A Rover's Story

“But there is one enjoyable thought. This thought arises from listening to the hazmats. From information I have overheard, I have developed an understanding that someday, perhaps someday soon, I will be put together again.

I like to think about this. It is a good thought. It is a good thought because it means someday I will be whole again. Which means that someday I will be able to move. And best of all, someday, I will be able to use my cameras at all times to see.”

Shortly before this excerpt, Resilience has expressed his dislike of being taken apart while also acknowledging the importance of the tests that the scientists are running on his various systems. Again, he uses his environment to make an educated guess about the future, believing that he will be put back together based on conversations he overhears. His desire to be whole is one of the first humanlike desires he experiences. Resilience recognizes that he is not currently in his preferred state, and he wants to be put together so he can explore his world and learn. He greatly dislikes when his cameras are turned off because it keeps him from seeing his surroundings and makes him feel more alone, which reflects the human fears of darkness and isolation.

“Frustrate is another word I have learned from Rania. Sometimes when she is alone in the lab, she speaks into her phone. She says things to her phone like ‘Mama, I know you are frustrated that I’m going to miss dinner again, but the work I am doing here is really important.’”

Here, Resilience expands his understanding of human language and emotions. By observing the scientists, he has learned to gather information, and now he is also learning words that he can correlate to specific feelings. This excerpt also offers insight into Rania’s character and home life. Rania’s stress about Resilience and the Mars mission shine through here as she explains that she will be coming home late yet again. Part of this frustration comes from feeling as though she could get more support from her family, which foreshadows the emotional growth Sophie experiences by writing to Resilience and coming to understand her mom’s work through those letters.

“Tablets, I have come to understand, are small computers. I sometimes try to talk to the tablets. I have recently discovered that I am able to talk to other machines. Rania’s phone is quite chatty. The tablets, though, are not great conversationalists. They are very focused on productivity.”

This passage references the motif of language, highlighting what we can learn from observing the way others communicate. In addition to understanding human speech, Resilience can also understand the language of robots, and he uses this understanding to gain more information about his world. Like humans, the robots and devices in Warga’s world have individualized personalities and patterns of communication. Also like humans, patterns of communication for a specific type of robot or device emerge as Resilience comes into contact with more than one type of device. Phones, in keeping with their main function, are easily distracted, which is seen later when Resilience talks to Rania’s phone, which keeps derailing the conversation. Tablets, as devices built for computing and performing work functions, are more serious, which is reflected in their desire to always be getting things done.

“I like Rania’s code. I always understand what she is asking me to do. The tasks are clear, like lift your arm or take a photograph with your third rear left-side camera or turn your wheels to the right.

But I also like that Xander talks to me using human speech. It is frustrating that I cannot talk back. I understand what he is saying, though. And I have a strong feeling that Xander somehow knows this.”

Here, Resilience observes the differences between Xander’s and Rania’s communication styles, again drawing on the important motif of language. First, this passage reinforces the idea that people communicate in different ways and that communication is related to personality. Rania is serious, and her communication is crisp. In contrast, Xander is casual, and his communication style is less formal. Resilience’s comparison also shows the benefits and drawbacks of different communication styles. Regarding work, Rania’s communication is preferred because there is never confusion about the task at hand; however, while Rania excels at clarity, she is distanced and reserved otherwise. Xander’s friendly communication makes Resilience feel like he’s part of the group and appreciated, even though Xander’s code is not as flawless as Rania’s.

“Journey has not heard Xander’s laugh, deep and textured. Journey has not listened to Xander read aloud from a sixth grader named Cadence’s essay. Journey does not know why she is called Journey.

Our environments have been different.

Environments matter.”

Here, Resilience uses more comparisons between himself and Journey to understand the difference between nature and nurture and its role in Balancing Emotion and Logic. By their nature, Resilience and Journey are both rovers, built exactly the same and programmed to perform the same functions. Nature dictates that they should be the same, but they are not because of nurture’s effect. Resilience has experienced an environment full of caring and companionship, mostly thanks to Xander. This relationship has allowed him to develop emotions because he feels cared for and wants to care in return. Though Journey’s environment is not seen, Resilience deduces that since he and Journey are built the same but have different personalities, Journey’s experience with her scientists must be less personal than what Resilience experiences from Xander.

