Red Hope (4 page)

The president started up again. “What you are looking
at are photos taken by the Mars Curiosity rover several days ago from a site
called Elpmis-63A. It’s in a small canyon and I’m told it is part of the
Pahrump Hills outcroppings. Those things you see that look like human hand, arm
and skull fossils are believed to be from a previous, um,
society
for
lack of a better term.”

Several journalists raised their hands trying to ask
the obvious question about what else the Curiosity rover had found. The president
ignored them and continued speaking.

“The desire for mankind to explore other worlds has
always been there, but we are a species that sometimes needs a little
motivation; a little push. What you have in your hands is a truckload of
motivation. An explosion of push. I have been in meetings with our NASA director,
members of Congress, and the Pentagon all this week.”

The president drank the rest of his water to prepare
for his bombshell statement. The LA Times reporter ran out the door of the
room. He thought he had his scoop, but he was about to miss the best part.

“We will be shifting some budget around and
reallocating some funds, but I am here today to say that we are going to send
people to Mars. Now, my advisors tell me that one year from now our planet and
Mars will be unusually close in their orbits. They say this rare launch window
only happens every 26 months. So I am making a promise to the American people
today. One year from now, by the end of next autumn, I propose that we put a
man or woman on Mars to learn all that our ancient neighbors on the Red Planet
have to teach us. I want to know what important lessons they have to share.”

He coughed to clear his throat.

“Let me be clear. Before another year passes, just
before
the next presidential election, we will send astronauts to the surface of Mars
and will return them safely to Earth.”

Chris’s eyes widened and his mouth gaped open. Several
news cameras caught his unflattering reaction and would use it on the front
page of tomorrow’s newspapers.

The president just promised something physically
impossible and it would be Chris’s job to either make it happen or fall on his
sword trying. He knew that the president did this only to guarantee his coming
re-election. A
reversed
October Surprise.

The president continued, “These developments are new
and we will be giving out details as we have them. Now I leave you in the
competent hands of our NASA Director Chris Tankovitch to answer your questions.
Thank you.”

The president gave a confident nod to the crowd and walked
directly out the side door leaving Chris all alone at the microphone. The next
30 minutes of questioning was unpleasant for the NASA director. The press
wanted all the details for this so-called one-year Mars mission.

Chris pointed to the journalist from the New York Post
who asked the final question.

“How much planning have you had for this mission so
far?”

Chris looked downward to carefully arrange his words.

“Let me answer that and a lot more. Um, ever since the
Moon Program, we’ve had a small team of engineers going through scenarios with
regard to a Mars mission. That team size has fluctuated over the years, but
it’s always been there. They’ve even had test settlements in the Southwest to
study the basic ins and outs of living in such a remote location. So we’ve done
a lot of planning already. The only catch is the travel.”

He continued, “Our existing rockets have very limited
fuel. This means that it takes a long time to get there. That is our greatest
challenge. As far as personnel go, we have a great group of veteran astronauts
from the shuttle program who would be very qualified for this mission. As the president
said, things are new and still in flux. I’ll have a lot more for you in the
next few weeks. Thank you all for coming here today.”

The press launched a battalion of questions toward
Chris as he slumped off the stage and out the door. He wandered down the
hallway looking for an empty room. Knocking on each door, he finally found a
room that wasn't occupied, walked in and collapsed into a sofa.

Chris was trying to get his head around all that had
just happened. He missed all of the glory, but got all of the daggers. A sound
of shuffling footsteps came down the hallway. Jim, the stage assistant, walked
past the open door, then doubled back after he saw Chris sitting dumbfounded on
the sofa.

Jim rotated his head to read the name plate next to
the door jamb and said, “Oh there you are Director…
Sally
?”

He laughed as they both realized Chris was in some
random NASA employee’s office.

“I’m a bit late, but here’s that bottle of water that
you asked for.”

“Hah, yes, thank you Jim,” Chris said quietly.

As Chris opened the bottle, he chuckled at the
absurdity of President Jennings’ plan. After all, it took six to nine months to
travel to Mars. That means it was mathematically impossible to send astronauts
there and return them before the next presidential election. Well, not unless
you had a time machine or some kind of miracle rocket engine that ran forever.

News of the Mars fossils and the audacious one-year mission washed over
the land like a tidal wave, steadily enveloping all aspects of daily life.
Within minutes, the headline screaming across internet news sites was “NASA
Budget Goes Deep in the Red for The Red Planet.” By dinnertime, every available
astronaut who owned a suit had been driven to their local TV studio to give
interviews on the national evening news broadcasts.

“How will this affect morale at NASA since the space
shuttle program was cancelled?” asked one of the nightly news anchors to an
astronaut dressed in a suit with a bright blue NASA tie.

“Frankly, it’s the first bit of hope we’ve had in
years. And I can coast really far on a little bit of hope,” stuttered the
astronaut as his eyes welled up with tears.

The day before the news conference there had been almost
zero chance of progress in manned space exploration. Even though we technically
won the Space Race, we were now begging Russia to help get our astronauts up to
the International Space Station; at a cost of $70 million per crew member. After
the president’s new challenge, there was a volcano of hope welling up inside
the ranks at NASA.

