By Braam Pretorius

In the summer of 2027, Elon Musk was not himself.

 Something had been gnawing at him since the last Artemis test flight failed, a strange inconsistency in a series of 1960s-era lunar trajectory documents. It wasn’t the math. It wasn’t the physics. It was the precision.

Too precise. Too clean. Too... modern.

While SpaceX engineers worked around the clock trying to solve the moon refuel conundrum, Elon booked a private flight to Cape Canaveral. Alone.

Chapter 1: The Key That Didn’t Exist

 The room didn’t appear on any of the base maps. It had no digital lock, no biometric scanner, just a dusty 1960s brass key handed to him by an anonymous ex-NASA engineer in a Waffle House parking lot two nights prior.

The door creaked open to a stairwell leading down into darkness. At the bottom, in an old Cold War bunker labeled D-17, sat a dusty film reel, a canister labeled simply: “Kubrick – Final Cut (MOON OPS B)”

Next to it, stacks of reels: "APOLLO 11", "NIXON CALL - SCRIPTED", "MOONBASE 1 - REJECTED DESIGN", "PROJECT PAPERCLIP: OPERATION MIRRORLIGHT"

And then, the real kicker, a worn binder marked: “LUNAR SIMULATION — Authorized Use Only — Controlled Narrative Division”

Chapter 2: The Smoking Tape

 Elon sat in the dark, projector humming. What he saw next wasn’t just shocking.

 It was beautiful, staged perfection. Neil Armstrong stepping onto a film set replica of the moon, with Kubrick himself behind the camera, coaching him on how to “sound more humble.” Buzz Aldrin pacing in the background, lighting a cigarette behind the lunar lander mockup.

Then came the Nixon rehearsal. Eight takes. Teleprompters. Applause signs.

Elon didn’t move for over an hour.

When the reel stopped, he pulled out his phone to take a photo — but the moment he snapped it, the screen flashed white. His phone was fried.

In the corner, a Cold War-era warning light blinked red: “Unauthorized Access – Blackout Protocol Initiated.”

Chapter 3: Sable Orion

 The red light flickered faster.  A deep click echoed through the hallway as if the bunker itself had taken a breath. Elon spun around. The door he'd come through — the one with the brass key — was now sealed shut. No keypad. No handle. No way back.

Then the speakers crackled.

"Unauthorized access detected. Protocol Orion initiated. Stand by for retrieval."

Retrieval? Of what?

He backed into the corner, eyes darting around for something — anything — he could use. That’s when he spotted it. A metal plaque embedded into the wall, barely visible under the dust:

“PROJECT SABLE ORION — Activated 1973 – Terminated Never”

Unknown to the public, Sable Orion was a rogue shadow cell — a leftover artifact from the Cold War era, created to protect America's "narrative assets." While the CIA played chess on the global stage, Sable Orion made sure no one questioned the moonboard.

Its agents were ghosts. Their files untraceable. Their charter signed in the blood of secrecy and Cold War paranoia.

And they were still very much active.

Elon’s moment of panic was cut short by a hiss of hydraulics.

A side wall slid open, revealing a narrow lift. Inside it stood a tall man in a dark suit and 1960s aviators, holding a briefcase.

No greeting. No question. “Mr. Musk. You’ve seen too much.”

Elon smiled faintly, brushing dust off his Tesla T-shirt. “I’ve always seen too much. You just didn’t notice until now.”

Without warning, the lights cut. Backup power flickered on in low red, just enough to see movement, three more figures stepping out of the shadows, each wearing old NASA mission patches over black tactical vests.

They weren’t here to talk.

Elon grabbed the film reel and the binder, ducked left, and sprinted down the emergency service corridor marked: “To Pad 39B – Historical Access Only.”

He didn’t know what waited at the end of the tunnel. But he had a theory:

 If the moon mission was faked here, there had to be a back door for the actors, crew, and equipment.

He just hoped it wasn’t welded shut.

Alarms now echoed through the complex like war drums. Elon ran past rusted lockers, a moth-eaten American flag, and a corkboard with Polaroids of fake moon boots and notes like: “Buzz: Smile more”

 “Fix crater 7 — continuity issue” “Kubrick unhappy with shadow angles”

Just before the corridor curved, he spotted a vintage Tesla coil, glowing, active. What the hell was that doing here?

Then it hit him: this wasn’t just about a fake moon landing.

It was bigger. Older. Buried deeper.

As Elon reached for the emergency hatch, he paused. Behind him, heavy boots echoed closer. Ahead, the rusted door creaked open…

And a woman stood in the light, holding out her hand.

“Dr. Ava Kim. MIT Exoarchaeology Department. I’ve been tracking this for years. If you want to live, come with me.”

Elon didn’t hesitate.

He handed her the film reel. “Then it’s time,” he said. “We tell the world the truth.”

Chapter 4: The Hollow Moon Files

 The Nevada desert was angry. Dry, cracked earth. The taste of static in the wind. The kind of silence that had its own pressure.

Elon and Dr. Ava Kim lay low in a rented Tesla Cybertruck parked two miles outside Area 51. It wasn’t her first time near Groom Lake, but it was the first time she was carrying a film reel from 1969 containing Kubrick’s voice saying, “Cut. That’s the one.”

They had 36 hours before Sable Orion would triangulate the signal again. Elon had already tossed three burner phones into a ravine.

 Still, they could feel it, the net was tightening.

Dr. Kim knew someone, a retired radar tech named "Boomer" who had worked at the base back in the late '80s.

He met them behind an abandoned diner near Rachel, Nevada.

 Eyes wild. Hands trembling.

“You think they buried the truth?” he said. “You have no idea. It’s not just the moon. It’s what they found there.”

Boomer handed Ava a keycard with faded red letters: “ACCESS – LUNAR STORAGE 7 – Omega Clearance”

By nightfall, the pair slipped into the service tunnel under the base, through a forgotten hatch last opened during the Reagan administration.

They bypassed the biometric systems using a signal hack Elon wrote on his Neuralink prototype.

Inside Hangar 7, past a wall of storage crates and disassembled satellite dishes, they found it.

A vault labeled: PROJECT MARE CRYPTICUM (Moon File Archive – Established 1970) “Truth is not for public consumption.”

Inside were:

• Carbon-dated rock samples, chemically identical to Earth’s crust.
• A folder titled “Apollo 20 – The Classified Mission”, showing footage of an ancient craft half-buried in lunar dust.
• Another reel. Black. Unlabeled.

They loaded it into an old projector, unsure if it would still work.

The footage was grainy. Silent.

 A camera moved through a lunar cave, artificial lighting rigged along the walls. A figure in an Apollo suit moved toward an object that looked like a massive metal vault embedded in the moon rock, etched with strange symbols.

“This isn’t man-made,” a voice said faintly on the audio channel. “And it’s not from Earth.”

The screen cut to black.

Then flashed a single line of text: “Welcome Home.”

Ava gasped.

“Elon… they didn’t just fake the moon landing to beat the Soviets... They faked it to hide what we found.”

Before they could process it, the vault behind them shuddered. A low vibration filled the hangar. Lights blinked. Something… activated.

And then the door behind them slammed shut.

A voice filled the chamber.

 It wasn’t human.

“Project Paperclip complete. Initiating Mirrorlight Protocol.”

 “Dedicated to all truth-seekers, fiction-lovers, and billionaires brave enough to break into a Cold War-era bunker.”