But halfway through Arendse’s leave, there was a phone call: An undersea internet cable off Angola was malfunctioning. The Thévenin, the only cable repair ship permanently stationed in Africa, was heading off to fix it, and Arendse was needed. “We impact the lives of millions of people,” Didier Dillard, Orange Marine’s chief executive officer, told Rest of World. 60 The number of times undersea internet cables could encircle the globe by 2040, according to projections. “It’s like a little floating city,” Thomas Quehec from France, the captain on rotation in July, told Rest of World.