Several days had passed since Rian ordered Monica and Felix to build the spaceship. During that time, Rian was completely unaware of the carelessness committed by Natasha and her squad on their previous reconnaissance mission….
…
On Earth, Several Days Earlier.
A man with messy blond hair and slightly chubby cheeks was chewing on a hamburger with a bored expression. His eyes were fixed on the row of large monitor screens in front of him.
What a boring job, he complained to himself. He took another lazy bite of his burger, sauce smearing the corner of his lip.
This was his daily routine, even during work hours. All day long, his job was just to watch the static images on those monitors, along with his four other colleagues.
People thought working at NASA was cool: researching outer space, searching for aliens, or covering up discovered truths.
But the reality was nothing like that. Yes, they did observe and research space, but it wasn't as amazing as people imagined. In reality, they just observed a few celestial bodies or predicted potential natural disasters to warn the public, like solar storms.
Researching and developing spaceship engines for a mission to Mars? Hah, just leave that to the private company next door.
Ever since NASA's budget was drastically cut thirty years ago, undertaking missions like in the 1960s was just a daydream.
He stood up, crumpling his burger wrapper. As he was about to walk to the trash can, a notification popped up on his main screen.
PING!
[NOTICE: ROVER PROMETHEUS IS TRANSMITTING IMAGE DATA]
PLOP!
The sound of the notification instantly made the crumpled wrapper fall from his grip. "How is this possible?"
He hurried back to his desk, his fingers flying frantically across the keyboard. At the moment, he was the only one in the room; his four colleagues had been temporarily transferred to another department to help with another project.
His face started to grow damp with cold sweat, his heart pounding. How is this possible?! Rover Prometheus… which was reported to have lost contact three years ago… suddenly sent an image?! This… this doesn't make any sense!
He quickly opened the data file sent by Prometheus. His eyes widened at the image displayed on the screen, a sight that made absolutely no sense.
"Oh, my God… This is…." His face turned deathly pale, filled with shock.
"Is this an April Fools' joke?" he thought frantically. He saw an image of someone wearing beautiful, European medieval-style silver armor observing the rover. Through the rover's camera, he could see another figure behind the armored person, a woman with an Eastern European appearance and long blue hair, wearing a maid's uniform. Beside her were two other people dressed all in black with white-and-orange fox masks. He also noticed a pair of small horns on their heads.
Gulp! He grabbed a bottle of water from his desk and chugged it down. He rubbed his eyes roughly, trying to make sure what he was seeing was real.
After confirming he wasn't hallucinating, he slammed his fist on the desk. "Are you kidding me?! How could there be people at the foot of Olympus Mons on Mars?! And what's more, wearing knight's armor and a maid's outfit!" he yelled at the silent monitor screen.
"Calm down… calm down. I need to check if the NASA server has been infiltrated by some bored hacker." He quickly grabbed his phone from his pocket and called his colleague in the Network Security Department.
After waiting a few seconds, the call finally connected. "What's up, Peter? Why are you calling me?" A lazy young man's voice came from the other end.
"William, can you check if there's a virus on the server?" Peter asked quickly.
"There isn't. Even if there were, I'd know immediately. Everything's normal here. What's up? Did you click on a weird link on a porn site again? Hey, Peter, I've told you time and time again not to watch porn on the office computer." William started to nag in a lecturing tone.
Peter's face immediately flushed with a mix of embarrassment and anger. "No! I'm not watching porn! What kind of psycho watches porn at the office?!" he shouted.
"You do," William replied flatly.
Peter fell silent, unable to argue. "Whatever! I still have important things to do!" He quickly hung up.
He looked back at the image sent by Prometheus. No errors on the server? This means… it's real? The image sent by Rover Prometheus… on Mars?
Where was this picture taken? Peter immediately tracked where the image was last sent from. His department was tasked with monitoring and observing Mars, especially the rovers that had been sent there. His own team was assigned to monitor secondary data from the Perseverance Rover and other archived missions.
Peter quickly found the location. The last location this image was sent from, before Rover Prometheus lost contact again.
"At the last location Prometheus went dark three years ago?" Peter muttered to himself.
"If this data is real… then this will be the biggest discovery of the 21st century." Peter grabbed his phone from the table and immediately called his superior.
Once connected, Peter spoke immediately, "Mr. Nelson, I need to see you right away. There's something very important I need to tell you."
Hearing the serious tone in Peter's voice, Nelson replied at once, "Come to my office immediately."
After that, they hung up.
Peter hastily transferred the data from his computer to his phone. Once finished, he left quickly, not forgetting to lock his office door. If someone else saw this data, it could lead to an information leak.
…
"Are you sure this data is correct?" The old man's voice echoed in the small office, making the atmosphere suddenly very serious.
"I can confirm it's correct, sir. This is data that was just sent by Rover Prometheus, and the location is still the same as we knew it when the rover lost contact three years ago."
Peter answered the man in front of him. The man sitting there, wearing a black linen shirt with a brown suit jacket, was his boss, Nelson Allen, who managed NASA's operations related to Mars. At NASA, each planet in the Solar System had its own operational department.
Nelson carefully took off his glasses and placed them on the desk. He then looked at Peter's face very seriously. "Who else knows about this information?" he asked.
Peter swallowed hard at the question. Am I going to be killed for knowing something I shouldn't know? He had heard stories like this on YouTube and in movies.
"No one, sir," Peter answered, his voice slightly stammering.
"What's wrong? Why are you sweating?" Nelson asked, confused, seeing the change in Peter's expression.
"It's just a habit of mine, sir." Peter answered quickly, forcing a smile.
Nelson just gave him a strange look, then continued. "I will report this to my superior. This information will probably reach the President soon, and information relayed to the president is usually classified. So, I want you to keep your mouth shut for a while until there's an order from the government."
"You have my word, sir. I won't say anything to anyone, not even about this conversation," Peter said with a confident and firm tone, his face showing an expression that seemed trustworthy.
Nelson looked at Peter with a mysterious smile. "So, what was our conversation about just now?"
"Don't know," Peter answered firmly.
"Good. You may go back. Oh, and you can go home early. You might get a notice tomorrow to be transferred to another department." Nelson picked up his phone from the desk and called a friend.
"Thank you, sir." Peter immediately left Nelson's office, on whose door was written Manager of Mars Operational Department.
"What is it, Nelson? It's not like you to call me." An old voice came from the other end of the line.
"Vincent, I have something important you need to know. I just got this information from my subordinate," Nelson said seriously.
"How important is this information? Is it more important than Jeanne at the nightclub? Haha!" Vincent laughed on the other end.
This old man… Nelson frowned, then continued. "Vincent, this is serious."
"Okay, fine. Spit it out, what's the news?" Vincent replied lazily. Nelson could even hear the man stirring a drink.
"It's… about the existence of aliens!"
Nelson waited for Vincent's reply, but all he got was silence.
Before finally… a burst of laughter came from the other end of the phone. "I wondered what it could be! Nelson, Nelson… you've worked at NASA for 40 years and you still believe in things like that? Are you messing with me? It's not even April yet."
"This is serious, old man!" Nelson immediately hung up the phone angrily. He snatched the report Peter had given him and rushed to the office of the current NASA Director, Vincent Daniels. "I'm coming to your office now, and I'm going to slap you with this report to snap you out of your drunken stupor!"