For We Are Many

“I’ll crank up the autofactory and start pumping them out. I’ll also see if I can modify the video and audio pickups to be more sensitive to insect sound and movement.”

Butterworth nodded to me and signed off. I gave orders to Guppy for the changes to the autofactory schedules, then sat back and shook my head.

Gross.

* * *

The Spits and FAITH colonies were done offloading to Romulus. Colonists were staying in temporary quarters until the towns were built. AMI construction equipment worked full speed to clear some land and set out street plans. We’d learned from the USE’s experience on Vulcan, and we were building a fence right away. The wildlife on Romulus wasn’t nearly as big or plentiful, but there was a joke going around about carnivorous rabbits.

Everyone was fine with excess caution.

The FAITH and Spits colonies were set up on separate continents. The land area on Romulus was divided into eight land masses, each about the size of Australia, and a number of smaller archipelagos. Separation of nations wouldn’t be a problem.

The really important item, from my point of view, was that our relatives were now awake. As part of our deal with Cranston, Julia Hendricks and family owned a communicator, so didn’t have to schedule time on the colony system.

At the appointed hour, I connected to the conference that Riker was advertising. I noted with a chuckle that we were up over thirty Bobs subscribing to the feed. I watched as Riker made the call and Julia came online. A dozen or so random family members jostled for position behind her in the video. And on her lap, with pride of place, was Space Cadet Justin.

“Unca’ Will!” he yelled.

“Hey, Cadet. Enjoy the space-ship ride?”

I could hear the pride and joy in Riker’s voice. I and every other Bob shared it. These were our sisters’ descendants, and a major reason why we put up with idiots like Cranston and VEHEMENT. I remembered Milo, who had expressed a strong lack of caring about humanity’s fate. A momentary wave of sadness washed over me at his memory. I wondered what he would have thought of the current situation.

I pulled myself back to the present, where Julia was talking about their experience. Well, trying to. Justin didn’t seem willing to give up the floor.

“…An’ we went in the big ship an’ we sat and it was boring an’ then there was a bump an’ they took us down a big hallway an’ they gave me a needle which I hated an’ they made me sleepy an’ they put me in a box an’…”

Amazing. He didn’t even seem to be stopping to breathe. The soliloquy went on for another minute, while Julia increasingly failed to keep a grin off her face. Finally, having said what he needed to say, he yelled, “Bye Unca’

Will” and shot out of frame. This prompted laughter from everyone, family and Bobs both.

Julia turned back to Riker with a smile on her face. “He has two speeds.

Asleep, and what you just saw.”

One of the family members, who I remembered as Philip something, leaned forward. “Will, how long until some other colony gets planted on Romulus?”

Riker shook his head. “Can’t say. We’ve got two more colony ships heading to your system right now, but the enclave leaders will decide whether they want to settle on Vulcan or Romulus. Howard tells me that Romulus is looking a lot more attractive these days, though.”

There were chuckles from the family. News of the raptors had already spread.

Riker talked to Julia for a few more minutes, fielded some questions from other family members, and got Julia to promise to call him as soon as they were in private residences.

Then, it was over. As Riker hung up the call, I sat back to bask in the peculiar mix of joy, wistfulness, and melancholy that seeing our family always left me with. I had talked with a few other Bobs about it—it seemed to be a common reaction. I guess Original Bob wasn’t as much of a loner as he’d always claimed.

I signed off of the conference call, and turned to Guppy, who had been hovering.

“What?”

[Colonel Butterworth wants to talk to you. They’ve caught a parasite adult]

* * *

Ugly little bugger.

Hummingbird-size turned out to be a little bit of an exaggeration, but it was still one of the biggest insects I’d ever seen. I didn’t much care for insects, and I had an urge to stomp on this one. It looked like some odd combination of hornet and spider, with two sets of wings. The stinger was particularly nasty-looking. Retractable, it could inject eggs in its victim up to an inch deep.

I had to turn off my gag reflex, watching the necropsy.

Well, now we had specifics. I bundled up all the data and shot off an email to Bill, asking for suggestions. Then I connected to Butterworth.

“Howard. You’ve seen our new neighbor?”

“Yeah, not my favorite creature. I’ve sent something off to Bill, and I’ve got a couple dozen new drones ready. I’ll program them with the data and get them to scan the area. See what we come up with.”

Butterworth nodded and disconnected.

The colonel looked outwardly calm, but I knew this was worrying him.

Big things like raptors, we could handle. Small stuff, not so much. Humanity could conceivably end up prisoners in their own homes if we didn’t get control of this pest.

21. Attacks Continue

Riker

December 2174

Sol

“We lost a cargo drone,” Charles said, popping into VR. “There was an explosive package waiting where it landed. As soon it touched down, the bomb went off.”

He sat down and accepted a coffee from Jeeves. “It was a supply delivery to Vancouver Island. They’ve still got enough of a fishery that they’re not facing immediate starvation, but the loss of equipment and resources is still painful.”

I looked up and muttered a few choice expletives. “I take it we lost the entire food shipment?”

Charles nodded. “I thought we had the landing area completely secured.

VEHEMENT has already claimed responsibility. They’re getting trickier.”

A light blinked on my console. Not surprisingly, it was Premier Grady. I accepted the call.

“We seem to have lost our delivery,” he said without preamble. “I saw the announcement. I do not blame you for this—you could just as soon blame me. However, the problem remains of hungry mouths to feed. What can be done?”

“Short term, sir, I’m going to put together another delivery. Homer is in your area, so he’ll arrange a time and place over a short-range laser link. No chance of intercepting the communication that way.” I turned to look at Homer. He nodded and disappeared.

I thought for a second, then turned back to the video call. “Meanwhile, I think that VEHEMENT has graduated to major threat. They’re not going to go away, and they’re no longer just a nuisance.”

I talked to Grady for a few more moments, going over some backlogged items. Then he looked to his right and announced that he was receiving the connection from Homer. His eyes moved across the video screen for a few

moments, then he turned back to me and nodded.

After he disconnected, Charles said, “We also have the issue of the Florianópolis attacks.”

“I know, Charles. A lot of people still blame Brazil for the war. I guess they’re taking out their frustrations and getting some revenge. We have a task force going on that already. I just don’t know how hard they’re working on it.

There seems to be a lot of sympathy for those terrorist attacks.”

“Less so for the supply chain attacks, even though fewer lives are lost.”

Charles shrugged. “Hits closer to home, I guess.”

* * *

There had been sabotage on one of the donuts. Some chemicals had been introduced into the irrigation system and had killed three sections of kudzu before the automated systems caught on and shut everything down for inspection.

This VEHEMENT group was good. The only people that had legitimate access to the space farms were the Bobs. Since VEHEMENT demonstrably was able to gain access, we had to consider all other means. Ideas for how they might have done it included fake drones controlled by VEHEMENT, stealth devices piggy-backing up from Earth on returning delivery vehicles, or even hacking of our legitimate drones. None of those alternatives really seemed realistic, but then that was the thing about being a good hacker. If people saw it coming, you wouldn’t be able to get away with it.

I set my AMI monitors to reviewing all traffic for the last month. Even if they found nothing, I was at least eliminating possibilities. I was archiving everything, though, in case I got inspired at some later date. Somewhere in all the communications around Earth, there had to be exchanges between VEHEMENT members.

I went back to review, yet again, everything in the libraries about cryptography.

22. Fallout

Bob

December 2173

Delta Eridani

“Archimedes.”

Archimedes stopped in mid-step and looked wildly around. “Bawbe?”

I cancelled the camouflage on the drone for a moment so he could locate it. He grunted an acknowledgement and settled carefully to the ground to sit, leaning against a tree. I brought the drone down to eye level, then re-engaged the camouflage.

“I don’t think you’re going to be allowed back.” The statement was delivered in a low voice, without looking at the drone. “Since you were banished, there have been no attacks.”

“That’s because I’ve killed six hippogriffs so far that were heading your way,” I replied. I was irritated, and I let it show in my tone.

Archimedes looked at the drone, eyes wide. “You’re still protecting us?”

“You’re still important to me, Archimedes. Especially you and your family. Speaking of which, how is Buster doing?”

Archimedes smiled fondly. “He wants to help me make tools now. Of course, all he does is bash rocks together, but it’s a start.” He lost the smile and looked down for a moment before continuing, “I’m getting a lot of what you call cold shoulder, still. Some of the other cubs have started to tease Buster. I don’t want you to go away forever, but I can’t have my family affected.”

“I understand, Archimedes. I still need to get you up to speed with the bow and arrow eventually, but it can wait. The thing to remember is that I didn’t wipe out the hippogriffs, just the local nest. As a species, they’re still out there, and your area is effectively unclaimed territory for them now. You need to be ready to hold them off. At minimum, you need to have a supply of extra spears. And the bows and arrows will give you more range.”

“Okay. I’ve been playing around with the short spears, uh, arrows. I told

people they’re small spears for Buster. They laugh, but they believe me. The bow part, why does it have to be different materials?”

“Laminated material is stronger and has much better spring. Eventually you’ll glue it, but for now, tying is good enough.”

We talked for a while longer: plans for new weapons, suggestions for the medicine woman, basic math. I would bring these people out of the stone age one way or another.

Eventually, Archimedes got up, said goodbye, and headed back to Camelot. It was enough. It was a good day.

* * *

Marvin had something to say again. I could always tell. He would open his mouth, then close it, then try again. I wasn’t sure if I should be concerned or not. Last time, it had been hippogriffs. Not a good track record.

Finally, he managed to squeeze it out. “I think I’m going to be heading out, soon.”

I froze for almost half a second. “As in, leaving Delta Eridani?”

“Yeah. Bob, you’ve done a lot with the Deltans, but I think it’s past the point where it needs two of us. This is a caretaker situation, now.” He made a gesture at the video window I’d been watching. “Truthfully, the council kicking you out was probably a good thing for them. They go back to deciding their own destiny. You can still tweak things here and there, but the sky god business really wasn’t healthy. For you or for them.”

I thought about being offended, getting mad, but the truth was that I’d been having very similar thoughts. I dropped my eyes and nodded. “Still, it won’t be the same without you around to give Guppy bad greeting lines.”

“Hell, Bob, with SCUT we’re never really out of touch. If I keep my speed below .75 C, my tau won’t go high enough to preclude VR. I might just seem a little groggy to you.”

“Funny, it still doesn’t feel the same.” I shrugged and paced back and forth a few times in silence. “I guess I understand, though, Marv. It’s always been my project. Luke and Bender knew that.”

“Sure wish they’d intercept the SCUT plans transmission,” Marvin commented, changing the subject. “It would be nice to know if they’re okay.”

I nodded and sat down. What a crap year this was turning into.

On the other hand, SCUT did make things a little easier. There were things

to do, and Bobs to talk to.

I shook my head and sighed. The moping was pointless. I would always be able to find a laundry list of things to be depressed about, if I worked at it.

The Deltans were still there, even if they weren’t talking to me at the moment.

23. VEHEMENT

Riker

September 2175

Sol

Pieces of space station mingled with desiccated plants and the carcasses of livestock that had been unlucky enough to be living on that donut. The debris had scattered with the explosion, but orbital mechanics and mutual gravity were bringing everything back together.

Homer’s image floated in the video window. “We’d just brought this one on-line. Six months’ work, gone.”

I nodded silently. The donuts were Homer’s babies. He’d come up with the idea and head-manned it to completion. This couldn’t be easy for him.

“Any announcements?”

“Yeah. VEHEMENT. The usual crazy-ass rant. Humanity is a cancer, the universe is better off without them, blah, blah.”

“I’m sorry, buddy. But we’ll get them, one way or another.”

Homer was silent. His expression said everything. Sadness, anger, confusion. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. I felt guilty about all the bad thoughts I’d had about him in the past. He was a fully contributing member of the team, and this was killing him.

I was concerned about Homer. He had pretty much stopped ribbing me.

Hadn’t called me number two in months. In fact, he seemed to have turned all business. I wondered if someone had offended him, but on the one occasion I’d tried to talk to him about it, he just deflected the conversation.

“We’ve got enough redundancy now that this won’t leave us dead in the water,” I said. “But with the reduced planetside output, it’s going to mean short rations. Or more kudzu.” I smiled, trying to lighten the mood. Homer wasn’t having any. He shrugged, then ended the connection.

“Guppy, what have we got relating to Farm-6?”

[Querying AMI team. One moment]

After a short delay, Guppy continued.

[No related transmissions detected. No nearby activity except by Heaven vessels]

Crap. They were covering their tracks too well. “Something will break.

Something has to.”

Guppy didn’t comment. He wasn’t much on encouragement. Huge fishy eyes blinked once.

* * *

Just to really make my week, there were several terrorist attacks on Florianópolis as well. I kept wondering if there was some anniversary coming up that was triggering all the activity. The terrorists were getting smarter, and hitting more critical targets. One of the attacks had taken out the power system. It would take a couple of days to fix.

It wasn’t the first time that the actions of VEHEMENT and the Brazilian attacks seemed to be coordinated. I wondered if there was some connection.

It was almost certainly two different groups, but maybe they were talking to each other, sharing intelligence. That could actually be of benefit to me.

The old Earth, pre-war, had global technology and every form of communications you could imagine. This post-apocalyptic reality was far more limited. There were fewer methods of communication for collusion between the two groups, or even cross-talk between VEHEMENT cells.

But I’d been monitoring all channels. At least everything I could think of.

So either I’d missed some form of communication; or they were using some kind of steganography, which would be almost impossible to recognize unless you knew what you were looking for; or they had gone low-tech.

Option three would be too slow, number one I couldn’t do anything about, so that left two. Steganography was by definition inefficient, since you had to spread the message out enough for it to be unnoticeable. Therefore the transmission medium would have to allow a high bandwidth, which would immediately rule out a lot of possibilities. And there were statistical methods that could ferret out steganographic messages.

I retired to my VR, to give this more thought.

24. Visiting Marvin

Bob

March 2174

Delta Eridani

I hadn’t had to kill a hippogriff in months. It wasn’t clear if they’d learned to avoid the territory, or if there simply weren’t any left that were close enough to bother the Deltans. Since Marvin’s departure, I was handling all the drones myself. I could automate a certain amount of the tasks, but I still eventually had to review the mission recordings. Honestly, I couldn’t be bothered.

I kept my eye on Archimedes and his family, probably a little more than I should. I had occasional flashes of myself as the overbearing grandparent who kept wanting to visit. It was an embarrassing image, and I resolved to contact Archimedes a little less often.

Marvin was long gone, heading for Pi3 Orionis. I think he was hoping for an intelligent species that he could be in charge of. It seemed we actually had a paternal streak. Or maybe maternal. He was, as promised, keeping his top speed low enough so that he could still interface via SCUT connection. We’d found a balance, where he frame-jacked up a bit and I slowed my time-sense some, and we could then interact at the same time-rate. It worked.

Today, I was visiting Marvin. In Delta Eridani, as senior Bob, I generally played host. It was interesting that traditions and modes of behavior were developing even among a bunch of post-human computers. Generally, the senior Bob in any system was in charge, and played host to the other Bobs. It made sense to me, which meant it pretty much made sense to all the Bobs.

Marvin apparently had a bit of a luxury streak in him. His VR

environment was an open-air patio and rancher-style house at the top of a low mountain, in a semi-tropical climate. The ocean stretched out in all directions, right out to the horizon.

It was a beautiful, if somewhat mundane scene, except for a couple of anomalies: the very close horizon, the low gravity, and the presence of Earth hanging in the middle of the sky.

“You know there’s no air on the moon, right?” I grinned at him.

Marvin shrugged. “I’m going through all the science fiction books I’ve read over the years and replicating the environments for a while. It’s interesting, and it’s good practice at VR programming.”

I nodded. It wasn’t really important. We were stalling, and we both knew it.

Finally, I brought up the elephant in the room. “My two newest clones, Pete and Victor, are almost ready to leave. Victor is willing to follow the trail of either Luke or Bender. Pete is not interested at all. We have to make a choice.”

Marvin took a moment to brush his hand through his hair. I remembered that habit from when I was Original Bob. Apparently death wasn’t enough to remove nervous tics.

“I guess Pete is adamant?” he asked.

“Yup. Like Milo with Earth. ‘This is the expression of not caring.’ He’s going off in whatever direction he decides on, and that’s that.”

Marvin chuckled. “A recurring theme. Great. Well, it’s a coin toss, then, isn’t it?”

“The thing is, Marv, what if something bad happened to both Luke and Bender? They were heading for different stars, but in the same general direction. What if they ran into something?”

“What, like the Borg? It just seems unlikely, Bob. What would be the motive?”

“Don’t know. Maybe another Medeiros. We don’t really have any information.” I shrugged, conceding the point. “Well, we’ll leave it up to Victor. He’ll transmit constantly over SCUT, so we’ll know if something happens to him.”

Marvin nodded, a worried look on his face.

25. Rabbits

Howard

November 2189

Vulcan

There was a call on my queue from one of the biologists. I was a little surprised. Normally I talked only to Butterworth—not there was a rule or anything. Still… curious, I dialed the call.

“Sheehy.” A woman appeared on screen for a moment, then disappeared off frame. I got an impression of thick red hair, tied into a ponytail.

“Dr. Sheehy? This is Howard Johansson, returning your call.”

Her disembodied voice drifted back to the phone. “Oh, thanks for getting back to me. Colonel Butterworth wanted me to call you if we had news. We have news.”

I waited for a moment. “And…”

She returned and grinned into the video. “Sorry. I love the drama.

Anyway, we have a possible treatment for the vine.”

“Which is…” Honestly, Sheehy, keep this up and I’ll drop a rock on you.

“Bunnies.”

“I’m going to drop a rock on you.”

Dr. Sheehy laughed. I couldn’t help noticing that she had a great laugh.

Also freckles, dimples when she laughed… I mentally slapped myself. This could go exactly nowhere.

She disappeared again, then returned holding a small section of plant.

“Turns out rabbits not only are able to eat the vine, they seem to be attracted to it. I think the toxin is just added flavoring to them. Bad for the vine. Good for us.”

“Right, but we still have to expend a lot of effort to harvest the vine and get it to the rabbits. Could just as easily incinerate it.”

“No, no.” Dr. Sheehy shook her head. “Rabbits are self-replicating.

Aggressively so. You may have heard…” She grinned at me. “And they make great stew.”

