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Jake agonized over the situation for the next couple of weeks while there was no further contact from the tiger and Curiosity's backup telemetry link stayed down. He wondered what it was exactly he might have done to upset the big cat. Everything had been going fantastically well right up until the moment Jake sent an image of himself and the tiger took a look at it.

Could Jake really be so hideous that the cat no longer wanted anything at all to do with him? It was certainly possible that a beautiful, furry race like the tiger's might see the more or less hairless apes that humans were as something ugly. Still, it seemed odd that the alien would allow such a momentous event as first contact and getting to know a completely new intelligent species fall apart over something as superficial and inconsequential as surface looks.

The tiger was clearly exceedingly intelligent. He was obviously curious about Jake and humans, and he had been enthusiastic about their sharing of knowledge up until Jake had shown him what he looks like.

He hoped whatever was keeping the tiger away for so long was simply something unavoidable, like the ongoing efforts to terraform Mars.

Just days after the cat had cut Jake off, the comets in the long line that had been launched at the planet from the Kuiper belt had started to rain down on Mars and it was clear from the way they were coming in that they were being used to seed the atmosphere of the planet.

The comets were all approaching Mars at a shallow angle in an almost glancing approach. As they neared the planet they were pulled in by gravity and captured in orbits that rapidly decayed, dragging the comets down in a spiral in such a way that they heated and evaporated before they could make contact with the surface of the planet. This approach avoided further bombardment of Mars's surface so as to prevent any unnecessary damage to the terrain.

The long bombardment by the asteroids coming from the belt between Mars and Jupiter had finally ceased right around the time the comets arrived. Data from the ACE and WIND spacecraft orbiting at L1 had already begun to detect a strong magnetic field building around the planet. They could see that the energetic particles that made up the solar winds were being deflected and diverted around the planet once again, just as they likely had been billions of years ago when Mars was more "alive". Scientists studying the process theorized that so much energy had been imparted to the planet's outer core that the field would likely continue to build a little more before it would finally stabilize into its permanent state.

The newly forming atmosphere being carried in by the comets would be safe from the solar winds because of the magnetic field, but it was likely that the miles high layers of thick Martian dust would not begin to significantly settle out for at least a couple of months, even though the meteor bombardment had stopped. How quickly the air would clear was primarily dependent on how fast the atmosphere would thicken up as a result of the comets, and how much of their makeup was water.

As Mars's atmosphere became saturated with water and gases from the vaporizing comets, the temperature would slowly begin to normalize. In its current state the planet's temperature varies wildly from day to night with highs at the equator in the summer getting to around 70 degrees Fahrenheit, but plunging to nearly -100 degrees at night, and even colder than that in the regions experiencing winter. The new atmosphere was currently in turmoil as a result. As night fell the water vapor would freeze into snow that would begin to fall to the ground. Even the ammonia that was present in some of the comets would begin to freeze out into a thin snow from the intense cold of night in the winter areas of the planet. At the poles, the temperature could still get so cold that even the methane would freeze, but that wouldn't happen much longer as the chaotic atmosphere began to create weather that would spread the planet's heat around.

In the daytime the snow from the frozen gases would vaporize again. The water snow would melt too, but the planet was so dry that most of the liquid water would likely be absorbed into the Martian soil before finally, in time, a water table would build up and standing water would begin to form on the surface wherever there were depressions in the terrain. Lakes would begin to form, then eventually streams and rivers that would start to flow down long-dead channels created from ancient flows of water that must have existed on the planet billions of years in the past. The flowing water would eventually collect into oceans. Water thought to be long frozen under the surface of Mars would also begin to warm and bubble up to the surface, carrying along with it the high concentrations of hydrated salts that scientists know exist on the planet. Those highly concentrated salts would mix with the rest of the water in the new oceans to bring the salt content very close to what can be found in Earth's salty oceans. The oceans would help to further moderate the planet's temperate and, as they warmed, they would begin to form an ideal habitat for ocean based lifeforms.

The Mangalyaan orbiter was beginning to detect substantially higher concentrations of methane and ammonia being added to the already existing low levels of carbon dioxide in the thickening atmosphere. Those gases, combined with the water vapor, were beginning to form an effective thermal blanket over the planet. Methane especially is a very efficient greenhouse gas that traps heat radiated from the sun, and it would help to keep the temperature more stable all around the planet. As the atmosphere got thicker, the heat that built up during the day would be retained more and more into the night. The equator would begin to get warmer, and the nights would eventually no longer drop below the freezing point except in the regions experiencing winter, just like on Earth.

