Taking a lesson from Bob-1’s experience, I decided I would start by doubling my production capability. Accordingly, my first production run consisted entirely of new printers. I then assigned a couple of printers to do nothing but produce more printers, while the rest started working on drones. I was going to invest some up-front time in ramping up my capacity, which would hopefully pay off later.
It took almost two years before I was ready to start building actual Bobs. The speed at which a printer could produce an item was dependent partly on the size of the item, but also very much on the level of detail required. 3D printers delivered individual atoms using a number of tuned carbon nanotubes, each sized for specific elements. Building something like itself required the maximum level of detail and precision, as you had to place individual carbon atoms, one after another, with zero defects. This made 3D printers one of the most complex items that a 3D printer could be asked to build. Only something biological would be harder.
Anyway, finally, I was producing Bobs. After much discussion, Bill and I came up with a blueprint for a Version 5 Heaven vessel—a virtual dreadnaught compared to the original Heaven-1. I felt a little intimidated just looking at the plans.
Bill was still working on the SUDDAR cloaking from the 82 Eridani mission, but we knew enough about it to build around the requirement for now. I also put together a design for a stealth buster, very similar in overall structure to Medeiros’ stealth fission bombs.
Howard had managed to extract H-bomb blueprints from Butterworth. I guess the colonel considered the Others to be enough of a threat to override military secrecy. Unbelievable that they were still even thinking in those terms, with 99.9% of the human race gone.
Three years after waking up at Alpha Centauri, I had my first cohort of battle cruisers.
62. Departure
Mulder
November 2201
Departure
I put my hands behind my head and stretched as I reviewed the report that I would be sending to Bill and Riker. This would be my final report from Poseidon. Tomorrow, Monty would start the return trip to Earth, empty except for some biological samples. And I would point my bow and head for a new system, leaving Marcus as Bob-in-residence here.
I pinged Monty and Marcus and invited them over. They responded immediately.
“Hey, Mulder. I’m going to miss you guys,” Marcus said, looking at each of us.
“Yeah, I know,” Monty replied. “I wish I could keep it down below .75 C, but we can’t afford the extra transit time for a colony ship.”
Marcus looked a little down, so I gestured to my report to change the subject. “Things are looking good. Three mat colonies in full operation, and two floating cities getting close to complete.”
Marcus nodded. “And as of today, it’s three months since the last kraken attack.”
“Apparently they can be taught.”
Marcus grinned and invoked a Coke. “And then there’s this.” He popped up an image.
“What the ffff…” I squinted at the graphic. “Is that actually…”
“Aerial city, as in floating in the air. Yep.” He waved a hand. “Well, okay, it’s a small proof-of-concept prototype, but still… I’ve been putting this thing together for a while. Triple redundancy, all kinds of failsafes. Theoretically we should be able to lift something as big as your floating cities and keep it in the air indefinitely.”
“Unbelievable,” Monty said. “When will it be ready to test?”
Marcus grimaced. “Sorry, buddy. Not for another six months. You won’t be able to find out the results until you get back to Earth.”
“Well, that sucks. On the other hand, by the time I’m back online, the thing might be ready for prime time. This could get interesting.”
I nodded, not saying anything. This was a good argument for staying below .75, just to be able to follow the project. If this crazy idea of Marcus’s actually worked, it would change the game significantly.
* * *
Poseidon receded rapidly in the rear view as I accelerated out of the system. The goodbyes from Chief Draper and the friends that I’d made over the years stung more than I’d expected. It was very possible that some of those people would be dead by the time my tau dropped at the other end. Making friends with humans just didn’t seem like a good idea, on balance.
Riker pinged me and I invited him in.
“Hey, Mulder. Sorry I couldn’t get back to you before. It’s been that kind of millennium.” Will grinned at me.
“Especially the last week or so, I guess,” I replied, smiling back. I summoned Jeeves and he arrived with a coffee for Will.
