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    Oppy
    Oppy
    Oppy
    Ebook42 pages28 minutes

    Oppy

    By Greg Krojac

    ()

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    About this ebook

    (SHORT STORY)

     

    "Hello humans.

    "I'm Mars Opportunity Rover, Oppy for short. I used to work on the planet Mars, back in the 21st century, collecting data for an organisation on Earth called NASA. At least I did until the day I no longer had any energy to continue and I powered off.

    ​"You may find it strange that I can speak - it was never one of my abilities one hundred thousand years ago, but some cosmic archaeologists uncovered me and made some adjustments.

    ​"Would you like to hear what happened?"

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGreg Krojac
    Release dateMar 4, 2019
    ISBN9781393734185
    Oppy
    Author

    Greg Krojac

    Born in 1957, Greg Krojac grew up in Maidenhead, England. He is the author of nine published novels: the dystopian Recarn Chronicles trilogy (comprising of Revelation, Revolution, and Resolution), the post-apocalyptic love story The Boy Who Wasn’t And The Girl Who Couldn’t Be, the foreboding First Contact novel, Immune, and the Sophont trilogy (The Girl With Acrylic Eyes, Metalheads & Meatheads, and Reuleaux’s Portal). He is also writing a Mad Max style series of novellas, the first of which has been published as Judd’s Errand. He ventured outside of the science fiction genre recently to write a comedy-horror novella, WTF? And in addition, has published a short story Oppy about the fate of the Mars Opportunity Rover. His most recent work is a scifi thriller titled The Weatherman. He currently lives just outside the city of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, with his partner, Eliene, and their dog, Sophie, and two cats, Tabitha and Jess, and teaches English as a foreign language (TEFL) at a local language school.

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      Book preview

      Oppy - Greg Krojac

      Dedicated to the men and women of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, NASA

      ––––––––

      Cover image: Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

      My battery is low and it’s getting dark.

      (The final message of Mars Opportunity Rover, June 10, 2018)

      Mars Opportunity Rover was finally pronounced ‘dead’ by NASA on Wednesday, 13 February 2019, despite numerous attempts to revive it after contact was lost on June 10, 2018. It surpassed its life expectancy of 92.5 Earth days and was operational for an additional 5,405.5 Earth days

      *****

      The thin orange pipeline snaked away into the distance until it met the main suction unit of the Dust Removal Device, the DRD, itself connected to a giant storage tank, just as seven other pipelines did from the other archaeological quadrants. The DRD was, in essence, a giant vacuum cleaner whose suction wands with their 5mm apertures were guided skilfully and meticulously by highly trained operators, archaeological cosmologists from Terra 3   – affectionately known as Arcos.

      The environment on the Terçaterrans’ home planet, although similar to that of Terra, differed in two important aspects. Firstly, the light received from its sun was less bright than that which Terra had received from its own sun and this had resulted in an evolutionary response that had enlarged the eyes to allow more of the available light to enter. Terçaterrans were still clearly human in origin, but they had exaggerated facial features that could be seen as both charming and disconcerting in equal measure.

      Secondly, medical advances and the serendipitous effects of the Terçaterran environment had meant that living cells remained efficient and healthy for much longer. This was reflected both visually in physical appearance but also in the condition of internal organs, and made estimating the age of a Terçaterran simply by their appearance a challenging task.

      Lopata’s extraordinarily large eyes blinked every few seconds – first vertically as her human ancestors’ eyes would have done and then from side to side, a secondary membrane having evolved to help protect Terçaterran eyes from the increased cosmic rays on Terra 3.

      The oxygenating membrane that cocooned Lopata’s entire body flexed as she breathed, the gossamer-thin transparent film being first drawn into her slightly enlarged nostrils and then released again as she exhaled. It was a strange sensation that took a little getting used to but, after a while, she hardly noticed it happening.

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