All These Worlds (Bobiverse Book 3)

by Dennis E. Taylor

  “Asgard?”

  “That’s a little trite, don’t you think?” I gave Jack the evil eye.

  He shrugged, unrepentant. “I like themes.”

  No one but me seemed to have a problem with it, so I shrugged. “Let’s take it as tentative. Now, planet two?”

  “Tartarus?”

  “Oh, sure, if you don’t want anyone to settle there, ever.”

  Jack grinned and shrugged again. “Well, if we want to stay on theme, there’s Muspelheim.”

  “That sounds like some kind of rash,” Isaac interjected. We all laughed.

  “Jotunheim?”

  We all looked at Owen. “Land of giants,” I said. “Actually kind of appropriate.”

  “And sticking to the theme!” Jack exclaimed.

  “Okay, then, vote on those three. “In favor? Opposed?” I grinned at the guys. “Carried. Looks like we have a Norse mythology going here.”

  I sat down and grabbed a Coke. “So, now that the fun stuff is out of the way, how will we handle the settling?”

  “We’ll wake up a rep from each colony group, Let them decide.” Isaac waved a hand at the holograms. “There’s enough space on Asgard and Jotunheim that they could reasonably pick the same planet.”

  “Hmm, jungle planet, heavy planet, or can’t-breathe planet. This should be fun.”

  * * *

  Katsu Ito, leader of the Japanese enclave, was a Harvard-educated intellectual who had found himself in a position of power despite all his attempts to dodge the position. Or so he explained it, anyway. At the moment, he was hugging a coffee in Exodus-43’s common area. I’d printed up one of the androids from Howard’s plans and was sitting across the table, waiting for him to focus.

  He looked up at me, eyes still not quite tracking. Bobbing his head slightly, he said, “You’re not a video. But you look like Riker. What the—?”

  I smiled back at him. “Android, sir. Technology marches on. I’m Mack, the replicant who was assigned to escort the colony ships to 82 Eridani.”

  Christie Campbell, the Vancouver Island enclave leader, was hugging a cup of chamomile tea. I spared a moment to be perplexed. The stasis pods didn’t freeze the subject. There was no reason to be cold, or to need to warm up. But when decanted, people almost universally wanted to hug something warm. Weird.

  She peered at us with one eye, evidently in somewhat worse shape than Katsu. “I think the takeaway, Ser Ito, is that we have arrived and there are some decisions to make.”

  “That is correct, Ser Campbell.” I nodded to her. “I’ve prepared summaries for you to read while you hug your warm-up drinks. We can talk in an hour or so.” I nodded again, got up, and left. I could have just switched off right in front of them, but I didn’t think that shoving my artificiality in their faces would be politically astute.

  * * *

  I came back an hour later, to find the two colony leaders in deep discussion. They looked up as I sat down.

  “Have you come to any decisions?” I asked.

  “I believe we have,” Ser Campbell replied. “The Canadian contingent will settle on Asgard. Your first recommendation for a site will be acceptable.” She turned her head and nodded to Mr. Ito, conceding the floor.

  He wore a tight smile as he spoke. “We will settle the second planet, and we will accept your recommendation of a more northerly location where the ecosystem is less overwhelming. However, the name…”

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Jotunheim? It sounds like someone sneezing.” He shook his head. “Unacceptable. We prefer Takama-ga-hara.”

  I quickly referenced my libraries. It took less than five milliseconds to find the definition. “The dwelling place of the Kami. Nice. And perhaps appropriate. However, westerners will shorten it to Takama. Just sayin’.”

  He grinned. “An acceptable risk.”

  “Okay, done.” I returned the smile. “Jack will be pissed. His theme is kaput.”

  * * *

  Jack popped into my VR, invoked a La-Z-Boy, and plopped down on it. “Aagh! Friggin’ whiney, complainy, ungrateful hoo-mahns. We hates ‘em.”

  “What now?”

