The sun beat down onto the black asphalt, a lack of clouds providing no coverage to Freya Scott stepping across the parking lot. Once inside, she was greeted by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory team with exhausted smiles and half-assed greetings, same as every other morning. Most had been working overtime due to the upcoming mission. So had she, but after working around the clock for days and nearly falling asleep on the job, she figured one night of full rest in the comfort of her own bed might do her some good. Freya tossed her empty iced coffee into the trash bin just outside of the laboratory and made her way into the rover room where her hard work of the past couple years would be sleeping. Waiting for its daily wake-up routine. She was hired three years ago, and within a year was tasked with building a sophisticated scout rover for a new Mars mission. The challenge had been their biggest demands: Make it as small, fast and intelligent as possible. Much different from any other rover previously sent besides Ingenuity. Even the small helicopter could only do so much and didn’t last a full ninety days on the planet.


“You wanna-” Freya startled, hand clung to her chest, the white lights in the room flickering on from her movement.


“Jesus, Preston, you scared the shit out of me!” Her co-worker chuckled and stood from where he’d been sitting. 


“Why were you just sitting here in the dark?”


“I wanted to let him sleep in until you got here. I didn’t leave last night. The lights must have cut off after I sat down and dozed off,” he responded.


Preston Clark was the only person on the team she regularly communicated with, having spent most of her time buried in Rotor, building him into what she imagined him to be in her mind. Creating him requested her full, undivided attention. Her co-worker was only two years older than her, both the young ages of twenty-five and twenty-seven, fairly young for a couple technicians working under NASA. However, he proved to be much more childish. Both of their engineering skills made up for it, and that’s how they landed their jobs.


“Whatever, just help me find a song to wake him up and let’s get to work. I wasted so much time going home to sleep,” she said.


“Why do you insist we use music to start him up every day? Seems a little theatrical considering our work.” She rolled her eyes at him, sitting down at the computer and scrolling through a playlist of songs that she would end up sending through his feed. She settled on “Viva La Vida” by Coldplay and turned in her chair with a quizzical stare.


“Um, NASA history? The Spirit and Opportunity rovers. They played songs for them every day to wake them up. How do you work here?” she teased him. 


He scoffed, flung his arms up as if to surrender and made his way over to the rover when he started to wake up. Freya stood up and followed Preston over to her creation, still in awe by the rover every day despite working on it for the past two years. Granted, she couldn’t take all of the credit. Preston put in a lot of work to build Rotor too on the technological side of it. But Rotor quickly became Freya’s child, to which Preston just let her claim. He never got attached the way she did. Her goal today would only further the bond to her work – make him talk. NASA insisted they needed a clear line of communication further than any of the previous missions. Being 2035, technology had advanced since the last rover launch. With that in mind, she needed to make sure the rover could communicate beyond the normal standards. Which meant making him talk through audio feedback. While it would still have delays of communication getting from Mars to Earth in five to twenty minutes, getting voice feedback would be a new step in the Mars missions. Doing yet another thing that hadn’t been done. The more of that she could do, the more secure she felt in her job. It was only a bonus to be adding another human-like trait in the process, only adding to her enthusiasm. 


A message pinged through the computer, signaling Rotor’s greeting to the two technicians: Good morning, Freya and Preston.


Freya smiled, typing back a good morning message and letting the rover know what the plan was for the day. Then, they got to work. Preston tried to figure out a way to get Rotor’s messages translated into audio files to play through the speakers embedded in him. Meanwhile, Freya played around on her tablet, testing an assortment of voices to choose the best fit for Rotor. She landed on a masculine, but still robotic sounding voice and Preston stopped what he was doing to pay attention to it.


“You know, speaking of NASA history, I thought we always referred to our rovers and spacecraft as female. So why exactly are we calling it a him?” he asked.


“I don’t know, because things change. He’s the first of his kind and I think it’s pretty fitting for this to be the first male rover. Besides, looks like a him, doesn’t it?” 


