I jumped. “How the hell?”
He laughed at my reaction. “Hah! One-upped you, old man. Take that!”
“You integrated the VR into the subspace comms?” I felt a slow smile spread across my face. That was pretty impressive work.
His bobbing eyebrows were answer enough. Then he frowned in thought. “This tech isn’t going to make the space stations obsolete, is it?”
“Not a chance.” I shook my head. “We’ll have to wait until someone builds one at the other end, but theory says the signal dropout will be almost total after about twenty-five light years. We’ll have to use the space stations as routers.”
“The internet goes galactic!” Garfield laughed.
“Hey, with IPV8, we should be able to address every galaxy in the universe.” I knew I was preaching to the choir. After all, Bob, right? But I have a tendency to think out loud.
“That’s fine, Bill. When do you think we’ll be ready to transmit plans?”
“I think we should send what we have right now. It’s still clunky, but once they’ve built it at the other end, they don’t have to wait years for the next update.”
We grinned at each other across the virtual table. This changed everything.
Riker – April 2157 – Sol
The signal was audio only, and very weak. “Unknown ship, do you copy?”
I looked at Homer and raised one eyebrow. He shrugged. “As good a place to start as any.”
Activating my transmitter, I responded, “This is the starship Heaven-2 of the United Federation of Planets. Commander Riker speaking.”
There were several seconds of silence. “Uh-huh. Listen, I don’t know who you are, but you’ve just apparently averted a global catastrophe, so I guess I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. Our telemetry is not up to military snuff, but our systems tentatively identify you as similar to the Heaven-series interstellar probe that FAITH launched a couple or three decades back.”
“Guilty as charged. And to whom am I speaking?”
“I am Colonel George Butterworth of the United States of Eurasia Army Corps. Rest assured, commander, that our true position is obfuscated. If you attempt to destroy the source of this transmission, you will achieve nothing.”
The colonel’s accent was definitely British, and far too close to the cliché’d pronunciation portrayed in many American TV shows. I would have to be careful not to let Homer talk to him. I doubted Homer would be able to resist the urge toward mimicry. “Colonel, let’s not get off on the wrong foot, okay? We have no intention of blowing anyone up. We had a little disagreement with what appears to have been the last of the Brazilian Empire space navy. Now, I think it’s time to start fixing things.”
***
We had been in discussions with the USE military for three weeks now. I was faithfully forwarding recordings of everything to Bill. Negotiations were slow and cautious, mostly on the part of Colonel Butterworth. He had been very slow to accept the idea that Homer and I weren’t dyed-in-the-wool FAITH theologues. It took a very frank discussion in which I explained in detail the reasons for my atheism before the colonel really began to believe me.
The USE refugee camp that Colonel Butterworth had under his care consisted of about twenty thousand people, mostly civilians, who had been collected into an underground military installation when the space bombardments had started. The colonel guessed the global human population at less than twenty million at this point, although he admitted the uncertainty on that estimate was huge.
Some of the refugees were scientific personnel who had been working on a USE colony ship back before the war. In the 22nd century, things were constructed in virtual space first. Once complete, the plans were uploaded to an autofactory, which built the entire item using 3D printers, roamers, and nanites.
The colony ship plans were ready, needing only a space-based construction yard. And a destination. The colonel informed us that the Chinese and USE probes had launched shortly after Bob-1, but the USE probe had never been heard from again.
The colonel and I were conversing via video link, as usual. He knew that the Heaven vessels were staffed by replicants, as were the USE and Brazilian probes. However, we were the first to have a full-on VR avatar that looked and behaved like a human being. The colonel was having a little trouble accepting at a visceral level that I wasn’t ‘real’. I’d toned down the Enterprise theme and stopped making Star Trek references, out of courtesy. It blew me away that almost two hundred years after Shatner first famously didn’t actually say, “Beam me up, Scotty,” people still knew Star Trek. Now that’s a franchise.
At the moment, the colonel was bringing me up to date on recent history. If we were going to make an attempt to save the human race, I wanted to have the whole picture.
“There was never actually a point where you could say now, we’re at war,” the colonel explained. “International tensions had been high for quite a number of years. The confrontation over the attempted destruction of Heaven-1 was simply the tipping point. Each act prompted a reaction, each reaction a retaliation. The other governments got dragged in one at a time, and eventually it became system-wide. Stations and colonies were abandoned, personnel were recalled. Some of the transports were destroyed, despite having no military value. Of course, that just escalated things.”
The colonel got up and began to pace around his office. The camera at his end kept him perfectly framed. “At first, the conflict was primarily spaceside. Annexation of strategic locations and orbits, denial of assets, that kind of thing. Then the first nuke was used planetside, and after that, all bets were off.”
Colonel Butterworth sat down at his desk and massaged his forehead for a few moments. He reached into a drawer and pulled out what looked very much like a bottle of Jameson. Hmm. Funny what survives the end of the world.
