So, caution was still indicated.
I invited Bill over to take a look at the video records. He tapped a spot on the video window. “That's interesting. You see that?”
“Hmm, yeah. Fusion torch. Great for acceleration and maneuverability, but hard on fuel.”
“Over the short haul they could probably out-pace you, Bob. Best be careful.”
“Hmmph.” I sat back in my La-Z-Boy. “Not that I'm planning on going in and introducing myself. That's two encounters, two attacks, and one lost replicant.”
“Some assumptions in there.”
“Reasonable ones. Enough that I'd need some evidence to the contrary, before I’d change my mind.” I reached over and scrolled the window forward a fraction. “No SUDDAR, no SURGE, no SCUT. They, whoever they are, haven't discovered subspace theory. On the other hand, their fusion drive tech is impressive, and if I'm right about them having used lasers, so is there weapons tech. That's a lot of wattage out of a drone that small. Which means their fusion reactor tech is probably better than ours.”
Bill grinned and shrugged. “Not surprising. No one uses fusion reactors anymore.”
“True. We’d long since switched to the Casimir power source that we've gotten from the Others. It was far superior to any kind of fusion reactor, for reasons including but not limited to a complete lack of detectable emissions. Naturally, work on fusion technology had subsequently stagnated, but no one cared. “So,” I tapped my chin and thought, “these, uh, whoevers, have perhaps continued development in more traditional directions and may have surpassed us in some other technologies as well, while being totally deficient in others. Their drone designs reflect that.”
“Fair summary. How about Boogens, for their drones?”
“Sure, why not.”
“So what's the plan?”
“Plan? We don't need no stinking plan.” We both grinned. “Seriously, at this point, I'm only up to ‘don't get caught’. It's a little nebulous after that.
“We have designs in the archives for evading radar detection, you know.”
I stared at Bill for a moment. “Geeze, I must be getting old. Okay, so some kind of radar proofing carbon black exteriors to foil visual, low power electronics combined with a super-cooled heatsink to counter infrared detection…” I sat forward as my enthusiasm mounted. “We can coast in. We don’t need to use cloaking since they don't appear to have SUDDAR, so we can use long-range SUDDAR to watch for patrols… yeah, this is good!”
“Now you’re cooking. Do you have enough trajectory data to apply Bender's probable location?”
“Within a huge margin of error, yes. I’ll send some more scouts the long way around to look for where he might be by now. Or his remains.” We were both silent for a moment as we process this thought in parallel
“Sounds like you got some work to do, Bob,” Bill said. “I'll leave you to it.”
‘Some work to do’ meant some engineering design work to get the combination of attributes that I wanted based on plans and notes on BobNet. Whatever else the wars with the Others and Medeiros may have done, they greatly accelerated battle-related technologies. But hasn’t war always done that?
The engineering was no big deal. I am, after all, a computer - even if I don't acknowledge it most of the time. The actual construction work, well, that was going to take longer. I still had to do everything out in the Kuiper-Oort interface, and there was still no miraculous cache of handy elements to make my life easier.
The one new piece of tech I added was a core of ice at a couple of degrees Kelvin. The scouts were designed to be ultra-low power, which meant very little heat generation. But I didn't even want that to show. Waste heat would be transferred to the ice core which would gradually warm up. I’d calculated the heat transfer rate and I was pretty sure the scouts could make it through the system before their heatsinks gave out and they started to radiate significant infrared.
On the downside, to keep within the heat budget, they wouldn't be able to maintain continuous contact. That meant I could conceivably lose them and not know it until they failed to report in. Well, life isn’t perfect. I calculated trajectories and times, and launched the scouts myself via railgun. Ballistic all the way, baby. If they had to maneuver, that would be the end of the heatsink. If all went well, it would be months before they sailed out the other side.
By the time I’d done this, the other scouts had made it all the way around the system and were running a search pattern on Bender's expected location. I told Bill the margins of error were huge, which meant a large volume to search, but I was still disappointed by every day that went by without result. For no other reason than to have something to do, I set myself a course to the other side of the Boogen system. The long way around, though. I still wasn't prepared to fly through the system, even a little bit. I had no idea how far out the Boogens patrolled.
I was about halfway around when Guppy made my day. “Scouts have found something.”
“Cool what do they have?”
“Something.”
That black box test was going to be done with no anesthetic and soon. “Give me the report.”
A window popped up in front of me, replete with all kinds of statistics and measurements. The most important item though was an image of a shredded section of a version-2 Heaven vessel.
Bender.
4. Collection Run
Herschel
October 2332
New Pav
I watched on the monitor as the drones chivvied the ingots into the hold. As each massive block of metal arrived, roamers wrapped it in cable netting and carefully winched it up against the wall then tied it down. We’d have raw materials for just about any project we’d care to take on for a long time. The deal Jacques had struck was certainly efficient, because Neil and I had been running around from system to system for the last 50 years or so, we had not had much opportunity to stop anywhere and stock up. And in any case, the residents of those systems would not have been happy with us poaching their natural resources.
