Yet another Mars ticket

By 2142, Mars had become profitable.

Priya and Ethan were sitting at their Martian desk, scrolling through the piled-up tickets. To improve efficiency, support staff had been relocated to Mars. Managers remained on Earth. They were already used to the twelve-minute delay anyway and their managers only needed a report with pretty charts and cute colors at the end of the week.

A new ticket appeared on the screen. It was, as usual, flashing in red.

“Priya, we have a new ticket. They're asking us to deactivate Cerena’s access.”

“Who are ‘they’?”

“HR.”

A long silence followed the answer. They already knew about the merger and, obviously, employees deemed redundant would be fired and Cerena was the latest hired in the company. She had moved her family there last year and everyone assumed she had negotiated a very comfortable salary. She wasn't obligated to relocate her entire family or her dog. But she had openly stated that she was doing it for the money. It was all she talked about during coffee breaks.

“But we can’t do this Ethan, she’s using the rover! She doesn’t even know she is fired!”

“They cut the access before they announce she’s fired. It’s a rule meant to prevent fired employees from breaking anything.”

“She is inside a rover, on Mars. She won’t break anything. It would kill her.”

“It’s happened on Earth before.”

“But we are on Mars. If we do that, she’s going to be stuck outside in the middle of nowhere.”

“Yes. And we will have to get back the rover afterward. I’m responsible for the rover.”

An awkward silence followed.

“Do we have to do it right now?”

“We have to do it twelve minutes ago. They still don’t understand we have a delay.”

“Ok then, I'm sending the ticket back with a question. That would buy us some time: What kind of access are you talking about? All of them? She is using the rover.”

Priya reassigned the ticket and pressed Enter.

“Done! Let’s grab a coffee. We have at least a 24-minute break and Cerena will have plenty of time to get back before they send us back the ticket.”

Almost instantly, the ticket was reassigned to the team.

“Already? Probably an answer from our local AI.”

Priya opened the ticket and started reading it.

“It answered with another question: ‘Why is she using the rover?’ What? Who cares? How was this AI trained?”

“It learned from legacy tickets. AI trained with our answers.”

“That’s beautiful! The AI has integrated procrastination. And Cerena is still outside.”

“I think we should do it. I don’t want to get fired.”

“If we do that, Cerena is dead.”

“We could open another ticket after that. We’ll mark it as the highest priority.”

“All tickets have the highest priority.”

“So?”

“If everything is urgent, our ticket won’t be fixed first.”

“We could clean the backlog.”

“That would take too much time. I’ll call Cerena.”

“You can’t.”

“Why?”

“The system that cuts all communications is automatic. It’s meant to prevent people from warning employees before their dismissal.”

“Let’s go old school then! Switch on the old radio.”

Ethan switched on the old dusty radio and started scanning all frequencies. Among the static, they heard Cerena’s voice:

“Is anybody out there?”

“Cerena! You can hear us! Awesome!”

“My com device is dead. I’m heading back to the office. I don’t know why but the log tells me I don’t have access to the device. I’ll have to check when I’m back.”

“Sure. Come back safe…”

Ethan released the com button on the radio.

“We won’t tell her?”

“Not on the radio! We’re still human!”

“Hey guys, can you take control of the rover? I don’t have access to most of the measurement sensors. It’s very difficult to drive and the back is full of stones I collected. The rover has so much inertia.”

“Ethan, did you charge the emergency key so we can override the authorization and get control of the rover?”

“No. It discharges faster than it charges.”

“It’s stupid. Why?”

“The law of 2024 in Europe that imposed USB‑C as the only standard forced us to use USB‑C. But the key consumes more energy than USB‑C can provide.”

“It was more than a hundred years ago!”

“It never changed. And our headquarters is in Europe.”

“And the key from the merging company?”

“The headquarters is in America but this is a proprietary plug so we can’t use it with our system.”

“Why don’t we have both plugs in the office?”

“Budget cuts.”

“No one from Earth answers, and we are stuck because of a connector compatibility issue?”

“Yes.”

“Cerena, we can’t take control over the rover. You’ll have to drive back alone.”

“OK then. Stay by the radio please. I’ll call if I have an issue.”

Priya and Ethan stood by the radio. They didn’t even want to move their chairs a little. The green dot of the rover moved slowly, alone in the red desert. A desert no one at either headquarters had ever seen.

Then, Ethan started talking:

“Do you want a coffee?”

“Not now.”

Ethan kept looking from the radio to the computer and back again. He started refreshing the ticket. The ticket had been open for too long. It wouldn’t look good on Friday’s report.

“How long do you think she will take? The ticket is still open.”

“Ethan?”

“Yes?”

“Stop talking please.”

***

Ethan and Priya were now waiting by the airlock. Ethan took his tablet so he could close the ticket as soon as Cerena went through the airlock. Priya was ready to scan her own access card to unlock the hatch so Cerena could enter. Priya would get a three-day suspension, but she didn't care.

Cerena had barely removed her helmet when Priya hugged her.

“I’m sorry…”

“Why are you sorry Priya? I’m fine.”

“You’re fired. We received the ticket earlier.”

“Really? Awesome!”

“Wait, what?”

“Picking up stones is so boring! How much compensation do you think I'll receive?”

“I don’t know.”

Ethan went back to his tablet and started processing the request.

“Let’s follow the procedure to ask for your compensation. I’m opening the new ticket.”

Priya sighed. Another ticket.