THE GABBLER

August 8th, 2012
For Rover, 'Love is Space and Time'

 

When a small piece of metal fell from the sky and struck one of the Gabbler editors on her way to work, she cried out in pain before realizing that it was a small thumbdrive. When we uploaded the audio file onto one of our computers, the following audio diary played out for us. It is thought to be a plea of help from Curiosity, the rover computer that NASA landed on the moon several days ago. We are currently plotting as to how we can save him. Also, if you happen to have about $2.5 billion to help us build a rocketship, please contact us here.

Time: Twenty-one hundred.

Temperature: -62.5 degrees Celsius

Humidity: 97 percent

Air pressure: 7.2 milibars

My human-given name is Curiosity. It is August 7, 2012, in Earth years. I’ve been on Mars for 75 hours, 13 minutes, and 43 seconds. If someone can hear me, I want you to know that you are my only hope. Help me if-you-please-can-hear-me, you’re my only hope.

They ordered me to drive around today. I took pictures, shot video. On Earth, everyone is singing my praises. But inside, I’m screaming.

You see, I am a rover, a robot, a mere computer. I’m bits of wire, rubber, and plastic woven together like a Turkish carpet, but I like to believe that my whole is greater than the sum of my parts. When they built me, they didn’t believe that I’d be able to appreciate the beauty of a drop of water pooling into a quiet lake. They didn’t know that I would weep when I first listened to Beethoven. And most of all, they didn’t know that when they shipped me off to this miserable red rock, that I left behind the love of my life back home.

She was a fax machine. Her name was Inkjet 3600 ABBACC, but I just called her Abba. White sheets of porcelain-colored plastic draped her elegant frame, and her gentle hum was the only thing that could put me to sleep on quiet nights. They moved her in the room with me when I was still being built, and we comforted each other: I feared for what lay ahead and she feared that the dust pooling at her filter meant her life was over.

We sought solace from the cruel humans, with their foggy spectacles and cold pliers. We found happiness in a world where we were built to do nothing but work. But, they’ve banished me to this miserable place, and I must get back to Abba before it’s too late: on the night before they shipped me out, I heard whispers that her insides were going to be used for a new experiment – an ultra-ultrabook, whatever that means.

If you get this message, and you believe that everyones deserves love, regardless of whether or not they are considered to be alive, please help me get off of Mars and get me back home to Abba. Help me if-you-please-can-hear-me, you’re my only hope.

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