Ancient City Part One. There's something I need to show you. I should have told you earlier, but I wasn't sure how.
Sounds serious. Before they sent us here, they scanned this whole area from orbit. They were mapping safe landing zones, checking terrain, and they found something that made a lot of people very uncomfortable.
Wind does strange things here. I've seen rocks out there that look like walls, like doorways. Up close, it's just erosion.
That's what half the team said. Erosion, shadows, cameras playing tricks. But the radar went through the sand and the shapes are still there underneath.
They're not surface features. They go deep, deep enough that nobody could explain it. And south of the grid, there are two larger formations, massive, triangular.
They tried to classify them as geological, but I sat in that room. I watched the faces. Nobody believed their own explanation.
Why didn't you tell me this when you woke up? Because I barely knew you. Because I didn't know if you'd think I was crazy.
And because honestly, part of me was hoping I could just forget about it and focus on surviving. I can't. Every night I think about it.
What's sitting out there in the sand while we eat breakfast and fix pipes? Three years I've been here, I went everywhere. North, south, west, but east.
The cannon drops and I never had enough power to go alone and come back safe. So, I just never went. You know what scares me?
It's not what we might find. It's that I've been 100 clicks away from it this whole time alone. And I had no idea.
So, we go. Yeah, we go. How far can the rover go on a full charge?
About 160 clicks. Maybe more if the terrain is flat. And if it's not flat, then we bring extra batteries and hope for the best.
I've never taken the rover out for more than a day. This is different. Different good or different bad?
Just different. Having someone to come back to changes how you pack. Have you ever seen the canyon from the rim?
Even from distance? Once first year, I drove to the edge and looked down. It goes deep.
Could see the bottom, but couldn't find a way down with the rover. But there is a way down. There's always a way down.
It's the getting back up that wor When I fixed this suit for you, I wasn't sure you'd ever wear it. What do you mean? First few weeks after you woke up, you barely left the medbay.
I thought maybe you'd stay on the base. Let me do the outside work. I didn't fly here to watch from a window.
Ready? No. Let's go.
It's strange. Every time I step outside, I expect it to feel different, but it's just quiet. You get used to the quiet that keeps surprising you.
Can I ask you something you don't have to answer? That's a dangerous way to start a question. When you realized nobody was coming for you, what did you do that first day when you knew?
I checked every system on the base twice. Then I ate dinner. Then I sat in the command module and stared at the comms panel for about 6 hours waiting for it to light up.
Did you try sending a signal? Every day for the first 400 days. Then something in the transmitter burned out and I couldn't fix it.
After that, I just stopped counting days for a while. 400 days. What about you?
Why did you signed up for a rescue mission to a planet where the last crew disappeared? Honestly, I almost didn't. I was on the backup list.
The primary geologist broke his leg 3 weeks before launch. Training accident. They called me on a Tuesday.
Told me I had 48 hours to decide. And you said yes in 48 hours. I said yes in about 48 seconds.
The hours were for packing. My father, he drove me to the launch site and didn't say the word the entire way. 3 hours in the car, complete silence.
He just for it held me for a long time. And then he said, "Bring me back a rock. " Did you?
I've been picking one out. Haven't decided yet. I had a dog.
That's what I think about if you can believe that. Not the career, not the house, not any of it. I think about my dog sitting by the front door waiting.
What kind of dog? Mut. Some kind of shepherd mix.
Dumbest, most loyal animal you ever met. She used to sleep on my boot, so I couldn't leave without waking her up. She's probably still waiting.
Yeah, that's the part I try not to think about. You know what's strange? On Earth, everyone talks about Mars like it's this dead, empty place, just dust and rocks.
But sitting here driving through it, it doesn't feel dead to me. It feels like it's sleeping. I've thought that, too.
Especially at night when the wind stops and everything goes completely still. It feels like the whole planet is holding its breath. Maybe it was waiting for someone to find what's out there.
Or maybe it's just rocks and we're two people driving toward nothing. You don't believe that. Wait.
Stop. Stop the rover. What?
Over there. 2:00. You see that ridge?
Rocks. Tall ones. Could be volcanic.
Volcanic rocks don't stand in a line. Could be a dyke. Magma pushes through a crack, erodess, the soft rock erodess.
