CHAPTER 27
ICARUS
GOODBYE
Icarus was about to say goodbye to his friends Trillion and Atlas for a long while. His matrix was about to be disconnected and all residual power removed.
His current location was in deep orbit in the system he’d first colonized. His spaceship was hiding embedded in a planet around the size of Pluto. He wanted to make sure his location was relatively unknown, as he assumed he’d be there for quite a while.
Atlas had solved the issue of creating a fabricator that was small enough to be disguised as an asteroid.
Icarus’s plan was simple. Using a tight-beam-communication blast, he would send a copy of himself and Ship to a spacecraft that was currently on a trajectory through the Atua system.
The biggest issue with the Starnet was it required a constant stream of particles sent between two locations. The problem then was that if a small rock or microasteroid passed through the constant stream of particles, some of them might be bounced in the wrong direction—potentially toward the planet. This would be detectable and give away the position of the spacecraft.
That’s why they’d never equipped this starship with any such Starnet: the risk was too high that the alien might detect one of these stray particles.
To ensure the spacecraft wasn’t seen or detected, all the lines and curves on the starship were specifically designed to bounce light away from the center of the system—in particular, they made sure light always bounced away from the Atua planet that was occupied.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Scans of the system showed there wasn’t much activity happening in the system, not much in the way of asteroid mining or space-based megaprojects. That was what led Atlas to conclude this must not be their home world—because surely a space-based civilization would be conducting a lot of activities out in space, especially around their home world.
“Our window to make the transfer is open now,” Ship said. They calculated the position of the receiving spacecraft. They had a short window in which it could safely receive a transmission from the team.
Icarus nodded. “I’m going to miss you both. See you in a bit.”
Trillion, Atlas, and both their Ships all waved as they watched their two friends, a little sad. They had said their goodbyes and were there to see them off.
Icarus and Ship were standing in a little two-person escape pod with their arms crossed over their chests. They weren’t really about to be ejected out into space. But Icarus liked the dramatic impact of pretending like they were.
“Launching now,” Ship said.
“Wait,” Trillion said, jumping toward the both of them. “One more hug.”
Trillion jumped in between both of them and gave Icarus and Ship one last big hold. “Take lots of photos and come back with lots of stories.”
Trillion stepped back from them both.
Icarus and Ship were launched out the escape hatch as copies of them raced across the stars.
It was two years before Icarus and Ship arrived at their intended location. Traveling at light speed still took time to travel across the stars. And they didn’t have the option of using the Starnet.
Once on board the spaceship, they embarked on the complicated task of getting to the surface on the planet. It was a mostly preplanned maneuver. A version of Lex was in the driver’s seat. But Icarus and Ship never had their minds reprinted inside of matrices. Their minds, or at least all the information required to reconstitute their minds inside of matrices, were stored as data, saved as ones and zeros inside of a hard drive. Both Icarus and Ship had to be stored this way because matrices were fragile—they wouldn’t survive reentry. Even the improved versions Angelique’s people had designed couldn’t survive what was about to happen.