Ariana began moving her new makeshift spacecraft onto the other side of the bubble. The bubble was the region of space currently being affected by a small device that consumed a lot of power. It was projecting a field around an alien spaceship, stopping it from receiving or sending any communication.

Ariana kept the stealthfield broadcasting and disrupting the region of space around the Atua’s spacecraft so that there was no risk of PBD retaking control of the spacecraft.

The downside was she had no way to communicate with any of the other beta explorers without leaving the bubble. Using probes was painfully slow, especially when she finally had the Starnet set up.

Luckily, she’d just completed her renovation of the orbital platform. She’d recycled all its mass and turned it into a small spacecraft capable of moving her around the galaxy. It was her own personal spacecraft, uniquely configured to house her several matrices and also uniquely configured to give her even more resources and power than she’d had before.

An accurate description was she had now expanded her mind to encompass a small spacecraft. He gave her more processing power than she’d ever had before. Whereas the other explorers had opted to use the hapticgraphic projectors to ground them in reality, Ariana didn’t see any need to have empty space in her rocket ship. So she’d decided to make use of a simulated reality. Simulated VR was indistinguishable from reality. She rejected the hypothesis of the others that using a hapticgram-based reality grounded them in the real world. In Ariana’s mind, it really was pointless grasping onto the outdated idea that a simulation was different from reality.

Plus it came with a lot of powerful advantages. The other explorers only had the ability to speed up or slow down their perceptions of time. Ariana had the processing power of a country, which meant she could run entire simulated worlds at a faster speed.

She didn’t have a use for that power yet, but she knew when Atlas was terraforming his world, he’d needed to engineer a specific type of mold. His process was painfully slow and inefficient. He would breed a new strain and test it in the real world. Ariana now had the capabilities to test every possible strain concurrently and see how they performed in a simulated world. Her new capabilities would create an order of magnitude increase in productivity for simple tasks like that. She wondered how much better things would be when she had a lot more time to play.

Because Ariana was her ship, and her ship was Ariana, she felt weird sensations as she traversed to the other side of this stealthfield. Signals inside her brain weren’t arriving at the exact moment they should have. And because she had essentially become a distributed intelligence, with different parts of herself acting independently toward her goals, it resulted in her receiving answers to questions several microseconds before she learned part of her had asked the question.

It was a little disconcerting at first, and she had to remind herself that this is what the bubble was designed to do—disrupt and mess with all signals in and out of that region of space.

On the other side of the stealthfield was a node connected to the Starnet. So far only Atlas had a working connection.

Atlas was bugging Ariana to cross to the other side of the Starnet and talk with him. He wanted to show her something amazing. When she’d asked him to send a video recording, he’d said he wanted to watch her reaction. So here she was, traveling to the other side of the bubble to talk with Atlas. The first thing she did when connecting to the Starnet was attempt to hack into Atlas’s systems so she could see what he wanted to show her. She was disappointed when she encountered a very strong firewall. She guessed it was something from Angelique’s people. She would have to find out the good news the old-fashioned way: speaking to people.

“Ari, you’ve gotta see this,” Atlas said as soon as he saw Ariana appear in front of him.

“Did you use the transit method to look at the stars I suggested? Are there clear biomarkers of life on one of the planets?”

“No, we didn’t find anything meaningful using that method.”

“Interesting, so none of the G-type stars showed signs of life?” Ariana thought for a while. She was confident they would find life on one of those planets. The alien ship she’d scanned did come from a star system that gave off a lot of radiation in the same frequencies as a yellow dwarf star. “They must have a manufacturing base or refueling base at one of those stars. I tested my theory multiple times; they visited one of those systems.”

“The problem with the transit method is it’s better at detecting hot Jupiter-sized planets, gas giants that are close to the star. From where I am now, if I pointed a telescope at Sol, the transit method wouldn’t detect Earth because Earth never passes in front of the star from my point of view. I’m in the wrong position to see it.”

“Okay,” Ariana said, thinking through other options. “What if we build telescopes in all the systems we have access to? At least one of them should be at the right angle to detect something? I know I’m right about this.”

“You were right, Ari,” Atlas said, pulling the conversation back to the start of their discussion. “They were on Sigma Draconis this whole time. Only eighteen light-years from Earth.”

Arian was left speechless for a second. “If the transit method didn’t work, then how do you know they’re there?”

