MARTIAN TRIANGLE: PART 1

By Lord_Magpie & Max Shippee

This is via the Writer’s Prompt “[WP] 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.

The first approximately 800 words are from a user that goes by Lord_Magpie, the rest by Max Shippee.

------

“What do you mean there’s a boat on Capture?” Truman groaned, rolling over in a vain attempt to not wake his wife. “Are you smoking something?” The phone light illuminated his bedroom like a cheap night light. His wife rolled over to his side, her eyes glancing at the screen. Holding the phone away, Truman squinted to check the time. Three thirty it read just above his assistant name. Christ, these people are going to kill me.

“Sir,” his assistant whispered. “I think you need to come into Control immediately.”

“What is it?” Megan asked, before rolling back over to her side. Truman swung his legs out from underneath the comfort of his duvet and into the cold November night.

“Fine,” he said, maybe a little too harshly before hanging up. He threw on the clothes he had worn the day before, ignoring the feel of dirt and sweat.

“I don’t know, honey,” he said as he kissed Megan goodbye. “Tommy’s probably just seeing things. You know how he has a fondness for smoking all types of nonsense.” Megan murmured a response but Truman was already out the door.

Still half asleep, he found himself outside the Main Building before he knew it. For a moment he couldn’t help but look up. A cloudless night, the moon hung large and clear in the sky. Truman knew the exact spot to look at. Knew exactly where the lunar rover was. Where it had begun and where it would go. Then, he heard a shuffle through the door. Tommy, looking disheveled, burst outside, nearly falling over his own feet as he glanced up and saw Truman.

“Sir,” he gasped, out of breath. “Thank god! Come on, you won’t believe this.” Tommy held the door open as Truman entered the building’s empty lobby.

“What I can't believe Tommy,” Truman grumbled. “Is how you can come to work looking more like a homeless person rather than an engineer.” Tommy’s white shirt was haphazardly tucked in the front of his black slacks but not at the back. The stench of cigarette smoke wafted from him but still Tommy charged ahead.

On they walked through a maze of corridors until they reached a pair of sliding glass doors. The word “Control” was spread across the doors in dark red writing, a familiar sight to Truman. After a quick scan of his keycard, Tommy admitted the two men into the room.

As soon as the doors opened, they were hit with a wave of shouting. Men in skewed glasses shouted over the top of giant computer screens. Women rubbed their eyes, tired. Most stopped what they were doing as they saw Tommy and Truman walk towards their regular place in the centre of the room.

“Alright let’s see this boat that’s definitely not just a pile of rocks,” Truman muttered. Every eye in the room was on him. The screen flickered once before showing them what the rover was seeing. The stats that surrounded the image seemed normal. Showing a near full battery life and an average distance travelled, they were always the first thing Truman looked at. Still, he didn’t dwell on them long. His jaw dropped open. He rubbed his eyes, once, twice, three times. Still, the image remained the same. For month’s all they had looked at were rocks. Sometimes the rock would have an interesting shape, mostly they were just rocks. So why, how in the hell am I looking at a US navy ship?

“What…” Truman stammered. “How?” No spoke for a moment. Truman turned his head sideways, reading the writing on the side of the boat that couldn’t possibly exist.

“It’s the USS Cyclops, Sir,” Tommy said, answering the question on Truman’s lips. The USS Cyclops?! What in god’s green earth is going on?

“There’s more, Sir,” Tommy went on, nervously wringing his hands. Truman leaned back on his chair, eyes glued to the giant ship on the surface of the moon.

“More? Christ, I don’t need to hear more but go on.” Truman groaned, rubbing his eyes again.

“Well, Sir,” Tommy began. “We searched the internet for information. Well, the USS Cyclops apparently went missing in 1941…from the Bermuda Triangle.” Those final words made Truman sit up. His head was ringing, too many questions ran through his mind. Then the image started moving. He could see Thomas Reilly in front of him, controlling the rover. Just before he was about to shout, scream at Thomas to turn back to the boat, Truman realised what he was doing. The camera turned, now showing a vast ship graveyard. Hundreds of boats, some wooden, some steel, spread out across the moon’s plains. Truman wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve.

