Chapter 615 - 603: The Risk of War

Presidential Palace.

John leaned on the table with both arms, typing at a speed that belied his age on Twitter.

"The earthquake was caused entirely by natural factors; the power of the hydrogen bomb is negligible compared to the forces of nature. I sympathize with the disaster-stricken people and will donate $100,000 from my own funds to help alleviate their loss."

After finishing the tweet, he tagged a string of names, all Twitter-active officials.

The day before yesterday, the USS Wyoming successfully carried out its final cleanup operation, launching a missile from 5,400 kilometers away and detonating it in the predetermined airspace. The yield was just a bit higher than Russia’s, a passable result."

Fortunately, most of the force of the airburst hydrogen bomb was limited within the controlled area, causing only two large-scale power outages and communication signal losses outside the control zone. Edo City was largely unaffected.

However, four hours after the nuclear explosion, a 7.6 magnitude earthquake occurred in the waters surrounding Hokkaido, causing certain damage to four cities. Many people believed the earthquake was caused by the hydrogen bomb.

In John’s view, this notion was quite absurd, and he hadn’t even planned an official response.

After closing Twitter, he proficiently opened TikTok; these two apps, one blue, one black, had become essential tools for him to gauge public sentiment.

Although data was still expensive, it could not stop his heart from rejoicing with the people!

Reading the official reports was far more painful than going through tweets and short videos. The result of rampant bureaucracy was that the reports were extremely complicated and verbose, with hundreds of pages of documents filled with various conspiracies and schemes, especially when it involved budget approvals, with so many items they were truly dizzying.

After scrolling through another viral TikTok compilation of "most beautiful nuclear explosion scenes," his office door was knocked.

"Come in."

John set down his phone and subconsciously straightened up a bit.

The visitors were Robert and Claire, the former and current directors who came together, which almost certainly meant it was no small matter.

"What’s the matter gentlemen, please don’t tell me there’s another problem with the Moon project."

"The Artemis III mission is proceeding smoothly, and everything is in good condition."

Robert’s words alleviated his greatest worry, but the former’s serious expression still unsettled John.

Sure enough, the next sentence immediately changed the atmosphere.

"Mr. President, we have intercepted an alien signal that is very close to Earth, around Mars."

"..."

The air fell silent, Claire, and Robert were cautious due to the gravity of the matter. John simply didn’t know what to say.

Even if someone told him that the Chinese were planning to construct a military base on the Moon, he’d believe it, but aliens...

After a process of wanting to speak, then holding back, then wanting to speak again, John tentatively broke the silence:

"Lightfoot, if NACA wants to increase its budget, I can approve some more. As the head of the space agency, you should be more serious."

He didn’t quite believe that the two NACA directors came together just to deceive him, but the topic of aliens was too horrifying to take seriously once you really got down to it, so much so that he simply couldn’t believe it.

"Sorry, I understand your reaction. We also found it hard to believe, but it is true."

Claire earnestly took out a stack of papers from his briefcase, placed them on John’s desk, and began to narrate the story.

The story goes back to the team controlling the Curiosity rover on Mars; it was a very ordinary afternoon two weeks ago, and after sleeping in darkness for over forty hours, Curiosity was greeted by fair weather and ready to head out to a predetermined target to start the survey.

To observe whether the terrain at the destination was safe to traverse, Boris asked for permission to use the MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005), which is equipped with a high-definition camera with a 0.3-meter resolution, the best optical remote-sensing satellite currently in Mars orbit.

The MRO quickly began its observation mission, but as it sent back signals, a beam of radio waves brushed past it, leaving a record in its log.

The universe is not short on electromagnetic waves; whether it’s the sun, planets, satellites—all celestial bodies with activity—are constantly emitting electromagnetic waves, and there are countless natural signals from outside the Solar System. These natural signals are usually treated as background noise and ignored.

But this particular signal was different; although its frequency band was not within the communication range of spacecraft and should have been filtered out, its signal strength was abnormal, not appearing to be a typical attenuation from crossing great distances, but rather like a transmission source around Mars.

This unusual record was noticed by the staff controlling the MRO right away. At the time, she didn’t think much of it—such occurrences were not uncommon—but she recorded it out of habit according to NACA’s protocols and passed it on to Group A for analysis.

Group A, very mysterious but practically useless, wasn’t even a formal department.

A stands for Aliens, originating from the space race of the 70s. Back then, as the Union abandoned the Mars project betting on Venus, scientists at that time believed that Venus, with its Earth-like environment, could possibly have aliens. Before Venera 4 penetrated the atmosphere of Venus to discover it was hellish, people had many beautiful illusions about the planet.

It was the height of the competition, and considering both sides were investing immense resources into researching supernatural abilities, establishing research on aliens was, of course, reasonable.