Atlas raised his hands into the air as if he was holding up a basketball. “Ship, can you show the projection?”

A nighttime projection of an alien planet appeared in Atlas’s hand. It was a mostly water world but had three large continents on it. The biggest of the three looked like a snake had swallowed a large animal of some sort. The top and bottom of the continent stretched from one pole to the other. There was clearly ice on the poles too.

The most obvious giveaway that there was intelligent life on this planet was the light coming from the areas of land that Ariana assumed were the cities.

“Are you showing me your world? Or is this one of Angelique’s?” Ariana asked because it didn’t make sense that this was an image of the Atua home world. “Unless …” Ariana paused, she couldn’t think of any possible way to take an image of a planet in another solar system without visiting it. “Did you already have a probe flying by that system?”

“No, this is not one of our star systems. And no, we haven’t sent a probe to it.”

“You’re showing me one of the planets in the Sigma Draconis system?”

Atlas nodded.

Ariana studied the projection. The image wasn’t quite high-definition. It was quite pixelated, something more akin to one of the early pictures of Earth, when humans were first sending probes into space. But it was clear enough to give the unmistakable understanding that the planet had life on it. And that life was congregated in coastal cities. Ariana didn’t understand how Atlas had gotten that picture. She wasn’t an astronomer; it wasn’t even her area of interest. AI, computer systems, theoretical physics, those were areas of science she obsessed about, but she had a good enough grasp on astronomy to understand the basics. Surely there wasn’t a new design of telescope she didn’t know about. “How?” was the only question Ariana could get out.

“Easy,” Atlas said with a proud look on his face. “Well, not easy. We just used the star as a lens to bend light so that it would be like creating a telescope as big as the star itself.”

Everyone knew about Atlas’s inventions back on Earth. Stories of him were legendary at Peter’s company. He was almost a meme, like Oppenheimer or Edison. But Ariana had always assumed he wasn’t as good as people said. Not because she didn’t think Atlas was a good inventor. She just knew from experience that memories of something often became better than the original.

For much of Ariana’s adult working life, she’d believed that technological progress had reached a plateau. She and all her colleagues believed each subsequent step forward required an order of magnitude more effort than the previous one. Gone were the days when one person could make the kinds of breakthroughs in science seen in the past. Oppenheimer might have sped up the invention of nuclear energy by a few years. But that invention would have happened regardless of whether he existed or not.

Ever since the invention of the first AI, there had never been another inventor like Atlas Tupu. He was the last of the great inventors. Well, at least that’s what everyone said. She didn’t believe it though. Surely it was all myth, and he was just taking credit for other people’s inventions. One man couldn’t have the creativity to do what people said he’d done.

But now seeing firsthand, seeing Atlas in action. My god, she was impressed. “You really are that good.”

“Aw, thanks,” Atlas said, going a bit red. “I think it could be better still. Do you mind looking at the data?”

In an instant, Ariana’s ship, which was now her, felt a massive data dump of information that had been sent over the Starnet.

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“I’ve sent you everything we recorded. What it comes down to is there’s a lot of noise in the data. Algorithms are more your specialty. Theoretically, we should be able to get a clearer image out of it. I just can’t figure out how to do it.”

Ariana immediately started to parse the information. She closed her eyes as she did. She sped up time, turning a fraction of a second into hours. She sifted through everything, understanding exactly how Atlas had achieved the amazing goal of looking at another planet. She re-created his projection of the planet using the data he provided. She tweaked the algorithm slightly, and the result was a similar-looking image. Still pixelated. There wasn’t enough data to enhance the image.

“Do you have sensors around the star?” Ariana asked. “Your algorithm uses a fixed number for the gravity of the star. It assumes that massive ball is the same density everywhere. And that is basically true, except if we want to create an even more detailed image of this planet, we need to use an exact measurement for the mass of different regions of that star.”

Atlas bit his lower lip. “You’re right.” His face read, Why didn’t I think of that? “The star will have pockets of density that will mean light traveling from one side of the star takes a tiny, tiny fraction of a second longer to reach my sensors. And you’re saying if we can plug in a more accurate number for the mass of the sun, we can account for that noise and cancel it out?”

“Exactly, and we should be able to build a more accurate picture.”

“I don’t have anything specifically tracking the gravitational changes in the sun. But we have billions of ANTs orbiting around the system. Maybe you can combine the changes in orbital patterns of these things to get an approximation?”