In time, clouds would begin to form and soon after Mars would begin to be lashed with powerful rainstorms as the heavy concentration of water vapor began to condense and fall in liquid form instead of snow while the mean temperature rose. Massive storms would build from the steep temperature gradients between the cold and warm zones while the overall temperature of the planet moved upwards and the atmosphere began to churn more violently in its attempt to achieve thermal balance. It was felt that when that process finally began in earnest, the heavy rains would drag the martian dust down with it and begin to clear the air again. It would only be a matter of weeks after that that the Curiosity rover's main transceiver might finally be able to break through and bring its link back up. Jake dreaded the coming of that day since it would mean the end of his "alone time" with the alien, assuming the cat ever actually made contact again. In any case, it still may be months before that day would come.

Unfortunately though, it looked as though other developments would likely end his contact with the tiger sooner than that. He'd been given the news that a new, heavily secured location was being prepared as a base of operations for the alien response team, which included Jake as the operator of the rover. The aliens were still being considered as a possible threat by the government, so they felt that any facilities used to study them and make contact with them should be located in as secure a location as possible and defended against a possible attack so that none of the secrets gained by studying them would be lost. They were in the process of repurposing a part of the Cheyenne mountain nuclear bunker in Colorado to house all of the computers and communication equipment that would be used to study the aliens. It would still take several more weeks before it would be available, but they wanted it ready in time for Curiosity's link coming back up when the Martian atmosphere finally clears enough for rover's weak transmitter to punch through. Once the facility was ready, Jake would be relocated there. He would spend the rest of his days for the foreseeable future deep underground, where he couldn't possibly use his cellphone to tether his laptop any longer so he would no longer be able to sneak in through the back door. In any case, he would be relieved of any such equipment before he was even allowed to enter the bunker, so it was a moot point. The bottom line was that as a result of the relocation he would lose his chance to work with the alien on a one on one basis forever, and the government team would be calling the shots from that point forward.

There were also rumors being whispered around JPL that NASA was putting most of their planned projects on hold while they focused all of their resources and funding, along with massive sums of newly appropriated emergency funding, on building up a rudimentary planetary defense system as quickly as possible. The coffee room discussion theorized that their focus would be to launch as many nuclear warheads into space as possible, as quickly as possible. The warheads would be rockets themselves, but they would be carried up in groups in advance by much larger rockets built to carry heavy payloads up out of Earth's orbit, and then parked at the L2 Lagrangian point on the Mars side. They could then be targeted against any asteroids that might ever be shot from the belt towards Earth by the aliens. Launching the warheads from L2 would mean they could be built with very small engines using little fuel since they wouldn't need to overcome Earth's gravity, and they would have no problem reaching the asteroids in plenty of time to destroy them before they could reach Earth. Building them small and light would mean they could be mass produced using existing nuclear warheads and the buildup of an effective defense could happen quickly.

NASA was also putting the finishing touches on the James Webb space telescope they'd been working on for years that was scheduled for launch in just a couple of months, and adjusting its configuration so that it could be used to rapidly locate and lock onto incoming threats, and provide needed targeting information for the warheads. If the asteroids were of the smaller variety that had been used on Mars, a single detonation of a sufficiently powerful nuclear warhead out in front could likely take out many asteroids in one blast, and they should be able to get dozens of warheads in orbit at L2 in fairly short order, so they should be able to mount a somewhat effective defense. In order to achieve that as quickly as needed though, they would have to involve private companies like Orbital ATK, Blue Origin, SpaceX, Bigelow Aerospace, Interorbital Systems, Scaled Composites, and many others. In the old days when everything would have had to depend solely on NASA, such a rapid deployment would have been inconceivable. Now it was well within the realm of possibility, especially if they expanded their involvement to include companies outside the US like Virgin Galactic, Reaction Engines Ltd., Starchaser Industries and others.

The United States was engaged in talks with other space ready nations in order to get as much assistance in preparing for the defense of Earth as they could muster. It was felt that time was of the essence. The aliens were currently in a state of weaker presence and it may become necessary to act before they could get a firm foothold in the solar system. Once a reasonably adequate defensive grid was setup, they would likely move on to preparing more offensive capabilities such as possible strikes at the locations in the asteroid belt that had been used to fling rocks at Mars. Those locations would obviously be where any Earth bound projectiles would also be launched from, so taking them out directly would shut that capability down and remove the danger. The James Webb telescope would finally have the resolution needed to examine the belt closely and should have no problem locating the equipment that was being used to manipulate the rocks out there, and providing the target information to longer range warheads that could deal with the threat.

Larger rockets were also being planned to be assembled in Earth orbit and moved to L2 so that they could then be launched on short notice in Mars's direction if it was ever necessary and would be able to reach it as quickly as possible. Since the rockets would consist of nothing more than a warhead and a few electronics for guidance along with a very large engine, they could reach Mars in no time at all even though the normal launch window for an energy efficient Hohmann transfer orbit to the red planet had just recently closed and would stay closed for the next two years. In secret military meetings the possibility of quietly going ahead with those launches and actually putting nuclear warheads in orbit around Mars in advance in case they might ever be needed were underway.

