Celestial City, Space Command Center. It was twelve o 'clock at noon, the employee's break time.
A man in a Celestial Trade uniform stuffed fries dipped in ketchup into his mouth while sliding his oily fingers on the holographic screen. He clicked on the live stream of a well-known game streamer who played Godly Land.
This neural interface VR MMORPG took the world by storm once it was launched. Relying on the nature-defying function of intelligent real-time calculation, it firmly captured the hearts of players with endless plots and possibilities. With a terrifying 95% market share, it dominated the large VR MMORPG market.
Gris was no exception. Before he became an employee of Celestial Trade, he was already a loyal fan of Godly Land. Every time during lunch break, he would open a few fixed live streams, throw snacks into his mouth, and watch the gods do the legendary "Unique Mission".
The stream was at the most exciting part. Just as the streamer named Shadow Demon finished the plot of the Unique Mission and was about to fight the boss, the communication headset he threw on the table suddenly flashed a red light.
Looking at the flashing red light, Gris was slightly taken aback.
Although he was reluctant, he still reluctantly turned off the holographic screen, put his feet down, grabbed the headset on the table, and put it on his head.
That was the nature of his job.
Because the communication resources between Earth and Mars were precious, even during his break time, he must sit at his desk on standby. The real break time was only after work, when an intern would take over his work.
He cleared his throat, wiped off the grease on his mouth, and pressed the button.
"… This is the Space Command Center, Liaison 011 is at your service."
There was a burst of noise on the other end of the communication, and it quickly became clear.
"… This is Project 071. We found … something special underground. We don't know how to describe our shock at the moment. "
Special thing?
Gris took a moment to process. He immediately grabbed the ballpoint pen from the table and put it on the notepad.
"Okay, Project 071, Space Command Center has received your message. Can you describe it in detail? What did you find? "
"A very wide underground space, no groundwater, no ice … It's empty, and the shell is metal. After scrapping about five drills, we drilled open its shell. We detected some metallic objects inside. They don't look natural, but we can't tell what they are. "
Next to the rover, Wang Qiang contacted the Celestial City Space Command Center through the Mars communication base station while he looked at the screen of the instrument in his hand with a solemn expression.
Standing next to him were four Marines wearing aerospace kinetic skeletons, and they were holding the new individual weapon of Celestial Trade's aerospace force – the Gauss rifle. At this moment, the four Marines were standing near the drilling platform.
Seeing that Wang Qiang hung up the phone, Captain Hong Zewei, who was standing next to him, immediately stepped forward and asked.
"What did the command center say?"
"They told us to continue drilling and then drop the drones down."
"Drop the drones directly? What if a monster comes out of it? "Hong Zewei smiled bitterly." Or a Gundam or something … "
"Then we must be extras who die at the beginning of the movie." Wang Qiang shrugged and put his arm on the rover. He looked in the direction of the drilling well with a complicated expression. "Or Columbus who discovered the New World."
"You're the captain. You make the decision."
…
January 1st, 2020.
After a three-month vacation in the apocalypse, Jiang Chen returned to Coro Island on New Year's Day.
The Xin election campaign was in full swing. In the streets and alleys of major cities such as Coro City, Penglai City, and Ange City, the holographic screens floating next to the maglev roads flashed with advertisements of Future Group's products or President Zhang Yaping's campaign statement.
Under such a propaganda offensive, the candidates of other parties almost became foils.
In fact, even without this propaganda, the possibility of Zhang Yaping losing was almost zero. The past four years were four years of rapid progress for Xin. The total GDP created in these four years even exceeded the total GDP of this island country in the past few centuries.
Many people watched this country, from a small island with sugarcane, fisheries, and coconuts as its pillars, become a "cosmic power" with the support of Future Group and sat on the throne of the "leader" of the Earth Defense Alliance.
Countless people were beating their chests and stamping their feet, holding their foreheads and sighing, feeling sorry for losing such a powerful and heaven-defying enterprise.
Also stirring the international situation was an election on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. Although Xin had made epic achievements in many fields, and the center of gravity of the world had begun to tilt from the Eastern Pacific to the Western Pacific, for now, the crossroads of the world was still New York's Times Square, not the space elevator to the future of mankind.
Compared with the stable Xin election, the UA election was full of dramatic changes.
A dark horse emerged from the crowd. Trump, who held the banner of racism, used his "Twitter empire" to carve out a bloody path and unexpectedly obtained the nomination of the party's candidate. He also unexpectedly became a popular candidate in the March election primaries.
While the Republicans were arguing over this issue, the Democrats were already in a state of "swords and blades".
Hill's negative news suddenly broke out on the Internet, and she was tired of excuses for accepting foreign funds, private emails, and other issues.
Kerry suddenly resigned from his position as Secretary of State and broke his vow not to run. He said he would take the UA and the Democratic Party to the "right path" and targeted Hill.
After a public campaign speech, John Kennedy had transformed from a little-known member of parliament into a nationally renowned candidate. His support rate had increased by leaps and bounds, just like the dark horse with a black face in the past …
The three forces attacked each other, fighting for the sake of the general election preliminaries in March, which could be described as tragic. Due to the mediocre quality of this year's Republican candidates, many people had even joked that this year's presidential election would be decided in the primaries in March.
Under the glamorous appearance, it was a more bloody and tragic capital battle.
Behind Kerry was Daniel Morgan, behind Hill was the Rockefeller Consortium, and the Kennedy family itself was one of the members of the B City Consortium. Although the influence of the B City Consortium was not comparable to the two giants on Wall Street, they found a powerful foreign aid – Future Group.
In the face of more distant crises, the problems of human civilization itself seemed to be more urgent.
In this turbulent undercurrent, the blue planet ushered in the first day of the 21st century …
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