[ WP ] We finally get men on Mars and they discover an old Soviet flag placed down decades ago . The Soviets won the space race but for whatever horrifying reason did n't say anything .

Sarah crested the red ridge and her heart burst. She had almost literally moved mountains to be here. And now the rocks, sand and dust she had memorized for years lay before her. Her view from the southern slope of Olympus Mons stretched for kilometers -- though that seemed too small a unit to measure what she could see. It felt like she could see for light years. She could feel the stretch of time and space across this ancient landscape. She could feel it stretch across her own landscape, tracing her journey from the wheat fields of Washington, where she learned her love of the stars, through the naval academy and, eventually, here on the fourth rock from the sun. 
 
 She felt she could see everything, but soon only one thing dominated her vision: something that looked like -- but could not possibly be -- a metal pole with a red and yellow flag drooping to its side. 
 
 Sarah called out, `` Jordan, I'm climbing down a klick to a crater that may have some exposed metal.'' `` Sure thing, Skip.'' 
 
 The object that could not have been a flagpole was nestled into a crater, and looked like it would be in the shadows almost the entire day. Sarah had only caught a small glint from the top few millimeters of the pole that was in the light, but it was enough. 
 
 As she climbed down, she thought about all the factors that had brought her so far: the dissolution of NASA and the privatization of the American space program, the food shortages in Asia that had destabilized a third of the world's population, and the wild hope that low-grav farming on Mars would someday solve the problems on Earth. While she was not on Mars to prospect for metals, the Mars First Consortium would not say no to anything useful. And so she descended under the guise that she was prospecting. She knew the truth though -- whatever she was chasing was far above and beyond her pay grade. 
 
 She reached the crater and found what she would have called a path to the floor of the crater, except there were n't any paths on Mars. She reached the floor of the crater, and all her instruments went dark. Her rebreather was working fine, it could handle a power outage, but coms, lights, and navigation were all off. She tried to reboot her suit, to no avail. Things were weird enough, so she decided to press on the 50 meters to the `` flagpole'' anyway. 
 
 Sarah had walked over all kinds of Martian dust, or sand or gravel, but she had n't seen anything like the bottom of the crater. It was oddly smooth, as if it had been sanded down and polished, with a thin layer of dust to coat it and a few rocks and boulders strewn around for show. She could n't shake the feeling that she should be anywhere but in that crater, out of the sunlight, with no communications. She was not exactly afraid, she just had that old familiar feeling that what she was about to do was intensely stupid and yet inevitable she would do it. It was like when she ate a whole ghost pepper on Charlie's dare on her honeymoon. A terrible decision, but one she had to make anyway. Come to think of it, Charlie himself was one of those terrible decisions. 
 
 She reached the flagpole. There was no denying it any longer. It was about five feet high, perfectly cylindrical in shape, and of course there was no mistaking the hammer and sickle flag that indicated the Soviets ( or someone pretending to be them ) had marked their time in this crater. 
 
 Another stupid decision: she touched the pole. A jolt ran through her finger, up her arm and through her body. That was n't supposed to be possible with the padding in her glove, but she found herself splayed on the ground shaking anyway. Actually, she was n't shaking, the ground was. She tried to get to her feet as a thicker darkness rose around her and swallowed the skies above her, but it was no use. She was being lowered underground. All she could do was wait it out. 
 
 Sarah sat, and waited, well away from the flagpole ( she was n't making that mistake again ). She may have dozed off, it felt like she was descending for hours, or it might have been a couple of minutes. 
 
 Finally, her platform reached its destination. A door opened into a spartan metallic corridor with blinding incandescent lights. Sarah took a moment to adjust her eyes and began to explore the corridor. She was familiar enough with Russian design from her days training for the ISS that she could see many of the same influences. There was something to the platform, the shape and color of the metal, the design ( or lack thereof ) of the panels making up the corridor, that gave her a nostalgic feeling of training for a Soyuz mission. 
 
 She reached a door to another room. It was ajar. She pushed it open and gasped. On a series of ancient monitors, yet in surprisingly high definition, she watched as pivotal moments of her life played out: her first kiss, her graduation, the moment she knew she had to divorce Charlie to achieve her dreams... The room looked and felt old. The monitors had even older terminals with keyboards set in Russian, though a few looked newer and seemed to have standard Qwerty keyboards in English. The chairs were steel and looked exceedingly uncomfortable, but looked as if they were polished yesterday. Sarah's eyes were drawn back to the monitors, where the center screen flashed a message in English. 
 
 `` Hello Sarah, we have been waiting for you...'' 
 
 `` Hello? Who is there?'' Sarah said, once in English and once in Russian. 
 
 A new message flashed onto the screen, `` We are.'' 
 
 `` Who is'we'?'' 
 
 `` Come and see for yourself...'' A small, unassuming door towards the rear of the room opened with a click and a hiss. Sarah felt compelled to step through. She still had n't shaken the feeling that she should just run away and hide, but her curiosity was overwhelming. 
 
 She entered the back room, her stomach dropping out when she saw what it contained. Three grotesque Russian men stood before her. They each had ugly steel and metals protruding from their bodies at odd angles in odd places, with plastic tubing ferrying liquids throughout their bodies. Their military uniforms were tattered. It seemed their backs were impossibly straight. Each man's eyes had been replaced by small metallic balls that twirled constantly. Their mouths were wired shut, and they had antennas sticking out of their skulls. It looked as if they had an intake port shunted into their necks. They were expressionless and, strangely enough, held hands with each other. And the man in the center had a screen affixed to his chest. 
 
 Another message: `` We are the Sputnik. We want to go home.'' Sarah's heart ached for the men these once were. `` The process for conversion was imperfect for these bodies, but we have refined our techniques in the past decades.'' Sarah's feeling of dread doubled. The door closed behind her. `` We have been watching you and waiting. You have the determination to succeed where we did not. And you have brought us a ship to get home.'' Sarah tugged at the door to get out of the room as the bodies slowly slid toward her, their legs never moving from the ground. `` Our people abandoned us, but you will not. You will lead us into the new age.'' The things that were once men closed in around her. She heaved at the door once more, digging her feet in, and the latch broke. She ran from the room, down the corridor, praying the elevator would work for her once more.
