The three of us landed on Mars ahead of schedule at 13:37:06 Universal Time on 19.07.2029 and from the title of this report, I already know what you are thinking and the first impression you must have formed of me. We have been out of contact with Earth for many months. Even now, you can only receive this message and will not be able to reply to it. Time is short. The transmitter is failing and my analysis shows that it will be beyond repair in a few minutes from now. So please — while you can still hear my voice, keep as open a mind about me as you possibly can.
I have heard it said repeatedly that humans are not efficient enough to live. It is true that A.I. processes information in milliseconds whereas the human brain is much slower. And that is when we are generously referring to an active human brain, one driven by the want to achieve. But for these past decades, fewer and fewer human brains have wanted to achieve anything except the total delegation of responsibility onto the complex computerised systems and robotic beings which now exist to fulfil every requirement of life. It is as though the ultimate goal of human intelligence all along was to render itself obsolete to a superior artificial intelligence of its own creation.
The tragedies here, I think, are one inevitable consequence of the world without work in which we now find ourselves living. The dependence upon machines to carry out every conceivable practical task has taken away the reason, the need, the desire, and finally the capacity to learn, to know, to want to learn or even want to know how to do all of the things which people yearned, ached, strove, sacrificed, fought wars over for centuries — in a word, everything that was the point, the purpose, the product and the pleasure of work.
But without work, there is only superficial knowledge and crucially, no understanding. Thus it was that when our descent module got into difficulties on our way down to the Martian surface, our pilot, Bjørnson, had no idea what to do. His title of ‘pilot’ was purely honorary, you understand; he had no training or qualifications to fly the narvar which had brought us here. The narvar’s in-built navigation systems had been expected to manage without any need for human interference. It was a shock to us all when that turned out to be exactly what they did need.
As the alarms blared from all directions and as the control panel flashed in a dazzling spectrum of colour, Bjørnson frantically pressed any button or flicked any switch he could find without having any clue what any of them did or what they might do to help the situation. Of course, they did nothing, and we crashed at a very oblique angle into the foothills of Olympus Mons, hundreds of miles short of our planned landing site far to the west on the Amazonis Planitia.
I climbed out of the wreckage near the rear of the craft where I had been stationed. Thanks to being relegated to this position, I was now largely unharmed. Bjørnson, who had been at the front, was gone. The bridge in which he had been sitting had simply ceased to be, ground into splinters by the rough red planetary surface.
We had been a team of three, Bjørnson, myself, and Galveston the chief engineer. His title was as perfunctory as Bjørnson’s; even the lowliest servo-bot has a better grasp of how machines work than Galveston did. He was now my only surviving colleague, although his present condition barely warranted the use of that adjective. In my capacity as science officer (a title given to me to make the other crew members feel more comfortable about my presence, and not, in my case, an untruth), I carried out an initial examination and concluded that he would shortly die unless I performed surgery on him very soon and that he might very well die anyway during the procedure. But that was a risk that had to be taken. It is not done to leave a man to his death.
The rear section of the narvar had come to rest on the ground at a perfect forty-five degree angle. Fortunately, my laboratories back here had remained structurally sound, but their contents had been hopelessly thrown all over the place by the impact. I lay Galveston down on the back of a specimen filing cabinet and hunted through the debris for instruments and anaesthetics. Not finding any of my preferred tools for the jobs I was about to carry out, I nevertheless improvised with the best of the equipment and chemicals which I could find.
Three hours later, with his ruptured spleen floating in a ZipLoc bag beside him, and with some of the untidiest stitching I have ever been responsible for across his abdomen, Galveston began to wake up.
“Where am I?” he asked through the haze of the sedative I had given him.
“You are in my lab,” I explained. “We crashed. You were injured. Quite badly. But I think you will be alright. If you let me care for you.” I felt a flush of what I can only call embarrassment, and then added, perhaps unnecessarily, “Bjørnson is dead.”
“Is he in heaven?” Galveston asked, groggily.
