11:15 CST, September 28

SpaceR Launch Complex

Boca Chica, Texas

The SUV full of gamers pulled into the SpaceR launch complex and parked among the swarming herds of vehicles. The place was always a bustle of activity in the launch videos Rick had watched. Today it seemed more frantic than ever. There were three rockets on launch pads in the distance, and several others being hauled around.

Smack dab in the middle of the bustle was the U.S. Army. Uniformed men with guns stood around looking as out of place as he felt. Soldiers moved over to escort the team as their driver turned off the engine. Team Technique spilled out, Rick climbing out of the front passenger seat. He’d wanted to avoid sitting directly next to any of his old teammates.

Now a pair of uniformed soldiers gestured them all forward. Having someone to guard seemed to lift their spirits. Rick wondered if he was considered a VIP or a prisoner. Neither seemed to quite fit.

Pratt and Kim were getting into the act, mugging it up for the escort, pointing finger-guns and offering to sign their hats. “Yeah, Team Technique in the house!” Kim shouted. “You saw us all in Vegas, right? Now we’re here to kick some alien butt!”

“Shut it,” Rick said. “We don’t know why we’re here.”

“We don’t know why you’re here,” Kim agreed. “Asswipe. Nobody wants a cheater on the planet-saver team.”

“I didn’t cheat!” His instinctive retort fell on deaf ears as the team was ushered into the headquarters building. They paused at the door, their escort showing something to the soldiers on guard there, before being allowed into a glass-fronted reception area. Again, the place seemed oddly busy, with executives in suits, engineer-types in slacks, and even a couple sets of guys in hardhats bustling through. A receptionist sat behind her desk with a guy in uniform right next to her, clearly watching. It felt to Rick like the Army had descended on SpaceR right in the middle of their busiest day ever. The SpaceR people were just trying to go about their work, ignoring the security, but he spotted the nervous glances.

The receptionist handed Rick and Team Technique bright orange lanyards with tags that read VISITOR in all caps. He hung his around his neck and followed their escort into an elevator and up three floors. This level seemed to be just conference rooms; on one side of the hall, four different small rooms with frosted glass, on the other, a single enormous conference room. Here the glass was clear, but someone had pasted paper to the inside, obscuring the view. Yet more armed men stood outside the door. Their escort gestured them inside. Team Technique entered, Rick on their heels.

The room was vast, with chairs for a couple hundred, but almost empty. Tall screens at the front and side of the room showed a starry screensaver. There was a table with bottles of water and fruit juices at the back, and platters that had obviously held pastries but now only crumbs. Rick snagged an orange juice, his rumbling stomach reminding him he hadn’t eaten in quite a few hours.

A dozen military officers in a variety of uniforms – not all American -- were clustered at the front of the room. Here in the back stood enlisted men, Marines and Army from what Rick could tell, carrying rifles. A few people in a variety of suits and shirt sleeves were scattered around the room, talking in groups of two and three. A woman with tight blond hair in a bun carrying a clipboard and jabbing a pen at it while arguing with a pudgy Asian man wearing glasses. What all these people were doing in the same place, Rick had no idea.

One uniformed man, bald and wearing immaculate camouflage marked with a colonel’s insignia stood by a podium and glared at them as they entered. “Welcome, gentlemen. Take a seat and we can get started."

Their military escort urged the team forward, to the front eight rows, where half a dozen other people also sat, a cluster of mostly European-descent men and one woman wearing a variety of fatigues.

The escort stood in the aisle for a moment while the colonel glared. "You're dismissed," he said finally when they didn't take the hint. The men glanced at each other before turning to leave.

"I'm Colonel al-Raman." He was in his early 50s, with deep-set glare lines on his face as he leaned against the podium. He had seen a lot of sun. Several men in button-down shirts, wearing civilian garb and nervous expressions, clustered on the other side of the podium. They were talking to each other quietly over a laptop, clustered around it like teammates watching a perplexing replay video.

The Colonel cleared his throat. The men by the laptop and looked up, startled.

"Oh right.” One of the geeks did something to project the screen against the wall. It flared to life with a diagram of the inner solar system. Rick picked out the orbits of Earth and Mars and another orbit that dove in past them both, like the orbit of a comet.

Now the colonel resumed speaking. "No doubt you're all wondering why you're here. Approximately two months ago, an object was detected coming from the edge of our solar system. Its trajectory was stable, and it was classified as an asteroid. A week later, the object's profile began to change. It was decelerating. This was not immediately a cause for alarm. Similar things have happened with naturally occurring objects.” The colonel glanced at the two men by the laptop.