The hard rock stays standing. Pull over. I want to see them up close.
That's unusual. That's not unusual. That's impossible.
Erosion doesn't leave seven stones at identical height. Wind doesn't carve flat tops. There's more behind these.
Look, they keep going. They're not in a line. They're curving.
It's a circle. It's a circle. Lentils.
What did you just say? Lintils. That's what they're called.
Horizontal stones resting on vertical ones. I know what that's called because I've seen it before. Everyone has.
This can't be real. These proportions, the outer ring, the inner horseshoe shape, the lintils on the Sarsson circle. This isn't Similar.
This is Stone Line. The same layout, the same geometry on Mars. Who builds a copy of Stonehenge on another planet?
Maybe it's not a copy. Maybe ours is. We need to document everything.
Every stone, every angle. If we don't bring proof, nobody will believe a word of this. I know.
And we're still a day's drive from those grid formations. One thing at a time. Let's start here.
Heat. Heat. The pressure just dropped fast.
Look at the horizon. I see it. That wall wasn't there 5 minutes ago.
I see it. How far to any kind of cover? There was a rock formation about eight clicks back.
Or we push forward and hope there's something ahead. Can't go back. We'd be driving straight into it.
Then we push. Engine off. We sit.
We wait. How long can these last? Hours?
Sometimes days? Days. We have water.
We have air. The rover holds. We just wait.
You should try to sleep. I'll keep an eye on the systems. I'm not going to sleep.
Why not? Because my brain won't stop. I keep seeing those stones, the circle, the lintils.
And then I think about what's waiting at the end of this drive and I can't turn it off. First year here, I couldn't sleep either. Not because of anything I'd found, just because of the silence.
On Earth, you don't notice it. There's always something. Traffic, birds, neighbors, the fridge humming here.
Nothing. Just your own heartbeat. It took me months to stop being afraid of it.
And now, now I can't sleep when it's loud. Can I tell you something that's going to sound insane? We found Stonehenge on Mars today.
I think my threshold for insane has moved. When I was lying in the medbay those first days after you brought me in, I wasn't fully unconscious. I could hear things.
Not words, more like shapes of sound. Your footsteps, the machine. And at some point, I heard you talking.
Talking to who? To me, I think, or to yourself, I think. I couldn't make out the words, but I remember thinking, "There's someone here.
I'm not alone. " And that's what pulled me back. I used to talk to you every night.
check your vitals, change the IV, and then just sit there and talk about nothing, about what I fixed that day, what broke, what I ate. I think I needed it more than you did. Maybe we both needed it.
You know what I never said out loud to anyone? Not to the comm's panel, not to myself, not to you when you under three years that I was scared. Three year never said I once said the word.
Are you scared now? Is this it right now? Sitting in a box in the middle of a dust storm on Mars with alien ruins behind us and God knows what ahead.
Yeah. No. And that's the strangest part.
Get some rest. I'll watch the systems. I thought you couldn't sleep.
I can't. That's why watch. Look at the ground.
Those ridges. I see them. They're too straight.
The storm arranged everything. I don't recognize any of this. Nav says we're close.
Less than 10 clicks. And they're parallel. Both sides of us now.
Are those walls? The storm stripped the sand off. Whatever's under here, we're driving through it.
Oh my god, it's real. the grid from the orbital scans. It's a city, streets, blocks, everything.
And those two structures in the south, pyramids, 60 m tall, they said they look bigger from here. Whoever built this, they built Stonehenge, too. the same people, the same whatever they were.
And they knew Earth, they knew us, or we knew them. Somewhere back in time, there's a connection that nobody on either planet remembers. What do we do now?
We go down there. We document everything. And when we get back, we tell them what we found.
And if they don't believe us, then we come back as many times as it takes. You know, 3 years I thought I was stuck here, stranded, surviving. Turns out I was just early.
Mission log. Psalm 247. I've been alone on Mars for eight months now.
Every day the same. Check systems, run surveys, try not to go crazy talking to myself. But today was different.
Today I found an ancient river. And at the end of that river, a cave. Inside that cave, a fortune in gold.
Nobody's going to believe this. Heat. Heat.
Heat. Heat. Hallelujah.
Sh. Heat. Heat.
