Back aboard the Crown of Thorns, I met with Terna on the command bridge as our crew pulled the ship back to the BuyMort gate. It hung in orbit of the solar system’s largest planet, another ringed gas giant.

Once we were in the gate’s activation range, Terna called a stop and declared us at a safe distance. Then she turned to speak to me.

“Tyson, there are so many!” she exclaimed. “If the tribe we discovered is to be believed, there are potentially millions of No-Morts on that planet. Possibly as many as ten million.”

“What’s our play?” I asked.

Terna blinked a few times and shook her head. “Right now, nothing. We watch long range scans, looking for BuyMort activity. If we see none, we stay away.”

“Forever?” I asked. “Do you know what we found there?”

She nodded. “Yes. BuyMort’s memory.”

“It’s not just BuyMort’s memory, it's everything we need. It’s every product, blueprint, advertisement, or media file ever passed through the BuyMort network. The technology alone, Terna . . .” I drifted off with a sigh.

She nodded, arms crossed while I spoke. “Our presence there will bring the BuyMort’s focus back to this world. These No-Morts have been without BuyMort for hundreds of years, many of them no longer have knowledge of it. The tribe we discovered found us, after BuyMort Unlimited had already started coming back online. They came to stop us from going inside, and said that a monster lives there that would destroy us all if we disturbed it.”

“It would be devastating for them, wouldn’t it,” I said. It wasn’t a question, but Terna nodded emphatically anyway.

“They do not even have the icon. My tribe had icons, and we had not touched the BuyMort for over one hundred years before they were taken,” she explained.

I sighed again. “We can’t go back down there,” I muttered.

“It may be too late already,” she said. “We cannot know for certain unless we see BuyMort activity on the planet. With our fleet and expedition this far out, and the gate already active, we shouldn’t cause any further infestation. But again, it may be too late.”

I nodded and Terna left, floating across the ship’s open central area to one of its arms where her quarters were stored. I stared after her as she went. The library on the planet was too valuable to just ignore, but I couldn’t disregard her words on the matter either. In spite of myself, I weighed the lives of ten million No-Morts against the advancements my society stood to make.

With a shake of my head, I pushed the thoughts out. No matter what decision was to be made eventually, the first thing we had to do was wait. The Crown of Thorns kept pulsing its sensors, mapping out the solar system and paying close attention for BuyMort activity.

We quickly found a pod hangar orbiting the gas giant with us and locked in on it to watch for energy spikes. Several more carrier satellites were focused on as the scans continued, including three in orbit of the jungle planet. Mere hours later when we picked up the energy spike we had been dreading, the pod hangars all came online within seconds of one another, and pod traffic to the surface of the planet began.

I called Terna back to the bridge, but in the background of the communication window she already had the scan screens up. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she responded to my summons, and she said nothing as she arrived on the bridge.

I waited a handful of moments, giving her time to get her emotional response under control, and then I pulled up the jungle planet on our main screens. “Tell us what to do, Terna,” I said. “Tell us how to help.”

She wiped her eyes and nodded rapidly, before turning to the screen. “We must provide emergency aid,” she finally said. “Their world is irrevocably changed, all we can do is help where we can.”

With a nod, I pulled up BuyMort instant communication services and summoned the rest of the standing BlueCleave available force. My affiliate also put out the call for any sapient interested in providing emergency aid, and millions of volunteers appeared over the next few days. My affiliate screened the candidates and funneled them into various aid pushes that were scheduled in stages.

Over a hundred thousand BlueCleave hobbs arrived within the hour, accompanying the Foregone Conclusion and a massive amount of emergency supplies. Food, clothing, medicine, construction material, powered tools, and vehicles all stuffed the star-shaped craft’s various holds.

Terna began organizing units by conscripting No-Morts of her own. This meant the No-Mort would lose all progress they had made in refusing BuyMort’s use and their service was considered a noble sacrifice. It meant they wouldn’t be able to go home after they were done. They would have to relocate to beginning hab-blocks, where BuyMort use was still common.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

But their expertise was critical, as each led aid expeditions to the planet’s surface. They would know better than the rest of us how to help those on the surface while minimizing BuyMort involvement and related damage.

As quickly as she was able, Terna organized a squad for us to return to the tribe she claimed had found her. The location was within a hundred miles of the library, so I joined her. We descended to meet with tall, lanky g’kal tribesmen, as other parties began reporting both the canid-humanoids, and what appeared to be high elf remnants.

Both groups kept their distance from one another, living segregated tribal lives. While the elves of the world seemed to have a better grasp of masonry and craftsmanship, neither of them were at even an iron-age level of technology. The chaos the different groups of sapients caused while interacting with BuyMort immediately led to war between the species in more than one location.

