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Chapter 321 Protocol 404

A few minutes before the UN general meeting took place Aron was in one of the rooms of his VR mansion together with Rina. They were waiting for the hearing to begin and would watch it through the Edenian ambassador\'s glasses. There was no other way to watch it, as the hearing was behind closed doors with no recording equipment allowed.

In fact, Aron and Rina weren\'t alone; everyone who had sufficient security clearance and was in possession of a pair of Aron\'s AR glasses was doing the same. John was watching it with the high-level officers of the military, the leader of Nyx was watching it with her subordinates, Sarah with Felix, and the other companies\' presidents were watching it together as well. Sarah and Felix hadn\'t joined Aron and Rina only because they could only handle so much PDA and their limits had been reached far, far earlier.

Alexander and his Esparian counterpart were watching it with their staffs as well, meaning that everyone with the power to do anything significant in Eden and Esparia were waiting for the hearing to begin and leaving the running of their countries and companies to subordinates.

A bucket of popcorn and a large movie theater-style soda appeared in his hands and he offered the popcorn to Rina, who was sitting beside him.

"No thanks, us girls have to watch our figures," she said, giving her boyfriend a girlish, coquettish smile.

"Uhh... your figure is perfect, though. And what is VR for if not to enjoy the things you can\'t enjoy in reality? Plus, for everything else, there\'s Biogen." Aron truly enjoyed simple domestic moments like these. They reminded him that he, too, was only human.

"It\'s starting," Aron said as the American ambassador entered the room and took her seat.

...

"Ladies and gentlemen, esteemed ambassadors, we stand charged wi—"

Just as she began her speech and Aron had all of his focus on the hearing, a few of those watching were teleported to a different meeting room. Aron, Rina, John, General Jacob Stiles of the Aeolus Air Force, Director Diana Tregarde of Nyx, and Alexander and his Esparian counterpart, President Jose Inez of Esparia, found themselves in an unfamiliar room together. They hadn\'t undergone the logoff sequence, so they knew they were still in VR, but that was all.

Something big must have happened.

Moments later, those who were still watching the hearing and had begun panicking as their leaders disappeared all received a brief message from the missing peoples\' accounts to continue watching the hearing, and they had simply been summoned for an emergency meeting by Nova. Although the message caused questions to arise, the leaders\' subordinates continued watching the UNSC hearing regardless. They knew that if something important had arisen, they would be briefed on what they needed to know when their bosses returned.

...

"Are we being attacked?" Aron asked the moment his brain comprehended what had taken place. He knew what protocol called for such a reaction from Nova.

Only Protocol 404 would allow Nova to do things like forcefully logging people into the VR, no matter the situation they were in. If something was happening and their presence was paramount, it was better to reveal the VR capabilities than to hold them secret. But only if seconds mattered or the briefing was of apocalyptic importance. The moment Aron saw the lineup of people in the conference room—which included all of the military AIs and the scientists focused on space research from Lab City—he guessed that the situation was the latter and slightly relaxed.

Out of all the real people in the room, Aron\'s reaction was the calmest. The rest, having no experience with forced teleportation, were looking slightly pale as their thoughts caught up to the dilated time, but overall, they handled it well. At least those who\'d undergone genetic enhancement had, anyway; President Inez was still frozen and had a blank look on his face as he tried to come to terms with the immediate time differential.

[If what\'s going to be presented to us is true, it might be much worse than that,] Nova said, then gestured for the scientists to begin their briefing.

The simulated version of Stephen Hawking stood and walked to the stage. "Sorry for the urgent call, but we discovered something that we\'re confident means we\'ve been discovered by an advanced civilization. And from their course, they\'re on their way to us," he said. The screen behind him was powered on, but currently showed nothing. That would change when he started talking in detail about the topic at hand, though.

His words caused the hearts of all the humans in the room to pound, except for Aron, who released a sigh of relief. As long as it wasn\'t the outbreak of a nuclear war or something, he would be able to deal with it. He was also feeling a little vindicated in his belief that alien civilizations existed being proven; his evidence up until that moment was only the introduction of technologies in the system including the name of the civilization that discovered them, along with details.

"Within the data our satellite network has been collecting, we discovered an approaching mass of mana headed toward our solar system," Hawking continued. As he spoke, the screen behind him changed from the light blue that meant it wasn\'t receiving a signal to an image of the starry sky deep in the universe. The view zoomed in until a green object the size of Luna, judging by the measurements next to it on the display, became visible.

"Shit," Aron said. He understood what the object\'s detection meant, but the other humans in the room seemed to just be impressed by the capability of the satellites. They had no idea what mana was and were only concerned about the huge mass that was on approach to the solar system.

Aron, on the other hand, completely understood what was meant by the discovery and why it had taken so long for them to discover the object. He thought back to the month before, when he had gone on his "impromptu skydiving excursion", as Rina had called it.