Unbenlievable

Nothing about Tuesday said it was coming. Gray sky. Typical traffic. I said a polite good morning to Xan, Mike, and Jerry as I entered the office. Jerry said it back. I took my place, adjusted my chair, and got to work. The rest of the team would arrive soon and follow the same routine.

Savannah arrived a few minutes after I had settled in. Not unusual. The clunk of her water bottle hitting her desk suggested no excessive frustration. She said hello to the room as she unloaded her bag and sat down. Soon the slightly too loud drum of her keyboard joined the general effort. I didn't notice anything off about her.

"Have you been following the Artemis II mission?"

Mike's question cut through the drone of rattling HVAC. The room turned to him. "I've been looking at the pictures and —"

"That's propaganda. We've never been to the moon."

The voice came from the back of the room. Quiet. Certain. The room went silent as it looked for the source.

Xan turned his chair.

"Xan's right," Savannah affirmed, "There's no way we had the technology to land on the moon in the 60's. It was a ploy to beat the Russians."

I looked around the room. Jared and Shaylee looked amused, but unfazed. Kiersten and Mike seemed confused. Scott and Jerry, stoic.

"I mean, it is kinda crazy when you think about it..."

The third voice came from my left. Then a fourth from in front of me: "Didn't NASA film backup videos just in case? Do we know they didn't use them instead?"

Something cold moved through me. My vision narrowed. I clutched my chest. I looked around the room again, afraid of what I would find. I expected confusion or defiance. I saw only nodding heads and smiles.

"You can't be serious." The words escaped my mouth before I had anything to follow.

"Ben, you're telling me you think we had the technology to put people on the moon in 1969?" Savannah's voice was even. "We were in the middle of the Cold War and had to beat the Russians. We did not land on the moon."

As Daniel before me, I had been thrust into the lion's den.

"But...the radio transmissions... the retroreflectors... the independent verification by multiple countries including the Soviet Union who had every reason to disprove it..."

I looked around the room one more time. Nobody was confused. Nobody was waiting for an answer. They had already decided.

I clenched my fists.

So had I.

- Ben