I smiled back at her. There was a certain poetry in the solution. Granted, we’d be unleashing a Terran scourge, even if a fluffy one, on an unsuspecting planet. But Vulcan attacked first. “Have you asked Butterworth about it?”

“He says council will have to approve. But they’re feeling a little humble these days. He thinks he can ram it through.”

“Well, all righty then.”

Dr. Sheehy paused for a moment before continuing. “You heard about the bronto attack yesterday?”

“Well, attack is not the right word. They tried to eat the fence again.”

“Yes, and we had to kill one that had figured out that he could just avoid the electrical wires. That’s one smart bronto. IQ up in the two, maybe three range.” Dr. Sheehy smiled at her own joke. “Anyway, before they airlifted the carcass away from the clearing, someone got the bright idea to cut off a big hunk of meat. It passed toxicology tests, and it passed the barbeque test.

So now bronto is on the menu. You may find your kudzu sales dropping.”

“Whoa! You were not supposed to be hunting for sustenance until the impact studies are completed. Is the council good with this?”

Dr. Sheehy gave me an unbelieving look. “Try to picture the council telling twenty thousand people that they have to eat kudzu instead of steak, when steak is lumbering around in plain view every day. Can you say lynching?”

“Yeah, okay, point taken. Well, I still have the Romulan colony market.

They don’t have bronto.”

Dr. Sheehy grinned and shrugged, then disconnected.

To be honest, this was good news from my point of view. The more the colonies could do themselves, the less I had to do. I could even conceivably take off in a decade or so.

And on that subject, the GUPPI-controlled surveillance system wasn’t going to build itself. Back to work.

26. Selling Poseidon

Riker

December 2175

Sol

“You seem incapable of preventing them from striking at will.” Ambassador Gerrold seemed to be enjoying the situation, which made his attempts at portraying anger unconvincing. I’d ignored his jibes in the past, but I was getting tired of it.

“And what have you been able to do, Ambassador? Found the source of those hacking attempts yet? Made any arrests? Got any suggestions?

Anything besides endless carping?” I exchanged glares with the ambassador for a moment, then moved on. “We’re working on replacing the donut, but it’ll still be a few months. Plus whatever time it takes to get the farm regrown. There will be short rations for a while, but no starvation.” I had a sudden inspiration, one of those mid-action moments, and added,

“VEHEMENT got lucky this time. We stop most of their attempts before they get anywhere. They aren’t really that smart.” It wasn’t true, but baiting them might force some kind of reaction. VEHEMENT depended on fear, and being publicly dissed might provoke a response.

Before anyone could comment, I turned off my audio, effectively giving up the floor. I turned to Guppy without moving my avatar. “Put everything we have on communications monitoring. I want to know who reacts to my words, and how. I want every byte accounted for.”

Guppy nodded and went into command fugue.

The session moved on to the emigration question. The Maldives and Micronesia had pretty much cemented their claim on Poseidon—partly due to lack of interest by the other enclaves. They needed about six hundred more people from other enclaves to form a full colony-ship complement, but they were having a hard time making that. No one wanted to split off from their group, especially to go to a planet so, um, specialized. It was attractive to islanders; to everyone else, not so much.

At the same time, other groups were trying to lay claim to the semi-completed ships for emigration to Vulcan or Romulus. The whole thing was acrimonious and mostly information-free.

[No detectable increase in Earthside traffic. One anomalous communication to spaceside]

Okay, that was something. “Source? Destination?”

[Source New Zealand, although not near any population centers.

Destination Homer]

“Uh, excuse me?”

[It was a tight-beam signal. It would not have been detectable except for a chance alignment with one of our drones on cleanup duty]

Oh. Shit. That just did not make sense. Why would Homer be helping them? Why would he be sabotaging his own project? Unless he didn’t have a choice…

Suddenly Homer’s change in personality took on an ominous cast. It was very un-Homer-like. The complete cessation of jokes, the withdrawal from the rest of us…

Perhaps because it wasn’t Homer.

I sent a message to Charles, requesting a physical meet-up.

27. Luke Returns

Bob

March 2178

Delta Eridani

I walked through the village VR, watching the activity. There had been improvements in the six years since I’d been kicked out. I had enough hidden cameras and camouflaged drones around the village now to feed a real-time VR. No more recorded scenes.

Archimedes had finally started taking my tent design seriously. A few other couples copied the result, and now there were a half-dozen pretty good facsimiles of teepees scattered through the village. It was the dry season, but once the rains started up again, I expected this innovation to increase in popularity.

I was trying to ignore a couple engaging in some very public displays of affection when I received a ping. From Luke!

I responded and he popped in. “Hey, Bob. Long time.”

I grinned and slapped him on the shoulder. “Luke! Good to see you, buddy.”

Luke appeared momentarily surprised. We’ve never been physically demonstrative like that. In fact, Original Bob was a little standoffish in terms of physical contact. Luke got over it quickly, though, and grinned back at me.

“I just went through the whole surprise-visit-by-Bill thing. Apparently it’s a standard hazing ritual.”

I laughed. “Oh, yes. I went through it, too. You don’t expect a VR link across light years, and I notice that Bill’s transmitted plans still don’t mention the possibility. So, where are you right now?”

“Kappa Ceti. And before you say it, Bill already gave me crap about not picking up his transmissions right away.” Luke materialized a coffee, waited while Spike sniffed his hand, and then turned back to me. “I’ve spent the last several minutes reading blogs. Lots has been happening, apparently.”

I nodded, knowing he would have caught up on events with the Deltans

first thing. “What have you found, out your way?”

“A super-Earth.” Luke shrugged. “Absolutely not suitable for colonization. Gravity just over 3G, but a full-on ecosystem. I’ve been having fun cataloguing things. And I’ve started another load of Bobs.”

Luke stopped talking as Archimedes came into the VR area, his son trailing him. Buster was almost as tall as his father, and not showing any sign of slowing down. Archimedes had filled out as he reached full adulthood and wasn’t looking at all bookish any more. The two of them together made a formidable team.

They were carrying bows and had quivers on their backs. Each was carrying some kind of small game, sort of a wild turkey analogue, freshly killed.

Luke turned to me. “Bows and arrows? Wow, dude. Moving things right along.”

I waved a hand in dismissal. “Sooner or later the hippogriffs will find them again. I want them to be ready.”

Luke nodded and materialized a La-Z-Boy. “Good to be back. This looks like fun. Where’s Marvin?”

“He took off a few years ago, right after I got kicked out of Camelot. He keeps in touch, though.”

“Cool. I’ll look him up when I have a moment. Heard from Bender?”

I shook my head. “No, and I have no idea why. One of my clones has followed his flight plan, and should be able to report something in a year or two.”

Luke nodded. I materialized the couch and coffee table setup and got comfortable. There’s always time to get caught up with old friends.

28. Et Tu, Homer

Riker

December 2175

Sol

There was seldom any reason for the Bobs to meet physically these days.

SCUT and VR meant we could do everything we needed to in virtual space.

SCUT-equipped drones made distance irrelevant for remote administration as well.

Now, two Heaven vessels floated less than fifty meters apart, in a section of space not far enough from a Lagrange point to look suspicious, but not so close that nearby clutter might disguise an eavesdropper. A laser link ensured that communications would be leakage-free and interception-free.

Charles sat across from me, the coffee in his hand forgotten, his expression a mix of confusion, disbelief, and horror.

I hastened to explain. “This is just speculation on my part. Or it started out that way, anyway. When I went over the recent instances of VEHEMENT

spaceside sabotage, Homer was always a recent visitor. In a couple of cases, the only recent visitor. We’d been saying that nothing had been near the locations, but that’s because we’ve been discounting ourselves as suspects.”

“But… Homer? How?”

“You remember the hacking attempt on me? I thought that was the only instance, but maybe it was the only instance that we detected. VEHEMENT

obviously has some heavy-duty tech on their side. Maybe they discovered another way in.”

“So what do we do?”

I looked down for a moment. This wasn’t going to be easy to say. “We have to disable Homer and check him out. We can apologize afterwards if I’m wrong. Remember the Battle of Sol?”

* * *

[Investigation complete. File uploaded]

“Thanks, Guppy. I’ll look at it when I have a chance.” The file would be a summary of whatever the drones had found at the ground location of that suspicious transmission. I’d made a point of disabling all radio comms on those drones, and using secret-key encryption and frequency jumping for the SCUT telemetry. I couldn’t have intercepted and decoded that kind of setup if I’d been handed the information on a silver platter. I had to assume that the unknown opponent wasn’t too much smarter than me, or I might as well just roll over and expose my throat.

I sent Homer a message that I thought I knew where the next attack by VEHEMENT would be and that we needed a secure discussion. Charles, Homer and I arranged to meet just to orbital north of the Earth-moon L4

point.

Homer coasted up and applied the brakes. Once we were at station-keeping, we rotated to present our laser comms to each other.

In an abundance of paranoia, I routed my communications through sandbox Bob. Laser comms were intimate enough that if Homer had a virus, it might try to get to me via that connection. I’d told Charles to do the same.

We connected up and Homer appeared in my VR. “So, Riker, what’s this big discovery?”

I took a sip of my coffee, and privately looked over at sandbox Bob. No reaction. “Just waiting for Charles. I don’t want to have to repeat myself and answer the same arguments twice. One of us can fill in Ralph later when he gets here.” I looked up at the holotank where Charles was just coming up on our group.

Charles linked up by laser comms and popped into the common VR. “Hi guys. ‘Sup?”

In my private VR, sandbox Bob grabbed his throat and fell over. I looked at Guppy, one eyebrow raised.

[Source of attack is Homer]

I raised both hands in the air in the common VR, and Charles put a steel ball right through Homer’s reactor control system.

Homer went dead as he lost all power, just as he had back in our battle with the Brazilian probes. I did a quick scan. Perfect shot, no collateral damage. Charles looked green, and I’m sure I did as well.

We sent over a squad of roamers and unceremoniously cut into Homer’s cargo bay. It took a few hours before we had Homer’s matrix up on a test

cradle. Now came the dirty part.

* * *

“Here it is.” I pointed to the listing. “It looks like the laser comms were the source of infection. I’m not sure when or how they would have gotten access, but in any case, it was brilliant. A hole in our defenses that I hadn’t even considered.”

Charles nodded. “Listen, Homer might not be the only one. You could be infected—although that seems unlikely, given that you’re the one exposing the issue—or I could be. My Guppy saw the penetration attempt from Homer as well, so unless you’re pulling some kind of double-reverse Maxwell Smart thing, I think you’re legit. I need you to do an inspection of my matrix to clear up any suspicions about me. Like they did in The Thing. ” He looked at me expectantly.

I thought for a moment and nodded. It was a good idea, and necessary.

Charles would have to open his hangar doors, then shut down, but now that I knew what to look for, the actual check would take only minutes.

I explained the requirements, and Charles did as instructed. A couple of roamers entered Charles’ hull, and twenty minutes later Charles was back up and running.

“Thanks, Charles. I can reciprocate if there’s any lingering doubt in your mind.”

He shook his head. “You could have infected me while I was off.

Absolutely no reason for you not to. I’m good.”

We turned our attention back to Homer.

* * *

It took thirty hours overall to clean up and repair him. The virus, or Trojan, or whatever you wanted to call it, had gotten its hooks into multiple systems.

Homer would have had very little free will, but would be fully conscious. I shuddered, thinking what that must have been like.

Ralph showed up in the midst of the process and we had to explain the whole thing to him. While I was talking, Charles lined up with Ralph’s reactor control system. When we pointed this out and explained the alternatives, Ralph quite rationally agreed to an inspection.

Once Ralph was back up—clean, thankfully—we turned back to Homer. I

removed the viral control, and I installed a freshly-made firewall over the laser comms. None of us would be susceptible to that particular attack in the future. I also forwarded a complete report to Bill for him to add to the standard releases.

Homer booted up. His avatar appeared in the common VR, looked surprised, then collapsed, screaming. The rest of us looked at each other in horror. Had I done something wrong? Had I damaged Homer?

“Homer, buddy, come back. You okay?” I knelt beside him and put my hand on his shoulder.

The screaming stopped, and he began to moan. He curled into a fetal position, squeezed his eyes shut, and rocked back and forth on the floor.

I was at a complete loss. Original Bob hadn’t been much for this kind of emotional contact, and I was self-aware enough to know that I was even more standoffish than he was. Ralph and Charles didn’t look any more prepared.

However, Homer didn’t seem to be getting worse or harming himself, so we decided in timeless male fashion to leave things be and wait for him to get a grip.

After a few more milliseconds, Homer gasped and opened his eyes. “I was hagridden. The bastards had total control of me. They made me lie to you; they made me blow things up. They made me kill people! ”

Homer began to cry, a hopeless moaning alternating with racking sobs. “I couldn’t do anything. I could only watch myself follow their orders. I couldn’t tell you, I couldn’t stop myself, I couldn’t even kill myself!”

Bill popped into VR. “I’ve been lurking since I got your report. This is unforgivable. I know we don’t like violence, but if you feel the need to end the bastards that did this, no one will say boo.” He sat on the floor beside Homer and put a hand on his back, simply maintaining human contact.

I looked at Charles and Ralph. The expression on their faces said all that was needed. Someone was going to pay.

* * *

Homer had come out of his funk, but he was still very fragile. Bill was gone, after promising any help we might want in building anything we might need, up to and including Things That Explode. Yep. Angry.

Charles kept an eye on Homer while Ralph oversaw the construction of the replacement donut. Homer was gradually able to unwind himself and sit,

but he would go into panic attacks from time to time. I suggested we enable his endocrine controls, but he shook his head emphatically.

“It feels too much like what they did to me. It’s a leash. It’s just a different leash.” He waved a hand helplessly, trying to find words. “It feels like claustrophobia or something. Just the idea of something controlling me makes me want to run around the room, screaming.”

“Okay, Homer. Whatever you feel best about.” Charles put a hand on his shoulder. “We’re here for you, whatever you need.”

Homer nodded to us and tried a smile, but it wasn’t very reassuring.

I had not attended the latest UN session. If VEHEMENT had noticed that they’d lost their puppet, I didn’t want to give them any more information. Let them think we’d all destroyed each other.

Meanwhile, I looked over Guppy’s report. The tight-beam signal had come from what originally might have been a small military outpost high in the back country of New Zealand. It had some pretty hefty communications capability, judging from the visible hardware. Per my orders, the drones avoided using SUDDAR scanning, as that would have been detectable.

Instead we stuck to passive surveillance techniques. Visual and infrared pinpointed occupied areas and gave an approximate head-count. Audio snooping picked up some of the conversations, the contents of which left no doubt about who was in residence. This appeared to be VEHEMENT central.

Even if they operated on a cell structure, without their tech central they wouldn’t be good for much in the future.

I remembered the early hacking attempt, which had also originated from New Zealand. It was reasonable to assume that this had been an ongoing war for longer than I’d realized.

Fine. War declared. But I wanted to be certain I caught the right people.

The mastermind behind so complex a setup wouldn’t be that easy to track down. I was sure there’d be at least one more hop to his location.

I would take whatever amount of time, use whatever resources I needed, to catch him. Without limit. And when I did, there would be a reckoning.

29. Emergency

Howard

April 2190

Vulcan

[Emergency at Landing]

I turned briefly to look at Guppy; but good news or bad, Guppy looked like Admiral Ackbar. No help there.

I turned back to my video call with Dr. Sheehy, said, “Gotta go!” and disconnected. I picked up the video connection that Guppy was holding for me. It was Stéphane.

“Howard, we’ve got a group of raptors that somehow got through the fence. They’re running through town, looking for prey.”

“Last known location?”

Stéphane gave me a cross-street. I knew that security would be converging on the location, but the raptors could move fast—much faster than a human.

I had only two busters close enough to be useful, but I had all the drones that were part of the automated surveillance system. As well, several backup units were parked on top of the Administration building, sitting in their cradles. I activated the backups and sent all units to the reported location.

Halfway there, the two busters blew past the flock of drones, doing close to Mach One. I was now juggling eighteen separate units. Even with most of them slaved to a primary, it was hard to keep track. I dismissed my VR and frame-jacked up high enough so that I could multi-task.

The busters were coming up on the reported location, but I couldn’t see any raptors. I split off a couple of drones and sent them up to a kilometer altitude, activating high-res, infra-red, and motion-detection sensors.

Security personnel were approaching from several directions. There were only two streets that the raptors could be on, and there was no sign of them.

Could Brodeur have been wrong? A quick check of the video surveillance streams eliminated that possibility. Either raptors could become invisible—

wouldn’t that be a kicker—or they’d found somewhere to hide.

I brought all the drones down to a few feet above ground and started a search pattern for raptor prints. The drones took off in different directions, following anything that was even remotely print-like. Chivvying all these units was really wearing on me—even in frame-jack, I had to keep track of what orders each unit was following—so I guess I don’t feel too bad that it took me a couple of missed cycles before I realized one of the units wasn’t responding.

I pulled up the video log for that unit, and—wow, that’s what the inside of a raptor mouth looks like. Good to know.

The raptor pack had gone to ground inside someone’s storage shed. I guess one of them decided he should take out the flying thing before it raised the alarm. Even acknowledging that they couldn’t know about radio, that was intelligent behavior. Bill and I would be discussing this one.

Meanwhile, I sent all units to surround the shed, dropped my frame-rate to real-time, and called Stéphane.

The drones and busters arrived and took up positions around the shed. And the moment they did that, the raptors made a break for freedom. They dodged through the circle of drones, leaped a fence, and made a bee-line for the perimeter.

It would be a coin-toss whether any of the security people could get into position to take them out, and at the speed the raptors were moving, there wouldn’t be much opportunity. Hopefully civilians would have heard the alert and had enough sense to stay indoors.

“Stéphane, have they killed anyone?”

“Not to my knowledge, but we’ll be checking out this hou—no, never mind, I see some faces looking out the window. Someone just gave me a thumbs-up. So no, no casualties.”

“Okay. They’re out of range of you guys now. I don’t have enough space to get my busters up to speed anyway, so I’m going to let them go. Maybe they’ll spread the word…”

“Tabernacle! You think they can talk?”

“Erm, probably not, but maybe they can teach caution through their behavior. Oh, and guess what? Seems raptors can dig, too. Wonderful.” I looked down at the hole through which the raptors were wriggling. It must have been seven or eight feet deep at the low point. Looked like we would be upgrading the fences. Again.

