Chapter 3: 3. An unexpected but not unwelcome development.

2010

On Earth, USA, Washington, D.C.

In the NASA headquarters.

Sounds of keyboards, walking, and computers were accompanied by the silent chatter of NASA's employees, the staff present was highly competent and most of them had decades of experience in their respective fields.

These last five years were infu-interesting, to say the least. They lost MRO (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter) not even 30 seconds after the artificial satellite orbital insertion on the red planet, it could only take one extremely high-quality photo of a red flaming boulder that was flying at Mach 40 right in its direction.

It obviously didn't survive the collision, and just like that 720 million USD were gone, years of blood sweat, and tears to go poof, the reaction of the expert was comparable to that of a 13 years gamer's rage quitting and smashing his keyboard on the screen, repeatedly. 

They were craving to discover what caused the destruction of the biggest volcano known to mankind but the sudden obliteration of the MRO added to their stress and might have made them snap a bit.

One and half years ago, a new moon started to form consequently named Harmonia, at the start they could still glimpse, with the help of powerful telescopes at the covered remnants of Olympus Mons, that it was covered by a strange colorful, and glowing stain that grew each year.

That was driving the whole people in the known insane, the last closed-up picture was taken by the MGS (Mars Global Surveyor) on the 6th March of 2006 before the satellite orbit was abruptly altered causing it to incinerate in the planet's atmosphere.

The destruction of MGS was promptly followed by all other man-made satellites around Mars, they crashed on the ground, vaporized in the atmosphere, or were yeeted away from the planet's randomly changing gravitational hold.

It was the fault of a certain titan that was oblivious to all the problems he caused to humans by dabbling with his power and by merely living here.

The operator was piloting Spirit, excavating the ground, and doing various tests, for example testing the percentage of gas in the atmosphere which had changed after Olympus Mon collapse.

The CO2 quantity had decreased by 75%, the N2 level increased by 3100%, the O2 level increased by 15 000%, and many more, when they discovered this they were even more excited and also dissatisfied with the lack of data, they wanted more.

And it was a secret tightly kept from the mass, that Mars and its atmosphere were becoming habitable. They didn't know how or why it happened but greed and the dream of space conquest were already in the hearts of many, a habitable planet free of pollution and just for humans to take and use.

Monarch and the one knowing of the monsters slumbering on Earth will add titanless to this list of advantages.

Going back to the operator, he looked bored out of his mind while fidgeting with the rover control, it was routine. He saw a huge shadow on the ground all around Spirit and it stretched for hundreds of meters, he ignored it, clouds did the same plenty of time, and he assumed it was just a big one. So he just didn't care enough to react.

Suddenly the screen became black, he waited half a minute before bringing his face near the screen, with a contemplative frown on his bushy eyebrows. He was going to switch it off to check.

However, he jolted back and jumped out of his chair with a girlish yelp as the image appeared, scaring the shit out of him, "Hey, what's wrong John, I already told you to take a poseeeeeee….", his colleague, a brown-skinned and slim woman said worriedly and trailed off as her eyes went wide open as she gawked at the feedback of Spirit, while on the floor John's mouth was open wide enough to fit multiple eggs.

Others started to come to see what was happening and most had more or less the same reaction, except for one whose laid-back attitude became serious, it was Dr. Rick Stanton an old man, with light skin, white hair, and brown eyes, wearing a grey two-piece suit, with a badge indicating his status as a VIP guest.

He was here to help on a project between Monarch and NASA, evidently, it was secret and it was about a new blueprint of an artificial satellite specialty designed for Mars' bizarre gravity.

And what all of them were currently beholding was a humanoid statue, on a big plateau full of strange cyan and purple glowing plants, thousands of white and black pyramids with a golden top of practically all sizes accompanied by other rectangular buildings of different colors.

The most remarkable characteristic of this strange city was the said statue seemingly made of gold, iron, copper, and a multitude of minerals and other stones like white marble, all beautifully merged together in this shape as if forcibly compressed and put together like this. 

The sheer size of the thing was making them go insane as it was physically impossible, it was two times the height of Burj Khalifa or fifteen Godzillas on top of each other. (1656m or ~5433ft tall)

It was wearing a white shendot, with a golden belt around its waist, the body musculature and lack of breasts indicate it was male, well they didn't know alien physiology so they assumed it was gender. 

The feet of the statue were slightly apart from each other, its arms were horizontally outstretched and the palms of its hands facing the ground.

The head looked straight ahead and was similar to that of a blue whale but it had 6 orbs made that followed its eyes of the same color. It was oddly similar in nature to that of an Egyptian God.

It was the biggest T-pose in the universe, not that the scientist and technicians knew since it really became popular as a meme on the Internet in 2017. Though it didn't stop them from strangely feeling disrespected and treated as inferior life forms.

They were also the factor of incredulity, astonishment, alarm, and stupefaction at 'why in the fuck' is there a giant statue of an unknown Egyptian God on Mars with a pyramid and all its implications that come with it.

"Holy fuck… this…", Dr. Rick stared at the screen his mind going into overdrive. He didn't know if it was good news or how potentially they were fucked.

The angle of Spirit moved a bit, showing everyone that the rover wasn't on the ground but below a massive gaping hole, a literal Abyss, void of any light, the Abyss limits being way out of Spirit's camera range. This made the old man remember the Hollow Earth theory. He shook his head. It wasn't the time for that.