Jake felt that if anything, the heightened defensive stance that Earth was preparing would likely only cause the aliens to begin to look at the humans as a possible threat where previously they had no reason to. It could lead to a dangerous escalation on both sides if it wasn't handled carefully. He surmised that the complete silence from the aliens was causing most of the concern. If they were friendly, why would they not have approached Earth already to let the humans know what their plans are? Why would they not begin to try to form diplomatic ties? To the paranoid governments, their silence could only mean a disdain for the Earth and its population. The governments were uncomfortable with the idea of allowing such an advanced species with the power to easily wipe out the human race to setup shop right next door, without them saying a peep about what their intentions are. If they didn't care enough about Earth to open up diplomatic relations, then they likely wouldn't think twice about destroying it either.

It seemed to Jake that the more likely possibility was simply that the Earth and its inhabitants hadn't been taken into consideration when the plan to terraform Mars, which was likely started a hundred or more years ago, was devised, simply because we were far too primitive to even have been contacted at that time. He imagined that, in the absence of faster than light travel, wherever the tiger race came from they would likely have planned all of this and put it in motion over a century ago, possibly even before we had started to emit radio waves that could be detected by them. Even if they did know we were here, they would not have had any way of knowing how far humans would have advanced in that time, or even if we'd still exist as a race when they arrived. It was even possible that they had no knowledge of the existence of intelligent life on Earth when all of this had begun so there were no contingencies in place to deal with it.

All anyone could do at this point was guess about the aliens and what their intentions might be, and that was a big part of the problem. The governments would naturally guess on the side of the aliens being an aggressive species bent on expansion that was a threat to Earth and the human race, at least until they prove themselves otherwise. They would feel it was their obligation to do so in order to protect the human race. The fact that the aliens were making no attempt to prove a benign intent was what was allowing the governments to wind themselves up tighter and tighter.

If the governments of Earth would simply be patient, Jake was certain the cats would make a more official first contact once they were properly settled in. Unfortunately, the governments of several countries, led by the United States, were already in discussion about whether or not they should even allow that settling in to happen. The solar system belongs to the humans in their opinion and if the aliens wanted a share of it, they should have asked first.

This new species was obviously much more advanced and as such humans would become second fiddle to them. The aliens would be able to dictate the rules of the relationship between them and the humans since they would wield the power to destroy the humans easily. The cats would be the ones in charge. The only real chance the humans would have to stop them and remain the masters of their own planetary system, would be to hit the aliens before they could establish a foothold. Though Jake didn't know it yet, there were already some discussions in military circles about preparing some sort of offensive to prevent the aliens from being able to complete their goal of inhabiting Mars. The longer the aliens stayed silent about their intentions, the more likely it was that the level of paranoia would increase to dangerous proportions. It was rapidly evolving into a powder keg that could explode with the slightest provocation. All that would be needed is the spark to set it off.

Jake wished now more than ever that he hadn't somehow screwed up and made the tiger cut off all contact. They'd been making such terrific progress so quickly. If they could establish some rudimentary means of communication and advance it sufficiently, Jake could try to let the tiger know what was going on back here. He needed to try to convince him to get his people to open up a conversation with the human race and make their intentions clear. If they were a peaceful race they needed to let the humans know they were perfectly safe. It might begin to defuse a situation that could easily get ugly in a hurry.

Jake was back into the abysmal situation he'd been in when Curiosity had first lost its connection from the dust storm. There was really nothing for him to do other than to wait for the situation to change. It was even harder this time because he wasn't sure if the cat would ever even want to talk again. Like before, Jake realized the only thing he could really do was to kill some time by trying to prepare things in advance in case the tiger ever opened up the dialog again.

He'd spent some time working out a set of equations with which he could describe to the alien a video compression algorithm. It was more complex than the simple one he'd devised for the raw audio data. Video was a much more cumbersome beast, but it also by nature contained a great deal more redundant information both spatially and temporally that was ripe for extreme compression without large amounts of data loss. The nice part of the equations was that they also inherently described how the input data and the resulting output following decompression needed to be formatted. It would use the language of mathematics to describe a means of creating a full color image for each frame along with the frame rate that would be used for playback. Jake had settled on thirty frames per second simply because the software he would be using to record the videos had that mode available, and it would be much more space efficient than higher frame rates. It would be quite good enough to provide smooth video playback at the lower resolution he'd also settled on, while allowing the much more advanced compression algorithm to allow for several minutes of video and audio to be stored in Curiosity's command buffer's limited space.

If the cat ever made contact again, Jake would be ready to show him how they might exchange videos with each other. He felt that would be important to enable faster progression on understanding each other's languages. Jake could simply stand in front of a camera and point at things and say this is a book, this is a desk, this is a human, and so on, all with accompanying audio. Or maybe hold up a tablet of his own in front of his camera with a word on it with a picture of what it means while saying the word so the cat would hear the English pronunciation. No matter how they approached it, the video with accompanying audio should speed the process of learning the languages quite a bit.

