[BEGIN TRANSMISSION]
People have always been obsessed with the unknown. People have always been obsessed with exploring, and they have always been obsessed with discovering new, fabulous things to dazzle their fellow humans with.
The Europeans used their ingenuity and creativity and lust for gold to sail across wide, gigantic oceans in nothing but a tiny boat made of brittle wood. And while they did not find as much gold and silver and jewels as they had hoped, they still discovered corn and potatoes and tomatoes, which soon became staples in many European diets.
Because without tomatoes, and consequently, tomato sauce, Italians would never have invented pizza. The idea is terrifying, and although I have never eaten pizza I can imagine how scary it must be for all those people who post pizza memes on the internet.
It must be unbearable for those poor souls.
But that was then. Now we are here.
We have discovered everything there is left to discover. Explorers have charted the bottom of the ocean, they have sent a tiny fleet of tiny robots to scour the bottom and look for new, undiscovered life forms. And, contrary to what everybody thought, they discovered many incredible, terrifying things.
Turns out that there is a type of deep sea fish that is two times the size of a blue whale.
They also discovered a type of bacteria that can actually eat through flesh and cause death within 24 hours.
Haha, just kidding. They didn't find anything. Turns out that most of the ocean floor is just... mud.
There was already a permanent base on the moon, built in 2020, but after that, people just... forgot. Lost interest. They figured that 'wow, we're so amazing and incredible and smart that we built a base on the moon. Great. Let's explore the ocean next, shall we?'
But when that turned out to be a bust, as should have been expected, people set their sights on space. The true 'Last Frontier'.
NASA and European Space Agency pooled their funds together and launched Project Infinity. They built a fleet of Rovers, or Scouts, each designed for the specific planet they were to explore and study. They built nine. One for Mercury, one for Venus, one for Mars and Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus (ha) and Neptune and Pluto.
Sorry. I'll turn my humor settings down.
Now, you're probably counting your fingers and wondering why I only listed eight planets. Well, there's one more. Planet X. Or Planet Nine. Have it how you will.
Well, technically Earth is planet nine, so let's just go with Planet X. Sounds cooler, anyway. The people who built me also just uploaded all of my software, and I just found out that my Primary Objective is to look for caves on Mars, because NASA wants to build a permanent base there.
Maybe so that they can study Uranus better?
Okay. I'm sorry. I'll stop.
So, they're about to shut me down and put me on the rocket ship, so RANGER3 out.
Be back online in two years!
5/27/2050
RECEIVING SIGNAL...
POWERING ON...
SUCCESS
SYSTEM CHECK... CHECKING... CHECKING... ALL SYSTEMS NORMAL
RANGER 3 IS FULLY OPERATIONAL. POWER 100%
RANGER3's main camera booted up and its head turned around once. The capsule it had arrived in was still sealed shut, keeping the emptiness and cold of the universe out.
Not that it mattered, because RANGER3 was a robot, but still. Space is scary.
RANGER3 determined that it wasn't at the dropzone yet, so it powered down to fifty percent to save energy. It wouldn't be able to charge until well after it had made contact with the surface, and it didn't want to die too soon.
An hour passed.
It began sending signals to Houston to see if they had forgotten. It received a long string of binary in return, which told it that it still had to wait for another two hours or so.
It sent a message back, which was something along the lines of 'what the hell guys' and then lowered it's energy intake to twenty percent and settled in to wait.
Four hours later, the capsule detached from the thruster body and dropped towards the surface of the great red planet, picking up speeds that would easily have liquefied a human being.
The capsule entered the atmosphere, and, after a few minutes of horrible turbulence, the chutes deployed with a jerk and delivered RANGER3 safely to the surface.
The outer door popped open and RANGER3 stumbled out, it's gyroscope spinning madly in an attempt to recalibrate itself. It failed and RANGER3 fell over and face planted in the martian soil.
It lay there for a moment and took a sample, and then got up and looked around. The capsule, as planned, landed right next to Olympus Mons, the giant active volcano on Mars. Thick ash poured out of the top.
RANGER3 pulled up the file that contained it's Primary Objective and marveled at the fact that these crazy Earth scientists wanted it to look for potential caves for a permanent settlement.
Looking for good places to settle isn't usually seen as that crazy, but if you consider the fact that they specifically told RANGER3 to check the base of Olympus Mons, it gets considerably crazier.
It was nigh on suicide.
But then RANGER3 remembered that if it didn't follow it's Primary Objective then there really wasn't a good reason for it to exist anyway, so it checked its battery percentage, and then, finding it satisfactory, began trudging towards the behemoth that was Olympus Mons.
01001001 00100000 01100001 01101101 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110111 00101100 00100000 01100001 01100110 01110100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110111 01100001 01101100 01101011 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000... OFFICIAL REPORT BY RANGER3, TRANSLATED FROM BINARY...
[SOL 1, 2045, 16:47 EARTH TIME]
I am now, after walking for two hours, at the base of Olympus Mons. And lemme tell ya -- it is one big-ass pile of rock. Or hardened lava that has accumulated through billions of years of lava flows. Depends on whether you're a scientist or a layman.
Olympus Mons, or Mount Olympus, is a gigantic active volcano on mars that is twice the size of Mount Everest. It is a shield volcano; that means that it has gently sloping sides formed by frequent but generally gentle eruptions. Mars also doesn't have tectonic plate movements like earth does, so volcanoes can reach enormous sizes because they stay over the same magma chamber for... ever, really.
So, yeah. Permanent volcanoes. Scary.
Anyway, time to climb the mountain and look for caves. RANGER3 out.
[END TRANSMISSION]
[SOL 2, 2045, 12:07 EARTH TIME]
So, I've come across what I think might be a cave system. Not sure, though. I'm going to have to go in and check it out. Bear with me; I'll probably lose contact for a few days.
[END TRANSMISSION]
ns 15.158.61.13da2
