"What's the matter with you two?" Sergeant Jones asked with a raised eyebrow as Sergeant Barreto and Sergeant Lynch walked into the small hotel room. "You look like someone just walked over your grave."
"You could say that," Sergeant Lynch replied, letting out a long shuddering breath. "This job just keeps getting weirder."
"What happened?" Sergeant Stakes asked, putting down her phone.
"Well, we just discovered that we live in the Matrix," Sergeant Lynch replied, flopping down onto the hard bed.
Sergeant Stakes laughed, then sobered up as she saw the serious expressions on their faces. She looked at Sergeant Barreto. "Seriously?"
"Pretty much," Sergeant Barreto shrugged. "Oh, and by the way, Mars is just like Earth, and there is a good chance Earth will turn into a gas giant if we drill too far into the crust."
"Huh?" Sergeant Jones stared at her, nonplussed. "What are you talking about?"
"We just overheard a conversation Heidi had with Aria and Autumn," Sergeant Barreto explained. "They asked her why the Titan's destroyed civilization, which I can only assume means the legendary titans from Greek mythology, which might not be so mythological after all."
"Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?" Sergeant Stakes breathed.
"Yeah, it only got weirder from there," Sergeant Lynch said from where she was staring at the ceiling on the bed. "Apparently, the world actually was flat, a long time ago. Then some alien civilization shocked it like Frankenstein, and everything blew up into three-dimensional space like a balloon."
"Wow," Sergeant Jones said, her eyes alight with interest. "So what does that have to do with the Matrix?"
Sergeant Barreto rehearsed the conversation they had heard earlier. When she finished, Sergeant Stakes let out a low whistle of amazement. "So we have people on Mars? And there are lakes and trees and stuff?"
"According to Heidi," Sergeant Barreto nodded. "Sounds like an epic conspiracy theory, but this is Heidi we're talking about."
"You two going to brief the Colonel?" Sergeant Jones asked warily. "It might be dangerous for him to know some of this stuff."
"I seriously doubt he's in any danger as long as Heidi is alive," Sergeant Lynch chuckled. "If he were, he would probably already be dead. You don't think The Powers That Be would have left him alone after the abduction incident, do you?"
"Good point," Sergeant Jones agreed. "I still can't believe we're in some kind of super-matrix."
"Maybe that's how Heidi does the stuff that she does," Sergeant Lynch suggested thoughtfully.
"So have you all ignored the elephant in the room, or have you just not thought of it yet?" Sergeant Stakes asked, looking agitated.
"What?" Sergeant Lynch asked, sitting up.
"If the Ttians are real, doesn't that suggest something a little revealing about who Heidi is?" Sergeant Stakes asked meaningfully.
"Oh my god, you're right!" Sergeant Lynch smacked her head with a stupefied expression. "She really is a goddess, isn't she?"
Silence filled the room as they all stared at each other with wide eyes. Sergeant Barreto finally broke the silence. "Maybe, but perhaps not exactly like they were depicted in mythology. Maybe they just had access to advanced technology. After all, Arthur C. Clark once said that sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic to a lower tech civilization, or something like that. Maybe a former civilization was a lot more advanced than we are today.