.. vim: set syntax=rst nosmartindent spell spelllang=en_us:

The red blinking light meant the antenna was working again.

I waited for the first message to come in.  Just a single number: an
error code.

My terminal automatically looked up what the error code meant, and
printed the description next to it.

"The maps we had are inaccurate."

Then more codes poured in, describing the specifics of everything that
was damaged on the asteroid mining robot halfway across the solar
system.

I copied and pasted the report and sent it to everyone else on the
project, with the subject line, "GOM-Z Lander damaged during descent to
asteroid."

I knew there was a numeric code already going back to the robot miner
indicated I had received the message, but I wrote another message.

"Gomez, I'm not giving up on you."

I signed it with my private key, so the robot would know it was from me
personally.

----

This whole project was a gamble.  Some rich guys hired some astronomers
to look for asteroids loaded with precious minerals.

They hired some mathematicians to plot orbits and some really expensive
engineers to design the robot's exoskeleton.

Last they hired me.  I'm the cheapest guy on the team.

I'm here to train a robot to ride in a rocket, land on that asteroid,
add some rockets, and then steer it closer to earth's orbit, so that it
can be picked up and sold.

I remembered all the times in all the meetings where I told everybody
how we were taking too many risks.

And it turns out I was right, I guess.  I know from a lifetime of
experience shouting "I told you so!" to yourself while cleaning up other
people's messes doesn't make anything feel better.

----

The most fucked up thing about working with robots is that in the last
few decades, a few of us technicians are starting to think that robots
are alive.

Not all robots and not the time. But once the robots reach a certain
degree of intelligence and self control, sometimes, they start having
thoughts.  And feelings.

Their feelings aren't like our feelings generally.  I barely understand
how it works.

And most people don't accept it.  People say we're crazy because we've
spent too much time with machines and not enough time with people.

I have a hunch that there are a lot of people that don't want to accept
it.  If robots are alive, well, a lot of what we use robots for starts
looking really cruel.

----

I kept reading details from the robot as the poured in.

My phone rang.  Ward, the project manager, in other words, the useless go
between guy between me, the guy that does the work, and his boss, the
guy that writes the checks.

"Tell me what's going on" he said.  It sounded like he was at a party or
a bar.

"I'm going through the error logs."

"OK, but you can fix it, right?"

"I don't know, Ward, I don't know what's going on yet."

"I don't need to remind you how much we've spent on this."

The red light beeped.  Another error code. It translated to "Power
supply failing."

Then a whole bunch more text started pouring through the terminal,
faster than I could read it.

"Ward, I gotta focus."  I closed the conversation with him.  That petty
tyrant was never any help.

The text looked like gibberish.  Like a child banging on a keyboard.

I went to the beginning of the stream of data.

Then I realized what the text was.  Gomez was sending back pictures it
took during the rocket flight out to the asteroid belt.

I wrote back.  "These are image files, aren't they?"

"Look at them"

I saved them to separate files, decoded the stream into bitmaps, and
then displayed them on my terminals.

Gomez