The following day, I was still at home since the meeting wasn't for another few hours. The house I live in is somewhat, on the outskirts of the city, but not exactly in New York City. It is a decent sized house, three-stories with twenty-one hundred square feet or space, sitting on about five acres of land. It is, by no means a mansion, but compared to what's left, it is definitely much better than what most other people have. I live alone and I don't have any surviving family that I know about. Both of my parents died when I was fourteen years-old. My family has been a military family for five generations, not including me. But, because my parents were military, high-ranking officials too, they were the targets of a lot of bad people. They were both killed by the same car bomb, which the killer and faction still remain unknown.
I also had three siblings; two brothers and one sister, who was my twin. All three of them joined up, both of my brothers in the Marines, always trying to best each other, and my sister with the Air Force. Ever since the day the bombs fell, I haven't heard from them. As bad as it may sound, it has been over nine years since that day. As it stands, I don't think they're alive. But, a part of me still hopes that they're alive.
In any event, I must continue getting ready and prepare myself for the meeting. Given everything that has happened, they likely are going to speed up preparations for the mission. Hardly can say I blame them. I just hope they don't rush through it and we end up having more problems than we can handle.
After about four and a half hours, I arrived at the building where the meeting was being held. The meeting still wasn't in session yet, so everyone was in the atrium, either sitting wherever a seat was available, standing in small groups chatting with one another or just walking around, trying to find different conversations to join. Not to long after I had entered the atrium, I noticed Alex, on the far end of the atrium, sitting alone. So, I figured he could use some company and decided to go join him.
"Good morning, Alex." I greeted.
"Ah. Good morning, Walter!" he said. "I heard from the Professor about what you did last night. That was very brave of you. That chemical compound is extremely important to us."
"Yes, thank you. I want this mission to succeed as much as you do." I said. "So, before Jackson's unintended interruption yesterday, what were you going to say about the Sun's surface activity?" I asked.
"I won't go into detail right now, since I'll be presenting that during the meeting. But, basically, the Sun is likely to produce a solar flare and it could be a serious problem for the mission." he said.
"You're right, that most likely would present a problem. Any class of Solar Flare would be bad, but even at an X-1 Class Solar Flare, it would be cataclysmic to the mission." After I finished my sentence, I noticed Jackson walking over to us.
"Hey guy!" he called out, from around ten feet away. "What are you up to?"
"Nothing much, just chatting about things we're going to be discussing during the meeting today." I answered.
"Ah. I see. Oh, looks like they're having everyone go in now."
The security guards began waving people into the conference room at the entrance to the room. People began to casually get up from where they were sitting and slowly began making their way to the conference room. The main entrance to the conference room is only a double door, so the only speed people can go, is slow.
Once Alex, Jackson, and I finally made it into the conference room, Jackson took his seat somewhere in the crowd, while Alex and I took our seats in the center of the room with Prof. Donavich. Once the majority of people took their seats, the meeting started.
"Here we are, once again." said the Professor. "Hopefully this time, we will do better at creating a plan, rather than creating more drama." A few people laughed at this. Though Paul tried to hide it, even he found it to be humorous too.
"Yes, we have much to go over, discuss, and we have very little time to do it." added Alex. At this, he looked towards the Professor, the Professor then nodded to him, and Alex began.
Just as before, a holographic image of the Sun was projected from the center table.
"As before, this is our sun. Now, I would like to draw everyone's attention to this dark area on the sun." he said, then pointed to a dark spot on the star's surface. "This here, is what we called -in astronomy- a sunspot. They are area's where solar activity is increased exponentially and will commonly produce solar flares. Of what magnitude, we don't know. We can only find out once it has actually produce a solar flare, but by that point, it would be too late."
"Do we have any kind of protection against a solar flare?" I asked.
"Yes and no. The ships and structures we would be using are protected from the solar flare's radiation, but the we haven't been able to produce an adequate counter-measure against the damage it does to electronics, such as communication relays. But, the personal environment suits that we have for movement on a hostile surface, though they are capable of handling radiation to some degree, the radiation from a solar flare would be too much for the suit to bare for long, especially on Mars."
"What do you propose? Do we wait for the surface activity to dissipate?" asked one of the astronomers.
"No. That would be years from now. We don't have that kind of time. This needs to happen soon or it will be too late." said Alex. It was very obvious that his optimistic point of view had faded slightly. "Look, I understand that this is a long shot, no matter what choice we make. But, we can't just sit here and do nothing!"
"I say we go. We all know the risks. Without taking a leap of faith sometimes, Humanity would never have made it this far. Besides, we're out of options. This is all or nothing." said Paul. I was completely baffled by this. He was the last person I had expected to agree to do this.
"Yes, I concur as well. Let's have a show of hands; who thinks we should do this?" said the Professor. From how it appeared, every individual person there had raised their hand in favor of this mission. "Alright then. Looks like this mission is a-go."
"Hold on." I said. "First, we need a plan as to what we're going to do. This isn't just some camping trip. We are going to need some serious machinery, equipment, food, water, oxygen, environment suits, and so on. We are talking weeks of preparations and planning!"
"Yes, this is true. But, that's why we take the time to gather to obvious materials that we need, and continue to carve out a plan in the meantime." said the Professor.
"Alright. Then what are we waiting for? We've got a job to do, so lets do it!" I said proudly. Clapping erupted from everyone there and that was all we needed, for us to know that this mission, had already begun.