Jake had also spent quite a bit of time working on the dictionary idea he'd had earlier. With the previous rudimentary method of compression that they'd exchanged, Jake found that he could fit an entire English dictionary into the the rover's memory with plenty of room to spare. He searched the Internet and found a few illustrated children's dictionaries and realized those could be invaluable as well. They would tie thousands of words to a visual representation of what they meant and that might help. They would at least indicate to the cat that he was dealing with dictionaries which should help him determine what, if anything, he could do with the data. He wasn't sure if the cat would actually be able to do anything with all of the information, but he had nothing better to do than to bundle it all together so that he could send it out and the cat could either try to make something of it or ignore it, or at least set it aside for later.

He'd also prepared a list of slides that he would incorporate into a video that would show the cat the English alphabet along with the symbols we use for punctuation. Each had an accompanying ASCII code shown beside it to relate them to the stream of data that made up the dictionaries and he included a complete ASCII table as well. His hope was that the tigers may have more sophisticated computer systems that could perform heuristic processing on all of the data to begin to actually learn the English language for the cat, and then provide him with a means to perform a translation.

The latest thing he'd found was an audio dictionary app that contained nearly two hundred thousand English words along with the sound of them being pronounced. It would be difficult for the cat to make sense of it, so Jake had simply massaged the app's data to create a flat table of the English word stored in ASCII format along with the accompanying audio waveform that pronounced it. He once again relied on a mathematical formula to show the cat how the data was formatted. Accompanied by the ASCII table and alphabet, the cat would easily be able to use the data to convert any word typed in English to the sound of the word being spoken. Jake's dream was to ultimately have a translation program that the cat could speak into in his own language, which would get translated to the English language, and spoken using the words included in the audio dictionary. It wouldn't need to be perfect to be effective and the problem was not actually a terribly difficult one to solve, once the actual languages were understood, which of course would be the tricky part.

He was just finishing putting the data together in another file that he could later send through Curiosity's memory when his laptop suddenly bleeped with an alert that Jake recognized as meaning the program that monitors the rover's backup transceiver had once again locked onto a signal. The link was back up!

His heart began to race as he quickly brought up the script that took two images in a row and he injected it into the command stream.

The next six minutes were excruciating as he waited anxiously to see what he would see. Was the cat still upset? Was he ready to share again?

The laptop beeped and the image came up and Jake was relieved to see the tiger front and center and smiling at the camera. It wasn't the same happy smile he'd seen on the cat's face in their previous encounters. It looked a bit sad or chagrined. He couldn't quite tell which. The laptop beeped again a minute later and Jake saw the cat was pointing at his ear and also out of the picture towards the box he'd been using to send Jake the audio data during the last session weeks ago. It looked like he was telling Jake he'd left an audio message there for him.

He excitedly sent out the script that commanded Curiosity to provide a raw dump of its memory. When he received it he extracted the area below the script and took a quick look at it. It looked like a raw audio waveform again so he played it back. It was simply a long string of growls and meowls and a sort of whining that almost had an apologetic tone to it. It sounded to Jake almost as if the cat was trying to explain why he'd cut Jake off before, but of course it made absolutely no sense to him.

He decided that whether it was an apology or not didn't really matter to him. He wanted to let the cat know he liked him a great deal and was just happy to see him again. It wasn't even necessary for the tiger to reciprocate. It wouldn't change Jake's feelings. He was glad to be back in contact and he was anxious to start working with the big cat again. He quickly sent the script again that commanded Curiosity to draw the Jake emoji followed by the heart, and then the cat emoji and he waited for the images to come back.

When the laptop beeped he was happy to see the tiger smiling again as he blew a kiss into the camera. He didn't quite seem as enthusiastic as he'd been before, but at least he seemed to be more or less over whatever upset he'd been feeling after seeing the image of Jake.

He felt relieved and happy that they were back on track, and he felt it was time to put the incident behind them and get back to work. He went ahead and brought up the slides he'd prepared over the past weeks that described the more sophisticated compression algorithms designed for video, and he sent them out to Curiosity. He wanted to advance them to the next level as quickly as possible. Because of the Cheyenne mountain situation, he likely only had a few weeks to work with the cat now instead of the months he'd been hoping for.

He waited impatiently and the laptop beeped and the image showed that Curiosity had drawn his intended slide and once again the big cat was studying it closely. In order to explain to the cat that they were going to be dealing with video data now, Jake had simply had the rover draw a stick figure inside a box, but he drew it three times to look like three frames. Each time the figure advanced through the the process of waving its arm like the frames of an animation. After that he drew the complex equations of the video compression algorithm he wanted them to use, and then finally an arrow that pointed towards the box the cat had interfaced to the rover's memory.

