Tea and Aliens; no way to run an alien invasion

The Ur network neutralizes space and time. Without warning, it connects with Nolan, whose life is about to need alien intervention. Since the network puts everything at zero distance from everything else, there are a lot of aliens, -- and they are much too close by. All of them are different. And all of them have different problems –which have now become Nolan's problems. Our hero, with his new love, Fiona, wind up in charge of an intergalactic nexus… which is a house in a quiet little suburb. Unfortunately, terrestrial biology is not compatible with alien body chemistries. Even worse, alien technology is not compatible with terrestrial technology. Nolan and Fiona have the job of keeping those chemistries and those technologies separated. It is not helpful that various earlier visitations, over millennia, have left some peculiar artifacts on this planet. These have to be found and returned. Or, at least, shut down. Is it all a Government secret? No, Earth Governments are trying desperatelynot to know anything about this. Meanwhile there could be a microbial infection traceable to Earth. Things almost settle down. So, while still in Europe, Nolan has Fiona join him. They plan a moonlight picnic in the ruins of a French chateau -- only to be interrupted by three gargoyles, soon to be joined by a gaggle of other aliens. Afterward, the two humans attempt to get into tourist mode. But in a visit to a cathedral, Fiona is pulled through a labyrinth to encounter an imprisoned artist who is far from human. Elsewhere in spacetime Fiona meets a horseshoe-crab-like scientist whose civilization is threatened by oxygen-driven climate change. Later on, in a long-delayed honeymoon trip, Nolan and Fiona are in Western Australia where they encounter two aliens with one name. Back home again, they find that the still-locked-down portal is failing. It's a doorstop, in an access point that it can't hold open much longer. The entire communication-connection to Earth is at risk from a programming error forty three centuries old. The whole chain of causation has to be traced and fixed before the portal-doorstop destabilizes. The final chapter "Earth People are Like That" is by a guest artist; a highly evolved millipede. He has adopted a lot of human literary tropes. That is to say, he steals from the best; from Shakespeare to Tchaikovsky. Perhaps also from not-the-best; specifically 1950s American musicals.