“Daaazz-Vaaa-Donnn-Ya, Tava-reeeeesssshhhhh Mars, kiss my metal ass good byeeee, Houston!  Daddy’s... on its way!”

There was an awkward silence filled with static that roared even over the thundering of the launch engines.  The static was what the VIC was told to expect whenever the man on the communication device toggled it open but wasn’t speaking.  Finally, a pitifully composed voice recaptured the silence.  “Calm down, VIC, you’re scaring the Russians.  They don’t know you as well as I do, and they’ve got almost as much invested in you as NASA.  You’re leaving earth’s atmosphere, no malfunctions noted here, Houston gives you a go.”

“Roger that control, no problems noted here.  Is that you, Charley Potterfield?”

“Roger that, VIC.”

“Wow, NASA actually did something right!  You on the radio for the whole trip, buddy?”

“Roger, VIC—for the next three years, with evenings, weekends, and holidays off.  Hope you remembered to bring a good book.  Janet’ll flip if you start calling for me at 3:00 AM for a chat.”

“I got the notebook Stacey gave me, and I’m writing everything down for her... and you.”

A chuckle escaped from the Houston end.  “Good, VIC.  That’s what human beings do, they write things down.  How’s the ride so far, robonaut?”

“Great ship, Charley.  Not even much shaking on lift off!  The lift off from Mars should be a snap.”

There was that awkward silence filled with static again.  VIC suspected it had confused his human counterpart, but was not certain how.  Every time he thought he understood mankind, it seemed to go out of its way to cross him up.

* * * * *

Once upon a time, when the world was buried in debt up to its eyeballs due to political stupidity, all hopes of meeting a Martian are being pinned on a strange humanoid thing.  VIC—Various Intelligenced Cyborg—is a miracle of science and as real as death... but it is a species of one.  The VIC is neither man nor a machine.  It is an intelligent creature, without the troublesome genes and ancestry of mankind or any earthly creature of organic composition... but it is not a machine.

A later incarnation of the early “robonauts” NASA stationed on the International Space Station, they gave mankind the ability to have two- and three-year manned space flights without having an actual living person aboard.  NASA’s Deep Space Flight Project Leader, the scientist who developed a water manufacturing cell for planetary settlements, in an interview with Modern Space Flight E-Magazine had quelled the argument of the viability of these robotic astronauts over humans by saying, “It doesn't breathe, eat, drink, shit, or get pissed off.  It has no fear.”  In short, it had none of the human failings that had slowed the human race down.  The robonauts, however, had a few failings unique to them that took mankind decades to overcome.

The earlier models, though constructed as humanoid-ish, were wishful humanoid devices at best.  Some were wired into control boards (being humanoid only from the waist up, having only “from the waist up”), given to only limited functions and a tendency to break down at the damnedest times, often sending years of planning right out the old refuse port.  Later robonauts were mobile to a degree, but were operated like remote-controlled cars—NASA engineers got a good laugh about this.  Instead of keeping these little wonders in-house, a half-crazy President who had cut off most of their funding (and in so doing, screwed them and most of the US space program right into the ground) forced General Motors, partially owned by the Federal Government and compulsorily ordered to do what they were told, into “helping” develop these mechanized creatures.  That they were little more than remote-controlled toys that kept breaking down surprised none of the NASA engineering staff.  A scandal had arisen when a recovered defective unit had been retrieved from an important test launch, and “Property of Government Motors.  Made in the USA, with Chinese parts, by Union Workers” was found lasered into the plastic back plate, to the delight of the American press and shame of the Democrats in Washington.

When the Disney Animatronics Imagineers came aboard, things changed.  The Disney boys, while they couldn’t out-drink the Russian engineers on the project (but proved they could drink the NASA boys under the table, and were then honored as part of the team), got the robonauts moving in a very human and more dependable fashion—a little stiff perhaps, but definitely more human.  By re-engineering old models into functional body designs, and then adding working human-type eye sockets and jaws to rather mechanical faces, they created a highly functional, fairly sturdy work force with frighteningly human overtones.  That changed the thinking about the robonauts.  They were no longer machines that at best mimicked human motion—they now surpassed human motion.  Parts no longer just rotated about 180 degrees and reversed as human beings did, but did three-sixties like nothing—not for just one or two functions, but the full range of human motions.  Screws could be driven in the void of space in a third of the time of a human hand even with tools, and twice as fast as the previous model.

These models were being considered for the first manned mission to Mars, but they were only the eyes and ears and fingers of teams of humans back at home on Earth.  Every quick decision ended in disaster.  It was obvious in a preliminary moon flight that without the human skill of decision-making, these devises couldn’t eliminate the need for a human actually being there.  The robonauts would get fried, smashed, drowned, or frozen, and the human controller would get a cup of coffee and go back to a drawing board.

