4
At eight o’clock, Patty Melancourt, Melissa’s assistant team leader, arrived. Melancourt had been irritable and depressed lately, and Melissa hoped that a successful test of the Titan Explorer would inject some fresh enthusiasm for the mission into her. Melancourt climbed up to the console platform and sat down at her workstation area without making eye contact or greeting anyone. She looked tired.
After booting up her workstation, Melissa focused her attention on the Explorer itself. It sat on a motorized gantry next to the Bottle, still vacuum-sealed in plastic from the clean room in which it had been built. The mission team members bustled about the floor, busy with their assigned tasks, a murmuring traffic of engineers, technicians, and scientists who eddied about holding iPads and clipboards.
Melissa checked her watch: ten A.M. The countdown had been going on for an hour, and all systems were go. Tony Groves, the mission director, came over to her and Stein. Groves was a wry, lanky man with a hank of black hair coming out from under his cap.
“Shall we unwrap the package?”
“Let’s do it,” said Stein.
They all descended from the control platform and climbed onto the gantry holding the Explorer raft. Groves produced a box cutter–like tool and handed it to her. “You do the honors—cut the ribbon, so to speak.”
Melissa took it and leaned over the raft. The seals to be cut were printed in red and numbered. She cut the first seal of the encasing plastic wrap, and then the next and the next, while Groves removed each plastic sheet and cast it to the floor.
Soon the raft stood revealed in all its glory. It was, she had to admit, a disappointing sight. Most space probes and rovers were visually striking, made of gleaming foil, shiny metal, and complicated arms and levers and bundles of wires. The Titan Explorer, on the other hand, looked like a big gray cookie, four feet in diameter, with heavy bumpers. Because of the violent and corrosive environment it would have to go into, it had no projecting parts or exposed metal and was thoroughly sealed. Three hatches on its upper surface hid a retractable communications antenna, a spotlight, and a mechanical arm. The arm carried the science packages, cameras, drill, and sampling pipette, and it could be extended from the raft on command or retracted and sealed behind a hatch in case of rough weather. The Explorer was propelled by a small jet drive, not unlike that on a Jet Ski, driven by an impeller. It could move the raft at a speed of four knots.
Despite its dull look, inside it was a technological miracle, a meticulously designed and handcrafted one-of-a-kind object that had taken two years and $100 million to build. The software package alone had cost $5 million.
As she stared at it, it took her breath away, this dull gray hockey puck stuffed with magic. Her feelings of pride were followed by a spasm of fear at the thought that they were about to drop this jewel into a tank sloshing with liquid methane and poisonous gas at almost three hundred degrees below zero.
Groves, too, stared at the raft, in a moment of silence. Then he spoke: “Let’s run down the final checklist.”
While she read off the items on the list, Groves checked the Explorer, bending this way and that, looking underneath it, examining the seams and hatches, searching for problems. But she knew he wouldn’t find any. A hundred engineers and technicians had already tested every component almost to death. Everyone at NASA had a mortal fear of failure.
Groves stepped back. “All good. Time to load the software and boot her up.”
Melissa had nicknamed the software “Dorothy.” The Dorothy software had voice recognition capability, and it had to know when it was being addressed. Thus, the name Dorothy, in addition to being a nickname, was also an important software cue.
“Load it,” said Groves.
Melissa took out her laptop, placed it on the gantry next to the Explorer, opened it, and connected it via cable to a dangling Ethernet jack. She typed for a few moments, the screen responding, and then she sat back and glanced up at Groves. “Loading.”
They waited a few minutes as the software booted up the raft and ran through an automatic set of routines.
“Locked and loaded.”
Melissa Shepherd paused. The entire area had fallen silent. All those not directly engaged in some task had gathered to watch. This was an important moment.
She bent over the computer. The software test sequence had been worked out ahead of time and could be done automatically, but they had decided to run these preliminary tests using the voice recognition and speech synthesis software.
Melissa said, “Dorothy, turn on propulsion at one-tenth speed, for ten seconds.”
A moment later, the impeller inside the raft began to whir. Ten seconds passed, and it stopped. There was a smattering of applause from the group.
“Extend antenna.”
A little hatch slid open and a long, black, sleek antenna came telescoping up. More applause.
“Retract.”
It went back in.
A simulation was one thing; this was something different. This was real. For the first time, the software was actually operating the entire raft. There was something about this that Melissa found profoundly moving.
“Extend the spotlight.”
Out came an arm from a second hatch, looming up like a big eye on a stalk.
“Rotate one hundred and eighty degrees.”
It rotated.
“Turn on.”
It clicked on.
Everyone was silent. Breathless. This was far more dramatic than Melissa had anticipated.
“Extend the instrumentation package and camera.”
Another hatch slid open and the third arm now crept out, more massive, studded with cameras, sensors, and sampling tools. It terminated in a metal claw and drill.
“Turn on the camera.”
That, Melissa knew, would also turn on the Explorer’s eye—its ability to see and record.
Jack Stein, from his position at the console, spoke: “Camera is operational. Image is clear.”
Now Shepherd had to smile. She had a little test of the AI portion of the program she had dreamed up.
“Dorothy?” she said. “I have a little challenge for you.”
The room fell silent.
“Say hello, by name, to each person standing in the circle around you.”
This was not going to be easy: each of them was swathed in a hair covering and face mask.
The camera, a buglike eye, began to rotate, stopping to stare at each person in turn, looking up and down, before making a second circuit.
“Hello, Tony,” came a girlish voice out of the laptop speaker, the camera staring at Groves.
“It has a lovely voice,” Groves said. “Not your usual nasal computer whine.”
“I thought we’d give Dorothy a little class,” said Melissa.
The Explorer camera went around and greeted each person by name. It finally ended up back at Melissa. It stared at her for a while, and Melissa began to feel uncomfortable. Surely it would know her better than anyone.
“Do I know you?” Dorothy asked.
This was embarrassing. “I hope so.”
Nothing. Then the voice said, “Groucho Marx?”
There was a silence, and then Melissa realized the software had made a joke. She was deeply shocked. Everyone else began to laugh.
“Love it,” said Tony. “Very clever. You had us there for a moment.”
Melissa Shepherd did not say that the joke was unprogrammed.