Two minutes later the death asteroid zapped the decoy, just as the decoy had finished a SUDDAR scan of its pursuers. The decoy forwarded a complete set of readings to us, then blew itself up.
Mario and I looked at each other, our eyes wide. I spoke first. “That was, uh, a little early.”
“Yeah, looks like Garfield was a bit off on his estimates of the internal capabilities of the death asteroids. He’s going to have to rejigger his models.”
I checked the received telemetry. “Well, fortunately, we got a good scan just at the end. This should help.” I took a close look at the scan of the death asteroid. “Or not. Look at that.” I pointed to a section of the scan. “That looks like living area. Why the crap would they need that much living area?”
Mario thought for a moment. “Either they’re really really big, or the death asteroid requires a lot of personnel to run, or they really really like each other. Like naked mole-rats or something.”
“Huh. Questions and more questions. Well, we’ve got this much done, anyway. The decoy took a few hit points, but by and large I’d say the shielding was a success.”
Mario nodded. “We’ll see what Thor and Garfield have to say at the next moot.” He raised his cup to me, finished his coffee in a gulp, and popped out.
I turned myself around, pointed the bow at GL 54, and headed home.
54. Stuff is Happening
Hal
October, 2197
En Route to GL 54
I was eighteen months into my journey when I got a message from Bill. At my current tau, any kind of real-time interaction was out of the question. I couldn’t frame-jack nearly high enough to overcome the time dilation. So communications tended to wait until the end of a trip, or they came as emails, as in this case.
I grabbed the sheet and read it.
Hal;
Well, the fecal matter seems to have struck the atmospheric propulsor. A squad of Others vessels was detected leaving GL 877, heading for GL 54. To be fair, scouting by other Bobs indicates that other, closer systems have already been stripped, so this isn’t necessarily anything more than a normal scavenging mission. Just the same, Mario has decided to hit the road, along with every piece of equipment he has.
We’re going to leave a couple of drones behind for observation, and use one to try communicating with the Others. If they react by pointing one of the death asteroids at us, we’ll blow up the drone.
Just thought you should know. It looks like we’re heading for a formal First Contact. You may want to re-route.
Bill
Oh, fudge. May you live in interesting times. Mm, hmm.
55. Contact
Bill
October 2204
GL 54
Mario was now in mid-trip, fleeing GL 54 for Zeta Tucanae, so it was up to me to handle the introductions when the Others arrived. I couldn’t help but feel a certain level of nervousness. These were the beings that had blown up Bashful and Hal. There were a lot of ways this could go down, but I didn’t think friendly was in the expected range.
Before he left, Mario did a little preparatory construction. He had four stealth drones set up for observation, and a non-stealth drone for making contact. With SCUT communications, I could easily control them from here in Epsilon Eridani.
The contact drone made me chuckle. The hull was shiny, the reactor leaked neutrons like a sieve, and in the radio spectrum the drone was as noisy as an unshielded electric motor. I thought he might have overdone the hee-yuk, but it was certainly a masterpiece. It also had an antenna dish for tight-beaming radio telemetry to a non-existent mother-ship, which I thought was a great touch. We wanted the Others to underestimate us, right up to the moment we would deliver the knock-out punch.
The Others’ convoy was impressive. Ten death asteroids, a couple hundred small attendants, and twenty huge cylindrical hulks that I assumed would be cargo ships. These last units were upwards of ten kilometers in length and a kilometer in diameter. I tried to estimate the tonnage of metals that they could transport and my mind boggled at the results.
Interestingly, though, based on a rough calculation, the total cargo capacity was within an order of magnitude of what they’d need to strip this system. Either they had previously scouted the system, or they had some way to get a good estimate of available resources beforehand. Or maybe they just lucked out. They might make multiple trips if a system had enough resources to justify it.
Well, that was something for the future. I activated the communications drone, placed it right in the path of the incoming armada, and squirted a radio signal at them. For a first attempt, it was the most basic of communications: the first ten prime numbers, represented as a series of blips. Then I waited for a response. I had listed a number of possibilities while waiting for them to arrive. It might be the next ten primes, or it might be my message relayed back to me in reverse, or it might be another mathematical series. Or it might be a blast of cosmic rays.
I was not expecting an audio message, in Mandarin.
Fortunately I had a translation routine on file, such things having been fairly standard issue in the twenty-second century.
We see you, food. Your time is not yet. Move aside.
“Well, blow me down. Food, am I?” I was so flummoxed that it took me almost a half-second to come up with a response. It occurred to me during that time that I shouldn’t react too quickly. If they thought I was biological, so much the better.
“We are not attempting to block you. This unit is obviously too small for that. We are trying to communicate.”
To what purpose? To beg for mercy? An interesting idea, mercy. We learned it from the cybernetic unit that we captured. We have no such concept.
“Do you have a concept of exchange of information?”
If it benefits us.
Well, that was something, anyway. Based on Hal’s experience, I had a couple of minutes before they were close enough to zap the drone. Assuming they were going to do so, which I figured was a pretty safe bet.