Jake had also sent a short compressed video along with the script. It was now sitting in the robot's command memory waiting to be downloaded by the cat. He wasn't entirely sure if he should do it, since it was a video of himself waving to the camera and saying, "Hi there, I'm Jake Smith. It seems I somehow look offensive to you, but I hope we can get past that and continue to work together." He hoped it wouldn't cause the cat to suddenly break the connection again when he saw the ugly human waving at him, but he felt that any meaningful exchanges between them from here on out would involve him being in front of the camera, so it was best to find out right away if it would be an issue. The cat would have to get used to the way Jake looked if he wanted to continue a more efficient exchange going forward.

He knew it would take a bit longer this time, but only because of the more advanced programming the tiger would have to do in order to process the highly compressed video data. Figuring out what it actually was didn't require any sort of leap for the cat this time. He would know from the context of the short list of animated frames combined with the fact that they'd already exchanged audio and an image, that it was now moving video he was dealing with. The mathematics of the algorithms would explain everything in more detail than Jake could have done even if they did know each other's languages. The language of mathematics was much more precise and as engineers they both knew it intimately.

He once again sent the short script that would have Curiosity take an image, wait one minute, then take another in a repeating loop until he interrupted it, just so he could watch what was going on at the other end.

In time the images started coming in, and already he saw the big tiger sitting cross-legged in front of the camera, working away on his tablet. He had a smile on his face and it was clear he understood what he was dealing with already. Many images were sent across before he finally saw the cat holding up the tablet in front of the camera with what looked like the last frame of the video Jake had sent displayed in full color on the screen. The cat was grinning broadly and pointing at his ear with his other paw as if to indicate he had heard the audio too.

In the next image after that Jake could see the big cat's booted feet walking out of frame towards the box. He grinned as he sent out the command to Curiosity to send a dump of its memory again. It would take three minutes for the script to get there and he was sure the tiger would have finished uploading whatever it was he was sending back by the time the rover executed the command.

While he waited he saw the last few images from the previous loop come back in, and in them the cat had reentered the scene and was holding up his tablet. On it he'd drawn the cat emoji followed by the heart, followed by the Jake emoji. Jake smiled at the sentiment. Whatever it was that had upset the cat so much before seemed to be a thing of the past already. The cat had a sort of wistful looking smile on his face that Jake couldn't quite place precisely, but at least it was a smile. At the very least the emoji equation showed that the cat still liked him, despite whatever had upset him before.

At last his laptop beeped to indicate the receipt of the dump of the rover's memory so he quickly stripped out the compressed data and ran it through his decompression algorithm and played the video back. He grinned as he watched the big cat, who was standing in front of a camera of his own in the hanger, raise one arm with a fist over his head and roar a victory for the camera. He had a big smile on his face as he growled out some message, and then he did an exaggerated wink and blew a kiss into the camera.

Jake was absolutely thrilled. They were back on track and it had been just as easy as he'd hoped it would be to exchange the video compression scheme. Now they could actually point at things and say words to each other almost as if they were in the same room.

He put together the other large data file he wanted to share with the tiger. It contained all of the dictionaries he'd put together along with the audio samples of the English words and the ASCII table and alphabet and punctuation symbols. It was a lot of data, but the cat would likely understand that he wasn't expected to figure it out right away. He could work on it later on. He'd also commanded Curiosity to draw the Jake emoji with the equal sign, followed by the word "Jake", followed by another equal sign, and then a sort of definition of "Jake" as "the man who you are talking to", followed by an arrow once again pointing to the box interfaced to the robot's memory. The definition would be meaningless symbols to the cat, but he would quickly catch on that what he was seeing was a word that described Jake, followed by a definition of "Jake" because of the equal signs relating them. Jake hoped that with that simple message the cat would guess that the dump of data was dictionary information and he'd know to set it aside to deal with later.

He sent the scripts out and waited for the images to start coming back. The first one that came back showed the cat looking at the picture the rover had drawn on the tablet with a bit of a puzzled expression. The next one showed him walking off to download the data again. The next couple of images showed nothing, and then finally the cat was back in the picture again and he'd blanked Curiosity's tablet once more and was busy drawing on his own tablet while still looking sort of puzzled. Jake hoped he wasn't confused by the last set of data. He thought he'd sufficiently conveyed its meaning and the cat would know it was a dump of English dictionary data and he could deal with it whenever he might get a chance or feel the inclination, assuming there was actually anything he could do with it.

In the next image that came back Jake realized the source of the big cat's puzzled look. He hadn't really given it much thought when he'd drawn that the Jake emoji equals the word "Jake". This wasn't the first time the cat had seen that word, though it was certainly the first time the word had been related to the emoji of Jake. The tiger was now holding up his tablet and on it he'd drawn the Jake emoji followed by the word "Jake" followed by the equal sign and then a question mark. Underneath all of that he'd written "Jake Smith was here" followed by another question mark.

