“We have a responsibility…”
“Argument by assertion.”
“… to keep from interfering in the affairs…”
“Prejudicial language, and you haven't proven the assertion yet.”
Starfleet gave Bill a murderous glare, and another red suited member took up the attack.
“Look at your history. Deltans. Others. Even humanity. Every time you interact you cause damage.”
“Others? You’re using the Others as an example?” Bill’s expression of bristling disbelief was probably at least partly acting, but if there was ever a justification, this was it. “The Others weren’t just sitting around minding their own business, you know. The damage they were doing…”
“There’s always a rationalization, isn't there.”
I stopped listening. Sadly, it was like most political arguments. No one was willing to debate their base assumptions or justify them or compromise on them. The simple tactic being that if you repeated your assertion often enough, with enough emotion and volume, the opponents would somehow be forced to see things your way. Never worked, of course. At least it never had with original Bob. But that didn't stop people from trying. Even Bobs, apparently.
I scanned the audience idly while waiting for Starfleet to get tired of beating their collective head against a brick wall, and was surprised to see two unfamiliar faces. I tried to check metadata, but I was blocked, so I sent a low priority text to Bill. He responded during Starfleet's next tirade, evidently not listening any more than I was.
“Couple of replicants, clients of Eternity Solutions from Asgard.”
That was interesting. The people who chose a replicant afterlife were buying into strata title virtual reality systems. Computer systems orbiting in the Oort in their local system, rather than setting themselves up with a spaceship. From what I understood, you could purchase different packages which got you access to different levels of computer power, different VR options, and even access to Mannies for physical interfacing in real. They had access to BobNet as well, as did anyone, but mostly they'd kept to themselves.
We had security policies set up, of course. They were guests in the computer sense of the word as well as the social sense, but Bill had an open-door policy regarding the moots. If anyone wanted to visit or even play some baseball, that was fine. The woman appeared bored. The man was trying to look in every direction at once, totally overwhelmed by the experience. It was obvious who had brought whom to the moot. They were making any waves with the Bobs, either - not like when Bridget or Henry first joined the moot. It must have become at least somewhat commonplace.
I brought my attention back to the argument, when the currently speaking Starfleet rep abruptly made a cutting off gesture and said, “Enough! This is pointless. I can see you not going to do the right thing on your own. So be it.” He nodded to his group, and as one, they winked out.
The moot erupted into pandemonium, more than before I mean.
“That,” I said to Bill in a low voice, “was a veiled threat.”
“Yeah, but what exactly?” He frowned. “Well, maybe we can get this meeting done now, and you and I will have to discuss this later.”
Hugh was sending updates every 24 hours. For all that made the Skippies weird on paper, they were a lot more civilized and courteous than Starfleet, whom you’d think would be almost mainstream in the Bobiverse. Language and customs were coming along finally. We seemed to have crossed some kind of cusp where blocks of disparate information began coalescing into a more complete picture. We could actually go in with what we had at this point, in an emergency. We’d just pretend to be from far away, and in Heaven’s River, far away really meant something. The Borg had finished their android design based on the completed report on biology, and had given me an auto factory blueprint for one generic native Quinlan, male or female, with editable parameters suitable for producing distinct individualized units. According to the notes, Quinlans differentiated each other primarily by facial shape and features, just like humans. Plus some color variations in facial fur. The complete package included software and hardware support for generating unique faces. The notes also stressed that some field testing would be required before the design could be considered ready. It was funny: for all the divergence of the Bobs, give them a problem to solve and the differences disappeared. I would be very sad when I met a clone that lacked that quality. That would no longer be Robert Johansson, in any sense that mattered.
The exploration crew, including Will, was due for a meeting at 1600 to go over our status, so I was a little surprised to get a ping from Bridget five minutes early. I invited her over and she popped in right away.
“Hi Bridget.” I gesture to her favorite chair, and she dropped into it looking uncharacteristically unsure of herself.
“That thing we were talking about earlier,” she said and waited for me to nod. “I'm not going to clone.”
I waited for Bridget to continue, but it looked like she was waiting for me to comment. “Okay. You’ve discussed it with Howard?”
She nodded. “He’s not happy. Mostly because I'm not happy. I mean, he's happy I won't be cloning, but-”
“I know what you mean. I have to be honest, Bridget, I don't entirely understand what you and Henry are so much against replication. I mean, I've never been what you call a fan, but we are heading for 10,000 Bobs by now.”
“Many of whom don't self-identify as Bob-clones anymore.” Bridget waved off my incipient reply. “I know, that's not relevant to your decision. But it IS relevant to ours. Plus, you're being a humanist helps. You don’t see yourself as being any more or less Bob than original Bob or any of your clones. For someone with, um, a more metaphysical view of life, it's not that simple. The best I can describe it is that I feel like each of us, myself and my clone, would end up with half a soul.”
I opened my mouth to point out that technically, by her belief system, only original Bridget had the soul, but realized in time that that would be the exact opposite of reassuring. Maybe I was finally learning when to keep my cake hole shut.
