Dalton was back at the office, as a new week arose. Another red smoky morning, with the fires controlled, but the air not yet cleansed. Dalton's contract was nearly finished. There was no more need for his synthetic data. The AI guidance team had enough simulated seafloors. Either the probe would surface, or it would not. Nothing here could change it.

The Chinese claimed they have found something. But a microbe on Mars could be anything these days. The initial theories were that the scientific community would prove it a simple extremophile from Earth, carried on the wind from the Mars Colony, or a hitchhiker on the Chinese probe. The Europa scientists had continued confidence it would be their discoveries that would be validated instead of the Chinese claims… eventually.

Dalton was leaning against the back wall of the control room when the call came in.

“Contact!” A controller yelled.

“We have mission data. The probe believes it completed its objectives!” Another cried out.

The mood in the room was jubilant. To resurface so quickly would mean the probe had accomplished all the objectives. Indeed, Dalton had run many simulations. The probe could have been confused about what the evidence actually showed, but to resurface so soon means the probe had high confidence in its data.

“It's reporting many terabytes.” Someone from data acquisition said.

The main screen lit up with a replay. A white dot and a black screen recounted the distance to the seafloor.

Clapping all around. Cheers and all eyes on the screen.

It had been a tense few days, returning from the ranch and the stress of international tensions, and then the Chinese revelation had wound everyone up tightly. Now there was the chance to counter the Chinese claim.

The release was cathartic.

Hugs, tears, and a general release of tension. The wound-up rubber band was finally released.

The actual hum-drum data stream comprised mission timestamps and a two-digit code. The team translated them back to human readable form, but the screen displayed the probe’s stream of consciousness, which looked something like this:

(x100+), Melt Complete, Traverse, Observe, Traverse, Traverse, Sonar, … , Observe, Detach, Dive, …, Dive (x100+) … Search, Observe, Search, Observe, …, Debug, Sonar, Debug, Sonar, … , Sonar reset, Sys Check, … , Debug, Sonar reset, … , Camera reset, Light reset, … Traverse, Drop Ballast, Search, Sample collected, Ascend, Ascend, Ascend, … , Reestablish Contact.>

They watched this low fidelity reconstruction with great awe. They did not have the scientific data back yet, but as engineers and operators, they could bask in so great an achievement. This could open the door for a probe into Titan’s interior, or Enceladus, or more. Thoughts like this were running through the minds of the ambitious in the room.

The scientific data would have to wait. Every ten days the Europa Clipper would swing back near Europa, establish a high-bandwidth to the relay, and then slowly transmit that data back to Earth.

“The probe will attempt to melt up through the ice,” another controller said.

Jim got up, and after a brief ovation for him he began, “We did it. It did it!” At this, the room erupted for another minute. Others came in from the office and joined the celebration. “Next on the Agenda. Our patron will contact us for a special message.”

They all stayed near to the control room. A few people shuffled out to hit the can quickly. All were eager to see Mr. Trillionaire on the screen and hear his praises.

“Team, what a great achievement for Western Science!“More cheers came from the room. You mean a great achievement for you? No? Dalton thought. History will remember you funded this project.

“I'm confident in the coming weeks. Have no fear. I am going to spare no expense marketing your findings. We unfortunately have a wait for the downloads, but I’ve asked my assistant Tory to brief you on the tour many of you all are going to do. Schools, Tik-toks, TED-talks, podcasts, you name it.”

Dalton watched it all from the back of the room. He was not convinced they had the data. The probe had encountered a large series of error messages and unclassified objects. The constant flicking and resetting of sensors, sonar, and cameras led him to think the probe might have been stealth reprogrammed by hackers. Why were there so many systems resets and debugs? What happens to the data in memory when an instrument resets?

And the Chinese revelations about discovering life sat in his stomach like rotten milk. All they did was re-run nearly the same experiment the Viking lander did in the 1970s! Yet now China had used its informational advantage to leverage a full court marketing press on the discovery. Plus, the fact they claimed to discover the life within a lava tube meant the claims couldn't be verified from NASA's wealth of satellites in orbit. The data the Chinese provided was tantalizing, though. If it was a ruse, they had clearly thought of the many counter-arguments.

But there was nothing he could do, nor the mission. They were on the slow train of data and couldn't press their claims. He was confident in his fake data, and the shepherding of the AIs. All simulations showed that a fast resurfacing from the probe meant it was extremely certain it had found life, and multicellular life.

Thumbnail images from the bottom showed strange things. Colors, but every upsample transformer of the compressed data yielded no coherent picture. Unyielding blackness of a dark sea, or streaks of colors on every frame. They'd need to download the raw image, which would take a long time. One of the other scientists said this was just collections of bioluminescent dinoflagellate and the AI was working too hard trying to upsample an image that wasn’t there.

His job was almost over. They did not need Dalton much longer. No more fake training data. Now they were working with the real. The entire AI simulation team was being wound down, and the probe would be 'parked' near the under-ice relay for a possibility of one day being re-activated to explore another portion (or revisiting of a past site) of Europa.