It was a cigar-shaped lump of rock, a dull red in color. In augmented reality the object turned lazily on its short axis. Also known as ‘Oumuamua, which is a Hawaiian word meaning ‘first messenger.’ ” “This,” he said, gesturing at the air above their heads, “is an object called 1I/2017 U1. Light bloomed above them as an AR image formed, pixels coalescing out of the air. He tapped the screen on the podium and got started. Sunny knew what was at stake with these presentations. Still, she was just one more person he needed to convince. The sunglasses made it impossible to see her eyes. Who still wore AR sunglasses? Everybody in his generation just used an earring or a nose ring as their device. He just wished - he wished Jansen would take those sunglasses off. He was a little thrown, but he could do this. What the hell was she doing here? This was top-secret stuff, not meant for every washed-up astronaut NASA could drag in off the street. Most likely for the discovery he’s going to tell you about today.” He may look young, but don’t let that fool you. He’s an astrophysicist working in our Planetary Science Directorate. It took Sunny a minute to realize whom he was looking at. Roy McAllister and a middle-aged woman wearing a pair of cheap AR sunglasses. Two more people came in and sat down in the front row.

Maybe she had some idea of what he was going to say. She gave him back a very fast, tight little smile, then leaned forward and hugged her knees, as if she was very nervous. He took his hat off and carefully sat it on the seat next to him. A Southeast Asian woman in a cardigan and some military guy with tons of medals on the front of his uniform. Two of them sat down in the middle rows, a couple of seats apart from each other.

Today only four came in and sat down in the big stadium-style chairs.

Whom could they possibly be bringing in this time? The secretary-general of the UN? The classroom could hold 120 people. He was still a ball of nerves as he headed to classroom six at JPL and loaded all his files into the screen on the podium. Now he was giving the talk one last time. Then one day they’d put him in front of a 3-D camera and told him he would be speaking directly to the president of the United States. When he gave the same talk to NASA’s advisory groups, then the mission directorates and the staff offices, he’d gotten down to a tight twenty. The first time, when he’d talked to McAllister’s boss - NASA’s administrator, the head honcho - it took ninety minutes to get through. Sunny had given this presentation multiple times.

The Last Astronaut by David Wellington