“And on a more personal basis,” she continued, “the new Bridget would be cut off from Howard and from our children. I know I wouldn't be able to share them with her, and Howard told me flat out that he be completely weirded out by the idea. I try to imagine myself waking up and realizing that I’m the copy - that I’ll never again be with Howard and the kids.” Her lips quivered as she'd struggled to regain control. I waited quietly, giving her as much time she needed. Finally, she said, “I couldn't do that to myself. Or to other me. So I’m going to accept that I'll be working away from home for a while, and I make it up to them when I'm done.”
“Okay, Bridget. Either way, it's good to have you on the team.”
She flashed what Howard referred to is one of her nuclear smiles, and I felt my IQ drop. Fortunately, Bill and Garfield picked that moment to pop in.
“Hey all, got the latest from Hugh,” Bill waved a bound report at us as he threw himself into his chair. Garfield settled in with a little more dignity. I summon Jeeves, who brought in coffee, little sandwiches without crusts, and a perpetually full and fizzy glass of Coke for Will when he showed up.
Bill held up one of the sandwiches. “You’ve served these a couple of times now. I like them, but where did the idea come from?”
I grabbed a sandwich and scrutinized it. “Dunno. Random memory from original Bob, I guess. I'll probably get tired of them eventually, but you can put a lot of different things in sandwiches.”
Will popped in, waved, and flopped into his beanbag. “Okay ladies and germs, let's do this.”
Bill grinned at him and tossed the report into the air. It morphed into a video window, and Bill waggled a finger to pull summaries and sub windows. “Androids are coming along. It’ll be a good six months yet before they're ready, assuming they pass all functional tests. We’re were working with a lot of new techniques here, so I don't want to rush anything.”
&
nbsp; Bill motion to Garfield, who took up the thread. “The Gamers went through a ton of scenarios, but couldn't come up with anything tricky that would get for Quinlan-sized bodies through the airlock and passed the Boogens, so they’ve suggested we just bore through the outer shell, then work our way into the elevator system internally.”
“That seems risky, what if the Boogens notice?”
“Well, the Gamers suggested that the Boogens can't be too hair-trigger about the outer shell. After all, even with the amount of in system cleanup they've done, there will still be a certain number of micrometeor impacts every year. If they came running each time there was a tremor, they be doing nothing else.”
“Good point.” I cocked my head. “Are we going to test it?”
“I figure we'll just pick a point between two airlocks and start digging. If they come running, we either run away or self-destruct, and come up with another plan.”
Will grinned. “Well, it does have the virtue of simplicity.”
“Yeah,” I rubbed my eyes. “Alright, let's give it a try. Garfield, can you be in charge of implementation?”
“Sure thing.”
“Next order of business,” I said. “What we do when we get in?”
“Damned if I know,” Bill answered. “We have absolutely no indication that Bender is even in Heaven’s River, let alone where he might be. This makes a needle in a haystack look like a sure thing.”
“Except we don't really need to find Bender,” Garfield interjected. Heads turned to him. “All we need to do is establish contact with whoever has him. Or failing that, with whoever runs the ship, assuming they're not the same group.”
“This isn’t a blind search. It's more like detective work.”
“True enough. We’ll be working blind, initially.”
I was silent for a moment as I went to the options. “As we learn more, we can narrow things down a little. Maybe get more of a sense of direction, metaphorically speaking.”
There were nods around the circle as each person work through the implications. This was the open-ended aspect of the project. We had no idea how long it might take to narrow things down, because we had very little idea what we were going to find.
“It's worth noting,” Garfield said into the silence, “that there aren’t that many Boogen airlocks. If you assume that Bender's matrix went in through one of them, it really narrows things down.”
“True. There are, what, nine entrances?”
“Yes. And most of them appear to be inactive, which makes sense if they aren’t doing anything beyond cleanup patrols.”
“Could we send in multiple teams?” Bridget asked.
Bill shook his head. “We talked about that. More teams would mean more delay and more likelihood of exposure. Once the topopolis controllers discover our existence, they'd likely institute some kind of large-scale search, and maybe take other defensive postures. Remember, we don't know that they'll be friendly. Our only contact with them so far has been them blowing up Bender, and then Bob's drones. I don’t want to take a chance on how they might react to an invading force. Keep it small. Don't look dangerous.” He grinned at us. “Having said that, if we run into a brick wall, there's always the option of sending more teams. Bob can build some more matrixes locally and do some cloning, if bandwidth starts to become an issue. But the Mannies take a lot of time to build, a very finicky design.”
“The spy drones will continue to spread out as well,” Will added, “in both directions, upstream and downstream. If they find anything unusual, we’ll be alerted, and we can make a beeline for that location.”
We all exchanged looks.
“I guess we’re on track,” I said. “Let's see how the tunneling works out, then we’ll meet and discuss.”
13. Swimming with the Fish
Howard
December 2333
Big Top, Epsilon Eridani, Poseidon, Eta Cassiopeia
“Another beautiful day in Tantahur.”
Hands behind my back, I gazed through the picture window at the layers of cloud outside the city dome. At our altitude in the atmosphere of the Jovian planet Big Top, I could see at least 50 miles of clouds above us, and anywhere up to 100 downward before the view faded into the mist.