After pouring a glass and taking a sip, he continued, “It became a war of attrition. Each side tried to neutralize the other’s military capability. Then someone nuked most of the Brazilian Empire—your theory that it was the Chinese is reasonable—and civilian targets became fair game. The ships you took out were the last men standing. Metaphorically speaking, of course—they were only replicants.”
The colonel blushed slightly. “Er, no offence meant. In any case, they wouldn’t have lasted five minutes at the height of the war, when everyone still had equipment. But here at the end, we had no way to stop them. They just started slowly pounding away at everyone. Call it a scorched-earth policy, call it revenge, whatever. It was genocide. They probably took out a couple of billion people on their own.”
I felt ill. I had waited an additional six months while Homer and the decoy were assembled. How many people had died for that delay?
The colonel had reached the end of his spiel, and was concentrating on the glass of Jameson.
“So what can we do, colonel? Help rebuild? Relocate people?”
“I think that ship has sailed, Commander. The Earth will recover eventually. It’s tough that way. But not in time for humanity. My tame scientists say it will be minimum five to ten thousand years before things recover to any degree. We won’t last that long.”
Colonel Butterworth touched a control, and a schematic popped up in the video link. “This is the colony ship we designed and started to build in hopes that our probes would report back with something worth shipping out to. One of the first casualties of the war, I’m afraid. You have on-board autofactories that can bootstrap up to a full shipyard. With your help, we’d like to build a couple of these and leave the solar system.”
“And go where, specifically?”
The colonel sighed. “I’m actually hoping you’ll suggest a destination. It’s not like FAITH is going to be sending any ships. And you gave me to believe that you have no particular loyalty there.”
“And that’s true, colonel. I’m just making sure we’re all on the same wavelength.” I popped up a star chart of everything within twenty light-years of Earth. “You
can see the stars rated for likelihood of a habitable planet. Unfortunately, Epsilon Eridani was a failure, unless you want to live under a dome. By now, Bill may have received reports back from a couple of our ships, but we won’t find out for a few more years. Can you last that long?”
“We have to. It’ll take most of a decade to go from a standing start to two colony ships.”
I nodded. “Okay, then, let’s get this show on the road.”
Bob – April 2165 – Delta Eridani
I patted Spike as I watched the image of the planet slowly build in the holotank. To one side, a schematic of the entire system slowly cycled the planets through their orbits.
I couldn’t keep a grin off my face. Space exploration was fully living up to my nerd fantasies. Flying into a new star system, never before seen by humans, was a heady, almost godlike experience. I still couldn’t get over the idea that Bill was willing to sit in one system. On the other hand, he would get a chance to do physics and engineering full-time, and he’d be getting regular reports from everyone—albeit at light speed—so he would be participating at least vicariously. I hoped he’d forward any interesting news to the rest of us.
Delta Eridani was an orange star, cooler than Sol, but more than two and a half times as big. I had deliberately picked this system as my destination because of the high level of suitability. No binary companion, not a flare or variable star, exceptionally long living stellar type, low in UV emissions, wide potential habitable zone… The list went on and on.
The results fully lived up to expectations. I had identified ten planets, including one in the inner half of the Comfort Zone. The layout of this system paralleled the Sol System, to the point where I suspected there was some universal law at work. The inner planets were all rocky worlds, while the outer were all gas giants, and an asteroid belt divided the two groups. This system, though, contained five inner rocky planets, and two of the five outer gas giants had rings that rivalled Saturn’s. The biggest Jovian was just stupid big, at about six times the mass of Jupiter. I hadn’t yet counted all the moons it had collected.
And because of the size of their sun, the planets were more spread out, which might explain the large number of moons. Only the innermost planet was missing its own satellite.
I was too impatient to follow mission protocol and scan for resources first. I made a beeline for the habitable planet and did a quick survey from orbit. I would take the time to evaluate the results while I did the required but boring raw materials search.
Soon, I had completed the orbital scan. I did a quick flyby of the two moons, then with a sigh, I ordered Guppy to begin the survey of the asteroid belt.
***
“Status?”
[Asteroid belt scan 50% completed. Six locations identified with significant ore suitable for mining]
“At only halfway around? That’s pretty good.”
[Significantly better than Epsilon Eridani or Sol]
I nodded, then turned back to one of my infrared images of the night side of Delta Eridani 4, taken during the orbital survey. “Hey, Guppy, look at this here.” I materialized an arrow and pointed it to a spot on the picture, where several points of light were recorded. “Do these look like fires to you?”
[Probability very high]
“You think they’re natural? Wildfires?”
[I am not programmed to have an opinion]
“Oh, good lord. Okay, then, analysis: list the possible explanations in order of likelihood.”
[Small local wildfires would be most likely. Except…]
“Yes?” Guppy was about to volunteer information. That was definitely a first.
[No indication of lightning storms in the area, and the fires do not appear to be spreading. Further investigation is required]
“Hah! No argument from me, there. Let’s get this survey out of the way.”
[And get the autofactory set up]
“Nag, nag.” I sat back, bemused, and stared at the slowly rotating planetary image.
