My battery is low and it's getting dark

A harsh wind whipped across the horizon. Dark, pregnant clouds moving in fast; a billowing wall a mile high and crackling with static electricity the size of lightning bolts. I'd never seen lightning bolts in person, just on the vidcom recordings in school, but still, that's what we're told they resemble. Doesn't matter, not really, what it does mean is we need to move it. We've got an hour, maybe two, before the storm hits us and if we're not back in the buggy we won't ever be going home.

Home. Opportunity city. Just thinking of our mission makes me both nostalgic and sober. Such a monumental task given to us, two misfit teens who made a monumental discovery just screwing around online. Now here we are, standing over looking Perseverance Valley for the telltale pyramid.

A speck on the horizon, a faint glean in the weak Martian sunlight makes me catch my breath. I can't believe it. It can't be.

"John! Get over here, I think I found it!" I yell over the comms in my helmet, my heart racing as I half slide, half run, down the powdery embankment.

I can see the dust rising off to my right as John races after me. I can't believe we might have actually found it.

"Sasha, hold up! Wait for me to get the vidcom up and running!" He's yelling at me while frantically hitting buttons on his suit sleeve. The suits are only for when we leave the domes and they haven't been upgraded in generations. They're big, bulky things that weight more than I do, but it doesn't matter. The lower gravity allows me to semi-bounce to the small rise where I fall to my knees and start digging in the loose regolith. Mars doesn't really have sand, but a crushed volcanic rock that's both powdery and compact.

"Oh my God," John's voice is a faint thread of sound. His whisper almost reverent.

I glance up at him, squinting slightly as the sun hits my visor and the face plate darkens to compensate. It doesn't matter, I know I'm grinning like a madman.

"We found it." I breath, hands trembling as I smooth two centuries of dust and sand off the solar panels.

John's eyes get big behind his face mask as he takes a half-step back, finger raised to point at a dull blinking red light on the center stalk. I hear it then, a low hum, then a beep.

Oppy is still here after all these centuries and we just brought it back to life.

Mars will never be the same.