Prologue
Prologue
In the city of Phoenix, Arizona, on the top floor of the Danver building, suite 2033, office number 112, a soft yellow light started blinking on an otherwise quiet panel. After a few minutes of pulsing light, a soft tone rang out. After a few repetitions of this tone, Jacob L. Fritz finally turned his attention to the panel. There was a tall, wide screen dominating the middle of the panel, with varying blinking, solidly lit, or unlit indicators – there were very few buttons. Mr. Fritz rubbed his hands on his forehead, attempting to stave off a headache, and observed the pinging yellow light.
He tapped his earpiece and said, slowly, “Uh, boss. This is Fritz. You might want to take a look at… um… unit eight-seventeen.” The radio was silent for a few moments, and then David Damask’s voice replied.
“Activate the probe. We’ve got something here.”
Jacob Fritz flipped one of only two switches on the panel. The yellow light pulsed once, twice more, then stayed lit. The chime did not repeat. “Info coming in now,” Fritz reported over the radio. The screen on his console lit up, data feeding in faster than the human eye could track. Jacob’s eyes watered slightly as his implants kicked in, parsing the data as it passed from his optic nerve to the visual cortex of his brain. It encoded the data onto extra memory storage and review programs that would summarize the data and deliver it to his mind in an understandable and memorable way. His head burned during this process, but it was a sacrifice he was paid to make.
“New exoplanet discovered,” he mumbled into the radio. “Detecting nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere… silicon, aluminum, iron, calcium, sodium… many heavy metals. Liquid water… definitely. Flowing liquid H-two-O on the planet.”
“Remarkable,” Damask said over the radio, a crackle as more listeners joined the channel.
The data feed neared its end, the remaining info being added to the screen at a trickle. “One sun, no moons, a few other planets in the system: gas giant, a few ice balls. Nothing of note.”
Damask. “Are we a go?”
A new voice joined the conversation, one Jacob Fritz had never heard before. “We are go. Informatics team 6 is being activated now.”
“Jolly green giant?” Damask asked.
“Active.”