Diediediediediediediediedie.

Dragonfly heard the voice of Mars, clear as anything, speaking fluent ancient Changeling (not that that was difficult). She paid it no mind, mostly because the others could hear it too. It was the prolonged, annoying hiss of a mild dust storm.

NASA had predicted this storm, and after spending Sol 220 making certain everything outside was as dust-proof as could be managed, the castaways were spending all day indoors, away from the clingy, abrasive fine basaltic dust blowing around outside. As Mark explained, you didn’t expose yourself to suit-damaging conditions like a dust storm if you didn’t have to, especially if you had only the one suit.

With the chores inside the Hab caught up and potato harvest not for three sols yet, each of the castaways had found a dead-time task. Cherry Berry was reviewing bids from toy companies, forwarded by NASA’s lawyers, to make toys in the likenesses of the crew. Spitfire read a primer on human illnesses, provided by NASA’s doctors and written in the simplest English they could manage. (Spitfire still found it hard going.) Starlight Glimmer graded the essays the others had written for her most recent English lesson (topic: “Five Smarter Things to Do Than Wait For the Evil Tyrant to Actually Take Over Before Going Into Hiding”). Finally, Fireball and Mark studied and discussed the instructions for stripping out the interior of Rover 1, which would be the first step towards eventually leaving the Hab.

And Dragonfly had returned to a project she’d almost forgotten about, worried as she’d been about her own health. She still felt hungry for magic- hungry, but not HUNGRY, not starving-unto-madness hungry. She had time and concentration for other things now.

Things like Sojourner.

After reviving Pathfinder, there had been a good bit of on-again, off-again tinkering with the little rover. Mark had replaced Sojourner’s old, dead internal battery with a smaller rechargeable one from his supplies that produced and stored much more power. It hadn’t helped. With NASA’s help he’d established a radio link that would allow Sojourner inside the radiation-proof Hab to speak with Pathfinder outside it. Nothing doing. They’d carefully cleaned all the dust and grit out of the interior of the robot, and then they’d done the same to the wheels and tiny electric motors inside them.

Those wheels were a marvel. Mark had told Dragonfly that, more or less, the rover wheels used the same general principles as the Sojourner wheels. The rovers had four and Sojourner had six, but each wheel had its own electric engine that powered and even steered each wheel independently.

The only drawback, as Dragonfly noted again when she used a circuit tester to pass current through the little motors, was that the motors had been geared down- way, way down- trading away speed for extra torque. With power running through it, the little wheel turned as slowly as the key on a music box. Mark had looked it up; the rover’s top speed was a pathetic twenty-four meters- not kilometers, METERS- per hour.

But the wheels worked, all six of them. They’d figured that out months ago, before Mark had left Dragonfly to it and turned his attention to more vital tasks. Since then Dragonfly had opened up the insides, read the documentation politely provided by NASA, and got as far as verifying that the probe’s little radio system’s circuit board wasn’t damaged by cold or corrosion. Then her own worries had distracted her.

But today she was less worried, she had time on her hooves, and she was ready, with very tiny and judicious applications of telekinesis and larger applications of the understrength battery that had been Starlight Glimmer’s first success, to open the Warm Electronics Box, the part that held all the stuff that Mars’s cold would likely destroy.

Mark hadn’t bothered with the warm box because, as he put it, “That’s where the CPU and PROM live. If anything’s wrong with either, it’s game over.” But Dragonfly had checked the other stuff that she could, and without the robot’s computer running she couldn’t test the on-board cameras or any of the scientific tools, not that they were particularly important.

The core of the electronics inside the warm box took the form of two circuit boards linked by ribbon cables, gone stiff and brittle after their time on Mars. There were three huge resistors on one circuit board- even with the alien electronic shapes and codes, Dragonfly recognized them and their purpose right away. One was partially melted- a very odd thing, she thought, inside a probe that was working so far below freezing. Tiny bits of slag spattered the circuit board around the bad resistor, possibly in places that could produce a short-circuit.

Hm. I can fix this, if nothing else is damaged. And if the short burned out the processors, well, it’s game over anyway.

Dragonfly yanked all three of the old resistors and replaced them with new ones of the proper wattage from Mark’s spares. Then she applied a little more magic to carefully, carefully, carefully remove the slag from the circuit board. This left a couple of gaps which Dragonfly carefully patched, using a level of precision, had she known it, that humans could have achieved only with large machines.

Okay, she thought, half an hour later and after a brief suck on the half-powered battery to replenish her magic level. Before I put power back into this thing, is anything else broken?

