Opportunity
Opportunity
[The year (or year and first sentence) for each panel is written in a small frame at the top of each panel. It breaks the top frame of the panels.]
[Ponytail is sitting at a computer, facing left. Hairbun stands behind her.] 2010: Ponytail: After six years, Spirit is down, but Opportunity is still going strong. Hairbun: Tough little rover!
[Opportunity traveling on Mars. Text is written in frames with zigzag lines] 2015: Off-screen: Eleven years, wow. Off-screen 2: Wasn't the original mission 90 days? Off-screen: This is starting to get weird.
[Cueball and Megan sitting at a computer, facing right.] 2023: Cueball: The battery is totally disconnected. How can it still be moving?? Megan: Given what it did to the Mars 2020 rover, we may never know.
[Two Martian inhabitants looking like Cueball and Megan stands on a cliff edge pointing towards a dark, mountainous region. Behind them are a tower and a hover car] 2450, terraformed Mars, Martian imperial capital: Martian Cueball: Everything the light touches is our kingdom. Martian Megan: What's that dark area? Martian Cueball: That is Opportunity's half of the planet. We must never go there.

This comic is talking about the robotic science platform Opportunity . On January 25, 2004, the Opportunity rover landed on the surface of Mars for the purpose of gathering data about the surface of Mars. Opportunity has proven remarkably robust, and the comic extrapolates the rover's resilience to absurdity for comedic effect. As of Feb 12th, 2019, the Opportunity rover has finally been declared dead after 5352 Sols (Mars Days) or 5500 Earth days on Mars. On Feb 13th, 2019, Randall eulogies the Opportunity Rover in 2111: Opportunity Rover .
The comic depicts the two scientists Ponytail and Hairbun at ground control being amazed at this fact already in 2010, and (maybe the same two) scientists continue to discuss this in 2015 in the second panel.
They mention another Martian rover, Spirit that was also sent to Mars on the same date as Opportunity. Unfortunately, it became stuck and a sandstorm covered its solar panels. On March 22, 2010, it was thought that Spirit's batteries finally ran out, marking the end of its mission. This was covered in 695: Spirit , in which the Spirit rover is also portrayed with an anthropomorphic personality.
In 2023, Opportunity is still moving despite having supposedly no power source. It also became aggressive and deactivated the Perseverance rover sent in 2020 . Cueball and Megan can't explain how it moves, but investigating is now too dangerous. This evolution is similar to the stories of HAL 9000 (from 2001: A Space Odyssey ) and V'Ger (from Star Trek: The Motion Picture ), both of which became dangerous to human beings.
By 2450, humans have colonized and terraformed Mars. Maybe it is the 2023 Cueball and Megan's descendants that are looking out over their huge "kingdom" from the capital on Mars. However Opportunity is by now dominating half of the planet and will not allow humans to enter its dark reign.
"Everything the light touches" is a reference to a line by Mufasa in The Lion King . Mufasa's son Simba then asks "What about that shadowy place?" and Mufasa tells him "That is beyond our borders. You must never go there". This was used again in 1608: Hoverboard , where Cueball tells the same line to Ponytail in the left part of the world. In " what if " "Sunset on the British Empire" , concerning the end of the sun shining on the British Empire, Cueball tells a child that everything the light touches is their kingdom, and the child asks (in the title text) "What about that shadowy place over there?" to which Cueball replies (also in the title text), "That's France. We'll get it one of these days."
The title text forecasts the first words of the first astronauts on the surface of Mars. At first, the astronaut copies the first words of Neil Armstrong on the Moon ("That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind") but it is interrupted by the Opportunity rover. Opportunity has a drill to collect Martian rock samples, but here it is heavily suggested that the drill is being used as a weapon against the astronaut.
[The year (or year and first sentence) for each panel is written in a small frame at the top of each panel. It breaks the top frame of the panels.]
[Ponytail is sitting at a computer, facing left. Hairbun stands behind her.] 2010: Ponytail: After six years, Spirit is down, but Opportunity is still going strong. Hairbun: Tough little rover!
[Opportunity traveling on Mars. Text is written in frames with zigzag lines] 2015: Off-screen: Eleven years, wow. Off-screen 2: Wasn't the original mission 90 days? Off-screen: This is starting to get weird.
[Cueball and Megan sitting at a computer, facing right.] 2023: Cueball: The battery is totally disconnected. How can it still be moving?? Megan: Given what it did to the Mars 2020 rover, we may never know.
[Two Martian inhabitants looking like Cueball and Megan stands on a cliff edge pointing towards a dark, mountainous region. Behind them are a tower and a hover car] 2450, terraformed Mars, Martian imperial capital: Martian Cueball: Everything the light touches is our kingdom. Martian Megan: What's that dark area? Martian Cueball: That is Opportunity's half of the planet. We must never go there.
