The novelty eventually wore off, and Ludo returned to his original purpose of opening the hugely detailed map — choosing a location for the drop off of his items.
He found it was rather simple, and he chose a location about 20 miles out from Metro city, in the wilderness, actually kind of close to where the original meteor struck him a few days prior.
'Stealth' mode was already chosen when he made the purchase, but he couldn't know for sure if that would protect his delivery from being discovered or not, so he decided to add an extra layer of security by receiving it out in the middle of nowhere.
He knew that it was 99% sure an unnecessary thing to do, as whoever was delivering his items could surely hide themselves from a Basic level 1 civilisation — but it at least saved him from any prying or overly curious eyes that might be nearby at the time of his delivery.
That counted for something.
He set out nearly immediately after choosing the drop off location, making sure to triple check that the office was locked and all of his encryption on Blue's server was working properly.
Leaving it all unattended for a few hours did make him feel a bit uneasy, as the address of the office was publicly known on his company website, thanks to the stringent laws of Metro city requiring such a thing if he wanted to operate there legally.
Though he did make sure to tell Blue to be on high alert the whole time he was gone, and it made the according plans — gaining access to every security camera in a 2 block radius, and connecting itself to his newly bought phone to delivery any notifications should it find any suspicious activity in the area.
He'd have preferred to have an even larger radius of cameras to access, but the operating power would be stretched thin if he took it any more than 2 blocks — thanks to how mediocre the computing power of his server was.
Still, this was the best he could do for the time being. Once he received the money from the Blue 1.0 deal though, he'd finally be able to massively scale his operations.
After what felt like an intense 1.5 hour drive, Ludo finally arrived at the drop off point he'd chosen. Even though it was just 20 miles out from the city, he still had to make it out of the city first! That accounted for two thirds of the time he spent making his way over here…
"Man the city traffic sucks balls in the morning." He clicked his tongue while staring absentmindedly at the sky.
He now had around 30 minutes left to kill before it arrived.
Which made Ludo wonder, with the delivery time being so close now, did that mean it was already in their solar system? Was an alien spaceship currently cruising its way through, barrelling towards Earth just to deliver two pieces of technology to him?
Now that he really put some thought into it, travelling interstellar distances must be quite economic for those advanced civilizations, corporations, and whatever other alien groupings there were out in interstellar space.
Otherwise, how could such a thing as delivering items barely weighing a few kilos across light years of distance ever be profitable.
Either those 'credits' he'd been exchanging on the trading hubs had an extremely higher value than he'd originally thought, or travelling through space had become cheap.
The answer to this was something that he was actually rather interested in, as it was a no-brainer that for someone with the Galactic Terminal at his disposal, his sights would eventually set out on the vast solar system, and maybe even joining the Galactic ranks at some point.
If every time he wanted to build and send a ship out it would cost him the GDP of a small country with Earth's current capabilities, he didn't see how that would be a sustainable thing.
But seeing how others in the Galaxy had already demonstrated it could be done cheaply, or at least at a scale where it was profitable, he felt encouraged.
His thoughts carried on until he was abruptly pulled out of them by a loud beep sounding throughout his ears.
"Ouch!"
He couldn't help but yell out.
[30 seconds until final drop off.]
The Galactic terminal notified him.
"What!? Just 30 seconds? How could it be so close already?"
Ludo was shocked; the stealth option he'd picked appeared to be much more than he'd bargained for, as there was no indication whatsoever that cargo from interstellar space was about to land in this location!
Not a single sound, like any thunderous booms from something breaking into the atmosphere, no sign of any anomalous object in the clear blue sky above — but most importantly, no national alert on his phone warning anyone in the area of the imminent arrival of an alien spaceship!
If the government had detected that there was an alien spaceship en route and even about to arrive at Earth, and in less than 30 seconds at that, there was a high likelihood that they would have already sent out an emergency alert to all citizens in the area, or perhaps even the whole country.
Of course, there was always the chance that they'd keep the information to themselves in fear of causing any widespread panic, or for more sinister reasons, but Ludo chose to ignore that.
The odds were in his favour, and when a small, half-a-metre-wide, unassuming black box appeared before him out of nowhere, he felt absolutely certain of this fact.
"W-what the f—"
Ludo jumped back in fright.
He managed to catch a glimpse of what looked like a thin line of warped air leading from the top of the box all the way up into the sky, but that disappeared soon after.
[Package has been delivered.]
The final message from the Galactic Terminal confirmed that this was in fact his delivery — to nobody's surprise.
'Did it just lower it down to the ground with an invisible cable, attached to an invisible ship or something…?'
Deep down, Ludo suspected that was the answer, or at least a part of it.