The problem was simple: The computers that drove their operation—whether built into the mannequin frame, part of the craft control panel, or controlled at the NASA space centers—were patterned after the human brain.  But these computers merely received information, processed it, and then carried out an assigned function, as a human would do a rote task.  To “get the hell” out of the way, down, or to safety without sending a signal home, having it interpreted by an actual human brain, and a response sent back took too much time.  A computer, no matter how complex you make it, has nothing to do with any kind of functional creature intelligence and absolutely no instinct for survival.  Without human command, these mechanized beings couldn’t think for themselves and react.  There is no intelligence bred into a computer, just a logic that would react only if supplied specific facts that it had been programmed to grasp towards a desired end.  It looked like the project was doomed.

But again the Disney Imagineer Calvary road over the hill to the rescue.  Working with the Russians, the animatronics boys created a device that allowed the electronic currents in the human brain to be transferred into a miniature series of PC-like devices in the artificial cranium of a robonaut, implanting in effect an actual human brain, or at least the electrical brain waves that make human thought.  To explain it to the human race as a perfectly humane and religiously neutral procedure, Disney released The Mouse Goes to Mars to explain it.  It was nominated for an Oscar.  The NASA contribution to the event was to modify the transfer system so that it didn’t kill the donor.  It looked perfect on paper!

Unfortunately, it wasn’t paper they wanted to go to Mars.  The VIC had been gifted with nineteen languages and a complete store of linguistic files beyond individual language comprehension that constituted a near-universal translating system, a complete working understanding of astral-navigation and mechanics, physical mechanics, all the math known to man, complete possession of all the biological information in the known universe, basically all other scientific information the human race had discovered, all Wikipedia updates, and a working knowledge of the rides at Disneyland and show times at the Magic Kingdom, Florida, in the event VIC came across living intelligent creatures he wanted to send back to Earth.  He could also write things down—mainly because that’s what had been the traditional human thing to do!

NASA and the Russians thought it was a bit much, all that Disney stuff, but then they agreed that “throwing the mouse a bone” was only fair.

It was a project that had taken more than two decades.  Programming the robonaut took almost five years and nearly killed one of the scientist donors.  Finally, the day had come.  The last connections to human brains were severed.  The VIC stood in the center of a circle of twenty-three of the finest minds in the world, each holding a scientific problem in his or her native language to be solved.  The VIC powered up and went on-line.  Its head leisurely rotated in a circle, studying all the problems, and then it stopped.  For over a minute, there was a dead silence over the cluster.

“What are you doing?” asked Charley Potterfeild, one of the project leaders.

VIC’s head turned to face him, his metal eyelids blinking.  “I’m ridin’ a fuckin’ bicycle, what the hell does it look like I’m doin’?” it snapped sarcastically in an impersonated Rodney Dangerfield voice.  Grabbing at an imaginary tie, VIC tugged at it and shook its head.  “That’s the problem with you eggheads.  You don’t give an average guy no respect around here!”

There was a collective “wad-da-hell?” from the circle of twenty-three of the finest minds in the world.  VIC had picked up some unanticipated human traits.

They toyed with the idea of retooling the transfer device and reprogramming VIC, but that would have set them back at least another five to ten years, upsetting a certain full-crazy President who had already ordered a bronze commemorative plaque created to be implanted in the angry red planet, thus mandating it as a Democratic voting district.  Worse, nobody knew what or how to retool the gizmo!  With all those wild electrons snapping at the man-made synapses and all that universal knowledge being spliced in, unavoidable human personality had slipped through.  And given that the two numb-nuts chosen to donate brainwaves were basically personality stiffs, VIC had luckily gotten himself out of having a “Poindexter” persona.  The robonaut had performed its first miracle.  He had spliced two lack-luster human beings together and created a personality anybody would be happy to sit at a bar and have a drink with.

A cyborg is, by general definition, a mammal with robotics added to enhance its capability.  Charley Potterfield realized that, in effect, they had reversed this process.  This cyborg had been a robonaut gifted with human traits that made him seem genuinely human.  And it seemed to be enjoying its human personality.

Without any warning, the VIC walked into a hot shower one morning and started singing—a better test of waterproofing there had never been, and it left it smelling clean and fresh!  Charley’s youngest, Stacey, had given it a notebook, and the VIC wrote down everything of interest to it for her.  As they finished each workday, for unknown reasons, the VIC would go looking for a Jack Daniels on the rocks and dump it down into his chemical processor.  VIC was given to bad jokes, following Miami Dolphins football, and reading the plays of William Shakespeare.

Charley played to its “emotional” needs, and so took VIC under his wing.  In a strange way, they bonded, and whatever re-tooling VIC needed, Charley was able to do without having to plug it in again.  NASA realized it wasn’t electronic repair that was needed to continue the program, it was learning what emotional boinks their two human donors had passed on and teaching the VIC to work around them—emotionally.  It wasn’t actually easy for the engineers to accept, especially the Russians.  After all, VIC was a computer, and just because it was smarter than any actual human on the planet... why couldn’t they just reprogram it?  But Charley played shrink and managed to talk VIC around his fear of not having the rent money, his golf game falling apart (even though he’d never been on the links), and not having life insurance in a very dangerous occupation.  The one thing Charley couldn’t talk VIC around was his (assumed) imagined need for sleep.  He was a machine, and there was no need to rest, never mind sleep.  It was a major problem until Charley figured it out.

