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Red Rover

The crater was old,

No eyes saw it

When the river cut through

Its eroded rim,

Building a delta of silt and mud

Under the moons and stars.

Time passed,

The river shrank to a trickle, then nothing.

Wind-blown sand dunes

Worked and reworked

The lake’s desiccated bed.

100,000 millennia later,

Perseverance pays off,

Tracks mark troughs between the dunes,

A probe penetrates here and there.

Enzymes slick the probe,

Corrode the AI’s housing;

No life on Planet Four,

But a fair imitation

Kills the rover dead.

Wind covers tracks; nothing but sand

Moves on desert Mars.