“So what’s the status back at Sol?” I asked him.
“We have fourteen colony ships in active service now,” he replied. “Colonies at or soon to be at Vulcan, Poseidon, Epsilon Indi, and 82 Eridani. Things are looking up.”
“Or would be, if not for the Others.”
Will sighed. “Yeah, I know. 82 Eridani and Epsilon Indi, in particular, are close enough to be potentially in danger. We’re working on it.”
Yep. Just when you start to get ahead in the rat race, the universe delivers bigger rats.
63. The Pav
Jacques
February 2207
Delta Pavonis
I looked down from orbit at the sprinkles of light decorating the dark side of Delta Pavonis 4, realizing that there was a good chance these beings would be dead soon.
The, uh… well, Deltans was taken. Pavonians? No, that sucked. Pav for now, I guess. The Pav appeared to be well into their industrial age, probably equivalent to the Victorian era on Earth. They were pumping smoke into the atmosphere at a prodigious rate, setting the earliest stages for global warming. I sincerely hoped that in the fullness of time, they’d have the opportunity to get all bent out of shape about environmentalism.
I finished my initial survey, packaged up the results, and fired it off to Bill.
It took about ten minutes before I got a ping, and Bill appeared in my VR.
“Well, this sucks.”
I nodded. “Remember the days when we thought finding intelligence would be a good thing?” I leaned forward and put my head in my hands. “And I could end up being witness to the massacre of an entire species.”
Bill materialized an Adirondack chair—a little anachronistic in my VR, but whatever—and sat down. He sat in silence for a few milliseconds before replying. “Jacques, it’s very likely that Gamma will get hit first. That’s a full planetary ecology, but at least Claude hasn’t found any sentient life. And if the Others head that way, you’ll be able to help. Meanwhile, you need to start working the system and concentrate on building a bunch of Oliver’s dreadnaughts.”
I looked at him and shook my head. “No. Well, yes, but also no. I’ll build dreadnaughts, and I’ll be ready to help Claude, but I’m also going to try to build a couple of colony ships, using Riker’s design. With the experience he’s gained, I should be able to complete them in half the time. If the Others come a’knocking, I want to get some Pav off-planet. I’m not going to sit by while an entire race gets blown away.”
Bill stared at me, frowning, for several milliseconds. Then a smile slowly formed. “I can’t decide if you’re brilliant or a moron. I’ll think about it. It’s definitely a noble idea, Jacques, but maybe not doable. I think we’re due for a moot. Maybe we should run it through the group consciousness.”
I shrugged. The group could talk all they wanted. I knew what I had to do. Bill nodded to me and vanished.
* * *
Regardless of whether I went with Bill’s plan or mine, the first step was the same. Find resources, build autofactory. This system was metal-heavy, so I didn’t anticipate any kind of problem.
I turned to Guppy, who was waiting at parade rest, as usual. Funny, even several generations and versions away from Heaven-1, Guppy really hadn’t changed. Same fish-headed, deadpan, taciturn sidekick. Bu
t he got the job done.
“Guppy, we need autofactories, and soon. Send out everything we have to look for locations. Top priority, and don’t be subtle.”
Guppy nodded and went into command fugue. The ship shuddered as a cloud of scouts and drones took off in all directions. I was glad we were past the days when I’d have to personally fly the system with SUDDAR ranging in all directions. The improvements to SUDDAR and to the AMIs meant that even that part of the process could be delegated.
The order hadn’t included the planetary exploration scouts, as those would be useless for that task. And they were already planetside, anyway. I began to draw out a plan for concerted and organized accrual of information about the Pav.
* * *
The Pav looked for all the world like giant meerkats. They stood six feet tall or so when upright. They could walk bipedally, but for any kind of distance, they went down on all fours. I was having a little trouble getting used to the sight. Apparently, I’m a bipedalism bigot. Who knew?