Charley realized VIC had a virtual human brain.  It functioned entirely in the same fashion as a man’s.  Sleep was a prerequisite to the human condition.  While VIC could not recall any dreams, Charley was certain he did dream.  He had to if, like a man, the brain needed to revitalize itself.  To create a genuine human brain, sleep was a key part of the process.  The VIC didn’t physically need sleep, and when it was occupied it’d never even think of it.  But for the sake of conscious thought, at least some form of it was becoming a prerequisite.  It took a while to get that down NASA’s throat, but as soon as they did, they were back on course to the other planets.

There was only one thing left to do for the pending trip to Mars: transportation.

The science fiction world, of which the illiterate press was the spearhead, clung to their belief that a stationary base was the way to go, from which Buck Rogers would jump out of the hatch and charge out onto the void of Mars.  But NASA and company preferred rovers.  Rovers had all kinds of  advantages over stationary and limited-motion devices as they easily allowed more territory to be covered, could be directed to specific sites, and a busted down gizmo stranding a robonaut was, while embarrassing, a lot easier to deal with than a dead astronaut freezing or frying to death four miles from a stationary lander!  Even the remote-controlled rovers could be directed to the more sunny locals to weather the subzero winter months and extend the functional life time of both the rover and the robonautic device.  No big deal, actually, but it sounded important to the folk with the money.

Another issue was that Mars seemed to be largely covered by six inches of loose sandy dust, and wheels would get stuck or spin in the stuff, throwing off the odometers used to measure how far the vehicles had traveled.  There had been several designs to overcome this problem.  Some were good operationally, and some were not.  The Brits with Beagle 2, back around 2003, had a compressed spring mechanism which was designed to allow movement across the surface of Mars.  NASA even began developing a Mars Tumbleweed Rover, a wind-propelled rover that counted heavily on the Martian winds.

There had been dozens of small to medium-small rovers, but all carried limited payloads, only a small amount of equipment for scientific exploration.  The VIC was a walking, talking science lab who was pretty self-contained... but weighed as much as an African gorilla.  NASA had been expecting a small, passive mechanical man which initially was thirty-six to fifty-four inches tall, and would snap into a small vehicle like a Tonka toy part.  VIC’s physical condition, six foot tall and three hundred seventy pounds, required a different mode of transportation than NASA had drawn up.

In 1948, the Wilks family at their farm in Anglesey drove around in their war surplus Willys Jeep.  Deciding that they could take a good idea and make it better, they began crossing it with farm equipment—adding heavy plates, centering the steering wheel—and they created the most hard-assed vehicle ever known to the driving public.  More than a century later, the Land Rover was still going indestructibly on.  There wasn’t a climate on our planet that a Land Rover hadn’t beaten up with its unique ability to climb almost vertically and dig its wheels through marshes, swamps, and sand without even slowing.  With its extended breathing air tube, it could even travel partially submerged.  And with a heavily-modified individual steel-caged seat and other safety features, it offered a better-than-safe compartment for a human driving the vehicle in the event of rollovers, crashes, or collisions.

NASA acquired a late model Land Rover it bought second hand from a local used car lot (they would have bought new, but there was little money in the budget for what was supposed to be a prototype).  They cut the cab off, moved the rear end (complete with wheels), built modified brakes, and attached it to the cab and front end with an oversized, knobbier set of tires.  They re-plated the undercarriage with steel plates three inches thick to make it less susceptible to jagged rocky surfaces.  All window glass was replaced with bulletproof Plexiglas; mirrors were replaced with cameras and ground radar set-ups.  They were going to put in GPS and things such as a robotic arm, high-gain antennas, a hi-def panoramic camera mast assembly, and all the modifications of a high-line automobile when it occurred to somebody that the VIC had all that stuff built in already!  When it was finished, with a few budget over-runs, it looked like a five million dollar dune buggy that had been built by the Department of Defense.

They toyed with the idea of leaving the Land Rover engine and tuning the engine lean, but uncertainty over the Mars atmosphere and how much dust the breathing apparatus on the rover could swallow before choking out killed that idea.  Next they considered adding an oxygen tank to the end of the rover’s breathing tube, but that was just too dangerous.  Several scientists sitting down with the VIC for an end-of-day bourbon started going over all the means of propulsion at their disposal.  The question of what was the safest, most dependable, low-atmosphere drive source for a massive payload like VIC was being hotly debated until the fourth round, when it was unanimously decided that the limeys with Beagle 2 had been on to something.  Why not remove the engine in favor of a wind-up spring-operated DaVinci-esque drive source?  The VIC had the power of a small bull, so winding it up was no problem, with or without air!  They could even add a foldaway sail as an assist if the Mars winds were up!

