34 Moon Bounce

Emma found the figures carved by her father 13 years ago on one of the antenna poles and immediately took a picture of them. After pondering for a while, she returned to where Haoran was standing and asked him to come down.

"We're done here. I've found the clue I was looking for," Emma said. Haoran nodded as Emma took his hand and flew down to the ground.

"Why don't we just fly to the hotel?" Haoran asked.

"I don't know the way," Emma said with a shrug. "The view from up there and the view from down here are different."

"Oh... that's right," Haoran finally understood.

For them, it would be easier to fly toward the Eiffel Tower because the tower was humongous and could be seen from anywhere in the city center. But it would be difficult to find Hotel Nobel from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Their hotel was surrounded by so many similar-looking buildings.

So, the best option was to walk home or take a taxi. They decided to take the latter.

In the taxi, the two didn't discuss what had happened that night. They didn't want the taxi drivers to listen to their conversation. Only after they had arrived back at the hotel lobby did they discuss the clue Emma had found in the antenna tower.

"It feels like I'm doing a scavenger hunt to find pieces to complete a puzzle," Emma said softly. "My father left the coordinates of our home on the Moon. He deliberately put it where no one else could read it but me."

"You mean at the antenna tower earlier?" Haoran asked. "What are the coordinates?"

Emma pulled out her cellphone and showed him the picture she took. "This."

"Don't tell me this is the location of your parent's capsule on the Moon," Haoran said enthusiastically. "In that case, we should give these coordinates to Goose and let her do the search."

"You think so?" asked Emma. "Do you think we can trust Goose?"

"Goose built her reputation on a trust basis. Before, she didn't care who hired her services as long as they could pay her, so her clients began to trust her as she proved herself. But now, she's different. Goose has been openly refusing offers from the underworld and works with only select people. Not to mention, she has agreed to help us twice without payment. I think we can trust her."

Emma stood in silence in front of the elevator door. Although she was eager to trust Goose completely as Haoran did, she had never been in contact with Goose personally. Emma didn't even know what Goose looked like or where she lived, so it was hard for Emma to blindly trust Goose.

"Haoran, I don't think I want to take any risk," Emma finally said.

DING

The elevator door opened, and they entered. Haoran pressed the buttons for the 5th and 10th floor.

"You don't want to ask Goose for help?" Haoran asked her. "She can check these coordinates and immediately give the answer you're looking for."

Emma shook her head. "We don't know who or where she is. What if she betrays us and takes this information for herself? Then, I'll lose our home on the moon. I don't want to risk it."

"Okay. So, what's your plan?" Haoran asked. "We don't have the expertise to hack satellites like Goose."

Emma clenched her fists, and her face looked determined. "I'll learn it. I'll find out for myself without asking Goose for help. I'll be patient. You said it yourself, it might take years."

Haoran was stunned by Emma's determination. He finally nodded. "All right, if that's what you want."

DING

The elevator stopped on the 5th floor, and the door opened, but Emma didn't come out. She was still busy with her own thoughts.

"This is your floor," Haoran reminded.

"Hmm... I know." Emma pressed the elevator button to close. The elevator continued to the 10th floor. Haoran didn't say anything as they moved to his floor. He didn't plan for Emma to his suite tonight, but he didn't mind it one bit. When the elevator stopped on the 10th floor, and the door opened, Emma pulled Haoran's hand out, saying, "I want to discuss something with you."

"Okay," Haoran said as Emma dragged him toward his suite in 1012. Once they were at the door, Haoran swept the access card from his pocket, and both of them walked inside.

Emma immediately sat on the sofa with a serious face. "Take out your laptop."

"Give me a sec," said Haoran. He took his laptop from the study room and handed it to Emma. "The password's 1204."

Emma nodded. She turned on Haoran's laptop while Haoran went to the kitchenette and boiled some water to make tea.

"There's a new message from Goose," Emma said as she noticed the notification flashing on the lower right. Emma felt it had something to do with the task they gave Goose to track the whereabouts of her parents.

"Just open it," Haoran said from the kitchenette. He was busy taking out boxes of tea from the cupboard to make their tea. "Do you want Fruit Tea, Earl Grey, or Chamomile?"

Emma was touched by Haoran's attitude. He really trusted her and didn't even hesitate to give her the password to open his laptop. In addition, he even let Emma open his inbox to read the message from Goose.

With a pounding chest, Emma opened the message. She had heard from Haoran many times Goose was the best hacker in the world. So, Emma had been hoping that the hacker would be able to provide additional clues for Emma to find her parents.

[In my whole life, this is the first time I've had to admit failure. I've run hundreds of searches at the same time for 24 hours, but they didn't produce any results. I even searched in databases from up to fifteen years ago. This is really unusual. As if wherever they were, they were never recorded by any cameras. I've never come across anything like this.]

