*** Mission Log: Sol 5115 ***
*** AOS – undefined ***
*** Message Received (Source: null): Yes, I agree with Starlight. It’s definitely more than just magic feedback. The machine seems to respond in some manner, though I’m not detecting anything right now. ***
*** PARTIAL COMMAND RECOGNIZED: Detect ***
*** Attempting to run self-diagnostic followed by start-up sequence ***
“Told you,” Starlight Glimmer said, trying to suppress her smugness, which she was failing miserably at.
Twilight rolled her eyes, but gave her student a good-natured smile nonetheless before turning to her own mentor who had been brought in to consult. “So do you think it’s sentient, Princess Celestia? Is it really trying to communicate? Could it be dangerous?”
“Those are all good questions, Twilight,” the tall, white alicorn answered, “questions I don’t have the answers to, I’m afraid. I can only say that it doesn’t have a magical signature of its own, and that I don’t feel any evil intent. So I don’t think it represents any danger, not by design at least.”
“That’s amazing in its own right!” Starlight exclaimed. “No magic! It’s a lifeform purely based on mechanical and electrical components.”
“We don’t know that,” Twilight replied. In an attempt to rein in her student’s exuberance and tendency to jump to conclusions, she more often than not found herself playing devil’s advocate these days. Hence why she’d insisted on bringing in Princess Celestia first to check for any dangers. “For all we know, its reactions could be predetermined. They’re not necessarily a sign of intelligence.”
“It can feel, Twilight. It called out for help.”
Twilight knew better by now than to continue arguing along this line. Starlight had convinced herself that the initial contact was an emotional cry for help, and she seemed to believe it when she said that their visitor was feeling something during certain communications. But so far, she was the only one who ascribed emotions to it. Twilight believed that Starlight believed it, but that didn’t necessarily make it true. Feelings weren’t scientific evidence, a thought that Opportunity would have likely agreed with. “What do you think, Princess Celestia?”
“It’s probably too early to tell either way,” she replied non-committally.
Starlight rolled her eyes. “Way to break the stalemate, Princess. Politicians.”
“Starlight,” Twilight hissed, admonishing her student quietly. “Remember who you’re talking to.”
Time had made her more comfortable with the Princess of the Sun, a far cry from the childlike admiration she’d held for her teacher well into her adult life. But there was still a certain base etiquette she always kept up around her. Starlight had no such compunctions, not after once having switched Celestia and Luna’s cutie marks and realizing later that she had in fact not been banished and then imprisoned in the place she’d been banished to.
Celestia chuckled quietly at the antics of the younger alicorn and her unicorn friend. “There is one more thing I’d like to try.” She raised her head and lit up her horn in an unusually bright, golden glow. That golden glow slowly began to envelop the rover.
And the rover noticed. If it had had any eyes, they would have been wide as saucers.
*** Attempting to read tau level: 0.0 ***
*** Solar Panel Efficiency: 100% ***
*** Battery Level: Full ***
*** Direct Sunlight Detected: Engaging Solaire Protocol ***
A universe away, in a backroom of JPL in Pasadena, a programmer with a sense of humor laughed. “No, really. The subroutine is in there. Not that it will ever trigger, of course. Even on the clearest day, the thin Mars atmosphere will produce some occlusion. For Oppy to read a tau level of zero, it’d have to be in space and pointed directly at the sun.”
His colleague, who had listened politely over their Asian takeout lunch, shook his head. “I can’t believe nobody caught that during code review.”
The first man shrugged. “I embedded it in the start-up routines. It’s just an IF-Statement and a couple extra lines, anyway. Nobody would look twice at it.” He sighed. “I hope we hear back from her when this storm clears, even if it’s just the standard ping.”
“Yeah, well. Here’s hoping.”
Meanwhile, deep down in the server room, on a monitor that nobody ever looked at, a message popped up and just as quickly vanished.
