Martian Program Persistent ((hot))

On Sol 412, the alarm woke her.

Not a farewell. Not a prayer. Just a systems-status handshake from JPL, automatically generated and shot across 225 million kilometers of vacuum before the orbital relay fell silent. Program persistent. The code was still running. The mission, in the coldest, most mechanical sense, had not been aborted. But the people who had written that code? They were likely dead. martian program persistent