MARTIAN TRIANGLE: PART 2

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, though not in front of the camera. She had found that being able to travel with pre-production was far more fun than having to remember a bunch of lines and hit your mark. Instead, she had founded her own PR firm, and was now the major liaison between Hollywood and NASA. She was about to put her phone in her bag when she saw it light up with "Truman (NASA)" on her phone. She smiled, and flicked her screen to answer.

"Truman? Are you calling ME?!" she purposefully rubbed it in.

"Don't get too excited, I have a legitimate question for you," Truman responded. Truman hated that Hollywood seemed to have an endless fascination with science fiction, and yet at least three times a week, he had to field phone calls from some writers room at Warner Brothers, CBS, Netflix, or numerous others asking if "the science was realistic?" At first it was sort of endearing, but it had turned into this constant interruption of actual scientific work that he was trying to get done. Even worse, he watched alien superhero movie after man-on-mars movie crank out hundreds of millions of dollars in profit while he had to go begging to Congress penny by penny to actually try and do the thing instead of make a movie about it. And now here he was having to ask her for something.

"Do you have anyone at Industrial Light and Magic that could look at some footage for us? We think someone is about to play a huge prank with some Mars footage and we want to be ahead of it."

"Well, Industrial Light and Magic? That's a big ask," she paused for dramatic effect, "But of course I'd love to help! Have you gotten a chance to get back to James Cameron about his propulsion theories for warping on Avatar 3?"

"It's on my list," Truman replied, trying not to let his eye roll come through in his voice. "Bethany, it's actually urgent."

"Is it now? Well then, let me see what I can do."

"Maybe slide it over towards Aston Ang. At least he got the effects right on the black hole last time." Truman figured if anyone could sniff out leading edge special effects, it was Aston. Interstellar was one of the few movies that he thought did a good job at matching fact and fiction.

"Oh, Aston... he might be in Korea right now, but I'll check. What is it exactly that you're looking at?"

"One thing at a time, Beth," Truman didn't want to sound like he was avoiding, but he couldn't hide the little bit of disdain in his voice that he was asking for her help.

"It's the end of the work day over there, give me an hour or two and I'll try to connect you."

"Okay," Truman paused, "Thank you."

"Of course, anything for you, T-boy!"

Truman took a deep breath and kept his cool, "Talk soon."

"'K bye!" Bethany finished, and click the phone off. She flipped through her phone to Aston's number, and clicked “Call."