It was noon and the staff was resting.

A man in the Celestial Trade uniform was munching on fries with ketchup while sliding his greasy hand on the holographic screen. He turned on a famous streamer who was streaming Godly Land.

The neural-accessible VR online game took the world by storm. With miraculous intelligent real-time computation power, the game captured the minds of the players using endless plots and possibilities. The game captured over ninety-five percent of the VR MMORPG market.

Gris was no exception. Before he became a Celestial Trade employee, he was already a big fan of Godly Land. Whenever he took lunch, he would go into a select few channels to watch the streamers doing “unique missions” while he enjoyed his snacks.

The stream was getting more exciting as a streamer called Shadow Demon was about to finish the plot of a “unique mission” and enter the boss fight, but then the headset he tossed on the table suddenly flashed red.

Gris paused for a second when he saw the flashing red light.

Although he was reluctant, he turned off the holographic screen in agony and put his feet back down on the floor before he grabbed the headset.

It was the nature of his work.

Because the communication resources of the Earth and Mars were precious, even during his break, he must sit at his desk and be on standby. The real break only happened after work when shift interns would take over.

After he cleared his throat, he wiped the grease off of his mouth and skillfully pressed the button.

“This is the Space Command Center, Agent 011 is at your service.”

There was a brief period of static noise in the communication before it quickly became clear.

“…This is Project Team 071. We found something special in the ground… we don’t know how to describe our shock at the moment.”

Something special?

Gris couldn’t understand for a moment, but he did not dare to neglect what he had just heard. He immediately grabbed the pen from the table and jotted it down on a notepad.

“Okay, Project Team 071, the Space Command Center has received your message. Can you describe it more in detail? What did you find?”

“There is a wide underground space, no groundwater, no ice… It’s empty and the outer casing is metal. After scrapping about five drill bits, we have drilled through the outer casing. Inside we detected some metal objects, but they don’t seem natural and we can’t determine its source.”

Next to the Mars rover, Wang Qiang made contact with the Celestial City Space Command Center through the Mars communication base station. While looking at the screen of the instrument in his hand, he had a serious expression on his face.

Next to him were four Marines in aerospace kinetic skeletons, and they were holding the new personnel weapon – Gaussian Rifle. At this moment, the four Marines were cautiously guarding the drilling platform.

When Wang Qiang had hung up the phone, Captain Hong Zewei, who was standing next to him, immediately asked.

“What did the command center say?”

“They asked us to continue to drill down and then drop in drones.”

“Drop in drones? What if a monster comes out?” Hong Zewei smiled bitterly. “Or what if a Gundam appears…”

“Then we must be the side characters that die at the beginning of the movie,” Wang Qiang shrugged and put his arms on the Mars rover. He looked at the drill with a perplexed expression, “Or we’ll be the Columbus that discoveres the New World.”

“You are the ship captain, you have to make the choice.”

…

January 1st, 2020.

After a relaxing three-month holiday in the apocalypse, Jiang Chen returned to Coro Island on New Year’s Day.

The election campaign for Xin was in full swing. The holographic screen floating on the side of major streets in several major cities like Coro, Penglai, and Ange were either filled with advertisements of Future Group, or President Zhang Yaping’s campaign declaration.

Under the massive propaganda, other party candidates were all foils.

In fact, even without these propaganda offenses, Zhang Yaping’s chance of losing the election was almost zero. The past four years had been four years of rapid progress in Xin. The total GDP created in these four years exceeded the total GDP of this island country over the past few centuries.

Many people watched the island country transition from sugar cane, fishery, and coconuts being the pillar industries to becoming a “cosmic powerhouse” with the support Future Group who then seated Xin on the throne of the “Earth Defense Alliance”.

Countless people sighed and regretted the fact that they lost the support of such a powerful corporation.

Also stirring the international landscape was a general election on the other side of the Pacific. Although Xin achieved epic monuments in many fields and the world’s center of gravity began to tilt from the eastern Pacific to the western Pacific, for now, the world’s intersection was still at the Times Square, not a space elevator leading to the future of mankind.

Compared with the stable election of Xin, the UA election was full of dramatic changes.

A black horse broke out from the crowd, and Trump, under the “race” banner, unexpectedly won the candidacy of the party with the help of his “Twitter Empire”, and unexpectedly became a popular candidate for the primaries.

At the same time, while the Republican Party was still arguing over the candidacy, the Democratic Party was in the midst of a bloodbath.

Negative news of Hill suddenly stormed the Internet, and she was exhausted from deflecting scandals such as accepting foreign funds and private emails.

Kerry suddenly resigned from his post of Secretary of State and broke the vow of not participating in the election. He said that he would lead the UA and the Democratic Party on the “right path” and began targeting Hill.

John F. Kennedy emerged out of nowhere. After an open campaign speech, he changed from a little-known member of the House to a nationally-renowned campaigner. His support rate skyrocketed, just like the black horse from years before…

The three forces had attacked each other and it was a fierce battle for the primaries in March. Because of the subpar candidate from the Republican party, who also made a fool of himself because of a particular incident, many people joked that the president would be decided in March.

Under the glamorous appearances, it was a bloody and tragic battle between the capitals of Wall Street.

Behind Kerry was Daniel Morgan and Hill was backed by the Rockefeller Consortium, and the Kennedy family itself was a member of the B City Consortium’s community of interests. The B City Consortium’s influence was not comparable to the two Wall Street giants, but they managed to find a strong foreign aid – Future Group.

Before facing a more distant crisis, the problems of the human civilization seemed to be even more urgent.

On the first day of the second decade in the twenty-first century, this azure planet welcomed this turbulent and unstable political landscape.