Planet XO

Esh #2

Esh was woken up by the sound of commotion outside her house. She tried to cover her ears with a pillow and stay in bed, but curiosity got the better of her. She got up, wore her black furry slippers, walked over to her bedroom window which was on the first floor of her duplex home and pulled the curtains open. A small gang of media reporters had gathered outside, a dozen drone cameras noisily hovering around them. There were a few fancy news channel caravans on the streets. Her eyes caught a couple of shabby-looking radio broadcast vans behind them, usually used by independent broadcasters, mostly pets. Her mind tried to piece together what might have happened. Her most obvious guess was that the National Space Agency had released the list of shortlisted candidates to the media, something they had explicitly asked her not to do when she had confirmed her participation two days ago. "Mom!" she yelled as rushed downstairs without bothering to change out of her night pyjamas. She found her parents glued to the TV in the living room. "EBN has been trying to get a confirmation from the National Space Agency about the selection of the girl, but the officials have declined to comment on the issue so far," Atit Mann, the editor-in-chief of Eurasian Broadcast Network, was explaining in his usual hyper-animated style. So, it's not the NSA! Esh's mind began to race.

"Esh! Someone has leaked your selection to the media," her Dad volunteered as she approached them. He seemed unreasonably calm, while her mom was predictably agitated. Esh sat down next to them, her eyes on the TV even as her mind was restlessly trying to figure out how this might have happened. "Is it just EBN?" she asked her dad, even though she knew it wasn't. She had spotted the logos of at least four or five news channels from her window. "No, it's pretty much all of them. All of them are claiming it's an exclusive story they have access to," her Dad said.

"Is it just about me?"

"Yes, they still don't know about the others. Do you?"

Esh shook her head. Her dad asked her another question, but her mind had already drifted into her own internal universe. If all the channels were claiming they have an exclusive source, it probably meant that someone had sent the information to all of them at the same time. But why? She didn't know.

She didn't know how long she sat there lost in her own thoughts when the doorbell rang. Her dad got up to answer it, but she ran and beat him to the door.

"Hi Esh," a tall and skinny middle-aged dark-skinned man with a thick moustache smiled at her as she opened the door, "I'm Dr. Samuel Harper, assistant director of Project XO at NSA. May I enter so we can talk privately?" The camera drones were now pointed at her front door, hovering only a few feet behind the visitor. Six men dressed in suits were keeping the reporters from approaching too close. NBI, the National Bureau of Investigation, she identified them from the 3 red pins adorning the left arm of their black jacket. One of the drones rose from the herd, maybe to get a better view, and drifted towards her.

"Hey!" she heard one of the NBI agents shout as he pulled out a targeted EMP gun and pulled the trigger pointing at the drone. The drone dropped dead instantly. "Hey, you can't do that!" she heard someone yell from the crowd.

"May I?" the visitor asked again, the smile on his face intact, probably fake as far as Esh could tell.

"Sure" she ushered him in as she stepped back and noticed that her parents were standing right behind her.

"Can you tell us what's happening?" Esh asked him after they had finished exchanging greetings and sat down in the living hall.

"It's not an intentional leak, if that's what you are asking," he replied defensively. "In fact, we wanted to keep the identity of all the selected candidates under wraps for as long as we can. This leak changes a lot of our plans too, believe me" he bounced restlessly in his place as he spoke.