ch1: [ the robot ]

The robot said, "I wonder what it was like to die?" He said this as a passing thought to his brother, whom was busy working out the necessary algorithms for their blast off. His brother looked at him for a moment, not considering the question, rather how his little brother would ever survive the trials if he continued his incessant day-dreaming. "Why don't you just focus on navigating this machine and stop with your endless questions", said his brother visibly annoyed. The small capsule went silent again, but it didn’t stop the robot from wondering. In the low humming of the machines propulsion system, the robot thought to himself: There was a time when my body would have slowly ceased to function. When the very elements that made my existence would have deteriorated and there would be no way of reversing or exchanging them. There was a time when a trip like the one that my brother and are on would have never been possible. Not because the technology wasn’t there, but because the bodies of those that designed the trip would fail before the goal was met. “What must have that been like?”, he mistakenly said out loud.

His brother looked over at him with disgust. “We’re ready for lift-off, so stop with your fantasies and lets get off this crappy hunk of ice”, scolded the older robot as he inserted himself into the wall. The robot just stood there for a second, not understanding what his older brother had just told him. He was still trying to visualize what life must have been like centuries ago.

In a flash, the reality of the situation came back to him. He remembered that they had landed on this meteor in dire need of liquid nitrogen, the chemical that fueled their ship. Three days ago, the Robot had spent too much fuel chasing down the trajectory of a piece of space garbage he had noticed in his sensors. It had turned out to be an ancient heap of frozen bio waste, from the time that robots still had biological components. Since the solar system was littered with these things, it was not important enough a find to report to the antiquities department back on earth. None the less, they noted the objects orbit into the navigation database and left it behind. The robot looked over at his older brother, who’s patience had run out and was ready to give him a good flogging. Avoiding this, the robot also inserted himself into the wall and initiated the lift-off protocol. In a few moments, they again would be hurtling towards Europa, where the trials and his future awaited him.

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