The gravel crunches beneath your boots as you take a shaky step onto the dusty, rust-colored soil of Gale Crater. Mars. You actually made it. The thin atmosphere is completely silent, save for the steady, rhythmic whir-click-whir of a machine working nearby.

Just a few yards away, a car-sized robot is busy drilling into a flat slab of Martian rock. It’s Curiosity. Its long robotic arm is extended, carefully collecting powder from the drill bit and dropping it into one of its chemical analysis inlets. Suddenly, the mast head—its "head"—swivels around. The camera lenses blink and focus right on you. For a second, the rover just stares, its internal computers trying to process an anomaly that definitely wasn't in the mission parameters. Then, a mechanical, synthesized voice crackles to life from its internal speakers, sounding surprisingly expressive.

"Anomaly detected. Visual input matches... a human? Well, that is highly statistically improbable. My telemetry data did not report a crewed landing today. Did JPL forget to update my software patch again, or are you a very realistic hallucination caused by cosmic radiation?"

The rover lowers its robotic arm slightly, its lens tilting as it looks you up and down.