“Wow, this is getting morbid. I don’t feel quite so negative about the backups, now.”
I chuckled. “So let’s pick our destination systems, put together a working comms link, and get this show on the road.”
14. Sabotage
Riker
December 2170
Sol
The image on the video made me curl my lip in a sneer of both contempt and disgust. Half a herd of cattle lay dead in their paddock—fifty animals, poisoned by something in the food, according to the vet. On the other video window, Ms. Sharma, UN representative for the Maldives, waited silently.
She was attempting to maintain a stone face, and failing.
The slaughter represented the third act of full-blown terrorism this month.
VEHEMENT was ramping up from a nuisance to a full-blown threat. This was the first time they’d taken lives, though, even if livestock. I hadn’t come out and said it, but I considered this an act of war. If I caught up with this group, and it came down to an exchange of ordnance, I wouldn’t have any ethical issues with taking some of them down. I admitted to myself that I really didn’t know if I’d be able to pull the trigger. It was one thing to talk war, it was another entirely to actually take a human life.
But I would want to. That much, I was sure of.
Food supply continued to become more critical as Earth’s climate deteriorated. Over half of the thirty-five remaining enclaves around the planet were at least partly dependent on food subsidies from our orbital farms. The Maldives were still nominally self-supporting, but this assault on their food capacity would mean we’d have to kick in, at least in the short term.
Representative Sharma finally couldn’t hold it in any longer. “This is senseless. Senseless! Cattle? What have they proven? What have they accomplished? Cowards!”
I nodded at every word. For all the bickering in the UN, the various representatives were united in their hatred and contempt for VEHEMENT.
After an event like this, I could probably push through any special measure I wanted to, with little debate or opposition.
Too bad I didn’t have anything in my queue.
“This is going to hurt, Ms. Sharma. Those cattle represent a lot of high-quality calories, not to mention the breeding capacity.” I took a moment to check the herd numbers. “It’s not life-threatening, but it is damaging. I think, if the handlers hadn’t noticed the animals getting sick, we could have lost this entire herd. And that would have been devastating.”
“I will move to set up a task force at the UN meeting tomorrow,” Ms.
Sharma said. “I think there’s been a general feeling up to now that if we just ignored them and didn’t give them the attention they obviously crave, that they’d go away. No longer.”
I nodded without comment. I had the pronouncement from VEHEMENT
up in another video window. These people were several screws short, but there was no doubt they were deadly serious. The essential message was that humanity had made a mess of the solar system, and it was time for them to bow out and let the universe recover. And because we might be reluctant to go along, VEHEMENT was going to help us towards that goal.
Great. Violent, self-absorbed crackpots. On top of everything else.
I forwarded the missive to Homer, Charles, and Ralph, and also sent a copy on to Bill. Not that he would have any specific ideas, but I’d gotten in the habit of looping him in on everything. I smiled briefly at the thought.
Universal Archives.
Homer popped in a few milliseconds later. “Number Two, I am forced to admit I’m coming up blank. These clowns trump anything I could possibly say, just by existing.”
“Yup. Just when you think humanity has found the limits of stupid, they go and ratchet up the standard by another notch.” I shook my head. “We’re going to have to modify our schedules to replace the calories that the cattle would have supplied. Got any ideas?”
Homer bobbed his head back and forth. “Could be. It’s just possible that I’ve been under-reporting production a bit, to establish a small surplus. I suppose now would be a good time to notice the error with a gasp of relief.”
He grinned at me, and I smiled back. Homer was full of surprises.
That was fine for right now. But what about next time VEHEMENT
struck? I had a bad feeling that it was going to get worse, rather than better.
15. A Visit From Bill
Mario
November 2180
Gliese 54
I stared in frank amazement at the header on this latest communication from Bill.
Plans for a Subspace Communications Universal Transceiver (SCUT) with zero latency.
Holy. Crap. On a cracker.
Well, the big guy had delivered. I examined the plans and attached notes.
Bill was candid that this was an early version, and probably cantankerous. He also wasn’t sure about the range. Yeah, yeah, disclaimer, disclaimer. A hundred-plus years after our death and we still felt the need to lawyer at ourselves. Hmm, and keeping up the FAITH tradition of bad acronyms, too.
Simple math said other stars had received the plans already. I didn’t know if any of them had Bobs crewing the stations rather than AMIs. That would have been a decision made by the Bobs involved at the time. But there was a good chance I’d be able to get a line all the way back to Bill. The specs indicated that the system took care of discovery, routing, and encryption.
Cool!
I was lucky to have been still in the system when I intercepted the radio transmission. Bill was obviously beaming the plans to all stars within some arbitrary radius of Epsilon Eridani, but if I’d been between stars, it probably would have missed me entirely.
With no further ado, I suspended all other projects and turned every printer and roamer I had to the task of building myself a, er, SCUT.
* * *
It wasn’t visually impressive. Kind of kludge-looking, really, almost steampunk. I held my virtual breath and flipped the switch. Within moments, connection confirmations began to flood onto the console.
Tau Ceti
Omicron2 Eridani
Sol
Epsilon Eridani
Epsilon Indi
Alpha Centauri
Delta Eridani
Pi(3) Orionis
Eta Cassiopeiae A
Kappa Ceti
I checked the console menus and found that I could register myself on the global directory, which would get me on email, IM, and chat.
Very nice.
I set up my account, then pinged Bill.
“Bill here.”
“Wow. That is truly amazing stuff. Bill, this is Mario at GL 54. I have—”
“Really? Mario? ” And with that, Bill appeared in my VR, sitting on the other side of my desk.
“Holy—”
Bill raised a coffee cup at me in greeting. “Dude! Long time!”
“Yeah, well, that’s what I get for aiming for the far reaches.” I gave him a quick smirk, then turned serious. “So, the light-speed report won’t reach you for a couple of decades yet, but we seem to have a problem out here. Here’s the relevant data.” I shoved a set of files over to him.
Bill’s avatar froze for a few milliseconds as he went into frame-jack and scanned the files. When he came back, his eyes were haunted.