  “Turns out the jungles of Takama stink. And not just any old stink. The kind of stink that makes you wish you were back on Earth. Oh, and the gravity of Asgard is too high. Like that’s a surprise. But apparently it’s our fault, like we adjusted the gravity meter badly. And the sun is too bright, the clouds are too dark, the bugs are too buggy, the hills are too hilly…”

  “You exaggerate.”

  “Possibly. A bit.” Jack sat forward and scrubbed his face with his hands. “Remind me why we’re doing this?”

  “Because we’re wonderful, caring people?”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  I grinned at him. “Actually Jack, it brings up a point. Dexter’s been getting great results on Vulcan and Romulus by concentrating on making the inhabitants as independent as possible. Things like giving them control over the printer groups, making sure they have their own cargo ships, and so on. Maybe we should move in that direction early.”

  Jack shrugged. “That’s up to you more than anyone. The three of us will be leaving as soon as we’ve finished offloading the colonists. You’re the one who has to put up with them long-term.”

  “Mm. Well, one step at a time.”

  * * *

  Ser Campbell was not amused. Okay, note to self, no attempts at levity in the future.

  “Fine, Ser Campbell. Exactly what would you like me to do about the mosquitoes?”

  “Mosquitoes have nothing on these flying vampires, Mr. Johansson. It would be nice if they fell over dead after biting someone, but apparently humans are biocompatible. There must be something that can be done to control them?”

  Cupid bugs on Vulcan, Ickies on KKP, and Super Vampire Power Mosquitoes here. It would appear that the universe had certain themes that it liked to re-use. Wonderful. “You understand that if we clear them, there will ecological impacts?”

  “I really don’t care. I have three bites myself that are keeping me awake at night, and I can state truthfully that I would happily take a hammer to each and every one of the little…pests.”

  I had to admit, of all the things I didn’t miss about being biological, mosquitoes ranked very high. “Got it. All right, Ser Campbell. I think I can adapt Howard’s Cupid killers for something a little smaller.”

  Ser Campbell nodded, apparently mollified. “I don’t suppose you can do anything about the gravity?” She gave me a small smile.

  “Afraid not.” I chuckled. “Contrary to popular rumor, there isn’t actually a gravity meter.”

  She sighed and nodded. “Ser Ito has described the odor of Takama well enough that I wouldn’t seriously consider suggesting to my citizens that we move. However, when Valhalla becomes available, we might experience a lot of emigration.”

  “Mm, yeah, 0.8 gravity would be a significant relief. But that’s maybe fifty years away. Your children may be more satisfied with the status quo.”

  Ser Campbell nodded without comment. We said our goodbyes and disconnected.

  I checked the archives, and quickly found Howard’s plans for the Cupid bug killers. They could be scaled down for something more the size of a wasp. I sent the plans to the printer queue with a feeling akin to relief. One more item down.

  Cities Attacked

  Marcus

  September 2215

  Poseidon

  “They’ve done it. They’ve actually gone and done it!” Vinnie waved his phone like a weapon as he stomped toward me. Vinnie was not physically imposing, but somehow he managed to look like an unstoppable juggernaut when in his angry marching mode.

  “And by it, you mean…” Kal looked up from his tablet, where he’d been working on an engineering design for a new fish harvesting system.

  A dozen of us sat or reclined on the ring of grass that formed the periphery of the flying city of Amhor. Most residents who could manage it performed th
eir daily duties on lawn chairs or even on blankets. The air circulation systems were very carefully designed to keep the air temps down around a comfortable spring day in our domed environment—and it helped that fibrex didn’t trap infrared like traditional glass.

  Life was hell, but we tried to bear up under the burden.

  Vinnie threw himself down on the grass and tossed his phone onto a nearby side table. “The Council has declared us deserters and forbidden any contact. They’re confiscating any assets owned by any city resident that they can get their hands on, and issued warrants for our arrest.”

  This wasn’t really unexpected. In fact, it had taken a month longer than the date I’d originally estimated. If the Council had any brains at all, they’d be trying to pull the teeth of the biggest single threat to their rule—me—right about now. I checked my feeds and, sure enough, I’d been locked out of colony patrol, monitoring, defense, and infrastructure channels.

