It all began with a writer’s prompt on Reddit: “The first rover lands on Mars and NASA discovers that every boat and plane that has disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle scattered around the surface of the planet.” As posted from user Gregistopal on Reddit on April 19, 2023…

Bethany had just finished her morning yoga class when her phone lit up. She was tall, slender, and by all accounts a gorgeous, blonde "California girl." In addition to being effortlessly beautiful, Bethany had the gift of gab. She could literally talk anyone into anything, and because of this, she had become quite the hot ticket in Hollywood…

"Bethany! It's been a while!" Aston answered the phone in his usually over the top-ness.

"Aston! It's been too long! How's Seoul?"

"It was great, I got back late last night, and right back in the office this morning, do I sound that tired?"

"Well, I would've just stopped into your office if I would've known you were back!"

Truman was standing at his desk, phone in hand, listening to Aston chuckle on the other end of the line.

"Who is he? A nephew or something?" Aston chided. His feet were up on his own desk, he was taking a little pleasure in the fun, futile quest Truman had sent him on.

"What do you mean?" said Truman.

"I get it, I get. I'm impressed. This is incredible work. Whoever it is left no traces of anything. So sure, they can come by for an interview, hell, I'll hire them on the spot if they're working as fast as you say they are."

"Who's they?" asked Truman. "Do you have something?"

Tommy walked Truman over to the huge main screen. He leaned over to one of the techs, Luc with a 'C'.

"Go ahead," Tommy said, "Bring it up."

The large screen that filled the north side of the room blinked and digitized for a second, and then was filled with what looked like a pixel-ish close-up of the side of the USS Cyclops. Truman, along with the entire room, was staring at the screen. Without turning, he asked his first question.

"What color-enhancements are you running?" Truman asked.

"None," Luc with a 'C' answered. Truman turned and looked at him.

"None."

"None, sir," responded Luc with a 'C.'

"Then why the hell is it green?"

"You sure you don't want to come home for a bit?" Truman's wife, Megan, was on the other end of the phone. "If you have a whole team of people working to get it back up and running, you surely don't have to be there all night."

He had told a white lie to her when she had picked up. He had told her that the rover had stopped responding, and since it took a little under eleven minutes for the signal to travel back and forth, testing and retesting systems was taking quite a bit of time. He had enough to deal with with Tommy and the rest of Control, he didn't want to have to explain to his wife what they were seeing, especially since, in his mind, they still didn't know.

"Ready, sir," the soldier looked up at General Stapleton.

"One second," the General responded. He then turned to Truman, "You understand that what you're about to be a part of is Classified Information."

Truman, once again, wasn't entirely surprised that a government official, a military official, was informing him to keep his mouth shut about what he was about to see.

"Of course," he responded to the General. He then looked around the room. "What about all of them?" At least a couple dozen scientists had paused what they were doing in the Control Room and were waiting for whatever "the feed" was that General Stapleton had to show up on the Control Room Screen.

"They're clear," Stapleton said matter-of-factly.

"Oh -," started Truman, but he stopped himself. His mind was racing. "They're clear? Like... already?"