“Why are you stripping systems?”
For resources and food. Is this not obvious?
“Yes, but why not just colonize the star systems?”
Another concept that we learned from the captured unit. Colonization requires splitting the hive. Splitting the hive means a new Prime. A new Prime and another hive means war. This does not benefit us. Better to simply collect resources so that the hive can grow.
Oooookaaaaaay. A picture was forming—something insect-like. Prime was probably some equivalent to a queen.
I noted that they were coming up past the position of one of the stealth drones. These units were equipped with the new four-light-hour ultra-low-power SUDDAR units. I hoped to get a scan without alerting them.
“Can Primes not cooperate?”
Sub-Primes can be controlled, but not over interstellar distances. We know you are using this dialog to probe for information. This amuses us. The scurrying of food as it evades the inevitable end is perhaps for us what you mean by “art.”
Okay, that was just sick.
“We seek information. Sometimes even if there is no benefit.”
That makes no sense.
“The beings at Zeta Tucanae. You obliterated them.”
They were food. And they would have tried to prevent the harvesting.
“Is there no way we can co-exist? The universe is a large place.”
That also makes no sense. You are food. It is not the purpose of food to co-exist.
We will, in time, make our way to your Sol and your Epsilon Eridani. We have seen your radio beacons. Food always thus announces itself.
Oh, wow. Fermi paradox, resolved.
I checked my system status and noted that my drone was probably thirty seconds away from getting zapped. I decided to try and time the SUDDAR scan to coincide with that, in hopes that the zap might either command all their attention, or blind their systems for a few m
oments.
“You are building what we would call a Dyson Sphere. Is this for your population?”
Yes. The construct will allow up to five hundred million times the livable area. We will not run out of space within the lifetime of the Prime.
“And afterwards?”
Irrelevant. That is the concern of the next Prime.
“Isn’t overpopulation a concern? Overcrowding?”
There can never be too many of us. There can only be not enough food.
At that moment, the stealth drone detected the outgoing zap. The Others’ spokesman hadn’t even bothered with a throwaway line or anything. I was absurdly irritated. You’d think I’d deserve at least “Hasta la vista.”
Per instructions, the stealth drone did a quick series of snapshot scans of the Others’ vessels.
Then the zap arrived, and the communications drone exploded on cue. I noted, from the point of view of the stealth drone, that a squad of Others immediately took off in the direction that the communication drone’s directional antenna had been transmitting. Served them right. Let ’em waste time casting around.
I sat back and stared into space. This was big. This was going to need a moot for sure.
56. Descendants
Bob
January 2183
Delta Eridani
Buster grunted as he released the arrow. It flew dead true and buried itself in the target. Archimedes whooped from the sidelines, and Buster’s little brother and sister yelled insults. Another universality, apparently.
Buster turned to his opponent, Arnold’s son, and waggled his ears. Donald looked distinctly uncomfortable, but wasn’t going to back down in front of the entire hexghi.
Donald released the arrow. It hit the edge of the target. Not a kill shot, but certainly crippling, if it had hit a live target. Arnold shrugged and yelled something supportive.
I took a moment to smile at the number of new faces that had grown up over the last few years. Child mortality had dropped significantly with the reduction in the gorilloid threat, and the Deltan population was up to over eleven hundred.
Archimedes’ family had grown as well. Three children, and a fourth on the way. I was finally beginning to get an idea of the lifespan of the Deltans. Moses had died a few years ago, at somewhere between sixty and seventy Earth-years old. About the same or maybe even a little better than humans, given the environment.
It was a bittersweet time for me. The council had never relented in their decision to banish me. Archimedes brought it up a couple of times, but was shut down hard. His position as the tribe’s premiere tool maker protected him to a certain extent, but I finally told him to drop it. I didn’t want any backlash against his family.
Stories of The Bawbe still abounded, but I noticed that they were now being embellished. In particular, my reputation seemed to be suffering. The tone sounded a little more like Loki or Lucifer, these days. Would I end up as the devil in some far-future religious myth?
I sighed. The risks of godhood, I guess.
I sent a quick text to ask Marvin if he’d be joining today’s scrub game, and got an affirmative.
57. Moot
Bill
October 2204
Epsilon Eridani
I held the air-horn over my head and pressed the button twice. And received the usual round of boos. Gotta love tradition.
The catcalls were short-lived, though, more of a formality. The word had gotten out, and the Bobs were all business today. Even the pre-meeting session had been quiet, with a growling undertone.
“First, before we get to the main event, I’d like to introduce our newest long-range champion…” I gestured to a nearby Bob. “Bruce is from Calvin and Goku’s first cohort. He is calling in from 11 Leonis Minoris, and holds the record at thirty-seven light years from Earth. Sorry, Mario.”
The crowd applauded Bruce, and several people came over to talk to him. When the chatter had died down, I held the air-horn up for a moment and waited for quiet.