  Damn. That meant I would no longer be able to spend my time monitoring things for them, fixing things for them, running things for them…boo hoo. I grinned, and Kal looked at me quizzically.

  “I think I’ve just been fired.” I shrugged at him. “Spares me the trouble of quitting, I guess.”

  “What are we going to do?” asked one of the planning techs, a blonde woman named Freida.

  “Nothing,” I replied. “I’ve exchanged words with the Council the last couple of months. I’ve made it clear to them that we, and especially I, won’t fire the first shot. But that if they try to get their way by violence or war, they’d have the entire Bobiverse to deal with. So I don’t actually expect any shooting. Just legal maneuvering and threats.”

  “And economic sanctions. They’ve cut off all trade, all contact.” Kal shrugged at me.

  “What exactly are they cutting us off from, Kal?” Denu leaned back on an elbow and glared at Kal with an eyebrow arched. “We have a third of the planet’s population, but we produce half the food calories. Most of the technical people transferred to the cities in the first month. Manufacturing is off-planet, so we have as good access to it as they do—”

  “That may not be entirely true,” I said. Everyone looked at me.

  I shrugged. “I’ve been checking statuses as we’ve been talking. The Council seems to have managed to garrison all the materials stocks in the Lagrange points.” I tried to wave up an image, then remembered that I wasn’t in VR. Instead, I sent a feed to any tablets in our group. “I guess it explains why they were so slow to act—they were taking the extra time to get into position. My drones are showing Council security forces occupying strategic locations around the stockpiles. And,” I added, shaking my head, “looks like they’ve laid claim to the Lagrange autofactories as well.”

  “Are the Bobs going to take that lying down?” Kal glared at me.

  I chuckled in response. “Well, the Bobs consists of me, in this system, so not very much of a threat. I have ship busters, but they’re only useful in a full-scale engagement. I’ve got some roamers, but I wouldn’t want to sacrifice them in a guerilla war. I have my printers, but it would take time to set up a full autofactory, and more time to get mining going again.”

  “So we’re dead in the water?”

  “For the moment, as far as they know,” I responded. “But they also know we’ll rebuild our own resources in short order. They have to bring us to our knees before we can do so.”

  “How?”

  I shrugged. “Resource interdiction, which they’ve already done; denial of food sources, which they incorrectly think they can do; and cutting us off from any space assets, which I’m surprised to say they haven’t—”

  At that moment, the signal from my decoy cut off. “Son of a bitch. They did it.”

  All heads turned to stare at me. I shrugged and gave them a twisted grin. “They just blew me up!”

  Life

  Howard

  June 2219

  HIP 14101

  Finally.

  The drone flew through Odin’s upper-middle cloud layer, casual as you please, as if umpty-ump of its ancestors hadn’t gone down in screaming flames trying to achieve this milestone. Odin was slightly smaller than Saturn, but far more meteorologically active, due to being closer to its primary.

  All of which made a difficult environment for adapting a SURGE-powered drone.

  I watched readings carefully as the drone cruised through the atmosphere. While the chemistry wasn’t actually corrosive as such, it was definitely chemically active. The multiple possibilities for exothermic reactions made me hopeful that I would find something that I might be able to call life.

  I had no idea if all this work would ultimately pay off, but it was certainly interesting. The view from the drone was incomparable. I could see hundreds of kilometers down through clear patches of atmosphere into the depths, where colored masses of organics formed massive floating clouds. The layering was pretty obvious—Odin’s atmosphere was heavily stratified both latitudinally and vertically.

  Then I saw it—a group of dots, far ahead, seemingly flying in formation. I aimed the drone toward them. By the time I got to within a couple of kilometers, I was able to resolve the targets—giant blimps, with tentacles spread round them.

  There was no question they were alive. They didn’t quite resemble zeppelins, and they didn’t quite resemble jellyfish, and they didn’t quite resemble squid. They were some weird mashup of all three. Perhaps fifty meters long, with tentacles—the exact number varied between individuals. They moved as a flock.