A j’kal man claimed and sold an elven cemetery and the elves responded by selling a sacred mountain that the local j’kal used for coming of age rituals. My team managed to catch the mountain sale, being the only customers in range aside from BuyMort. With a surprisingly cheap price tag, we got it put back within hours, but the two species were at each other’s throats.

There were deaths. More vandalism and damaged land between the various factions continued across the globe. My hobbs were forced to dart and relocate entire populations, while Terna’s No-Mort coaches went to work trying to guide the populations through their new reality. Importantly, they offered a return to life before BuyMort. A path back to what their lives had been before our arrival.

A day passed without access to the library, and then another. Before I looked up, a week had gone by while I did nothing but put out fires, some of them literal. Whales from Nu-Earth became a problem, as they accessed the planet’s oceans and began a fire sale on everything they could point their sonar at. We sent whalers to hunt them, engaging BlueCleave’s submersible fleet and reigning in the kleptomaniac ocean-dwellers.

Most other species respected our request to leave the planet alone, unless with BlueCleave aid groups, but the whales of Nu-Earth were notorious pirates. We hunted, darted, and relocated dozens of the thieving mammals, levying fines against them to stop the practice.

The expenses piled up, as my expedition provided no financial income. My mind started wandering toward the library more and more.

Our teams had a marked effect on the planet, but the damage was primarily done. The locals' way of life was forever altered, and many of them didn’t survive the experience. Terna and her people applied heroic effort, and even established three new hab-blocks on Terna’s World for refugees.

While all of this was going on, I directed groups of Knowles back to the library and began the long process of ransacking it. I wanted that place taken for everything it had, and the small army of Knowles I assigned to the project shared my sentiment. They set up shop inside the library itself, building a small base camp that was used for rest and resupply before squads would head back into the tunnels, carefully cataloguing each advertisement.

They started a large, comprehensive data hunt that paid for the entire expedition within days. A week into the planet’s chaotic tragedy, we established the first black hole syphon generator in the Milky Way and began powering all of our various settlements and civilizations using its output. It caused upheaval in dozens of industries, but my iron grasp on my affiliate kept things from spiraling out of control.

I reorganized the entire affiliate around the abundant energy supply, while aiding Terna’s humanitarian operations on the jungle planet, and keeping a close eye on the library’s output. Anything my Knowles found that I thought would benefit my civilization I latched onto.

Within a month of our discovery of BuyMort Unlimited, all of our populated worlds no longer required food imports. Within another month I had installed a network of slip-gate capable ships to handle the multiverse’s shipping needs. Each universe grew more insular, as I guided all of our civilizations toward post-scarcity status. With our energy needs met and exceeded, my long-term plans started to manifest.

Six months after our discovery of BuyMort unlimited, the only reason ninety-nine percent of all sapients traveled between universes was tourism. The people of the jungle planet had entered BuyMort against their will, but many of them chose to stay. They made homes on several planets in-system and integrated into our growing society.

When BuyMort had come to my world, it had tipped our fragile balance and caused us to immediately destroy ourselves. In spite of my best efforts, the vast majority of my world’s eight billion inhabitants had perished.

On BuyMort Unlimited’s home world, the death toll from BuyMort’s re-arrival accounted for less than one percent of their total population. Through careful intervention, we had rehomed just over a million people into our various affiliates and associates scattered about the multiverse. The rest we worked with to help return to their way of life before BuyMort.

BlueCleave enforced a strict quarantine of the planet, and only my Knowles on the library expedition were allowed long-term access. The Knowle Institute of Record became completely focused on the library and its contents, and I funneled morties to the cause as often as I could spare them.

Terna saved the No-Morts of BuyMort Unlimited and helped guide my own efforts to narrow BuyMort’s interest on the planet. We relocated the tribes living closest to the library facility, and repeatedly demolished BuyMort pod hangar satellites and fruition centers that it tried to build all over the planet. Each demolition was carefully controlled and used the summoned bugs to pay for themselves.

Everything worked, from the top down. I guided our systems to serve the people who lived under them, and my rule went uncontested. The various pieces of technology I brought out of BuyMort Unlimited helped in that regard. I carefully chose which to apply, and constantly guided my affiliate toward universe-based independence.

With my focus on the affiliate, I only looked up from my work when the new library produced something interesting and six months after our discovery of BuyMort Unlimited, it produced a whopper.

BuyMort’s first gate. With a shaken sense of calm, I ordered my hobbs to prepare another expedition. This time, I told them, we were heading to the origination point of BuyMort itself.