The Pav wore clothing, but seemingly less for protection or modesty than for decoration and pockets, except in very cold climates. They were organized into countries or states, and seemed to use forms of government very similar to what humanity had come up with. Even their societies looked familiar. About the only real difference was the almost complete absence of monogamy. Pav seemed to organize into families of up to eight adults, generally evenly divided between genders. This created a somewhat different standard design for residences, but otherwise didn’t seem to have a large effect on society as a whole.
I picked one of the countries that resembled early America, selected one of the larger cities, and settled in for some dedicated research.
The absence of electronic media made for a bit of an inconvenience. However, I did find several bookstores. I managed to sneak in a couple of roamers, late in the evening. They took up positions in the shadows of the rafters and waited for closing time.
Then they started going through books. There wasn’t anything like a children’s section, but there were books for beginning readers, with illustrated alphabets. It took two nights to go through the entire contents of the stores.
Because a significant portion of the population was still illiterate, there were clubs set up where a Pav would read aloud from a book, while patrons ate or drank. Seemed like a very civilized idea to me. I stationed drones in the shadows of every reading club I could find, and made a point of scanning the books that were read at my earliest opportunity.
Within a month, I had a working vocabulary of the language of this country. The inhabitants, who called themselves Zjentfen, spoke a language that they called Tinozj.
Meanwhile, the mining scouts found more than enough resources to get going. As expected, this was a rich system. As with many star systems, an asteroid belt sat to the inside of the first Jovian, and the pickings were beyond easy. I set the printers to producing more printers first. I think we’d all learned a lesson from Bob—early reproduction of printers paid off in the long term.
I would wait for the Bob-moot, and hope that they’d have good suggestions for manufacturing allocations. But if their suggestions didn’t include colony ships to get some Pav off-planet, well, they could go jump.
64. Moot
Bill
March 2207
Epsilon Eridani
The airhorn’s blast brought the usual expressions of appreciation. I couldn’t bring myself to grin at the antics, though. This was going to be a tough meeting. The looks on everyone’s faces showed that they understood this.
“Okay, guys. Let’s summarize. The Others have kicked Mario out of GL 54 and they’re busily stripping the resources. They’ve launched another expedition heading for NN 4285. I’ve expressed concern that Gamma and Delta Pavonis are going to be next. And oh, look, there’s a habitable planet in one system and a civilization in the other.”
I looked at the sea of faces. Everyone was totally focused on my words. “Oliver in Alpha Centauri has come up with a latest and greatest battle-wagon design. He’s too far away to help Jacques and Claude, though, unless the Others hold off a lot longer than I really expect. Jacques is prepared to send reinforcements for Claude if it comes to that.”
“Or the other way around, if necessary.”
I looked for the owner of that comment. It was Jacques. I raised my eyebrow at him in an invitation to continue.
“Delta’s farther away from GL 877, so from that point of view, Gamma is a more likely target. Except that Delta has way higher metallicity, as can be seen plainly in the spectral lines. Maybe the Others will skip the closer system for the better system. They already bypassed Gamma once.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. An undercurrent of muttering passed through the room.
“It’s a point, Jacques. We won’t know until they move. We have full coverage around GL 877 now, so we can see any departures.” I motioned to Garfield, who was standing to one side of the podium. “Garfield will give us a rundown on weapons capability.”
Garfield stepped forward and gave an aborted wave to the crowd. He wasn’t in the mood, either.
“We have fission bombs, thanks to Medeiros. We have fusion bombs, or at least the plans, thanks to the USE and Colonel Butterworth. We’ve been able to size up the plasma spikes somewhat, but there’s a practical limit to the size of the magnetic containment. We’ve probably reached that. It’s enough for the smaller Others’ vessels, but not enough to seriously harm the death asteroids or cargo vessels.”