Jake took out his Android tablet and on it he typed in large bold text "Jake Smith =". He held the tablet up beside himself while he used his laptop's video camera to take a short video of himself pointing at the words and then pointing at himself to show the cat that the words were his name and as he pointed to each word and then himself he spoke each word out and said, "Jake Smith equals me." He couldn't conceive of any way to describe what "was here" meant at this point so he left that part out, but it would at least solve part of the mystery for the cat.

He compressed the video and sent it off, along with a command for the rover to draw the arrow pointing to the interface box that would let the cat know there was a video file incoming.

After a while one of the images that came back showed the cat grinning as he held up his own tablet that simply had "Jake Smith" written on it while the cat pointed straight at the camera with his other paw. He was showing quite clearly that he understood now what the words meant. The laptop beeped again and the next image came in. In this one the cat was holding up his tablet again, but this time Jake saw the lately too often repeated message "Jake Smith was here" written in a very odd looking image. It had a dark greenish tone over most of the picture with the message at an odd angle, and the words looked like they were written with great precision. The letters were very light greenish-grey and had very sharp edges. It looked almost like some strange sort of photo negative. He realized almost immediately that it looked sort of like a millimeter wave or x-ray image of the radioactive chamber that contained the robot's fuel! That was how the cat had learned the message! He must have been studying the rover in an attempt to discover why it was dead out there on the surface of Mars, and in the process of trying to find out what its power source was he must have imaged the inside of the fuel chamber with some kind of penetrating imaging system and saw what Jake had etched there!

In the next image the cat was pointing towards the interface box as if to tell Jake there was a file in there for him.

He ordered Curiosity to send him the memory dump and before long he was watching the video the cat had left for him. The first part of it showed the tiger holding up his tablet and there were a few words written on it in what must be the alien's language. Just as Jake had done, the cat pointed to each word while saying it aloud and then finally pointed at himself and said another word that must mean "me".

Jake smiled. He now knew the cat's full name and the symbols necessary to spell it out, though he would likely never be able to say it with much success. It was simply more growling to him in slightly shifting tones. He definitely loved the deep and resonant growl of the big cat's voice though.

As the short video continued, the cat then turned his tablet towards himself and began to drag his claw across it in various ways, then when he turned it back to the camera it had the x-ray image of the reaction chamber on it again. The cat reached out and the image jostled as the camera he was using to take the video was turned to point at Curiosity. The cat then moved over next to the robot and pointed right at the spot where there should have been a solid plate covering the area of the rover that contained the radioactive fuel source along with the power generator. Instead, Jake saw that the plate was gone, and inside was a nearly empty compartment that had previously been filled by the generator and fuel chamber. In its place was a very simple looking unit with a few cables coming out of it that had been connected to Curiosity's power system. The cat hadn't actually refilled the fuel chamber, he'd replaced the entire reactor! That explained why the rover was putting out more power than ever before. The cat, being an engineer, must have realized he could do better than refill the fuel, and instead put in an entirely new power generator based on some alien technology. All it would need to do was to put out sufficient electricity so as not to overwhelm Curiosity's power bus, but enough to charge its batteries as quickly and efficiently as possible.

In the last bit of the video the cat was pointing out the words Jake Smith on his tablet and then waving his big paw over the whole rover while looking questioningly at the camera. To Jake it looked as if the cat was asking, "Did you build this thing?"

He had no idea how exactly to answer the cat, so it would likely have to wait until they had more words in common since the answer wasn't a simple yes or no.

The rover was still in the mode where it was sending images in a loop so Jake's laptop beeped again and he looked over at the image. In it the cat was holding up his tablet again. On it was a beautifully detailed image of the Earth from space. Next to the image the cat had drawn the equal sign and a question mark.

Jake assumed the big cat was asking what the planet was called so he cobbled together a slide in which he drew a rough picture of the Earth and next to it he wrote "= Earth" and he sent the script off.

When the first image came back the cat was already holding up his tablet again, this time with an image of Mars from space with the question mark. Jake replied again, this time saying the planet in the image "= Mars".

The next image showed Mars again in a picture on the tiger's tablet, but overlaid on top of it was a series of curved lines wrapped around the planet forming a grid with small alien numbers written near the lines. Jake realized immediately it was the aliens' way of carving up Mars into a series of latitude and longitude lines. Another image came in from the rover and this time the image on the tablet the tiger held up showed a clear picture of the base the cat was in just as Jake remembered seeing it, followed by a series of numbers that Jake assumed must be the coordinates of the tiger's base written in alien numbers. That must have been what the cat was leading up to with the image of Mars with the grid over it. The cat was showing Jake precisely where he was on Mars, which of course he already knew since he knew the exact location of the Curiosity rover, but it was likely just the tiger's way of setting things up for the next question.

