Trillion’s Ship didn’t quite know what to do. He cared about Trillion deeply and hated watching her go through this. Just when she was getting into a rhythm and reconnecting with old friends, the Starnet had stopped working.
They didn’t know what had happened to it, either. It had just stopped working. They were connected to the Starnet through their star system Tac, so they sent a message to the Lex in that system. They just had to wait for the reply to find out what went wrong.
Ship saw in Trillion a sense of loneliness, and a sense that she was falling behind.
She was the only person in the original beta-explorer group that hadn’t colonized a world yet. Ship knew Trillion wouldn’t say it, but when Angelique had told them she had more than thirty worlds already, Trillion had felt even more like a disappointment.
Trillion still had the behavioral modification that drove her toward wanting to colonize a world. And Ship could tell it was clouding her thinking. It was also forcing her into despair. She was becoming increasingly desperate to find a planet. Especially now that she didn’t have Icarus to play games with.
Ship and Lex had just finished a brainstorming session where they’d tried to come up with a way to help Trillion get over this melancholy. After it was completed, they went to see how she was doing.
Ship stood on top of a small platform floating just below the clouds. Lex floated there right above his right shoulder—almost like a parrot.
Trillion was up among the clouds, divided into a million tiny pieces. Ever since the Starnet had switched off, she was spending more and more time in those clouds, attempting to communicate with the storm as if it was a person.
Trillion’s body slowly recombined, merging together from a million little ANTs, slowly coalescing into her form. Her bright-red hair shining in the day’s light.
She floated down in front of them both. “I think I’m getting closer.”
“Closer to speaking with the cloud?” Ship asked cautiously.
Trillion was convinced there was life in the clouds. Ship wasn’t sure she if was hallucinating it or not. He knew life could form in many different ways, and so was open to the possibility that it was a completely different kind of life.
Trillion moved her head up and down excitedly. “I’m starting to feel like someone is in there reaching out to me.” She sighed a little. “But it’s going to take some time. Anyway, is the Starnet up and running again?”
“Unfortunately, no. I don’t think it’s coming back anytime soon.”
“At least we know the others are safe. I still can’t believe Angelique has thirty star systems.”
Ship knew it wasn’t jealousy that caused Trillion to make that statement. It was a touch of disappointment in her that she was that far behind the others. She had a competitive streak in her, and Ship knew she wanted to get more star systems than thirty now. “It does blow my mind just how successful she’s been, while all of us have struggled to get one done.”
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“I think we can do something similar, Ship. We have launched about a couple hundred probes from the Tac system now. Many of them will be reaching their intended star systems soon. So we should start to see them sending signals to us shortly.”
Trillion and Ship had indeed launched a lot of small probes. These probes each had a small fabricator on board. Their mission was to land in a new star system, select the best target in that system for mining resources, then use the fabricators to mine enough resources to create a new Starnet. From there, the probes would make connections with them, and they could remotely select which star system they believed was the best option to head toward.
“I’m thinking we do something a little different, Ship.”
Ship raised an eyebrow at this. He wondered what Trillion was thinking. “Go on.”
“Let’s colonize all of them. Well, not them all. Because some of them might not be viable, and some of them might have life on them. But a big chunk of them should be fine for us to go bring life to. We could plot a course, seeding humans and then moving on to the next one.”
Ship’s guess was right. She wanted to beat Angelique. And it was a decent enough plan. Within no time they could reach out and colonize a lot of planets. Popping from star to star. “Let’s do it.”
Trillion looked down toward her feet. She looked a bit sad. “I might just go back into this cloud.” She pointed up toward the sky. “I don’t really feel like waiting around. Time moves faster while I’m in there. And at least if I spend a year in there, I’ll either figure out whether it’s actually an alien we can communicate with or I’ll have spent a lot of time meditating in the clouds while we wait to hear back from our probes. Either way time will race by quickly.”
Ship heard in Trillion’s voice a sadness. He heard a feeling of loneliness. She missed her friends, and she wanted to colonize a planet as fast as possible.
He really had to do something. He loved her and hated to watch her suffer like this. “How are you feeling? I know you’ve been dealing with a lot lately. I just want you to know I’m here for you.”
“I know you are.” Trillion walked over and help Ship in a big hug. She patted Lex. “Thank you. I don’t know where I’d be without you both. To be honest I’m feeling a bit sad. I know it’s not a competition. And I know it’s not a race. But I honestly feel like I let the others down. I still haven’t colonized a planet yet. I still have this thing inside my brain.” She pointed to her head. “I’m the only one who hasn’t got a planet. I’m the only one who hasn’t completed the mission.”
Ship just wished he could say the right words. He thought about justifying their slowness by explaining how the Dottiens trapped her on that moon for so long. She was unable to make any progress toward their goal while on that moon. But he worried that might actually make things worse by reminding her of a bad experience. Reminding her of when they were hopeless. Then he considered mentioning how Atlas’s planet kicked him off and was in a worse situation than her. But then again, he thought better of it, as he was the one who’d found Angelique.
Ship put his arms around Trillion thinking about what he should say. “Exponential growth—” he started to say. “It’s going to be fine because you’re the only person with a system full of resources. Practically unlimited resources. You’re the only one with a system like the Tac system. We might have been slow to start, but thanks to that world we’re going to leapfrog the others. You’re going to leapfrog them.”
Ship felt Trillion’s hug change. She felt more secure in herself. Her hug said to him that she agreed with him. It was the kind of thing he only knew because of spending so many centuries with her.
Ship heard Trillion smile as she spoke. “We’re going to do this together, Ship. You and me.” She put a hand on Lex. “And you too, buddy. We’re all in this together.”