“Bill, this is Marvin.” Bob gestured toward the newcomer. “He’s a disrespectful pain in the ass. And that’s one of his better qualities.”
Marvin and I smiled and nodded to each other. I said, “I recognize the tone of that laugh. I guess Bob has gone overboard.”
Marvin smirked. “You might say that. He’s become the great volcano god.
Did you see the spears and axes?”
“Hey!” Bob interjected. “I resent that. I’m more of a sky god.”
We all laughed together. Despite the joking, though, I was still a little lightheaded. An intelligent species, the first we’d ever run across. I had a pretty good idea which blog was going to be number one on BobNet for the next little while.
Bob motioned me to a couch and coffee-table setup sitting incongruously in the middle of the native village. “So, Bill, what’s new in the galaxy?”
I sat down, accepted a coffee from Jeeves, and took a moment to pat Bob’s
incarnation of Spike, who had come back to investigate. The cat’s A.I.
appeared more independent than my version. Another item to merge. It dawned on me that Bob was still the reigning master of VR coding.
“Wow, what’s been happening?” I thought for a moment. “Well, Milo discovered two habitable planets at Omicron2 Eridani. Named them Vulcan and Romulus.”
Bob laughed. “Of course he did. What else could he do?”
I grinned back at him, then got serious. “Riker and his clone, Homer, had a big battle in Sol with the last of the Brazilian space navy, and discovered that humanity had almost wiped itself out in a system-wide war. They’re building colony ships and are hoping to get some people to Vulcan before the Earth stops being livable.”
Bob interrupted. “How many people left?”
“About fifteen million, give or take.”
“And how big are the colony ships?”
I nodded, understanding where Bob was going. “Ten thousand capacity.
Yeah, I know. Fifteen hundred ships or fifteen hundred trips. But we can only do what we can do.”
Bob nodded. He looked worried, and I couldn’t blame him. Riker and I had this conversation regularly. So far, we hadn’t found any shortcut.
I tried to change the subject to lighten the mood. “We’ve got a minimum of about twenty Bobs running around the galaxy right now, by my estimate.”
I waved a hand in casual dismissal. “You know. The usual. Blah, blah…”
Bob visibly shook off the funk and tried to smile. “Sounds like you’ve taken to the job of central clearing house with a vengeance. Got anything going in Epsilon Eridani besides the SCUT?”
“I’m slowly terraforming Ragnarök. Riker has sent some seeds and plant samples my way with an outgoing Bob. They should be here in three years or so. Then I’ll try to get some basic moss/lichen hybrids growing. Oh, and the Android project. I’ve got a quadruped android working, more or less, and I can control it remotely. It’s slow going though, and I’ve barely scratched the surface.”
“I’ll want one of those when they’re available,” Bob said. “I’d like to be able to go down to Eden as an actual presence instead of a floating camera.”
“Mmm.” I nodded. It looked like Bob was pretty invested in the lives of
the Deltans. No real surprise, though.
13. Investigating the Others Mario
May 2180
Gliese 54
This time, I was lucky. Unlike Beta Hydri and Zeta Tucanae, Gliese 54 was untouched.
I had no clue about what might determine the course of whatever beings had stripped the two other systems. If they travelled as a single unit, and they were travelling in a straight line, they might never meet up with any of us.
My concern was that, if they were mining that much metal, they were probably building something. The obvious answer to that would be more of them. And that would be bad.
This was not a particularly interesting system. The primary was a small K, almost a red dwarf. It had a single lonely planet orbiting in close, and a bunch of space junk. Of course, space junk was what I needed. Although the overall metallicity of the system was low, most of it hadn’t aggregated into planets.
The manufacturing process was routine, even if I only had memories of having done it once as Bob-1 in Epsilon Eridani. It took a couple of months to build and deploy the space station. Once it was up, I squirted every bit of information I had on the Others back to Bill. The station had the added bonus that I would be able to transmit to it from any of the stars in the immediate area, and it would relay my messages to Epsilon Eridani.
I also decided that I didn’t want to be alone, so I started construction of four more Bobs. Bashful, Dopey, Sleepy, and Hungry all agreed to accompany me to deal with the potential threat. Yes, they named themselves after dwarves. And yes, it was pointed out at some length that there was no Hungry in the original crew. Hungry didn’t care. Apparently I can be very perverse. And stubborn. Anyway, there’s that joke about the fifty dwarves…
We sat around the desk in my treehouse, sipping tropical drinks with little umbrellas. Except Hungry, who refused to go along with the theme. He had a coffee. I suggested we rename him Surly and received a middle finger for my
trouble.
Sleepy opened the discussion. “We have to figure out the vector and size of the invasion, or infestation, or whatever it is. Is it heading for Earth? Or away?”
“And what they’re doing with all that metal. If they’re building more ships, it must be a massive fleet. How would we not see them coming?”
Dopey looked around at us, palms up. “And all the, uh, food…”
“Yeah…” I nodded slowly. “We have no information, really. We have to find them. And we have to get a report back without becoming part of their harvest. Their ants are surprisingly efficient. I’ve learned several things from them, which I’ve already squirted back Bill-ward.”
There was silence around the table as everyone digested this.
“So we each pick a system outward and head there,” Sleepy said. “We should keep a transmission channel open at all times, so we’ll have a record if one of us disappears.”
“Yes.” I nodded. “The open line should run all the way back to Bill. If necessary, stop and build a relay station. Keep up a constant stream of commentary and observations and send regular differential backups. Just in case…”
Sleepy took a sip of his drink before responding. “Sounds like a plan.
Although I don’t like the implications. If I get taken down, the Bob that gets restored won’t really be me.”
“What, you’re positing a soul, now? For us?” Surly, I mean Hungry, rolled his eyes. “Every time the crew of Star Trek transported, they faced the same philosophical question.”
Sleepy rolled his eyes back at Hungry in exaggerated mockery. “Again with the fictional TV series. Is that where you get all your life lessons?”
Hungry frowned. “Well, you should know, shouldn’t you?”
“Children, children. Am I going to have to separate you?” I glared around the table. “Can we focus on the planet-destroying, rampaging alien whatzits for now?”
Sleepy and Hungry both looked embarrassed. After a moment of silence, I continued. “I would also suggest that we have some kind of self-destruct capability built in. Maybe a dead-man trigger. Personally, I don’t want to have to feel myself being slowly disassembled if I get caught, and I certainly don’t want it or them to learn anything from me.”