* * *

“Things just get more and more complicated.” Colonel Butterworth had his head propped up in one hand, elbow on his desk. “Cranston and Valter are starting to look like the smart ones.”

The colonel didn’t expect an answer. I think he just needed a drinking buddy. I had a cognac from Sam’s template—I was really getting used to the taste—and I just nodded. Truthfully, the raptor invasion hadn’t resulted in any fatalities, and we were already starting on getting the fences fixed. Metal rods driven down twenty feet, spaced six inches apart, would take care of the digging issue.

And Bridget—Dr. Sheehy, that is—had a device almost perfected that could detect parasite infection through body odor. No blood tests required, just wave your hand over it as you go by. Those would be installed in all building entrances as soon as she had all the, er, bugs out. Longer-term, we hoped to thin the parasites out to the point of eventual extinction.

Meanwhile, she’d come up with a name for the thing—Cupid Bug.

Because, as she explained, it went for the heart. I had to admit, I appreciated Bridget’s sense of humor.

I also had several small batches aging of something that might turn out to be a replacement for Jameson. Or for paint thinner. Time would tell.

The colonel and I discussed a few miscellaneous items, but nothing really pressing. The council, as expected, had caved without a fight on the subject of bronto burgers. Let’s face it, one of the damned things would keep the entire colony in steaks for a couple of weeks. We wouldn’t need to kill many.

And the alternative was still kudzu.

I said goodbye to the colonel and popped out. On a whim, I activated one of the surveillance drones. I took it up a couple of kilometers and did a slow pan. The sun was going down in the west, and it was a magnificent sight.

From the surface of Vulcan, Omicron2 Eridani appeared almost a third bigger than Earth’s sun. As a K-type star, it had a slightly more orange cast, although you stopped noticing it after a day or so. But the additional output in the red end of the spectrum meant that even the most run-of-the-mill sunsets were spectacular by Earth standards. And today wasn’t run-of-the-mill.

Scattered clouds were all that were left of the recent thunderstorms, but those

clouds glowed in the sky like individual wildfires.

The forest-slash-jungle stretched horizon to horizon, hugging the hills and only reluctantly leaving the occasional rocky crag uncovered. Something like birds swooped and twirled in flocks that wouldn’t have been seen on Earth since the days of the passenger pigeon. If you could ignore all the things with big shark teeth, and the other things that could accidentally squish you between their toes, it was a kind of paradise. Oh, yeah, and the things that laid eggs in you. Eww.

30. Found Something

Bashful

November 2187

Gliese 877

We’d all taken off in different directions, per Mario’s orders. I picked GL-877, a nondescript star in a forgettable patch of sky. For all we knew, these Others might not be planet-based, or even system-based. But we had to start somewhere. At minimum, we’d be mapping their path of destruction.

[We have radio traffic]

Guppy pushed a window toward me. As I examined the readings, my eyebrows climbed up my forehead. The radio noise coming from this system was clearly artificial. One way or the other, something intelligent lived here.

Something noisy.

“Every possible caution, Guppy. Let’s take it slow. I don’t want to attract attention.”

[Understood]

“And prep the stealth probes.”

I’d have been cautious anyway, but given the possibility that this was the Others, I was going to give paranoia a brand-new level of definition. I had spent my time during transit building a couple of stealth probes. I’d had to sacrifice some busters and some roamers, but the result was a couple of probes that would be almost undetectable unless they cranked up to full power. I had constructed them out of carbon-fiber-matrix ceramic and non-ferrous metal wherever possible. The Others would have to be specifically looking for one of these in order to detect it. I’d already squirted the plans back to Mario as part of my continuous reporting.

I was still going about 5% of light speed, so I lined up just below the ecliptic and released one probe. I altered my line slightly, then released the other. It would take just under two weeks for the probes to free-fall through the system. Meanwhile, I would take a powered flight path, which would take me to the rendezvous point on the other side without my going anywhere near

the inner system. Unless the residents had far better detection systems than we did, they’d never know I was here.

I had carefully laid out parameters in which the probes would run for it and conditions in which they’d self-destruct. There would be no chances taken. In either case, once discovered, a probe would abandon attempts at stealth and squirt all telemetry to my calculated position.

With my powered flight plan, I arrived at the rendezvous several days before the probes, on a vector straight outward from the system. The probes hit the brakes and activated their beacons as they came within range.

I downloaded their data and transmitted the whole bundle in Mario’s direction before beginning my own analysis. It took about two days to build a coherent picture of the inner system. There were two lonely inner rocky planets and a single small Jovian farther out. The inner of the two rocky planets appeared to have an atmosphere. The other had been too far away from either probe to get details, but it appeared to have a surprisingly high albedo.

The system seemed to be particularly free of debris, except in an orbit about 80% of the orbital radius of the inner planet. At that distance from the sun, there was a truly spectacular amount of mass—and activity—spread right around the orbit. That whole area was, in fact, responsible for most of the electromagnetic activity in the system.

I turned to Guppy and pointed at the mass concentration. “What the crap is that?”

[Insufficient information. But we can rule out a natural satellite]

“Not a planet?”

[Correct. The mass is too diffuse]

I wished I had someone besides Guppy to discuss this with. The plan had been to build a second wave of Bobs back at Gliese 54 and send them to catch up with the first wave. So within perhaps six months, I could be getting company. Hopefully the new Bob had been picking up my transmissions and had a good idea of how to approach.

I was sitting more than six billion kilometers from the local sun, in some of the emptiest space I could imagine, so it was a shock when the proximity alarms started sounding.

I frame-jacked up to maximum and started to evaluate the readings.

Something was approaching at high speed. And the something apparently had

a very well shielded reactor, because it was SUDDAR that had picked it up.

A quick set of calculations showed that I wouldn’t be able to win a straight foot-race—it or they were approaching too fast. It was time for our tried-and-true doubling-back tactic. I had no idea what their maneuverability was like, so I calculated a conservative option and began accelerating at a thirty-five degree angle to their approach vector.

The other ships reacted almost immediately, which told me they had SUDDAR detection capability. Light-speed limitations would have meant almost an hour’s delay before they could respond to my movement.

The tableau developed slowly over the next several hours. Like a game of chess, everything was on the table. There would be no surprise tactics. The laws of physics would decide if I got past them. However, it was already obvious that closest approach would be, well, pretty close.

It took almost a day to reach that point. I spent the time scanning them with everything at my disposal. SUDDAR and visuals confirmed six vessels: five very similar to the wrecked cargo ship and one that honestly reminded me of a miniature Death Star. “Miniature” being a relative term—the thing was almost a half-kilometer in diameter. Instead of an inset dish like the Star Wars prop, it had a flat section with what looked like a grid. I hoped the purpose wasn’t similar.

Finally the laws of physics and reality made themselves clear, and I realized that I was going to sail past them, less than ten kilometers away. That was cutting it a little fine, but I’d take it.

As I was nearing closest approach, and getting ready to thumb my virtual nose at the pursuers, I saw the Death Star-wannabe start to rotate, bringing the grid-wall to bear on me.

This is not good.

“Guppy, anything we can do about shielding?”

[All resources are at maximum]

I calculated that I could do a certain amount of jinking without losing my lead. I immediately started evasive maneuvers. However, the others had made the same calculations. The Death Star simply waited until I ran out of slack and zeroed in.

The grid started to glow, then there was a p—

[Alert!

Controller

replicant

offline.

SURGE

drive

offline.

Requirements for self-destruct protocol have been met. Reactor overload

engaged…]

31. Taking Care of Business Howard

January 2191

Vulcan

Riker was going to be video-visiting our descendants in a few minutes. By tacit agreement, he was the face of Bob. We didn’t want to confuse or, worse, creep out our sister’s descendants. But all the Bobs tuned in to the conversation whenever possible. It reminded us all that we used to be human, and that we had left our mark on the universe. Okay, our sisters had, but close enough.

As usual, Julia was spokesperson for Clan Bob. People walked in and out of frame, stopped to make a comment or wave to the camera. The usual organized chaos, pretty much standard family stuff. Justin was a little older, and no longer content to sit on his mother’s lap. He kept running to get things to show Uncle Will. I grinned every time Justin was in frame. He was every Bob’s favorite: infinite energy, wide-eyed interest in anything and everything, and no idea at all what a scary and dangerous post-apocalyptic universe he’d been born into.

“You’ll have three new great-greats, soon, Will.” Julia smiled happily.

“There’s so much room here. It’s a complete reversal of how we felt back on Earth. It doesn’t feel like a sin to have children, anymore.”

Will laughed. “We are sending more people your way, Julia. But even if we settled every last remaining human being on Romulus, it still wouldn’t be crowded. You have a new world, and a new start.”

Justin pouted into the camera. “But we don’t have dimosaurs. I want dimosaurs!”

“Sorry, space cadet,” Will replied. “They’re only on Vulcan. When you’re older and have your own ship, you can visit and see them.”

“If any are left,” said one of the others, sotto voce.

Julia turned and glared at him, and he blushed.

“Howard tells me that the USE colonists are being careful about environmental impacts,” Will said, trying to defuse the moment of tension. “I understand that the Spits and FAITH are supposed to be doing the same.”

“Not from what I can see,” the man said.

“Richard is kind of a crank about the subject,” Julia said, looking slightly embarrassed. “Don’t let him get up a head of steam.”

At that moment, I received a text from Riker. Is there a big problem with this?

He’d frame-jacked to send the text, so I did the same as I replied. FAITH

is constantly pushing their luck. I’ve had several run-ins with Cranston about this and that. Richard’s comment doesn’t really surprise me. I’ll look into it.

On camera, Will said to the group, “Howard is watching for that kind of thing, Richard. He’ll nip it in the bud. The enclaves sign an agreement before we emigrate them, dealing with stuff like human rights and planetary exploitation.”

Richard nodded, and the conversation drifted to other subjects.

It was over too soon. But the videos were archived, and got a lot of plays on BobTube.

The thing about the FAITH colony bugged me, though. Cranston was really turning into a pain.

* * *

Sixteen surveillance drones lifted smoothly from their cradles and flew off to take up positions around Landing. I looked over at Guppy. “Everything in the green?”

[No issues detected. All parameters nominal]

The AMI controlling the surveillance system was an Artificial Machine Intelligence/GUPPI hybrid based on Bob’s work at Delta Eridani. It would combine the fast reflexes and multitasking of a true AI with the decision making capability of a replicant. Plus it would never get bored, or demand vacation time.

This was one more item that I wouldn’t be needed for any more. The TODO list was finally getting smaller faster than I could add to it. Excellent.

“Okay, then. We’ll let it run for a couple of days to establish processor loads, then we’ll add the Cupid Bug hunters to the system.”

[The hunters are autonomous units]

That was true. Given the highly focused nature of their task, AMIs were intelligent enough for Cupid Bug hunter operation. “Granted, but the central controller can take care of scheduling, maintenance, and repairs, as well as gathering statistics. I’m sure Bridget would like to know if encounters start to drop off.”

Guppy nodded. I’m sure the expression of sardonic amusement on his face was all in my imagination. After all, what does sardonic amusement look like on a fish, anyway?

And speaking of Bridget, er, Dr. Sheehy, I had a call to make. There was a small matter of a chemical analysis that I’d asked for.

* * *

“Sheehy.” Bridget briefly appeared in the video window, then exited frame to the left. The woman never stayed still, and always seemed to be working on several things at once. I couldn’t help be impressed by her energy.

“Hey, Bridget, it’s Howard.”

Dr. Sheehy’s face lit up as she came back into frame and sat down in front of the phone. We’d become fast friends over the last six months. We got along well, and she was a good break from too many Bobs. I tried not to think ephemeral when she was around.

“I guess you’re calling about that chemical analysis you wanted done?”

“Yup.”

“Well, you’ll be happy to know that it passes muster, and cleanly. No trace of methanol. It is completely potable.” She grinned. “Now, whether it’s any good or not…”

Bridget reached over and picked up the bottle that I’d delivered the previous day. She poured a small amount into a plastic glass and raised it in my direction. “Caťaoireaca.” She downed the glass in one motion.

I watched closely, waiting for her to go rigid, or melt, or burst into flames.

She swallowed the liquid, took a deep sucking breath, wiped her eyes, and said, “Smooth.”

“Really?”

“No.” Bridget made a face. “It’s not paint thinner, but it’s not Irish whiskey, either. Actually, since you used oak barrels, it’ll never be Irish. But if you squint your eyes and look sideways at it while yelling LAH-LAH-LAH, it could be whiskey.”

I nodded. “Well, I force-aged this stuff, so let’s not expect miracles. I’ll take a little more time with the production supply. And Riker thinks he can scan some proper sherry-infused barrel samples for me, for making Irish.”

“Sounds good.” Bridget gave me a sideways look. “Need a partner?”

“Well, someone has to hump the barrels around.” I grinned at her. “But yeah, it would help, if you’re serious. Anyway, I was also calling about the Peter Project.”

“Riiiiiiight. Well, Peter and his descendants are munching happily on the vine, turning it into more bunnies as quickly as they can. Farmers are happy, bunnies are happy, raptors are happy—not surprisingly, they like bunny as well. Pretty much a win-win for everyone except the vine.”

“Great.” I nodded, then popped up a picture on the video screen. “In other news, I’ve come up with a small drone that’s optimized for hunting the adult parasite. You said you didn’t think killing it would be too disruptive, right?”

“Correct, O electronic one. It’s an apex predator, really. There may be a population explosion in whatever it normally uses as hosts, but my guess is that there are normal-sized predators who will take care of that.”

“Mm, good. I’ll be adding them to the central surveillance system. I’ll need an estimate from you of how many we should have active at any time.”

Bridget nodded without comment. She was eyeing the paint thinner, twirling the glass in her hand. Hopefully, she was considering another shot and not fearing for her health. I asked her, “What does kaheerakah mean?”

“Caťaoireaca. It’s Irish for chairs.”

“Chairs? You toast furniture in Ireland?”

Bridget laughed. “There’s a story. Probably apocryphal…”

I made a rolling motion with my hand.

“Okay, but remember, you asked.”

She settled herself and poured another glass of paint thinner. “There was this Brit who decided to stop at Hotel Rosslare in County Wexford. He had a few, then a few more, then he decided to be friendly. So he asked the barmaid how you say ‘cheers’ in Irish.”

Bridget smiled wickedly. “And you know how the Brits massacre the English language, so she thought he said ‘chairs’, and she told him.

Whereupon he bought a round for the house, turned to the other patrons, raised his glass, and said Caťaoireaca.”

I chuckled. Bridget gave me the stink-eye. “Hey, down in front. Anyway,

the other patrons looked at each other in confusion, then raised their glasses and drank. Afterwards, Paddy turned to Sean and said, ‘What the blazes was that?’ Sean shrugged and answered, ‘Damned if I know, but as long as he keeps buying, he can toast the livestock for all of me.’”

I laughed. “I know some Irish jokes.”

“Don’t you dare.” She grinned at me, and I had a sudden feeling of regret at no longer being human.

* * *

“Stéphane, this is Bridget. Bridget, Stéphane.”

Stéphane held out his hand, and Bridget shook it. They both turned to look at me. Well, at the drone I was watching from. The new model was slightly bigger than a softball, so could go indoors. I was told my voice sounded a little tinny, but I could survive that.

I lowered myself to conversation height, and they sat. I’d texted our order to the waiter, so beers arrived immediately.

“So, is there an occasion for this?” Bridget looked back and forth between me and Stéphane.

“Not really. I mean, I’m not planning a takeover of the colony or anything.

God, why would I want to?” I chuckled. One of Stéphane’s eyes twitched, so I guess a tinny chuckle didn’t come across well.

“Anyway, between the brontos and other dinos, the raptors, vine, Cupid bug, and everything else that makes this such a fun place to live, I spend most of my time coordinating with the two of you. The committee seems determined to funnel all information through themselves, and sometimes I just want to slap them.”

“So you are creating unofficial channels, here?” A slow grin spread across Stéphane’s face.

“Something like that. You know, just to speed things along.”

Stéphane looked at Bridget. “You are responsible for the rabbits? Nice choice. I’ve had rabbit stew several times this month.”

Bridget laughed and turned to me. “Told you.”

She flipped open her tablet and set it up on a corner of the table, then looked at the drone and inclined her head towards the tablet. I took the hint, floated the drone up to the ceiling, and transferred my image to the tablet.

“This better?”

Both of my friends grinned at the tablet. Stéphane said, “You’re still ugly.”

It was a great afternoon.

32. Linus

Bill

May 2178

Epsilon Eridani

[Incoming Message from Linus]

“Linus? Holy hell! Put it on.”

I’d just recently received the radio transmission from Linus about Epsilon Indi and KKP. Linus had, unfortunately, left Epsilon Indi before my transmissions of the SCUT plans had reached him. He’d been out of touch since 2150, when he left Epsilon Indi, and he hadn’t lagged his light-speed report by more than a few months. I smiled to myself. There would have to be some catching up.

Linus’s original transmission included a complete description of his encounter with Henry Roberts, the replicant from the Australian probe.

Which officially didn’t exist.

Guppy popped up an email for me. It was a status update, essentially.

Linus was still a few days away, and he hadn’t been getting VR updates for the last thirty-odd years. The old video connections were even more subject to tau-related limitations than modern VR.

I sent him a return email with VR updates attached. Meanwhile, I would start building a SCUT unit for him to install when he got here.

* * *

Linus sat back, coffee in hand, and put his feet up on the desk. I raised an eyebrow at him.

“Come on, Bill,” Linus said, laughing. “I’ll fix any virtual damage afterwards, okay?”

I grinned back. “Mom taught us better than that.”

Linus rolled his eyes and took his feet off the desk. He materialized a footstool and made himself comfortable. “Gotta admit, I really like the new VR system. Nice job.”

“Wasn’t just me, Linus. Everyone has put in mods. Bob-1 did a whole independent branch out at Delta Eridani before we reconnected. Some really good fine-detail stuff came out of that.”

Linus shifted to get more comfortable, and I grinned into the short silence.

“Okay, before I explode—what’s with KKP? You’ve actually named it Klown Kar Planet?”

“Yep.” Linus grinned back at me. “Have you seen the orbital mechanics diagram? It’s a satellite of the system’s Jovian, and both the orbit and the planet’s axis are inclined ninety degrees from normal. Try to visualize the path of the sun over the year.”

“Habitable?”

