A Planet Without Intelligent Life
"Got another one for you, Dart," his boss stood over him with something written on her phone.
"Can it wait?" he pleaded.
On his screen was a research project he had been working on for the past few months, when he found moments of free time. The exoplanet was just restarting its revolution and he hoped he could finally begin to model its orbital mechanics.
"It comes from the top. It's the highest priority," she said sternly.
"But UFOs? It's obviously something else. They're just idiots."
"Those idiots give us funding," she admonished him. "Keep your personal opinions to yourself when you are at your job."
"But I'm running my experiment now."
"You are lucky that you can work on your experiment, but you forget that it is not officially sanctioned. I've pulled a lot of favors just so you could have some observation time."
"I know, but..."
"So don't complain to me when you're the one not doing your job."
Something snapped inside of Dart.
"No," he stood up suddenly, barely understanding what he was about to do.
"What do you mean?"
"I quit," he announced.
Had he really done that? He felt so free all of a sudden. All the bureaucracy, all the inane demands, and all the politics were suddenly cast aside.
"I'm too smart for this," he asserted. "I could get a better job anywhere. I'd get better pay in the private sector."
"Don't you care about serving the public?"
"I care a lot about the public. I don't care about serving the people they elect."
He dropped his badge on the ground and left. As he walked out the doors, he felt a euphoria come over him. He didn't exactly know what he wanted to do next, but anything would be better than continuing to work for the public space council.
Stella meanwhile knelt down to pick up the badge he had left on the ground. She shook her head in disappointment. Retention was getting to be a big problem. They couldn't afford to give raises for the next year, as the powers that be were not happy with the number of conspiracies they had been able to disprove.
Her best employees kept walking out on her, and she knew there was nothing she could do to convince them otherwise. She had tried.
Yet she was the manager and her job was to manage the situation. She took a deep breath and walked over to another desk.
"Got another one for you, James," she said as she stood over him.
NASA is our space agency. It has a mandate to explore space through things like the Artemis program to return to the moon. It has also been doing a lot more work in studying earth science. These are cool and valuable scientific endeavors that require our best and brightest.
But a lot of people in Congress have been pushing NASA to study UFOs and random conspiracies. Combined with budget constraints, that may hurt our ability to do cool stuff. Worse, it may lead to a brain drain where the brightest scientists no longer serve the public.