She looks normal, sort of, but every now and then I notice something peculiar. She is a news presenter on a national TV network in Australia. She speaks very fluently with a slight mid-Atlantic or possibly mid-Galaxy accent, is well groomed and of indeterminant racial heritage.
Her name is Dheportad Royde. Strange name. Where is she from? Is she a foreign agent seeking to undermine the very fabric of our society and ensure we all wear double denim? Is she an actor in deep disguise secretly wanting to rejoin the cast of Neighbours? Let’s ask the hard questions here: is she Kylie Minogue wearing a black wig?
I have noticed she doesn’t blink. Ever. Nor does she smile.
In fact, she is virtually expressionless, like an Easter Island statue but with better hair and make-up. The closest I have seen to her showing any sort of emotion, was when she was presenting a news story about Elon Musk’s plans to use his SpaceX spacecraft to shuttle people to Mars for vacations. While she was reading the report, I detected just a hint of wistfulness, just a touch of a faraway look in her eyes, as though she was staring off into space. But perhaps she was just responding to a signal from the TV producer to relax, try to smile and look more, well, human.
But maybe, just maybe, she felt a deep desire for something she had left behind. What could it be? My mind started racing like a rocket being launched.
Was I seeing a desperate longing for the red red dust of home? Was it wistfulness for a distinctive whiff of fresh methane from the underground methane springs of the Gale crater? Could it have been nostalgia for the excitement of dodging death in the spectacular meteor showers on her home planet? Or was she hankering after the breathtaking views from the top of Olympus Mons, the highest volcano in the solar system? Or perhaps Dheportad was daydreaming of an exhilarating hiking holiday with robo-friends in the Velis Marineris canyon complex which is four times deeper than the Grand Canyon?
But what I really want to know is – what is Ms Royde doing here on planet Earth?
Is she like one of those solo ants which scouts out your kitchen for a site for the ant army to build massive nests, and then stage a total takeover of the house and drive you out? But somehow I don’t see her as an evil spy. Personally, I think she is on a poignant, painful, personal path of pathos.
I once saw Miss Royde betray a flicker of terror which I believe was a further window into her digital soul. She was presenting an historical story about the transportation of convicts from England to Australia in the 18th and 19th century, often for relatively minor crimes like stealing a mock turtle. There was no missing that flash of fear in the eyes of a hunted human(oid). Then I realized this could reflect her own story. Perhaps she was a criminal deportee from the Red Planet. Slowly I put the pieces together until the bigger picture emerged, like completing a jigsaw of a polar bear in a snow storm.
Dheportad was, I believe, sent to planet E as punishment for her misdemeanours and crimes on planet M, just like the English and Irish convicts in the 18th and 19th century who were sentenced to transportation Down Under.
Perhaps Dheportad, sneezing because of the red dust storms, stole a handkerchief. Caught red-handed, she was sent into interplanetary exile. Perhaps she was like the unemployed English servant Margaret Catchpole who in 1797, penniless and sick, was persuaded by a friend to steal a horse to ride it 100 km to London to see her former lover, William Laud, an ex-smuggler. She tried to sell the horse but she too was caught red-handed. Margaret was sentenced to seven years transportation to New South Wales, Australia. Before setting sail for the Antipodes, she was detained as a convict in Ipswich Gaol but cleverly scaled the 22 foot prison walls with the aid of a clothesline. She was recaptured and immediately sent off to NSW where there were no clotheslines. There she became a convict servant, then trusted farm overseer then valued midwife and nurse and she died nursing an influenza patient. She has even had a pub named after her. Her story was retold many times in books, films and even an opera. **
Was this a parallel for Dheportad? Did she in desperation steal a Mars rover left over from one of the many Earth expeditions to Mars and then try to sell it and got busted and sentenced to seven years on Earth? I like to think that’s the explanation. I don’t know exactly how she got here. Perhaps she was dropped by parachute into a remote part of Sydney Harbour from an orbiting spacecraft, or her flying saucer landed briefly in a deserted part of Sydney, such as Sydney Opera House forecourt in the time of Covid. She then probably realized her best bet for the future was to blend into the surroundings to avoid being imprisoned in hotel quarantine. I believe she decided to hide in plain sight in the world of the TV media where slightly strange names, quirky behaviour and protection of personal privacy are more or less required for the job.
Dheportad knows that her three hour nightly stop at the basement electric charging station and her frequent high-risk vaping of argon gas could attract attention, so she guards her privacy very carefully. She makes sure that her name is very seldom displayed on the TV screen.
But humanoids have feelings too. Above all she does not want to miss out on returning to her beloved Mars. After serving her seven years hard labour in TV news in Sydney, she wants, I’m sure, to be on the first Elon Musk Spaceship flight to Mars, as a stowaway if necessary. There’s no place like home after all, even if you are a deported droid. Besides, she’s looking forward to writing a Martian book about her experiences, followed by a stage show, film and musical, just like Margaret Catchpole. He working title for her book is “My Lonely Life as Mars Maiden and Unearthly Earthling”.
© Geoff Milton 2020
**Wikipedia “Margaret Catchpole”