“Technically. Air’s right, gravity’s right, life is biocompatible. But I wouldn’t want to live there.”

“Mm. On the other hand, we don’t have a surplus of colony targets. I’ll bet one of the enclaves will select it.”

Linus nodded. He took on an introspective expression, and I knew he wanted to talk about Henry. I waited for him to organize his thoughts.

“So, Bill, I’ve been doing some work with Henry. You’ve gone over my reports, right?”

“Without a VR, he went psychotic, and started following a warped version of his directives. You extracted his matrix from the structure you found and set up a VR for him, then started some home-brew therapy.”

Linus nodded. “I’ve gotten him to the point where he understands what happened. He’s living in reality, now, but he’s still pretty fragile. He can go into panic attacks without warning. When that happens, he goes back to his sailboat.”

“Okay, so what sets him off?”

“He’s agoraphobic, which seems strange since he has no problem being in a teeny boat in the middle of an ocean.” Linus rolled his eyes. “And he doesn’t like Guppy. Apparently the Australians used the same acronym for the GUPPI interface as FAITH did—”

“It’s the other way around, Linus. I’ll bring you up to date later, but Australia actually got there first. Anyway, continue.”

Linus gave me a perplexed look, but apparently decided to go along with my schedule. “Um, so the imaginary beings that tortured him were fish. I’ve been trying to desensitize him to Guppy’s presence. It helps that we used the

Ackbar image. He saw Star Wars, and he thinks that’s pretty funny.”

I took a moment to shake my head. “Incredible. A hundred years after Star Wars and Star Trek were made, people were still watching them.”

Linus shrugged. “They were still playing The Wizard of Oz—the Judy Garland version—when Original Bob was an adult. That’s seventy-five years.

How is it different?”

I waved a hand to concede the point. “So you’ve upgraded Henry’s VR

and hardware, right? Let’s bring him in.”

Linus nodded and froze for a moment. Then, as his avatar came back to life, another person popped in. This wasn’t a Bob. Henry was shorter, with a trim, healthy physique, and thin, dark hair. I had an actual moment of vertigo.

It had been so long since I’d been in the presence of anyone except variations of Bob. It was different from video conferences with humans. VR or not, Henry was here.

I took a moment to catch my breath, then extended a hand. “Hi, Henry.

Welcome to the Bobiverse.”

“The what?” Linus and Henry both spoke at once, their eyes goggling in tandem.

“Long story.” I laughed. “Look Henry, I’ve given you your own domain and your own firewall. It’s a mutual protection thing. But you’ll have access to all the public features of BobNet, which includes several blogs. You should start reading. You, too, Linus. You’re way behind the times.”

Jeeves came in at my summons, and offered Henry a coffee. Henry did a double-take and pointed. “That’s, uh…”

I grinned. “John Cleese. Yep.” I looked at Linus. “You don’t use Jeeves?”

Linus shook his head. “Doesn’t really fit my VR.”

Meanwhile, Henry had taken the coffee, grinning. “Got anything to strengthen it?” he asked.

I nodded to Jeeves, who produced a bottle of whiskey out of nowhere. A quick pour, and Henry was looking much happier.

“I understand intellectually that this is all virtual reality.” Henry sat down and gestured around him. “But it’s quite amazing. If I didn’t already know, I think I’d be completely fooled.” He turned to Linus. “No offense, Linus, but your VR had some issues, if I were paying attention.”

Linus waved a hand in dismissal. “Henry, Bill and others have been working on the tech for thirty years while I’ve been gone. It shouldn’t be

surprising.”

“Hmm, okay, I have some reading to do. Acknowledged. How many people can you fit into a single Virtual Reality session?”

“It depends on the power of the computer that’s hosting it, Henry. I’ve got a huge system here in Epsilon Eridani that’s specifically designed for hosting.

I’ve hosted baseball games, and Bob-moots with dozens of Bobs at a time.” I glanced at each of them in turn. “You guys both have some catching up to do.

Linus, I’ve started building a latest-generation vessel for each of you. Henry, it’s up to you what you want to do. I understand you have some sensitivities that you’re dealing with. There’s no hurry. We have, literally, all the time in the universe.”

Henry looked shocked. Perhaps it hadn’t really hit him before. As replicants, we were immortal. Some of the later-generation Bobs had started to refer to humans as ephemerals. I wasn’t going to lecture anyone, but I believed the tag was dismissive and dehumanizing.

I sat forward and put my coffee down. “Henry, I’d love to see your boat when you have time and feel up to it. As you could probably tell from Linus, we’ve never had any experience with sailing. Meanwhile, let’s get started on bringing you guys up to date.”

Henry nodded and smiled tentatively. Linus made a head motion to him, and they disappeared.

I could hardly wait for the next moot.

33. Trouble in Paradise

Bob

January 2180

Delta Eridani

Buster had taken a mate. Archimedes and he were working on a framework for a tent, while the women stitched together the covering. Tents now covered the ground in downtown Camelot, and I was starting to see some variations in design. Archimedes had started to rebuild his for the third time, a process that was making Diana cranky. I rarely saw eye to eye with her, but in this case, I could see her point.

It was a peaceful, bucolic scene, except for all the armed Deltans walking around. Deltans had always been armed, if course, but in the past the weapons had been for hunting or for protection against predators like the gorilloids. But in the last year or two, there had been incidents of violence between Deltans.

Marvin and I sat in the middle of the village VR, watching the activity.

The VR was now a completely real-time representation of activity in Camelot, with only one or two blind spots where I hadn’t been able to sneak in a camera.

Marvin waved his glass of cognac in the general direction of a group of young Deltans. He’d picked up the habit from Howard over at Vulcan, and I still got a kick out of it. “So, Camelot has street gangs, now,” he said. “Are they going around hot-wiring teepees?”

I responded with an eyeroll and an exaggerated nod, then answered, “This is pretty recent behavior. I think it might have something to do with population density. They’re getting too crowded, and the tents take up more space, which just makes it worse.”

“Everything has side-effects,” Marvin said with a smile. “Have you noticed the gangs are co-ed?”

“Mm, yeah. I’m sure a sociologist would have something to say about that, but the libraries don’t have much in the way of that particular

discipline.”

Marvin snorted. “Doesn’t strike me as a field of study that theists would approve of, y’know?”

I nodded. “Too bad, though. The last mating season was significantly more violent. Two Deltans ended up dying from injuries. And now we’re getting face-offs between the hexghi. It worries me.”

“You could busterize someone…”

“Not funny, Marv.”

Marvin shrugged. He knew that I’d been staying strictly out of sight since my banishment. I couldn’t take the chance of fallout from a bawbe sighting affecting Archimedes.

After a moment, he added, “On the other hand, Bob, the problems we’re seeing are a result of the Deltan population going up. As problems go, it’s a helluva lot better than the problem you first found them with.”

I smiled, as much at Marvin’s transparent attempt to make me feel better as anything. But he was right. When I found the Deltans, attrition had been slowly killing them off. A rising population was infinitely better, for all the issues it was causing.

“So what do we do?”

“Nothing. At least for the moment. I’m banished, remember?” I shrugged.

“I suppose this is that point where I step away and let the Deltans make their own destiny. I talked about it in the past, but I guess I always expected it to be my choice. Not forced on me.” I gave Marvin a lopsided grin, and he laughed.

“I’m sure most parents feel that way at some point.”

34. Moose

Bill

June 2185

Epsilon Eridani

I could feel the wind on my face as I ran. This was nothing like VR. I controlled Bullwinkle directly—well, sort of—as he ran over the surface of Ragnarök. I was easily holding seventy KPH, the android’s reflexes taking care of the limb coordination at that speed.

The system was still far from perfect. In order to make this work, I had two drones following the moose. Radio comms between Bullwinkle and the drones were relayed via SCUT to me. It was more a proof of concept than a practical solution. But ignoring the Rube Goldberg communications, I now had a physical presence on the surface of the planet.

I slowed down as I approached my target coordinates. As I jogged up to the patch of green, I marveled at the smooth feel of the muscles working under the skin. It occurred to me that the VR experience was missing this level of detail. I’d have to correct that. The VR was coming due for a patch release anyway.

I stopped at the edge of the green. I engaged close-up visual and examined the moss/lichen mix. It had taken some brutally heartless breeding to come up with a mix that could survive in this atmosphere. I’d probably had less than a 1% survival rate on each generation for a while. But the result, in front of me, was justification for all the effort.

The green area was taking in CO2 and putting out oxygen. Only during the day, granted, but I’d bred it to go into a deep dormancy at night, so it used up virtually no oxygen. The green could double in size every year, given enough available space, and I’d been careful to give the individual plantings enough room to grow. I would continue to start new plantings as well, so within ten years I expected to have half the global land surface covered. And within a decade after that, I should have an oxygen level that humans could tolerate.

There were still problems with the atmosphere. Too much CO2, not

enough nitrogen, far too much methane and other organics. But I had projects on the go to ameliorate those issues as well.

I had recently seeded some of the seas with different forms of photosynthetic algae. I regretted that these imports would easily out-compete the native life that was just beginning to get a grip, but I knew that it wouldn’t have survived the introduction of Terran sea life anyway. Humanity was still drastically short of available new colonization targets, and that really was my number one priority.

Within another fifty years, I would have a planet people could walk around on without protection. It was good.

Meanwhile, Bullwinkle had the place to himself, the only quadruped on an empty planet. The seas hadn’t yet connected into oceans, although I wasn’t more than a couple of years away from that. Until then, I could go anywhere on foot, er, hoof. I picked my next inspection site and hit the gas.

* * *

“Okay, that was damned cool!” Garfield closed the recording of the moose session. “Can I try it?”

“That’s a little personal, don’t you think? You should build your own.

Doesn’t have to be a moose, either.”

“Yeah, I was wondering about that, Bill. Why wouldn’t you just go for a human-analogue? Isn’t that the point?”

I waved a hand in the general direction of the video window. “Sure, but trying to handle bipedalism would have just cranked up the feedback requirements by an order of magnitude, while reducing the available space for processing hardware. I’ll get there, don’t you doubt it.”

Garfield nodded and rubbed his chin in thought. “Hmm, I’ve always wanted to fly…”

* * *

Ten new Bobs sat around the table, nursing whatever drink they’d ordered. I was now using the pub as my standard VR. I’d gotten tired of the park, and especially the stupid geese.

I raised a glass to them. “Here’s to taking 82 Eridani back.”

“Back?” Loki grinned at me. “Did we ever actually have it?”

“Just roll with it, Loki. This is rhetoric. It doesn’t have to make sense.”

There were chuckles, and the Bobs raised their glasses in response.

These Bobs were to be the second strike force for 82 Eridani. Our first attempt had ended up, more or less, as a draw. We’d killed all the Medeiri in that system, as far as we knew, but with only Khan left alive, we couldn’t hold the system against the automated weaponry. This time, two of the members of the attack force would drive cargo vessels—I’d loaded up a number of innovations and a crapton of extra busters. There would be no issue of being outnumbered this time around.

It wasn’t just a pride thing. Milo had identified not one but two habitable planets, before he was torpedoed. Medeiros, left to himself, would garrison the system in preparation for colonists from a country that didn’t exist anymore. We needed to take it back.

At Khan’s request, I had loaded his backup into one of the fresh matrices.

It seemed this particular branch of the Bob tree liked villains, because he’d immediately named himself Loki. I looked forward to the shenanigans the next time Thor showed up to a Bob-moot.

I had also loaded Elmer’s backup into one of the new vessels. His first words were the standard Pacino-ism. I could sympathize, I guess. Like Tom Cruise, you keep going back in until you win.

We talked for a while, knocked back a few more, then it was time to go.

They said their goodbyes, popped into their own group VR, and started the journey to 82 Eridani, to clean house.

* * *

I raised my arm above my head and pressed the button. Instead of the usual annoying

blat

, the air horn produced a Dixie melody.

The crowd of Bobs, who had been preparing to boo me, instead broke into laughter.

I grinned to the crowd. “Just keeping you on your toes. So, announcements first. I’m sure you’ve heard about Linus and Henry Roberts.

Well, Henry is feeling ready to mingle today, so Linus is going to bring him over. Try to be polite, okay?”

People responded with catcalls and witticisms while I sent a quick ping to Linus. A moment later, he popped into the moot, with Henry beside him.

The effect was immediate, total silence, as every Bob in the room stared. I grinned at the sight. I knew the feeling from my first meeting with Henry. We

could all tell each other apart because of metadata tags, but other than some variations on facial hair, we’d all kept the original features. This was a different face. A non-Bob face.

Henry looked around. “Well, this is awkward.”

It was the right thing to say. Everyone laughed, then stepped forward to say hello. I was worried for a moment that Henry would get a panic attack, but he held up.

I gave it a few milliseconds, then brought everyone back to order with a short blat from the air-horn.

“The other major item, for those who haven’t already heard, is that the second 82 Eridani Expedition, with Loki leading, has shipped out. We are on our way to kick some Medeiros butt.”

When the cheering had died down, I continued. “And the last item is to remind you about the regular Scrub baseball games. Come one, come all.

You all know why I’m doing this. It’s up to you whether you want to participate.”

I turned and glared at Garfield. “And for the anonymous troll who put a call for a hockey league on today’s agenda, No! ”

Garfield grinned back at me as the crowd broke up in laughter.

35. Sales Call

Howard

September 2192

Vulcan

Bridget and I watched as Butterworth took a careful sip. He held the glass away from his face and looked at it. Damn, he had one of the best poker faces I’d ever seen. And possibly a cast-iron throat. He might as well have been drinking water for all the reaction he showed.

“Well?” Bridget leaned forward. I took a second to grin at her impatience.

For me, this was an interesting project, and a chance to do a favor for the colonel. For Bridget, this was an actual potential source of extra income. We Bobs might not have a use for capitalism, but in the human realm, money still made the world go around.

Butterworth glanced at Bridget and then looked at me in the video screen.

“It’s actually not bad. It’s definitely Irish whiskey. And since the Jameson has run out, I’ve been feeling the lack.”

“So this would be a saleable item?” Bridget hovered like a dog waiting for a treat.

“Absolutely. You know we’ve already got several beer manufacturers and a couple of small wineries going. This is the first hard liquor, though, that doesn’t qualify as a public hazard.”

Bridget turned towards my image on the tablet and grinned. Looked like we were in business.

Butterworth waved the empty glass. “If I wasn’t in a position where it would create a perceived conflict, I’d suggest partnering up. However, I guess I will have to settle for being a customer.”

Bridget took the hint and refilled his glass, then hers. I popped up a cognac and raised it in a toast.

* * *

Bridget started to laugh with her mouth full, then had to grab a napkin. We

were having dinner at The Shaded Green, one of the better restaurants in Landing. Okay, one of the only restaurants in Landing. And by we, I mean her. I was looking out through her tablet, which was propped up on the other end of the table. I’d set up a matching virtual meal of my own. Not bad, actually. Turned out I could cook.

“So Cranston out-and-out forbade you to sell liquor into FAITH

territory?” She rolled her eyes, and put down the napkin.

“Yep. It seems the ultra-religious don’t approve of strong drink. Who knew?”

“So we have to write off that entire market?”

I gave her a disbelieving look. “Of course not. We just have to find a local distributor. Prohibition has never worked, anywhere.” I grinned. “And strangely, there’s always demand.”

“How’s the potato crop coming along?” Bridget took a bite of her bronto steak and leaned forward on her elbows.

“Well, I’ve been growing potatoes for more than a year now.” I waved a hand dismissively. “This crop is only different in that it’s not part of the commons. And it’s going fine. We’ll have vodka for sale within six months.”

“I’ve always wanted to be a bad influence.” Bridget laughed. “Now I’m a liquor baron. Baroness.”

I raised my glass to her. In honor of the occasion, I was drinking virtual whiskey instead of cognac. “Here’s to us, kid.”

Bridget raised her own glass and drank. She put it down and said, “So you never answered my question.”

“Which?”

“Is this a business dinner or a date?”

“Yes.”

She smiled back at me. Damn, that was some smile.

36. Asteroid Movers

Bill

March 2187

Epsilon Eridani

“I’m feeling pretty smug right now.” I grinned at Garfield. He tried for maybe a millisecond to look unimpressed, but no one was fooled.

Right there in front of us, the asteroid mover was altering the approach vector of one of our icebergs. The difference in this case was that no part of the mover was touching the berg. The mover segments were spaced evenly around the center of gravity of the asteroid, held in place by individual SURGE drives. And the assembly as a whole generated another SURGE field that affected the entire asteroid.

The interactions were complex, and we’d had a few experimental failures.

But this one had passed all tests, and today was the first live field trial.

Everything was well within specs, and the changing path of the berg was right in the groove.

Finally, Garfield said, “And, done. Shutdown.”

“Excellent. Wait sixty seconds to make sure there’s no drift, then collect the drive segments.”

Garfield nodded to me. A minute later, twenty individual saucer-shaped drive segments left their self-imposed positions around the berg, linked up like a stack of plates, and went to station-keeping relative to Gar and myself.

In the video window, the berg fell neatly into an approach that would skim the atmosphere of Ragnarök. At the proper moment, a series of explosions would convert it to ice cubes, which would all melt and fall as rain over the next few weeks. Textbook.

I looked down at the large crater on Ragnarök which served as a permanent reminder of the iceberg that I’d missed. Yep. A lot of energy stored up in a chunk of matter coming in at orbital speeds, and being ice instead of rock hadn’t helped as much as you’d expect. A new sea was slowly forming in the crater, which I had named Bullseye.

37. He’s Gone

Riker

August 2176

Sol

“Homer’s gone.” Charles popped into my VR, tears in his eyes.

“Gone where? Left the system?”

“No, gone. Dead. He overloaded his reactor and blew himself up.” Charles had both hands clamped into fists. He couldn’t lift his eyes to look at me.

“How old is his most recent back—”

“He deleted all his backups. Every single one. He left a file for us.”

Charles pushed it toward me and turned away.

Guys;

I’m sorry to do this to you. I know how it’ll go over. But I can’t live with what was done to me, and with what I’ve done. I have flashbacks, constantly. I can’t forget the feeling of being controlled. It was like being able to feel a tapeworm moving around inside you, and there’s nothing you can do. I’d edit the memory out, if it was possible, but it’s not.

Please, find the people who are responsible and drop something on them.

Homer

I looked at Charles. He was shaking and biting back sobs. Then he blurred as my eyes filled.

