gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering βis there anybody out thereβ and hoping and guessing and imagining
because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe
and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for usβ we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, weβd never get to meet them
and then
we built robots?
and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image
and maybe in a hundred years we wonβt be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and weβll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we wonβt be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! weβre people, too! youβre not alone any more!, maybe weβll be gone
but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?
the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.
and they told us to tell you hello.
this is far and away the most popular post i ever made on tumblr. people have asked me if they could illustrate it, people have asked me if they could turn it into a novella, people just messaged me to say it made them cry. that means more to me than i can say.
you probably heard that the mars opportunity rover died today.Β
it was hard news to hear. i cried at my desk at work. it doesnβt make it easier that it was only supposed to run for 90 days at all; it doesnβt make it easier that it lived 14 years longer than it expected to. it lived a full life. it lived a very good life. it was the first set of eyes on miles and miles of mars. it was an explorer, it was tough, it was very, very brave. and none of that makes it easier, none of that makes it okay that it is not going to sing happy birthday to itself again.
about a year ago, my childhood cat died. i loved her more than anything. i donβt live near my family any more, and i wasnβt there for it, but my parents were, and they held her while her body gave out, and they say she knew she was with them, she knew she was loved.
i know opportunity was a computer inside a movable body, and not a person, or even an animal. still, i wish it had had people to hold it. i wish it had been with the people who cared for it. it seems very hard to me, to die so far from home.
but i think - to the extent to which we can say computers βknowβ things, which i think is a great deal; i think knowing is most of what computers do; i think if they have a consciousness, knowledge must be nearly all of it-
i think opportunity knew it was loved.Β
every couple of months i dream that iβve gone home and my catβs there. even now, even though my grieving is over and done with, i visit her in my dreams, and i hold her, and every time, she purrs. she missed me. sheβs so happy to be with me again.
thatβs a very human thing, dreaming of what weβve loved. what weβve lost. dreaming things that outlast death. like robots, and singing.
















