Alessandro and Omahley were expected to be standing by the door to receive their guests but only Alessandro was.
Natalie and Marcus were enlivened to meet with Alessandro once again, so were the three other ladies in their company: Irina, Lada and Khristina.
Alessandro hugged and kissed them one after the other but Irina wanted hers to be different from the others, so, she flexed her seductive muscle on him by ripping through his mouth with a French kiss, but Alessandro brushes aside the temptation gracefully.
"If Omahley were around, that wouldn't have arisen." He said angrily.
Omahley peacocks into the sitting room and took their breath away. Her sense of dress and a captivating smile brought her beauty to the fore. She warmed her way to Alessandro and gave him a long deep kiss. From the way he licks his lips with his tongue, it tells that he loved it, though it has grossly violated a clause in their terms of the contract, he overlooks it because it has, at least, sent out a warning sign to Irina and any other lady that may be harbouring romantic feelings for him to stand clear of him.
"May I have your attention please," announced Alessandro, "permit me to introduce to you, Omahley, my wife." Omahley in turn beamed with smiles and then waived at them heartily. A mixed reaction from Irena revealed that it took her by surprise and had left her upset. However, she concealed her disappointment with a friendly gesture to Omahley but vows not to be deterred by the minor distraction she has encountered on her way to owning the man that once only existed in her wildest dreams but now stands before her.
Omahley sat next to her man and was all over him; giving him close attention, occasionally looking at the other ladies direction with a 'come and get him if you can' attitude.
Natalie broke the silence by asking Alessandro, "do you know what I admire about the setting of your house? The bookshelves; beautifully stacked on each other like the walls of the Kremlin. It is an academic achievement for one to be able to assemble a huge collection of best-sellers like this one. He strode to the majestic shelf and lifts a voluminous book off it. "One of my favourites he said, showing it to the congregation before reading it aloud: Daring Greatly: How the Courage to be Vulnerable Transformed the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead, written by the renowned author, Brene Brown." He flips the book from page to page while he walks to the table.
To escape Omahley's vicious gestures towards her, Irina left her seat and strolled to Natalie, "I love books, and planned to have a replica of this at home too.
Piles of books took over every single available space on the table, giving Natalie and Irina no space to sit. Natalie had a close look at the books on the table and asked Alessandro what kind of research he was into because what was before him looks wired.
"That's why I called you here in the first place, but before I talk about it, I would like to show you something I thought you would love. Come with me, everyone."
Alessandro lifted himself from his seat and help pulled Omahley from hers while khristina looked at them jealously. He led them to a miniature forest within Longoria's property. At first, they saw nothing, after unlocking a door, a gigantic white Sabre-toothed Caspian Tiger leapt out of it unto Alessandro, Alessandro screamed and fell to the ground pretending he was attacked by it.
The prank seems to work; everyone disappeared from the vicinity but much later knew he pulled the fast one on them when they watched him play with the savage from a distance.
"Guys, come back," he solicited, and they all came back with wariness. The Caspian Tiger was large enough to make humans fall dead at the mere sight of its fanged Sabres, but the truth is that it is as playful as any loyal dog could be to its master. Even though Alessandro lay it down to be stroked, Lada was the least to touch the Caspian devil. Omahley was nowhere to be found. She ran into the house and never came back. Irina took advantage of her lapses and swarm Alessandro to show him how gallant she could be in the presence of the ferocious feline.
Alessandro hosted them to dinner. As expected, Omahley occupied the seat next to Alessandro to his right, and Irina, defiantly took the available seat to his left even though it was reserved for either Natalie or Marcus. Alessandro noticed the developing drama between Irina and Omahley but concentrated on his friends.
Natalie took a Moselle into his mouth and chews it.
"Before I forget," he said, "give me an insight about this research of yours that is on the anvil."
Alessandro took a gulp from a glass of Orange juice kept before him to help push down the remnant of food left in his mouth and then cleared his voice with a deep rumbling around his gullet.
"Things of old intrigues me a lot, no matter how insignificant they are, be they small or large, in this case, I am talking about the large things that went into extinction, like the wholly Siberian Rhino and the legendary Mammoth. I was told by the books I consulted that they once ruled the areas we now inhabited, Natalie. I sense these magical beasts still exist; I feel they are somewhere out there hibernating in a cave buried in the icebergs of the arctic circle."