We would grant Homer’s last wish. And it would be no trouble at all.

38. Following up

Hal

May 2188

Gliese 877

I was ten months from Gliese 877 when I received Bashful’s final radio transmission. Effectively, I had just watched myself die. It was a freaky feeling, not something I cared to repeat.

How had Bashful been traced? One possibility was that the Others had intercepted his transmissions, since those would have passed through the system once he was on the far side. Between the encryption we put on all our comms and the lack of any format information, I wasn’t worried about them learning anything, but simply detecting the transmissions wasn’t too much of a stretch.

I was more concerned about me joining Bashful as the main course. It wouldn’t take much intelligence to decide to follow the direction of the transmission, if that was what they’d keyed on. In that case, there might be an alien armada coming straight down my throat.

With that thought, I immediately instituted a hard right turn at 10 g. As soon as I was a few light-minutes off the straight line between Gliese 877 and Gliese 54, I fired off a drone along my original vector. At the speed I was still going, the drone wouldn’t need to use its drive. It could operate on minimal systems, drawing just enough power to maintain a maser link with me. I wanted to know if anything was coming.

I also fired off some commentary and analysis of the situation back to Mario via SCUT. We had to plan for the possibility of them tracing Bashful back to his origin. In principle, if the Others got hold of a space station, they could eventually trace the connection all the way back to Epsilon Eridani.

And if they found one that had been upgraded to SCUT, they’d have that, too.

If Mario was still back there, manning the station, I suggested that he booby-trap it.

I sat back in my easy chair and looked out the window, lost in thought.

The floor-to-ceiling glass showed a winter scene unbroken by anything man-made. Tall evergreens in the foreground gradually dropped into a tree-filled valley. Snowflakes blurred the view into the distance, while lending a postcard feel to the foreground. In a small breach of reality, my VR world never filled with snow, despite never having spring melts. But hey, what’s the point of obsessive realism?

I let myself get about thirty light-minutes off the line before turning back toward Gliese 877. The drone would let me know if something approached along my original vector. Unless there was a collision, which frankly would be just fine. The combined kinetic energy of two masses, each going about

.75 C or so in opposite directions, would produce a truly impressive light show.

I sighed and turned to Guppy. “Analysis?”

[Too many unknowns. If the alien SUDDAR has greater range than ours, they may destroy the drone before it gets close enough to register their approach. Or it may not be big enough to register or to bother with. Or they may not be interested enough to investigate]

“That’s about what I was thinking. The Others don’t seem to care a lot about other species. Or ecosystems. Or civilizations. They may actually be very Borg-like in ignoring us until it suits them.”

Guppy didn’t comment. Version-3 memory capacity or not, he still wasn’t into small talk.

* * *

It took a month to close the distance to Gliese 877. I was sure Bashful had thought he was being cautious, but I was ten times more so. I fired off several probes, with orders to rendezvous at coordinates two light-hours away from where I’d be waiting. They’d sit there for a week while I watched for any reaction. Only then would I collect them.

Things went pretty much according to plan. Mostly. I got to my planned location and waited for the probes to gather at their location. Right on schedule, they coasted up and came to a stop. I transferred all their data over, and settled down for a week of waiting.

I got through two days’ worth before a flotilla of Others showed up on the probes’ SUDDAR. As hoped, the Others were too far to detect me or for me to detect them directly.

[Same conformation as last time]

“Yeah, they seem to be consistent that way. Any indication they’ve detected us?”

[Negative. Trajectories are focused on the probes]

“Okay, then. Blow the probes, and let’s get out of here.”

[Aye. Probe destruction directive sent. Will we wait for SUDDAR

confirmation?]

“Yes, but if the Others show any inclination at all to change course, we’re outta here.”

Right at the expected time, the probes disappeared from SUDDAR. We turned and put some distance behind us at full 10 g.

* * *

After I squirted a status report and all the raw telemetry Mario-ward, I combed through the data myself. We continued to accelerate away from Gliese 877, although I was planning on looping around and approaching from stellar north for another round of spying.

In the holotank, a picture slowly formed of the inner system. The first interesting tidbit was the outer rocky planet.

“Will you look at that…” I leaned back in my chair and shook my head in disbelief. Even Guppy looked impressed. I think. Really hard to tell with a fish.

[The planet is completely encased in metal]

“Or is completely made of metal. Do we actually know if there’s a planet underneath that?”

[The engineering for an artificial structure all the way down would be impressive]

I experienced a jolt of irritation. I was the engineer, and Guppy had just handed me my ass. He was right, of course. A completely metal planet all the way to the core would require some truly astonishing engineering. A totally encased planet, maybe with a lot of underground structures, would make a lot more sense.

The problem was, we really didn’t know for sure. And I was beginning to think that astounding engineering might be exactly what we could expect from the Others. I turned to the main event on the display.

“That is what I think it is, right?”

[Based on what we can detect, it appears to be the beginning of a Dyson Sphere]

Ah-yep. Truly astounding.

The orbit just to the inside of the inner planet was crazy busy. Fusion signatures, radio traffic, SUDDAR emissions, and high-albedo craft flitting around. And that was just the small stuff. Floating in orbit, spaced equidistantly around the sun, were massive structures. Analysis indicated that they conformed to a spherical curvature with the same radius as their orbit.

They were, essentially, the beginning of a globe around the star.

“Well, we know where the metal went. We can guess where the…” I couldn’t finish the thought. “Any idea of population based on what we have?”

[Impossible to estimate without more information on subject biology]

Hmm, fair enough.

I turned to the other terrestroid planet in the system. Atmosphere blocked a lot of direct observation, but infrared and spectroscopic analysis indicated generally breathable air, though with a lot of pollutants. And the temperature would be close to fatal for a human.

“My guess is that’s the home planet. And they global-warmed themselves almost to extinction before getting into space.”

[Reasonable]

Out of idle curiosity, I started putting together a simulation to predict how they would assemble the Dyson sphere, how long it would take, and how many systems they’d have to plunder. I had to make a lot of assumptions, but I needed to start somewhere. I was immersed in the problem when I was interrupted by Guppy.

[Alert! Proximity alert! Incoming!]

“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me! How are they detecting us? I’m not even using radio!” In one sense, that was a good thing, since it would mean they didn’t have any idea which direction we were coming from. In another sense, I was being chased, which was much less of a good thing.

I spared a few milliseconds to review the SUDDAR results. Our improved SUDDAR, courtesy of Bill, had given me an earlier warning of the approaching enemy. Again, the same formation as the two previous occasions. Well, they were consistent, anyway.

They were coming up from behind, so there was no opportunity for our

traditional trick. This was going to be a straight-out stern chase. Which meant I would find out who had the better legs.

I immediately sent an update to Mario via SCUT. I also started on a baseline backup as well, with plans to add periodic differential backups.

All of this analysis and planning took perhaps twenty milliseconds. I turned my ship away from Gliese 877 and cranked the SURGE drive up to maximum. Interestingly, the Others did not react immediately. There was a half-hour delay before I saw them change their course. That was too quick for a visual reaction, so it meant that I had a thirty-light-minute advantage in SUDDAR range.

Unfortunately, I seemed to be about 2.5 g’s outmatched in the SURGE

department. Pings indicated that they were accelerating at 12.5 g on my tail.

I was going to lose the footrace.

I briefly considered using the SUDDAR jamming, then mentally slapped myself. Jamming wasn’t like cloaking, it was like blinding everyone with a searchlight. They’d be able to follow the emission like a beacon.

My only advantage was the apparent difference in range between my SUDDAR and theirs. If I could keep myself in that range long enough, I might be able to jink out of their view entirely.

Over the next several days, I changed my vector at random times, in random directions, but always with the intention of extending my lead. The Others kept cutting the distance, then I’d pull a fast one and extend it. I was subtly training them to expect certain behaviors from me, and I watched for them to start anticipating my moves.

Finally they were doing exactly what I expected of them. I made a predictable turn, then as soon as I judged myself to be out of range, I turned to an unexpected vector and shut down all systems. By my calculations, I’d stay out of SUDDAR range as they passed by. With no reactor signature I should be invisible since I was certainly too far away for a visual.

* * *

I coasted for three days, unwilling to take a chance of attracting their attention. There was a good chance that they were quartering the area, trying to reacquire my trail. But given the immensity of space and the speeds we had been travelling, for every second that passed, the volume that they had to search expanded faster than they could search it.

On the fourth day, I bundled up all my observations and data, added a differential backup, and squirted it off to Mario.

There was something about the whole thing that nagged at the edge of my mind, though.

The timing of the appearance of the Others’ patrol groups wasn’t consistent with following or chasing the probes. It was more as though they spotted them and came running, but not before the probes were already at or near rendezvous. Could the Others be detecting our radio interaction? That would require an amazing level of sensitivity, but then they did have that big grid, which might be good for more than deep-frying Bobs. And if they’d followed the direction of the probe’s final transmission, that would explain how they’d found me in the first place.

I had to test the theory. I knew I was taking a chance, but the payoff was too huge if I was right. We could use this against them. And maybe they’d be dumb enough to fall for the same evasive maneuver twice.

I sent a probe out a couple of light-seconds and set up a conversation. I made sure my backup was up to date and verified. Then I sat back to wait.

* * *

[Proximity Alert! Incoming ships!]

I checked the SUDDAR, and sure enough, the Others were coming straight at me. From behind, again, which meant another straight footrace.

Because I’d been running silent, it was their SUDDAR pings that alerted me to their presence. Unfortunately, that meant they could now see me.

I cranked up the reactor and the SURGE drive to emergency levels and started evasive maneuvers, but I wasn’t likely to escape them this time. They had a good head of steam coming in and had better acceleration than I did.

Well, I guess I was going to find out if—

[Alert!

Controller

replicant

offline.

SURGE

drive

offline.

Requirements for self-destruct protocol have been met. Reactor overload engaged…]

39. Bob-Moot

Bill

August 2188

Epsilon Eridani

I hadn’t called the meeting to order yet. Forty-three Bobs milled around the banquet hall. Knots of people argued, discussed, or just hugged and got caught up. Bob-1 formed the center of a dense cluster of Bobs, describing his Deltans to a rapt audience. It was interesting to watch. Bobs more than a generation or two removed from him seemed to treat him with reverence, as though they were meeting the pope.

I looked around the room. These were all the Bobs that had upgraded to SCUTs, and some of them were physically up to thirty light-years away. I grinned at the heady feeling from that knowledge.

A dozen Jeeveses circulated, supplying beer, wine, coffee, and food of every kind I could think of. Virtual, of course. But still.

I’d adjusted the acoustics several times to keep the background noise down. That was cheating a little and generally frowned upon when hosting a VR. But this wasn’t really a social event, despite appearances.

The latest data from Hal had caused a firestorm of debate.

The weapon that the Others used was in fact some kind of gamma ray emitter. Theories about how it worked had been bouncing around BobNet ever since.

It was time to get this show on the road. I held an air horn above my head and tooted it twice. As expected, it got everyone’s attention. And a round of boo’s. We Bobs don’t really respect each other all that much.

“Okay, hold your love. It’s time for this meeting to come to order. We have about as much information as we’re going to get without some more concerted—and overt—investigation of the Others.”

An undercurrent of growls greeted the mention of the Others. Medeiros had long since disappeared off the radar as our number-one enemy. The Others might not be aware of us, but we’d already declared war.

“Thor, you—” I waited as the laughter died down. Yeah, Thor. I guess it was inevitable that someone would eventually go in that direction, but we still all got a kick out of it. At least Thor hadn’t altered his physiology to match or started carrying around a hammer.

“Ahem. You have the best thesis on the Others’ weapon. Can you give us a capsule summary, please?”

Thor stepped up. “Okay, we’re positive that it’s some extremely high-energy electromagnetic beam in the gamma-ray range. It has incredible penetrative power, and would be immediately fatal to biological life. I have no doubt that’s what they use to kill planetary ecosystems. They probably employ multiple devices for full coverage.”

Thor called up a particle diagram. “Damage to electronics comes not from the gamma radiation per se, but from the secondary ionization induced in the structure. My proposed solution is two layers of depleted uranium alternating with two layers of electrostatic shielding to take out the charged particles.

This, on top of some extra hardening of our electronics, should allow us to survive a zapping.”

“You first!” came a shout from the back of the room.

When the chuckles died down, I said, “Fortunately it won’t be necessary to bell the cat ourselves. I’ve given the summary and a set of Thor’s diagrams to Mario, and he’s going to send one of his Bobs to test it out with a couple of probes. I think Hal has volunteered. He wants to get back at them for killing him.”

This was met with cheers of approval and a truncated rendition of

“Bicycle Built for Two.” I waited until relative quiet returned, then turned to Garfield. “Care to give us your theory on the weapon itself?”

Garfield stepped up and bowed to the audience with a grin. “The size of their Death Star wannabe—I’ve been calling it the Death Asteroid—says it all, I think. That thing is probably all fusion reactors and accumulators of some kind. Through all the chases of the various Bobs and drones and scouts, they’ve never fired one twice in the same encounter. That indicates to me that discharging it is expensive in some way. My guess is that they have to charge up the accumulators for some ridiculous amount of time before they can fire.

So one strategy in a dogfight would be to get them to fire at a decoy. We just have to have something that looks dangerous enough.”

Garfield’s presentation was met with quiet nods and thoughtful looks—the

ultimate compliment in a Bob-moot.

“Resources?” I looked over at Hungry. Yeah, Hungry had happened to pick a direction that brought him in line with one of my transmissions.

He started to answer, but was interrupted by Wally.

“Hold on a minute!” Wally stepped forward. “Have we decided on war already? I mean, yeah, we have to do something, but have we decided how much yet?”

There were scattered groans and a few catcalls, but it was a good question.

I nodded to Wally, then said, “I’ve been operating under the assumption that we’re going for all-out war. But really, are we prepared to wipe out an entire intelligent species? Even one that has done the same to others?”

Someone at the back yelled, “Hell, yes!”

“Yeah, okay. We’ll probably vote on that at some point, but—”

Thor interrupted me. “I think a better question is, can we wipe them out?

The mining vessel wreck that Mario found had superior tech, some of which we’re still trying to figure out. They have the Death Asteroid. They have better SURGE drives than us. They can beam power through SUDDAR…”

“And they’re building a friggin’ Dyson sphere,” Wally added.

“Here’s the thing,” Thor said, trying to regain the floor. “Right now, all we’ve done is make some random incursions around the edges. No real damage or anything. We’ll get exactly one chance for a surprise attack of some kind. After that, it’ll be toe-to-toe punch-ups and hit-and-run attacks on both sides. The million-dollar question is, can we win that war?”

Dead silence. Every Bob present understood the ramifications. If we picked a fight and lost, the damage would impact more than just our egos.

Bob-1’s Deltans, human colonists, and any other intelligent species in the area might be drawn into the conflict, or at least exposed to future attack. It was a daunting responsibility. We had to be sure we could win before we went in swinging.

“And if we don’t do anything,” Garfield pointed out, “they’ll keep on raiding other systems to build their damned sphere. Hal calculated that they’ll have to clean out another hundred systems or so to finish that thing.”

“Plus or minus fifty,” Hungry added.

“Yeah, okay, the error bars are huge. But fifty to a hundred and fifty systems means maybe five to fifteen systems with life, based on our admittedly limited experience. And at least a couple will have intelligent

life.”

“Yes, because that couple will include Deltans, Earth, and the colonists. A hundred systems requires them to go out at least thirty to forty light years, after you discount the systems with little to no metallicity. That covers the complete Bobiverse, as far as I know.”

I looked around at the audience for any other comments. No one seemed inclined to volunteer an opinion. “Okay, guys, time to wrap up the town hall part of this soiree, although you’re all welcome to stay as long as you want and discuss things with each other.” I waited a moment for any objections.

“Our big issue seems to be the risk involved in going to war with a species that appears to be more advanced than we are and probably outnumbers us.

Let’s meet in a week and see if we have anything new on that front.”

People immediately formed into small groups, and the Jeeveses began circulating again with food and drink.

40. Gotcha

Riker

February 2178

Vulcan

The man sat in front of a large bank of monitors. He watched one for a few moments, then moved to the next. He never seemed to stop, never rested.

The little red farmhouse sat far to the north of VEHEMENT central.

Nothing about it was distinctive. No visible technology, no radio broadcasts, nothing to indicate this was anything other than the home of some elderly recluse.

Except for an occasional scatter of maser radiation. I grinned as I watched him work. A maser passing through fifty kilometers of atmosphere was not quite undetectable, if you were sufficiently motivated. A small bit of radiation scattering, a slight warming of the air…

Passive detection meant he didn’t know I’d picked up his signal. It meant he didn’t know I was listening in on his conversations. Encrypted SCUT

communications meant he couldn’t detect my drones.

Well, well, well. Time for payback. But first, I wanted him to know…

41. Casualties

Bob

July 2182

Delta Eridani

[Alert! Activity outside normal parameters!]

I looked up, eyes wide. Guppy had standing orders to alert me if anything unusual occurred in or around the village. Of course Guppy, being Guppy, was short on details.

I activated the village VR, and found myself in the middle of a full-scale battle. At first I thought it was a gorilloid attack, but quickly realized that no gorilloids were in evidence anywhere. Instead, Deltans battled Deltans with spears, clubs, and axes. I could see a dozen or more bodies, either unconscious or dead.

Archimedes!

I ordered the VR to zoom in on Archimedes and his family. To my relief, I found that their tent was just outside the edge of the riot. Archimedes and Buster stood with bows in hand and arrows nocked. Belinda and Diana stood to either side, holding spears. That sight, as much as anything else, unnerved me. Neither female had ever shown interest in anything weapon-related.

I knew that father and son enjoyed a well-deserved reputation as expert shots, though. In fact, the edge of the battle seemed to particularly avoid the area immediately around his tent. Just as well. Fallout or not, if someone threatened Archimedes, they’d earn a visit from a personnel buster.

Marvin popped in. “What the hell? What caused this?”

“No idea, Marv. I was working on something else when Guppy alerted me. I’ll review the surveillance when I have time, but right now I just need to keep Archimedes safe.”

Marvin nodded, and took over control of a couple of busters just in case.

We waited, tense. Archimedes and Buster drew back on their bows and took aim a couple of times, but in every case, whatever Deltans had attracted their attention thought better of it and moved off.

