Aethernet
Among Aether’s interesting properties is its nonlocality, meaning that when it is perturbed, it is perturbed everywhere at once. This makes it the optimal medium for transmitting information across interstellar distances. There is one caveat, which is that aetheric signal attenuation is negligible, meaning everyone in Elysium must share a single common signal space that can easily become overwhelmed with traffic.
The Queen’s Guard
Early attempts to use Aethernet were subject to a predictable Tragedy of the Commons. Companies building telecom infrastructure were in a constant battle to establish ever more powerful transmitters and multiplexing algorithms to have any hope of being heard over the saturated signal bands. (Pascalia Wells, CEO of NiteLife at the time, was famously reported to have noted that “screaming into the void had never been such an exercise in futility before people started receiving answers.“) Eventually the various Megas controlling the galaxy had enough, and created the Guard.
This agency received a portion of their funding from each of the major players—the exact division of which became the subject of hot debate, and led to the establishment of the Fifth Year Calculations, a twice a decade bonanza of backroom dealings and tax fraud. Nevertheless, the levies were eventually decided, the Guard began licensing Aethernet frequency bands at huge cost, and soon the price and power of Aethernet transmitters plummeted to the point of being marketable towards individual pilots. The old multiplexing colossi immediately became terminally illegal—and the holy grail for pirates and hackers, whom the Queen’s Guard work tirelessly to exterminate.