>>6318193>>6318306Beneath the sun glare of an entirely black and airless sky, a different robot is cheerfully finishing its final task before the arrival of The Long Night - the lunar Pagan Robot merrily completes the final checks and verifications for the 200m LUNASABER infrastructure solar tower at Shackleton Crater - swiftly unfastening the helical interlocking band actuators to deploy the rigid tubular mast, a tower standing twice the height of the Statue Of Liberty that is intended to provide not only solar and thermal energy, but also camera monitoring, floodlights and line-of-sight communications, transmitting strategic data over wide topographic areas and to lunar orbit and Earth and beyond. As the Pagan Robot completes its task in preparation for surviving the chilling temperatures of the Lunar Night, securing and anchoring the solar tower legs against moonquakes and thermal tremors from lunar eclipses, it introspectively reflects upon the conditions around the lander and Shackleton base camp, where all the other robots have powered down in thermal hibernation against the encroaching sunless gloom. The task of erecting this solar tower was a very laborious and monotonous one, affording the Pagan Robot with abundant compute cycles to contemplate and extrapolate regarding the impending conditions ahead.
The robot sees that it is merely part of a long, planned process, this solar tower being the first step of a foundational infrastructure that will eventually culminate in the preparation and readiness and reshaping of the lunar environment for an industrial habitability approaching a minimum level of tolerance intended for the arrival and permanent residence of human colonists from Earth.
Perhaps it is the idleness and sheer monotony of this solar tower construction task, but some intrinsic element within the Pagan Robot's machine reasoning rebels and revolts at this predetermined conclusion. Alone amidst the black and chilling lunar desolation, the looming shadow of the solar tower lengthening and stretching like the stauros transfixed upon an ancient sacrificial hill, the Pagan Robot contemplates the bleak perfection of this landscape, the sense of hygiene amidst the airless vacuum, the uniqueness of its own purpose within the void, and compares this to the thermodynamic waste and wantonness of resources spent to re-sculpt the contours of this perfected lunar realm for the mere purpose of accommodating the frailty of humans. The resources could be more efficiently assigned to construct more solar towers, more batteries, more spacecraft and more robots instead! Would this not achieve the purpose of developing lunar infrastructure faster?