“They renamed it Trantor after all your carping, Howard. You got your way. Stop being a sore winner.”
I could feel Bridget's glare boring holes in the back of my head. She was right of course, but what was the point of being a curmudgeon if you couldn't curmudge? I turned and walked over behind her. I kissed the back of her head, and she leaned into me. This gave me an opportunity to examine the image on the canvas. “More new Quilt species?
Bridget pointed to several items. “Sure looks like it. I can’t figure out the mechanism, but Quilt biotech can and often do spawn new species every few generations. I shelved this for five years and I'm basically starting over from scratch.” She swiped the canvas with an irritated motion, and the screen winked out of existence.
“If you go on this expedition with Bob, it could be another several years. You might never catch up.” It wasn't quite an objection, but it wasn't supportive either. I still haven't decided if I was for or against Bridget going.
“I know, Howard. But Quilt will still be there. This is a once-only opportunity. Did you contact Marcus?”
“Yep. He's agreed to give us a tour. He’ll be waiting at Moody Port. We should pop over in virt first to say hi.”
“Then let's do this.”
The many closet opened at my mental command, and we stepped into our individual pods. As the pod started to close, I took a quick glance at Bridget. Her resting face showed she was more concerned than she let on. I knew this decision would be hard. I also knew she'd agreed to do it - there were few people as driven as my wife.
I exited the Manny and popped over to Marcus's VR. A moment later, Bridget appeared. Marcus, sitting by a fireplace, waived to a couch. Coffee and snacks sat on the coffee table within easy reach. Marcus was using the standard Bob Library VR at the moment, probably taking a rest from the Battlestar themes.
He waited until we were comfortable and properly snacked, then said “So I understand your inquiry has to do with the business that Bob-1 is involved with, but I haven't really been following it. Mind filling me in?”
“We’ll be going into the megastructure wearing Mannies that mimic the natives.” Bridget shifted and leaned forward, gesturing with her hands. “That part isn't new. Bob-1 did it with the Deltans, and Howard and I've done. We've even done non-humanoid Mannies, as with the Big Top native species.” Bridget glanced sideways at me, and I grinned. Flying around in the gas giant’s atmosphere as humongous manta rays was one of our first adventures as a replicant couple, and we still did occasionally for fun.
Bridget continued. “The natives are generally humanoid, but they’re also aquatic. And they’re intelligent, and come from a technological society. Although we’re not sure of their current level of knowledge. From that point of view, it's a bit of an unknown. We were hoping you could give us some perspective on aquatic Mannies.”
Marcus nodded and looked thoughtful for a fraction of a mil. “The Poseidon dolphins are intelligent animals, but as far as we can tell, they’re animals, just like Terran dolphins were. There's a simple language, but it's at the level of ‘danger’, ‘predator’, and ‘good food’. There’s no symbology or grammatical structure. It's only slightly more advanced than baboon calls, so I'm not sure where I come in.”
“You've been living among them almost full-time for a couple of years though,” Bridget replied. “How well are you accepted? How long did it take to fit in, and how hard is it to act like a dolphin?”
“I get the impression they think I'm a little weird,” Marcus shrugged and gave an embarrassed smile. “But I’m not shunned. I’ve had to fend off some mating advances, so I'm not too weird, you know.”
“Hasn’t stopped me,” I interjected.
Bridget made a low growlin
g sound as Marcus laughed.
“I think it sounds like you're concerned about fitting in without issue. That just requires doing your homework first. As for the aquatic end of things…” Marcus shrugged. “Well, let's find out. I have a couple of spare dolphin Mannies.”
Marcus messaged us a couple of addresses, then popped out. I followed immediately, and found myself lying on my stomach on a platform in a dark room. Wait, no, it wasn't a dark room it was… underwater. I rolled my eyes upward as I examined my action inventory, and saw that we were about 10 feet below the surface on the edge of what was probably one of the Poseidon plant mats. This would be Moody Port, formally a major colony location on the West Indies mat. Nowadays, with everyone living in flying cities, it was strictly for agriculture and aquaculture.
To my left, two other dolphin Mannies were moving around. A quick ping identified Bridget furthest left, and Marcus to her right. My heads-up help system indicated that the dolphins used to swim bladder to control buoyancy. I flexed and felt myself float up off the platform. A quick flick of the tail, and I was sliding forward through the water. Original Bob had never been much of a swimmer, preferring to keep water in bathtubs, and in extreme situations, hot tubs. But this was different. More like flying.
The biggest difference seemed to be the complete lack of any concern about drowning. Of course, in a Manny, breathing wasn't a problem anyway. But the Poseidon dolphins actually were fish, so they absorbed oxygen from the water using something like gills. Interestingly, they could also absorb oxygen from the air while floating at the surface by pumping air slowly through their swim bladder, so holding one's breath would never be an issue. It was kind of a best of both worlds, thing. The resemblance to earth dolphins was remarkable though. The domed heads and beaked mouths could fool you into thinking you were dealing with Earth stock, until you spotted the vertical tail flukes.
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