Volume One Earth Crisis

Chapter One Starlink Network

Trying to buy something satisfactory on the Internet for just one yuan is simply an impossible task.

What's more, this isn't the Internet—it's the Super Starlink Network that connects the entire universe!

It was late at night, but Eric Thompson didn't feel sleepy at all. He twisted open a bottle of cola beside him and gulped it down, wiped his mouth, then opened a bag of instant noodles and started biting into the noodle block directly.

Cola with dry instant noodles—a rather odd combination. Eric Thompson himself couldn't remember when he developed this not-so-healthy eating habit.

On the desk sat a square, portable wireless router, made of silver metal, quite small in size. If you added a watch strap, it would look a lot like the smartwatches people wear nowadays.

When Eric Thompson picked it up, he thought he'd found a watch. But after pressing the side button, the thing started actively recognizing Eric Thompson's laptop and connected to a network called Starlink, even automatically converting the language to Chinese.

On Starlink, whether it's the battle armor worn by warriors, the weapons they use, or coats as thin as paper that can withstand minus eighty degrees Celsius, or even energy chocolate bars that can sustain life for a week—there are all kinds of miraculous items far beyond Earth's level of civilization!

Shopping and trading are only part of Starlink's powerful functions. Eric Thompson can also use Starlink to access all sorts of little-known information.

For example, this universe is divided by star domains. The star domain where Earth is located is called Bristol, and the neighboring star domains are Azur and Grenada.

Eric Thompson used to love reading news on the Internet. But after logging into Starlink, he realized that the news on Starlink could only be described as an information explosion. A single star domain has thousands of habitable planets, and each planet generates thousands of news stories every day.

Staring at the constantly refreshing headlines filling the screen, Eric Thompson was struck with choice paralysis, not knowing where to start.

Want to check out books and movies from alien civilizations? With a click of the mouse, billions of books and billions of movies pop up. My god, what does that even mean? Even if Eric Thompson spent his whole life immersed in the Starlink Network, he could never finish them all!

It's just too vast. Starlink is simply too vast!

Can't remember which philosopher said it, but the end point of information explosion is information blockage.

Eric Thompson suddenly felt this made a lot of sense. With such a massive amount of information and technical data, anyone would have to spend a huge amount of time just choosing. This is undoubtedly a waste of life. In the long process of choosing, life quietly slips away.

The problem now is, although Eric Thompson is connected to Starlink, there's only one Starcoin in his account—he can't afford anything.

It's like a foodie suddenly arriving in a world where candy grows on trees, but can't eat any of it—just staring and drooling helplessly. How frustrating is that?

Starlink uses the universal interstellar currency, called Starcoin for short. Not only is Eric Thompson broke, even if he were as rich as a nation, he couldn't exchange Earth's currency for Starcoin. Without Starcoin, he can't buy any of the strange and wonderful things on Starlink.

Sigh~

Eric Thompson shook his head, staring at the exquisite wireless router, and said helplessly, "If I didn't know there was such a magical Starlink in this universe, I wouldn't be so frustrated. You little thing, you brought me to Starlink, but only gave me an empty account. What's the deal with that?"

Eric Thompson was just muttering to himself in the middle of the night, not expecting anyone to answer. But as soon as he finished speaking, the silver router actually spoke!

"Isn't there one Starcoin in the account? Mathematically speaking, that's not an empty account. Besides, this is the highest privilege account with no purchase restrictions."

The little silver guy's voice sounded like a child, and seemed a bit aggrieved?

Eric Thompson was startled, jumped up from his chair, and exclaimed, "You can talk?"

"I'm an artificial intelligence robot. Not only can I talk, I can think too."

Eric Thompson glanced at the account name displayed on the computer screen—Exorcist—and curiously asked, "You mean this Exorcist account has the highest privileges on Starlink?"

"That's right. I am the first-generation artificial intelligence management robot of Starlink, also known as the First-Gen Bot. My existence is experimental, and this account was used by administrators for testing, so there are no restrictions on purchasing privileges."