Magnetic Anomaly
Weaver of Tales
Inner Sanctum Nobility
This came to me in a dream last night and I was seriously contemplating writing this as a solo short story, but if it grabs enough attention here I'd be down for a collaborative effort. Attached some concept images of what the robots might look like, just for funsies.
New Mars exploration program in development requires brain remote pilots on earth to control state of the art robots on the red planet (or from orbit??).
For some reason (I'll figure it out) the pilots' bodies shut down and the program was going to be abandoned. In a last ditch effort to save the program and solve this mystery, several volunteers suffering from Huntington's, Parkinson's, etc, were offered the chance to take over as they no longer had bodily function anyway. This was an opportunity for them to take back control, having full functionality of the robots.
Their diseases became exponentially worse, whatever caused the original pilots bodies to cease working speeding up the deterioration processes. They believed some sort of electronically spread virus was the culprit, and so the pilots were quarantined, trained to use Morse code to relay their data to the scientists and project leaders, as to isolate the virus so it didn't spread across the earth.
Eventually, the pilots bodies began to erode, and their brains were all that was left of the pilots. In order to prevent further deterioration of their brains, the fluids that kept their brains working had to be routinely switched out, but this ultimately only delayed the inevitable. They were on limited time and had to solve this mystery soon or it would've been all for nothing.
Meanwhile, on Mars, the robots would fail to reach their safe zone before their routine "offline" blackout period, and would be stranded out in the open during a Martian sandstorm. When they took back control, they had to dig their way out, but the sandstorm revealed the possible culprit of the electronic virus: a giant face was uncovered, its exhales containing both natural and electrical byproducts. Was this electrical byproduct the cause of the electronic virus attacking the pilots? If so, they needed to find a way to kill this Martian entity, or shut it down somehow.
They make their way inside this dormant giant, and eventually realize it was basically a cyborg. An ancient device that was once used in hopes of preventing the collapse of the Martian atmosphere...a way to terraform the planet. The technology was far beyond anything humans had ever accomplished. They needed to shut it down.
In the depths of the giant's innards, a high tech station, the robots find the control room, and with it, pods containing preserved Martians. Many of the Martians were perfectly preserved, living, breathing, and in a state akin to sleep. Some of them however, were basically comatose. They were alive, perfectly preserved, but all brain function had ceased. Using the high tech tools at their disposal, they shut off the pods keeping a select few of the comatose aliens in their sleep-like preservation state and the pilots transferred their consciousness from the connection between their brains and their robots into these comatose Martians.
Then they woke up.
New Mars exploration program in development requires brain remote pilots on earth to control state of the art robots on the red planet (or from orbit??).
For some reason (I'll figure it out) the pilots' bodies shut down and the program was going to be abandoned. In a last ditch effort to save the program and solve this mystery, several volunteers suffering from Huntington's, Parkinson's, etc, were offered the chance to take over as they no longer had bodily function anyway. This was an opportunity for them to take back control, having full functionality of the robots.
Their diseases became exponentially worse, whatever caused the original pilots bodies to cease working speeding up the deterioration processes. They believed some sort of electronically spread virus was the culprit, and so the pilots were quarantined, trained to use Morse code to relay their data to the scientists and project leaders, as to isolate the virus so it didn't spread across the earth.
Eventually, the pilots bodies began to erode, and their brains were all that was left of the pilots. In order to prevent further deterioration of their brains, the fluids that kept their brains working had to be routinely switched out, but this ultimately only delayed the inevitable. They were on limited time and had to solve this mystery soon or it would've been all for nothing.
Meanwhile, on Mars, the robots would fail to reach their safe zone before their routine "offline" blackout period, and would be stranded out in the open during a Martian sandstorm. When they took back control, they had to dig their way out, but the sandstorm revealed the possible culprit of the electronic virus: a giant face was uncovered, its exhales containing both natural and electrical byproducts. Was this electrical byproduct the cause of the electronic virus attacking the pilots? If so, they needed to find a way to kill this Martian entity, or shut it down somehow.
They make their way inside this dormant giant, and eventually realize it was basically a cyborg. An ancient device that was once used in hopes of preventing the collapse of the Martian atmosphere...a way to terraform the planet. The technology was far beyond anything humans had ever accomplished. They needed to shut it down.
In the depths of the giant's innards, a high tech station, the robots find the control room, and with it, pods containing preserved Martians. Many of the Martians were perfectly preserved, living, breathing, and in a state akin to sleep. Some of them however, were basically comatose. They were alive, perfectly preserved, but all brain function had ceased. Using the high tech tools at their disposal, they shut off the pods keeping a select few of the comatose aliens in their sleep-like preservation state and the pilots transferred their consciousness from the connection between their brains and their robots into these comatose Martians.
Then they woke up.