  The flock didn’t react defensively to the drone, which was probably far too small to present as a threat. I circled them a dozen times, each individual following my trajectory with something that might have been an eye on a stalk.

  The drone’s readings finally moved far enough into the red, and I had to stop and bring it back—post-mortem examinations were still a large part of my development effort, and this one had been wildly successful. As the drone flew up to my location in orbit, I played the video records again and again.

  Finally, I turned off the playback and stared into space, a smile forming on my face. Bridget would love this. No biologist could possibly resist.

  * * *

  “But, that’s—incredible!” Bridget seemed to have become permanently bug-eyed as she scanned through the videos. “They are absolutely alive. Are they carbon-based? DNA-based?”

  “Probably, and who knows?” I grinned at her from an inset window on her tablet. I hadn’t wanted to take the time to deploy Manny, so I’d just phoned.

  “My God, Howard. And you have forever to study them…”

  “You could, too, Bridget.”

  “Howard…” Bridget gave me the stink-eye.

  “Sorry Bridge. I know, I promised. It just slipped out.”

  She responded with one of her patented nuclear smiles, then turned back to the videos. “I would love to see them.”

  “Wish granted. I’ll be right over.”

  Bridget raised an eyebrow. “Howard, you are oddly well-prepared. Am I being set up?”

  I grinned and winked at her as I disconnected.

  * * *

  Bridget looked at the device in her hands—a light helmet-shaped frame, with embedded sensors, integrated goggles, and headphones. On the coffee table in front of her lay a pair of very techie-looking gloves.

  “And what happens when I put this stuff on?” She asked, one eyebrow raised.

  “Well, this was the state of the art in video game gear, just before FAITH stomped on that particular industry. Full-immersion VR, or the twenty-first-century version of it, anyway. I found the plans in the libraries, and printed this up.”

  “And what happens when I put this stuff on?” Bridget repeated.

  “You get to visit me at my place. And get a better look at the Odin wildlife.”

  She nodded, slipped on the gloves, and donned the helmet.

  And popped into my VR.

  I put Manny on standby and
returned to VR. I was sitting in my beach chair, grinning at her as she slowly turned to take in the scene. I’d made Bridget’s avatar from images taken when I first met her, and it was an almost physical jolt to see her standing there, young again.

  I stood up and walked over. “This is a very limited interface, of course. You can’t fully interact—although you can pick up objects or feel me holding your hands—” I took her hands in mine. “—and you can move around using the game interface.”

  “All right. So, show me.”

  I activated the videos and data files that I’d accumulated on the native Odin life. Bridget gasped and stared at the images. She walked over to them and began paging and swiping through the data. I felt a moment of pleasure that our user interface was so obviously intuitive. But, of course, the Bobs had been living it and tweaking it for around a hundred years, now.

  “I’ve been cataloguing things,” I said. “There’s an incredibly diverse ecosystem. It has plant-equivalents that build organics from sunlight and raw materials; and animals, which eat plants or other animals.”

  Bridget took a moment to smile at me, then went back to the videos and files. She muttered constantly, a specialist immersed in her chosen field.

  I sat down and watched her work, a glow of joy battling with a vaguely guilty feeling. This wasn’t really about the Odin native life. I could have emailed those files to her. I’d promised Bridget that I wouldn’t hassle her about replication. Well, I was as capable of lawyering as the next person. I couldn’t say anything, but non-verbal persuasions were fair game.

  Eventually, Bridget noticed her hands. She stopped, examined them closely. Then she grabbed a handful of her hair and pulled it into view. She turned to me with a hurt look. “Howard, really? This is a dirty trick.”

  “Hey, fair’s fair. I’m perpetually thirty-one in here. And that is how I see you. Always will. I’m not trying to be underhanded.”

  “You are an evil, evil man. And a lawyer.” Her tone was disapproving, but she couldn’t suppress a small smile.

  “But you repeat yourself…”