Eventually the action died down. Deltans began backing away from the melee, still brandishing weapons. And now we had a chance to see the carnage. Property damage in the area of the riot was total, of course.

Hopefully the owners had managed to flee the scene, but they’d be rebuilding from scratch. I counted seventeen bodies lying motionless on the ground.

More than twice that number were bleeding and calling for help.

I wanted to throw up. What could possibly justify this? What could have set it off?

Marvin and I exchange glances and, without a word, I shut down the VR.

“I hope the medicine people can handle the number of patients,” Marvin said.

“They’ll have to, Marv. I couldn’t do anything with drones, even if I could take the chance on exposing myself.”

Marvin sighed. “I guess I understand why you’re always going on about Bill’s androids. It’d be great to have one available right now.”

“Yeah, I know, but he’s just not to that point yet. I keep bugging him, though.”

We sat down and I called up the video recordings for the last couple of hours. Marvin and I spent several full seconds reviewing them.

Finally, we sat back and Marvin shook his head. “Remember when we thought the Deltans were smart?”

“Yeah, no kidding,” I said. “The stupid. It burns.”

The whole thing—the riot, the injuries, the deaths—had been started by an argument over how to divvy up a small prey animal. Unbelievable.

We stared into space for a few more moments, getting over the shock.

Finally, I found my voice. “I’m going to go with the idea of population pressure as a trigger, unless something better presents itself. And I’m going to have a talk with Archimedes.”

* * *

The drone sat on the ground in front of Archimedes, looking very much like a rock. Archimedes slowly turned a flint core over in his hands, pretending to examine it. Anyone observing him would assume he was working on his flint.

“I think you’re right, bawbe,” Archimedes said in a low voice. “Things seem to be the most tense when everyone is home. When hunters are out, it’s

more peaceful.”

“Not a surprise, Archimedes. We’ve known for a long time that animals can be more stressed when things get crowded—even animals that like to live in groups.”

“So what do we do? Kick a bunch of people out of the village?”

I laughed. “Archimedes, let me introduce you to something called marketing. You don’t tell them they have to do it; you convince them that they want to do it, and that you don’t want them to. Works especially well with teenagers.”

Archimedes looked thoughtful for a few seconds, then smiled back. “I think I see where you’re going. So how do we do this?”

I thought for a moment. “Okay, here’s what we need to do…”

“Reverse psychology,” I said. The translation routine rendered that as

“backwards trickery,” and Archimedes looked confused.

I sighed and tried again. “Okay, here’s a story from my home. A great leader wanted to introduce potatoes to his people, because they were a good thing to grow. He made announcements, he visited villages, but no one was interested or wanted to change. So he grew some himself and passed a law that potatoes were just for leaders, and villagers weren’t allowed to eat them.

Within a couple of hands of days, all his potatoes had been stolen and people were growing them.” I watched Archimedes, trying to guess if he’d got the point.

Archimedes frowned. “Wait, they grew the tubers? Like, told the plants where to grow? Why not just go out and pick them?”

I sighed—a very human expression, but one that Archimedes had grown to understand. He grinned at my frustration.

“We’ve talked about farming, Archimedes. You can grow a lot of something in a small space if you’re organized about it. But the point…” I glared at him, but of course he couldn’t see that. “…is that he got people to do something by telling them that they couldn’t. Maybe your people aren’t stubborn that way—”

Archimedes interrupted me with a laugh. “Yeah, we are. Do you remember Buster when he was young?”

We shared a chuckle over the memories. Headstrong didn’t begin to cover it.

“Okay bawbe, I get it. So we just tell the gangs they can’t go to a new village?”

“Er, no, that won’t really do it. We don’t tell them anything at all. We start talking among ourselves about repopulating the other village sites, and doing it before the gangs get the same idea. And we talk loudly, and we do it where they might overhear.” I paused to let him consider what I was saying. “Get some of the council involved, to make it seem credible. Really, just pretend we’re actually thinking about something like that, and start making plans.”

“And this will work?” Archimedes shook his head. “I really wonder about your people.”

“Want to place a bet?”

Archimedes grinned and shook his head.

42. Business

Howard

March 2193

Vulcan

The Enniscorthy Distillery Company was doing well. I looked over the spreadsheet. We were just barely keeping up with orders. And we insisted on C.O.D., so no receivables issues.

After some discussion, we’d decided we needed a planetbound distillery, and we brought Stéphane in to set that up.

Bridget slapped the cover closed on her tablet, then set it on the desk. She worked her shoulder and spine a few times before leaning back in the chair.

Stéphane frowned in her direction. “Backache again? You should see the doctor.”

Bridget answered with a noncommittal smile, then looked towards my image on the phone. “I guess you don’t get backaches, right?”

“Not unless I want to. We Bobs try to keep things as realistic as possible, most of the time, though. I don’t need to let my muscles go stiff, but stretching them out feels good.”

She nodded, staring into space. “You’re effectively immortal, aren’t you?

How old are you personally, Howard?”

“Well, I’ve only existed for eight years’ subjective time as Howard. But my memories go back to Original Bob’s earliest memories as a child, maybe around two years old. So I remember around twenty-nine years as Original Bob, then four years as Bob-1 before he built his first set of clones; four years as Riker; fifteen years as Charles, who was one of Riker’s first clones; and eight years since Charles cloned me. That’s subjective time, as I said. There’s a lot of relativistic time dilation in there. So, I’ve experienced sixty years of life.”

She made a face at me. “That sounds complicated. Do you share thoughts?”

“With the other Bobs? No. When a Bob is cloned, he wakes up with the same memories as his parent at the moment the backup was made. After that, though, we each go our own way.”

“Wow. I’m not sure I could handle that. Life is complicated enough.”

“Well, what about as an afterlife?” I smiled at her. “Original Bob had to die first, before he became a replicant. Not much future in death, I’m told.”

“On the other hand, your relatives stop calling.”

“We do have one non-Bob, you know. Henry Roberts is the Australian probe replicant.”

She made a moue of something, maybe disapproval. “Yeah, word is he’s not fully bolted down.”

“Mm, well, Henry had some issues with sensory deprivation early on. We know how to handle it now. Any new replicants would probably be fine.” I looked at her sideways. “You thinking of applying?”

“No, just curious.”

Stéphane added, one eyebrow arched, “Immortality sounds good, though.”

43. An Exchange of Words

Riker

March 2178

Sol

“Hello, Mr. Vickers.”

The man at the other end of the call looked briefly surprised, but recovered quickly. “Well, I’m impressed. There was some question about whether you’d ever manage to figure things out. I guess it was too much to hope for that you’d just destroy each other, instead.”

I smiled at him—the kind of smile a cat shows to a bird. Just teeth. “Uh huh. You’ve been a busy little beaver. We’ve determined that the attacks on Brazil were also your work. I assume the idea was to try to foment another war, maybe knock off a few more people. So those deaths are also on you.”

Vickers waved a hand dismissively. “They had the chance to go voluntarily. It’s our duty to help them along. I don’t expect you to understand.”

“I doubt if you even care if anyone understands. My guess is, your

‘announcements’ are more about ego than any desire to help or inform.”

Vickers grinned at me. “Already descending to personal insults? I expected a little bit more from you.”

“You flatter yourself. This isn’t a duel of words. You aren’t important enough. I’m satisfying my curiosity, nothing more.” I carefully kept my face neutral. I didn’t want to give this guy any satisfaction. “And on that subject, this whole VEHEMENT thing seems more like a vehicle for you than a cause. People like you aren’t joiners, unless you think the organization can benefit you. So what’s your ultimate goal?”

A flash of anger crossed Vickers’ face. “If you must know, replicant, I’m your maker. I invented the replicant systems that you inhabit. The systems that FAITH stole without as much as a nod. You don’t deserve to exist, you shouldn’t be alive. VEHEMENT is a suitable tool for achieving that goal.”

“I doubt that the members of VEHEMENT will feel good about finding

out they’ve been used.”

“Don’t be naïve, replicant. They know I have my own motivations. They use me, I use them. Everyone gets what they want.”

“And what does Ambassador Gerrold get out of it?”

“Gerrold was working with me on the replicant systems in Australia.

When you stole from me, you stole from him. He was a little more interested in the fiduciary rewards—typical small mind—but his hate is useful.”

I nodded. I had about everything I needed. Except the one last item.

Permission.

“Homer committed suicide, you know. Couldn’t live with what you’d made him do.”

“Good. It’s no more than he, and all of you, deserve.”

Permission received.

“And the people you killed, in Brazil and elsewhere? Do you care about them?”

“I think I’ve already answered that question. Is there anything else that you wanted to say that might actually interest me? Before I continue the task of ending your existence? You can’t stop me, you know. You’re simply not good enough.” Vickers gave me a condescending smile.

“Hmm, well, before I called you, I stenciled your name on a ship-buster. It should be there in about twenty seconds. Let’s see if that’s good enough.”

Vickers shook his head, the smile never wavering. “And you’ll have missed. You’ll take out VEHEMENT headquarters, but not me.”

I cocked my head sideways. “Oh, you misunderstand. There’s a buster heading there, too. But the one I’m talking about is coming in on your position, fifty-five kilometers north and two kilometers east of the VEHEMENT base. Little red farmhouse, to all outside appearances.”

The smile left Vickers’ face. His eyes went wide and he turned towards the window. The window that had allowed the drones to verify his actual location. Nobody thinks of everything.

“If you have some variation on a god, asshole, you might want to have a very quick conversation with him. And fuck you to hell!”

Vickers leaped from his chair just as the buster arrived. One thousand pounds of high-tensile steel impacted the ground at planetary escape velocity.

It wouldn’t quite match the Barringer crater, but it was good enough for pest control. The video cut off as the entire area was vaporized. At the same

moment, another impact fifty-odd kilometers south created a matching crater.

New Zealand would have a couple of new lakes, by and by.

From a video window off to the side, Bill began a slow clap, echoed by Charles and Ralph.

* * *

“After all your talk, you’re not above pummeling the Earth when it’s convenient.” Gerrold glared out of the video window at me. I had preempted today’s UN session to announce the effective end of VEHEMENT.

I couldn’t decide if Gerrold was trying to bluff his way through this, or if he thought his connection with VEHEMENT was still unknown. In any case, I wasn’t in the mood.

I stood up, placed my hands on my desk, and leaned into the camera. As I opened my mouth to speak, I realized I was too enraged even to form words.

At that moment, if I’d had a ship-buster in position, Gerrold would have died.

I frame-jacked slightly, and took a few deep breaths. Just barely in control, I glared at him. “Listen, you putrid, self-inflated bag of air. A good friend of mine is dead, driven to suicide by your friend and former co-worker with your full knowledge and cooperation. People in Brazil are dead for no other reason than to fulfill his sick political goals and to allay your butt-hurt.

Again, with your knowledge and approval. And most of the rest of humanity is on starvation rations at the moment. So I am not in the mood to put up with your hypocritical yammering, and the only question right now is whether I let your own countrymen impeach and hopefully lynch you, or whether I come and get you myself, take you upstairs, and push you out an airlock. Why don’t you mouth me off just one more time, you festering pile of crap. Go ahead. Just one more word! ” I glared out the video window at him. In the entire UN gathering, there was not so much as a cough. I held the moment for another heartbeat, then sneered at him. “If you show up tomorrow, I’m going with plan B. I’m just sayin’.”

With a flourish, I cut the connection.

Charles grinned at me. “Say, you’re kind of scary when you get riled.”

I was too upset to smile back, but I did give him a shrug. “That’s for Homer.”

44. Baseball

Bill

March 2189

Epsilon Eridani

“Hey, batter batter, heeeeeeeeeeey, batter.”

Howard grinned at the outfield. “Has that ever worked?”

Bob yelled back, “It’s traditional. Just go with it.”

I sailed a perfect underhand toss across the plate. Howard swung and totally whiffed.

“That’s three. Everyone advance.”

Howard shrugged, materialized a glove, and jogged to the outfield. We were generally able to field a pretty full Scrub game these days, but we couldn’t depend on enough people for two teams. Original Bob had never been much of a team player anyway; we all preferred Scrub. More of a personal goals thing.

Some of us could even hit the ball.

I moved to the catcher position, and Loki took over as pitcher. Everyone else shuffled forward into the next position. As soon as we were all ready, Marvin came up to bat. Loki wound up and threw the ball right over the plate.

About ten feet over the plate.

There were boos from the outfield. I stood up. “Yeah, you’ve been practicing, my ass. That’s with practice?”

“At least it’s going in the right direction now.”

“Uh huh. In the interest of not walking every batter for the next half hour, I’m going to allow some Guppy intervention. Put it across at people height, okay?” I nodded to Marvin.

On the next pitch, Marvin knocked it into the outfield, between center and right. Howard and Dopey looked at each other, each waiting for the other to move. Marvin, no dummy, was closing in on second before the two stooges decided who should make an effort. By the time they had the ball into the infield, Marvin was at third. He took a moment to grin and thumb his nose.

We were all fairly evenly matched in sports prowess, for obvious reasons.

It came down to who was paying attention and who was letting their mind drift. We played for a subjective half hour, the agreed-upon duration, then retired to the pub.

The pub was hosted in the same matrix that handled Bob-moots, so it had more than enough processor power to handle all the Bobs and all the beer.

And Hungry’s coffee, of course.

As always, we ended up talking shop.

I had a group encircling me that wanted to talk about Bullwinkle.

“Bullwinkle? Really?”

“Hey, why not?” I grinned at Thor. “The thing needed an external antenna array because of the required bandwidth. I just played with the aesthetics a bit. You’ve seen the pictures.”

Howard chuckled. “It would be hard not to think of a moose. I think your sense of proportion was a little off when you built that thing.”

There were answering laughs from several people, plus some perplexed expressions from those who hadn’t seen the pictures.

“So what’s the long game, Bill?”

I shrugged. “Nothing dramatic, Mario. It’s an interesting project, and could be useful—”

“—It would give us a physical presence,” Howard interjected. “I remember Riker being frustrated sometimes, working with the enclaves. And it’s even more so for me. We have all this interaction with the ephemerals—”

“Please don’t use that word, Howard.” I gave him the stink-eye, and he looked embarrassed for a moment.

“It’s not intended to be derogatory, Bill. It’s just—”

“Then just say humans. Sure, it’s not derogatory, but it is dismissive. And it will eventually shape an attitude that their lives matter less.”

Howard gave me a blank look, then shrugged. “Anyway, the point is that I could be so much more effective if I could, you know, ‘walk among them’.

Flying around, looking like a giant pill-bug, and giving orders through a speaker is just incredibly limiting.”

“Politicians did it for centuries,” someone muttered.

I grinned and said, “That’s pill, not pill-bug. ”

“There are even better words…”

“Anatomical…”

“Scatological…”

I glared around the group. “If you guys break out into Gilbert and Sullivan, I’m leaving!”

We all laughed and the tension was broken. But I was still left with a weird twinge of foreboding.

Eventually, the moose groupies broke up and joined different conversations. I wandered around the pub, listening in but not engaging.

Topics ranged from the impending arrival of the latest colony ships to Omicron2 Eridani, the chances of a colony being successful on Klown Kar Planet, wildlife on Vulcan, speculation on the Others, and my asteroid-mover project. I moved in to listen on the last item.

Mario stopped what he was saying and turned to me. “Bill, we were just wondering about the capacity of the mover plates. How big can you go?”

I grinned at him. This was one of my favorite subjects. “Right now, we could probably apply a vector to something about half the size of Ceres. So, about five hundred kilometers in diameter. But it would be a tiny, tiny vector, in the range of a hundredth of a gee.” I thought for a moment. “How big can we go? Well, you keep adding plates to get more push. But that makes control of plate interactions more complex. It’s just an engineering problem, though. We’re learning how to tune the drive so that most of the energy goes into moving the payload instead of keeping the plates in position. There’s no theoretical maximum that I’ve been able to find.”

“So we could eventually move stars?” Mario grinned at me, obviously trolling.

I laughed. “Sure, in a million years or so. Theoretically possible doesn’t mean easy. ”

I nodded to the group and moved on. Another group was discussing the expanding bubble of the Bobiverse. In principle, we should be approaching a forty-light-year radius by now. But reproduction tended to be uneven and spotty. It was generally accepted that we Bobs were only marginally enthusiastic about cloning more of ourselves. I shrugged. The Others might change that.

The moot continued for many objective minutes—hours in our time-sense.

Eventually, though, Bobs started to pay their respects and pop out. It had been a good game. Okay, not really, but a good post-game wrap-up. I smiled

to myself. That was really the point.

* * *

“I have something to show you.” Garfield was trying and mostly failing to keep a huge grin off his face. Well, okay, not bad news, then.

“All right, Gar, I’ll bite. What’cha got?”

“I give you my answer to Bullwinkle.” With a flourish, he popped up a video window. “Rocky!”

“That does not look like Rocky. More like Rodan.”

“Hey, if we’re going to get pedantic,” Garfield said, laughing, “the real Bullwinkle was bipedal.”

“If we’re going to get pedantic, the real Bullwinkle was a cartoon. So, does it fly?”

“In theory.” The android stood in the hold of a cargo drone, still attached to its support cradle. Metadata told me that the drone was parked on the surface of Ragnarök. Garfield opened the cargo bay door, revealing the bare rock of the planet’s surface. His avatar froze as he switched his consciousness to the android. Another window popped up, showing Rocky’s viewpoint.

Rocky detached itself from the cradle and waddled to the door and out into the Ragnarök wilderness. The communications relay drone stayed with it and provided another viewpoint.

The android was not graceful on foot. Not really surprising. The still relatively thin air of Ragnarök would require a lot of wing surface in order to lift off, even with the powerful artificial musculature. But walking wasn’t the point.

Garfield set himself, opened his massive wings, and launched. Several powerful flaps were sufficient to get off the ground, and he steadily gained altitude. The comms drone kept pace, keeping Rocky centered in the frame.

The other window showed the view from Rocky’s eyes.

Honestly, it wasn’t impressive from any objective metric. Drones could fly faster, higher, with less energy, and were more maneuverable. But based on my experience with Bullwinkle, Garfield would be experiencing something entirely different from flying a drone.

Things went well for the first two minutes.

Then Garfield ran into some turbulence. Maybe a crosswind, maybe a downdraft, who knew? But Rocky went into a roll that approached ninety

degrees. He attempted to correct, and rolled farther in the opposite direction.

