Chapter 389: The Final Livestream

The livestream was live and within seconds, more than 3.2 billion standard viewers found themselves, once again staring at a sight that should have been impossible.The feed opened on a desolate rust-red landscape stretching to the horizon, punctuated by rocks and ancient impact craters. The sky overhead was a pale butterscotch color that no Earth sky had ever been.

For the five thousand Lucid users, the experience was exponentially more intense.

They stood on the surface of Mars. The ground beneath their feet felt solid despite being digital projection. The thin atmosphere, the reduced gravity, the alien wrongness of being on another planet—all of it translated through the immersion with unsettling completeness.

Several users stumbled, their brains struggling to process Martian gravity that was only thirty-eight percent of Earth’s. Every step wanted to become a bounce, every movement felt light and strange. Some stood frozen, afraid that motion would shatter the illusion and reveal this as elaborate CGI.

But it wasn’t CGI. The level of detail was too perfect, too specific. Individual grains of regolith were visible on the ground. The shadows fell at angles consistent with Mars’s greater distance from the Sun. The horizon curved with the correct radius for a planet half Earth’s diameter.

A figure stood in the center of this alien landscape, wearing the now-familiar black exosuit. The CEO of Nova Technologies, his face still hidden behind that smooth, featureless helmet.

"Welcome," his modulated voice carried clearly through the audio system, "to Mars. The fourth planet from our Sun, and humanity’s most likely candidate for future colonization."

He gestured at the landscape around them with casual familiarity, as if standing on another planet was routine rather than historic.

"This is my final livestream back," he continued, his tone conversational despite the cosmic significance of his location. "I wanted to talk about why I’ve been doing these broadcasts. Why I’ve been sharing this journey with all of you."

The comments section exploded immediately:

"JOURNEY?? You call LEAVING THE SOLAR SYSTEM a ’journey’??"

"How are you BACK already? You left less than two weeks ago!"

"This has to be VR. Has to be. Nobody can travel that fast."

"The production value is insane but there’s no way this is real Mars"

"If this is fake, it’s the best fake ever created. If it’s real, we’re watching history."

Liam seemed to notice the comments flooding past, and his helmet tilted slightly in what might have been amusement.

"I can see the skepticism," he said, and there was definitely humor in his modulated voice now. "Whether this is real or an elaborate virtual space I’ve created to fool everyone—well, everything will become clear in due time. For now, let me show you something interesting."

He began walking, his movements adapted perfectly to the Martian gravity. Each step was a controlled bounce, efficient and practiced. The five thousand Lucid users followed behind him like a scattered procession, their avatars moving with varying degrees of competence. Some had figured out the bouncing gait. Others still walked normally, looking awkward and Earth-bound despite standing on Mars.

The landscape around them was simultaneously beautiful and desolate. Ancient riverbeds carved paths through the rust-colored regolith, evidence of water that had flowed billions of years ago. Impact craters pocked the surface, their rims sharp and unworn in the absence of atmospheric erosion. In the distance, the wall of a massive canyon rose against the pale sky.

Standard viewers watched through their screens as the CEO walked across this alien terrain. The camera followed smoothly, capturing the details of the landscape, the play of weak sunlight across the rocks, the way dust kicked up by his footsteps settled slowly in the thin atmosphere.

Then, ahead of them, something artificial appeared against the natural terrain.

"There," Liam said, pointing. "That’s what I wanted to show you."

The Lucid users pressed forward, their avatars clustering around to get a better view. Even through the digital medium, curiosity overcame caution.

Partially buried under a thick layer of rust-red dust sat China’s Zhurong rover.

It looked small and vulnerable against the vast Martian landscape. The rover’s solar panels were completely covered in dust, rendering them useless. Its wheels were half-buried, trapped in the regolith that had accumulated during months—years now—of hibernation. The entire machine had the look of something abandoned, left behind by a species that had moved on.

The comments section shifted tone immediately:

"That’s the Zhurong rover!"

"China lost contact with it two years ago"

"It went into hibernation and never woke up"

"Are you seriously standing next to actual Mars hardware right now?"

"If this is VR, how did he get the rover’s exact position?"

Liam crouched beside the buried rover, his exosuit’s gloves carefully brushing away dust. The motion was gentle, as if he were uncovering an archaeological treasure rather than a disabled machine.

"Zhurong entered hibernation in May 2022," he explained as he worked, his voice taking on an educational quality. "The Martian winter was too harsh, the dust storms too severe. It was supposed to wake up when conditions improved, but it never did. The accumulated dust on its solar panels prevented power generation. Without power, it couldn’t wake up."

He continued clearing away the accumulated regolith with patient care. The rover emerged gradually from its tomb, revealing battered solar panels and wheels designed for a world they’d barely explored.

"Give me a moment," Liam said, straightening. He looked up—or rather, his featureless helmet tilted upward—and gestured.