Just as Jake had guessed, the next image that came in showed the cat holding up the tablet again, but this time it was a crudely drawn picture of the Earth with several lines carved across it, followed by a question mark. Underneath that was a drawing of the Jake emoji, with an arrow pointing to the Earth, then another arrow coming out from there and pointing to some alien digits, followed by a question mark again. The cat was asking Jake where on Earth he was actually located!

This one was a sort of mathematical question again and the cat should have no problem understanding the answer Jake would send. He began to prepare a multi-part video for the cat using his tablet as a visual guide. He first found an image of Earth that showed the North American continent facing forward and held it up to his laptop camera to show the cat which continent he was on. He paused the video recording and searched the Internet until he found an expanded map of the entire world showing lines of longitude and latitude with each line marked with degrees so the cat would see how humans carve up the planet and he showed that. He then found a detailed close up aerial photo of the precise location of the IERS Reference Meridian that showed precisely where zero degrees longitude was located. That's the reference that's also used for GPS. If the cat's equipment could take such detailed images of the Earth, he should be able to match it to that photo and then carve up the Earth into longitude lines with great precision. Latitude zero would be easy for him to determine since it was halfway from either pole and that was clearly shown in the expanded map of the world.

He then paused the video recording while he searched for an atlas style image of the United States that showed latitude and longitude lines and the associated numbers and he held that up to the camera briefly so the cat could then identify roughly where on the North American continent Jake lived. Then he found a map of California and circled Pasadena. He then showed the cat a map of Pasadena with the area where JPL was located circled. Finally he typed in the coordinates that corresponded to his actual location in simple decimal degrees that corresponded with the latitude and longitude lines he'd shown earlier on his tablet with eight digits following the decimal point to give the tiger precision to within mere feet, and he held that up in front of the laptop's camera. It was all the tiger would need to very precisely pinpoint Jake's location.

He sent the video off with the arrow pointing to the interface box and set the rover back into a loop sending images back every minute. The first image once again showed the cat's feet as he walked off to get the download. A couple of images later showed the cat once again sitting on the floor of the hangar cross-legged in front of the camera and smiling while he watched the video. The next several images still showed the cat working at something on his tablet. He was likely using the images to zero in on the coordinates he'd provided to find out exactly where Jake was on the continent. One more image showed the cat dragging his claw across the tablet's surface, and the next image showed the cat holding the tablet up to the camera with a big grin on his face.

Jake was surprised to see a very detailed overhead image of JPL that was clearly taken from space. Was the cat able to take an image at that detailed a resolution all the way from Mars? Over the image the cat had scrawled "Jake Smith was here" and then drawn an arrow pointing right at the heart of JPL's main building very near where the coordinates Jake had provided him were located. Judging by the shadows, the time of day in the image gave the impression it was current, as though the tiger had only just taken it minutes ago.

He wondered if it really was a current image, and if so, just how much closer could the cat's equipment get? The image was so crisp and clear that it looked to Jake as though it still wasn't anywhere near the limits of whatever technology was used to take it. It was a lot better than any satellite or aerial photo he'd ever seen. It could likely resolve to an even greater detail and zoom in closer. He thought it might be fun to find out just how close the cat could get.

He brought the image into the Paint program, scribbled out the circle and line and the message the cat had scrawled on it, then he circled a bench that was on the lawn in an outside break area next to the building. He drew two lines extending from that circle outward to a larger circle he drew, in which he roughly drew a larger version of the bench to make it look like he was zooming the image in on the bench. Above the bench he drew the Jake smiley. For kicks he wrote underneath it, "Jake Smith will be here". He then compressed the image and sent it off to Curiosity's memory along with the command to draw an arrow pointing to the interface box to tell the cat he had a video waiting, and he added the script to begin taking images in a loop again.

He closed his laptop, checked his watch, and left the office. He walked down the maze of hallways to the side door and went out of the building to the break area. He sat down at the bench he'd circled in the image and checked his watch again. It would still be another minute before Curiosity would receive his commands, and another minute or so after that before the cat would decompress the image and act on it. He wasn't even sure the tiger would understand what Jake wanted him to do, but he'd shown he was amazingly clever so far. If he didn't get it this time Jake could try to think of a way to explain it better another time. He was really curious to know if their technology was so good that it could snap a detailed picture of Jake from Mars.

He waited a bit longer and then he looked straight up, grinned, and began to wave. He wasn't sure how long it would be before the cat would take the image so he just sat there looking up, and grinning like an idiot at the sky while waving for well over a minute.

"You OK, Jake?"

He jumped in surprise at the sound of the voice. He looked over and saw his manager, Rick, walking towards him. He flushed with embarrassment at being caught doing something so strange.

"Hey, Rick. Yeah, I'm fine."

"Why are you waving at the sky? Are you starting to lose it from being cooped up in your office with nothing to do all this time?"

