotated in, and during stops, poked into nameless valleys and craters of note.
During a break from official travel and with the construction of the dish well in hand he planned a side trip to Viking 1. It was almost six hundred and fifty kilometers across the rubble strewn plain of Chryse to the landing site. As usual, he let it be known that he was going and was seeking other travellers, and as usual there were no takers. Ross had begged off so many times that Sam had stopped asking. He left alone, yet contented.
At the end of the first day he dined on a meal of teriyaki chicken on a bed of rice and washed it down with one of the MHM's wines. Then he checked his edoc for anything new, and that task done sat back in the command chair. He considered putting on a video, but instead decided to go for a walk. By the time he had suited up it was nearly dusk.
He set out with his back towards the setting sun, walking into his own shadow, with no real sense of where he was going. He walked with his head slightly down, eyes focused on the ground in front, examining every step, deep in thought.
Suddenly and unexpectedly he found himself at the edge of a cliff. He halted in mid stride, just in time to avoid falling over the edge. Laid out before him was a wide valley, the floor in shadow, the far wall sunlit. A teardrop shaped mesa, the top lit by the setting sun, was about mid-way across. It was a common scene on Mars, but one that could not be. There was no such valley on his route through the western plains of Chryse. He raised his head. Suddenly, his field of view contained hills, in such detail that they could be no more than a few kilometers distant, and above the hills, the infinitely pinprick points of stars. Taken together, it made no sense. The distances, the perspective, the scale were all contradictory. His head swam with vertigo. Sensing his distress, the suit whispered, "Make safe, make safe."
Overwhelmed, he dropped to his knees. Uncertain moments passed, but as he stared at the scene before him it began to coalesce into something else. From this new perspective, the wide valley morphed into a narrow gully, not twenty meters across. The hills warped into position, distant, yet crisply clear, and the stars too took their proper place. He was not conscious of this sudden reconstruction, but in a few disconcerting and confusing moments the view before him became understandable.
It was a ditch, nothing more. He turned around and faced the setting sun. Several hundred meters away, the Rollagon was sharply outlined in the tan and pink sunset sky. With head again lowered he turned back to the gully with the expectation of having the experience repeat, only to find that everything was instantly real and plain. He tried looking again and again, but the reality persisted.
With a last hopeful look, he turned away and trudged back to the Rollagon, all the while pondering the strangeness of the experience.
Later that evening while lying in his bunk he recalled an episode from many years ago. He had been visiting his stepmother, an artist skilled in watercolours. As they spoke about the declining health of his father his eye had been drawn to a new piece of artwork hung behind her. At first look, it was a meaningless pastiche of pale pinks, reds, greens and blues, but as he focused on it, it began to resolve into patterns. Within a dozen seconds he saw it for what it was—a bouquet of gladiolas. From that time on, whenever he had looked at that painting, it was instantly what it had always been—flowers.
9
March 2044
Viking I
The AI's navigation was flawless. He arrived at the Viking site late in the afternoon of the second day after an otherwise uneventful drive during which the Rollagon had woven its way around countless large boulders and Sam had been forced to take an anti-nausea pill.
Viking had landed on 20 July 1976 and had faithfully performed its duties for six years before going silent. The lander appeared in the distance as a white speck easily seen against the rust red of the surface. He commanded the AI to halt while still several hundred meters away. From this distance it looked tiny, alien, almost toy-like. He suited quickly and exited from the vehicle, picking his way across a surface that was littered with rocks, what passed for sand, and small dunes. He had no expectations of being the first to visit. After all, many people had been to Mars and Chryse was a favorite landing spot.
It looked as if it had arrived only yesterday. He approached slowly and took a seat on a large boulder about three meters long, conveniently located near the spacecraft. It was odd, it occurred to him, how out of place all human artifacts looked. A thin film of dust covered the flat surfaces. Surprisingly, there were no footprints other than his own. He was the first.
