It took Nick a while, but after a long, painful conversation with Petra, he determined that to the best of his knowledge, Petra hadn't done anything to the world's cryptocurrencies. I don't know what that's all about. He asked her the questions the CIA sent, and asked Petra about the questions they sent, and then decided what to tell them later.

He checked in with the Apocalypse Team. They had been watching the one-on-one interviews granted by several of the crew and the ambassadorial teams. Apparently, the interviews had some of the highest ratings for any programming ever, which wasn't too surprising. There were fan clubs and conspiracy theories and more than a few pieces of erotica already getting turned out. And death threats, of course.

Brian needed to vent. "How the fuck is this chicken-scratch gibberish supposed to be math?!"

"Not having much luck, huh?"

"Dude, I can't even find the goddamn numbers in this mess."

Nick frowned. < Petra, did you translate the math book to English before you sent it to Brian? >

< No, Nick. >

Oops. < Please send a version translated to English to him. >

"Is there a book for children available?" Brian demanded.

"I'll check. I just sent you something that might help, though."

Brian eagerly checked his mail and opened the file. "The—Nick! There was an English version!?"

"You've been trying to read Arrurran?" Vanessa asked.

"Just...don't talk to me for a few minutes," Brian grumbled, focusing on his laptop.

"How are things down there?" Nick asked the others.

"We're under siege by paparazzi, but it's not too bad. Security is keeping them out."

"Nick, have you heard from Em?" Maggie asked.

Nick grimaced. "No, but I wasn't expecting to."

"Do you know where she is?"

"She's still in Denver, last I checked. Don't worry, I've asked Petra to alert me if anything happens to her."

"Who's Petra?" Maggie asked.

Shit. Nick froze for a second. "It's...the nickname I gave the ship's computer. Don't tell anyone."

Maggie raised an eyebrow skeptically, but nodded.

"Nick, did you get those blueprints for the brain interface?" Steve asked.

"Oh, yeah. I'm just working on finding or making a version that we can make with existing technology. It's not like the fusion reactors."

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"...the what?"

Nick blinked. "Did I not mention those?"

"No, Nick you did not mention the fusion reactors! What fusion reactors!?"

"On the way to Earth, I figured that we could use a Mr. Fusion thing, but I didn't want terrorists to make an H-bomb out of it."

"...and?"

"I got some help from one of the Arrurrans who's an engineer. What we came up with is a design with a secret ingredient."

"A what?"

"One crucial missing piece that we can't make but aliens can."

Steve stared at nothing for a few seconds. "Supply of those?"

"I've been printing them during the trip. I've got about a hundred so far."

"How big are these reactors?"

"There are a lot of little ones, like tabletop size, and I've got ten of the cores for the big ones, that are like, a room or two."

"How much power?"

"1.21 gigawatts."

"Seriously?"

Nick stopped hiding his grin. "Okay, the little ones are I think around ninety megawatts and the big ones are like half a terawatt."

"Half a..." Brian looked up from his laptop. "Just a second..." He typed rapidly, then stared at the result, typed some more, then puffed out his cheeks before blowing out a sigh. "Dude, the whole planet only uses like three terawatts."

Steve ran a hand over his face, pulling on his chin at the end. "Nick...this is a big deal. One or two per continent, and we can shut down all the coal plants, oil plants, natural gas...they'll still be needed for heating, and we use oil for plastic and everything, but..." He sighed. "I'm guessing America needs one or two of those. Nick, the placement is going to be big politics."

"I guess I should tell the President, then, huh?" Nick mused.

"If you really have these cores ready, send the blueprints to...God, I don't even know. Let me think." Steve started pacing.

"Oh, Steve, I've got a question for you. Do you know anything about cryptocurrency?"

His friend paused. "A little, why?"

"Is there a reason people would think I attacked it?"

"Attacked...? Give me a minute. God, Nick, you're going to give me an ulcer...all right, the price of crypto is plummeting. Makes sense, actually."

"I know it's dropping, but why?"

"The money is based on computing power, Nick. You show up with aliens with computers centuries ahead of ours...oh my God, you could probably decrypt everything, even the 256-bit encryption protected stuff, couldn't you?"

Nick winced. "Never mind that right now. What about the crypto?"

"All right, all right...Look, money has value if people believe it does, right? So, at the moment, people don't know what to think, and crypto looks like a bad investment. Self-fulfilling prophecy..." Steve went to his computer to look something up. "Yeah, I guess the old man was right when he forbade me to put any money in it."

"But if it's that obvious, why did the CIA ask me if I attacked it?"

"The CIA asked you...?" Steve stopped talking and stared off into space for a long time. Everyone was quiet except for Brian bitching to himself quietly about alien math notation. Maggie was starting to talk about a pizza order when Steve cleared his throat.

"It's a con."

"What?"

"One of the billionaires is fueling a panic with rumors. They're gambling that the price will recover, and snapping up what's getting sold off at bargain prices."

"Who?"

"Think of a billionaire with a social media platform or a news network."

"There's like a dozen of those," Vanessa pointed out.

"More like six, but yeah. It's almost certainly one of those."

"Gotcha. Thanks, Steve."

"I'm sure the CIA has figured that out already, Nick. You're just a wild card and they had to double-check. I wouldn't worry about it."

Nick sighed in relief. "Thanks, Steve. I was worried that I broke the Internet accidentally or something."

"If you want to thank me, use the alien scanners to find me a gold deposit on land I can buy for cheap."

Nick blinked. "You serious?"

Steve stopped and stared at him. "That's...really an option?"

"I can check."

"Platinum and iridium," Steve said immediately. "And rhodium. Better than gold."

Brian spoke up, his nose still in his laptop. "Didn't NASA find a five trillion dollar asteroid at some point? Why not just drag that into Earth orbit?"

Everybody stared at each other for a moment.

"Or we could do that," Steve conceded.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.