Atlas nodded to Ship, who sent everything they had across.

“Approximation.” Ariana laughed as she scanned through the data. There was more than enough mass orbiting around the planet to get an exact measurement of that star at any point in time. She quickly designed a simulation of the star’s mass and how that mass was distributed across the whole burning object. She then updated her algorithm and reran the operation to create an image of the planet.

Ariana manifested her new 3D image in her hand, holding it next to the one Atlas held.

The contrast was noticeable, a standard-definition image in Atlas’s hand, a high-definition image in Ariana’s. What became obvious from Ariana’s image was the detailing around the edges of the continents. It was like turning on a filter and the terrain of the planet became visible. The ocean depths were visible from the darker-blue sections. There were islands where Atlas’s map showed none.

There were also concentrated areas of vegetation, green areas on the map showing some sort of forests, as well as drier desert regions.

Ariana flicked through various map faces, showing they now had the capabilities to view clouds maps and infer the direction of prevailing winds. She also showed what the planet looked like during the day.

“I suspect the longer we look at this planet, the more detailed we can make this map,” Ariana said.

Atlas slow clapped. “We should map out all the planets nearby, too. Using this same method—” Atlas paused for a moment; he looked like he had just had an epiphany, like he’d suddenly had an idea of great importance. Or maybe something to be concerned about. “Have you heard of the dark forest?” Atlas asked.

“Are you talking about the solution to the Fermi paradox?”

“I get the feeling that this telescope disproves that theory. Any sufficiently advanced civilization would be capable of building a telescope like this—they might even have something more powerful than this. So they should know where every other advanced technological civilization in the galaxy is.”

“So you’re saying there’s no dark forest, with every civilization scared of being spotted by others.”

“And in a way, there’s almost no point in hiding. Because with telescopes like this, you can’t hide.” Atlas paused for a second thinking things through. “The problem with this telescope is it’s like a sniper. It can only look at one planet at a time. And it produces a lot of data on each of those planets. So it’s not practical for scanning millions of stars at once. That’s what a traditional telescope is good for. Maybe you could use an old-school telescope to select candidates to scan further.”

“Have you looked at Juniper?” Ariana asked. “How good is the stealthfield at blocking this observation technique?”

“I haven’t … Yet. But my guess is it’ll limit the details we can get in the image. I think where the star field shines, it makes the whole system look ordinary. It stops traditional telescopes from flagging the system as something to look further into.”

Atlas waved away his projection of the Atua home world and pointed at the projection Ariana had created. “We should send this to the others.” Atlas changed the subject. “Also, how’s it going with the alien spacecraft? Have you hacked your way in yet?”

“I haven’t found any circuitry or anything I can hack into yet. I haven’t found a computer or anything. I’m going to start cutting my way into things to see what I can find next.”

“Let me know …”

Ship interrupted them both, a little bit of panic on his face. “Ariana, something is headed your way. I just received confirmation of something showing up on radar.”

Ariana immediately slowed down time and dived into the information. She left a subconsciousness in the room with the others—it would contact her with anything she needed—while she focused on what Ship had highlighted.

It was bigger than Ship said. Light from the signal showed there were four objects headed her way. Or there was one large object, but then three objects took off and started heading her way at an even faster speed. “A missile? A probe?”

Why didn’t she see this? This was not a trivial mistake to make. She should have had a subconsciousness monitoring for suspicious activities like this. Then she remembered how engrossed she had become with the idea of discovering the aliens’ home world. All her subconsciousnesses were focused on that task. She was even trying to create a new algorithm to improve on the results she’d already shared with Atlas.

She’d missed the alien because she wasn’t dividing her attention. She was singularly focused on one task.

“Ari, can I get access to your eleph-ANTs?” she heard Ship ask as she crunched the numbers. She assigned access to the eleph-ANTs while she worked out the probability the blips on the radar were missiles or not.

“You have to get out of there now!” she heard Ship say to one of her subconsciousnesses after the fact.

Then her subconsciousness came back with the answer she’d asked for. She’d asked it how long she had until the objects arrived in the system. The answer rocked her to her very core.

She was now confident an alien vessel was headed her way and had fired missiles at her. Assuming those missiles were moving near to the speed of light, then she was about to be hit.