We’d contacted the Pav on the way in. The kindest description I could give for their attitude would be… curt. I guess Jacques was right about them. The thought made me sad, overall. We hadn't been having a lot of luck with alien species. Between the Others, the Pav, and the Deltans, I was starting to wonder if it was outright impossible for mutually alien intelligences to get along. And if the local area was at all representative, there must be a LOT of intelligences out there. Eventually we'd run into another star faring species with a technological advantage. That made war, and possibly the extermination of humanity, statistically inevitable.
I shared my thoughts with Neil who was, as usual, draped over his chair sideways.
“Geeze, Hersh, that's gloomy even for you. You need a new hobby. Or a hobby at all.”
“Hardy har. But what's wrong with my logic, Neil?”
He sighed, and was silent for a few mils. “Nothing. I guess. So what you want to do about it? We’re still pond scum.”
“Nah. We haven’t been that for almost 80 years. We own and operate the biggest damned cargo ship in human space. We are personally responsible for setting up at least five colonies. I think we have some street cred.”
“Yeah, I guess so,” he replied. “And please don't take that as permission to do a Picard impersonation. I don’t think I can take it anymore.”
“You got it. So what can we do with all that cred?”
Neil pursed his lips and stared into space. “To be honest, my first thought when we got word about this windfall was to double our mover plate count and accelerate to beat hell for somewhere interesting.”
“Like Phineas. Or Ick and Day.”
“And at least a dozen others. A lot of Bobs are just taking off, Hersh. Seems kind of, I don't know, self-absorbed.”
“I was thinking more like trying to place a human colony well outside of human space. … in case you turn out to be right.”
I gave him an ap
ologetic shrug. “We still have all the stasis pods from the great Exodus. There’s simply never been any reason offload them anywhere. And that's the thing - there's no more reason for the pods, or for the Bellerophon, really - we’re obsolete.”
“So, to make ourselves relevant again, we try for another colony. And if we use the ore to add another 32 plates, we’d be able to push some really stupid g’s,” Neil said, warming to the subject.
“So, a human colony out in say, the Perseus arm…”
“… would ensure continuity even if the rest of humanity ran into a bigger badder Others.”
I nodded. “Now we have to do is figure out how to locate some volunteers.”
5. Investigation
Bob
November 2332
Outskirts, Eta Leporos
A cloud of wreckage slowly revolved around a common center of mass. Some of it was recognizable, most was not. I was a little surprised that there was much of anything. I wouldn't have expected a laser to leave much more than slag. Of course, I was assuming that whatever attacked Bender used the same techniques as the drones that attacked my scouts. I would know more once I arrived.
It didn’t make sense to have the drones try to collect all the detritus and bring it to me, that would take too long and carried too much danger of losing or further damaging something. Instead, I'd fly in with my complement of roamers into a close-up inspection. But first I set the exploration drones to watch for any approaching Boogens, even though it seemed unlikely that they’d take a sudden interest after letting the wreckage drift unmolested for so long. The fact that the wreckage was drifting away from the system was probably relevant, but if I'd triggered any alerts with all the activity, they might change their mind.
I fully admit that across the distance a lot more quickly than I should have. Caution, for the moment, was taking a back seat. Fortunately, I didn't run into Boogen pickets. Even more fortunately, I didn't run into an asteroid. I set the roamers loose to examine the wreckage it quickly became obvious that what I'd suspected was true. An internal explosion had ripped Bender ship apart. Most likely the laser had taken out the nuclear reactor control system in such a way as to make the reactor fail catastrophically.
I remembered my first encounter with Medeiros in Epsilon Eridani so many years ago. He'd suffered that very fate. In addition, the meltdown of taken out his matrix. I had to hope that Bender hadn't come to a similar end. It was an entirely different ship design, of course - Medeiros was riding a military ship designed by the Brazilian Empire. They considered even their human soldiers expendable, never mind a replicated intelligence. Bender was riding a ship that I’d redesigned, with special attention to keeping the replicants matrix safe. This bit of simple self-interest gave me hope.
Outside inspections complete the roamers entered the section of ship. I had multiple windows up trying to watch everything at once. Finally, I gave up trying to maintain my VR. I dismissed my library and frame-jacked. Now I could keep up with everything, and putting up with naked floating data windows was a small price.
One of the roamers bleeped for attention. I turned to the window and would have smiled if I currently had a body. The roamer had found the replicant matrix containment in the most heavily armored section of the ship, and no obvious damage. Then, elation was replaced by horror as the roamers opened the containment to find it empty. No not, empty - worse than empty. Not only was the replicant matrix missing, but all of the interface hardware had been carefully removed, probably as a unit.
This was NOT good. Someone had made a point of removing Bender and his support hardware in a way that implied an intention to study and possibly revive him. I remembered Homer, and cringed at the specter of Bender helpless and subject to torture. One thing was for sure though, the Boogens or their makers knew that someone else was around.
Having found Bender’s empty ship, I had now flip-flopped from panicked rush back to paranoid caution. I wasn't going to hurry anything. I wasn't going to take any chances on attracting the Boogens, or, well, running into an asteroid. The flight back to the autofactory area would take most of the week.