The whole discussion would have been forgotten with the rising sobriety of the next morning but for one engineer who had doodled the minutes of the meeting on a cocktail napkin and accidentally stuffed it in his wallet with his change.  When the General Tao’s chicken and pork lo mien arrived, the conversation began again over lunch.  It attracted a crowd, and by mid-afternoon the engine was being pulled from the rover and a spring gear mechanism Leonardo would have been proud of was being designed.  A few short months later, with VIC behind the wheel, they sent it out to the highway to be tested.  They were hoping for ten and a half miles at a speed of about twenty miles per hour.  VIC cranked the spring to its max, got in, hit the release, and disappeared out of sight in less than six seconds.

There was a slight miscalculation: off by a flyspeck everybody thought was a decimal point, everything from the gear ratio to the energy curve was thrown way off.  The rover had hit speeds of seventy miles an hour, and ran from Florida all the way to New Jersey before the spring gave out.  It did it with half of NASA, State and Local Police, the FBI, CIA, and remnants of the KGB on its tail all the way.  VIC became the first robonaut to be ticketed for operating an unregistered Land Rover, speeding, driving without a license, and failing to pull over.  The weird little Land Rover had exceeded all expectation.

Over the next month, Charley and VIC would drive deserts, swamps, Alaskan ice fields, Manhattan rush hour traffic, and every desolate tract of land on the planet... perfectly.  And few people even looked at VIC as he and Charley drove by.  It was the odd little rover with the oddly shaped wind-up key where the trunk should have been that they looked at and marveled.

* * * * *

The Mars lander craft that the VIC was in was not equipped with things to idle away a nearly three-year travel time for a mentally overactive robonaut.  Oh, NASA would flash the New York Times crossword puzzle, and every other crossword puzzle from every major daily on the planet to him.  He would have them all finished as soon as their images appeared.  It was obvious to Potterfield that VIC was getting even faster at crossword puzzles every day.  In fact, it may have very well been that VIC had already exceeded mental expectations.  His memory was already loaded with major novels and international literature but, hey, how many times can you read War and Peace in a day?  Having a better book collection than the Library of Congress in your memory doesn’t mean anything to a creature capable of reading every book in it in less than a work week—twice.  After the sixth time reading War and Peace, the Bible, Moby Dick, and the unabridged Webster’s Dictionary in an afternoon, Vic was bored again.  It wished they had installed an actual window.

Another problem nobody anticipated was that Vic was getting bored with the NASA Earth stations (or more correctly, the humans that manned them) that were going to follow his activities 24/7 for the entire three-year-long trip to Mars.  He liked talking with Charley, who had become a non-science friend, hearing about his sons playing football for their High School, his teenage daughter’s possibly-dope-smoking best friend that he was considering stuffing through a keyhole but not literally, and Mrs. P’s burning of the pancakes for Stacey, his six-year-old daughter’s first day of school.  But Charley’s IQ, while high for most humans, had no diversity.  Shakespeare, Einstein, other dimension mathematics, Dolphins football... all lost on him.  After a month, the VIC had talked with every scientist from every country in on the project and no matter what language they spoke, they were all boring.

The suggestion had been made that VIC just power himself down, actual machine that it was, and wait out the next couple of years.  It didn’t sit well with it—it felt as if this thinking, feeling wonder was being treated like chopped liver!  So VIC just nodded into the cam and shut down the communication system—and it set off a total panic on the home planet.  He had shut everything off manually, and until he turned it on again, there was no way of knowing what was happening with the ship, the robonaut, the environment... VIC had stuck it to them, but good.  The assumption made was that the robonaut had misinterpreted the command and had shut himself and every other non-essential piece of equipment down.  And this would be true.  The VIC had shut down everything except itself.  There were things to see out there without the annoyance of myopic scientists.

* * * * *

VIC had sat through many a long meeting having SPACE defined, refined, consigned, and maligned to him.  It saw Space in simple terms: Empty for the most part, dimly lit, scorching hot on the side where the sun shines and cold as an Eskimo’s ass on the other!  It eluded him as to just why the scientists had told it that a person suddenly exposed to a vacuum would not explode, freeze to death, or die from boiling blood, but rather that the sudden exposure to very low pressure such as during a sudden quick decompression could cause pulmonary barotrauma—it wasn't a person!  It had no heart or lungs, and was built from titanium steel.  For long duration space travel, external radiation sources were a concern, but not for health reason.  VIC was pretty certain it could cope with anything that developed.  No, “outer space” was simply the void that exists between celestial bodies that had flown about freely until Isaac Newton formalized some rules humanity could comprehend.  But there were still things out there to see.  Its Mars Lander had a telescope that allowed a pretty panoramic view of the universe in every direction desired.  VIC had played with the idea of ripping several panels off the outer hull and installing an actual “window” in spite of NASA, but fear of getting in trouble for destroying government property stopped him.  It was content then with the view through the scope.  By calculating the speed of light, VIC decided he was looking at a sight at least twelve to thirteen billion years old.  It spent several days mapping out the stars.  It walked around the lander singing, “On a clear dayyyyy, You can see the big banggg...”

* * * * *

Loneliness.

