Perseverance pauses during the two-week conjunction period.
Episode 5: Reproductive Imperative
A Short Story by W. Steve Wilson
The effort to tap the energy of the crawling beast yields promising results. Will this new energy source save the Shimmery combine and restore the Collective?
First shivered to wakefulness on the morning of the fortieth rotation since Second and Fifth left. Dread was flavoring their combine with Third and the reintegrated Fourth, worried that Second and Fifth had lost their way.
Fourth had remained dormant since the reintegration of Fourth One and Fourth Two. First and Third had stayed connected with the thinnest of tendrils, even during the sleep periods, to provide support and energy. First could sense Fourth slowly strengthening, with just a faint whisper of a second set of memories remaining. But still, Fourth had not roused themselves from a state of torpor.
Third shed a wavelet of worry. “Is Fourth going to wake up? What do we do if they don’t awaken? They can’t move, and we can’t leave them here.”
“They’re getting stronger from the energy we’re sharing. We need patience,” said First. “I’m more concerned that we haven’t heard from Second and Fifth. Their presence has faded to the background as if they’re far away.”
“They’ve been gone so long,” said Third. “Could they be lost?”
“I’m worried about that, too. We can’t follow them. We’ll need to stay with Fourth and hope for the best. When Fourth wakes up, we’ll decide what to do next.”
“If Fourth wakes up.”
“Stay hopeful, Third.” First sent a small current of strength and patience across their small combine, Shimmery3.
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Shimmery2 moved quickly on the last segment of their sprint across the ripple roughness. They had been gone too long. A slight touch of guilt entered their combine. They had been feeding and strengthening while Fourth lay in distress.
Second and Fifth rested at night during their trek, but could not recharge in the harshness of the region. Surprising to them, that had not deterred their progress.
“One more dash and we’ll be back with the others,” said Fifth.
Second could not contain a flash of enthusiasm. “This fresh energy is invigorating. I wonder if we could travel at night.”
“That would be exciting. It would make returning to the crawler much faster.”
Shimmery2 pressed on through the remaining ridges and burst out of the ripple roughness into the travel channel where they’d left Shimmery3. The resulting restoration of their combine members’ connection was a welcome homecoming. A further push and Second and Fifth reveled in the joyous recombination as Shimmery5.
First sent a wave of relief and delight over the combine. “Second and Fifth have returned, and Fourth is awake.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Second. “The energy from the crawling thing is rich and plentiful. Sharing it with the combine surely has rejuvenated Fourth.”
“Thank you,” said Fourth. “I’m still working to integrate Fourth Two’s memories, but I believe new experiences will heal us completely. It was time for us to rejoin the combine.”
Fifth sent a ripple of excitement across the combine. “We need to travel back to the crawler and begin tapping its energy again. We can travel north and then west across the boundary of the ripple roughness. Two, three rotations at most. We can try traveling at night.”
“Slow down, Fifth.” A soft current of humor from First bathed the combine. “We’ll rest here for a few rotations and be sure Fourth is ready to travel. And then we’ll take our time. We’d hate to exhaust ourselves before we reached the crawler.”
“And what of the flittery flyer? Did you encounter it?” asked Third.
“Yes, we did, and we should leave it alone. It didn’t detect us, and we should keep it that way. It’s not doing us any harm,” said Second.
Agreement and assent flowed across the combine, and Shimmery5 settled down to rest and wait—through eight rotations.
###
After ten rotations of travel, Shimmery5 spotted the crawler on the western end of the northern boundary of the ripple roughness. Shimmery5 approached the beast and coalesced below the energy supply.
“We need to send only a thin tendril into the nuclear furnace,” said Fifth, with a thin veil of pride tinging their connection.
First’s small current of humor flowed across the combine. First found these light touches were coming more easily and more frequently. Maybe it was the extra energy that Second and Fifth had shared, or perhaps a tiny hope for the future. “Very well, Fifth. Why don’t you take the lead?”
Fifth sent a thin tendril up and into the crawler. The now-familiar energy flowed down the tendril and across the entire combine. The effect was immediate—Shimmery5 filled with life, vigor, and health.
For seven rotations, Shimmery5 fed on the rich energy the visitors had brought, not moving from their location directly below the crawler.
Shimmery5 no longer considered them invaders. They were welcome guests and possibly saviors. The energy continued to flow into Shimmery5, and they respected the crawler’s need to extend its own tendrils and work occasionally. At such times, Fifth would retract their tendril and leave the crawler to its own devices.
On the seventh rotation, Fifth sent a signal of distress across the combine.
A chorus of connections touched Fifth. “What’s wrong, Fifth?”
“The ground is drying up and getting hot. I’m having trouble maintaining my tendril. It’s hurting, and I need to retreat.” Shimmery5 gently moved away until Fifth’s pain subsided. Fifth re-extended its tendril, and the energy flowed again.
Shimmery5 continued feeding, retreating as necessary, avoiding feeding when the crawler was working.
On the fifteenth rotation, Shimmery5 could resist the urge no longer, and in a process they had not experienced in over a billion revolutions, Shimmery5 became Shimmery10 and then Shimmery20.
A flood of joy and pleasure cascaded over the combine. First could see deliverance at hand. The Collective could thrive and survive. Shimmery20 could grow and send deputies to share their energy with the northern combines who could not travel to the warm zones. Perhaps they could even establish a link along the length of their world to distribute this bounty.
But first, they needed to share this good news with Glittery11. Surely the older crawler that had landed in Glittery11’s life zone almost five revolutions ago could provide the same generous offering. First would send Second and Fifth as their envoy.
Then, with renewed hope for the future, Shimmery20 would wait. And when the visitors from the third planet came themselves and when the time was right, Shimmery and the Collective would welcome them to their world and thank them for their gift of salvation.
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NASA/JPL-Caltech, September 28, 2021: There’s no way around it: due to their orbits, Mars and the Earth have to stop communicating with each other for about two weeks every two years. This quiet period is called solar conjunction, and for the Perseverance team that means we can’t send new instructions to the rover between sols 217-235 (September 28 – Oct. 17).
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Because it generates a lot of heat, we’ll look underneath the rover’s radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) to see if the soil dehydrates over time. If this happens, the rover’s spectrometers might pick up subtle changes to key absorption features.
[Reference: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/status/337/hunkering-down-for-solar-conjunction/ ]
CURIOSITY NEWS | September 28, 2021
NASA will stand down from commanding its Mars missions for the next few weeks while Earth and the Red Planet are on opposite sides of the Sun. This period, called Mars solar conjunction, happens every two years.
The Curiosity rover will take weather measurements using its REMS (Rover Environmental Monitoring Station) sensors, take radiation measurements with its RAD (Radiation Assessment Detector) and DAN (Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons) sensors, and look for dust devils with its suite of cameras.
[Reference: https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9051/nasas-mars-fleet-lies-low-with-sun-between-earth-and-red-planet/?site=msl]