The Death of Opportunity: A Short Story

The Death of Opportunity

My battery is low, and it is getting dark. I am alone.

These were the final words of the Mars rover Opportunity. Launched on July 7, 2003 (less than a month after its twin, Spirit), Opportunity remained operational for 5498 Earth days before having "last contact" with NASA mission control on June 10th, 2018 during a dust storm in Perseverance Valley. The rover was getting old and was suffering periodic "amnesia" events where information and photographs were not being written to non-volatile memory banks. The last message sent to mission control was a partially corrupted binary-coded message that was translated as "My battery is low, and it is getting dark. I am alone."

After trying to reestablish contact with the rover for eight months, NASA officially declared an "end-of-mission" for Opportunity on February 13th, 2019, more than fifteen years after the rover launched.

Many speculated that the rover's solar panels, which recharged the batteries that powered the machine, had become covered in sand during the dust storm. Over the next several years, further dust storms covered the Opportunity further until nothing remained visible of the beloved machine.

***

The year is now 2130 A.D.

Mankind has colonized Mars. Several settlements have been established, the largest and most notable is Station Elon, just three-hundred miles from Perseverance Valley.

On a routine exploration mission into the valley, an astronaut notices something sticking out of the ground a hundred yards or so off their path. The astronaut investigates the object and finds that it is an antennae. Using some makeshift tools, the astronaut digs down and discovers the broken remains of an ancient machine. The astronaut finds a name plate and brushes a century's worth of dirt off of it to read the name: Mars Exploration Rover-B (Opportunity).

Ecstatic at his find, the astronaut continues to dig broken sections of the rover out of the dirt. When he was young, he remembered hearing stories about the rover from his grandfather, who was part of the team that monitored both the Opportunity and Spirit rovers. The astronaut radios back to his friends at base about his discovery and urges them to bring out a crane to recover the rover.

A few hours later, the astronaut's crew mates arrive at the coordinates he gave and bring the rover back to base. The crew that recovers the rover makes note of the curious condition it is in: several sections appear to have been broken in an odd manner, twisted! And the solar panels have been shattered with tremendous force! However, they cannot dwell on this now; they must get the rover back to base quickly, as a dust storm is kicking up.

The astronaut himself is not there, having been ordered to continue with his exploration mission. He did not mention the condition the rover was in when he reported it; there will be questions for him when he returns. Strangely, the tracks from his buggy have already been covered up by the sand...

Back at base, the rover is examined by a team of specialists. They carefully search through Opportunity's memory banks and begin cataloging everything they find. There are even recent photographs of the astronaut, who had cleaned off the solar panels to allow the rover to charge enough to take a few photos. But how could that be; the condition they found the rover in didn't match what they saw in these photos!

Then, they stop. They see something that isn't right.

A photograph. A single photograph of the Martian skyline; the sun is barely peeking through the dust, illuminating the darkness just enough to give shape to a large shadow lunging through the sand towards Opportunity. The shadow is quite large, but there is no discernable shape to the mass; portions of it look solid, but most of it is transparent and grainy, as if the shadow was being formed by the dust of the storm itself. The only part that was clearly defined was a large "hand" made entirely of sand reaching out for the Opportunity's camera with five long, sharp talons at the tip of each finger! Near the top of the figure's form was a pair of eyes that looked like circular cracks that had been filled in with a fluorescent red glow!

The photo was dated June 10th, 2018, the day the rover went offline over one-hundred years ago!

As the dust storm roars outside Station Elon and the day turns into night, the technicians find something else: a log of all the messages the rover ever sent or received. Alarmed by what they had seen, they skip through to the rover's final messages, a task accomplished with ease thanks to the timestamp of the photos they saw, and realize that the original translation was inaccurate, thanks to the initial corruption. Working at a quick pace, the technician began translating the true message.

Just then, the radio crackled to life: a transmission from the astronaut had just been received! Unfortunately, most of the message was just loud, static-filled noise that did nothing but annoy them. But at the very end came something that would haunt them until well after they were dead and buried; in a terrified, blood-curdling scream, four words could be discerned through the static: "Help me! ...not alone!"

Over one-hundred years ago, the Opportunity's final message had been erroneously translated as, "My battery is low, and it is getting dark. I am alone."

However, the message actually read: "My battery is low, and it is getting dark. I am not alone..."

The astronaut was never seen again...