The VIC was to learn that it is the void between celestial bodies.  Even with human crews of two or three, the absence of home, loved ones, and familiar things makes space become a maddening torment.  Even with different tasks to perform and a voice coming out of a box to answer a question you asked ten minutes ago and ignoring the very real life threatening things to deal with on an hour to hour basis, the sense of alone can become overwhelming for a human—and that which was human in the VIC was becoming overwhelmed.  Shutting everything down did free him from the lower forms of life who only cared about their piece of the cybernetic robonaut action and, while it was still completing the experiments the Earth needed, it gave VIC the time wanted for projects of its own; mapping the universe was one thing, measuring the variant light speeds of randomly passing debris and asteroids, another.  Plenty to do, for sure.  But even with all that, every once in a while whatever quality he had absorbed to constitute an artificial humanity felt a tinge of loneliness that stopped him in his tracks—just another fact of his existence that had been missed by the NASA boys, the Disney squad, and the KGB who had “tinkered” the VIC together.

About two months after it had shut the Mars lander down, the VIC created a minor computer-masking device that would allow it to reach and hack into Charley’s laptop without Earth bases detecting the signal.  The VIC was pretty sure Charley wouldn’t rat him out.  However!  The best laid plans of VICs and men can wreck on the rocks of a six-year-old stuck for an idea about what to take to school for Show & Tell Day.  Little Stacy lugged pop’s PC to the bus and up a flight of stairs to her classroom, not quite certain what she was going to tell about it.  When VIC popped up on the screen, her struggle paid off big and Show & Tell Day became Science day!  So for the next four hours the VIC told a cheering crowd of six year olds about the marvels of space flight.  It spoke of the wonders it had seen so far, how it was safer for the VIC than for human astronauts, what it thought it was going to find on Mars, and why what it was engaged in wasn’t anything like what the Starship Enterprise would be doing... but it made sure he signed off with the Vulcan salute and telling Mrs. Petrucelli’s first grade class to “live long and prosper,” so as not to dash any young dreams.  It also got their sworn word that they wouldn’t tell anybody about the visit, at least until VIC landed on Mars.  And, getting Mrs. P’s MSN address, promised it’d stop by for a visit every month or so.

The VIC had never felt elated before, but all those youthful smiles cheering it on lifted its sagging spirits.  NASA may not need it, but those children sure did!  The promise of future visits gave the robonaut something to look forward to that its mission didn’t.  The VIC would follow these children for the next few years, and not one of them or their teachers ever let the cat out of the bag.

* * * * *

“Hello, Houston.  This is VIC, back online.  Mars Man One has a small problem.”  There was some lag time between responses.  The lander had missed the landing site by a few hundred yards—and half a planet.  It was supposed to be a summer landing in the Northern hemisphere, with mild temperatures around fifty degrees Fahrenheit.  Instead, VIC had been remote-controlled down in a howling blizzard to the Southern hemisphere, with temperatures falling to almost 220 degrees below zero.

Martian surface temperatures vary from lows of about −225 degrees at the winter polar caps to highs of up to 95 degrees at the equator in the summer.  Mars is also one and a half times as far from the sun as Earth, so it gets just a little less than half of the amount of sunlight as Earth—and the thin Martian atmosphere can’t store much solar heat.  Worse, the Martian year is about two Earth-years long, since Mars is a greater distance from the sun... meaning the Martian winters last twice as long as Earth’s.

This was no place to be stuck!  VIC had a problem.

“VIC, this is Houston.  Welcome back, buddy.  We can’t seem to get a fix on you.”

“That’s because you’re looking on the wrong side of the planet, Houston.  And unless you can mail me a pair of serious long johns and a pair of skis, this is not gonna be a fun visit!”

VIC could now confirm Mars did indeed have two different kinds of snowfalls.  As it had orbited the planet earlier in a low trajectory, it had observed water-ice snow, the stuff they were familiar with on Earth, falling at the Mars’ north pole.  But here in the south, carbon dioxide snow—dry ice—was falling outside the lander.  Mars was the only planet in our solar system suspected to have this unusual weather phenomenon... and here it was.  “Houston, to define this zone as cold is more than an understatement.”

“Roger that, VIC, and please stop calling me ‘Houston.’  It’s me, Charley.”

“Sorry, Charley.  What went wrong?”

“Not sure, VIC.  We think the guidance system on the lander may have slipped its programming... were you fooling with that system?”

“Me?”  VIC had swapped  out parts for its masking device.

“Yeah, ‘me.’  And don’t tell me you were shut off!  I know you better than that.”

“Well... I did kind of mess with the transmitter.  A little.”

“I wouldn’t call missing a site by half a planet ‘a little’!  Would you?”

“Uh... no?”

“No!  I need a sit-rep right now, VIC.”

“The situation to report is simple, Charley.  It’s 220 degrees below zero, I’m becoming packed in dry ice, and my weather radar tells me I’m dead center under a storm cloud 450 kilometers wide.  I’m open to suggestions.”

There was momentary silence.  VIC could imagine all the Russians and NASA personnel huddled on the five yard line with time running out, trying to decide on a play that would score.  “VIC...”

“Yeah, Charley.”

“Start by assembling the rover...”  VIC looked over at the rover that had been pretty much assembled since month one.  “We want you to take it out and head in a northerly direction...”