"Pretty much. I came outside to get a bit of air. I know it's weird, but I was sitting here thinking about that big cat we saw on Mars. I suddenly wondered if he might be looking over this way, so the urge struck me to look up and wave to him."

Rick chuckled and said, "You really are losing it. Why the heck would he be looking this way?"

"I suppose there's no reason why he would. You know how it is. I just suddenly got the urge and I did it. I didn't think anyone would see me."

"I imagine you must be going nuts waiting for the storms to pass. I know you must be anxious to make contact again. I'm really jealous of you to be honest. You were lucky to be picked as the operator of the rover. I wish I could be there when it all starts to happen. There's a whole new intelligent species out there and someone is eventually going to get to figure out how to begin to communicate with them. You're actually going to see it all unfold, even if you'll have no real say in how it's done. That tiger looked so cool. I bet you can't wait to get going again."

"Yeah, I'm really looking forward to it."

"At least they're keeping me really busy, unlike you. It must be torture sitting alone in your office waiting for the link to come back up. I would have stopped in there once in a while to say hi, but we've all been ordered to stay away. Your office is sort of off limits now that the whole incident has become a top secret affair. We're not even supposed to be talking about it, really."

"I know. They're gonna cart me off to a new, top secret installation they're prepping for when the storm settles and Curiosity brings the link back up."

"I heard," Rick said, "They didn't tell me where it was, but I was notified that you're no longer a part of my team in any way for the foreseeable future and that you wouldn't even be on the campus much longer. They've got me involved in some projects that will keep me busier than I've ever been, so I probably won't see you again before you leave."

"Have they got you guys working on the next rover that was supposed to launch in 2020? It seems like it would be sort of pointless, and yet sort of more important than ever. The type of science it was being designed to do would be meaningless now, given the changes happening out there. It would be great to have a rover designed specifically to look around at the new Mars once the terraforming is done, but really we don't know yet exactly what the conditions will be. We'd need the aliens' permission to snoop around their planet too, I guess."

"Yeah. It's strange to think of it as being 'their planet', but I guess that's how we have to see it now. They cancelled the next rover project for now. They're pulling everyone over to a couple of new projects that I'm not allowed to talk about at all."

"I think I know what those projects might involve. I've heard some talk around the break room. If it's what I think it is, you need to try to put some pressure on them to stop it."

Rick chuckled, "You seem to be overestimating my level of influence. There's fuck all I can do to stop them. I have to do my job, or quit. I don't like it, but there are some that argue it's really necessary. I can't say I totally disagree with them, either. Those aliens could snuff us in a heart beat if they were of a mind to."

"What nobody seems to get is that doing what they're doing is exactly the sort of thing that might put the aliens in that mind set to begin with."

Rick shrugged and said, "I suppose you might be right. Anyhow, we shouldn't be talking at all at this point. I just came out to have a quick smoke. I'm gonna light up if you don't mind."

"Go ahead. I'll leave you to it. I should get back inside and sit at my desk and twiddle my fingers some more while I wait for Curiosity to call home."

"Take care, Jake. Hopefully we'll hook back up when this is all over. I want you back on my team."

"You take care, too. Good luck with your projects."

Jake got up and headed back into the building. He hustled back to his office. He hadn't meant to be away for quite so long.

He closed the door and locked it and then sat down at his desk, then he opened his laptop and entered his password on the lock screen. He was greeted with several images that Curiosity had sent across while he was away. The first one once again showed the cat walking off to download the new image, then he was out of the picture for the next couple of images. The next one after that showed the cat grinning broadly as he held up his tablet towards the camera. This time it had an image zoomed in very closely that showed Jake sitting on the bench outside, grinning, and waving up at the camera. He was stunned by the clarity and detail of it. What sort of technology did the aliens have that allowed them to take that close of a picture with that much detail all the way from Mars? It looked so incredibly sharp and clear that it could likely still be zoomed in more to the point of being able to count the pores in the skin on the end of Jake's nose.

In any case, it somehow felt great to know that the big cat knew exactly where Jake was, and he knew exactly where the cat was. It somehow made their connection feel even closer.

He smiled as he moved on to the next few images. In one of the last ones he saw the cat patiently waiting for a response from Jake, but nothing was coming. Then another image showed the cat looking off to the side like he'd done once before. The next image showed him looking a bit miffed at the interruption as he was caught in the act of reaching over to turn off the tablet that was setup for Curiosity to write on. It was the tiger's way of showing Jake he wouldn't be around for a while.

There were a couple more images that had come in that showed no sign of the cat, so Jake knew they were on an enforced break again.

He was disappointed, but it had been yet another amazing session with a real breakthrough. They could exchange videos of each other now, and the cat actually knew precisely where Jake was on Earth.

He wasn't sure how long the interruption would last this time, but he hoped it wouldn't be long at all.