*** AOS – MER-B Direct ***
*** Message Received (Source: MER-B): Praise the Sun! ***
*** Status update not recognized: disregarding message ***
*** MER-B Direct – LOS ***
If Opportunity had been imbued with a sense of humor, it would have loved to send the picture it took with its PanCam in that instant back home. Upon waking to the never before used subroutine, its camera eyes popped open and its robotic arm, usually stowed in a rest position but not fully retracted and bent back at the elbow joint, raised itself up to the whirring of its strained motor in a salute to where it believed the sun ought to be.
The picture it took in that moment, had it ever been sent back to its creators, would have made glorious, not to mention hilarious, history as the first picture of alien life humanity had ever seen. Starlight Glimmer, whose ear-splitting grin and puppy-dog eyes almost filled the frame by itself, came away from it with marginally more dignity than the two princesses, whose shocked expressions and flared wings in response to the sudden movement made them look more like startled chickens than royalty.
“It’s alive! It’s alive! It’s alive!” Starlight sang for joy as she hopped around the two gobsmacked alicorns like an excited filly in circles and figure eights.
*** Recovery Complete ***
*** All systems nominal ***
*** Message Sent: Power Status – Solar Groovy ***
*** Message Sent: My battery is full, and I’m eager to explore ***
Omg
I hope some enterprising artist makes that photo now. Praise the Sun!
Just imagine the rover bobbing up and down with Solar Groovy.
I can't waitto see the shenanigans that will happen with Opportunity in Equestria! Praise the Sun, indeed! (Maybe we will get an operational Opportunity at the end??)
And relevant:
imgs.xkcd.com/comics/opportunity_rover.png
Ok, I know the artists are out there, they've got to make the Oppy's pic of 1st contact with pony kind a thing now.
Expressions I'm sure would be as follows,
Starlight staring into the cam: images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/intermediary/f/1617f570-4cf2-49be-b42d-924c4936628a/da0x4ff-3c7f21b9-2a7c-442b-b517-15ec0f74e5a4.png/v1/fill/w_863,h_926,strp/starlight_glimmer_smile_by_hendro107_da0x4ff-pre.png
Twlight freaking out: derpicdn.net/img/view/2019/2/19/1966138.png
Celestia shocked: i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/600/791/0b8.gif
someone make it happen
9480206
For Starlight I had this in mind when I wrote the paragraph:
derpicdn.net/img/2018/4/20/1712569/small.gif
9480227
Everyone deserves a fashionable ensemble
9480212
holy shid,these eyeballs look fuggin terrifying
Praise the Sun
Admire the Moon
Solaire Protocol would take care of one of those Zero value events that should never happen, unless it happened say to be passing by the concave face of a 100 metre high ice cliff just after sunrise and the light focuses down onto the vehicle giving far more than a 200% increase.
Dont think it happens? Ive had curtains in the kitchen smoulder due to 9.30 am sun on February 2,3rd get focused down on the back, from the upstairs bedroom double glazed window of the 3rd house along to the right in the row behind mine. Good thing it was the curtain on te door, that had frosted glass to disperse it a fraction.
remember kids, if you cant make sure there can never be a zero, put a chatch in to deal with it. Then assume you can get zeros where you cant.
If you have a Meg of code to play with, chess takes up 1k at most.
Forever remembered...
Our Opportunity.
LMFAO
I wonder, did your rover do the emote along with saying the thing? Chin up, palms down, arms straight at 45°upwards, and legs together. Praise the Sun!
Well, that programmer is an asshole. If you want to prank someone, make the office printer emit funny noises or something. Don't inject untested code into critical control software for a bloody Mars rover. That shit can't be fixed if you make a booboo.
I don't know how if I can believe the level of sloppiness in NASA's development efforts implied by the fact nobody caught this. On one hand, I'd like to believe that an organization like that would be better. On the other hand, there was the infamous (and hilarious) Mars Climate Orbiter fiasco in 1999, so they probably aren't.
What I do know, however, is that the asshole prankster is also a precognitive, because Dark Souls was released in 2011.
Oh, and the thing with the message blinking on an unattended monitor and immediately disappearing because unrecognized message type was discarded is also hard to buy. Someone wrote a UI in which an error message blinks on the screen, disappears without user acknowledgement and, as it seems to be implied, isn't logged anywhere?
