To Know, Home

This is a collection of short vignettes about Earth as through the eyes of robots.

Reckoner.800 / To Know, Ocean

There was always something mesmerising about the ocean, it thought, staring into the deep. One part of its internal memory stored information on the mission they were set; chunks of machine code and scripting languages moving to and from an artificially intelligent core—arrive at the location, scan around the area, and resurface. (Another few parts of the space was dedicated to knowing how to live, here - what thrusters do what, how to get from A to B, etc.)

The UUV embarked at nine-fifteen A.M., Taikujian time, somewhere a few kilometres off of the Lighthouse District’s northern coast. The weather was a little windy—the kind that broke small waves and disrupted an otherwise mirror-like sea, Beaufort 4 or thereabouts—with some noticeable cloud cover rolling in, but neither of which had come to risk the mission. It was a nimble little machine, yes—not the fastest, not by any means, nor was exactly cutting-edge or state-of-the-art; but it was perfectly capable for its purpose, and it never needed to go beyond.

It got distracted, just a bit, on the way down—it felt different. Maybe it was in the water? (A temperature anomaly?)—maybe, the light shafts down here reflected a bit differently than usual, as the sun shone against schools of fish that surrounded the vehicle’s lenses moving in five degrees, small boxes marking out a cod from a herring as their scales glistened in reflections as they twist and turn around the light of the sun, each one a grey to white puncture in a blue-green sea.

Each of these reflected on the drone’s camera—the motors moved in five degrees, up, down, left and right —and adjusting focus to gaze. The movement was in autopilot, a lattice of thrusters engaging on and off under a safety yellow chassis to move around. Its eyes were piqued with an endless supply of curiosities as mackerel swam in shoals to the left, forming glistening, morphing silhouettes from shadows as they blotted out the sunlight.

Rayleigh Scattering / To Know, Earth

Kelly Bailey - Electric Guitar Ambience / Småland - Vetlanda
Two hundred and fifty or so tiny sensors were dotted around the hands of Thomas SKNL-7712-AB61, each a part of the ESA—the Extensible Somatosensory Array—each one able to give minute datapoints down to levels beyond that by biological counterparts; the exact temperature of an object, the weight and sometimes its makeup.

Thomas continued walking through the sand, crunching grains of sand under hydraulic limbs, each capable of great force, before kneeling down, brushing its hand along the sand as data travelled through data cabling neatly organised on the underside of their chassis—surface temperature 26°C, low humidity, and some kind of surface rock underneath. Cross-referencing with the historical weather data indicates this sand must’ve been blown in from the north-west. The sky is clear sans white streaks of cirrus uncinus clouds on the outer reaches of the Stratosphere, which reflected in Thomas’ camera array as it looked up into the sky.

Their internal clock reports 02:17:25PM, Wednesday, June 12, 2024, and they are with a survey company working for the Prefecture Council of Sēltaikura. A pair of researchers stand nearby them, staring into the ocean and chatting about food and games and homesickness, occasionally laughing with obscenities or overgrown inside jokes as Thomas walks over, placing a camera and tripod onto blue tarpaulin, unboxing it and trying to join in on the conversation, but never quite succeeding (they’re not that conversational, and they were more focused on setting up the survey hardware.)

They got the camera onto the tripod, but had to gesture for a researcher to get it into setup mode—their hands were rather clunky, which wasn’t ideal for tiny keypads—so they could punch in the right measurements and instructions automatically by interfacing to the camera directly; it was a quick process, as the direct link let them type in commands alike a conversation; what hard drive to store the data in, how much data to retain, etc.

Odyssey / To Know, Space

HOME - Odyssey

A few hours had passed since she had been given clearance to land. Her cameras drew overlays of wire-frames and lines and values and signals of where, and how, to land—it remained a blip in the distance as she continued her descent back through the atmosphere, colours warping through the deepest blues to the most vibrant oranges and yellows that gave way through time as her airframe passed through the layers of the atmosphere; heading remaining steady, moving in the km/s.

It’s some time in the early morning, judging by how the light moves, with the approach lights blinking red and white being a bit of a blur, as her optical systems were struggling to adjust to the low light (thankfully, she could still deduce the location of the runway by non-optical methods), leaving her to rely generally on the HUD; a few green indicators and a general gist of where to land, and at what speed and altitude, slowly coming into view as she flew closer to the runway—enough where the landing gear had extended, preparing for touchdown.

“Fifty, forty, you’re on the right track.”

ATC watched from their tower, streaming gigabytes of telemetry to and from the flight to keep her en route.

“Thirty, twenty,”

Touchdown, they announced—no more counting miles but friendly conversation as she switched to taxi, driving through the runway—

“Glad to have you back, Spirit. Make your way to H-6, I’ve highlighted it on your map.”

I’ve. Spirit flew for weeks only on a vague collective consciousness for a mission control, and while she did make out the names and voices of people, it didn’t feel the same as having a connection to an actual person. It’s good to be back.