Garfield popped up a diagram. “We’ve got the basic concepts of the cloaking figured out, but we weren’t able to salvage enough hardware to see how the Brazilians were actually doing it. Which means we’re starting from scratch. This appears to have been another one of those accidental discoveries, so it’s not just a matter of hours thrown at the problem. We’re going to need some breakthroughs.”
Someone at the front commented, “Without the cloaking, we can’t get the bombs close enough to be effective. They’ll just zap them or shoot them down. I think it’s safe to assume the Others have things like missiles as well.”
“We can get the items close enough,” someone else responded, “if we transport them in the cargo hold of a battle-wagon.”
There was silence as everyone looked at each other. We all knew what that meant. The battle-wagon would be destroyed in the explosion as well.
“We could put AMIs in some battle-wagons and make them suicide bombers.”
I felt my eyebrows climb up my forehead. That was actually not completely idiotic. We’d have to think about how many dreadnaughts we’d staff with AMIs, though.
“Or SCUT-based remotes.”
I looked around. “Okay, who is that? Those are some good ideas. Maybe you should be on the committee.”
Someone stepped forward. It was Elmer. “No thanks. I’m just trying to spare my hide.” He grinned around at the audience and we finally got some laughter.
“There’s also relativistic ramming,” another voice interjected.
I shook my head. “We thought about that. It would have to be busters, or something that could be directed. And even so, you’d have to launch weeks before the encounter, and you’d have to plan it to intercept the enemy at the right place and the right time. Chances of getting it right are too low. Plus they’ll see the approach from a light-hour out with SUDDAR and they just have to dodge. The busters would have a ridiculous tau and wouldn’t be able to react quickly enough. If we forget about relativistic speeds and just stick to our normal ramming, they won’t even feel it. Or they’ll just zap ship-busters a couple dozen at a time with those big zappers.”
There was a short silence as everyone digested this.
We knocked around the weapons issue for a while, but soon realized we were all rehashing the same information. I ended the meeting, and we broke into groups. Technically, this was the social part of the get-together, but we’ve always been a wo
rkaholic. Each small crowd turned into a single-issue discussion group.
In one group, Jacques was doing an informal presentation on the Pav. I found Bob, Bob-1 that is, in the audience. I stepped up beside him; he nodded an acknowledgement and turned back to the presentation.
I wanted to say something to him about the Deltans—to commiserate, or express sympathy, see how he was doing, something. He was effectively banished from their society. He’d pretty much adopted the tribe as his family, and to be cast out like that couldn’t be easy.
But, you know, we are Bob. Smart, driven, and socially inept. I focused my attention on the presentation.
The Pav seemed, in many ways, to be very human. Okay, they were furry, had group marriages, and ran around on all fours. But other than that...
The Pav tended to a sort of natural socialism. They had social institutions for the less fortunate, but those seemed to be supported by private funding. And well supported, too. Pav governments, even the types that, on Earth, would have been heavily interventionist, tended to be lean and hands-off. On the other hand, the Pav were, by human standards, about as organized as a basket of puppies. I wondered what effect introducing Robert’s Rules of Order would have on them.
Jacques finished his presentation, got a round of applause, then the questions started. I grinned, nodded to Bob, and wandered off.
So many Bobs. So much intelligence in this room, if I did say so myself. So much control of resources, spread over a sphere that might be approaching a hundred light-years in diameter. And we couldn’t put together a plan to protect a single planet. With a grimace of self-loathing, I popped back to my own VR.
65. Grandpa
Bob
January 2195
Delta Eridani
Archimedes hovered like a nervous father as Belinda cleaned up her new pup. Buster smiled at him, but I could see an edge of irritation as well.
It’s the sacred duty of every parent to drive their kids crazy. Especially when they become grandparents. I grinned at the thought of my mother and father as grandparents, doing their best to make Andrea and Alaina insane. Then I had to wipe my eyes as the thought brought back a cascade of family memories. A quick frame-jack allowed me to get it together without missing anything.
Bobiverse 2: For We Are Many Page 23