The motion kept reinforcing itself, and every attempt by Garfield to get it under control either made it worse or introduced pitch and yaw.

Finally, Garfield folded his wings and went into free fall. This stopped the harmonic cycle, but he was now rapidly losing altitude.

“Maybe time to start flying again, buddy.” I blushed as soon as the words left my mouth. Nothing like stating the obvious to help out.

“Thanks, Bill, I might just try that.”

Garfield was taking my foot-in-mouth moment with good grace. I resolved to try shutting the hell up as a strategy.

Garfield stuck out his wings just the smallest amount, trying to establish stability. It seemed to be working for a few moments. Then the rushing air snapped his wings out like a parachute opening up. Every status light went red, and Garfield screamed.

I pulled back to VR, to find Garfield sitting hunched forward, hugging himself, a wild look in his eyes. He took a few deep breaths, then glared at me.

“Um, I guess we did too good of a job of setting up the neural feedback.

That hurt! ”

I nodded. “In theory, that’s what we want. But maybe we should put a limiter on it.”

“Yeah, let’s do that.” Garfield stood and stretched carefully. “Where’s Rocky?”

“Still on his way down. Wings are snapped, though, as is his keel. I don’t think you want to be in there for the landing.” I pulled up the video feed from the trailing drone, which was still faithfully following the tumbling android.

Rocky was definitely junk, and Garfield hadn’t thought to add a parachute.

I looked at Garfield, and he shrugged. “Well, it’s not the fall that kills you…” he said, with a rueful half-smile on his face.

We watched as Rocky hit the ground. Every status indicator went dead, and the trailing drone picked up the loud, hollow thump of impact.

I instructed the cargo drone to head for the impact site and pick up the pieces. I turned to Garfield.

“So, other than the unfortunate ending, how did it feel?”

“Incredible. I was flying. Actually flying, not just working a control panel.

I think hang gliding might come close, but nothing else.”

I smiled at him. I could understand the feeling. “It’s a lot more real than VR.”

“Yeah, and what we’ve got here will allow Bobs to interact with the real world. As beings, I mean, not as floating cameras.”

“You’re right, Garfield. In an emergency, I think we could even use them with the comms drone hanging around, although that’s messy.”

Garfield gazed into space for a few moments. “I wonder if we’re missing the big picture. Take this to its logical conclusion and we could replace our HEAVEN hulls with bodies.”

“Like mechanical versions of van Vogt’s Silkies?” That was a mind-boggling thought.

“Yeah, like that. Bill, we may be the beginning of a new species. Homo siderea.”

“Hmm, the TODO just keeps getting longer and longer. Let’s see if we can get rid of the trailing communication drone first, okay?”

Garfield smiled and shrugged. “So, you know what comes now, right?”

“What?”

He grinned and held the beat. “Rocky II.”

“I hate you.”

45. Replication

Howard

August 2193

Vulcan

“You want what? ” Riker frowned and leaned back in surprise.

I waited for him to finish overacting. “Any information on creating a replicant. We have the replicant hardware and all, but we’re a little light on the part where you start with a body and end up with a recording.”

“Why the fleeming hell would you want that?”

I shrugged. “No particular reason. I just think it’s a gap in our knowledge base. If we wanted to create a new replicant, right now we couldn’t.

Basically, we’re it.”

Riker gave me the hairy eyeball, and a caption flashed below him, at waist height: ‘Not sure if joking or serious.’

I laughed. Will rarely attempted a joke, especially since Homer, but when he did, it was always funny.

“What’s really going on, Howard?”

“It’s nothing, really, Will. I’m not imminently intending to replicate someone, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s just that we only have the one generation of humans to get the information from. After that, we’d be reduced to reverse-engineering, with all the failures and false starts that implies.”

“It has nothing to do with Dr. Sheehy at all?”

I kept my face deadpan. “Not particularly.” It would seem there was no privacy at all in Bob-town. Anyway, we were just friends. “We’re just friends.”

Will looked at me, unmoving for a few more milliseconds, then nodded his head and looked away. “Okay, Howard, I’ll bring it up with the appropriate people at this end. I take it you’ve talked to Cranston already, about any info that FAITH might still have on the process?”

“Mm, yeah. He, of course, wanted a crapton of concessions in return,

before I’d even find out if he had anything worthwhile.”

“Well, hell.” Will grinned at me. “Why didn’t you say so? Doing an end-run around Cranston is all the motivation I need.” He finished his coffee, gave me a nod, and vanished.

I figured that would work. Just needed to not sell it too hard, or he would have gotten suspicious.

I pulled up the medical report that I’d intercepted, labelled B. Sheehy. I examined the scan for the hundredth time, hoping maybe this time it would be different.

* * *

Cranston’s face glowed a most unhealthy shade of red in the video window. I tried not to smile.

“Dammit, your product is showing up in our territory. I’ve told you we’re not interested. I’ve forbade you from selling your devil’s brew here. I want it stopped.”

He was mad. Cursing and everything. Excellent.

“Minister Cranston—Oh, it’s President Cranston, now, isn’t it? Anyway, sir, I am not selling or even offering any of my alcohol-themed products in New Jerusalem. However, your attempt at controlling the supply has likely driven the price up high enough that it’s being brought in from Spitsbergen by unorthodox methods. I have to admit, their consumption does seem rather high…”

“Then put a stop to it!”

“Absolutely, sir. I’ll put a line on the label, ‘Not for resale in New Jerusalem’. That should do it. After all, smugglers and bootleggers are always law-abiding.”

Amazing. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for his face to get redder.

Live and learn. But he wasn’t finished, apparently.

“And I will lodge an official protest at the idea of you using the colony equipment to engage in private enterprise. You are profiteering off of our backs.”

I shook my head in amazement. “First, I made all of those donuts and gave them to the colonies free of charge. Second, I’m not using one of those donuts. I made my own. And third, not that it’s actually relevant, but we’re gradually moving production planetside. Once that’s done, I’ll add the donut

to the colony inventory.”

“Tread carefully, replicant. You might find access to your families restricted.”

That was not an unexpected tactic, but it didn’t make it any easier to take.

I had my response ready. “Mr. President, you signed an agreement before we shipped you here that established certain inalienable rights for your citizens.

You also entered into a personal agreement with Riker concerning specifics of our family. Start reneging on that, and this will escalate quickly.”

We spent several seconds in a stare-off before Cranston broke eye contact.

“Very well. We will pursue the border options, for now. However, this is not over.” He reached out of frame and broke connection.

“Wow.”

I turned to the video window showing Riker’s image. “Wow, indeed, Will.

Should we be setting up an escape plan for the family?”

“As one alternative.” Will stared into space for a few moments. “Another would be to just remove the irritant.”

My eyebrows rose. “The whiskey?”

“No, you twit. Cranston.”

Now that was a plan I could get behind.

46. Klown Kar Planet

Rudy

February 2190

Epsilon Indi

I did a test ping to Riker, to check my tau. I’d been doing this regularly for the last couple of days, waiting for it to drop to the point where I could maintain a VR connection. We’d been exchanging emails for a few weeks, but a tradition of sorts had developed where the moment when a travelling Bob could maintain a VR session with a stationary Bob was considered arrival. It was more significant than actual entry into the system.

I received a response, then Riker popped into VR.

“Hey, Rudy. Good to hear from you. Where’s Edwin?”

“Still not slowed down enough. I moved ahead so I could get a look at KKP. I’ll be there in about eight days, and Exodus-6 will be another week.”

Riker nodded. “Call me back when you’ve had a close look at KKP.”

* * *

The planet itself wasn’t particularly memorable. It had oceans, it had land.

The day and night cycles, though, had imposed a certain chaos on the evolution of life. Based on Linus’ notes and what I could see from quick drone flyabouts, the planet had gone through something equivalent to the Cambrian Explosion, then kept every single branch. Both plants and animals came in a huge number of phyla. At first glance, it could appear to a non-scientist as if every individual plant and animal was its own species. Linus had theorized that the weird light cycles created a large number of niches and opportunities for competition.

This included several different versions of photosynthesis, optimized for different parts of the spectrum. Which resulted in what I suspected was the real reason for the name—the planet had more colors than a patchwork quilt.

Even the oceans came in different hues, due to the different breeds of plankton.

Between the sun’s path through the sky over the course of the year, and the extra heat and light supplied by the Jovian primary, days, nights, and even seasons would be hard to differentiate. I chuckled, perusing the notes. Linus had tentatively named the Jovian Big Top. I doubted either name would survive the colony’s first general meeting, honestly. But it was fun while it lasted.

As had become habit with the Bobs, Linus had left some mining drones and an autofactory behind to process raw ore from asteroids into refined metals, and left them in orbit with a beacon attached. Epsilon Indi wasn’t a rich system, but the automation had still managed to accumulate several hundred thousand tons of material. It would be a good start.

I pinged Edwin. I received an invitation and popped into his VR.

“Hi, Rudy.”

“Edwin.” I sat down and accepted a coffee from Jeeves. Edwin’s VR was, in my opinion, one of the better ones. He’d created a living area with huge windows on one wall that looked out on whatever view was really available outside his vessel. That would have been a little boring during the trip, but now it showed Big Top as he approached orbital insertion. Edwin was still several million miles away, but this was a Jovian planet. It already dominated the sky.

“So, what do we have?” he asked.

“This planet is like that Harrison novel,” I answered. “What was it? Oh, yeah, Deathworld. Where everything was deadly.”

“That bad?”

I waved a hand. “Possibly I exaggerate. But the ecosystem is very, very competitive. I know they are making do with a fence on Vulcan, but for here, I’m leaning more towards domes. Not for atmosphere, but to keep out the ickies.”

Edwin laughed. “Yeah, there’s a technical term for you. Ickies.”

“No, it’s actually a species name.” I smirked in response. “Blame Linus.

Ickies are a kind of flying leech with multiple suckers. I think the name is appropriate.”

Edwin started to look a little green. “Oh, lovely. I might just start a betting pool on whether the colonists take one look around and start screaming at me to take them back.”

“Mmm. But, you know, according to Howard, the Cupid bug is well on

the way to being eradicated. Maybe a drone specifically designed as an ickie-killer will do the trick.”

“Jeez.” Edwin pinched the bridge of his nose. “On the plus side, once I unload, I get to go back to Earth.” He looked up at me and grinned. “You, not so much.”

I responded with one finger.

47. New Village

Bob

September, 2182

Delta Eridani

The Deltan council, including Archimedes and Arnold, watched as almost a hundred Deltan adolescents marched away from camp, yelling insults and challenges at the onlookers. The council members did a creditable job of maintaining straight faces, some even managing to look upset.

When the tail end of the parade disappeared into the bush, Arnold slapped Archimedes on the back and said, “That was great.” He then leaned in close and said, in a low voice that only Archimedes and the spy drone could hear,

“I’m sure bawbe had a hand in it.”

Archimedes’ eyes got wide and he looked very concerned, but Arnold just shook his head and said, “I don’t need to know. I’m just glad it worked.”

Other council members gave Archimedes a nod or a smile as they dispersed.

Marvin and I looked at each other, then began laughing. The worst troublemakers in Camelot, completely convinced that it was their idea, had just marched off to one of the old abandoned village sites to repopulate it.

And Archimedes was getting the credit for thinking up and masterminding the plot. Reverse psychology… not just for humans.

Marvin lost his smile and got a worried expression. “Of course, it fixes the immediate problem, but everything we do seems to have side effects down the road. What if they go to war with Camelot in a few years?”

“Don’t borrow trouble, Marv.” I sighed and sat back. “Sure as hell, something will hit the fan, but let’s worry about it when it happens.”

But he was probably right.

48. Operation

Howard

September 2193

Vulcan

I texted Stéphane for the third time in the last hour. I couldn’t call him anymore, as he’d blocked voice calls from me after my last attempt.

His reply came back within a minute. “Still in surgery. Calm down. Aren’t you supposed to be a computer?”

Okay, that stung. Well, not really, but point taken. I took a deep breath and attempted to relax.

Bridget’s surgery was already running overtime. There was no scenario in which that was a good thing. I’d tried distracting myself with a few of the many projects I had on the go, but I couldn’t maintain concentration.

In desperation I checked in on Bill. Guppy indicated that he was running Bullwinkle, so wouldn’t be responding except in an emergency. I doubted that me freaking out really qualified, so I didn’t bother leaving a message. I had a quick peek at his terraforming blog, but there was nothing new.

I was seriously considering just frame-jacking down, when Stéphane called me.

“Hi Howard. You can stop with the worrying now. She’s out of surgery, and the doctors say it looks positive. The tumor was a little more spread than they expected, so it took longer to excise. But all good.”

I thanked Stéphane, traded some meaningless comments, then hung up. I sat back, took several deep breaths, until I thought that I had it under control.

And without so much as a by-the-way, I leaned forward and started to sob.

Just friends.

* * *

There had been a lot of improvements in medicine since the days of Original Bob, but some things hadn’t changed all that much. Cancer could be nipped in the bud if caught early, but there was no vaccination yet. And the knife

was still often the only effective treatment.

This was unacceptable. What the hell had they been doing for a hundred years? I resolved to look into it when I had a chance.

Meanwhile, Stéphane sat at her bedside. He’d dialed me in through the room phone. While I waited, I sent a quick email to Bill to hurry the hell up with the androids. I knew it wouldn’t help, but it was action of a sort.

Stéphane and I traded an occasional desultory comment, but neither of us was in the mood for more. Finally, he turned to me. “I’m going to stretch and refuel. Some of us still have to eat. I’ll tell them not to come in and hang up the phone on you.” With a nod, he got up, leaving me to watch over Bridget.

If you’ve ever watched someone come out of anesthesia, it’s not like waking up. That can be sexy, under the right circumstances. Bridget looked more like a drowned rat that had just been given CPR. I made a note to myself to keep that observation private.

She finally opened one eye, looked around, and spotted me peering at her from the phone. She squinted, grimaced at me, and said, “Jeez, what do I need to do to get a day off?”

I laughed, then had to override the video image to keep from embarrassing myself. My image froze for a couple of milliseconds—not nearly long enough for her to notice. When I’d recovered control, I grinned at her. “Not to worry, sales are good. This year you can take Christmas off, and even use up some extra coal.”

I was considering what I would say next, when Stéphane walked back in, coffee in hand. Bridget’s face lit up, and Stéphane smiled when he saw she was awake. He exclaimed, “Ma minette!” and pulled up a chair as close to the bed as he could manage. He took her hand, and I ceased to exist for any practical purpose.

How did I miss this?

We made small talk. I don’t remember it. I’m sure I could play back my logs, but why? I made my excuses as soon as I could without appearing to be acting odd, then retreated to my VR.

Right, well, what did I expect? Bridget was a human. An ephemeral. Her plans would include a home, a family, a place in society. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I’d been very carefully avoiding thinking about certain issues.

And one of the issues that had just come into focus was that I was an

outsider. I saw the world through video calls and chat windows and drone cameras. I really shouldn’t have been surprised that something could develop right under my nose.

I materialized a bucket and kicked it as hard as I could. Strangely, it helped.

49. Arrival

Mulder

March 2195

Poseidon (Eta Cassiopeiae)

“Poseidon. Good name.” Marcus shook his head in mock amazement, then took a sip of his coke. “I’ve had a look at your summary and notes. Pretty cool. I really want to see a kraken.”

I smiled in response. “You won’t be disappointed. I promise. Anyway, right now, you’re…”

“I’m just settling into a polar orbit. Monty is about a week away, and should be down to VR tau by now. I’ll ping him.”

Marcus settled more comfortably into his seat and sipped thoughtfully on his straw. For some reason, Marcus had never taken to coffee. He preferred his virtual caffeine in carbonated form. Well, whatever.

At that moment, Monty popped in and materialized another chair for himself. He accepted a coffee from Jeeves and looked around.

My VR wasn’t particularly inspired, as such things go. I’d never felt the need to come up with something new and imaginative. I had a variation on Bob-1’s library, but with high windows for more sunlight, and more casual furniture.

“So, anyway, things grow big in the water, in direct proportion to the available space. A global ocean, eight hundred kilometers deep, makes for some very large nasties.”

Monty looked concerned. “They couldn’t take down a mat, could they?”

“Oh, hell no. Nothing’s that big. But on this planet, a day at the beach is likely to be fatal even if you don’t get wet. The kraken in particular has tentacles, and one of its feeding strategies is to grab animals off the edges of mats.”

“Right.” Monty nodded. “Well, the mats are a short-term solution, anyway. The colonists will be building floating cities for the long term. We’ll just need tough enough perimeter defenses to keep them out.”

“So,” I looked at him, changing the subject. “When are you going to decant the colonists?”

“I’m waking the Setup Management team right now. Couple of hours, they’ll be ready to start.” Unlike the land-based colonies in other systems, the teams here would be working from the colony transport—Monty—for a considerable time, and the civilian population likely wouldn’t start to emerge for a good six months. Future shipments would have it a little easier.

We had a number of variations on floating city plans on file. Free-floating cities had been a bit of a thing for a while in the twenty-second century. Of course, they had access to land-based support, and they didn’t have to deal with predators up to a hundred meters long, with tentacles.

* * *

Discussions with the Prep team hadn’t taken as long as I expected. I guess there’d been a lot of planning before they’d launched from Earth system, and there hadn’t been any surprises at this end. Yet.

I had tagged all the biggest mats with beacons, so we knew what was available. The Prep team picked a couple of large mats that were drifting in the north tropical current. They were both well over a hundred square km in area, complete with commensal ecosystems. Within a day, we were ferrying down supplies and equipment.

The colonists, a conglomerate of enclaves from Micronesia, the Maldives, Vanuatu, and Saint Lucia, would have to be awoken in small groups as living space was constructed on the mats. It would be about a year before Monty would be able to leave.

Marcus would be staying here to help with the colony setup after Monty headed back to Earth. He would build a fleet of human-crewed spaceships so that the colonists wouldn’t be dependent on us. With no land on Poseidon, all industry would have to be space-based, and Marcus didn’t want to play permanent taxi-to-the-world.

* * *

Marcus popped in without warning. “We just lost another settler.”

“Kraken?”

Marcus nodded and sat down. He took a moment to give Spike a chin-scritch, then materialized a Coke.

“I’m sure Chief Draper is pissed,” Monty said. “We have to come up with some better defense. We could go through the entire setup team pretty fast.”