I had one quandary to deal with, meanwhile. Would I make an announcement now or wait until I knew more? Could I even keep quiet for a week? For that matter would Will be able to keep his trap shut? I hadn't actually asked him to, although I was sure he would wait rather than steal my thunder.
Screw it.
I pulled up my console and began writing a blog entry. I had a large following anyway, being the first Bob replicant, and I could be pretty certain that Luke and Marvin would be watching every post. It took a few full seconds of thought to get the tone right. Cautious optimism, mixed with a realistic appraisal of possible issues. Hope, but be prepared.
Finally, it was done. I hit ‘post’, then sat back and waited.
3, 2, 1.
Luke, Marvin, and Bill popped in at the same time all talking at once and waving their arms. I turned in my office chair and waited until the noise died down.
“Why yes, I'm free right now, come on over,” I said.
“Bite me,” Marvin replied. “Where is he?”
“Well that's the $64,000 question, isn’t it?” I materialized chairs for everyone, and Jeeves entered with coffee.
“Dammit,” Marvin muttered. “Dammit, dammit.”
“What's the next step,” Luke asked. “Do you have a plan?”
“Nothing concrete yet. I guess the first step is to find the Boogen base, or source, or whatever. There's a good chance Bender will be there. Hell, we can just fly in and SUDDAR the hell out of it, if it comes to that. Locate Bender’s matrix and go from there.”
“A raid?”
“If that looks like the best plan.” I stuck my chin out. “If someone has kidnapped Bender and is experimenting on him, I'm not sure diplomacy will be my first choice.”
“Easy there, Bob,” Bill said. “Let’s see what we find before we start building bombs, okay?”
“Yeah, I know. Don't worry, I'll be circumspect.”
There followed one of those silences were no one quite knew what to say. Finally, Marvin nodded, and he and Luke stood. He gave me a wave and popped out, which left… Bill.
“So, Number 2, what's up?
“Oh, ha ha. Listen, I wanted to ask you just how you plan to go in system looking for the Boogens, and how public you're going to be about it.”
“Public, what the fuck? Are you saying there's any question?”
“Of course not, Bob. Not from me or any of the others in our generation. But Starfleet is agita-”
“Starfleet? What?”
Bill sighed. “You still haven't read my blog yet, have you?”
“Uhh, no. Sorry, been busy.”
“Remember Morlock? We’re calling him and his group Starfleet now, because of their obsession with the Prime Directive. It's become gospel to them. They don't even want us to keep interacting with humans. They’re trying to generate support for a formal declaration of some kind that you should leave whatever you find alone.”
“Is a formal declaration anything like a law?”
Bill snorted. “We don't have laws. But if enough people got together, they could apply social pressure of some kind.”
“What, like, shunning?”
“Well, something like that, in principle. A loss of prestige anyway.
“For god’s sake, Bill. Original Bob never gave even a small fraction of a rats ass about that.
“Yeah, I know. But more and more Bobs are becoming less and less Bob-like. I'm starting to call them replicants, in fact, instead of Bobs, just to make the distinction.”
“And they’re more concerned about… prestige?”
“Given a random walk you can't very well drop below zero rats asses, but you can increase the value arbitrarily, so yes we're getting more replicants who are for one of the better word joiners. Performing mutual interest groups and all kinds of things. like Starfleet. And the Borg. And the Skippies.�
�
“Skippies? Skippies?!” I could feel my eyes bugging out even in VR. “What, they've changed their avatars to beer cans and started calling people monkeys?”
Bill snorted his coffee and had to take a moment to compose himself. “No, it's the group trying to build the Matryoshka Brain, you know? Singularity super AI and so on? I don't know who started the nickname, but the Skippies haven't complained yet. They also, by the way, want us to leave the humans alone. But in their case it’s because they think the humans are holding us back from our destiny or some such.”
“Are there any other… no, never mind, I’ll read your blog. God dammit, I go away for a few decades and the whole place falls apart.” I grinned at Bill “I have some catching up to do, apparently.”
“There’s an understatement. Let me know if you need anything.” Bill gave me a nod and popped out.
Interesting times indeed.
6. The Search Expands
Bob
May 2333
Outskirts, Eta Leporos
I sat in my library, blearily gazing at the table in front of me. Will, Bill, and Garfield watched me silently, the occasional slow head shake the only commentary offered. Every once in a while, I took a halfhearted sip of my coffee.
Bill finally couldn't take it any longer. “You do understand you’re in virt, right? You can just dismiss the hangover.”
“Right,” I responded with a pasty half smile that was probably more terrifying than reassuring. “Yeah, and in the future I'll do just that. There's no metric in which this is enjoyable, but after finally reading your blog, well… original Bob was by no means an alcoholic, but he did occasionally, when it was called for, go on… uh…”
“A bender. Did you make that whole speech just to deliver that line?”
I chuckled, then groaned and held my head. “No, it was just a bonus. But god dammit Bill, we are diverging. Nothing bad yet, but I think you're right in expecting it. And we actually have a… Bobbi now?”
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