She peered up from her tablet to stare at Rotor. He stood in the middle of the room, his metal coated in a black and blue layer. He stood at just three feet tall with a square body and square-ish head. If she had to describe him to someone, she’d tell them to think of Disney’s Wall-E rover but without all the ugly yellow. He had cameras for eyes like every other rover and moved on four wheels. His arms weren’t very functional, but in the process of building him, Freya thought he looked a little funny without them. 


“So, how do we attach this voice to his audio?” she asked, turning to Preston, who held his hand out for the tablet. 


It took a couple hours of Preston cursing and groaning, clicking and typing away at the computer while trying to sync everything together and program it into the rover. Freya sat back and watched him work, his hazel eyes darting back and forth wildly at the screen. He’d run his hand through his short, brown hair every several minutes, displaying his frustration. She’d giggle quietly to herself every time he did it, causing his hair to stand out in different directions. They bickered a lot, but Freya cared for him. He understood her in ways the rest of the team didn’t. He didn’t share her feelings about things in the same way, but he allowed her to be herself and never stood in her way or complained. Preston wasn’t necessarily introverted, but he always preferred to spend most of his time with Freya even when they weren’t working on the rover. In the time they had worked together, they had built a bond of trust with each other. A sense of enjoyment and peace working alongside each other. She blinked out of her thoughts, finding Preston staring at her with an irritated expression. He’d been trying to get her attention while she was zoned out.


“C’mon, Freya, what do you want him to say? We gotta test this out.”


They both decided on simply asking him to speak, to which he responded with a simple “Hello! I am speaking.” Preston snorted at Rotor’s choice of words and from there, began to dive into a way to communicate to the rover by speaking to it instead of messaging. Still hard at work on the programming an hour later, he glanced over at Freya, slouched in the chair beside him and staring at her rover. Deep in thought. 


“Have you still not thought about why they want to send Rotor to Mars? Don’t you think it’s a little strange?” he asked her.


“No, not really. He’s different from the others.”


“Right, but he’s a scouting rover. No tools, no sampling system, nothing. Purely just to survey the planet. Which has already been done many times. Perseverance is still up there. Why send another rover, on top of that, a scouting rover?” She turned to look at him, clearly offended.


“I don’t know, Preston. It’s not my job to ask questions. And it sounds like you’re just insulting my rover now. I built what they asked for.” 


Preston turned back to his computer, unsure of what to say and scared of only pushing her further. But he could tell the thought was weighing on her. The way she stared at the rover with a concerned expression before he’d even asked, the tone of her voice, the instant defense to him vocalizing his curiosity. 


“I’m just trying to keep my job and build the rover I’ve always wanted to build. That’s it. I can’t think outside of that,” she added. 


He just looked at her again and nodded in understanding. The only words that left his lips as he worked was a mumbled “I’m sorry.”


#


The next day, Freya began testing procedures on the rover. Getting it ready for its trip to Mars and making sure everything worked as it should with no hiccups. The first test would be in the Mars Yard – an area man-made by the JPL team to mimic the planet and test the rovers on its capabilities of driving on the harsher terrain. This consisted of mostly sand and rock, where the most challenging task was seeing if the wheels of the rover could withstand driving over multiple types of rocks. In past rovers, punctured holes in the wheels from rocks were a huge setback. With Rotor’s size, making sure he didn’t tip over was also a concern. Even with a rover-bogie suspension system, it was expected the smaller rover would have a hard time withstanding excessive tilts. The good thing was that Rotor had the capability of thinking for itself. Making his own decisions. If he ever thought something would be a hazard, he could decide not to do it. Or find a way around it. 

Freya instructed Rotor to take a stroll around the yard, but to make sure to drive over some of the bigger rocks to test the strength of the wheels. She would have been lying if she told the others she didn’t have multiple mini panic attacks every time the rover climbed over a massive rock, swaying enough to make her audibly gasp. But the suspension proved worthy and he’d come away, standing up with hole-free wheels. She spotted a patch of rockless sand, directing him to it to see just how fast he could go. It was one of the requirements listed to her from NASA and though she had tested his speed back at the lab, on sand, it was possible for him to struggle getting up to speed and gaining traction. She watched on, Rotor coming to a halt and waiting for her command. 


