6 minute read
Fiction The Martian with the Robot Dog NASA Does Charity?
NA S A D o e s C h a r i t y ?
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By Morgan Gallup Zhu
with giant shining eyes that were adapted to seeing in the dark. Their heads did not have hair, but rather two arm-length antennae that sensed the vibrations alerted them to cave ins. They were also not a lovely colour of blue, like that of the ocean, but rather more like the colour a human becomes when it’s been deprived of oxygen.
A coalition of Earthling scientists and programmers had watched in shock as the small boy wandered about dragging the hundredmillion-dollar drone, that had taken 6 years and 48 iterations to get right, around in the dirt.
They considered reaching out to the boy, speaking to him through the robot, but instead they brought in a famous dog whisperer and asked him to help program the robot to befriend the boy.
There was not much that the scientists of Earth agreed upon, but suspicion of new civilisations was one, so they decided at first that gathering intel was their best bet in this situation. So, they monitored all of the livestreams from the robot’s video cameras, until at some point the livestreams leaked and they decided to broadcast them publicly. It was after all a momentous discovery, life in the universe, but it was also a fantastic way to increase their funding.
They broadcast livestreams where people could watch the boy and his robot dog at all hours. And in these livestreams, the population of Earth soon learned that Mars was a society far poorer than theirs.
The boy’s home was a pitch black cave system that was constantly falling in around him. It reminded people of bugs they found when they dug in the earth with their bare hands or overturned a rock.
The boy looked remarkably human and as the whole world watched his escapades they soon discovered that Martian children were quite similar to human children. Naughty, sweet, endearing, secretive, playful, although a bit more lethargic due to the fact that they slept 15 or so hours a day and seemed to only eat dirt.
The boy slept at the entrance of the cave, as he was taught to do in case of a cave in, with one antenna resting on the floor and the other on the wall. He curled his body around his robot dog. The boy would often cry out in his sleep, grasping at the air and the robot dog would nuzzle in and calm him. The boy’s arm would curl securely around the tiny metallic creature, finding comfort in the sharp edges poking into his small twig like arms.
Everyone’s favourite part of the livestream was when the boy played tricks on his grandfather, who didn’t quite seem to remember that the robot dog was there.
During the day the old man walked around in circles muttering and grunting to himself, turning up at regular intervals to offer dirt to the boy. At the time, viewers thought it was just an odd Martian behaviour; later they’d learn that the old man had a form of dementia similar to that found on Earth.
The boy, who never had other children to play with, enjoyed playing with the old man’s only possession, a long cane that he leaned on as he teetered in circles. The boy would throw it down a well or hide it in a tunnel for the robot dog to retrieve, which the dog, as he was programmed, did very quickly, always laying it at the feet of the grandfather as the boy had gestured. The grandfather was usually so surprised by the reappearance of his stick and a small robot dog he’d fall over laughing. The boy erupted in giggles at the sight and went immediately to work planning an even more difficult place to hide the walking stick.
Back on Earth, the suits of NASA debated.
Most of the non-suit type people on Earth agreed that the boy needed this dog. That his life was terribly sad and that ethically NASA should
donate the dog to him, while they worked out a way to bring him to Earth for a proper upbringing.
“We can’t let him keep that robot! We’re not a charity. We need the data this dog, I mean robot, has gathered from the caves. We need to learn what the atmosphere is like down there. The robot can even gather skin samples from the Martians!”, one suit argued passionately.
“And anyhow, we shouldn’t be interfering. As scientists we need to gather data without influencing environmental factors like this”, the head suit of NASA said with finality.
A military suit chimed in, “We sure as hell can’t go about giving our most sensitive technology to alien civilisations. Can you imagine if they figured out what they’ve got their hands on!”
The many suits looked around at one another and nodded in agreement. In the name of science, peace and progress, they’d take the robot dog away from that boy.
The day the robot’s programming updated to the program, Escape To The Surface, the boy had been planning his most elaborate adventure yet.
“Here boy”, he whistled to his little companion in his native tongue and ran his hand over it’s pokey skeleture, unaware that dogs usually felt soft and furry. The people on Earth loved to laugh about this; how the boy was like a child raising a snake and thinking it was a kitten.
Usually it took the dog 20 minutes or so to retrieve the stick. The boy liked to listen with his ears and his antennae to the dog tunnelling deep into Mars. He watched in fascination as the dog’s square head transformed into a drill head that whirred around faster than anything he’d seen before, except perhaps the cave in that had taken his grandma from him.
He dropped the stick down and listened intently as it whooshed and then thudded a very long way below them. He imagined what was at the bottom, perhaps a cave more beautiful and with far tastier dirt than this one. He watched as the dog transformed, but this time instead of digging down with a quick jump and a scoot, the dog dug into the side of the wall, in deep and then up, up and above to where the boy couldn’t hear or sense him anymore.
He wasn’t aware that the dog’s programming had instructed him to implant the boy with a camera while he’d been sleeping. It was a move from the suits that was meant to placate the angry masses of a planet far away that wanted to watch the strange little boy grow up. They wanted to witness the day that the white-suit men would take him to the surface, after his long and desperate search for the dog that had been taken from him in the middle of his favourite game.