“‘You do understand that the hazmats built us to be different from them, right?’ Journey says, finally breaking the silence.

‘Yes,’ I say, even though for one of the first times I am not sure I actually understand. I usually understand everything. It is a confusing and terrible feeling to not understand something.”

This exchange between Journey and Resilience follows a discussion where the rovers expound on the likelihood of them going to Mars together. This idea excites Resilience, and Journey is concerned by this reaction because excitement is a human emotion, something rovers should not have because they clash with the reason the rovers were built. Journey starts to explain the importance of these differences here, and Resilience experiences uncertainty for the first time, which shows the negativity we feel when we are told something that goes against our nature. Resilience doesn’t understand why being like humans is a bad thing because emotions have served him well thus far by helping him feel connected to Xander and Rania. Resilience’s observation that not knowing is a terrible feeling is yet another way he is similar to humans.

“The hazmats are trying to arrange for the launch to occur when the planets are as close to one another as possible. This is a complicated math equation. I can calculate it within seconds, but it is not my job to calculate it. That is the task of another computer.”

Resilience’s task is to go to Mars, explore, and bring the Courage rover back online. Nonetheless, even though it’s another computer’s job, Resilience is programmed with the capabilities to calculate the information the humans need to schedule the launch. This moment hints at the novel’s broader emphasis on the importance of teamwork in the pursuit of knowledge. For example, Rania’s code may be the best, but even so, the novel makes clear that she could not have produced Resilience without the assistance from her fellow scientists.

“The whole time I was hiking back down the hill, I kept thinking about how Mom has worked so hard on you. And how everyone is saying that you are going to make world-changing discoveries. But what does that mean? Are you going to change our world? Or are you going to change another world? What does it even mean to change the world? What about it needs to be changed?”

This excerpt is from one of Sophie’s many letters. Here, she grapples with her feelings about Resilience and her mom, and she’s stuck on wondering about Resilience’s mission and purpose. She understands that Resilience is going to Mars to make discoveries and send back information that will drive change, but she doesn’t understand why this change is necessary. Sophie’s questions call into question the purpose of scientific exploration. Even in the absence of an immediate “need” to send rovers to Mars and explore, doing so serves the pursuit of knowledge, which satisfies human curiosity. Humans are, by nature, a curious species who want to understand their world and what’s beyond it.

“Xander tells me about every song. ‘This is the song I slow danced to in eighth grade,’ he says before he plays the song. I do not know what it means to slow dance. Or what eighth grade is. But I like the song. It is slow and steady.

He selects another song. ‘This was the song I would listen to in college before a big exam.’ The song is not calming. It is one of those songs with lots of crashing noises. It is a song that demands you pay attention to it.”

This excerpt features the motif of music, showing the effect of music on emotion and memory. Xander associates different types of songs with different memories and different emotional states. The song he danced to in eighth grade is slow and sweet, while the song he listened to while studying is faster and angrier or more frantic. Resilience doesn’t fully understand what things like dances or college are, but this lack of information doesn’t stop him from feeling very different emotions associated with each song.

“Here’s something fun to know about rainbows—everyone always draws them as arches, but really, they are circles. They are infinite. They go on and on. That’s why I like them. And that’s why I think about them when I’m nervous.”

This excerpt is also from one of Sophie’s letters. Resilience has been moved to the launch site and is making final preparations for the launch. Rania is extremely nervous, and Sophie writes this letter both to process her and her mother’s emotions and to offer Resilience comfort. In a previous letter, Sophie acknowledged that she would be terrified if she were in Resilience’s position, which calls to empathy—the ability to understand what others are going through. It also indicates her state of development in terms of accepting Grief and Loss as Part of Life. What frightens Sophie about Resilience’s mission is fear of loss or even death; Sophie’s explanation of rainbows suggests her anxiety about loss and change and the current way she has found to cope with that fear.

“‘Where are we?’ Fly asks.

‘I believe inside a rocket.’

‘What do you mean by believe?’

‘Good question.’”

This exchange between Resilience and Fly comes while they are on the rocket waiting for launch. Both are nervous but also curious, evidenced by Fly’s question. Resilience isn’t completely sure of what’s happening, so he offsets his explanation with “believe,” showing his humanlike uncertainty. Fly queries the meaning of “believe,” and Resilience’s answer shows that this is another question that may have no answer.

