Paul Gillebaard: Moon Hoax

Peter, thinking this could be good, smiled like Kuang had done earlier, and said, “It’ll stay in this room.”

Sie hesitated a moment, contemplating Peter’s expression before glancing back at Kuang. Kuang signaled for Sie to continue. Sie said, “CNSA is the organization responsible for testing the MK Laser. This is currently happening at the remote location in China I mentioned earlier. CNSA was chosen by China officials because the ultimate purpose of the laser is for mining on the moon. We hope to use the laser once we start landing on the moon to help with mining Helium 3. We feel Helium 3 could be the new energy source of the future, and we want to get the first jump on bringing it back to Earth to use in China’s power stations. Of course this is years away.” Then Sie surprised Peter by saying, “Two of the workers currently trapped… are taikonauts.”

Of the many meetings Peter had with CNSA over the last year, this was the first time he heard China say the laser was going to be used on the moon. He still felt Sie was full of crap, but the explanation did show they were trying to come up with a believable story. Peter still suspected the laser was going to be used as a weapon system in Earth orbit, and still assumed it was involved on the current mission. He assumed the laser was being tested somehow around the moon, even though all the CNSA officials in the room were trying to convince him otherwise. He was impressed with this lie of trapped taikonauts, especially with the short time they had to come up with it. This false story would explain the need to get both him and Rob out there so quickly, especially if taikonauts were slowly suffocating, and why high CNSA officials would be sitting in the meeting with a mission going on. The Chinese were loyal to their own. They probably felt such a story would be enough to satisfy Peter and the folks at Byington. Being a CIA agent with the intelligence the agency had, he wasn’t buying it. However, as just a director of engineering of a corporation, he would not have any reason to question Sie’s lie. So he nodded in acceptance of the reason and said, “How can we help?”

Sie laid out the laser’s engineering drawings on the conference table. Rob stood up to get a better view of the drawings as Sie motioned for him to review them. Rob slowly started to sift through the diagrams, studying each closely. Even though the captions were all in Chinese, as the design engineer, Rob only needed to see the mechanical and electrical layouts to understand what he was looking at. As he reviewed the drawings he would occasionally ask one of the CNSA engineers what a certain word meant. While Rob continued to review the drawings, Sie walked Peter over to the prototype. He explained the modifications they had done to the laser and asked if Peter might have some ideas on what could be causing the problem. Peter suggested a handful of possibilities but each one had already been considered by Sie and his team.

Soon everyone, including Sie and Peter, had gathered around Rob as he continued to review the drawings and ask questions. After about an hour, he had come to the wiring diagram, which baffled him. Something seemed wrong. The circuits drawn seemed to show the opposite of what they should be. He pointed this out to the engineers, and they began to discuss it in more detail. The engineers said the circuits were drawn as explained in the laser’s operation manual. Rob pulled out his copy written for CNSA from his briefcase. Sie put their copy of the same manual in front of Rob, this edition written in Chinese. Rob turned to the electrical section in his manual which addressed the circuits. With the wiring diagram next to him, he read his manual regarding the switches that would turn the laser on, and the text correctly read “run the circuits in the closed position.” But looking at the drawing, the circuits were shown in the “open” position, meaning the switches were off. He pointed this out and said the switches were in the “off” position. Sie looked at their manual to compare what was written versus Rob’s version. As he read, he smacked his forehead apparently realizing their mistake. In Mandarin Chinese, the words for “off” and “close” are the same, which is guan. When translating the manual, their version ended up saying “run the circuit in the off position,” instead of the “closed position.” Somewhere down the line, someone must have seen the confusion of using guan and assumed it meant “off,” so replaced guan with another word meaning “off”, bi. The switches were all opposite of what they should have been when the computer was sending the transmission to “arm.”

Rob turned to the start-up instructions in his manual and showed what steps would need to be taken opposite to what was stated in the manual to turn the laser on.

Sie carefully took notes. “I want to relay this information right away to the job site to see if in fact, this is the problem. Please make yourselves comfortable in the conference room and we will be back shortly.”

The next thing Peter knew, all were gone from the room except him and Rob. Peter knew China’s story didn’t fit now. According to them, the laser did work when they were blasting the boulders, and now it didn’t. If Rob’s fix was correct, then the laser would have never worked. He kept this to himself.

“Well that was bloody easy,” said Rob.

“Yeah, good job figuring out the problem,” Peter said, thinking of his next move.

Rob asked, “So your dad walked on the moon, fancy that?”

Peter, thinking of something else, said, “Yeah, no big deal. Hey, I need to go to the restroom, do you?”

“I’m fine,” answered Rob. As Peter opened the door Rob sarcastically blurted out, “Don’t forget to take one of your buddies to the loo with you.”

Peter looked back and smiled at Rob before poking his head out the door. “I need to go to the restroom,” he said to the guards with a slight grin. The soldier on the right motioned for Peter to follow him. As they walked down the cold, dimly lit corridor, they came upon a hallway on their left. Peter looked down it as they passed and briefly saw the launch control room at the end with Sie and the engineers hovered around a control panel, speaking to someone on speaker. He assumed they were communicating with one of the taikonauts in space, passing on the instructions. From the modifications Sie pointed out to him, Peter concluded they must be test firing the laser in space, and probably firing it at targets on the moon.

The soldier arrived at the men’s room, and opened the door for Peter. Peter walked in, and sure enough the soldier followed him in. Peter turned to him. “Oh, you have to go too?” The soldier showed no expression, which made Peter chuckle. Fortunately the launch center had western toilets; Peter hated dealing with “squat” toilets. Peter walked up to the first urinal and the soldier followed, standing only a few feet behind. As Peter did his business he couldn’t help himself and started whistling the tune from the movie, The Great Escape. Smiling, he wondered if the soldier had any idea what the tune was from. Peter finished up and was escorted back. As they passed the same hallway where he had seen the control room, he looked again. Sie and the others were no longer there.

Peter reentered the conference room, and found most of the gentlemen were back, standing around Rob. Sie turned to Peter and said the new instructions had been passed on to the workers, and they should know in about an hour if the outcome was successful. Peter figured it had already been ten minutes since they told the taikonauts. He wondered why they were not able to get feedback sooner if the laser worked; arming it shouldn’t take more than five minutes. If Sie was able to communicate with the taikonauts then they should have been able to test it soon after getting the instructions.