————

[Continued by Max Shippee in all subsequent parts]

... Truman wiped his forehead with the back of his sleeve.

“Jesus Christ,” he moaned. “Somebody called the President.”

Truman looked around the room, at all the people staring. Waiting. He looked to Tommy.

"What time does Margie usually get in?"

"Margie... Carruthers?" Tommy asked. "But she's with Space Telesc..."

"I know what she's with!"

"Uh... Nine, I guess?"

"Look," Truman finally turned to the whole group. "I know what this looks like, but it isn't. It can't be." He shook his head, "It's just not possible. So here's what we're going to do." Truman nodding to each team in kind as he gave his orders.

"Communications, I need you to check the signal, and make sure it's not being highjacked by someone who's doing some damn prank and feeding us photoshopped images from the damn rover. And imaging... I need you to go over these images pixel by pixel to find some kind of residual evidence of what's going on. This is probably some YouTube special effects wannabe that playing us for views before we even know it."

He stood tall to address the room, "I know what it looks like, but it's not, there's just no way. So what I need you to do is to think of ways that someone could make it look like there's fucking boats on Mars and then use fucking science and find the evidence. And if ANY of this leaves this room, every one of you is fired!"

The room was dead quiet, not a soul dared to move.

"NOW!" Truman finally finished. With that, the room was abuzz with activity again. Tommy turned to Truman.

"And, uh... what about Dr. Carruthers?"

"Call her house at eight. I don't think we have to get her out of bed for some damn hoax," Truman rolled his eyes at Tommy for doing just that. "We're going to have her turn James Webb on the damn planet."

"Can you even do that?" Tommy asked.

"We can, and we will. But now, coffee."

Dr. Margie Carruthers had her long hair up. While it looked like she had probably rushed out of the house, she still looked as put-together as ever. She stood next to Truman in his office, her own coffee in hand, blinking at him.

"There's a really long line of research in front of you, Truman, we can't just let you jump the line to point James Webb at Mars, because someone is putting Tatooine in the damn Northern Lowlands. Even if it was something strange... Mars is something we've already studied, something we've had probes around for years... it's called the James Webb Space telescope, not "planet telescope" for god's sake.

(Sorry... have to drop the kids at school! more later!!)

EDIT: Continuing ...

There was a scream from the control room, that made both Truman and Margie turn.

Tommy came to the open door, “Sir… you need to come see this.”

Truman and Margie stepped into the main room and looked up at the huge main screen on the wall. Truman just stared.

“Jesus,” Margie said.

“It looks like a corpse,” said Tommy. There on the screen in front of them, the USS Cyclops was still large and in the distance, but now directly in front of the camera was a much, much smaller boat. It was maybe sixteen feet long, a small windshield, and twin outboard motors, and fishing poles sticking up.

Draped over the side of the boat was a corpse bent over with a fishing net in hand. It’s skin broken and bleached against the bones underneath. As if a strange punchline, on the ground there was a mummified tuna.

Truman let out a chuckle, “The fish is a nice touch.” He then turned to the room. “Does anyone have anything yet? Anyone?”

Cliff in communications finally spoke up, “We’ve been combing the signal since two am, we can’t find any hiccups or abnormalities.”

Noah, who was usually in charge of compositing images spoke next, “We’re getting nothing here either.”

Truman spoke under his breath, “A whole room full of graduate degrees and I have to do all the thinking.”

He turned back to Tommy, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think we need to call Bethany.”

“Bethany?” Tommy’s eyebrows went up.

“Are you sure?” Margie questioned.

Truman turned on his heal and went to his desk, and pulled out a business card. He had refused to put her number in his phone.