[ WP ] You 're the first astronaut sent to Mars . When you 're about to land , you spot a ship exactly like yours a mile away .

Millions, possibly billions, around the globe all gasped in synchronization as they saw the ship, exactly identical to ours, not even a mile from our landing zone. It was large, like ours, it was painted white with the distinctive NASA logo on the side and the numbers'2035' painted on the side. Except our ship read'2036' 
'Mission control, I repeat, mission control, can you read me?' They replied almost immediately. 
 
'This is mission control, we can read you, over.' The man on the other end sounded scared. Like we'd made a mistake. I looked at my crew members around me, all with the same pale white face, staring at the ship. 
 
'We're not the only ones seeing this are we?' I asked mission control.'Over.' 
 
'No, we're seeing this too. And there's something we have n't been honest about, But we ca n't discuss this live on air, wait until we contact you. Over.' And with that my radio turned to static and here we were, left 401 MILLION kilometers from Earth, with the aim to make this planet ours. 
 
 That's when we noticed something else. 
 
 We cut our cameras and decided we'd explore the dome of which we could see the roof of just over a hill. And so we left our ship after gearing up in the correct etiquette and stepped onto the orange dust of Mars. We did n't do or say anything special because we clearly were n't the first ones here. And that was certified when we found the crew of the 2035 mission. A secret project NASA worked on to see if a ship could make it to Mars. They did n't tell the crew what their goal was until they landed and cut all communications. They were the reason we were there. And so they welcomed us, helped us settle, fed us and taught us what they had built and we gave them our own supplies, set up a second dome for farming different crops and set up a third for a proper living quarters. 
 
 The year now is 2040, on Earth at least and we see another ship landing not one mile from our landing zone. Through the glass, we see their faces are pale and their ship is identical to ours. Except theirs read'2040'.