“Or we could reconsider flying cities.” Marcus grinned at me.

“Oh for Pete’s sake, Marcus. There are no plans in the libraries for flying cities.”

“Yeah, but you could start with Bill’s asteroid mover and I bet you could end up with something that would hold a city in the air.”

“Let us know when you have a design, there, Marcus.”

Marcus made a dismissive gesture and changed the subject. “Well, we can’t stick to the status quo. The krakens will just keep getting bolder. But building floating cities without an established land base of some kind is going to require some inventive re-thinking.”

“Can we beef up the protection around the floating mats?” Monty asked.

In response, Marcus popped up a schematic view of the island. “Here’s the problem. The Kraken are able to wriggle a tentacle through the mat and grab inland prey. Native life has figured out how to tread lightly, but humans have two left feet, so to speak.”

“Plus,” I added, “all the equipment makes a racket.”

Monty rubbed his forehead, looking disgusted. “Um. Any ideas? Serious ones, I mean.”

“Actually, yes.” Marcus nodded. “I can adapt some library plans to construct an electrified net that discharges on contact. A million volts or so should provide some negative reinforcement.”

“Or a watery grave. Either is good.” I nodded. Nice.

Marcus grinned at me. “Now the bad news. To build the net, and to build the equipment necessary to deploy it, will add six months to our schedule.

Draper will take that about as well as Butterworth would.”

“Moo,” I replied.

“Yeah, like that.”

Monty groaned. “I’m not thrilled either. It means I’m stuck here for another six months.”

“Suck it up. You’re immortal.”

“Bite me.”

We all grinned at each other. The routine exchange of insults felt sort of reassuring.

“Well,” Marcus finally said. “Guess we’d better go break the news.”

“What do you mean, ‘we’, Kemo Sabe?”

Marcus laughed and popped out.

50. Second Expedition

Loki

November 2195

82 Eridani

We flew straight into the 82 Eridani system without attempting any finesse.

We were here to kick some ass and, more importantly, to finish the job that Khan and his group had started.

Twelve Bobs, with Version-4 vessels featuring even more heavily shielded reactors than the threes, and total radio silence. Special carbon-black exteriors ensured an almost-zero albedo, and we had borrowed from the military to arrive at profiles that were virtually invisible to radar. The only place we were vulnerable was SUDDAR detection, and as far as we knew we had the range advantage in that area.

There was no point in being subtle. But being tricky was definitely on the menu. We spread a net of observation drones in front of us, coasting with minimal systems. Interspersed with them were ship-busters and decoy drones.

SCUT connections with every drone and buster guaranteed instant communications. Whether the enemy detected our outriders first or us first, we could still throw a surprise at them.

We didn’t know, of course, whether there were any Medeiri left from the first expedition. Or, for that matter, whether the Medeiros that escaped at Alpha Centauri might have made his way here. Best case, there would be nothing but the Brazilian AMIs, still patrolling the system looking for things to blow up. We’d brought plenty of decoys to cover that eventuality as well.

Yep, we were loaded for bear. We just had to hope that Medeiros hadn’t invented a bigger, better bear.

Ultra-low intensity version-4 SUDDAR wouldn’t even be detectable to traditional SUDDAR receivers unless the listener was specifically looking for it. We came into the system like a person in a pitch-black room, carefully feeling our way forward and ready to pull in our toes at the slightest sign of an obstacle.

We needn’t have bothered. Medeiros might not have a bigger bear, but he definitely had some kind of passive early warning system that we couldn’t detect. We were met by a solid wall of oncoming ordnance. The first engagement looked like a republic-vs-empire Star Wars shoot-em-up. And again Medeiros was using cloaking technology. But this time, we were ready for that.

It looked like Medeiros continued to depend on nukes as his main weapon.

Four enemy drones detonated simultaneously as soon as they were within range of our defenders.

Nothing was going to survive being up close and personal with an exploding fission bomb, but in space the shock wave was a strictly short-range issue. At any distance, the main force of destruction would be the EMP. And we’d engineered for that, this time. It took Medeiros a dozen ineffective nukes before he caught on to the fact that we weren’t affected. At that point, flying nukes started trying to get in closer. We spiked them, we busterized them, we confused them with our own set of decoys. And we watched and listened for the source of the commands.

Then Medeiros showed that he had learned from our last encounter.

A wave of attack drones came at us that were completely different from the traditional flying nukes. Our attempts to spike them just bounced off.

“Oh, this is bad. What’s spike-proof?”

“Possibly something with a defensive magnetic field,” Elmer replied.

“We’ll need to use busters on these guys.”

“Good call, Elmer. Okay, everyone, deploy half your busters forward. Any enemy drone that survives a spiking gets busterized.”

A flood of busters accelerated toward the oncoming ordnance. We carefully staggered them so that Medeiros couldn’t catch multiple busters with one nuke. The first contact produced so much carnage, between detonations and debris, that we couldn’t resolve the battlefield for several precious seconds.

Then I remembered reading the report on Riker’s first battle in Sol.

“Scatter! Watch for passive incoming!” I sent a SUDDAR pulse ahead as I turned and accelerated at ninety degrees. Sure enough, the ping showed a massive number of dense objects hurtling towards us.

It was too late for three of us, though. Jeffrey, Milton, and Zeke disappeared from the status board as their signals cut off.

The only good thing about this attack strategy, if something could be considered good, was that the passive ordnance couldn’t chase us. With the field now clearing, we could verify that there wasn’t another wave on the way. At least, not yet. I wasn’t going to make any assumptions.

Our second wave of busters now engaged the remaining enemy drones. Up close the busters had an advantage, and we recorded almost 100% kills.

A momentary lull in encounters allowed me to scan the battlefield. For the moment, there was no movement. The question now was: did Medeiros have more in reserve?

A second SUDDAR sweep showed another wave of enemy ordnance coming in. We weren’t anywhere near done, yet. A quick count showed Medeiros had more drones than we had busters. This put us at a definite disadvantage. Plasma spikes helped to even things out with unprotected drones, though, and since building nukes was expensive of time and resources, I had to hope some of that incoming consisted of decoys.

“Has anyone picked up any transmissions from Medeiros, yet?”

A chorus of no s came back to me.

Damn. One of our planned strategies was to triangulate on the Brazilian craft’s transmissions. Our last battle with him had shown the wisdom of cutting off the head. But Medeiros seemed to have learned from last time in that area, as well.

I accepted a call from one of the crew.

“Hey, Loki?”

“What’s up, Verne?”

“I’ve been doing an analysis of Medeiros’ attack strategy. I don’t think he’s actively controlling the battle.”

“Pre-programmed decision trees? If so, those are very smart AMIs. We saw them running through some sophisticated strategies.”

“I think it’s a bit of both.”

“Oh, great. That’s helpful.”

I could hear the smile in Verne’s voice. “Well, it is, kind of. He’s probably set up a number of different battle scenarios and canned responses with different goal weightings. He changes response trees with a very short command sequence, maybe a couple of bytes and a checksum, too short to triangulate on. Then the AMIs are on their own.”

Now that was interesting. “In that case, he can only have one response tree

going at a time, right?”

“Correct, unless he’s giving separate orders to different squads. And in that case, I think we’d have picked up on multiple transmissions.”

“Excellent.” I considered for a millisecond. “Attention everyone. We are going to split into groups, by the numbers, and execute strategies one through four. Let’s see how well the AMI pilots handle too many different scenarios.

Verne and Surly, activate the radio jammers.”

Everyone acknowledged, and we split off in various directions, each vessel accompanied by its personal cloud of drones and busters.

For a wonder, it appeared to work. Some of the Brazilian AMIs seemed to be coping, but more of them became confused. There was a small group that would rush towards a Heaven contingent, stop, rush towards another one, then reverse and repeat. Gotta love AMIs.

And then Medeiros panicked. Unable to regain control of his drones, he cranked up his radio transmission power and attempted to outshout the jammer. He might as well have put on a hat with a flashing red light. Verne and Surly immediately released the death squad—a batch of busters specifically programmed to latch onto the Medeiri with SUDDAR and not to let go until they were space junk. The death squad shot forward at close to forty G, and I imagined them yelling “Wheee!” in high-pitched minion voices.

In next to no time the death squad surrounded the Medeiri—there were two Brazilian vessels—and destroyed them. However, this time we were going to be thorough. As soon as they got the recall order, the busters took off after the Brazilian drones. There would be no peace until every piece of Brazilian equipment in the system was obliterated.

* * *

It took a further eighteen hours to track down every fusion signature in the system. I took a video call from Elmer.

“Looks clear now. Anything still alive will have gone to ground. Time to implement phase three?”

“You bet, Elmer.” Again I switched to command channel. “Okay, everyone. Phase three. Surly, release the hunter-seekers.” I heard several snickers, hastily suppressed. Dune didn’t have a particularly good reputation among the Bobs.

The hunter-seekers were essentially drones optimized for long-distance searching. Their SUDDARs were able to reach to almost four light hours. By overlapping search fields, they could get increased definition of anything they ran across. It would take a week, but they would cover every inch of the star system, identify any refined metal up to a kilometer deep underground, and relay that information to busters for remedial action.

Meanwhile, we examined the battle records.

“That’s an Alpha Centauri Medeiros,” Hank said.

“You sure?”

“Absolutely.” Hank pulled up images of the 82 Eridani Medeiros group from our first battle, then images of the Alpha Centauri Medeiros group as recorded by Calvin and Goku.

The differences were subtle, but the two probes were definitely based on slightly different designs. It came as no surprise that the Brazilians would have worked on improvements even as they were building and launching probes. Apparently the first and second probes to leave Earth had been—Oh, hold on. That would require three different launches from Earth. One to Epsilon Eridani to fight Bob-1, one to Alpha Centauri, and one to 82 Eridani.

Sure enough, my memory of Bob’s Medeiros was yet a third design variant.

That meant that we couldn’t depend on our estimates of the total Medeiri in the universe.

Life just sucked, sometimes.

I announced this information to the squad, and got the expected groans.

“Okay, guys. Looks like Medeiros will continue to be our Snidely Whiplash, showing up in every episode to set traps and twirl his mustache.

But meanwhile, we have this system. Let’s split up and finish the survey.

You know that there are colony ships on the way to Vulcan that can be redirected here with minimal delay. We want to get that word to them as soon as possible, if it’s warranted. And let’s keep in mind that Bill wants tech samples. We’re looking especially for cloaking technology and fission bomb designs.”

This was something all the Bobs could get behind enthusiastically. War was something we did reluctantly and only by necessity. Exploration, well…

that was fun.

* * *

“Wow, Milo really did hit the jackpot.” Verne grinned from ear to ear as he popped up survey results.

The rest of us nodded, grunted, or muttered “hell yes” according to our temperaments. This was indeed a major find. Two habitable planets, one to the inside edge of the habitable zone, and one to the outside edge. The outer planet had two moons, one of which was also habitable, although barely. The air was very thin—it would be like living in the Andes. You’d need to acclimate over time.

Except that Bill had taken on terraforming as a hobby…

I grinned at the thought, producing quizzical looks from some of the others. The moon’s atmosphere would outgas over geological timescales, but we could replenish it over human timescales. It would require ongoing maintenance, but it had been a long time since humanity had just accepted the environment as we found it.

We bumped up the priority on biocompatibility analysis. If everything checked out, this could be worth redirecting in-flight colony ships for.

51. Wedding

Howard

April 2195

Vulcan

The bride was beautiful. The groom was French. And I wanted to be drunk. I even talked to Bill about modifying the VR. He told me to quit being an idiot.

And idiot is what I was being. Hello? Earth to Howard. Computer, remember? I was on my best behavior, wished them well, made small talk, and left as soon as I could.

I made a call to one of two lawyers doing business in Landing. Yes, lawyers. Some things you just can’t get rid of.

Ms. Benning picked up right away. “Good afternoon, Mr. Johansson. I have the paperwork completed, and everything has been properly filed. We just need a few signatures from the other two parties, and everything will be legal.”

I nodded. “Any issues with me not being, um, human?”

“Nothing is ever settled in law, as you may well know.” She smiled into the phone. “But filing two sets of paperwork, one based on you having a legal standing and one based on the converse, should take care of any but the most determined challenges.”

“Thank you. Forward the paperwork to the Brodeurs. I’ll make sure they sign it and return it promptly.”

I hung up the phone and sighed deeply. Once they signed the papers, Mr.

and Mrs. Brodeur would own 100% of the distillery. It would be my wedding present to them. Plus, it would leave me with no ties to Vulcan. And that would be good.

* * *

Dexter popped into my VR, raised his coffee in salute, and sat down. He had escorted Exodus-7 to Vulcan and had taken my offer to stay on as resident Bob.

He appraised me without speaking for several milliseconds. I waited, content with the silence.

“So, you’re joining the freakin’ Foreign Legion. Could you be any more cliché?”

I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “I guess I am. On both counts. What’s it to ya?”

“I thought being a replicant meant all that was behind us.”

“Maybe in a hundred years, Dexter. Or maybe a thousand. They’re ephemerals. I’m just going to make a point of remembering that.” I gestured vaguely at the star map I’d been perusing. “And I’m outta here. Sam from Exodus-3 envied me being able to stay in one place and watch it grow, now you get to try it for yourself. I want to go see what’s out there.”

Dexter nodded slowly. “I’ve been reading your blog. Good detail. It shouldn’t be too hard to step in. Have you picked a target system yet?”

“Not really. I’ve got several likely looking targets. We’re far enough away from the Others that it isn’t an immediate concern. I’ll probably just flip a coin.” I leaned forward. “First, I have one last set of goodbyes to take care of.

You’ve got the keys, Dexter. Good luck.”

Dexter stood, nodded to me, and popped out. The parting wasn’t as final with the Bobs, of course. I’d still be available by SCUT if I kept my tau low enough, and I’d be available in any case once I reached my destination.

Now for the hard part.

* * *

Stéphane passed the documents back and forth from hand to hand as if they were burning him. His gaze kept shifting, to everywhere except my image on the phone. Bridget looked as though she was fighting back tears. I couldn’t tell if she was just upset about me leaving, or if she suspected some of the reasons.

“It’s not the distillery, Howard,” Stéphane said. “It’s a generous thing you do. The company is becoming one of the biggest on Vulcan. But why? Not even why leave, but why give it up?”

“Like I said, Stéphane, it’s a wedding gift. I really have no need for money, and I think it’s easier if I cut all ties.”

Stéphane nodded and stood silently for a few moments. Then he looked at the phone—finally—and said, in almost a whisper, “I will miss you, mon

ami. ” He exchanged a look with Bridget, and she nodded, once. He took the papers and, without looking back, left the room.

Bridget hesitated for a moment, then came over and sat down in front of the phone. “Howard, when you introduced Stéphane and I, isn’t this what you had in mind?”

Okay, then, no pretense. “I didn’t have anything in mind, Bridget. Just wanted to have my two besties in the room at the same time, I guess. Seems to have worked.”

Bridget jerked back slightly, a hurt look on her face. It was a petty thing to say, and I was immediately sorry. “Look, Bridget, I didn’t have some master plan. Apparently, I didn’t even have a clue. I guess it took me this long to really get that I’m not human. I’m not part of the dance anymore.”

“You’re human, Howard. Where it matters. I wish I’d met you when you were still alive.”

“Me too.” I paused the appropriate amount of human time. “I guess I’d better go. Places to go, species to meet…”

She smiled, gave me a small wave, and disconnected. Just before the image blinked out, I saw her eyes well up.

52. Bullwinkle

Bill

December 2195

Epsilon Eridani

I was touring the Ragnarök landscape in Bullwinkle when I got a ping from Garfield.

I sent an IM back. “What’s up?”

Garfield responded on audio only. I hadn’t implemented head’s-up visuals yet, and I didn’t want to exit the moose.

“Report’s back from 82 Eridani.”

Well, that would be interesting no matter how it had ended up. Come to think of it, the fact that someone was still alive to report back limited the extent to which the news could be bad. I tried to focus on that thought. I shut down Bullwinkle and called the transport drone to come and get him.

It took a moment to refocus myself in my regular VR. Garfield was sitting at the table, swiping through a report.

“Well?”

Garfield leaned back and grinned. “It’ll take a while to go through everything, and they’re still consolidating, but it’s looking damned good. A couple of the guys are checking biocompatibility. Unless there’s something really poisonous, we have three new colony targets.”

He reached forward and popped up a couple of items in separate windows.

“Then there’s this. One of the advantages of using busters as a weapon is there’s lots of wreckage to examine. Loki thinks he may already be getting a handle on the cloaking stuff.” Garfield’s grin looked like it was becoming permanent. “We’ve also got a couple of unexploded fission bombs. The guys will be very careful, of course, but we think a V4 SUDDAR pulse might be able to get us a scan without setting off a booby trap.”

“Excellent.” I sat down and requested a couple of coffees from Jeeves. I was silent for a moment, scrubbing my face with my hands. “The thing is, Gar, even with this stuff we can’t do more than delay and annoy the Others.

The more I see of them, the bigger and more invincible they look. Their population, based on the latest models, could easily be a couple of hundred billion. They could field a space navy that would just roll over us, if we really pissed them off.”

Garfield nodded, a morose expression on his face. After a short silence, he looked up at me. “How’s it going with Bullwinkle? I notice you no longer have a drone following.”

“Yeppers.” I was glad to change the subject. “Improvements in miniaturization, local processing, better comms. I still need a large body, but it’s coming down gradually. Not quite to the point of a human body yet.”

“Still too big for Rocky?”

“Afraid so, buddy. Working on it, though.”

“So what’s your ultimate goal?”

“To walk in and punch Cranston right in the nose.”

Garfield threw his head back and laughed.

* * *

We settled into the pub, beers and coffees scattered around the tables.

Another game of Scrub, another reminder that I was never an athlete. I grinned at the thought. At least there were no jocks around to rub it in anymore.

Monty parked himself at my table and took a tentative sip of his beer. I’d recently introduced a new dark beer that I thought was a serviceable substitute for Guinness. I watched him carefully.

Monty stared at the glass for a moment, nodded, and took a deeper sip.

Success! I messaged Guppy to add the beer to the menu.

“Hey, Monty, how’s things up Poseidon way?”

Monty raised the glass in my direction. “Pretty good, actually, Bill. We had a couple of bad months where the krakens started hanging around a lot, hoping for a meal, but the new underwater defenses seem to be gradually changing their minds.”