Chapter 6

Translator: Dragon Boat Translation Editor: Dragon Boat Translation

Meanwhile, in the Great Xia Space Agency.

The staff members didn’t sleep all night. They were divided into several groups. One group was responsible for checking whether the lunar long-orbit exploration satellite was operating normally. Specifically, they were checking whether the image of the White Rabbit Nine landing site was correct.

The other group of people were checking the landing point of White Rabbit Nine. They wanted to see if there was any chance of the spaceship having deviated from its supposed landing point.

Another group of people contacted the military and asked about the various possibilities of the signal being blocked.

Chief Engineer Yang had dark circles under his eyes. Since he was the commander-in-chief, he did not sleep all night.

A young man new to the job ran over, “Chief Engineer Yang, the television station is calling to ask about the truth behind White Rabbit Nine. Should we tell them?”

Chief Engineer Yang was infuriated with the question,”The truth? Do you know what the truth is? Why don’t you tell me what the hell happened?”

The young employee was too scared to say anything in response. Seeing him like this, Chief Engineer Yang simply told him to go away.

Pretty soon, other people came over and asked the same question. They all came from different places.There was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of State Security, and even the General Affairs Department. Apart from the General Affairs Department, Chief Engineer Yang dismissed everyone who came to ask. After thinking for a moment, he said to his subordinates,

“Tell them that we have temporarily lost contact with White Rabbit Nine. Tell them that we are investigating the cause…”

Naturally, Chief Engineer Yang was very nervous. However, he knew his priorities. Right now, the most important thing was not to give an explanation to the audience in front of the television, but to find out what happened to White Rabbit Nine!

Chief Engineer Yang had an ominous feeling about all of this. He was afraid that the final outcome would be bad. Really bad. Still, without knowing what the result would be, he could only brace himself and continue to check.

Pretty soon, it was dawn.

Assistant Little Wang walked over with his phone in hand. He was looking pretty worried.

“Chief Engineer Yang! Instead of dying down, the discussion has become even more intense! The top ten searched topics on the internet are all about White Rabbit Nine…”

“I know ~~!”

Chief Engineer Yang rubbed his temples with his fingers. He knew how much attention this whole situation was attracting. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be receivingfive phone calls from the television station.

“Are we just going to ignore it?!”

“We can’t do anything about it now, can we?!”

Chief Engineer Yang had a bitter expression. “Now, there’s only one examination left. We’ll talk about it after that is over…”

Assistant Little Wang fell silent. This whole situation was too much pressure for anyone. Even she felt a headache just thinking about it. Fortunately, she was not the chief engineer.

Half an hour later, all the inspections were completed. The staff members who had been tired for the entire night began to report the results one by one.

“The inspection of the White Rabbit will be completed by Group 4, Group 5, Group 6, and Group 8…”

“The four of us will be responsible for checking the White Rabbit’s mobility and navigation control systems…”

“We have a full set of test data of the White Rabbit before it lost signal. The rover was using a wheeled, arm suspension scheme. It can move forward, backward, rotate, and climb hills…”

“According to the calculations, the data is normal. There is nothing unusual…”

“The five of us will be responsible for the inspection of the measurement and control data transmission sub-system and the integrated electronic sub-system…”

“.. Drive module normal, central computer normal, processing module normal, navigation control normal…”

The teams reported that the data of the White Rabbit was normal. There were no errors. However, Chief Engineer Yang’s was starting to have an irritated or even worried look on his face. The more normal the White Rabbit was reported to be, the more it meant that the loss of contact was an outlier, something that happened because of an uncontrollable and unknown factor.

“What about the satellites? What are the results?”

“Satellite communication transmission is normal, no deviation…”

“Sir, after communicating with the military, we concluded that we can not rule out the possibility that there’s high-tech technology that is blocking our satellites and replacing input with fake content. However, the possibility of this is very low. With the current technology available on planet Earth, it is very difficult to do this without being found out…”

“Not even the Commonwealth of Meine can do something like that, no?”

“According to the military, Meine might have been able to do so thirty years ago. Now, however, they can’t possibly sneak past us.”

After the information was gathered, Chief Engineer Yang had to face a fact.

“So, the image sent back by the satellite in the far orbit is real. White Rabbit Nine should have been at the landing point, but it went missing?!!”

“Is this some kind of supernatural phenomenon?!”

“Perhaps, the malfunction of the satellite is something we have never encountered before…”

The assistant was also at a loss. She was still waiting for the latest report, “Boss, do you want to report it?”

“No! We still don’t know anything yet!”

Chief Engineer Yang shook his head. Just like what his subordinates said, perhaps the satellite had a malfunction that they did not know the reason for, which led to this seemingly supernatural event.

“There’s still less than half a day before the long-orbit satellites of the Commonwealth of Meine can observe the landing point. Let’s wait and see what their satellites will capture…”

..

“Any news?”

“No!”

Ma Hai Bo shook his head as he looked at the report he received, “It’s as if White Rabbit Nine didn’t land on the moon! The officials haven’t even released any follow-up news. The latest news is from last night, when the live broadcast was interrupted…”

“It’s pretty abnormal. It’s been almost a day since the livestream, but there’s nothing new at all. It’s as if they’ve completely forgotten that there’s another spaceship on the moon with three astronauts on it…”

The officials pretended that nothing had happened, but the netizens would not. There were rumours everywhere on the Internet, and some of them were spreading like wildfire.

For example, some were saying that the three astronauts were kidnapped by aliens. They were saying that the aliens were asking for a ransom of 8.8 billion yuan.

Another rumour was that White Rabbit Nine had already crashed. It was said that the officials could not accept this fact, so they simply tried to erase all the records that they had.

Some people even believed the rumour that the Moon that was on live broadcast was actually filmed in a prison. They were saying that the three people sent there were prisoners dressed as astronauts.

Anyhow, public opinion would always shift towards believing in nonsensical stories. Netizens believed all kinds of things, especially when the officials did not explain it immediately.

On the internet, the most popular conspiracy theories were that “the Great Xia Space Administration was filming the moon landing in a recording studio: and that “since reporters risked their lives to confirm this, the live broadcast was put to a halt…”

“It’s said that as soon as the three astronauts got off the spacecraft, a reporter from the Commonwealth of Meine rushed towards the camera. He was asking why they weren’t on the moon!”

“It’s true. I even saw the video just now. Unfortunately, it was deleted. This stupid platform doesn’t want to release it…”

“I saw the video too. The three astronauts were stunned. They turned to look at the camera, and then one of the directors shouted “Cut, cut, cut! Stop the livestream!”…”

“Ha, ha! I already predicted that Great Xia can’t send people to the moon before the stream. It’s all starting to make sense now, isn’t it? Am I a prophet?!”

“My boyfriend works at the Meine Space Agency. According to him, in another six hours, our long-orbit lunar satellite will be able to observe the landing site of the White Rabbit Nine…”

“Hehe… Soon, we’ll know for sure whether White Rabbit Nine is a hoax or not! Maybe it’s a hoax shot in a recording studio. Or, we’ll find out that it’s actually on the moon!!”