Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Insight" data-source="post: 5302017" data-attributes="member: 11437">June 10I received a strange distress call this morning from Attenborough, the other orbital station circling Mars.  A product of British design, Attenborough was taken over by the European Space Agency a few months ago.  I didn't think anyone was station there, until the message this morning.  It came from none other than Lloyd MacLaren, a fellow astronaut and a Scotsman whom I'd met during a joint NASA-ESA exercise at Cape Canaveral, Florida, about five years ago.  Lloyd and I had roomed together for the weekend and got along pretty well.  Small solar system!Apparently, the life support sub-system at Attenborough had gone offline, which automatically prompted a call to Deep Red.  When Lloyd got on the line, he let me know that everything was fine.  I wonder if maybe it was an ice-breaker or an opportunity to talk.  Lloyd and I talked for probably half an hour.  He'd been on Earth more recently and had some news I'd missed.  Probably the most staggering was that California had seceded from the U.S.  I guess they took Texas' example from a few years ago.  Looks like the entire western half of the country is about to attempt to break away.  War is on the horizon.  Again.  I hope my brother Clark can stay out of it this time.Lloyd and I also talked about the transmissions from Mars.  The Attenborough had picked up on the second transmission, but not the first.  I told Lloyd in very broad terms about the first transmission, but, owing to NASA's orders, I was prohibited from revealing specific details.  Lloyd, who's much more talented in theoretical mathematics than I am, promised to try to decipher the second transmission and let me know what he discovers, if anything.</blockquote>

Verification