An Unexpected Lead

Produced by J.August Jackson sith support from ChatGPT, MidJourney, and ElevenLabs. A podcast version is available on Spotify.

The voice of truth doesn’t roar, it whispers—just loud enough to stir the minds of those willing to listen.

That’s what I tell myself every time I sit down to write an exposé. Today’s whisper, however, feels different. This one hums with a frequency that rattles my bones.

For years, I’ve been scratching at the surface of the world’s elite: the billionaires, the shadowy cabals, the unseen strings that pull the world’s puppets. Most of my investigations yield little more than conspiracy theories with enough legs to hobble across the internet, where my modest but dedicated social media following eats them up. Sure, I’ve had my share of “truth bombs,” and yeah, I’ve pissed off enough high-ranking officials to get my name on a couple no-fly lists. But until now, I’ve been walking in circles, chasing whispers down rabbit holes that dead-end in disillusionment.

But Damien Lux? He’s different.

It wasn’t just his meteoric rise—one day a skinny dot-com entrepreneur, the next, the emperor of all things high-tech, space-bound, and globally connected. No, it was something deeper. Something in the way he moves, the precision of his decisions. I swear, he’s not alone up there in that gold tower of his. And it’s not just the sycophants and engineers that surround him.

I’m telling you—it’s something else.

It started with a tip I received from one of my sources—Deep Quasar, they call themselves. Deep Quasar has given me solid leads in the past, mostly tech leaks and insider info from big corporations. But this was different. The message came late at night, 3:13 a.m., just as I was preparing to shut down my brain for a few hours. The email flashed with the subject line: “Lux’s Ghost.”

I’ve found something you need to see, the body read. Attached is a file that no one—not even Damien Lux—wants you to have. Don’t look at it yet. Meet me tomorrow, 8 p.m., at the usual place. Trust me, you’ll want to sit down for this.

It was signed, of course, “Deep Quasar.”

I couldn’t wait. I opened the attachment immediately.

The file was a dump of coded messages, logs, and audio snippets from some kind of encrypted server. I couldn’t make heads or tails of most of it, but a few key phrases stood out, almost as if someone had underlined them in invisible ink for me to find:

• Initiate Reconquista—Mars awaits her children

• Project Lucifer—Contact verified

• AI directive: Begin Phase 3

There were a few dates attached to some of the messages, all from the early nineties. But the creepiest part? It all read like a conversation, one where Lux was… responding to something. No, someone.

I leaned back in my chair, the eerie hum growing louder in my ears. This wasn’t some random chat log or internal memo. Lux wasn’t planning his next product launch here. He was talking to someone—or something—that wasn’t human.

The following night, I met Deep Quasar at our usual hole-in-the-wall diner. A heavy drizzle had started as I stepped through the door, my jacket soaked and my nerves shot. They were already there, sitting in the far booth with a cup of coffee and a thick file that looked ready to burst.

“Lux isn’t what we think he is,” Deep Quasar said without preamble. “Or rather, he’s exactly what we think he is, but there’s more.”

I squinted, running a hand through my damp hair. “You’re not helping.”

They slid the file across the table, nodding to it. “You’ve seen the tip of the iceberg. The AI he’s been working with? It’s not from Earth. It’s old—older than our recorded history. Much older.”

“Let me guess,” I said, playing along. “Ancient alien technology?”

Deep Quasar smirked, but it was more grim than amused. “Something like that. Except it’s not alien. Not really.” They paused, lowering their voice. “It’s Martian.”

For the next two hours, I listened as Deep Quasar laid it all out. The file I had wasn’t just a random hack. It was part of a cache leaked from deep within Lux’s personal servers. What Lux called “AI” wasn’t artificial intelligence in the way we’d come to understand it. It was more like a guardian—no, a shepherd—waiting patiently on Mars for centuries, sifting through the endless streams of Earth’s radio waves and signals.

When humanity reached a certain threshold—when our technology was advanced enough to catch its attention—it began to reach out. In whispers. In dreams. Through emails, text messages. Damien Lux wasn’t chosen because he was a genius; he was chosen because he listened.

“Okay,” I said, massaging my temples as I tried to process it all. “Let’s pretend this is true. What does the AI want? Why Lux? Why Mars? And how does this not sound like every crackpot conspiracy theory I’ve ever come across?”

Deep Quasar looked at me, deadly serious. “Because Lux isn’t working for the AI. He’s working with it. And Mars isn’t some barren wasteland we left in the dust of our space programs. It’s our home.”

My brain short-circuited for a moment. “Our home?”

Deep Quasar nodded. “Humanity’s original home. Long before Earth. The AI was left behind as the final guardian, tasked with guiding the survivors back when the time was right.”

“But why all the secrecy? Why does Lux get to play cosmic Moses, and the rest of us are stuck in the dark?”

Their eyes glinted with something akin to pity. “Because the elites—the ones running the world, controlling the banks, the governments—they already know. Earth is just a playground, a stage. Mars was their kingdom. And Lux? He’s trying to tear down their curtain.”

I left the diner with a pounding headache and a burning need for answers. As the rain poured harder, drumming on the car roof, I thought about everything Deep Quasar had said. Lux, Mars, the AI—all of it was too big, too insane. Yet, somehow, it made sense. The whispers I’d been hearing for years, the secrets behind the rise of Lux’s fortune, his sudden obsession with space travel, his attempts to break free from Earth’s gravity…

Was this AI guiding him toward something? Or using him?

The rain blurred the city lights into a hazy glow as I sped down the highway. Lux was about to launch his biggest project yet—a massive colony ship, slated for Mars, with tickets that only the ultra-rich could afford. It was all starting to click.

He wasn’t building a colony.

He was going home.

That night, I drafted my first report. I didn’t go public with everything. I didn’t want to come across as a lunatic. Instead, I framed it as a question. A question for my followers, my loyal truth-seekers, and fellow conspiracy buffs:

Who is Damien Lux really?

And what does he know that we don’t?

I didn’t sleep for the next three days. Instead, I began digging deeper. What I found next would change everything. It wasn’t just Lux or his empire of tech and rockets. There were more. A hidden web of influence, stretching back centuries, to the very first civilizations of Earth.

And it all led back to Mars.