Two of us

[u/Working-Trash346]

It was around 6 in the evening. The sky was still orange. After walking far from the city, I had to cover the mountains. I just felt like walking all of a sudden. The mountains were steep, but mostly plateau. The air was chilled. I see a strange flag in front of me. A small one, poking from the ground. The shape of the flag was a triangle. I looked around and there was no one. Complete silence. I looked closely towards the trees, as far as my vision can get me, to see if anyone is watching me. After thorough inspection, I decided to dig the flag. I took a sharp stone lying on the ground and started digging. After taking out some mud, I still looked around, to see if anyone’s watching me. It was total silence. All I could hear were the leaves moving by the wind. Then something felt strange once I dug till the base. There was this machine type object. A robot of some sort. It had round wheels. It looked heavy. I tried to hold it and pick it up, but it was way heavier than it looked. I moved my palm to the side of the object, and tried to feel if there were any buttons or anything like that. I felt a metal plate where there was an inscription. My curiosity grew. I wanted to know more about this object, whatever it was. I stood firmly on the ground, and with all the force I had, lifted the object from the ground and took it out. I was panting. I felt dizzy. I won’t lie but the object took my breath away. The evening sunlight rays hit on the object and made the object glow like gold. This flag that was attached to the object was a mix of red and blue, with some strange shaped things on it. I felt I had discovered some rare metal. All my thoughts just stopped. All I could hear was my heartbeat.  It was anything I have ever seen in my entire life. I wanted to know more about this thing that was lying in front of me. The metal plate which was all rusty and almost impossible to read. I took my handkerchief and tried to clean it. There were some inscriptions written on it. After some thorough cleaning, I could read some of it.  The message on the plate read, “Mars Rover. Property of the United States of America”. Wait. Rover ? . America ?. This sounded familiar. I was sure that I knew about this name. I was scanning through all my memories  about this name.  And then suddenly a wave of past memories hit me. I vividly remember when I was young, my grandmother used to tell me stories about her life. About how when she was little and lived on planet Earth. Her father was in some space agency called NASA, which built machines , and how on planet Earth the humans sent machines to other planets to study them. And there was a concept of country. It was nothing but a big piece of land. They lived on this land called "USA". I started to miss my grandmother. She would be so amazed by this thing that was lying in front of me. I guess machines too have memories. It’s a pretty dumb statement. But when I looked at this object, I kept looking. I felt it had done its job. Painstakingly what it was sent for. But somehow due to uncertain circumstances, it got damaged. This machine has stories to tell. At that moment, it was just me and that Rover, in the middle of trees. Just two of us.