From somewhere above them, a small drone descended. It was sleek and elegant, its design far more advanced than anything currently flying on Earth. The craft moved with perfect stability despite the thin Martian atmosphere, positioning itself precisely above the rover.

The drone deployed cleaning mechanisms—compressed air jets, micro-brushes, electrostatic fields that lifted dust particles without touching the delicate solar panels. Within minutes, the rover was pristine, its surfaces clear, its systems exposed to weak but sufficient Martian sunlight.

"There," Liam said with satisfaction. "That should help."

While the drone worked, Liam turned his attention back to the camera, back to the billions watching.

"This rover reminded me of something else I encountered during my journey," he said, his tone shifting to something more contemplative. "Voyager 1. Humanity’s most distant probe, still transmitting after nearly fifty years of travel."

The comments section went very quiet for a moment, as if everyone was holding their breath.

"I met Voyager 1 while traveling through interstellar space," Liam continued casually, as if discussing a chance encounter at a coffee shop rather than a meeting billions of kilometers from home. "The probe’s radioisotope thermoelectric generators were failing. Within a few years, maybe months, it would have gone silent forever. So I fixed it."

The silence in the comments shattered:

"WHAT"

"You fixed VOYAGER 1??"

"NASA reported unusual telemetry last week!"

"The power readings didn’t make sense—output suddenly increased"

"This confirms it. This actually confirms it."

"How do you just CASUALLY mention fixing humanity’s most distant spacecraft??"

NASA’s official account, still unverified like other institutional accounts, appeared in the comments. The message was professional but carried undertones of desperate curiosity:

NASA: "We would very much like to schedule a meeting to discuss the Voyager 1 situation. There are... several aspects of the recent telemetry that require clarification. When would be convenient?"

Liam’s helmet tilted as he read the comment, and his modulated laugh carried clearly through the audio.

"Unfortunately," he said, and he genuinely did sound apologetic, "I’m going to be too busy for meetings in the near future. But NASA doesn’t need to worry. Voyager 1’s power issues are solved permanently. It’ll keep transmitting for decades. Possibly centuries."

NASA: "Decades? The RTG should—"

NASA: "Actually, could we discuss the specifics of—"

NASA: "Please. We really need to understand what—"

The comments kept coming, but Liam had already moved on. The drone finished its work and flew back toward the space shuttle that was presumably in orbit somewhere above them.

The Zhurong rover, now clean and exposed to sunlight, began showing signs of life. Status lights flickered on. Systems initiated startup sequences. After years of silence, the machine was waking.

"There we go," Liam said with satisfaction. "Zhurong is back online. Power systems functional, communications restored. It should be transmitting to Earth right about... now."

Somewhere in Beijing, in the China National Space Administration’s control center, alarms were going off as telemetry they’d thought lost forever suddenly flooded their receivers.

But Liam’s attention was already elsewhere. He stood back up and looked out across the rust-red landscape.

"I think that covers everything I wanted to show you today," he said. "Mars is beautiful in its own way. Hostile, dead, unforgiving—but beautiful. In the future, humans will walk this surface for real, not just as digital avatars. They’ll build habitats in these valleys, grow food in pressurized greenhouses, terraform this world back to the living planet it once was."

The five thousand Lucid users stood behind him in silence, their avatars motionless as they absorbed the weight of what he was saying.

"But that’s the future," Liam continued. "For now, this is goodbye. Thank you for joining me."

"Wait!" someone’s voice cut through the audio—one of the Lucid users, breaking the silence. "Where are you going next? When will—"

The feed cut to black.

The livestream was over.

For exactly three seconds, 3.2 billion people stared at blank screens, trying to process what they’d just witnessed.

Then the internet exploded.

Within minutes, #MarsStream was trending globally. #Voyager1 followed immediately. #Zhurong climbed to third place. Every social media platform buckled under the weight of simultaneous conversations about what they’d just seen.

NASA’s official channels lit up with activity. They issued a statement within the hour, confirming that Zhurong had indeed come back online and was transmitting. They mentioned unusual readings from Voyager 1 that they were "still analyzing." They very carefully avoided commenting on whether the Nova Technologies CEO had actually been to either location.

The China National Space Administration released their own statement, expressing "surprise and gratitude" for Zhurong’s unexpected revival while noting that they were investigating how and why the rover’s systems had been restored.

But the real conversation was happening everywhere else:

"He just casually fixed two pieces of space hardware like it’s NOTHING"

"NASA is losing their minds right now and he’s like ’sorry too busy’"

"The audacity of saying Voyager 1 will work for CENTURIES"

"Either he’s the greatest liar in history or we just watched someone prove casual interplanetary travel"

"The Lucid users STOOD ON MARS. Virtually, but still. They stood on another planet."

"We’re living through the most important moment in human history and he’s treating it like a casual vlog"