It was Friday night, and Chris Beck was finally home. The apartment that he shared with his girlfriend was dark and quiet. Beth sat in her armchair, laptop open. Her dark grey hoodie cowled around her face, and her headphones were on. Beth's version of a "Do Not Disturb" sign. Research? Coding? He wasn't sure. He hated keeping secrets from her; especially this one. It had been four days now, and it was becoming unbearable. One more night, he promised himself. Just a few hours to go. She'd know all about it tomorrow morning, when the Ares 3 crew would be complete once again. Even Vogel would be there, he had boarded a plane in Berlin that afternoon.

And two more days after that, the press conference. The world was going to be a different place, as of Monday morning. Right now, Chris was exhausted. He showered and collapsed into bed, remembering the day's events.

Mark's dad, shaking his hand and thanking him for taking care of his son. His mother, tears in her eyes, refusing to leave Mark's side. They, too, were getting a small preview of the new world that awaited everyone else on Monday. Mark, still drawn and thin, worn out from his first PT session, was ready to take the next step on his journey. Chris closed his eyes, trying to will his mind into calmness. One more night. He began to drift, idly wondering whether NASA could scrounge together a new uniform for Mark by tomorrow morning. One more night.

Houston Space Center

"What am I supposed to say, Mitch?" Annie Montrose snarled at Mitch Henderson. "What the hell am I supposed to say! The first question out of their ape shit mouths is going to be - how did we not know-AGAIN-that Mark Watney didn't die."

"No, I think their first question will probably be something more along the lines of, 'Holy shit, pictures of a real alien spacecraft, how fast can we launch a nuke at it?"

"This is going to be a bloodbath. When all of those satellites suddenly died last year, how were we supposed to know they'd been disabled by Watney's new road trip pal? Space weather! God, how stupid are the fuckers in SatCon?" Annie paced the meeting room, as they brainstormed the best answers to the most obvious questions they were likely to get.

"Which of these pictures should we lead with, you think?" Mitch asked nobody in particular. "I like this one, of the alien puttering around with the toilet in the Hab. Really captures the spirit of the whole thing."

Annie glared.

The White House

Teddy had been in the Situation Room before, but this was the first time, as far as he knew, that anyone had ever informed a sitting president that an alien spacecraft had landed on American soil, with only the permission of a hitchhiking astronaut. The conversation had been colorful, to say the least. President Roberts was immediately swept up in the notion of "handling" the situation and somehow using it to curry support for himself in the upcoming election.

"You think it's a peaceful alien. You're absolutely sure?" President Roberts mused, for the fourth time.

"As far as we know. That's what Watney assures us."

"And Watney has requested the private meeting with me, to pass along a personal message. From the alien." He closed his eyes. "Can it even talk?"

"I'm told that she can communicate with some sort of application she and Watney designed. It's probably rudimentary, at best. Watney thinks it should suffice."

President Roberts tried to shut out the handful of aides and military personnel that were requesting to speak. He had a pounding headache.

"Yes. Yes, I'll meet with him. Set it up, right away."

Houston Memorial Hospital

It was midnight, and Mark was alone in his hospital room. He knew he should be sleeping, but he was too keyed up. Tomorrow was going to be the start of something huge. Somehow, he'd never envisioned himself ever undertaking a journey more important than the one to Mars. But now he was caught up in something much larger.

A single, musical note, barely audible against the din of the equipment, chimed. He studied his hands again. He tapped the small circle in his right palm, and pulled up the message that Oaiea had just sent.

Go to sleep.

He fumbled for a moment, pulling up the words he wanted. He smiled for a moment, and double tapped the circle to send the message and turn off the device.

He slept.

Mark had awoken, one morning some three months into his journey to Earth, to find Oaiea poring over a video file. It was, like most video files from Oaiea's computer, filled with trilling musical notes thundering over a backdrop of flashing pictures. Scenes of sad-looking aliens, cityscapes, and pictures of star charts, with the diagram of Earth that he'd seen before, many times. Mark supposed it was something akin to CNN for aliens. It was depicting things that had happened very long ago-he didn't have an exact understanding, but thought this was probably because her home planet was many hundreds, maybe upwards of a thousand light-years away. Information traveled back and forth, but it simply moved too slowly to be of very much importance. He tapped his computer and pulled and prodded at the menus until he'd found the words to say, "What is that? When did it happen?"

Oaiea thought for a few moments. He wasn't sure she wanted to tell him anything this specific, or if they even had the right words in their translator. She was usually guarded with him, with this type of questioning. She tapped for a long time, erased things repeatedly, and finally, double tapped. "It is the end of the voyage. The last time our people met." Her face was solemn, whatever she was saying, it was something of great importance to her. Personal importance? He couldn't tell. He knew a little bit about her history. She was from a race of long-lived beings, compared to humans. How long-lived, she seemed to hold those cards close to her chest, but he assumed she had to be over 1,000 years old. She didn't look that old, she looked a little bit like a young girl, actually. Her small stature and large eyes gave her an innocent, youthful appearance. Her eyes had a starry opalescence to them, a quality Mark vaguely remembered as 'chatoyancy' from some long-forgotten geology course. Those eyes were fixed on his, now, as she tapped another message. She spoke to her computer in a symphonic chord sequence that sounded somehow sad. It was strange, that while he couldn't ever discern any individual words in her language, other than her name, occasionally he did pick up on the timbre of what she was feeling as she spoke the words. Sang them. She pulled up her calculator application and did some quick multiplication.

"This event happened 5,984 Earth years ago. Two of my fellow travelers-" She paused for a moment, tapping and speaking to her computer to continue the statement. Mark knew that by travelers, she referred to the small percentage of her people, that like Oaiea, travelled for their life's work. They were the information gatherers, the scientists. The nerds. His kind of people. "-landed on Earth. They brought with them the hopes of a generation that had endeavoured for so long to reach out to them." Mark cringed, he could only imagine what sort of response they'd gotten from the mankind of 6,000 years ago. The Stone Age, or the Bronze Age-spears and rock-hewn weapons, perhaps. "The travelers were violently removed from their lives. Their technology destroyed. My people do not condone war-like behavior." Mark thought for a moment. This was what she had been leading up to, why she had wanted to help. He was beginning to understand now.