Dalton stepped back inside in the makeshift control room. He looked over to see Emman already in their corner. Marco was slipping back behind others as they moved their chairs forward to let them pass.

“What'd I miss?” Dalton asked.

“Proof of life.”

“Still pending, for sure, but everyone thinks we found life on Europa.”

Dalton did not know how to interpret the data, so he just had to trust his coworkers. He leaned against the wall and continued to think about the Chinese situation. He had no proof, and was still sure that multicellular life would be found on Europa, and perhaps back-dating their claim. Still, to have the news cycle entirely usurped by another scientific claim of the same magnitude was unheard of. They had to fight for every ‘like’ through the flow of white noise of this information ocean.

The ostentatious Chinese claim dominated the news cycle. The text feed was eventually turned off, but the last full scrawl he saw was

“We're bringing our sponsor for a live call.” Someone in the room said.

The mood around the control room was a futile hope, the coup by the Chinese martian rover was huge, but most in the room keep thinking like 'Well surely our claim will be mentioned soon!' or 'Once the actual science is analyzed we'll be vindicated.'

That’s not how the misinformation age works. Dalton thought.

The Trillionaire started his live call, but Dalton half listened: 'He couldn’t be more proud, more data in the coming weeks. Sure, we found life as well.’ Blah, blah, blah.

“Next, Tory will brief us on Reno and our trip back.”

At this, Dalton stepped back outside again.

The Chinese have faked it! He thought. Angry that he hadn’t been clever enough to think of it first. Plus, I bet they’ve jacked up our data. He walked back to the dormitory room to pack what little he had.

On the trip back, Dalton was quiet. Even when engaged by others, he said little. He watched the backside of the Sierras with renewed interest. In fact, he had never been to Tahoe.

Reno had fared fine. The graphite bomb had only tripped the breakers, so to speak. After clearing the lines and resetting, they restored power. Faint lines of silvery ribbon could still be seen from trees and piled on the ground. Those would need to be cleared in the future to prevent the wind from blowing those over the lines again.

He returned home to his small apartment decked out in artificial materials. The eggshell sheen on the walls, the off-white, the vinyl flooring, the laminate countertop.

But there he saw his cat, (looking at him with disdain). And the empty water and food dish. The cat had opened up a cabinet and found the open food bin. Dalton presumed the cat got more water from the toilet, which could account for the cat’s facial expression. (Though the shower faucet did drip.)

He sat down at his computer, but the situation was unchanged. Too little data had come in from Jupiter in the ensuing hours. The bandwidth to Mars was twenty years ahead of Jupiter.

He was sure of multi-cellular life, but how would he prove it?