I first encountered these smallish spherical satellites when one knocked on my window.
I'm not joking. My normal 'apartment' on Hephaestus is totally underground, but I keep a 'sitting room' sort of affair for people who need to see _something_ other than screens and displays and four rock walls. I know I need it, on occasion.
So I'm racked out in a Brady Bunch orange La-Z-Boy, reading some absurdly trashy military-scifi novel, and refilling my 'relaxation' meter, when I hear the stereotypical tap-tap-tapping upon my chamber door. Not on the door, actually, but on one of the bayed windows that this room is blessed with. I cocked an eyebrow and dog-eared my page, setting the book aside and getting up. I could see a silvery spheroid outside the window, with some sort of manipulator extended to tap against the glass.
Bemused, I waved, and the spheroid bobbed in place once and tapped the glass again. I glanced over my shoulder at the terminal built in to one of the bookcases, and opened my mouth.
"Hermes, you there?"
"Yeah, boss, what's.. WOAH!, what's that?!"
Hermes was apparently as startled as I am, and judging from the visual cue (her avatar abruptly being clad in jungle fatigues and clutching a rifle), significantly more worried about our visitor. "I'm not sure what it is, but why didn't you catch it earlier?"
"Well, I hate to admit it, but I'm burning enough CPU on the new 'waved Osmium alloy that I disabled video monitoring, and that thing doesn't show up above the noise floor on anything else."
I hrmmed, and the sphere outside the window tapped again. I considered it, and it tapped out S O S in morse, the single red 'eye' on it flashing along with the taps. That changed the situation, and Hermes made a startled noise as I opened the window. (note - the dome's been repaired and pressurized by this point, thank you Kevin). The silvery orb floated into the window, retracting his manipulator, and rotated away from me, allowing me to see a rather nasty dent in the 'back' side.
"I think we've got a 'little lost robot', Hermes. I'm gonna head down to the machine shop, just in case, alert Mr. Sparky, this thing might need to be 'handled'."
"Righto."
I tapped the little globe, and he spun around to face me with his glowing red eye, which on closer examination had a family resemblance to an IR transceiver with an LED behind it. I smiled and tossed a thumb over my shoulder at the door. "C'mon, little guy, let's take you downstairs and get you fixed up."
The little machine bobbed once, which I assume was it's equivalent of a nod, and we headed down to the machine shop.
As near as I can figure out, this poor little drone got whacked by a tiny asteroid and squished his radio, and he's been wandering around for quite a while on his inboard 'backup AI', looking for help. To make a long story short, I was able to fix the damage to the poor guy's shell, but I wasn't able to repair the radio that got squished.
He's got a fairly impressive sensor array, primarily optical. Hermes ran some rough calculations, and says he's well into the 'read lisence plates from orbit' range. He's also got a pretty damn impressive data radio, judging from the wreckage, a reactionless drive with fairly low power but impressive efficiency, and an ID tag.
More later, we're heading down for Seattle now.
Edit: changed title of post, swapped paragraph order on the 'conclusion' bits to make more sense. Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979
I'm not joking. My normal 'apartment' on Hephaestus is totally underground, but I keep a 'sitting room' sort of affair for people who need to see _something_ other than screens and displays and four rock walls. I know I need it, on occasion.
So I'm racked out in a Brady Bunch orange La-Z-Boy, reading some absurdly trashy military-scifi novel, and refilling my 'relaxation' meter, when I hear the stereotypical tap-tap-tapping upon my chamber door. Not on the door, actually, but on one of the bayed windows that this room is blessed with. I cocked an eyebrow and dog-eared my page, setting the book aside and getting up. I could see a silvery spheroid outside the window, with some sort of manipulator extended to tap against the glass.
Bemused, I waved, and the spheroid bobbed in place once and tapped the glass again. I glanced over my shoulder at the terminal built in to one of the bookcases, and opened my mouth.
"Hermes, you there?"
"Yeah, boss, what's.. WOAH!, what's that?!"
Hermes was apparently as startled as I am, and judging from the visual cue (her avatar abruptly being clad in jungle fatigues and clutching a rifle), significantly more worried about our visitor. "I'm not sure what it is, but why didn't you catch it earlier?"
"Well, I hate to admit it, but I'm burning enough CPU on the new 'waved Osmium alloy that I disabled video monitoring, and that thing doesn't show up above the noise floor on anything else."
I hrmmed, and the sphere outside the window tapped again. I considered it, and it tapped out S O S in morse, the single red 'eye' on it flashing along with the taps. That changed the situation, and Hermes made a startled noise as I opened the window. (note - the dome's been repaired and pressurized by this point, thank you Kevin). The silvery orb floated into the window, retracting his manipulator, and rotated away from me, allowing me to see a rather nasty dent in the 'back' side.
"I think we've got a 'little lost robot', Hermes. I'm gonna head down to the machine shop, just in case, alert Mr. Sparky, this thing might need to be 'handled'."
"Righto."
I tapped the little globe, and he spun around to face me with his glowing red eye, which on closer examination had a family resemblance to an IR transceiver with an LED behind it. I smiled and tossed a thumb over my shoulder at the door. "C'mon, little guy, let's take you downstairs and get you fixed up."
The little machine bobbed once, which I assume was it's equivalent of a nod, and we headed down to the machine shop.
As near as I can figure out, this poor little drone got whacked by a tiny asteroid and squished his radio, and he's been wandering around for quite a while on his inboard 'backup AI', looking for help. To make a long story short, I was able to fix the damage to the poor guy's shell, but I wasn't able to repair the radio that got squished.
He's got a fairly impressive sensor array, primarily optical. Hermes ran some rough calculations, and says he's well into the 'read lisence plates from orbit' range. He's also got a pretty damn impressive data radio, judging from the wreckage, a reactionless drive with fairly low power but impressive efficiency, and an ID tag.
ID Tag Wrote:Property of the Illuminati, if found, return to geostationary orbit, or 42 W. 23rd St., Seattle, WA, USA, Earth."I'm a little weirded out about this. I saddled up V, and now that I know what to look for, I found several of these little probes sitting all around Earth in geosync.
More later, we're heading down for Seattle now.
Edit: changed title of post, swapped paragraph order on the 'conclusion' bits to make more sense. Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979