On her “go” he sped down the sandy pathway, barreling towards her. Had she not been recording it, no one would have believed what she heard from the enthusiastic rover. He let out a child-like “weeeee” and came to a sliding stop just feet away from her. She had to fight back a laugh, sending the video to Preston before shoving her phone back in her pocket.


“Alright, buddy. Fun over. Now to the complicated stuff.” The rover made a noise in response, a robotic “awww” of disappointment. 


The final test would be in what the team nicknamed the “torture chamber.” She’d test Rotor’s performance under Mars harsh weather conditions. This included major dust storms, freezing cold temperatures and testing his solar panel. While he handled the first two without any issues, the solar panel showed to be their only obstacle. Within an hour, Rotor stopped responding and shut down to conserve energy. She made a call to Preston and they both took a look at the design of their solar panel and quickly found the problem.


“We’re idiots. The solar panel is made onto the back of his body,” Preston pointed out.


“Right. So what's the issue?” She asked, to which Preston stared at her with a look that could slap her right in the face.


“The planets move around the sun, Freya. We have to have a tilting solar panel. This thing is fixed to his back, he’ll only get sun from one direction.” Freya groaned, her cheeks turning a deep shade of red from embarrassment. It was a rookie mistake, something that should have been common sense. But he patted her on the shoulder and gave her a smile of reassurance anyways.


“Back to the drawing board,” Preston said.


They returned to the lab and began designing a new set up for the solar panel, now adding in a mechanism that would extend the solar panel out from the body and tilt it in different directions depending on the location of the sun. As Freya installed it, Preston stood above her, supervising her work. He drew a deep breath, an unsettling feeling in his stomach that was getting worse the closer they got to the launch window. Ever since NASA asked them to build the rover, there had been chatter around the building. Every now and then, he’d pass through and hear worried voices through the door of the conference room. People seemed on edge. Overly invested in this mission. Nothing had really felt right since. The first couple years he worked here, before this mission was set, the energy in the building and the people were totally different. It was as if something bad had happened, but no one was saying anything. He’d been trying to get Freya to ask about the intention of the mission in hopes of getting to the bottom of it, but she’d dismiss him every time.


“Done! Let’s try it out,” she beamed, standing back on her feet and visibly proud of herself.


The new solar panel design passed through testing without trouble and Preston suggested to Freya that they go out to celebrate. They settled on a local bar near Freya’s home in Pasadena, twenty minutes away from the lab. They talked about testing Rotor in the Mars Yard, about their journey in building the rover together, and spent time catching up on their lives outside of work. Which consisted of basically nothing. Both of them dedicated their lives to their job. With some drinks in their system and Freya finally winding down from the day, Preston made the decision to broach the sensitive subject one more time.


“Freya, I know you’re tired of hearing it. But I don’t feel good about this. Something is going on with the mission and I think we really need to figure out what they’re hiding from us.”


“Why do you have such a problem with the team? Or is it Rotor? Do you not think he’ll make it up there?” She retorted.


“That’s not what it is, but the past couple years, things have been weird as fuck around there. Something’s up, all I’m asking is for you to confront them about the reason for the mission before it’s too late.” Freya’s nostrils flared, and she reached for her purse, moving to her feet and dropping cash on the table for her drinks.


“I thought you actually cared but clearly you don’t care at all if I lose my job. And Rotor.” Preston reached out to grab her arm, trying to stop her from leaving. She was perceiving his questioning in a different way than how he meant it and his expression was full of hurt. His voice defeated as he spoke to her, he made a desperate last attempt.


“I’m bringing this up because I do care about you and Rotor. More than you know.”


Freya stared at him for a moment, processing, before ripping her arm from his grip and storming out of the bar. His fist slammed down onto the table. Maybe she was right. If she confronted them about keeping something from them and demanding answers, it was possible they could kick her from the mission. Or worse, fire her. He didn’t want to be the reason she lost everything and had to watch her life crumble around her. So he decided hers wouldn’t. If she wouldn’t do it, he could. But just going up to them and asking questions wouldn’t help either of them. He would have to get answers in a different way, without anyone catching wind of him digging for information on the mission.


He needed to put his technological skills to use now more than ever.