Tevun-Krus #100 - The Ultimate Reading Experience!
100 stories, poems and artworks from the best SciFi writers the orange Multiverse has to offer. We got coffee & cookies. We got cake. We got beer. Don't miss out!
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The rocket ship fell from the black sky, the plume of its exhaust casting shadows across the desolate landscape beneath it. As it descended, the craft probed the ground beneath it with radar eyes, returning the data to the autopilot that was looking for a place to land. When the relays within the autopilot clicked with satisfaction, the ship's engine was cut and the capsule unfolded spidery legs to take the impact.
For a few minutes the rocket ship stood motionless, then a hatch in its side opened. Two metal figures - one tall and thin, the other short and round - emerged from the hatch. They surveyed the surface of the world, scanning it with photocells and microwave sensors. Other devices in the skins of the robots took measurements of the temperature and background radiation.
The first robot, the short and round one, transmitted a signal to its companion: +++INTERROGATIVE: WHY HAVE WE BEEN SENT TO THIS WORLD?+++
The second robot, which resembled two cylinders mounted lengthways on top of each other, consulted its databanks. +++WE HAVE BEEN SENT HERE BECAUSE THIS WORLD IS NOT SUITABLE FOR HUMANS+++THEY CLASSIFY IT AS HAZARDOUS, BORING AND DISTANT+++
The first robot digested this information. +++IS IT TOO LATE TO JOIN A UNION?+++ it asked.
Robots Part II
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With their capsule safely down and the landing site full surveyed, the robots began the next phase of their mission: setting up a lunar habitat. Carefully, they unloaded the supplies from their rocket, carrying the crates and protective cocoons to the location that had been identified as most suitable. Then, with everything ready, they opened the instruction file that would tell them how to put together the pieces of the base.
It was a complex build. The file contained many instructions - from how to dig a trench for cables, to how to ensure that the habitat systems had been commissioned correctly. Pictograms and animations showed how to connect the various components to each other to form the base. Flow diagrams had nested loops, repeating sequences of actions before branching out to new sequences.
