The Cease and Desist from Proxima Centauri
A Quantum Relay Novel

About this book:

When humanity's first message from the stars arrives, it doesn't bring wisdom, prime numbers, or an invitation to the galactic federation. It brings a cease-and-desist order. Served via quantum entanglement from four light-years away, Form 109-C cites seventeen counts of unpermitted deep-core drilling, missing environmental impact statements, and spatial-variance pollution—all filed by the Proxima Sector Territorial Authority against a species that didn't know it had a landlord.

Arthur Vance just wanted his hazard pay and a cottage in Vermont. Instead, the lone operator of Kuiper Relay Station Nine finds himself humanity's unwilling process server, staring down a seventy-two-hour deadline before "secondary sub-light punitive enforcement" arrives. With Sol-Tariff Energy's harvesters still chewing through the Oort Cloud, Earth's corporate lawyers screaming about jurisdiction, and a potted fern as his only confidant, Arthur has to navigate interstellar civil procedure, forced-entangled physics, and the terrifying realization that the universe runs on billable hours.

Sharp, surreal, and hopelessly funny, *The Cease and Desist from Proxima Centauri* launches the Quantum Relay Novels—a series where first contact is a paperwork problem, sovereignty is a contract dispute, and saving the species might just come down to finding a loophole in the light cone.