“Say again, Charley.  Did you say ‘out’ as in... outside?”

“Yes.  Head out and...”

“Charley... CHARLEY!  It’s minus 220 degrees outside!  Carbon dioxide requires temperatures of just about minus 193 degrees Fahrenheit to fall as snow here!  And it’s snowing like crazy out there!  Are you getting my hint about just how cold the Martian surface is right now?  I’d freeze my nuts and bolts off out there.”

“VIC, you’ve got to get out of there, or you’re going to freeze solid right there in the lander!  You’ve got to go north!”

Mars is a rocky terrestrial planet with a thin atmosphere, having the impact craters like the moon and all the volcanoes, valleys, deserts, and polar ice caps like Earth.  The Martian rotational period and seasonal cycles are also similar to those of Earth, as is the axial tilt that produces the seasons.  It was the southern part of Mars that was the least accepting of anything human, and the VIC was there.  “I repeat, Charley, it’s major league cold out there.  Pow-wow with the boys and give me an idea.”

There was that uneasy stillness again.  “VIC, give the lander's engines a blast at about an eighteen-degree angle.  Get up high enough, and the lower atmosphere wind—”

“Excuse me, Houston.  Say again.  To perform the maneuver your suggesting, there won’t be enough fuel left for lift off!  I’ll be stuck here until the next mission in ten years!”

There was a longer pause.  “VIC, I’d have thought by now you’d have realized you’re disposable.  Remember.  You’re not actually human.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Wish I was, Mars Man One.  You’ve already survived longer than a human would have.  You might make another three, maybe four years.  If we get lucky, the whole ten.  If we get a good fix on your position—”

“Mars Lander signing off!”

* * * * *

VIC hadn’t been able to go into its sleep mode, so it had searched its literary banks and come across an old science fiction novel by Robert Anson Heinlein that seemed morosely apropos.  It was an imaginative tale about a man who had been raised by Martians and returned to Earth to find he was not accepted as a true human.  “I used to think I was serving humanity... and I pleasured in the thought.  Then I discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it.”  Unlike humans who read what was in front of their eyes, VIC read what was behind them.  The words it was reading stung.  Perhaps better than any living thing in the universe, it understood the words.  It could sense ground control trying to reestablish contact.  It paused its thought stream and stared at the control panel, debating whether or not it really wanted to talk to the men who had told it point blank that they were more than willing to let it expire without even the weakest attempt at a rescue.

The ultimate concern of the Mars Man One mission had been to study the planet for habitability.  The VIC had dutifully written everything down in Stacey’s notebook.  It now seemed to have been a mathematical equation, a final exam, an exercise in the dominance of mankind.  It was that no longer.  To the VIC, it was a serious test of life over death.

Looking at the viewing screen, it could see that the external cameras were beginning to freeze.  It was obvious this part of Mars was definitely not habitable, even for a VIC.  From where it sat, it could see dry ice was falling, although it had flown over good old fashioned Earth-like snow.  “Planetary habitability” is the ability of a world to develop and sustain life, and a solid packing in dry ice didn’t lend to this concept.

The concept favored worlds that had liquid on their surface.  VIC drew from its memory banks what humans knew about the history of Mars.  The planet's thin atmosphere seemed to prevent liquid water from existing over large regions for extended periods... but there were signs that at one time, there had been flowing water, rivers and lakes.  Geological evidence gathered by the unmanned missions suggested that Mars once had large-scale water coverage on its surface.  A Mars Orbiter had revealed the possibility of flowing water during the warmest months on Mars, and it was taken by the robonaut as a sign of hope.  The past flows of liquid water demonstrated to the VIC Mars’ potential for habitability—on the northern half of the planet.  That was where things seemed to be better, in a climatologically sort of way at least.     

There were decisions to be made.  VIC could do what it was told to do: finish its assigned experiments and slowly rot out of existence.  Or it could abort and blast off this rock for home, certain it could manually guide the ship back to Earth.  It opted for “door numbered three” instead.  Using most of the remaining fuel, VIC blasted off and placed the Mars lander in a low orbit.  Using the same electronic telescope it had mapped the stars with, VIC started mapping Mars, searching for the most likely place that would allow it at least a chance to survive.

Mars Man One made almost eight complete orbits.  Mars is a small planet, approximately half the diameter of Earth and having only about 15% of Earth's volume and 11% of the mass.  Its surface area is only slightly less than the total area of Earth's dry land.  Yet despite how small Mars was, there was still a lot for the VIC to look at.

Mars had long been described as the “Red Planet” as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance—and it was red-red!  The Russians are going to love this, VIC thought.  It briefly considered Olympus Mons, the highest mountain on Mars—or, for that matter, in the entire solar system, as far as we know.  The VIC had seen some remarkable mountains on Earth (and in fact it had driven over most of them), but Olympus Mons left them all behind.  VIC also studied the Valles Marineris, one of the largest canyons in the solar system, and gave it serious consideration.  It was a good place to hide from the dust storms; Mars produced the largest dust storms in the whole solar system, storms that could vary from a small storm over an isolated area to gigantic storms jacketing the entire planet.  It was this, along with temperatures that could dip to more than minus 200 degrees, that were VIC’s main worries.  Freezing joints loaded with dust could shut down operation very quickly.  Water, if found, was a nicety, as would be any edible vegetation—not that either was of direct concern to the VIC.  The lack of breathable atmosphere wouldn’t bother the cyborg that much, either.

