The day was finally here, and the novel was finally put on sale. Bookstores all over the world, be it within the empire, within ASEAN, within the vassal kingdoms, within Africa, within the Middle East, throughout the Mediterranean, and even in Europe, opened up for business.

Since the launch was held only after shipping 200,000 copies to each part of the world, it was possible to hold a simultaneous launch throughout the globe.

The lines of people wanting to buy the book spanned the whole street, and sometimes, in countries where there are only one or two bookstores selling the book, it was even seen spanning hundreds of metres.

It even attracted several newspapers and part-time writers from all the media houses.

"This is unprecedented, dear readers, a line of 200 metres has been formed here in our own Warsaw, it is foreseeable that Empress Kavya's book has a strong chance of breaking her previous record."

Apart from the three countries of Britain, France, and the Netherlands, which do not have economic relations with the Bharatiya Empire and do not trade, all the other European countries, even if there is some bad blood, have trade relationships between them. So even though the nobles are wary or hate the Bharatiya Empire, the commoners and youngsters love and adore the novels and artistic works of the Bharatiya Empire.

The countries with the best relationship with the Bharatiya Empire, like the United Greek Soviet Republics, the Kingdom of Israel, and the Kingdom of Egypt, allowed any of their bookstores to import books from the Bharatiya Empire without any restrictions, so the Greeks, Jews, and Egyptians rushed to the streets to get a copy for themselves. For the Greeks and Egyptians, the reason why they were so interested was because of curiosity: what would the novel written by the Empress of the Empire that supported them look like? As for the Jews, they already are avid fans of the Bharatiya Empire since, after all, most of the Jews in the top echelon in the Kingdom of Israel are from Bharat, not to mention the President of Israel at one point had citizenship of the Bharatiya Empire.

Andreas was a department director in a state-owned construction company responsible for the digging of the Suez Canal. He took a big gulp as he stood in a line filled with the Bharatiyas and the Jews. Being a department director who was under only three people within the company, the executive vice president, the senior vice president, and the general manager, he did not have to bow his head to too many people. But around the Bharatiyas and the Jews, he had to be cautious because even though he ranked higher than them, in reality, they were much more important than himself.

Last month, a section chief did not give any face to a Bharatiya engineer and ordered him around. As a result, he was immediately fired from duty, and someone immediately replaced him. The section chief was made an example for all of the senior cadres in the organisation.

The same went for the Jews; they were usually in the higher positions within the canal construction project, so even though one or two Greeks like him outranked them, if he offended them, they could command more power than he could ever imagine. As for why he was trying to buy the new book of the Empress of the Bharatiya Empire, the reason was his intent to follow whatever the rich or superiors did, so that he could understand what it is like being rich or superior. It was very much similar to the kids from the middle-class family in Vijay's last life, where they bought designer brand clothes despite not having a stable life.

The line moved slowly as one person after another came out of the bookstore with an excited expression on their faces while holding the book close to their bodies as if it was a treasure.

Soon it was Andreas' turn. He already knew the price of the book since it was mentioned on the board outside the bookstore, so he did not say much, placed the money on the table, and the shopkeeper, without even asking which book he wanted to buy, took a book from a pile of books and placed it on the counter, though finally, a few words were still heard from his mouth.

"Thank you, come again."

Andreas nodded and left.

Udai, who had his subordinate buy a copy of the new novel of Her Majesty the Empress, rubbed his hands in excitement and placed the book in front of him.

Raghavendra Kulkarni directly took leave from teaching and sat in his dormitory, ready to binge the whole book in a day.

Priyanka Deshmukh sent her child to school, her husband to work, then sat alone in her room in front of the new book of Kavya.

Readers across the world placed their attention on the cover of the book, which unsurprisingly was the same image that was on the poster, so people all over the world turned the first page in anticipation, because they all knew that there would be a majestic illustration of something according to Her Majesty's habits.

And they were right, there was indeed an illustration, and this illustration was that of a small, tiny, rice-sized spaceship travelling through a vast sea of stars.

'Gasp!' Priyanka Deshmukh immediately widened her eyes and covered her mouth.

"Oh Lord!" A Catholic priest, whose guilty pleasure was to read novels, held his chest as it began to palpitate.

"Marvellous!" A famous painter of the Italian Federation was greatly inspired by the way the vastness of the starry sky was described while still keeping the main actor in focus. Not even turning the next page, he quickly left his room and went straight to a church he had agreed to paint.

"Baciccio!" The people prepping the church were surprised. Wasn't this guy supposed to come tomorrow? Why did he come so quickly?

The painter waved his hand exaggeratedly and yelled, "I have changed my mind, I now have a new inspiration, quickly paint the ceiling white!"

The assistants didn't know why their master changed his mind so suddenly, but in the end, they still followed his wishes.

It was not only Giovanni Battista Gaulli, one of the greatest contemporary painters of the late 17th century, who was inspired by the illustration; there were many other nobles and scientists who drew inspiration from it. A famous example is an astronomer from Polish-Lithuania, but that is a story for another day.

The page was finally flipped, and the story began.

Captain Vikram Chandra, a disgraced former officer of the Earth Colonial Navy, begins his journey in the orbital station Chandralokh above Earth.

The description of how advanced the future world was completely ensnared the people who read it. It was as if they had been transported into the world of the future, where cars were not powered by steam but were magically operated using energy cubes, and the cars went over a raised platform when there was traffic. There were even trains going into and out of the city to maintain this prolific urban life. As for the space technology, the depiction of rockets spewing out blazing flames from their backs and attaching themselves to the Chandralokh Station above Earth left many mesmerised and some contemplative.

After losing his commission for refusing to abandon colonies during the Titan Mining Disaster, Vikram acquires the delegate exploration vessel Garuda's Wing from a black market dealer.

The Garuda's Wing was powered by a 6th-generation energy drive system and a 240-degree chakra protection array matrix.

"Hehe," a teenager from the Ayodhya Kingdom laughed with giddiness.

Due to heightened technology and taking magical elixirs, people lived longer, so over the next 100 years he assembled his crew: Mira Patel, a brilliant energy drive engineer expelled from Mumbai Institute for her radical theories on space-fold navigation; Jin Wei, a xenobiologist searching for his missing daughter who vanished with the lost colony ship Ashoka; and Zara Okaku, a former corporate spy whose neural implants allowed her to interface directly with the ship's Aatma, Indra.

Captain Vikram Chandra had a lot of adventures and faced a lot of adversity when assembling his group, but finally, the shared meal of khichdi in the ship's cramped gallery became the end of the first quarter of the book.

'2012: A Star Wanderers Story' is a rather long novel with over two million words packed into a single book, so by the time people read up to the part where the crew was assembled, several hours had unknowingly passed by.

Raghu Deep Vardhan, a chief engineer of Parvati Iron and Steel, had countless thoughts running in his mind. Reading the first part alone gave him a lot of inspiration. 'Maybe I can make it a reality,' he thought. Then, remembering the new technology his company had acquired, his heartbeat began to pick up, because he seemed to have realised that one of the elements mentioned in the book could already be realised. Although not fully, he could definitely think about implementing it using the steam engine.

Without wasting any more time, he went directly to the chairman to put forward his suggestion and request some funds and researchers for him to conduct experiments.

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