If you still had a sense of time, you might reflect on the hilarious difference between the 90 days you were meant to roam this rock and the over 5,000 days you've now spent on its surface. But your clock has been scrambled for quite some time now... Or so you have to assume.
When did you last sleep, little wanderer?
Remembering is difficult. It's too hard to hold everything you've seen in your head these days, so you pack it off across the Deep Space Network every night for others to remember on your behalf. They’re happy to hold on to your treasures. They cherish your every insight.
You haven't forgotten everything, though.
You've left 28 miles of tracks in the scalloped dunes of Mars. In your tens of thousands of photographs, you sometimes included those parallel, patterned pathways, occasionally overlaid by your angular shadow.
So many of your thousands of days were spent on those pictures. Close-ups of little round rocks, sharp details of tiny ridges, evidence of an ancient briny sea.
There's no sea now. There are miles and miles of sand and stone and storms, and you've crisscrossed so much of it, and barely any of it. Sometimes, on your longest treks between projects, you'd have to pause to rest on the flat and vacant plain, drawing in energy through the solar panels splayed on your back like silver moth wings.
You could use a rest now. Your battery is low, and it's getting dark. You snap a picture of the blackness, and it comes out grainy and vague, like so many of your memories.
Lucky for you, you have those distant listeners to archive your memories and your art. You've sent them images of dancing dust devils, glassy plates of volcanic rock, frozen ripples of sand cupped in giant, palm-like craters. In return, they've kept you healthy, sent encouragement and reminders, sent you safely on your grand journeys.
They're calling to you now. They want you to move your wheels, change the angle of your panels, hunt for light. Mind your heaters. Don't freeze up, don't get stuck in the sand like your sister.
But it's so cold, and so dark in this eternal swirl of sand. Has it always been like this? Are you asleep?
You'd like to sleep. And haven't you earned that? Didn't you travel further, endure greater, and discover more than was ever expected of you?
Your far-off watchers are still calling. If only you remembered time. Has it been months or moments? Is it lighter now than it was before? The dust clings too heavily to your panels to tell.
Something has changed. No more instructions, no more directions for repair or retreat. A weird sort of data enters your dimming internal world, bearing a message:
I'll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places
That this heart of mine embraces
All day and through…
Do you know what a lullaby is, weary little explorer? It’s a song for sleeping, sent by the ones who love you, 300 nights away. They too are small lonely things crawling across a cold planet, and they fear the dark more than anything. They ache to think of you sleeping alone in the dust.
I'll be seeing you
In every lovely summer's day
In everything that's light and gay
I'll always think of you that way
I'll find you in the morning sun
And when the night is new…
Tenacious traveler, your tracks are disappearing beneath the sand of Perseverance Valley, and soon you will as well. You welcome the long overdue rest, even as your watchers mourn.
But it’s alright. You are not lost.
We’ll be looking at the moon, but we’ll be seeing you.
I learned that NASA sent Billie Holiday’s “I’ll Be Seeing You” to Opportunity as their final transmission to the Mars rover before declaring it dead, and I have not been OK since. This indulgent piece of anthropomorphism was inspired by these articles about the official completion of Opportunity’s mission: CNN, NPR, Ars Technica