It finally settled on an equatorial spot a little north of dead center, and put down near the high wall of a ravine which offered some protection from the dust storms and showed signs of having once been a pathway for water.  VIC threw open the hatch, stepped out into the Martian sunrise and yelled, “HONEY... I’M HOME!”

* * * * *

The two moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos, were small and irregularly shaped—and, to the processing centers in VIC’s computers, the most beautiful sight seen so far.  The Martian atmosphere was always quite dusty from the constant dust storms which gave the Martian sky an interesting ocher color, and filtered the visions of the moons.

The VIC had refined the drive mechanism in the land rover for better driver control.  When the VIC took it out of the lander, ir never bothered to extend the ramp to bridge the ship to the Martian ground.  The surface gravity of Mars is only about 38% of Earth’s, so VIC spun the tires and shot out from the lander, flew about three hundred yards, and bounced at least another hundred.  When the dust settled, VIC got out and put the top down.

The fact that there wasn’t enough oxygen in the atmosphere to keep a human alive was of no matter to the VIC.  It found that riding around with the top down was an exhilarating experience.  VIC was now an actual explorer... technically.  In truth, it was more like an unchained tourist after a long bus ride.  Though it was a machine, there was an important part of it that was composite human.  And that part had been wounded by humans who had, essentially, given it up for dead.  The cyborg had kept the thought sublimated as long as it could, but now it was filling its artificial mind with thoughts it wasn’t ever prepared to deal with.  It wondered... if its human mind were to cease, would its metal body continue to function?

A Martian year is equal to 1.88 Earth years or—for the layman, one earth year, 320 days and 18.2 hours.  The solar day on Mars is only slightly longer than an Earth day, though... twenty-four hours, thirty-nine minutes, and 35.244 seconds.  How long would the VIC be here?  How much would it need, want, or lack?  What would it fill all that time with?  What would it do with it?  What was the VIC’s true calling?  So many numbers, so many facts, so many choices, all rolling around in its consciousness at hyper speeds through his processors.

VIC slowly applied the braking mechanism and came to a grinding halt, the rover’s brakes already loaded with the iron dust of the planet.  It was at that moment, the universe changed for the VIC.

Its strange little rover had come to a halt a few feet only from the edge of a canyon that seemed to go on into infinity.  VIC hadn’t consciously seen it before.  Oh, the explorer knew it was there, in fact it was heading intentionally towards it.  But it hadn’t seen it.  It was just a place on a map.  The VIC slowly stepped out of the rover and walked to the edge, an edge that fell a good six hundred feet down.  In the dull mid-day sun, the VIC perceived colors, butterscotch, tan, greenish tints to redish rocks, running in all directions on the bed of what must have once been a mighty river.  Somewhere in time, the VIC had acquired a sense of true beauty.  It wasn’t the sense that scientists had trained it to feel, but something bigger, something that without words was answering all its questions.

VIC cranked the rover’s spring as tight as it could get it and set off at a feverish pace.  This was its planet now, in the absence of life native to it.  VIC would travel the planet, mapping details and, well, seeing the sights as it looked for signs of life, water, and anything else of use to a Robinson Crusoe!  There seemed to be so many sights waiting to be seen.  It needed only one thing: living voices every once in a while.  And it would take care of that before beginning the great adventure.

* * * * *

The VIC was relying on good old fashioned human luck.  Though it had been instructed that the reality of luck was unlikely, something internal told it to wait and it’d get what it wanted.  So it sat motionless for nearly three weeks, watching the monitoring device it had hacked into Potterfield’s PC with.  It sat through a number of NASA meeting as Charley took notes confirming the VIC’s suspicion that it was being marooned, and a presidential ass-reaming from an irate President because Charley let the VIC run loose before planting his bronze plaque.  The VIC also found a checking error of $7.34 that Charley had missed, watched bills being paid, saw what Charley liked to read, what puzzles he played, and which friends he liked to chat with.  Finally, at the end of the third week, it got lucky.  A game of “Angry Birds” popped up on the screen.

“Hi Stace, how’s school?” wafted through the speaker as its image appeared on the screen of Charley’s PC.

“VIC!  We all thought you were dead.  That’s what they told us.  I’m so glad you’re not!  Wait, I’ll get dad!”

“NO!  No.  I hate being sneaky, but I just wanted to talk with you.  Please don’t tell anyone I’m here.  You’re a fourth grader now.  Wow.  A long time for us.  Tell me all about the kids, is everybody okay?”  They chatted back and forth over simple things.  Things the human psyche of the robonaut needed.  After an hour of simple things, the VIC started telling the child of the magical things it had seen on Mars: grand mountains and valleys and where it believed water existed.  It told her of what the rising of two moons was like, and how cold the small planet so far from our sun could become.  At the end of the conversation, the VIC gave the youngster a code she could use to contact him from either her dad’s PC or from a computer at school.  VIC confessed that it missed talking with her class, and would stop whatever it was doing to chat with them if they liked.