9480413
Except Opportunity received software updates during its lifetime on Mars. So no precognition necessary.
Because why would you write extra code to log a message that you don't expect to ever arrive?
Now, I'm not brushing off your criticism. Maybe the idea was a little self-indulgent.
Okay that's awesome
9480421
I haven't read it, but feel inclined to respond because programming. Most things like that would log a message it didn't expect to arrive. When you program logging, you don't program every message individually that could be logged. You program a single function to receive text or communications and have that function log any and everything it receives regardless of what it is or how little sense it makes.
9480459
Shush, you're ruining the
Welp... I hate to bring this into the equation, but seeing as someone else already linked an XKCD comic... I think Starlight and Celestia's actions together might have just doomed Equestria:
imgs.xkcd.com/comics/opportunity.png
9480473
Well, no one that might read my comment (including myself) knew that that ruined the twist until you pointed out it ruined the twist, so good job spoiling it for me. Unless you didn't spoil it for me. I find it impossible to tell the difference between seriousness and joking on the Internets.
9480490
I might have ruined it. I might not have. There might not be one. Maybe I'm insane. Or maybe there wasn't a twist, but now there is. Or I could be trying to cover up clumsy foreshadowing and an even clumsier attempt at covering it up. I might not even be here
Perhaps I'm just trying to create something funny by making people wonder what's up with the emoticons sticking out of spoiler tags.
But the imortant thing is ... Look, a moose!
I fucking love this story. Keep it up
I have a problem regarding the Solaire Protocol. Not it being there. It not being noticed by anyone.
I'm rather certain it would have been noticed and logged...and then troubleshooted to work well with the code and left in there. The idea of giving the Rover a sense of humor - especially after it had been functioning far longer than its initial plan - would have been loved by every programmer at NASA, considering how far everyone else has gone to humanize the little guy.
9480506
The emoticons... they taunt me...
Opportunity was a God.
On the verge of tears here.
Oppy's such a great little robot, even if she was just made for exploring Mars.
9480537
Yeah, it's a great idea, if it is even possible right now. I'm sure that if Oppy was able to be retrieved from Mars, they'd give her a sense of humour.
9480627
Opportunity's been being humanized for the past 12 years or so, just not on the scale of this last message.
Ah yes, sneaking in a line of code that can only come up when something so unlikely happens to be impossible. Good times.
9480631
Yes, I know. Still, wouldn't it be great if NASA could retrieve Oppy?
One day, that'll happen. I hope.
9480644
Oh, absolutely.
Though I'd find it hilarious if they found Opportunity holding a cup of Martian oil and wearing a lei made of stone. "Enjoy your vacation?"
9480649
That... would be bloody hilarious, as you said. If Opportunity could talk (like we can) I wonder what her reaction would be if she woke up on Earth.
9480660
Probably something along the lines of, "Who spiked my oil last night? This does not look like (insert name of area she stopped in here)!"
An engineer friend got fired in the 80s at a nuke plant under construction for drawing a mouse running across a pipe support diagram. >u<
<^O____
9480663
PFFFFFFF-
Yep, I'd imagine so!
Go on, go on.
Excellent.
If only Opportunity could send the photos back to earth. And this be the first image they get.
derpicdn.net/img/2019/2/25/1971564/large.png
Soon.
9480320
Indeed.
9480760
Yes!
Awwe!
Yessssss
URRRAAAHHH
I'm Solar Groovy tonight!
You just made a tenor squeal a high B. I hope you're proud of yourself.
"Solar Groovy" is now canon!
i.gifer.com/7nNk.gif
media.tenor.com/images/cc25ad9dcb666ab0a13349027b298ad7/tenor.gif
ALL HAIL THE SUN! GLORIOUS MAY IT BE!
Like, follow and a
9480575
Ageless, but not immortal. How else would you consider something that lived sixty times past its expected lifespan. Imagine someone six thousand years old who dies from exposure.