“Fly and I are built to be able to share information. It is nice to know that he will always be able to know what I know, and I will know what he knows, but it also means that we have none of what hazmats call privacy. Hazmats seem to really value privacy. I have not quite yet understood why, though. So far, sharing everything with Fly has been a good thing.”

Up until this point, Resilience has focused mainly on the ways he is like humans and all the reasons he believes this similarity is a good thing. Here, Resilience notes a key difference between the robots and humans he’s met—the desire for privacy. Resilience feels comforted by Fly’s presence and by the idea that Fly can access his knowledge. Similarly, Resilience finds comfort in being able to read Fly’s data banks because it proves that he is not alone.

“Eventually I return to my top cameras, craning up to get a better look at the sky. The sky! I have never seen the sky. But there it is. Wide and vast. I have never felt so small before. Small, tiny, minuscule. Is felt the right word? Are tiny and small and minuscule the right words? I do not know. My system cannot tell me. I check, but there is no information regarding how to describe this very strange feeling.”

Here, Resilience has just arrived on Mars and seen the sky for the first time. He is experiencing the human phenomenon of realizing how small we are in the vastness of existence, which in turn emphasizes the seemingly infinite nature of the pursuit of knowledge. Regarding the motif of language, Resilience understands both human and machine language, but both languages fail him here. Words feel inadequate. This reaction illustrates the main limitation of language—when it lacks the words for a specific thing or experience. This also represents how language is a fluid construct. Resilience doesn’t have the words for his current situation, but that doesn’t mean the appropriate words couldn’t be created.

“And even though I cannot hear the hazmats, I can make sure they hear me. I open my microphone and set it to record. I capture the soft whistle of Mars’s wind. The low hum of my engine. The quiet that is so unlike the quiet of the laboratory. I hope they will notice that quiet. That they will understand it.”

Here, Resilience is cataloguing all the differences between the world he knows (the lab) and his new world (Mars). His desire for the scientists to understand what he’s experiencing is an example of the human desire to share inspiring things. Mars is unlike anything Resilience has known or imagined, and he feels there is a great uniqueness and importance to the planet.

“‘Gruzunks, are you sure you haven’t received a message from the command center that you are behind schedule?’

‘No,’ I say. ‘I have not.’ I do not say: You are annoying sometimes. But I think it. Then I try to think a nice thought, too: You are helpful sometimes. This is what I believe the hazmats call balance.”

This scene shows the various emotions Resilience feels toward Guardian. He appreciates the satellite for the help she’s given but also wishes she would be less overbearing and strict. Resilience’s internal reaction reflects the importance of balancing emotion and logic, especially in terms of using logic to keep emotional reactions respectful and fair. By the end of the quotation, using logic, Resilience reaches a more honest and complete emotional evaluation.

“‘I like that. I like to wonder with you.’

‘I like that you like to wonder with me, too, Fly,’ I say.

I snap a picture of the night sky. The command desk has not requested a photograph, but I want to take one.

I would like them to see what I see. I would like them to wonder.”

This exchange between Resilience and Fly comes after Fly gets unstuck and out of the dust storm’s path. At this point, Resilience is experiencing a mix of several feelings, including relief, frustration, and, though he doesn’t know it yet, fear of his own mortality—this last emotion foreshadows the crisis he experiences when he finds Courage blank. Resilience has viewed Mars’s sky many times since landing on the planet, but this time feels different because, a moment ago, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever get to look at it and wonder again.

“As Guardian talks to Fly, I receive a message from the command center. At first, I think I must be reading the code wrong. That it cannot be correct. But I read it over and over, and it says the same thing.

It is asking me not to retrieve the drone. That can’t be right.

I read the code one more time, and then I override the command. I have been given the ability to do that.”

Here, Fly has just gone down in the dust storm that funneled up near the rock formation. Prior to receiving this order, Resilience already made the decision to retrieve Fly because he cares about his companion and because they are a team. The command from the scientists shows that while Resilience cares for and understands humans, the humans are still mostly operating on pure logic regarding the machines. To the scientists, Fly is a disposable commodity.

“Mom thinks it is incredible that you retrieved your helicopter even though she told you not to. And you know what? I think that’s…okay, I’m not going to use a bad word, but you can just fill it in here. Like it’s so annoying that Mom wants to celebrate you for not listening to her but flips out on me if I don’t load the dishwasher in the exact way she wants.”