One of them nodded. "Yes, in 2000 and..."

The colonel cut him off with a wave of the hand. "Because of previous public reaction, we didn't immediately announce the news, asking the institutions who had spotted the change to keep quite while we analyzed the issue. Two days later, a signal was detected.” He paused to let that sink in. “It was an alien signal originating from the probe.”

Rick boggled. Alien signal. Aliens had arrived and he was one of the first to know about it. He slid his right hand up his left arm and surreptitiously pinched himself. Not dreaming. This was real.

Pratt spoke up. "How did you know it was from the probe?"

One of the civilians stepped forward. "We didn't initially, but we brought the Deep Space Array to bear and triangulated..."

The colonel waved his hand, glaring at both of them in turn. "The details are not important. What's important is what happened next."

The screen now showed a view of the interior of the Mars base. Rick felt a surge of relief. Everything looked fine. The walls were intact. There seemed to be air. Except another view appeared, and then another, and he felt his heart sink.

It didn't matter to him. NASA hadn’t wanted him. He wasn't on that team. As long as Sam wasn't there...

The Colonel continued, “Six weeks ago, the manned outpost on Mars underwent an anomaly." He laid heavy significance on the last word.

Rick felt his heart skip a beat. He tried to remember when the last time Sam call’s had come in. He had ignored it. He had ghosted her hard for the last year and a half. For all he knew….

"What kind of anomaly?" a guy in the seated group of military types called.

"I was getting to that." The Colonel’s tone made it clear further interruptions would not be appreciated. "Save your questions for the appropriate time."

Andrews, who was seated near Rick, muttered under his breath, "Appropriate time? When is the appropriate time?"

"The base is intact, and automated telemetry is coming back to us. This indicates everything is fine. Except the crew is missing. Early in the Martian morning, the cameras captured this.”

The scene changed. A man in a light shirt and shorts was sitting in a bunk reading. On the bunk above, a sleeping form lay wrapped in blankets.

A moment later, they were gone.

Rick blinked, refusing to believe his eyes. The book fell softly to the bunk. The blanket crumpled, empty.

"This anomaly was connected to the object – which we now believe is an alien vessel -- entering our solar system. The vessel was on an orbit that approached Mars and since then has continued to decelerate. It will make a close flyby of Mars and then head back into solar orbit."

Colonel Al-Raman gestured at the man at the keyboard, and the image changed back to the map of the solar system. The strange orbit animating to show the object passing through on a hyperbolic orbit.

"If it continues on its way, that'll be fine. But the think tank boys think it’s likely to decelerate." The orbit swung and intersected Earth. “This is happens if it continues to decelerate as it passes Mars.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

All around the room, people sat up straighter or shifted uncomfortably. Rick was staring at the screen, but not really seeing it. He kept replaying that scene from the Mars mission, the people vanishing while leaving their possessions intact. What sort of weapon could do that?

The stunned silence was broken by the door opening. The colonel straightened and shifted his glare. Rick followed his gaze.

A group of Asian men and one woman entered in a tight group. Three wore uniforms with the flag of the Chinese mainland. A seventh man followed. He wore a suit and a tight smile and was also Asian, with a lapel flag.

The colonel glared at the seventh man. “Are you a translator or a handler?”

The man's smile briefly widened. “Translator, of course.”

“How many of you speak English?”

Three of the group's hands snapped up immediately. The other three followed hesitantly.

The colonel looked back at the translator. "You may go."

"I must protest—"

The colonel snapped his fingers. Two of the soldiers who had been standing at the back of the room with guns stepped forward. "My men will be happy to escort you if you don't know the way." The colonel spoke slowly, each word laden with threat. The man went.

Rick studied the remaining six Chinese. Three bore stoic expressions and wore their uniforms well. Another man, heavy and more muscular than the others, with rounder features, sat with his arms folded and a stern look. Something about his bearing didn't match the other soldiers in the room, and his uniform was ill-fitting. On the other hand, he certainly didn't look like a gamer, which is what Rick assumed the last two of the group were. If America was rounding up gamers, it stood to reason that China was bringing some as well.

"We were just discussing the situation. Do I need to go back?" the colonel asked.

One of the Chinese soldiers, slightly older than the others, raised a hand. "No, Colonel, we have been briefed. Please continue." He must be in charge. The others deferred without a word.

The colonel nodded. "Thank you."

