Haze of Titan

Chapter One

"Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say."

Technically, "they" are right. In the vacuum of space, there's no air to push out of your lungs. There's no way to make your vocal chords vibrate. Even if there were, there's no medium to carry the sound waves to listening ears. But just because nobody can hear it, doesn't mean you don't scream. Not when you begin to feel the alien parasites moving around inside. It doesn't matter if nobody can hear it. Trust me, you scream…

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In 2004, I was just a young boy. The Cassini mission was beaming back early pictures of Titan, Saturn's moon. It looked boring to me. All I saw was a featureless, smooth, hazy orange glow. But there was talk of an atmosphere, hydrocarbons, and maybe even life. My dad was hooked, and so I was hooked, fast-tracked into STEM classes and space camps all the way through college. I started working as a NASA intern the year of the First Pandemic.

We called it COVID-19. Honestly, we had no idea what we were doing. Rather than be honest and just say that, science took a backseat to politics. Leaders picked sound bites and sides over common sense and doing what's right. We mostly made it through, until the Second Pandemic swept the globe, ushering in what we now call the Bio-Wars of the 2020's.

It turns out the conspiracy theorists of the early 2000's were onto something. There really was an elite group pushing a global agenda from behind the scenes. But their plans to 'thin the herd' through gain-of-function research and weaponized viruses was exposed and their vision of a New World Order morphed into something else.

The World Health Organization became the Global Health Organization. The International Monetary Fund became the Global Monetary Fund. The World Trade Organization became the Global Trade Organization. The United Nations became The Global Authority, with a massive buildup of Global Peacekeepers to squelch sources of regional unrest. National leaders handed over power in exchange for favor and comfort. Income inequality reached record-setting heights. The supply chain disruption that began with the First Pandemic coupled with the handouts that led to inflation just meant that the weak and the old died by the millions. People rebelled, but there was little they could do against the rapid rise of the new Global Authority.

It all just proved that we, as a species, have learned nothing and confirmed the need for humans to become a multi-planetary species.

As luck would have it, governmental space agencies like NASA, the ESA, and even ROSCOSMOS were folded into the Global Space Agency. The best and least politicized minds on the planet recognized the need to get us off Earth and fast-forwarded plans to establish colonies off-planet.

By 2034, we had a colony on the moon. Powered by breakthroughs in nuclear fusion, quantum computing, and AI, we had a colony on Mars by 2043. GSA's big project for the 2050's was a base on Titan, part of our ongoing search for alien life.

Everything was going as expected on Titan until the day the autonomous drilling rig broke through the surface ice and into the watery ocean below. We had astronauts in a station orbiting Titan, but no one on the ground yet. Sensors started going crazy. The cameras went offline. Reams of data were sent back to GSA. All signs pointed to the discovery of complex life deep in the heart of Titan.

As a ranking xenobiologist, I was called up for the next mission to supply the station at Titan, and told to prep for a mission to the surface…

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My first call was to Fitz. "Fitz, pick up… C'mon, pick up… Fitz! Put the drink down and pick up… Fine, call me back. It's IMPORTANT!"

Less than 5 minutes later, as if on cue, Fitz called me back. "It's just like you to ruin a perfectly good night of drinking, Jed. What's so important?"

"Better sober up Fitz. Something's happened on Titan and we need to report to GSA at 0700. That's about all I can say. Get some sleep. They'll brief us in the morning."

"Roger that, Jed. Fitz out."

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"Jed, Fitz, thanks for coming in on such short notice." We were in Nik's office, bright and early. Nik got up to greet us, gestured for us to take a seat, and sat down on the front edge of his desk. I'd never seen him do that for anybody before. As Director of the GSA, Nik was really pulling out the red carpet treatment for us. "Look you two, first things first. Everything I'm about to tell you is top secret. You're not to discuss it with anyone outside of us three. Got it?" All we could do was nod in agreement.

"Ok, I'll get right to it. We think our drilling mission on Titan may have found some form of life in the ocean below the ice. The drilling rig was working fine, sending back data as expected. And then, shortly after the drill broke through and retracted, things went haywire. We collected data until the sensors and cameras went offline. We've moved up our timetable to get boots on the ground and set up the beginnings of a base. With this unexpected development, we need your expertise there sooner rather than later."

"Even with launching from the lunar gateway, our latest ion drives, and a gravity assist from Mars, the trip still takes a few months. The GSA guys are still crunching the numbers for launch, but we'll need you ready to go on a moment's notice. We're compiling data that came back from the drill site so we have a better idea of what you may find down there. Let's meet again in two days to discuss. In the meantime, get home, start packing, and say your farewells. You're going to be gone for a while."

We left Nik's office in stunned silence and headed back to my place. The next few days were a blur. Our briefing about the data from Titan was inconclusive. There seemed to be evidence of something resembling DNA, but they needed more time to analyze the samples they had. Realistically, they needed more samples and they needed a lab and a xenobiologist on the ground. I guess that's why they want me there more than anything else.

In ten days, Fitz and I were headed to the launchpad. We'd be on Titan in less than three months. Were we really on the cusp of confirming complex life beyond Earth?