It didn’t take long to find the next problem, once she started seriously examining the boards. The main power lead connecting to the circuit boards was partially melted. Dragonfly had thought, when she’d opened up the warm box, that the lead was just bent backwards, folded behind the circuit board. But no- two wires of the split ribbon harness were bent back that way, but the others had slagged a gap open a small distance short of where the bend should have been. A quick look inside the cover of the warm box revealed another blotch of slag.

“Mark?” she asked. “Where’s Sojourner’s ground wire?”

Mark looked up from the computer he and Fireball were sharing. “I have no idea,” he said. “Let’s find out.”

It didn’t take long. Originally Sojourner hadn’t had a ground wire at all. But pre-launch testing had demonstrated that, in a simulated Martian environment, the little rover built up dangerous levels of static electricity. So the antenna had been modified to include a cluster of tiny tungsten filaments that would safely discharge static electricity into the Martian air.

Of the four filaments, only the tiniest stub of one remained on the antenna base. The others were broken off, gone forever.

“So,” Dragonfly speculated, after explaining what she’d found, “lightning struck the probe, fried the resistor, and melted the power cord?”

“I doubt it,” Mark said. “I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure, but I think this is two separate incidents. A static discharge event would have done a lot more damage than just popping one resistor, if it did any at all. I think the resistor failed first. Maybe the part was bad, or maybe Sojourner’s internal heat regulation system pumped too much power into it while trying to save itself from dying. Then, years later, with the probe powered down, the sandstorm that buried Pathfinder ripped off the static discharge points and built up enough internal charge to melt these wires.” He frowned and added, “And it probably fried Sojourner’s brains in the process. Pathfinder’s ground is its entire hull, and its ground wire is internal, so it didn’t have that problem.”

“Didn’t,” Dragonfly couldn’t help saying, “or doesn’t?”

The two silently considered the faint sound of Mars screaming imprecations of death at them through the canvas dome above them.

“Nothing we can do about that right now,” Mark said, after waiting far too long to do so. “And there’s a chance we might break Pathfinder trying to fix it. Let’s leave that problem for NASA.” He looked at Sojourner’s circuits, shook his head, and sighed. “The problem is, we don’t have a good way to test the chips here except trying to activate Sojourner. And if they’re bad, I don’t have replacements. So I don’t know where to go from here.”

Dragonfly considered this. Yes, she was feeling better… but was she feeling better enough for what she was about to do? Or was it a sign of her sickness that she was delusional enough to believe it made any sense? “I have an idea,” she said. “Really stupid, too.”

Mark took two rapid steps backwards. Dragonfly didn’t blame him; he’d been at ground zero for ideas she and the ponies had thought were good ideas.

She switched on the defective magic battery for a quick splash of extra power. What she was about to do wasn’t unicorn-style, flashy magic… but she wasn’t sure it was changeling magic, either. After all, changelings could detect emotion like a flavor or scent, but that didn’t make it possible for changelings to alter their flavor for others to taste.

This is silly. This is stupid. And it might be dangerous to me, weak as I still am.

And I’m doing this because I feel sorry for a stupid little ancient alien robot.

But the thing is, I’m doing it anyway.

Dragonfly closed her eyes, let out a breath, and tuned out Mark’s curiosity and the preoccupation of the others with their own tasks. She flipped the high hoof to the sandy, breezy voice of Mars- or of the dust storm, anyway. She tuned everything out, everything she could, before laying a hoof lightly on the circuit boards and thinking, Where are you hurt?

A faint taste of loneliness. Where is the voice? Where is everything? I am alone.

Where are you hurt?

I don’t see anything. I don’t hear anything. I was left alone.

Where are you hurt?

I want instructions. No one speaks. The one that instructs is not there. I am alone.

The traces of emotion weren’t helping. Frustrated, Dragonfly shouted mentally, Shut UP about being alone and show me where you’re broken!!

I can’t think. My mind is loose. My mind is split. Where is the voice?

Disgusted, Dragonfly removed her hoof. “Knew it was a dumb idea,” she hissed. “’Oh, I’m alone,’ it says. ‘Give me instructions,’ it says. ‘My mind is loose,’ it says. Stupid little robot.”

“Wait a minute,” Mark said. “Did it really say its mind was loose?”

“Maybe. Maybe not,” Dragonfly muttered. “Maybe I imagined it. Maybe I’m crazy. Just ask anyone.”

“Did you check to make sure the chips were seated properly?” Mark asked.

“Nothing rattles,” Dragonfly replied.

