Thanks for joining us today. I’m Scoop Anderson, and this afternoon I can tell you that I have some amazing news.
When we think of conspiracy theories, we all have something that comes to mind. Maybe for you, it’s the Kennedy assassination or the current health status of Elvis. For me, it has always been the moon landing. There was just something that didn’t feel right about it.
Well, I’m excited to tell you that here at Fake Cat News, we’ve put together all the pieces of a story that is going to shake the world.
The moon landing was a hoax, and we can prove it.
The trail of evidence starts at the home of a soft-spoken 17-year-old Canadian hacker named Milo. With a keen interest in proving that there was life on Mars, Milo hacked into the feed from the Mars Rover to NASA. He was convinced that the space agency wasn’t telling the truth about what they were finding on Mars and he was right.
One day, while Milo was monitoring data from the rover, a series of pictures appeared. They displayed something the rover had found while digging in the dirt and taking soil samples. The data that came next confirmed that the photographs were, in fact, pictures of cat poop in the dirt on Mars.
Milo immediately posted the pictures and data on Reddit and the story went viral. How is it that a cat was ever on Mars?
Pressure quickly started to build on NASA. How long had they known? Did they have anything to do with putting a cat on Mars?
All the speculation was too much to take for a retired rocket scientist named Greg. At the age of 84, Greg was losing a battle with cancer, and as far as he was concerned, he deserved it. The decades of secrets and lies he had carried with him because of a mistake he made had taken a heavy toll. As he saw it, the price was cancer. He couldn’t take it anymore, and he agreed to tell his story to Fake Cat News.
It had all started with monkeys. Greg was an engineer who designed the part of the rocket that housed the test monkeys. There would be a couple of chairs, a feeding contraption, windows, and some simple controls that the scientists used for testing. Greg had built these for a decade’s worth of test missions. Brave monkeys were shot into space so their vital signs could be monitored until the very end.
When Greg got the call telling him he’d be designing the control pod for the first human mission to the moon, he was ecstatic. He would be part of history and he’d get a raise.
Greg worked day and night to design a control room that was ahead of its time. The astronauts would have their every need taken care of. As he sent the files to the rocket construction team, he swelled with pride.
It’s safe to say the whole country was on the pride train. The hype was overwhelming. The astronauts were already heroes, and the President of the United States was already taking credit for a mission accomplished.
A day before the launch, when the rocket was delivered, the bottom dropped out of the dream. It turns out that Greg had made an error in the formula that determined the units of measure. The math is complicated, but what it comes down to is this: the pod had been built to the measurements of a monkey, not a human astronaut.
The scene in the NASA control room could be characterized as hushed panic. What were they going to do? They couldn’t send astronauts to the moon in a rocket built for a monkey. Who was going to tell the president?
Then, a young scientist in the back of the room let out a faint “We could fake it…”
Everyone in the room looked over at him in disbelief, and maybe with a hint of hope.
“Yeah, we could fake it,” he said. “My brother makes monster movies in his garage. I’m sure he could help us. We could use the old gym as a soundstage, and we already have the space suits and astronauts.”
Soon, everyone started to get excited. Maybe they could do it?
Another engineer reminded the team that they had agreed to let a local high school monitor the vital signs of one of the astronauts live.
“We could use a monkey!” said one enthusiastic engineer.
But most people agreed that they didn’t happen to have a monkey. Then, as if in unison, they all looked over at the official NASA control room cat, Lacy, who had been following the day’s events closely.
It was decided. Within hours, Lacy had been strapped into the control pod with a self-cleaning litter box and a bag of cat food.
From here, our story comes from video recordings taken from inside the pod and sent back to NASA.
The camera’s view shows the main hatch being opened from the outside. A hand reaches in with two white mice dangling by their tails. The mice are dropped, and the door quickly closes. Later, it was determined that the hand belonged to a young janitor who had befriended the cat. He figured Lacy would find them delicious.
All of America, and much of the world, gripped their seats as they watched the rocket launch toward the moon and into history. Lacy gripped her seat too, in sheer terror, as the rocket ripped into the sky.
After what seemed like forever, the booster rockets detached, and the spacecraft continued on its path toward the moon.
Inside the pod was a sight to see. Lacy the cat had some loose straps keeping her on the seat, but the two mice weren’t as lucky. They floated around and around in the air without gravity to keep them on the floor. Occasionally, Lacy would nip at them with her teeth, but her heart wasn’t in the hunt. She knew she was in trouble. Her three years of hanging around NASA had taught her a lot. She figured she could even fly this thing if need be—but she also knew that might not be enough.
Lacy figured the ship was on autopilot to the moon and would land itself, but she didn’t know if they planned on bringing her home. She would just have to enjoy the view and make the best of it.
After many hours, Lacy got bored and decided to catch one of the mice. One had stopped floating and crawled into a control panel. The other was still floating near Lacy’s head with an odd anti-gravity swimming motion. It took a couple of tries, but eventually, Lacy reached out and grabbed the mouse with her claws.
Suddenly, Lacy heard a yell from the control panel. The other mouse screamed, “Please don’t eat my darling Peaches! She’s all I have!”
Lacy was having none of it. After all, she was pregnant. She needed the protein.
Then the mouse yelled, “I’ll cut this red wire with my teeth!”
Lacy figured the tiny mouse would never cut the wire before she could get to him, so she slowly placed Peaches in her mouth.
Just then, the mouse in the control panel bit down, easily cutting the wire in one skilled motion. The ship began to spin in space, and Lacy lost her grip on the mouse, who quickly flew into the control panel with her husband, Joseph.
Back at NASA, there was mayhem. The ship’s autopilot had failed, and the craft was off course. It quickly became evident that the ship had overshot the moon.
Then suddenly, something changed. Everyone in the control room stood in stunned silence as the ship straightened its path and took a new course. They couldn’t believe their eyes.
Back on the ship, Lacy was furious. That darn mouse had disabled the autopilot, and Lacy had to take over the controls herself. As she saw the moon fade into the distance, she knew a new plan was needed. Lacy decided to head for Mars.
On the ground, NASA moved forward with releasing their fake moon landing footage, while keeping one eye on the trajectory of their spacecraft.
As news of the successful moon landing spread, the world celebrated.
On the spacecraft, there was a celebration of sorts as well. Lacy came to a power-sharing agreement with the mice—and not a moment too soon. Peaches gave birth to seven squirmy little babies. It was an exciting time in space: floating baby mice grabbing cat treats in zero gravity.
Not long after, Lacy had a litter of kittens who were more than eager to bounce from wall to wall in the control pod, mastering barrel rolls and pretend mouse hunting.
NASA later determined that the craft likely burned up in the Martian atmosphere while attempting to land. But a small group of scientists still held out hope that the landing was successful. That same group spearheaded the effort to send a robot to Mars to go cat hunting.
They decided to call it… Rover.