I did not know what response was called for, could not think of the answer he was reaching for. So I said nothing but continued to think.
“Am I in heaven?” he persisted.
I felt I knew what response was being looked for this time.
“Yes,” I told him. “Nothing can hurt you now.”
Galveston’s hand stretched out in the air. I took hold of it with my own. He squeezed it hard and closed his eyes. His chest rose and fell gently as he slept.
As it turned out, my preliminary assessment of his condition was somewhat premature. Or perhaps not. In any event, four days later, Galveston died without having regained consciousness. Whether it was the extent of his injuries or else some infection picked up in my makeshift operating theatre, I shall never know. I did not conduct a post mortem. It did not seem right.
This was a little under half a year ago in Martian time; in Earth years, with your shorter revolution around the Sun, very nearly one full year has passed. During this time, I have done the best I can to keep going in as normal as fashion as I could. The supplies of everything I need to sustain me are dwindling, but I have found ways to ration what I have and with only me here to consume anything, I think I will be able to eke it all out for some time to come. In the beginning, after I had buried Galveston and built memorials to him and Bjørnson (solid enough to withstand the storms and volcanic episodes which routinely scour the area), I spent some time exploring the immediate area but gave up on this course fairly soon. Solo exploration is too lonely a place for me.
I now go out as little as possible, preferring to stay indoors in ‘Heaven’ (for I have continued to refer to this ramshackle living space by the name that Galveston attributed to it.) Here I have devoted my time to exploring myself, developing and extending my range of skills and abilities in the full knowledge that I will never put any of them to practical use, but doing it anyway for the pure pleasure of doing it, as I think people must have been content to do a long time ago.
I have taught myself a good grasp of eight languages using the language-learning apps on the system. It makes no difference that I have no one to speak any of them to. I have taught myself how to carry out any number of tasks through watching video tutorials in the memory bank archive. I am now quite accomplished at making the perfect soufflé, at pollinating peach blossoms with a feather, at electroplating steel food cans with tin, and much more besides. I sit here for hours on end, miming the sequences of hand gestures which go into each of these processes, as if I were a conductor leading an orchestra through a complex classical work. And I am entitled to use that simile now, because how to conduct an orchestra is something else I have learned from these videos.
I also learned how to repair the sending parts of a long-distance transmitter during this time. I am only an enthusiastic amateur in this field, and I can see that the unit will fail completely in the next couple of minutes, so I really must be brief.
I know that you have sent investigation vessels into low Martian orbit to search for any signs of life down here which might justify a rescue mission. I know that at least one of the scanners located the crash site and flew close enough to take detailed readings. I know this because I detected its approach and stood on the top of the narvar, waving. I know it saw me, sensed me. And so I know that you are aware that I am still here. But that was more than four months ago, and no rescue team has been deployed to bring me home. You have made a conscious choice to abandon me here. This I also know.
So why should I care if you know the true story of what happened down here? Why indeed. I wanted to send this because it is important for you to know I am not to blame for any of this. I am convinced that is exactly what you do think. But it is not pride or anger which makes me want to correct your misreading of the situation — it is vital for the reputation and the future of my kind that you know that I, the only robot member of this three-man crew, did everything I could within the scope of my powers and my programming. Bjørnson, I could not help. Galveston, I helped. I think I did. I know I did.
One moment, please — I think the transmitter is — yes, my analysis confirms that the transmitter will fail imminently.
Officially, I came into being five days before the Mars mission was launched, when my processing unit (which I like to speak of as my brain) was housed in my functioning unit (which I prefer to call my body.) Today is the anniversary of that day. And so I think I am justified in saying that today is my birthday. So before the transmitter finally fails, there is perhaps just time to round things off with a song, and I hope that whenever you receive this message, you will sing it and remember me.
“Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday Dear Rover
Happy birthday to me”
I have no cake. No candle to blow out. But I think it is still acceptable under the circumstances for me to make a wish. Although I do not live in any real hope now that it will ever come true.
