Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Oppy
    Oppy
    Oppy
    Ebook42 pages28 minutes

    Oppy

    By Greg Krojac

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    (SHORT STORY)

     

    "Hello humans.

    "I'm Mars Opportunity Rover, Oppy for short. I used to work on the planet Mars, back in the 21st century, collecting data for an organisation on Earth called NASA. At least I did until the day I no longer had any energy to continue and I powered off.

    ​"You may find it strange that I can speak - it was never one of my abilities one hundred thousand years ago, but some cosmic archaeologists uncovered me and made some adjustments.

    ​"Would you like to hear what happened?"

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGreg Krojac
    Release dateMar 4, 2019
    ISBN9781393734185
    Oppy
    Author

    Greg Krojac

    Born in 1957, Greg Krojac grew up in Maidenhead, England. He is the author of nine published novels: the dystopian Recarn Chronicles trilogy (comprising of Revelation, Revolution, and Resolution), the post-apocalyptic love story The Boy Who Wasn’t And The Girl Who Couldn’t Be, the foreboding First Contact novel, Immune, and the Sophont trilogy (The Girl With Acrylic Eyes, Metalheads & Meatheads, and Reuleaux’s Portal). He is also writing a Mad Max style series of novellas, the first of which has been published as Judd’s Errand. He ventured outside of the science fiction genre recently to write a comedy-horror novella, WTF? And in addition, has published a short story Oppy about the fate of the Mars Opportunity Rover. His most recent work is a scifi thriller titled The Weatherman. He currently lives just outside the city of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, with his partner, Eliene, and their dog, Sophie, and two cats, Tabitha and Jess, and teaches English as a foreign language (TEFL) at a local language school.

    Read more from Greg Krojac

    Related to Oppy

    Related ebooks

    Short Stories For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Opportunity’s End

      Sep 4, 2019

      THE MARTIAN WINDS WERE PICKING UP — kicking dust, sand and debris off the ground in a storm that would soon envelope the entire globe. For weeks, amateur astronomers on Earth would swing their telescopes toward the Red Planet only to find its familia

      9 min read

    • Article

      Solar Flair

      Jul 16, 2019

      Solar Flair
      5 min read

    • Article

      Extraterrestrial

      Dec 1, 2019

      Extraterrestrial
      7 min read

    • Article

      Just A Little PERSEVERANCE

      Jun 2, 2021

      Just A Little PERSEVERANCE
      6 min read

    • Article

      Solar Flair

      Jun 27, 2019

      Solar Flair
      5 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Nov 16, 2023

      SHUTTLE HISTORY Tom Jones Smithsonian Books £33 • HB Adventure stories are best told by those who lived them. Here, astronaut Tom Jones offers an off-piste look at the 135 Shuttle flights between April 1981 and July 2011. Jones flew four times on the

      5 min read

    • Article

      Inside The Sky At Night

      Nov 17, 2022

      Inside The Sky At Night
      2 min read

    • Article

      Why We Hunt For Alien Life

      Nov 1, 2023

      Why We Hunt For Alien Life
      4 min read

    • Article

      Cutting Edge

      Jul 15, 2021

      Cutting Edge
      4 min read

    • Article

      What Are the Odds of Alien Contact?

      Jan 16, 2020

      The only intelligent life forms we know of reside here on Earth. But that hasn’t stopped us from trying to answer the question: “Are we alone?” The search for extraterrestrial intelligence now has an accepted acronym, SETI, and a growing number of in

      10 min read

    • Article

      Too Much Space

      Mar 17, 2021

      Too Much Space
      5 min read

    • Article

      Launch For The Moon

      Jul 14, 2022

      Launch For The Moon
      5 min read

    • Article

      New Astronomy And Space Titles Reviewed BOOKS

      Jun 18, 2020

      Allen Lane £20 • HB Surely there is life on Mars – or at least that is what was thought by astronomers from the late 1600s all the way up to the 1980s. But in recent years that statement has taken on a whole new meaning. This book takes us on a voya

      4 min read

    • Article

      Sky’s The Limit

      Nov 24, 2023

      Sky’s The Limit
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Oppy

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Oppy - Greg Krojac

      Dedicated to the men and women of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, NASA

      ––––––––

      Cover image: Courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech

      My battery is low and it’s getting dark.

      (The final message of Mars Opportunity Rover, June 10, 2018)

      Mars Opportunity Rover was finally pronounced ‘dead’ by NASA on Wednesday, 13 February 2019, despite numerous attempts to revive it after contact was lost on June 10, 2018. It surpassed its life expectancy of 92.5 Earth days and was operational for an additional 5,405.5 Earth days

      *****

      The thin orange pipeline snaked away into the distance until it met the main suction unit of the Dust Removal Device, the DRD, itself connected to a giant storage tank, just as seven other pipelines did from the other archaeological quadrants. The DRD was, in essence, a giant vacuum cleaner whose suction wands with their 5mm apertures were guided skilfully and meticulously by highly trained operators, archaeological cosmologists from Terra 3   – affectionately known as Arcos.

      The environment on the Terçaterrans’ home planet, although similar to that of Terra, differed in two important aspects. Firstly, the light received from its sun was less bright than that which Terra had received from its own sun and this had resulted in an evolutionary response that had enlarged the eyes to allow more of the available light to enter. Terçaterrans were still clearly human in origin, but they had exaggerated facial features that could be seen as both charming and disconcerting in equal measure.

      Secondly, medical advances and the serendipitous effects of the Terçaterran environment had meant that living cells remained efficient and healthy for much longer. This was reflected both visually in physical appearance but also in the condition of internal organs, and made estimating the age of a Terçaterran simply by their appearance a challenging task.

      Lopata’s extraordinarily large eyes blinked every few seconds – first vertically as her human ancestors’ eyes would have done and then from side to side, a secondary membrane having evolved to help protect Terçaterran eyes from the increased cosmic rays on Terra 3.

      The oxygenating membrane that cocooned Lopata’s entire body flexed as she breathed, the gossamer-thin transparent film being first drawn into her slightly enlarged nostrils and then released again as she exhaled. It was a strange sensation that took a little getting used to but, after a while, she hardly noticed it happening.

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1