Oh. That one. I’d been putting that off…
* * *
Butterworth was livid. This was no mere cow he was having, this was the whole herd. I listened, jaw agape, as he carpet-bombed his tirade with expletives. I hadn’t even been aware he knew the f-word. Turned out he was an expert in its use as a verb, noun, adjective, adverb, article, and several forms of punctuation. I made sure I was recording.
Finally, he calmed down. Relatively. Sort of.
“So these, these… Others—moronic name, by the way—are going around depopulating planets? Just because?”
“Well, according to Mario...” I noted that Butterworth couldn’t quite suppress an eye-roll. He didn’t think much of our naming choices. “…they kill all the life on any planets in the system, then extract all the metals and
rare elements.”
“And we’re parked out here like a juicy target!”
I looked down and took the time to rein in my tendency to sarcasm before answering. “Colonel, it’s not like you’d have been any safer on Earth. If anything, Vulcan is slightly farther away from where they appear to be operating. And Earth has been advertising its presence for a couple of centuries with radio pollution.”
The colonel nodded, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. I felt for him.
He had no doubt thought that the worst was over with the landing on Vulcan.
Now we were all back in the frying pan.
“So what plans do the Bobs have, Howard?”
Now I was on more neutral ground. “Mario has built a bunch of scout-Bobs, and they’re checking nearby systems. He’s going to keep building cohorts, and they’re going to keep spreading out until they’ve mapped the Others’ depredations. Then we’ll take it from there. Bill has turned his attention to methods of destruction. Unfortunately, the Others are probably ahead of us technologically. We have some bootstrapping to do.”
“Keep me informed, please.” He wandered over and sat at his desk, rubbing his forehead. I enjoyed the few seconds of silence as he reviewed his notes.
“Farm donuts.” He said, looking up at me. “Those appear to be exceeding expectations.”
“Yes, Colonel. Bill came up with a lot of engineering improvements while breeding up the plant stock for release on Ragnarök. He has something called free time. I hope to experience it someday.”
Butterworth snorted and gave me a wry smile. We were both going full-bore, getting the colony up and running. The fact that replicants didn’t need to eat or sleep just meant that I was available seven days a week, twenty-two hours and thirteen minutes a day. Or thirty-one forty-nine, on Romulus.
Scheduling was going to be a headache once the Romulan colony was up and running. Funny, I couldn’t remember any science-fiction stories that actually dealt with how you’d handle timekeeping on a new planet.
“And that means,” Butterworth continued, “that we’ll be able to set up the Spits and FAITH colonies on an accelerated schedule. I expect you’re looking forward to your descendants coming out of stasis.”
“No one more than Riker.” I grinned. “I have to admit it’s been a pretty
popular program in BobNet.”
Butterworth grimaced. “BobNet. Seven billion people on Earth in the early twenty-first century, and FAITH decided to replicate a nerd-slash-engineer with a Star Trek fixation.” He grinned at me to take the sting out of the comment and reached for the disconnect button. “Until tomorrow, then…”
17. We’ve Lost a Drone
Bob
May 2171
Delta Eridani
The conversation with Bill had been both awesome and depressing. The idea that humanity was down to fifteen million people was devastating. On the other hand, it sounded like that number had come close to dropping to a big fat zero.
On the plus side, I wasn’t surprised that he’d cracked the subspace problem, but I was impressed by how quickly he’d done it. It left a small, nagging question in the back of my mind as to whether I could have pulled that off. How different from me was Bill?
Meh. No matter. The problem had been solved, Bill and I were working on merging the VR source from our two independent development branches, and real-time communications between Bobs was now a reality, at least in principle. I grinned to myself at the idea of a galactic internet. There still weren’t a lot of Bobs online, but that would change as Bill’s message spread through the local sphere at the speed of light.
I was overjoyed to find out that I had the official First Contact position sewn up. But I doubted I would be the only one.
Luke and Bender hadn’t come online yet. I hoped they would eventually intercept Bill’s transmissions so we could get caught up. Just in case, I instructed the local space station to periodically retransmit the SCUT plans along their flight paths. One way or another, they’d eventually receive the plans.
The lack of significant progress on Bill’s Android project was a little disappointing. A lot of the basic tech was being developed back on Earth when Original Bob was still alive. But it was proving difficult to put all the concepts together into an artificial body that could operate like a complete organism. Oh, well. Sooner or later, Bill would make some breakthroughs.
Meanwhile, I had my own projects.
Marvin had taken delivery of the exploration squads and was deploying them into his search grid covering the Deltans’ original territory. At the level of detail we were trying for, he expected to be finished in three months or so.
* * *
“I just lost a drone.” Marvin popped into my VR unannounced. He had a perplexed expression on his face.
“Define lost. ”
“Have a look.” He popped up a video window. It showed a panoramic view of Eden from several hundred meters in the air. The drone was flying a search pattern, looking for clearings that could be potential former villages.
Suddenly, the image began corkscrewing wildly and breaking up. After about half a second of this, the image disappeared.
“The hell,” I muttered. “I’m assuming that was an attack from above?”
“It would appear so. I did a frame-by-frame, and this was the best I could come up with.” He popped up a still image. It was out of focus and broken up by video interference lines, but there was an impression of something biting or chewing on the drone.
“I ran some filters and cleanup routines on it. The result is partly extrapolated.” He switched to a second image. This one was still grainy and lacking in detail, but I could make out what appeared to be a large beak or muzzle, filled with teeth.
“Wow,” I said. “I would sure hate for that to be the last thing I saw.”
“Guppy, are we getting any telemetry at all from the drone?” Marvin asked.
[Negative. Attack likely took out the power system]
“Hmm, well, I want to take a look at the wreckage. I’ll set up a SUDDAR
search. Highly refined metal should stand out like a lamp in a cave.” Marvin stood up, gave me a salute, and disappeared.
* * *
The wreckage of the drone rotated slowly in the holotank. Marvin had found the destroyed unit several kilometers south of its last known location and had taken a full-detail SUDDAR scan.
The drone was bitten almost in half, and had two parallel claw marks dug into the shell. The units were designed to be lightweight—unlike the busters,