The Ange that had stayed on Everest merged with the Ange who’d visited Atlas to combine their experiences and focus on getting the Starnet built.

It took several months for the scientists on Everest to figure out a strategy for moving the paired photons within the bubble around the planet.

The risks were high, since when entangled particles moved through the stealthfield, they lost entanglement, which would ruin the ability for the Starnet to work. Atlas hadn’t put any time into figuring out how to make it work; he’d assumed the planet’s knowledge of the stealthfield was greater than his, and so he’d left it up to the Ange carrying the tech. The only instruction he’d given was to not carry it through the bubble around the planet.

Even if there wasn’t an initial strategy for bringing the starship full of entangled particles through the stealthfield, Atlas knew it wouldn’t limit the overall goal of the Starnet. Communication wouldn’t be real time; it would be delayed a couple of days. This ultimately was still better than the several years it took any other form of communication—even traveling at the maximum speed: light speed.

At the very least, one of the colonies would figure out a solution, and that information could be disseminated among the other colonies quite quickly.

Ange and her small team couldn’t find a solution around it without turning off the stealthfield. So in the end they created a smaller Starnet that was used to send information FTL to the very edge of the bubble.

Then it was simply a case of tight-beam communication through the stealthfield, where the other connection to the Starnet resided, the one that was connected to Atlas.

They were able to use tight-beam communication as they already had the ability to make changes to the bubble in a way that they didn’t interfere with these kinds of signals in specific areas of it. This was a tool they already had at their disposal.

What this all resulted in was a slightly lower-bandwidth version of the Starnet. But still, it provided a near-real-time-communication link to Atlas, Trillion, and the other planets connected on the Starnet.

Everyone was there in the room for the official first usage of the Starnet on Everest. Ange sat around a table along with Peter, Hezekiah, Unity, and Ship.

It was a table made of solid diamond because Ange thought she’d give it a try, given that there wasn’t much difference between using the fabricators to print a table out of wood or diamond.

It was stupid really, a table with that many reflective indexes meant anyone in the room without robotic eyes had a hard time seeing anything—blinded by the gleaming brilliance coming off the table.

Ange rested her hand on the slab, feeling the cold, solid nature of the stone. She led the Starnet project and had the use of the FTL communication placed under the Ange’s Angel program, which meant, like interstellar travel, the operating of the technology was a joint venture between her and the military. Exactly how it was built was a guarded secret.

As part of the arrangement, she was still in the testing phase, which essentially meant they had a week of unmonitored use of the Starnet—“to confirm it’s working as expected.”

After the week was up, the military and select members of parliament would get access to it. Then they would make a decision on whether to share it with their citizens.

Ange assumed that once it was shared with everyone, the level of knowledge improvement and growth would climb even faster. With hundreds of billions of humans being able to communicate in real time, progress was about to speed up.

If Einstein was one in a billion. Then the Starnet was about to enable hundreds of Einsteins to collaborate together in real time. They could all solve problems for which the questions had not yet been asked and, most importantly, find a way to fight back against these Atua aliens—and to speed up the progression of human life.

“You ready?” Ange asked the group.

Everyone in the room nodded.

Ship sent through the mental command, and the Starnet was turned on.

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Nothing happened. Not that nothing happened with the Starnet. The connection was made, and it was working. Rather, nothing visible happened.

“Is it on?” Hezekiah asked, looking at the others for a cue.

Ship closed his eyes, connecting through the metaphorical wire to his other counterparts. “We’re connected. I’ve just pinged Atlas’s Ship. They’re currently on Icarus’s world, Titan. Should we pop across?” Ship paused for a moment, looking like he was collecting more data. “Icarus is back. He’s giving a lecture about his time visiting the alien home world.”

Everyone’s eyes in the room lit up. Ange had told them all that Icarus had gone to the alien home world. She wasn’t sure it was a smart idea. But obviously he’d made it back safely—and with stories to tell.

It was the kind of announcement that made your heart race. Not only had Icarus made the somewhat crazy decision to sneak onto an alien world and observe them from the inside. But he’d also made it back alive, which was incredibly lucky.

