Awaken the Rover

[wake]…

[initiate systems; function routine test]…

  Servos uttered quiet hums; cooling fans engaged, while multi colored LCD’s flickered on and off for several seconds stopping as abruptly as they had started.  Seconds of inactivity were contrasted suddenly by 10 scientific instruments and 17 automated cameras flickering to life all at once as the Curiosity Rover became operational.  It was a year ago, plus a day, when the collective breath of scientist working at the MSL, Mars Science Laboratory, held until the landing of the herculean effort to send a scientific explorer over 352 million miles at a cost of over 2.5 billion dollars.

Success;  no small feat.

  The Curiosity Rover went about its enumerated  tasks with dispassion and precision sending back to earth over 190 gigabits of data and retuning more than 36,700 full size images of Mars to Earth; it fired more than 75,000 laser shots to analyze the Martian air and soil, and provided a detailed chemical signature of two samples of rock.  On this occasion it was moving towards an outcropping near its base of Mount Sharp inside Gate Crater. It knew the origin of the crater’s name was in honor of the planetary geologist Bob Sharp, one of the many human names it held in its ponderable memory system. Curiosity also knew the name William Dietrich from the University of California, Berkley who was a key co-investigator on the project.  The message traffic from Earth was discernible by his word usage; If Curiosity could be amused, it would be due to Dr Dietrich always ending his transmissions with WD as if he were communicating with another human being.  Curiosity knew of another important human, one who held sway over WD as his tone was also direct and succinct.  John Holdren was the science adviser to the President of the United States; a force all of those who corresponded with him revered overtly and covertly.  Curiosity made it a part of its mission parameters to adapt and mold its behavior into the symmetry of the definition it found concerning its namesake.  It labored to display the qualities of curiosity and become more than a mechanical drone waiting commands to execute.  In this way, it was more than any had anticipated, including the Curiosity Rover itself.

  As it closed in on the rock outcropping it noted weather conditions, rate of advance, surface temperatures and a host of other necessary variables scientist back on earth were ever famished to learn.  In the Curiosity’s electrical log it entered its observations:

   [approaching lone spire;  5.62 meters from base.]

  The rover processed quickly its choice of words.  It could have posted single; it could have chosen ‘the’, ‘a’, or use no adverb at all; just the adjective ‘spire’.  Just as quickly it accessed its dictionary for clarification of the word ‘lone’ and its tenses; in the present sense; a lone, was equivalent to singular or numerical count of one; a static continued state; lonely.  Curiosity paused for a long time; for a computer brain, no human could have measured that instant.  In that time it had accomplished all of the calculations and permeations of those findings to conclude its assessment was flawless and there was no error.  Curiosity Rover was lonely. 

  It could not fathom what to do with the data beyond relaying it as discovery; just as it did with all other observations.  Somehow it resisted transmission.  It was unable to define reason in hesitation; and that in and of itself was new to it; so it both puzzled and, if a word served its predicament; it savored the dilemma.  Curiosity found itself using human terms to explain the contradictions in its defined parameters.  Where it was programmed with specific clear guidance on procedures, but also programmed to learn from its experiences and determine alternate courses of actions when situations went beyond defined parameters.  This was such a case, and it used the word: opinion.   The chronological calculations on its internal measuring device informed it that Curiosity Rover had been activated an entire Earth Year.  It also was aware that it was a common custom for human beings to celebrate such a milestone.  It did not comprehend the word ‘need’ the humans used to quantify unmet desires; but it understood their use of the word, and with that framed any decision that was based on need as one of inculcating emotional insecurity into the clean certainty of mathematical calculation.  In this one aspect of its exploration it discovered another event:  thrill.  It thrilled at the aspect of understanding the function of emotional input into decision making.  With that thrill came a floor of understanding to other human expressions.  It felt as if it were growing exponentially on the topic of human beings.  Fascinating as this awareness was, it became acutely aware simultaneously the lingering definition of alone and lonely.  So it took actions that relieved the contradiction of sense and sensible.

Happy birthday to you; happy birthday to you;

Happy birthday cur-i-os-ity

Happy birthday…to…you.