Project Phoenix ( Andy Weir Project Hail Mary sequel Fan Fic)

Project Phoenix Chapter 1

Prolog.

I loved Project Hail Mary. Really! A very nice story, good characters and the science was amazing. Now, having said that I have to say it: the end felt empty. What happened on earth? How did they fix the solar system? What happens with reaching out to Erid and the other race of intelligent beings out there. Well, this is my attempt at telling that story.

Chapter 1: Beep

Alan Kunanmar stirred his coffee lazily as he chewed on the last of his cookies. At least his coffee would be hot today. He was in his 40s and already felt old. He was slim, just like everybody else and covered with too many clothes. He rarely took anything off. It was specially cold today. It always was. Since Astrophage was discovered 30 years ago the planet had been getting colder and colder despite all attempts of humanity to keep the temperature on the planet.

Francoise Leclerc was still the minister of temperature. That was a funny name for his title. After Proyect Hail Mary launched all the governments in the world created a new government, to keep order, or at least to try. Dr. Leclerc was in charge of all the efforts to keep the planet habitable for humans. He started his career as an ambientalist fighting climate change and evil corporations to pollute the planet. Little did he knew that he would be the one doing the most destruction himself. Despite everything his success was moderate and insufficient. He bombed most of Antarctica to melt the ice caps and change the currents of the sea, he worked with Dr Rendel on the Astrophage farm across the sahara desert to both continue to produce Astrophage and use the reflective heat to warm up the atmosphere. All attempts were short lived. The planet continued to cool as the sun lost its power.

Millions of lives were lost. From the estimated 7 billion people inhabiting earth only about 500 million remained. All concentrated around the equator. The once really hot cities now became an everlasting winter, and further north and south of the planet was too cold for humans to live.

Alan lived in Cairo, which had become a mayor capital of the world, now so close to the desert and in the warmest latitudes. His job was to monitor transmissions in Space. He was part of the team to be looking out for the returning spaceships called the beetles from the Tau Ceti system. It was a boring Job. Most of it consisted in writing reports of the network of antennas still working or not working and the connection to the remaining satellites listening to space sounds and signals. He had done this job for several years now. At the beginning every little piece of signal received from space was carefully analyzed and everyone was overhyped about it. Now, however, everybody in the team was simply praying that the huge antennas in Hawaii and in Chile would continue to work despite the cold and the snow.

Today wasn't very different. He hung his thick jacket by the door and sat lazily at his terminal. He began with the routine checks. Connection to main servers: working. Connection to Santiago, Chile: working. Connection to Hawaii: working. Now the satellites. ISS: still up there and working. Tau Research sat I: Yup, still alive. Tau Research Sat II: still there, but orbit continue to decay. He wrote a note that this satellite wouldn't last a lot longer. Tau Research Sat III: Alive and Kicking.

Now to the previous operator, he checked his notes that read the same as usual. All connections up and short outages during the day to Chile's observatory. That would need some fixing soon.

He took a look at the logs for the received transmissions and saw a few files in the queue for processing. Well, at least there was something to do. He drank his coffee while it was still hot. He selected the first file and clicked analyze. Alan had learned some years ago to not be exited for every piece of transmissions received but he just couldn't help having some hope. Like someone playing the lottery, even if the odds are very slim he kept playing.