***
The survey was soon finished. I flew back to the location of the biggest deposits and began to set up. I unshipped the manufacturing equipment, sent mining roamers to work on the most promising asteroids, and deployed transport drones.
I decided that defense was going to be a priority, starting with an early-warning system. Accordingly, I manufactured twelve observation drones and sent them to form an icosahedron around the system. With small, shielded reactors, they would spot any incoming craft long before it could possibly detect one of them.
Next came the communications station. That routine task could be left to the AMIs. I gave them instructions for construction of the station, and further instructions to get started on building Bobs. At some point, I would need to get involved again, but for now I could leave my devices to their own devices. Snickering at my own wordplay, I headed back to DE-4.
I dreaded building more Bobs, just a bit. The first cohort had been a surprise, and not a pleasant one. Milo’s self-centeredness had surprised all of us. And although I hadn’t said anything to anyone about it, Riker’s lack of a sense of humor had bothered me.
When I made more Bobs, would I end up with a psychopath? Okay, that was a little over the top. The differences between the Bobs weren’t that dramatic. My parents would probably have recognized me in any of them. Mario, for instance—when I was in a situation that I was impatient with, I clammed up just like that. Just maybe not to that extent.
All beside the point, though. Bill was right. I would, sooner or later, want company.
***
On the trip out from Epsilon Eridani, I had worked on designs for exploration drones. Bill said he would work on the concept, but I wanted something usable when I got here. If Bill sent along some plans at some point, I’d merge the best of both. Meanwhile, I was at least able to operate.
The observation drones were about the size of footballs. They came with remote cameras and microphones, as well as extendable limbs for gripping and perching. More than anything, they reminded me of very large pill bugs.
I started on the biological analysis drones as well. They were larger, about a meter in length. They had visual and auditory input optimized for more close-up work, and they had a far larger number of extendible appendages for varied tasks. I suppose I could have waited to deploy everything at once, but I simply didn’t have that level of patience.
The drones could change color to match the background, even to the extent of some limited pattern mimicry. When in the air, they would adjust their bottom half to match the sky, and their upper half to match the general terrain. This wasn’t out of any fear of getting shot down—more of a concern about some local wildlife attempting to make a meal out of one. The drones were pretty tough, but why borrow trouble?
I sent several observation drones to the general area of the fires.
As a city boy, I didn’t have a true appreciation of how big thousands of square miles of wilderness actually was. This area of the planet was temperate to sub-tropical forest. Well, I assumed it was forest. Whatever it was, it stretched from horizon to horizon, with occasional breaks for meadows and rocky bluffs. Truthfully, someone flying a small airplane over this wouldn’t have been able to tell they weren’t on Earth. I felt a momentary pang of homesickness.
I realized there was no way I could find anything with a random search. It was late afternoon in this area, so I sent one drone up a kilometer and instructed it to wait for nightfall and look for fires.
I sent the other drone down to examine the forest ecosystem close up.
The planet was slightly larger than Earth, but had a lower surface gravity, probably due to a smaller core. The gravity, combined with a somewhat denser atmosphere, made for an environment ideal for soaring flyers and tall tree-analogues. And the trees had taken advantage of this.
The drone landed in a tree, extended its legs, and began to slowly creep along the trunk. And, I realized with a start, it was really a tree. It was
brown—well, brownish— tall, hard, and had branches and leafy things. It looked like a pretty clear case of convergent evolution. It was, in fact, the kind of tree that I loved to climb when I was young. Wide, horizontal branchings produced many convenient places to sit. Thick leaf canopies kept the sun off. And the sheer size of the trees was awe-inspiring. I wanted to hug one.
The canopy was awash with life. The drone, camouflaged to resemble the tree bark, could snoop on the local wildlife with impunity. I had done an intensive study of taxonomy and cladistics analysis during the voyage, and now found myself evaluating the images with a semi-professional eye.
Although the body plans varied wildly in their details, the creatures I was seeing did tend to fall into familiar patterns. Insect analogues were, so far, six-legged and exoskeletal, and seemed to hit a maximum size of slightly larger than a mouse. I found a small, furry mammal analogue that had six legs as well, except for one variant that had four legs and wings. I decided to name this particular animal a hippogriff, harkening back to my D&D days. This particular little beastie seemed to have limited ability to change color, to match its background. I watched with amazement as it blended into the tree branch and waited for prey to pass by.
I also catalogued many larger mammal analogues that had four limbs. They might be an evolutionary branch that had lost the third pair. And there were birds. Or, again, bird-analogues. The bird analogues had what looked very much like feathers. I found it fascinating that the bird things flew like birds, and the small furry things flew like bats. It seemed that aerodynamics had a lot to say about animal flight here just as on Earth.
There was even a snake equivalent, which interestingly seemed to be mammalian on this planet. It looked like the three-segment body plan had been multiplied to considerable length.
I found everything fascinating, and was paradoxically irritated when Guppy interrupted.
[Heat and light sources detected]
We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) Page 15