This excerpt from one of Sophie’s letters coincides with Resilience’s decision to retrieve Fly and shows a few things. First, it illustrates the different standards we place on different people/things based on what we believe their capabilities are. Since Resilience is a robot, Rania expects him to make rational decisions based on the information he has. To her, leaving Fly is the logical choice because Fly is now damaged and can’t perform his duties at optimal capacity. When Resilience doesn’t do as Rania expects, she is surprised because the rover is acting in a way other than she believes he is capable of, and the idea that Resilience is capable of caring amazes her.

“‘It is a part of the cycle. I told you, rovers are not meant to last for infinite amounts of time.’

‘But why? Why should I work to gather so much information if it will only all be blank someday?’”

This exchange between Guardian and Resilience occurs shortly after Resilience has encountered Courage and found the rover’s data banks wiped clear. This discovery has frightened Resilience past the point of rational thought. Resilience struggles to find a reason why Courage’s memory is blank and what the point of existing is if we only lose everything we did during life. This quotation is part of Resilience’s emotional development, marking his next steps in accepting grief and loss as part of life.

“By the time we reach the rock formation, we have traveled a very long distance. So much human time has passed. I have collected several samples. I have drilled many, many holes. I have watched the sun sink into the deep red horizon. I have watched the sun rise on mornings when the sky is a pale watery yellow. I have kicked up dust, left countless tracks across wide swathes of open waves of sand that glow in the daylight from the sun and turn dark black at night. I have grinded over jagged rocks and navigated narrow and twisty paths.

I have roved.”

Resilience thinks these lines as he works his way back to the rock formation where he heard the mystery sound. His description of the time that has passed and everything he has done is his way of understanding how he’s lived his life. As he comes to the event that he’s spent years working toward, he looks back on all the steps it took to get here, and he measures that progress by where he’s been and what he’s experienced. “I have roved” is his version of “I have lived,” and this remark foreshadows that he is ready and willing to sacrifice himself to gain the sample and information he seeks.

“‘Remember how a sixth grader in Ohio gave me my name?’ I ask Fly.

‘You told me that. But I still don’t know what a sixth grader is,’ says Fly. ‘Or Ohio.’

‘It means something, though,’ I say. ‘It means something to have a name. To matter enough for someone to give you one.’”

This passage comes shortly before Resilience’s fall and blank period. The first part of this quotation calls to the long-ago conversation between Resilience and Fly where Resilience detailed how he got the name Resilience. Neither of them knew what sixth grade or Ohio was then, and they still don’t know, but this lack of information doesn’t matter. It’s sometimes more important to ask the questions than to find answers. Resilience’s final lines here call to what makes us feel like we’ve existed. To Resilience, being given a name means that he is important. He matters to the people of Earth and especially to the scientists in his lab, which has helped him find purpose in his mission.

“By the way, I’ve decided to answer my own question from a long time ago: Earth is your home. We’re claiming you. You’re ours.

You’re the first rover to ever return to Earth. You’re making history, Res. You’re changing the world.”

These lines from one of Sophie’s letters while Resilience is blank call back to one she wrote years before where she asked what it meant to change the world and why the world needed changing. Here, she answers those questions for herself by detailing that Resilience is the first rover to come home, meaning he is doing something that has never before been done. This “first” represents change.

“I do not know how long it is before I am moved to the new space. It is difficult for me to keep track of time back in the laboratory. I no longer have my time log. And there is no reddish sky with a bright spot of sun. There is no dark night with a sky splattered with stars. There are no jagged tops of distant mountains or smooth sand dunes rippled with wind.

There are only white walls. Recycled and purified air. The hum of the machinery of the building.”

Here, Resilience has woken up back in his lab on Earth. This passage acknowledges how new experiences change us. Prior to his journey to Mars, the lab was all Resilience knew. At that point, he based everything he knew on the lab, what he did there, and what he learned from the scientists who worked on him. Now that he’s been to Mars and back, the lab seems smaller and far less interesting than it once was. Whereas Resilience used to track time by activities in the lab, he can no longer do so because he grew used to using Mars’s sky to track time. In addition, he notices how flat and sterile the lab feels compared to Mars’s rugged terrain and unexpected weather. Resilience has outgrown his lab, similar to how humans may outgrow their original conditions.