Archaeopteryx

The air is damp, pouring rain hits the melting rocks and vaporises in dramatic hisses. The colors are spectacular, orange-red fluids bubbling in slow motion, dark blue water filling deep caves, nearly black clouds tower at the horizon, sudden patches of bright blue sky open up high above, white fog everywhere, an expressionist painting emerges and reconfigures, long before painters do exist. Everything is constantly moving, breathing, transforming. The big bird takes shelter under a fern, carefully navigating in unstable land. In the distance, another smaller creature tries to escape the water, but fails. Nearby, the probe is stuck in the mud, with its shiny surface and its perfect curvature. A masterpiece of engineering, unfortunately in this very moment becoming dysfunctional, one gamma ray too many, and a nanoscale structure located at a critical signal path forever unlearns how to do its job. The bird is hungry. Miller decides to skip his second coffee, he feels overly agitated these days anyway. Too many meetings, too much administrative work. Too many humans too far away from the station with too many opinions. He climbs up the metal ladder, tries to ignore the icy wind, stares at the camera and is waiting for the click. Someone has left a note on his desk, "had again hundreds of errors on A-78, replace?". He takes the paper, carefully reconfigures it into a tiny yellow ball and misses the trash by ten centimetres. The big bird slowly unfolds her wings, looks down at her claws, and decides to get rid of the logging device. A few small stones are rolling down the rock, playing a beautiful and complex rhythmical motive but no one listens. Then she finally decides to ascend. The clouds are getting more dense, rapidly building up giant structures, ready for the next big thunderstorm to come, sending down ice cubes and fire all at once. The data packet is short and seems insignificant, just one pulse too much on a green LED in a server room. It takes the first few hubs, until it finally gets corrected by a slightly too smart AI. The big bird glances one last time at the morning sun, satisfied, and ceases to exist.