Ret Balclass="underline" I see. That is very informative Andrea. Next caller is… hey hey… it’s our old friend Megiddo from underground. Go ahead, Megiddo, you are on the Truth Nationwide.
Caller: Hello, Ret, and greetings.
Ret Balclass="underline" It’s good to hear from you old friend. I hesitate, of course, to ask where you are and what you are doing.
Caller: Right, and I thank you for that. I am lying low at the moment. My former employers have had enough of me and I them. But they have sent their lackeys from the CIA and the NSA to search for me, saying that the knowledge in my head is a danger to national security. Hah! They shall search in vain!
Ret Balclass="underline" Ha ha! What can we do for you tonight, Megiddo?
Caller: I just wanted to let you know that the situation with Mars has gotten worse.
Ret Balclass="underline" Ah yes! Mars. For some of our listeners out there that are just tuning in, you need to realize that the color of Mars is changing. I myself have seen this with my own telescope. Our friend Megiddo here, has enlightened us on this subject.
Caller: Thanks, Ret. I’ll make this short so my burst transmissions are not traced. But the CIA and the right wing conspiracy know about this. They’re covering it up and are in fact planning to send a rapid development space mission to the planet to make contact with the enemy and finalize their plans for world domination. They’re putting together a set of Boeing Delta Vs with common booster cores that will fling their communications satellite towards Mars on a fast fly-by. This will put them in contact with the masters that are rapidly converting Mars as a base of operations in this solar system.
Ret Balclass="underline" Really? How do you… no, I know better than to ask.
Caller: Thanks, Ret. You are a trooper. But I’m telling everybody now. Prepare, be prepared. The world as we know it is about to disintegrate.
Ret Balclass="underline" Wow! Thanks, Megiddo, we’ll keep our listeners posted. Next caller is Ben from Dayton, Ohio. Ben, go ahead you are on the Truth Nationwide.
Caller: Ha ha, Jesus H. Christ, Ret! That guy was so whacked he probably wears an aluminum foil hat on his head!
Ret Balclass="underline" Ah caller, you must be new to the Truth Nationwide. Megiddo has been with us for years. And indeed he does wear an aluminum beanie. He discovered years ago that the remote viewing technology of the CIA can track him otherwise. But to all my listeners, I say this: More times than not Megiddo has predicted something that has actually come to pass.
Caller: Well, if you ask me, he is nuts.
Reference to mission to Mars forwarded to higher security cell for breach evaluation.
Chapter 3
The eight-inch diameter aperture Meade LX90 her father had gotten her for her birthday the previous year more than thrilled Charlotte Fisher. Most fifteen-year-old girls would have wanted something more girly, but not her. The color ccd camera he got her this year might — just might — make up for him missing her birthday again. But ever since the divorce a few years ago when he took that job at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California — to get away from her mom — he began missing things while at the same time trying to make up for it by buying her expensive gifts. In the case of the computer-driven telescope, it did. The perfectly clear evenings in the high altitude at Denver were perfect for stargazing — well, if you could get far enough away from the light pollution of the city. Fortunately, they lived far enough north from the city that a few dark places could be found.
“I think Mars is more, I dunno, gray-colored than red,” Tina said as she pointed to the image on the laptop while Charlotte brought the little planet into focus.
“Yeah, I think so too,” Charlotte replied.
“Hey, maybe we should go over and ask Mikey about it,” Tina giggled.
“I want to do some more observing here,” Charlotte fiddled with the altitude-azimuth controls on the telescope.
“Chicken!” Tina said. “You know he likes you. Just go talk to him.”
“What would I say? I mean he’s a jock and just at this star party for the extra credit he needs in science class and me… I’m nobody he wants to talk to.”
“Whatever. I’m gonna go see what he’s up to.”
“You better not!”
“Only way you’re gonna stop me is to go yourself.” Tina flipped her blonde hair over her shoulder and giggled again as she turned away.
The two had been an unlikely pair since grade school. Tina was a petite and ditsy blonde-hair-blue-eyes cheerleader type who always wanted attention and Charlotte was the dark-haired-sit-quietly-in-the-front-of-the-class-and-make-straight-A’s type. The only time Charlotte ever got loud or aggressive was on the girl’s fast-pitch softball team. She was only five feet six inches tall, but she had the super athletic ability of being able to knock the cover off a softball. This made her a deadly homerun hitter. The two girls had been best friends since grade school and neither of them knew why — well, that wasn’t exactly true. Charlotte’s dad John Fisher and Tina’s mother Alice Pike had worked together at the Denver Lockheed Martin facility as long as the two girls could remember. That was of course, up until the divorce and Charlotte’s dad had taken a promotion and transfer out to California. John was a booster systems designer, a “rocket scientist,” while Alice was a physicist working on advanced microprocessor design, pushing the theoretical limits to find smaller and smaller processors that used very little power for space applications.
“Dingbat.” Charlotte shook her head as she went back to work.
She set the computer to capture a long-term exposure of the little red planet, hoping that she would be able to see the redness that she had seen before. Mars had been the first thing she viewed the previous year when she had gotten the telescope from her dad. She had viewed it a few times since but Saturn was her favorite. She had spent most of her time viewing the beautiful rings of the giant gas planet. But their assignment for class was to view Mars.
“What are you looking at, Miss Fisher?” Mr. Anders asked his prize pupil.
“Mars. It’ll come up on the screen in a minute. I’m taking a long exposure.”
Mr. Anders stood by quietly as the image on the laptop began to appear. Mars’ outline and the larger features like the polar ice cap filled in first, then more detail filled in. The image was slightly blurry because of the layers of Earth’s atmosphere being turbulent, but the software had an algorithm to remove some of the fuzziness and enhance the edge features of the image. Finally, the computer dinged, announcing the image was complete and post-processed.
“Let’s blow it up and look at it,” Mr. Anders said.
Charlotte dragged the mouse pointer over to the zoom controls and expanded the view. The little planet filled the screen.
“Hmmm…” Charlotte murmured. “Doesn’t look right.”
“Have you got a filter on the eyepiece?” Mr. Anders asked her.
“Nope, that’s an unfiltered image and my ccd is color.”
“Hey, I thought Mars was supposed to be red,” Mike said, pointing over Mr. Ander’s shoulder. Tina stood behind him pointing and nodding at Charlotte as they approached the telescope. Charlotte tried to ignore her.
“That’s right, Mike,” Mr. Anders said, looking at Charlotte’s telescope and computer camera setup. “It should be.”