UNDERGROUND

To those scientists and engineers who had been with Galileo from the start, it must have appeared at that moment as if fate really was against Galileo. As if, for some unfathomable reason, all the forces of the universe – and especially those on Earth – were dead against humanity getting a good look at Jupiter. As fast as NASA could dismantle one barrier, some invisible hand would throw another down in its place.

❖

Monday, 16 October, 1989
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center¹,
Greenbelt, Maryland

Across the vast NASA empire, reaching from Maryland to California, from Europe to Japan, NASA workers greeted each other, checked their in-trays for mail, got their cups of coffee, settled into their chairs and tried to login to their computers for a day of solving complex physics problems. But many of the computer systems were behaving very strangely.

From the moment staff logged in, it was clear that someone – or something – had taken over. Instead of the usual system’s official identification banner, they were startled to find the following message staring them in the face:

 W O R M S    A G A I N S T    N U C L E A R    K I L L E R S
_______________________________________________________________
\__  ____________  _____    ________    ____  ____   __  _____/
 \ \ \    /\    / /    / /\ \       | \ \  | |    | | / /    /
  \ \ \  /  \  / /    / /__\ \      | |\ \ | |    | |/ /    /
   \ \ \/ /\ \/ /    / ______ \     | | \ \| |    | |\ \   /
    \_\  /__\  /____/ /______\ \____| |__\ | |____| |_\ \_/
     \___________________________________________________/
      \                                                 /
       \    Your System Has Been Officically WANKed    /
        \_____________________________________________/
 
You talk of times of peace for all, and then prepare for war.