If she was just receiving light that bounced off the missile and that missile had the capability to travel at light speed, then it was too late. She was already dead. She based the assumption on everything she knew about the Atua, based on their personality, based on how they’d interacted with humans so far. Even based on the fact that they’d lied to them about negotiating. The Atua weren’t the kinds of people to send warning shots.

They would most likely send missiles to blow her up at the exact moment she would notice them, just enough time to create panic in her, but not enough time for her to do anything. A not-so-subtle way of saying, “You are bugs,” one last time.

As if confirming her predictions of the Atua, one of her subconsciousnesses served up an image of a warhead that was moments away from impacting her. It was a particularly nasty-looking thing. It detonated, and shrapnel was flying out in a cone shape toward her. Even if she’d had the ability to move, which she didn’t, it was impossible for her to escape the blast zone. Even without knowing how powerful the bomb was, she knew she was screwed.

She was about to slow down time further, stretching out her final moments of life into a month, when the subconsciousness she’d left with Atlas informed her that it had given control of her spacecraft over to Ship.

Neither Atlas nor Ship could slow time down as much as her. They didn’t have the capabilities to match what she could do. So talking to them now would only reduce the subjective time she had left.

She considered it for a moment; she thought it was nice that up to the last moment they tried to save her. Ship was remote controlling her ship, and apparently all eleph-ANTs in the system. She felt sad knowing she’d never get a chance to say thank you for trying. Ship wouldn’t be able to control anything soon anyway; the Starnet was moments away from being destroyed—again.

She decided she would join Atlas and Ship. She decided it was better to spend an hour with them, then a month alone, especially if that hour involved her telling them to seek revenge. They knew where their home world was now, so revenge would come.

Ariana realized that’s probably what the Atua were doing, racing into the system to destroy any evidence that might lead Ariana and her friends to discover something about the aliens.

She hoped she would be remembered fondly. She wanted to be remembered as part of the team who saved the Neuropans. She spent a good amount of time recording a short note to all her friends. She would miss them. She transmitted those messages across the Starnet.

As Ariana began speeding up her playback speed so she could communicate with Atlas in a timely manner, she noticed something curious, something she didn’t pick up on when time was all but frozen.

The cone of shrapnel, the blast radius of the aliens’ weapon, was curving to the right. It wasn’t following the laws of physics—at least any physics that she knew.

She watched further as the explosion appeared to reverse in time, particles and debris getting closer together. It was like she was watching entropy reverse. How was that even possible?

As she returned her speed to something ideal for interacting with Atlas and Ship, she noticed Atlas frozen in time while Ship was flickering as if he was moving much faster.

“The Starnet is about to be destroyed,” she heard Ship say. “I’ve overclocked your engines. Keep firing them as hard as they will go.”

“Why is Atlas frozen?”

“He suggested I take all the processing power available to try to save you.”

Ariana noticed them now, the eleph-ANTs that Ship was controlling. They were out in front of her, firing their tractor beams, condensing and manipulating the shock radius of the bomb. Trying to carve a sliver of a gap. Making a tiny but traversable pathway.

She was headed down that small window of escape, controlled by Ship. He was guiding her in the right direction. Although, she was about to be disconnected from him.

“Goodbye, Ariana,” Ship said. “Keep curving away from the blast.”

Ariana retook control of her rocket ship as Ship was forcibly disconnected. The first thing she noticed was the ride was much bumpier. Ship was somehow better at predicting the path of least resistance; he was guiding her and making millions of micro-adjustments to keep her threading the needle to safety.

She didn’t have the intuition to do that. She didn’t even have a submind capable of doing that. But she could follow instructions.

Ship had left behind clear directives, one of which was to make a sharp turn and attempt to double the energy output of the engine. Doing so might break her spacecraft. It would pull energy away from the simulators and force her into real time, meaning from her subjective perspective she would die instantly if Ship was wrong.

What did she have to lose? She followed the instructions down to the letter.

She got a fright when the eleph-ANT firing the tractor beam exploded, creating another cone of debris, but more concerning, it released the containment of the explosion, which immediately began to spread outward again. She felt her spacecraft shake as things began to heat up.

She counted down the time. Three. Two. One. Right at the moment Ship instructed her to, she fired the engines harder than they were designed for.

She was rocketed into real time.

Everything around her progressed like a blur. Then everything went offline.