As the Chinese settled into their seats, the colonel handed over the meeting to a suited, glasses-wearing man who had been hanging out in the back of the room, Doctor Schmit. He started trying to summarize the contents of the alien message, but the meeting immediately devolved into chaos. Schmit, who was apparently from the NSA, tried to be evasive about the specifics of the message. The Chinese pressed him for details, and even the American military contingent seemed unsatisfied with the answers.

Rick was trying to follow along and take it all in when one of the NASA men came over and tapped him on the shoulder. “Word outside?”

Rick glanced at the colonel, who was standing at the front of the room watching with eagle eyes. The colonel’s hawk gaze passed over him and he gave a slight nod. Rick rose and followed the NASA guy from the room.

They stepped out into the hall. The door shut behind them, blocking out all sound. The other guy stepped across the hall, waving to one of the security guards, and issued Rick into a much smaller conference room, where two dozen tall-backed swivel chairs surrounded a table. "Rick Staunton-Jones? It's nice to finally meet you." The NASA guy stuck out his hand.

“Have we met?"

The man shook his head. "No, I'm Dwayne Kozlowski. Samantha told me all about you.”

Rick's ears immediately pricked up. Who was this guy, and what relationship did he have with Sam? He chided himself. Sam was his ex-girlfriend. He had no call to be jealous. Something must have shown in his face, because Dwayne immediately started backpedaling. "We were just friends in training. She got to talking about gaming and she mentioned her boyfriend was a pro gamer."

"Ex-boyfriend," Rick said, "and ex-pro gamer." And ex-NASA candidate, he didn't say.

Dwayne looked embarrassed. "Yeah, well, so... I remembered you when all this came up.”

“Can you tell me what is going on? Why am I here?”

“They've banned us from giving the details of the alien message. Some NSA bullshit. I think they don't want the Chinese to know how they decoded it. But the short, short version is, we think the alien probe thing sucked up our Mars crew. Into a game world. There’s – again, can’t mention details, but it seems like whatever it's like in there, it'll involve teams.”

Rick's apprehension had been growing, and he couldn't take it any longer.

"Look, just tell me. Was she there? Was Sam on Mars?"

Dwayne's mouth hung open, cut off in mid-sentence. He closed it, opened it again, and then swallowed hard. "She didn't tell you?”

Rick felt the stab in his gut. All those texts and emails he had ignored. He hadn't exactly blocked her, but he silenced the notifications. He gritted his teeth. "Just tell me."

Dwayne looked sick. "Yeah, she was backup to Dr Tremblay, the hydrologist. Then he got sick. She went out almost a year ago, on with Expedition 4."

Rick sagged. He felt like he wanted to puke. He set a hand on the back of a chair. It had been over between them for a year and a half, but somehow, still.

"Look, I thought she told you. I'm sorry."

“Had her blocked,” Rick mumbled. "I just couldn't." He didn't say out loud that he couldn't face her success when his life was turning to shit. It wasn't her fault he had screwed up things so bad, but he hadn’t been able to just be happy for her. When she had got accepted at NASA and he hadn't, it had poisoned their relationship. They had drug out the break up until she was off in training, until the reality couldn't be ignored.

He shook his head, trying to snap himself out of the blackness, as the could've, would've, should’ves of his own failure closed in. "It's fine.” It wasn't. "Just tell me what this is all about. Why are we here? Are you sending us out there?"

Dwayne nodded. "Yeah."

Rick's mouth was dry. He felt a surge of adrenaline. He was going into space, but it didn't overcome the blackness in his heart. He was going into space to find out what doom had befallen his ex-girlfriend, and maybe to face the same fate himself.

“Why?”

“Some of us think the Mars crew might still be alive. As soon as we decoded the alien message, it set off a political shitstorm. Everybody had their own idea what should be done. Once they hammered that out, no one could figure out who should go. There were committees, and then leadership overrode those, and then those were replaced by more committees. It was a complete cluster. When it was clear we wouldn't have time for real astronaut training, they got a court order and pulled all of your medical records. That way we don't even have to screen you guys."

"Wait." Rick held up a hand to stop the flow, the flood of information that told him almost nothing. "What do you mean? No time for training?"

Dwayne nodded. "You're going up tomorrow."

Rick's mouth dropped open. "You have to be fucking kidding me."

"The debate about who we should send went right up to the last minute until there was no time left except to round you up by... well, hopefully it wasn't by force... and get you here immediately."

"That's the most stupid and incompetent thing I've ever heard."

Dwayne shrugged. "Yeah, well, we work for the government."

Rick felt sick. Everyone wanted to believe their government was smooth and efficient and had a cohesive plan for the good of everyone. Time and time again, reality proved that wrong. Still, hope sprang eternal.