And so, under a blanket of secrecy, their friendship continued for nearly eight more years.  At last the final batteries and power cells in the transmitters were exhausted, and the VIC faded from the world of men in total—gone, but not forgotten in the memories of children who had stood on the edge of Martian craters, seen the universe in all its vivid colors, and were freed from the bounds of Earth to dream the dreams of spacemen and women.  The VIC had shared his successes and failures with them, given them the curiosity of the universe, and they—especially Stacy, who became like a daughter to the machine—renewed in the cyborg the gift of humanity.  The children bounced with the VIC over the Martian landscape in the funny looking Land Rover, and even had a class vote on which site the VIC had shown them to set up as a permanent residence.  VIC knew it didn’t matter which site they chose, one being not much better than the other, but it gave them that all-so-important sense of worth that humanity craves—and they gave it back to the VIC, tenfold.  But as humanity is mortal and cyborgs may not be, with the fading of the VIC’s electrical power, they too faded away.

* * * * *

It was at the beginning of VIC’s third decade as the Emperor of Mars.  If life had existed in forms other than microbial, the cyborg had seen no signs of it.  As was its custom, with the rising of the sun it would walk an ancient river bed or lakeshore, often driving for many rough miles in its rover to get there.  It was a source of amusement to VIC that while all the modern technology was either broken, offline, or fading, it was Da Vinci’s simple idea of mechanics that kept working.  Oh, the rover had broken down from time to time, but VIC had simply cobbled together a repair from lander parts.  During the spring and summer months he travelled the entirety of the northern hemisphere of Mars, digging and poking the Martian soil and memorizing the stunningly striking Mars-scape.

But it was becoming more and more obvious to the VIC that it was experiencing old age, robonaut style.  Though it had found a way to recharge his own power cells, after twenty-five years of exposure to a hostile environment the actual inner cells that functioned as an internal system were degenerating.  His internal GPS was offline, not having enough power to operate it, so he navigated by the shiny lights that flickered above him.  He nearly smashed his rover up several times because his enhanced vision was fading, again from loss of power.  VIC had considering retiring, such as it could be, but decided to be semi-retired, exploring when he could and sitting on a rock and tossing a home-made fishing pole line into a long-deceased river and watching the stars when he couldn’t.  It had been decades, though it seemed like centuries, since the VIC had heard an actual, unrecorded human voice.  As his memory cells began to fade with his power cells, it wondered if the wealth of information it had documented would ever be found.  It all was beginning to feel like a massive waste of a lifetime. 

The VIC had disassembled the lander and converted it to a permanent structure on the site the children had selected.  It had welded it air-tight, with a working O₂ generator, in preparation for the day Earth would remember and come looking.  But so far, they had not.  There were hours of recorded studies on Mars, data out the yin-yang that would never be used.  The VIC had, despite a conscious contempt, served a humanity that really didn’t want to be served.  It left the VIC sadder than its loneliness required.

* * * * *

It was, as VIC calculated, a fine early June morning and a perfect day for fishing when it saw the new light in the dark sky.  It was faint and flickering but constant, and it seemed to be heading towards the VIC.  It wondered why it hadn’t noticed it before, then realized that it had probably been more visible in the night sky that VIC no longer had much interest in.  That evening, Vic returned to its favorite fishing place, sat on its rock, and watched the light shine brightly in the sky.  What was it VIC saw?  A comet or an asteroid, probably; it had given up the idea of a crew from Earth a decade ago when humanity hadn’t come back for him.

The VIC followed the light all summer long.  It was obvious by September that this strange fascination was coming down just about on top of the lander station.  VIC had even packed the land rover with essential treasured items and was ready to flee to the other side of the planet... but, when it thought about it, decided it might be better to be crushed under a meteor than fade slowly, mindlessly, into oblivion.  So it sat.  Day after day after day the VIC spent its time watching, its life passing with its memory cells.

It was mid-October when VIC recognized that there was only a few hours of time left.  It didn’t wish to see its own end, so for the last time VIC returned to its lander.  VIC had never considered prayer, toyed with it, and decided it would be hypocritical to start now.  After one long last look at the two moons on the lander's view screen that had thrilled VIC so much when it first arrived, it shut itself off.

“Hey.  Old timer.”  VIC’s optics were being manually turned on.  Electric eyes were focusing on an astronaut’s name patch: S. Potterfield.  “What’s a girl gotta do to get a drink around here?”  The VIC’s vision came on full.  He could see three astronauts standing around it.  VIC recognized the woman’s voice, even through the visored helmet.  It was older, heavier, but he knew it.

“How did you find me, Stace?”   There was a moment of silence, and the VIC felt its head resting against the astronaut.

“We voted on this site, remember?  I wrote the coordinates down!”

“Of course you did,” VIC said.  “That’s what human’s do!”

THE END

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