This fourth part of the Dark Horizons story is the final part that deals with the aftermath…
Some time passed after the New Horizons flyby, on the whole things went back to normal. Eveyone had soon decided to get on with the original job, no one dared discuss the events of that day. Anyone that even alluded to it was met with critisism and told to shut it. No one wanted those people back and to be under scrutiny again. It seemed everyone treated it as a massive secret.
Many of the people couldn’t come to term with what had happened and disappeared, there were the odd random conspiracy theories posted online about a huge spacecraft discovered by the New Horizons probe. With no evidence to back this up, these were dismissed as another crack pot conspiracy theory. One of the most notable disappearances was Sarah. Serveral months after the flyby she had told Henry that she was going to visit some university friends in Chicago. Henry suspected she was going to take her stolen data to them so it could be analysed, he warned her not to. The discussion turned into an argument and she left in a bad way. Sarah never arrived in Chicago – her car was found deserted on a remote country road. A police search failed to find her and eventually she was listed as missing.
Henry tried to find the official called John Hanson and failed to locate him. For a long time no-one would respond to his questions. It was only when the state governor involved that that he was told “No one knows about John Hanson”
Henry insisted “You must, I’ve met him and I think he knows about the disappearance of my colleague”
“The man isn’t being protected – he simply doesn’t exist” Henry was told. With no futher clues to who he was Henry abandoned his attempts to find him and Sarah. He regisned his post, bu always wondered what really happened that day and all the days after. In hi dreams he never forgot the huge battered hulk of a spacecraft he and everyone else saw that day. Sometimes he wished it had been his worst nightmare.
New Horizons didn’t finish at Pluto – it went onto explore objects on the furthest reaches of the solar system… whatever they were.
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Simon Farnell
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