"Are you trying to suggest what am thinking, like going all out on an epic adventure into the caves and wake them up from the long sleep and tell them, "look guys, it's the twenty-first Century and high time you come out and start living once again so that the present civilization may behold your majesty again?". "Precisely, Natalie; that's what am suggesting. Let's go and bring them to town and freshen them up. We could make history by doing so."
Marcus, whose father is an influential Oceanographer in a top Russian research institute, owns a Ripsaw luxury Tank and a submersible, promised to make them available to the crew for the adventure.
Alessandro, who is the mastermind of the programme, provided the arctic cats, Cross-bows, Maps, Atlas', Stethoscopes, Gps', Compass', an assortment of food and lots of warm clothing.
Natalie makes an offer of scores of Siberian Huskies and Sledge.
"You talk too much," said Irina to Alessandro. She stretched out her hand and fetch a bowl of salad place before Omahley and served Alessandro. "Eat some greens," she said before serving herself.
Irina was so flirty and smooth at the table; she outsmarts Omahley in gaining the attention of Alessandro.
Omahley in turn who had a rough time fending off Irina from Alessandro raised her wristwatch to Alessandro's gaze and gave it a gentle pat to remind him of a scheduled programme billed for 8:00 pm, Siberian time. Alessandro sprang to his feet and clasps his hands noisily to draw his audience's attention.
"Guys," he said, "there's a documentary about the landing of the Perseverance Rover on Mars about to be aired any moment from now. I, therefore, invite you all to the Theatre where it shall be viewed, live!
Alessandro, who led them to the Cinema hall was sandwiched by Omahley and Irina. Pop-corn and an assortment of soft drinks were in abundance and on display by the entrance.
Irina grasps two large cups of Chapman cocktails and handed one to Alessandro. Before she could go back for the pop-corn, Omahley outsmarted her; she hauls two large foils of the chewable and handed one to Alessandro.
A ten thousand watts surround sound boom from the soundtrack of the latest box office movie was being played on a fifteen-metre super-sized screen hit their ears as they walk into the state-of-the-art home theatre.
Irina and three other ladies began to move their bodies rhythmically to the music.
Alessandro breaks himself free from Omahley and Irina and snatches a seat between Marcus and Natalie. "We are twelve minutes behind time, tune in let's see what's going on." Ulan heeds Alessandro's commands and switches to the other station and the first image that captures their eyes was of an aeroshell descending into Mars-like a fiery meteorite with a blistering speed, a term described by NASA as 'seven minutes of terror. The aeroshell which contains the Perseverance Rover and the descent stage, both of which were robots, travelled six hundred million miles to the Martian surface on its own from earth, or six months to get there.
The spacecraft then deploys a supersonic parachute from its aeroshell which help slows the vehicle. The heat shield then separates and drops away from the back shell after the parachute was deployed and the rover is exposed and ready for touchdown.
Alessandro and his friends were awestruck, they all went numb with motionless hands in their pop-corn baskets, watching the wonders of the twenty-first-century unfolding, second only to the Parker Probe in action.
The rover and the descent stage separate from the parachute and backshell. The descent stage also called Sky Crane by its fabricator, NASA, was equipped with eight throttleable retro-rockets, or Mars Landing Engines as narrated by the commentator, help slow the spacecraft in preparation for a touchdown.
At about 65 feet or 12 seconds before touchdown, a whirl of dust about two metres high was kicked off by the rover's engine and the Sky Crane lowers the rover safely to the surface with three nylon cables to bring the rover to the ground.
Meanwhile, the rover, with a mini-helicopter was attached to it, stretched its legs and brings its wheels into landing position. When the rover senses that its wheels have touched the ground, it cuts the cables connecting it to the Sky Crane and the rover is left safe on a Crater dubbed by NASA as, Jezero on the Martian surface and then flew off and crash-land safely away from Perseverance
.
It took a while for the group to come back to their senses. "Wah, this looks fetish to me!" Grunts Alessandro, "there's only but little that the human race is yet to solve in outer space; even the mystery behind the almighty Sun has been demystified and laid bare before our very own eyes. Don't you think we humans are beginning to encroach on God's backyard like in the Biblical first people did in the saga of the tower of Babel? Don't you think another round of spell might be cast upon humanity so that they speak different languages from the ones they speak to stop us from going any farther than this?"