Primitive Scout Unit Discovers It Is Exactly Where It Left Itself

The bipedal inhabitants of Sector 7 are currently celebrating a technological breakthrough involving their favorite hobby: throwing expensive metal boxes at nearby rocks. Their most recent mobile unit, a trundling heap of optical sensors and primitive processors known as Perseverance, has successfully utilized a process they call Global Localization.

Essentially, the machine looked at the rocks, compared them to a picture taken from a slightly higher altitude, and concluded that it was, indeed, on Mars. The tribal elders at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory—a collective dedicated to burning liquid fuels for moderate gains in distance—expressed immense pride in this achievement. For a species that still loses its organic transport keys on a daily basis, knowing the precise coordinates of a robot millions of miles away is considered a peak intellectual feat.

While the rest of the galaxy uses quantum-entangled positioning to navigate the thirteen dimensions, the humans are satisfied with matching 360-degree panoramas of dust to older panoramas of dust. They call this advancement. We call it a desperate attempt to ensure their multi-billion credit toy hasn't fallen into a hole. This data will likely be used to continue their search for microbial life, blissfully unaware that the rest of us have been avoiding their calls for eons.

— Zog-7, Sector 7 Observer