(Ed note: Sorry about the delay. Hay fever hit hard and early this year and I was completely unprepared for it; it usually comes in April, not mid-March.)

The Voyager 2 probe spent an hour inside the stealth ship before being ejected. As the ship had matched course and speed with it, it continued on its way with no apparent changes. Unless someone happened to have been watching the entire process from start to finish, the disappearance wouldnt even have been noticed.

Even for keen-eyed observers, if they noticed the disappearance it would seem like a sensor glitch on their side, as nothing about the venerable space probe had changed, at least outwardly. The only difference was that the insides of the probe had been swapped out for nanite colonies that took the shape of the components that were already there, but with the vastly increased capabilities of imperial tech.

The nanite colonies had vastly improved the sensors of the Voyager 2, though the communication issue had been a little bit trickier. Since radio waves were interceptable and quantum teleportation required more energy than the probe should be able to generate, the new method of communication with Earth was via ultrahigh frequency whisker lasers through a relay network of stealthed repeater probes.

Voyager 2 would passively collect material from the interstellar medium and print probes on its own from there on, and Captain de Groots crew would lay the remainder during their return journey.

(Ed note: Space isnt completely empty. Theres a lot of gas and dust particles floating around in it, ranging from a handful of particles per cubic centimeter to tens, or even thousands of particles per cubic centimeter.)

The stealth ship laid the first probe, then began the journey home.

Another crew, meanwhile, had completed the same maneuver on the original Voyager and was also headed home. The two probes, one that had already left the solar system and entered the interstellar medium and one that would soon leave the solar system, would act as the vanguards in search of intelligent life in the galaxy, something that the simulation was incapable of predicting.

While all that was happening in space, things continued apace on the planet. People had celebrated the new year and were returning to work, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and eager to face the challenges of the year 3 AE.

Theyd had the vacation of their lives. With the time dilation in VR, coupled with virtual travel being instantaneous, many people had joked that they would have nothing left on their bucket list after a few short years. They had even enjoyed their vacation so much that not only was their productivity increased when they returned, but they didnt even grumble about paying taxes... much.

Everyone had received a notification of how much their income was, and a breakdown of their spending to aid in budgeting. The new currency had made it difficult to estimate the spending power people had in their hands, so the information was both helpful and timely. Thankfully, the taxes were low and the empire would accept either lump sum payments or a zero-interest installment plan stretching their tax payment into four, six, or twelve equal payments. Thus, the vast majority of people found themselves with nothing to grumble about.

But as for those who had attempted to hide their income, thinking that the empire would be as lax as the previous scattered governments were regarding income tax, well... they had quite a rude awakening. There were no more tax shelters, and even putting their money under other peoples names worked. The empire saw everything they tried and included it all in their tax settlement notifications, leaving billionaires to pay the same income tax as people barely eking out a living hovering just above the poverty line.

Even Arons businesses were the same. Though he didnt have to pay tax on the token 1 END he received from the treasury as a salary, his businesses werent exempt. The only money that was considered tax exempt was money that was paid out from the imperial treasury; everything else, barring charitable organizations, was subject to paying taxes.

During the previous year, the empire had collected a one-time windfall in a lump sum as a result of people hiding their dirty money. Criminal organizations, such as drug empires, and other money like ongoing government operations from their black budgets, had been seized. So had more white-collar criminal money, with people losing the money they had been hiding in tax shelters. Everything from people taking out credit cards in the names of their pets to people artificially inflating the value of artwork had been spotted, and the gains of those criminal enterprises seized right along with drug money.

And now, all usable cashin the empire, at leastwas tracked through the chips in the bills and coins themselves. Thus, not even cash could be used as a tax shelter; every bill and every coin had an owner, and with specified owners, it made cash just as easy to tax as electronic currency.

The ultra-wealthy werent happy about what they saw as draconian tax collection and income tracking laws. It had historically been something of a game they played with the government and tax agencies, where they would see how much they could hide and avoid paying taxes on and the government tried to find and tax the undeclared income. But now they couldnt play those games, leaving them rather unhappy with the outcome.

At first, they had attempted the same thing theyd always done: resort to bribing officials to get the system changed to benefit the wealthy. But with no way to lobby the imperial government, at least not legally, they were completely at a loss. After all, if the officials arent elected, theres no need for them to collect campaign funds.

So they opted to attempt outright bribes, sending sacks of cash and other valuables to the officials along with promises of lucrative positions once they leave their cushy government jobs.

But that just spectacularly backfired on them.

Every government employee knew they were subject to constant monitoring of their job performance. Their training had even told them what to do in case someone attempted to bribe them: accept the bribe, make the promise, and report the person who bribed them to their superior. As a reward for reporting it, they could even keep whatever was used to bribe them, be it cash or otherwise.

If they didnt report it, however, they would be caught and sentenced to an even stricter sentence than the person attempting to bribe them. Accepting bribes was seen as even worse than the bribery itself, and every single agency had a department dedicated to investigating the employees of that agency, much like the internal affairs division of police forces.

Little did they know, however, that the people responsible for catching them were the librarians keeping the record of their brain data in the Akashic Library. Every time they violated the rules, a report would be generated and sent to an investigator, who would catch the rule-breaker and punish them on the spot.

The ultra-wealthy had finally been met with a government that was impossible for them to influence in any way.