[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

Some of you may have spotted Stuarts poem over in the 5-wheels thread, and rather stupidly I culled it ( in light of the new rules ) instead of moving it to here - because it's an excellent piece...hopefully he can repost it in here..

A bit of googling around and I found this

http://www.sffworld.com/community/story/1150p0.html

If you like MER, if you like Mars - read it...it's a stunning short story, almost had me in tears. Nico, you HAVE to read it, same with you Ustrax - it's utterly brilliant - it captures my visions of the future of the Columbia Hills very well indeed.

Doug

[sranderson]

Hi folks. I have posted a few times, mostly in the Opportunity section. I actually was involved in MER, responsible for the Remote Engineering Unit modules (one on each lander and one on each cruise stage), as well as being systems engineer for the power and pyro driver modules. I managed the REU efforts and worked with two other design engineers and production staff to get the modules designed, built, and tested. I did my own inspection of each board prior to first power-on and again prior to shipment. I'll always remember holding those boards, knowing that they were going to Mars.

I also write a little. Here is something you may enjoy.


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We have come very late.

The smell of age blows across the cracked biscuits of the old seabed,
pushing up burnt-brown echos of lost waves.

The dunes would be sand on another world -- a younger world.
But here, the deep ages have ground the sand to dust,
And the dust has passed to finest powder.

It is just as well.
The wind, thin and cold,
has lost any strength for sand.
Powder alone can it streak and softly pile.

And nothing else has moved forever.

Yes, we are much too late.
The seas waited for us, drying, refilling, and drying many times.
Waited past life, past death, to frozen dry bone dust,
The shrunken sun passing eternally, numbingly, above.

In dim memory, things may have gloried and battled
in these shallow seas; in that warm milky green water.

Were there eyes to watch that scene?
Could there have been thought,
Or even understanding?

And did they ever dream the possibility
Of this dead time,
so far down time's arrow,
so far from life?

All is gone now,
Or perhaps held fast in substrata and darkness.
But I fear that those ancient eyes have become part of the dust-that-blows.

A meteor streaks, falls, and oddly,
Bounces.
A completely new thing.

We see through its eyes:
The dune sea,
the biscuit bed,
hints of water and salt,
Holes blasted deep by the bombardments of antiquity.

In these craters, we seek the old echos
as we wander and dig and grind.

We are disturbing this dead world.
We plan to disturb it further.
Even life, which left long ago,
May yet return.

Or we may squander this last opportunity.
The dust fills our tracks as our spirit wavers.
On Mars, a bet on entropy to win
Is always a sure thing.

Age after age, that soft-blown powder
will dig and scour,
wearing our machines down,
carelessly scattering their atoms
in thin new layers across the seabeds.

Mars understands this well.

It has all the time in the world.