Rick waved his finger towards the closed door, gesturing to take in the entire mess. "So all these groups are going?"

"Three groups of six. The military group in the front, they're not all Americans. It’s a multinational force. Mostly special operatives. I don't know all their backgrounds, but they're a pretty hardcore bunch. I think the Colonel's going, too. Then there's you and Team Technique. Ton of debate on that one. Should we send gamers? Who should they be? What game should they come from? The military finally came down and said it had to be a cohesive team all from one game. They said teamwork was more important than skill set. I don't know about that, but," he shrugged, "we know the trial's going to be team-based."

"Teams," Rick muttered. He looked sharply at Dwayne. "How big a team?"

"We don't know that either."

"But you picked an Everwar team of six, and the military and the Chinese, they're all six too. You know that Everwar is an anomaly, right? Most games have five-man parties."

Dwayne shrugged. "I know. I game a good bit, but you can't tell that to the brass. They figured more was better than fewer. Wouldn't do to send teams of four and find out the aliens wanted teams of seven. At least this way there'll be a big enough pool you guys can rearrange once you get there."

Rick dropped into a chair, overwhelmed. He was flying to fucking Mars to save his ex-girlfriend from alien invaders. It was more bizarre than he could possibly imagine.

"Do you guys have some caffeine around here? Something in a can? Or maybe tequila?"

Dwayne started to reply, when there was a commotion from out in the hall. He pulled the door open, peering out, then turned to Rick with his mouth hanging open. “He’s here.”

“Who?”

“Leon Ambrusk.”

Rick’s jaw dropped. The SpaceR guy? The one practically underwriting the Mars expedition in the first place? Here?

“Come on,” Dwayne said. Rick needed no urging. He followed back to the big room, where Ambrusk’s arrival had set the place on its head.

Ambrusk stood at the podium at the front of the room, leaning his elbow on it, talking to al-Raman, while everyone else crowded as close as they could. Rick left Dwayne gaping and returned to Team Technique.’

“Dude, if that was a bio break, you need more fiber in your diet,” Andrews remarked.

“Shut it,” Rick said, but a second later Ambrusk turned to them, beaming.

“Hey, there. Thanks for coming, all of you. I just had to take a couple minutes to come talk to you before you ship out. Everybody else, clear out. Ok, yes, you can stay, just — get back and let me talk to the heroes, ok?”

Rick felt a complex swell of emotions as the richest man on Earth spoke to him. Well, him and a dozen others. It was like Ambrusk was just a normal guy, here to talk.

Ambrusk abruptly punched the podium which made Andrews jump. “Dang! I’d give a lot to be going with you. First contact! Damn! I mean, damn! But the spooks up here don’t want you to know what’s going on. I think that’s dumb and since they need my freakin’ rockets to get you there, I’m overriding it.”

Rick leaned forward in his seat. So did everyone else. Some of the military types were tapping their toes and frowning. Al-Raman had his arms crossed and a neutral expression on his face.

“Look, to be honest, we aren’t sure what you’re going to find. The experts think you’re going to get integrated into some sort of galactic network. The probe isn’t big enough for anything but digital reality, so everyone thinks the Mars crew got beamed into a simulation. And the ones who aren’t afraid of losing their jobs tell me they think it’s a game scenario of some sort. Why, they don’t know.” Ambrusk leaned forward, this time definitely focused on Team Technique. “But you and I, we’re gamers.” Rick recalled that Ambrusk reportedly had a top-fifty slot on the hardcore leaderboard of Diablo IV. “We know why. Anyone who’s got the tech to come billions of miles, they aren’t after our water or our uranium or any of that shit. They probably aren’t even here because we taste good. They’re a post-scarcity society, and the only things that matter are information. New experiences. Communication. But that doesn’t make it some bright Star Trek future. Anyone with that kind of drive is competitive.”

Jens and Pratt were nodding. Rick felt compelled by Ambrusk’s words, the optimism and surety behind them.

“They’re coming for Earth,” Ambrusk continued. “Based on their current trajectory, about three years from now they’re intercept our orbit. What then? If the translation’s right — and for what I’m paying to the leading AI corps it had better be — then we’re about to be offered a chance to compete on a galactic scale, to prove Earth has what it takes to be part of the big league. So we’re sending you all ahead on a fact-finding mission to learn as much as you can and get us a leg up. You’re going to get in there and figure out how things are set up. What we can and can’t do. What the rules are. Then, when the rest of Earth joins you, I won’t be the richest man in the world any more.” He pointed right at Rick. “You will be, in the new world where information isn’t just golden, it’s gold.”