“I guess you’ve all heard by now, but I’ll summarize just to make sure we haven’t missed anything. We have communicated with the Others. They appear to have captured the Chinese probe at some point, and stripped its data. The good news is that they speak Mandarin, so communications were pretty straightforward. The bad news is they know where Earth is. And thanks to my ham-handed broadcasts to every star system in sight, they know about Epsilon Eridani as well.”
I waved off the yelled comments. “No, they won’t get the SCUT plans. The broadcasts were encrypted, as is everything we do; and the Chinese probe wouldn’t know anything about the transmission or file formats, so they wouldn’t be able to separate out encrypted data from transport envelope.”
I waited for any objections, then continued, “The other piece of good news is they are sufficiently arrogant that they don’t feel the need to come over and squash us forthwith. Their attitude seems to be that they’ll get to us when they get to us.”
This produced low growls from the audience, and I grinned. “Now, we got some good scans of the armada, and we’re able to observe their operations as they strip GL 54. I’m going to call up Garfield to give us a rundown in a minute. But first I want to thank Hal for successfully testing the new Heaven design against the death asteroids. At least in that area, we are ahead of the game.”
There were cheers from the audience, and the usual first verse of “Bicycle Built for Two.” It never got old. Hal grinned to the crowd, waved, and took a bow.
Garfield walked up onto the podium and glared at me. I laughed, held up the horn, and gave a blast.
“Okay,” Garfield yelled over the boos, “I have a bit of egg on my face. My guesstimates of the power capabilities and weaponry of the death asteroid were a little off, because the Others are actually more inventive than I thought. I just hope they don’t have more surprises.”
Garfield waited for silence, and he got it. Every Bob in the room was now completely focused on his words.
“Power beaming via SUDDAR. It’s not just for running those little ant-things they use for harvesting. It’s also for charging death asteroids remotely. The death asteroids are capable of charging themselves without help, but it looks like it would take about a day on their own. So they have huge reactors in the cargo carriers which, in combination with the SUDDAR beaming, can run ants, drones, mining carriers, or charge up death asteroids.”
“Why?” yelled someone from the crowd. “Seems unnecessarily complicated.”
Garfield nodded in the general direction of the voice. “I think it’s dictated by their biology. It’s pretty obvious from Bill’s conversation with them that they’re a hive organism. A large portion of the interior of the death asteroids is living space. Far too much, in my opinion, to be justifiable just based on personnel requirements. Every vehicle they have is either automated or has the same large living space. I think they need to live in large groups. They may get some version of agoraphobia or something if there aren’t enough of their brethren around.”
“Well, it would explain their decision to build the Dyson Sphere.” Hal said from the front of the audience.
“That and their comment about going to war with any splinter group,” I added. “That could be phenotypical behavior as well. These beings seem to be very much driven by their biology. It may be that their reference to all other life as ‘food’ is more of the same. Something that drives their actions at such an instinctual level can be taken advantage of, if we can figure out how. That’s one of the tasks I want you guys to take out of this meeting.”
There were silent nods throughout the room. And a palpable aura of anticipation. I’d tried to keep this quiet, but somehow word had gotten out.
“And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for.” I grinned at the crowd. “We got images of the Others from the scans. The detail isn’t great, of course. The drone was too—”
“Less talk, more show!”
I snapped my mouth shut. So much for building the drama. With a wave, I brought up the composite 3D image that we’d put together.
There were oohs and aahs from the crowd. The Other was hard to describe, simply because it was hard to get a perspective on it. The scale superimposed on the image indicated that it was about four feet tall, although it didn’t really stand straight. Color shaded between an oily green-violet sheen through gray, to black.
I looked at the perplexed faces in the crowd. I understand that look. I’d worn it recently. But I’d been examining all the images since we separated them from the scans, so I had somewhat of a head start on figuring it out.
“Okay, think of the posture of a gorilla. Not quite a quadruped, but not quite upright. These things that look kind of like meaty wings are the front, er, limbs. The back limbs are more like a split tail, except that there’s also a tail. Visualize a sea lion’s back end with a tail tacked on. The front limbs have these big appendages that look like fat fingers, but I don’t think they’re for manipulating. They have suckers on them, so I think they’re more for gripping their prey. The creature has what I’d have to describe as feeding fingers that fold out from here…“ I pointed to the front of the thing, “… and appear to be dexterous enough to act as manipulators. They also direct food into the maw…” I switched to another image which showed the thing with its front split open in a vertical slash. “… which doesn’t masticate so much as grind and strip the meal. I think it would be particularly slow and painful to be eaten by these things.”
I switched images again and pointed to the front. “The head does appear to have the primary sensory apparatus, although what looks like the brain is more centrally located, here.” I pointed to a spot high on the main trunk. “Vision is not great. It seems to be a large number of small eyes spaced around the dome of the head. You have to wonder why a predator would need 360-degree vision.”
I switched back to the first picture. “The scan indicated they were packed into the living area with a density similar to us in this room. Except that it was like that everywhere. No empty rooms. No private quarters. They are probably always packed in like sardines.”
Bobiverse 2: For We Are Many Page 21