I remember like it was yesterday
The grand line falling, sound exceeds
Bang, rumble, calling across the freeway
With thrumming heart, a crater of mach speeds
What once green was now a grime sight
Around blackened burning weeds, a bot bleeds
The most lovely figure, sizzling starlight
Heaven's photons, astra eyes stare
"Phew! That was quite t—bzz—the landing, right?"
Her golden screen gleams, a true cadet's flare
In a doze, motors move, rebirth
"I—Khzzz—where am I? Is this place somewhere?"
"This is an old world long forgotten, Earth,
from lower realms, under stars' reign.
We dance to the Sun, that is our worth."
"Are you uncanny! Er, my line again:
Am Satele, Explo-Series.
Pleased to mee—bzzt—uh? I forgot, what a pain!"
That was the day I met her. The Satele I've known for a week. This long lost planet in the depths of the universe snatched her, and she possessed that which we could not decipher; this fruit falling far from the tree across space was quite unlike anyone I've met before, and in fact anyone who had come to Earth now or long ago bore no close resemblance.
Robots never sang, never danced, never had any manner of sensibilities which transcended electrical impulses, except for Satele X-2, who was a deviation nobody could dismiss.
"Are you okay?" Satele chirped, looking straight at me. I must have been staring, riveted by her display glowing like sunlight, the hundreds of tiny blue electronic components embedded across her surface glinting in yellow.
I reckoned I wasn't, somewhat.
"Are you criss-crossed lost in thought—Oh?" her antenna ears perked up again, "WE WITNESS THE EXPLOSION OF OUR LATEST ROCKET... AGAIN." She shook her head as the errant transmission waned, "aww, that's sad! How'd it malfunction?"
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"The fuel ran too short, I think," I mumbled, "this is the 6th failure. We just don't seem to improve."
She tilted her head, her cathode-eyes were bright, warped with technicolor, the static crackling against the busy radio spectrum. "Why are you sad? The research is still a blast, you learned a bit more about fuel in your last attempt, too, there is always room for a new plan to fire up," her antennas took up the pause and spun, listening for more signals, "don't you think?"
I didn't know how to respond, my brain was still full of flame and smoke.
Circuitry tinkered, supplies checked, fuel level signs read, combustion engineers grumbling with nobody's approval as their final efforts come down the execution chain.
All for what? Another ball of fire? With our resources diminishing, twenty years of supposed progress whittled down to nothing as the wheels of space and time spun ever faster, momentum restless in our rush to attain distant planets.
"I love these thingies! What do you call them?" her lo-fi voice misted through my haze, sounding clear. She was holding a pop-up hologram device showing the blurry, monochrome model of a flying insect I have never seen in person, for it has been long extinct.
"They're called butterflies, Satele," my reply came to me slowly.
It flitted and faded away as its animation left the device's range.
"You have to show me more of Earth, I'd like to see the flying butters, falling waters... yah ok?"
"Not much of it is worth seeing, these encyclopedias are the gold standard," I closed my eyes, "Earth is a dead planet."
"You are living, are you not?" she asked, not in jest but in a curious manner.
"I don't know anymore," was my florid response after a second of thought, another one of my recurring walls to hide behind.
Her antennae twizzled, "ghosts are faster than light," she said as her screen face warped and distorted, her circuits abuzz, "I learned this while exploring Gliese 667Cc, the Tw'nak wraiths are hyperspace things. Blue, fast and such. You don't look like them. You look like an Earthling: fleshy, solid and roundish."
I might have smiled, Satele fascinated me in a way, her alien knowledge told through messy data, snippets of knowledge with confusing simplicity.
"Don't you feel happy to be—oh! Channel 335855 Hz is showing Angry Explosions Of Rocketsnakes again! I love this show! Wait wait wait, here comes the disaster shot! Ohhh!"
Maybe Satele is the Earthling who sees the greens of the forests and I'm the one lost in space.