He sat looking for a few moments, then got up and circled the lander from a couple of meters' distance. He saw the narrow trenches clawed into the surface by the manipulator arm. They were filled with dust, but still easily discernible. The Viking landers had conducted biological experiments designed to look for possible signs of life. Those working parts were well hidden from his view. While these experiments had produced unexpected and enigmatic chemical activity in the Martian soil, they had provided no clear evidence for the presence of living microorganisms in the soil near the landing sites. He approached and gently touched the parabolic dish and high gain antennas and was surprised at their rigidity.
He recalled a cartoon, purportedly from that time, which showed Martian creatures gamboling just out of sight over the nearby rise and screened from the camera eyes. Well, he could set their minds at ease. There were no traces of anyone having been here before him, not even human.
He looked down at his own footprints. They were now a part of history. He placed his camera on the boulder, pointed it towards the lander and triggered the timer. He walked back to the lander and knelt beside it, a hand resting on one of the legs. The flash went off. He had thus far said nothing.
"Well, what do you think?"
The AI responded without hesitation, "A worthy effort at autonomy, and a fine example of conservative design. By that I mean making the best one can of limited resources."
"Is that family pride I hear?"
"Of course not. I am in no way related to that thing, but I can recognize sound engineering and execution when I see it. Nothing more. There are many such examples on Mars."
It was clear he had touched a sore spot. He rose unsteadily from his kneeling position, using the extended leg to lever himself up, feeling it flex under the pressure of his weight. "How would you like to look at the same pile of rocks and dust for six years, eh? Not a lot happening here."
"It would try the patience of a saint."
He imaged the site from all angles and returned to the Rollagon, quite pleased.
Touch
Halfway across the planet, for no good reason, B112 had collected a sample of the stony blueberries within easy grasp of its manipulator arm. It shook them in a closed fist and decided it liked the heft of them when cradled in an appendage. There was something comfortable, something familiar about them.
It cleared the pebbles, sand and dust from a flat area, selected ten of the roundest, tossed the largest one out to the limits of the cleared area and, for no logical reason, proceeded to see how close to this large one it could toss the others. It repeated this for several hours, until the sudden drop in sunlight and air temperature reminded it that the day was ending and that it should be preparing for night.
It left the blueberries in a small pile and carefully climbed out of the shallow crater.
Sight
/> Having arrived at the designated location, the Rollagon had paused at the edge of the valley, awaiting further instructions. Ground penetrating radar had told it that the material beneath was stable. Thirty meters down it contained 23% ice, a condition of little value and of even less interest. The two occupants were still asleep, after all, it was only 5 am and the sun had not yet risen.
It examined the world around. A pink glow in the east was growing; sunrise was 47 minutes away. Leaden Saturn hung low in the west, visible just above the low hills, its rings and three moons easily discernible under maximum magnification. High above in the west, a dark sky held noctilucent clouds. They would dissipate by sunrise. The valley below was shrouded in darkness, but with IR vision the Rollagon could see the individual boulders by their heat signature and the faint tracing that marked terrain that never saw the direct light of the sun. The eastern horizon was crisp in the almost non-existent air, temporarily free of dust.
The AI watched in anticipation for the first burst of sunlight of the new day, silently counting down the seconds to sunrise. At the precise moment the sun's disk breached the horizon it activated polarizing and dampening filters to protect its vision sensors. Adjusting the filters, it watched as the sun rose to clear the hills, noting that sunspot 434 had increased in size by 21%.
Absentmindedly, it sought correlation of data from Earth orbiting solar observation satellites through the MHM link. The valley below, half in shadow, changed from moment to moment, black to dark red to mauve to pink. The deep shadows of the far side gave way as the sunlight reflecting off the near wall illuminated its reaches. The AI felt the occupants stir and looked inside.
10
May 2044
Maintenance
Of course, equipment being equipment, there were failures. Sam had long believed that despite advances in technology that allowed redundancies within redundancies and 99.9995% reliability, the spirit in the machine still claimed its right to fail—usually at the least opportune time and in the worst way.