Every former astronaut secretly wanted to be on the
crew picked for that first mission. This resulted in each of them passively
making statements about how
they
would handle it if
they
were
chosen. On one of the late night talk shows, the host had seated in front of
him a gaggle of Lunar Program veterans.

“So what are the key things about this mission that
make it different from your Moon landing days?” asked the host.

They looked at each other before one took the lead to
answer.

“Well, they’re going to need a completely new vehicle.
A much larger one than the Apollo landers. Maybe even two, you know? Send one
ahead that has living space plus a laboratory in it and then ship the crew out
in another one. When they both land on the planet, they’ll have room to do a
lot of work. Sounds good, right?”

Another veteran chimed in.

“Yes, it’s going to take several years to design and
test it. I don’t see how they can meet the president’s schedule. And what about
the travel time? It could take six, seven, maybe even more months just to get
there! We don’t have the rocket engines to do that in a realistic time frame.”

"Several years just for the design?" asked
the host.

"Yes. 
Several
."

This same crew of veterans then went on to guest the
Late Late show. Then the Late Late Late show. After that they went to Taco Bell
and talked about how they would jump at this mission even now if NASA would
only ask them.

Within a few days, all of the available astronauts had
used up their fifteen minutes of fame. Then the journalists descended like vultures
onto all available paleontologists; any professional who could even spell the
word fossil would suffice. Ironically, in this case, they were hard to find. It
was the fossil digging season in the Southern Hemisphere and most of the
experienced researchers were out in the field digging for dinosaur bones in
some of the most remote locations on Earth.

NBC’s nightly news managed to get one of Russia’s most
respected female paleontologists, Yeva Turoskova, on a satellite video phone
from a dig in Australia. Her claim to fame was that she was also a retired
astronaut for the former Soviet Union. Most importantly she spoke English. The
journalists saw her as a triple win.

The news anchor asked her, “Can you give us your
thoughts on the photographs from Mars?”

“Um, well. They are interesting, yes? I haven’t seen
them close up yet, but they do look a little human. We could tell a lot more if
they got better photographs with higher resolution.”

She looked down for a moment and then disappeared from
camera view. When she came back up, she was holding a bucket. Yeva reached in
and pulled out a sizable rock with a lizard fossil sticking out of it showing
jagged teeth.

“Do you see this fossil? It is called
Rusellosaurus
coheni
. I know you’ve never heard of it. It was an ancient swimming lizard.
I know a lot about it. Why? Because I have had time to study the fossil from
many angles. I can even guess what food it ate by studying its teeth. See these
teeth? They are crazy teeth, yes? Probably a carnivore. When I get back to
university, I look forward to exploring all of the information they are
gathering from Mars.”

The news anchor was bored. He tapped his note card on
the table as his eyes glazed over.

“Thank you, Dr. Yeva Turoskova, speaking to us from a
remote fossil dig site in Australia.”

She gave a happy smile and said, “It was my pleas…” as
the signal cut out.

A large majority of the internet junk email began
changing themes from Nigerian treasury secretaries to Martian treasury
secretaries and selling life insurance to future Mars travelers.

An official Mars Real Estate Agency was started and
headquartered out of Tampa, Florida. Ads began appearing after midnight masked
as science shows, but clearly selling land lots on the Red Planet. Acreage was
cheap for now, so viewers were told to act quickly. Plots with a good view of
Mount Sharp were already sold out.

In modern times, it didn’t take long for the theme of
living on Mars to infect the entertainment world too. One comedic late night
host had a skit where he interviewed Martians who joked about losing all their
money gambling on Vega, a star 25 million light years away.

“What happens on Vega stays on Vega.”

The religious leaders of the time were quiet about the
Mars issue at first. They were taking time to digest it because so many people
trusted their opinions and their leadership. They were just as fascinated by
this discovery as the secular world. 

A well-known philosophical blogger named Jaydon LeVans
composed a New York Times editorial that was both hopeful and inspiring.

He wrote, “All life is a miracle in my mind regardless
of what planet it lives on. I'm not amazed so much by its existence, but by how
it develops from something so simple into something so wonderful and complex.
Look at it this way. After an egg is fertilized the cells start to quickly multiply
and a brand new organism starts growing without any instructions at all from
the parents. The microscopic DNA works like a fine craftsman, insuring that
everything falls into place at precisely the right time. With that kind of
perfection happening trillions of times every day here on Earth, it makes
perfect sense that life is abundant throughout the cosmos. I genuinely wonder
how God chooses to reveal himself to people on other worlds.”

Within 72 hours of the president’s press conference, all
of the interviews that could be gotten were given. The real estate plots were
sold out. Most Americans felt this was an exciting mission, but the discrepancy
between idealistic and realistic timelines would eventually kill much of that
excitement. Budget problems would probably halt the program at some point in
time. This was not a defense program. Therefore, it
was
killable.

That’s how Washington, D.C. works. It would take a
steadfast unbiased president to keep the momentum going. In other words, it was
completely doomed and the fossils would sit unobserved for another ten years
until we sent yet another unmanned rover to wheel around on Mars.