Mark gingerly picked up the circuit boards and carried them over to the geology lab. The Hab had a grand total of two magnifying glasses: a tiny hand-held magnifier in Mark’s tool kit, and a larger, table-mounted glass for use in preliminary study of rock samples. Mark set the circuit boards under the magnifier and began looking them over. “Uh-huh… uh-huh… fucking wonderful,” he muttered.

“What?” Dragonfly tried to look over Mark’s shoulder, which she couldn’t do without flying (which she couldn’t, not without a magic field) or climbing on Mark’s shoulder (which would have been awkward). “What is it?”

“A lot of chip connectors have snapped,” Mark said. “No melting that I can see- just a more or less clean break. I guess it’s damage from the cold.” He stood up and let Dragonfly sit on a stool to look through the magnifier.

“No slag?” Dragonfly asked. “Doesn’t that mean it happened before the power surge?”

“Mmmm,” Watney grunted noncommittally. “A power surge can leave circuits looking fine until you try to power them up again. Still no way to know.” He sighed and added, “And those connectors are tiny. I don’t know that I have the stuff to jump the gaps.”

“Leave it to me!” Dragonfly dropped off the work stool, cleared her throat and shouted, “Starlight! Could you come here for a minute?”

“Hold on!” Grumbling, Starlight walked through the potato plants to the geology table. “What is it, Ms. B-Minus?” she asked.

“I want- hey, what do you mean, B-minus?” Dragonfly protested. “That essay was perfect and you know it!”

“The English was correct,” Starlight replied. “But I docked twenty percent because you only gave me four better ideas than waiting for the tyrant.”

“I gave you five!”

“Join the Winning Team does NOT count!”

“Slytherin, remember?” Dragonfly teased. “Maybe I’ll get a snake for a pet when I get home.”

“What. Do. You. WANT?”

“Have a look at the connectors between the silicon chips and the board,” Dragonfly said, motioning Starlight to the magnifier.

Starlight took a quick look. “Aren’t those metal filaments supposed to be intact?” she asked.

“Yep!” Dragonfly replied. “Can you cast a spell to fix it?”

“I could,” Starlight said. “If it’s important enough. What’s it for?”

“It’s Sojourner.”

“The little rover?” Starlight asked. “What do we need it to do?”

“Er… nothing,” Dragonfly admitted. “I just wanted to fix it.”

“Nothing doing,” Starlight said, dropping off the stool.

“Aw, c’mon,” Dragonfly wheedled. “Not even for cute little me?”

“You’re three… um… you’re eight centimeters taller than me,” Starlight grumbled. “And I’m not going to risk more magic exhaustion repairing equipment if it’s not necessary to our survival!”

As Starlight walked away, Dragonfly said, “Well, then I’ll have to do it myself! Of course, I’m not as talented as you, so I might mess up! And I’ll have to use a lot of magic to do it! But I’m sure I’ll be fine! It’s just a major reversal of entropy- no big deal at-“

“ALL RIGHT, I’LL DO IT!”

Author's Notes:

So yeah, I'm a bit sentimental.

I tried, and failed, to find Sojourner's software or any useful hints about it for writing this, but I did find pics of the two main circuit boards inside the WEB. I found them fascinatingly incomprehensible, so forgive me if what I've written is drivel.

Any or all of these things- failure of the resistors used to heat the interior of Sojourner's warm box, static electrical damage following the loss of its "lightning rods", damage due to thermal contraction and brittleness- could really be issues for reviving the probes. Weir (and I) ignored these things for Pathfinder's revival, partly because giving Mark access to a newer salvage probe radio would require moving the Hab. The next best option for a radio after Pathfinder, based on distance from the Hab, was the Viking 1 lander, about the same distance but west-northwest instead of south-southwest from the Hab.

Incidentally, static electricity is a MAJOR issue for long-term Moon and Mars missions, human or robotic. On Earth you can put a stake in the ground or drag a wire on the dirt and be all right. But Earth has wet, conductive soil and rock plus a magnetic field that generally draws static current into itself. Mars and the Moon are dry and have no magnetic field to speak of. (Mars has some local magnetic anomalies, but they're basically enormous magnetite deposits from the ancient days when Mars did have a magnetic field. The fields they produce are so feeble as to be negligible.)

Of course, we assume that by the time Ares I landed NASA had the static electricity problem licked, at least well enough for long-term human habitation. But Pathfinder-Sojourner was the first Mars probe that faced the issue. A large part of the longevity of the rovers that followed is down to the static discharge solution used on Sojourner. And in the real world, static electricity issues will continue to be a major concern for engineering.

Buffer's at 1 1/3; I did a lot of re-writing this morning, then started another chapter and ran out of steam. We'll see if I come up with more tonight when I get home from this event, but probably not.