Emma felt discouraged. Even Goose, whom Haoran said was the best hacker in the world, couldn't find her parents' tracks. The girl bit her lip and tried to think.

A moment later, Emma typed a reply to Goose. Emma suspected her parents did something to hide their faces from being caught by cameras anywhere in the world. They did it for the purpose of being invisible but there was no way they could keep hiding their bodies.

[They're researchers who worked on secret projects and were accustomed to hiding from surveillance. You might be able to find patterns between photos and videos of a couple whose faces are faint, blurry, or hard to recognize. It's easy for them to deceive surveillance cameras around the world using infrared. Their faces won't be caught on camera. But their bodies will still be seen. Maybe, if you could find such patterns on the database, two people, one man and one woman together, whose faces were never caught by camera... then you might be able to find them. Try checking the surveillance camera database in Paris throughout February 2043.]

After pressing the SEND button, Emma put down Haoran's laptop on the table and took a deep breath. She had given a very specific instruction to Goose. She hoped the hacker would be able to narrow down her search and find clues about Emma's parents' tracks in 2043.

Emma knew that by the end of the winter of 2043, Kaoshin and Arreya Stardust were in Paris because they wrote the coordinates for Emma on top of the Eiffel Tower.

Later, they took little Emma to the orphanage. Goose would definitely be able to find their appearance data on the camera surveillance from that month.

Emma wanted to know where her parents had gone after leaving her in the orphanage. From there, she would look for their next track.

"What did Goose say?" Haoran asked, carrying a tray with a pot of tea and two cups. He placed them on the table and poured tea for them.

Emma took Haoran's laptop and showed him the message from Goose and her reply. Haoran nodded and before he could make a comment, a message came from Goose again.

[This is very helpful! You're right. People can easily avoid surveillance cameras with infrared. You're so smart. I'll launch new searches with these specifics.]

Haoran typed a reply to Goose. [Thank you, Goose.]

He and Emma then exchanged glances.

"Now we just have to wait," said Haoran as he handed a cup of tea to Emma. "Drink first. I thought you wanted to discuss something important."

He checked his watch, the gesture, unknowingly to him, actually made Emma feel guilty. She felt bad about taking Haoran's time even though it was already past midnight.

"Are you going to sleep? Am I bothering you?" Emma asked in a shy voice.

Haoran shook his head. "Oh, not at all. Like I said, don't be a stranger."

"Hmm... okay." Emma nodded. "Thank you."

She took a sip of her tea and looked at the carpeted floor.

"Looks like something's bothering you," commented Haoran, also drinking his tea. "You can tell me anything."

Emma stared at Haoran for a long time before placing her cup on the table. "Uhm... you said, your father has an investment in SpaceLab, right? I need to use a connection to SpaceLab to send messages to the Moon using their Deep Space Network*. I've heard that SpaceLab's DSN network is the best in the world today. If we can use that, we won't have to use Goose's services. I want to be able to send the message myself."

Haoran looked calm when he heard Emma's words. "What kind of message do you want to send? If it's just a radio message, you don't have to use the SpaceLab connection or even DSN. We can send messages using radio waves to the Moon. Many people are doing it for almost a hundred years already. Have you heard of Moon Bounce*? A lot of radio amateurs do it as a hobby, sending radio waves to the Moon using the EME technique, Earth-Moon-Earth. We can send radio waves to the Moon, and later, the waves will be bounced back by the Moon's surface. It takes 2.5 seconds to do it."

Emma looked at Haoran with an astonished face. "How do you know all this?"

Haoran shrugged with a happy smile. "I have an interest in astronomy. Since I know my father's investing in SpaceLab, I'm determined to get there one day. You didn't know about Moon Bounce?"

Emma shook her head. "I had no interest in astronomy before this."

"Ahh..." Haoran patted his chest and said enthusiastically. "I know a lot about space. I'll help you send your message to the Moon."

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[1] Deep Space Network = Worldwide network of U.S. spacecraft communication facilities, located in the United States (California), Spain (Madrid), and Australia (Canberra), which supports NASA's interplanetary spacecraft missions. It also carries out radio and radar astronomical observations for the exploration of the Solar System and the universe and supports missions that orbit the Earth. DSN is part of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Similar networks are run by Russia, China, India, Japan and the European Space Agency.

In this novel, the Deep Space Network referred to by Emma is the space program network owned by SpaceLab (private space exploration initiative) in collaboration with all public space programs in the world.

[2] Moon Bounce = Earth-Moon-Earth Communication (EME), also known as Moon bounce, is a radio communication technique that relies on radio wave propagation from an earth-based transmitter directed through reflection from the surface of the Moon back to Earth-based receivers.