While the president was announcing the discovery at
the NASA press conference, there was a man out in California who was still in
his pajamas, frozen like a statue and watching the president speak on
television. He sat motionless in the kitchen of his beach house in Santa Cruz
near the tippy top of the scenic Monterey Bay. This is where this man spent his
extended weekends before returning to the hustle and bustle of Silicon Valley 30
miles to the north.

He had a TV remote in one hand and a spoon filled with
raisin bran in the other. The only signs of life were the blinking of his eyes and
the chewing of his cereal as he watched what he believed to be the
quintessential event of his life taking place.

He cringed as the journalists tried to get the NASA
director to admit that his organization wasn’t up to the task. He smiled when
the NASA director didn’t take the bait even though everybody knew the timeline
was impossible. Fortunately for NASA, this man watching from California,
Keller
Murch
, could provide the missing technology today. He’d already built
rockets that ran for days if not weeks.

When Keller heard the NASA director admit that the
existing rocket motor technology would be the biggest challenge, raisin bran
sprayed from his mouth. He threw his breakfast in the sink and ran downstairs to
his six-car garage.

The floppy-haired Keller jumped into his supercharged 1968
Ford Mustang GT and drove at nearly 120 mph from his beach house toward his
office in Silicon Valley. This stretch of freeway known by the locals as
Highway
17
was one of the curviest mountain roads on the West Coast. It had a
history of killing wealthy entrepreneurs who tried to navigate it too quickly
while drunk with dotcom power.

Halfway through the trip the road passed through the
mountain town of Scotts Valley; it's the only straight portion of the road.
The two freeway exits there fly by fast when you’re commanding a high-powered
sports car. The last exit always caught Keller’s eye because of the Wendell’s Restaurant
at the bottom of the off ramp. That was the first corporation he ever worked
for.

When Keller was only 15, he lied to the Wendell’s
Restaurant manager about his age so he could work. It was near his boyhood home
in Elkhart, Indiana; just two blocks away from the mobile home factory which
always made the lunchtime rush intense.

That job taught him everything he would need to know in
the business world. The customer wasn’t always right, but they were never
wrong. After being promoted to assistant manager at the age of 20, he married
his high school sweetheart Angie. They were a happy working couple; in those
days you could make ends meet without a college degree.

Four years later their world was rocked; she was
diagnosed with cancer. At that time, medicine could only prolong her life for a
little while. She somehow  hung on for almost a year. They were near bankruptcy
when the end came. Keller was convinced that the love of his life would still
be alive had he been a rich man. He kneeled down in front of her grave and
said, "Honey, I'm going to make you proud. I’m going to do something great
with my life."

One warm summer night shortly after her funeral, his
district manager came in to help with the dinner rush at the hamburger
restaurant.

“Hey Keller, you run the cash register. I’ll cook the
burgers, okay?”

While the district manager was flipping hamburgers a
glass vial fell out of his shirt pocket and smashed on the ground. A little
mountain of white powder lay on the greasy tile floor surrounded by shards of
broken glass. The manager let out a yelp and threw the spatula onto the grill.
He grabbed two completed customer comment cards from the front counter and
dropped to the ground on his knees. He used one card to scoop the white powder
onto the other card.

The district manager stood back up and glared at the
line of customers. In a loathing voice he said, “Don’t you
dare
judge
me.”

He then turned and walked back to the manager’s office
while carefully holding the white powder in the cupped cards. The customers waiting
for their food all stared in disbelief and abandoned their orders.

If the district manager’s job was so stressful that he
had to resort to drugs, Keller thought, then maybe this wasn’t such a promising
career after all. It was about time Keller changed course and lived up to the
promise he’d made to do something great with his life.

That’s when luck struck. In addition to a drug-using
district manager, one of his coworkers was a part-time programmer of games for
the up and coming personal computer market. Keller agreed to help him market
his games for a slice of the profits. They formed a company called
Insane
Galactic Game Technologies
.

The games sold well through magazines and online
bulletin boards; the internet was just catching on. The two entrepreneurs
eventually simplified the company name to
I.G. Game Technologies
. Before
he knew it, they sold the company for the insane price of $4 million and both
walked away happy and carefree. This is when Keller learned that luck rarely
knocks twice.

He coasted for nearly two decades on small investments
and ended up slumming around the northern California town of Palo Alto, part of
a region referred to as
Silicon Valley
. That’s where the Googles and the
Facebooks of the world got their start. He figured that a new location might
bring him more luck.

Keller attended house party after house party of
business people that he’d met through friends. However, he couldn’t find the
second break that he so desperately wanted. It dawned on Keller that
I.G.
Game Technologies
might be the high-point of his career.

On the night before he planned to abandon California,
Keller decided to drink his blues away at a hipster café and bar in Palo Alto.
As he walked into the darkened establishment, all he could see was a swarm of
illuminated white apples staring back at him. Everybody was socializing through
their laptops. It was very quiet. Before the end of the night, though, he ran
into a trio of enthusiastic grad students from Stanford. They bragged about the
amazing work they were doing in their rocket laboratory. They invited him to
see it for himself.