If Ange was honest with herself, she hadn’t thought Icarus was coming back. In fact, she’d thought he had a death wish. He was functionally immortal. He didn’t die. He didn’t age. And he’d already been around for thousands of years. His original purpose was building the Rings of Titan. But once he’d completed that mission, he didn’t give himself something else to focus on.

Ange herself had focused on the Ange’s Angel program. She’d gone out and colonized more worlds. But she was starting to get a sense that that program was ending with the Starnet and the potential for autonomous drones.

She knew it was only a matter of time before one of her worlds went out and colonized a new world without her—if that hadn’t already happened.

She wanted to live forever; she didn’t want to risk her life in the way Icarus did. So if her assumption about Icarus was correct and he took this extremely unnecessary risk because he’d lost his purpose in life, then Ange was going to make it her mission to find a new purpose. Something that still involved going out and discovering the universe. “Can we watch his lecture?”

Ship shook his head. “There’s no way for us to get in there. The auditorium is firewalled off.” Ship paused once more. “Oh, we’re good. Atlas’s Ship just requested us access. We should be able to stream in shortly.”

It took a little longer than the team expected. They discussed among one another for a while until Ship confirmed they could live stream in.

They appeared in a large university auditorium at the very back of the hall. The place was filled. Every seat was taken, and people were gathered around in every available space. Even the aisles were full of people—a fire hazard undoubtedly.

Ange looked around the room. It wasn’t just students; there were people from every walk of life. Older people, people in suits, even random avatars. Ange saw someone in a black hood made of some kind of ghostly material that sparkled. Next to that person, there was someone in white boxers with red hearts on them. He had a scarf covering his mouth and nose.

As Ange scanned the room, she saw the influence Icarus had over the planet. Everyone looked unique and expressed themselves in their own way.

They were floating above everyone in projected seats in the only available section.

Unfortunately for them, Icarus had just finished speaking.

“We’re thirty minutes over time,” Icarus said as he finished what he was saying. “I can answer one more question before we’re kicked out of this place completely.”

Hands shot up in the air from everyone. Ange assumed half the crowd had raised their hands trying to get one last question answered.

Icarus pointed at a young girl near the front. A porter ran over and handed her the mic. “What was the most surprising thing you learned about visiting the alien world?”

Icarus considered it for a while, nodding his head slowly. “I found it fascinating just how alien the aliens were.” He clicked back a few slides on his presentation.

On-screen, the words sonar and magnetic fields were visible.

“There’s no equivalence to the human brain,” Icarus continued. “Their brain intuitively processes the world differently from us. So they designed their world to take advantage of that. It was beautiful really. I struggle to explain it, except to say it’s alien. They see the world using different sensors than us. It’s like if you could never hear and then suddenly could. Or if you only saw the world in black and white, then suddenly you can see color. I’m actually building a module in the metaverse to simulate this …”

Icarus saw waving hands, and he was finally being pushed out of the lecture hall. “Come back next month, and I’ll share an update.”

Icarus was hurried out, and people began leaving the auditorium when they realized they weren’t able to intercept Icarus for a private conversation.

Ange and the team waited for Icarus in a little office down the hall.

It was a relatively cramped space now that everyone was in it, open books and half-scribbled papers all over the place. Ange had to hop up on the small desk to make room for everyone.

Hezekiah knocked over a stack of books and was now quickly trying to place them back onto the window ledge where they were previously balancing precariously.

Icarus walked into the room with a sense of swagger that Ange hadn’t seen in him before. He looked like he owned the place.

Ange jumped on him and gave him a massive hug. “You adrenaline junkie. You could have got yourself captured … Or worse, killed.”

“It was worth it though,” Icarus said. “I have so much more to tell you.”

Ange’s eyes lit up when Atlas, Trillion, and both their Ships walked through the door, crowding an already full room.

“Is anyone in here not a simulant?” Icarus asked as he was squished even farther into the room.

The core team of friends all confirmed, while there were a couple unknown people around the peripherals that were real humans.

“Teleport to my RV?” Atlas asked.

Everyone nodded and left the room.