They also realize that the statue was in truth upside down with how the sky wasn't supposed to be below it… and multiple isles of varying size and shape were also floating around. Physics wasn't really working as it was supposed to. 

One scientist fainted, unable to cope with his vision of how reality should work and not liking how it was being utterly violated before his very eyes.

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It was simply way too much. They didn't wake up today thinking something like this would happen nor in their life for that matter.

The screen went black again and came back just after, this time in front of a golden orb encircled with black, it was an eye staring right into the camera, nobody dared to touch spirit control.

The atmosphere in the room was extremely tense, they all were subjected to a myriad of different emotions, most of them being fear, wonder, astonishment, and curiosity. It was the first alien life form they saw.

Even more in Rick's case, he felt that the gargantuan extraterrestrial creature behind the screen knew what the rover could do and it honestly freaked him out, not even counting that it might be the cause of why gravity acted so strangely. Making it even more terrifying. 

And they only saw its eyeball, not even a bit of its skin, it was a complete mystery.

Cold sweat was running behind his back, his heart pounding in his chest but even in this condition, he called Monarch to headquarters, whatever this thing was, it wasn't good news.

The beast pupil and iris were nearly merged, they were of a shimmering golden and glowing intensely while the rest of the eyeball was vantablack. Making a drastic contrast between the two parts of the eye, it was utterly alien and at the same time beautiful. Particles of lights were also floating around it.

It was a fantastical sight. Until the screen did go black for the umpteenth time. And didn't come back.

Everyone sighed unconsciously as if a weight was lifted from their shoulders, now they will talk and talked a lot. For example, aliens existed and apparently made the pyramids. 

What is the beast that played with Spirit? How was the statue even able to stand? Why did the statue do this strange pose? Is it a form of greeting, goodbye, flirting, or something totally different? So many alternatives.

What is their society like? What do they look like? Are they even carbon-based lifeforms? Why did gravity act this way? Is this perhaps a type of technology? What is the big hole in the ground? So many questions but no answers.

They wanted to know, no they needed to know. 

It was a historical event after all, and one of the biggest in mankind's history because it was the FIRST SIGN OF ANOTHER TRULY SAPIENT LIFEFORMS AND ALIEN ONE AT THAT! 

_______________________

Caelicetus POV

'Wonder what humans would do with this…', I thought amused as I turned off the rover with my gravitokinesis and floated it to the feet of the statue. It was very small compared to my eye. It was as if I was looking at an ant 'Yeah, I'm really big,' I noted. I wonder how a human would be compared to me, at least the rover made me realize that I was in the 21st century and the absence of big lifeforms except myself on Mars made me cross DC and Marvel from the possibility of universes I'm into.

I wasn't too much into all of the comics stuff, so I am not 100% sure, I will need to say hello to humans in a more down-to-earth way soon enough. One-way facetime is good and all but meeting in person is better.

In my last life, some were really obsessed with Mars to an unhealthy degree, and most for terrible reasons since they didn't understand anything.

One example: colonizing Mars because of the danger of climate change, yeah no. For Earth to be as worse as Mars it needs to be basically destroyed or explode. Nonetheless, it was good for technology development but it really stopped here.

Well, it isn't the case in this universe. I know, I caused Mars to change. Life, especially plants and mushrooms, was starting to spread at an incredible pace. It was the same that I saw when I woke up for the first time, some were already showing physical changes.

Some strange and 'small' arthropods looking like the mix of a shrimp and a cuttlefish that I named grape shrimp could also be seen. They flew in huge swarms of millions with the help of gravity currents and a weak self-levitation, it was just one of the many species I saw. They were also quite tasty snacks.

I found it relaxing to watch things grow and live, well lack of entertainment makes you discover a thing or two about yourself. 

Now, the Abyss as I named it. Was made by me for no particular reason other than boredom and curiosity but I got a bit too much into it. It was situated at Olympus Mon location. And it's a big circular hole it was of France's size and goes more than 300 kilometers (186mi) into the ground.

Digging holes is easy when you simply pluck the ground out and/or absorb it with black holes. I also constantly see it with white holes in the same spot, making a new moon. Also, there was a mass extinction since I could see signs of life and civilization before something killed everything off.

Above it was the remnant of the volcano that I compressed and made levitate permanently by imbuing the whole now 13 kilometers (8mi) tall mountain called Aeviternus Mon, with gravitons making it perpetually fall in two way, it tries to fall to the sky and the same time in the Abyss making it infinitely stay in place. It wasn't easy to make and very exhausting.

And below was where I made an inversed city with things I made mostly before, yes I have a hobby of making things like I'm in a sandbox game. Thus the giant T-pose statue has my head in the middle of the still nameless city, there are also many random things I made, randomly floating around the Abyss such as golden doges.

This hobby was in fact incredibly useful since I have way better control, but still have problems with very light and small objects or things with nearly nonexistent mass that I simply can't control and only absorb with black holes.

I made those by compressing them with gravity and heating them with lava in the way I wanted before letting them cool off. Gravity forging and casting, something that existed in my last life.

All in all, doing those seemingly random things was only beneficial. It helped me in every aspect. And I can attest that I feel better than as a human, no taxes, obligation to superior, retarded client and colleague, useless stress and human problem in general also hands are overrated when gravity is in your flippers.

Then I randomly got an idea, 'Oh! I know what I'll do when I visit Earth. The Moon is a bit too boring for my taste… I will change it a bit.'

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