The organized chaos was—no, scratch that, there was nothing organized about this. The chaos was mostly confined to the common areas. Children were not allowed in the kitchen, as the women worked on the meal. Funny, two hundred years after Original Bob’s death, women still ruled the kitchen. Probably, I admitted to myself, because men would have just opened up a bag of chips and a jar of dip.
Well, nothing wrong with chips and dip.
I looked over the dishes spread out over the dining room table, already being attacked by hungry relatives. They were going all out, and I promised myself I’d try a few things, if only to catalog the taste for VR.
I wandered around for a few minutes, saying hello to people and exchanging a word or two here and there. This type of scenario had never been Original Bob’s forte. Small talk and cocktail party socializing had always seemed so shallow and meaningless.
But this was different. Every single person here had some of my DNA, or was married to someone who did. Every single person gave meaning to my life, and the lives of my sisters and parents.
I looked around, and realized I was stalling. Really, this shouldn’t be that difficult. People aged. People grew up, had children, grew old. Died. Julia’s death still haunted me. Now I was visiting Justin, on his seventy-fifth. I could remember the first time I saw him, as clear as the day it happened—two years old, sitting on his mother’s lap in front of the camera. Space Cadet Justin, laughing in delight at the pretty pictures.
With a deep breath, I entered the sitting room. Justin was surrounded by family, chatting, all making sure he was comfortable and wanted for nothing.
Justin turned and smiled when he saw me. He raised a hand in greeting, and I smiled back. One of the entourage vacated a chair and I sat beside him. “Hey, Space Cadet. How are things?”
Justin grinned back at me. “That’s Admiral space cadet to you, whippersnapper.”
“That’s uncle whippersnapper to you, Admiral.”
We both chuckled at the exchange. I looked at Justin’s face. I could still see Julia in him, which of course meant I could see Andrea. I felt myself starting to tear up and clamped down on it. Instead, I took his hand. “Just as well you retired. There’s nowhere left to go from admiral.” I hesitated. “Justin, we talked a long time ago about replication…”
“The day my mom died. I remember. Nothing’s changed, Will. You guys are still doing chores, and now you’re stuck fighting some alien menace for us. It just doesn’t seem like much of an afterlife.” Justin tilted his head and looked at me with a small smile. “I know what you think of religion. But right or wrong, I’ll die in peace. And Pascal’s Wager works both ways, right?”
I nodded, returning his smile. “Yup. If you’re wrong, you won’t have the opportunity to regret it.”
Justin was silent for a few moments as he looked around the room. “Y’know, Uncle whippersnapper, a lot of the younger ones probably don’t even recognize you. You’ve made fewer and fewer appearances over the years. Is that on purpose, or just the Others thing?”
And there it was. The thing I’d been avoiding. But I owed it to Justin to not evade. “It’s a bit of both. I think it was your mother’s death that really got to me. People die. And I remember each and every one, as clear as the day it happened. Over time, that’s more and more unhappy memories to deal with. I think I’m trying to move toward thinking of my relatives more as a group and less as individuals.” I gave him a small smile to soften the message. “It distances me a little—well, a lot—but on balance I think it works out better.”
“So I’m the last one of our clan that you’ve been keeping in touch with?”
“Yeah. Bob-1 calls it ‘fading into legend’.”
“Well, I’m glad to have known you, Uncle Will. And it’s nice to know I’ll be remembered.”
I snorted. “Look around. I don’t think that’s an issue.”
We spoke for a few more minutes, then I excused myself and gave up my chair. Someone immediately sat down for their turn with the clan patriarch.
I raised my hand in a parting wave, and Justin smiled at me before turning to answer a question.
Family.
Offsite
Bill
December 2243
Epsilon Eridani
I looked down upon Ragnarök, and it was good. I chuckled to myself, glad that I hadn’t said that out loud. Garfield would never let me live it down.
Still, it was hard not to feel a little god-like. The seas were finally connecting to form oceans. Atmospheric oxygen was up, noxious gasses were down. My moss/lichen mix had taken hold and was swiftly turning the orbital view from a rocky brown/gray to a muted green. I’d planted some conifers and grasses, and they hadn’t immediately grabbed their veggie throats and fallen over, dead.
Time to think about building the food chain, from plankton in the ocean on up.
I pinged Garfield, then popped in. “Hey, Gar. We haven’t done an in-person tour of Ragnarök in a while. You up for one?”
Garfield shook his head. “Sorry, Bill, Rocky IV is not quite ready. I’ve pared down the wing size, but I don’t have enough supporting musculature. I’m adjusting it.”
I shrugged, but I was disappointed. Our races across the landscape of Ragnarök, moose versus weird Rodan-like bat-thing, were highlights of my otherwise stressful life. Preparing for the possible arrival of the Others provided all the excitement and variety of the worst dead-end office job.
“How’s the backup site going?” Garfield asked.
I settled into a chair and invoked a coffee. “Almost done. Out past the Oort, not in line with the flight path between here and any nearby systems, and cloaked; it should be impossible to find except by accident.”
“Are you keeping up on capacity?”
“That’s an issue, all right.” I grinned at him. “We’re building new Bobs so fast, these days. What’re we up to, like five hundred of us?”
Garfield smiled sadly. “Yeah, weird that it takes a threat to our existence to get us to move our asses.”
“Or not so weird.” I snorted. “That’s kind of what Original Bob was like.”
Garfield grunted. “On that note, the latest batch of drones that Oliver sent to Sol will complete the coverage, once they get there and Will deploys them. From that point, we’ll get a few weeks’ warning if a convoy of Others is detected approaching Earth.”
“Still not great, but better than nothing.” I stood up. “Okay, Gar, let me know when Rocky’s ready. I could use the distraction.” Without waiting for a response, I popped out.
* * *
I took a deep breath through my nose. Ragnarök had a definite odor to it; not quite Earth-like, but not quite alien. I started walking in a random direction, admiring the grass that grew between the trees, and the insect life that was maybe a little too profuse. I might need to introduce another insectivore or two.
The human android body felt good. I still used Bullwinkle occasionally, but I admitted to myself that human form was much more comfortable. And now that Ragnarök had achieved livability, it felt much more natural.
All in all, the planet was looking good. Steady reintroduction of plants and animals from the Svalbard stocks would gradually turn Ragnarök into something that a human being would recognize and feel at home in.
Unfortunately, with the looming Others’ threat, this wasn’t exactly a prime colonization target. As one of the two systems that the Others had threatened to harvest, it certainly wouldn’t be high on the list of places to move to.
If they carried through on that threat, this could end up being all for nothing. The thought made me frown. If they carried through on their threats, it would be a lot worse than just Ragnarök.
If we succeeded in holding them off, though…
Maybe humanity didn’t need this one planet. Set it up as a preserve, instead. Let the flora and fauna evolve and repopulate without human interference.
That sounded good. I smiled and called ov
er the cargo drone to collect me.
City In The Clouds
Howard
December 2226
Odin
Eight mover plates slowly lowered Rivendell into the Odin cloudscape. Marcus had run through the entire list of Barsoom city names, and many of the other science-fiction ones. It felt slightly cheesy resorting to LOTR names, but what choice did I have?
The city, whatever name we eventually settled on, was several times bigger than Marcus’ aerial cities. When using buoyancy for lift, bigger was better. Rivendell boasted actual buildings, too. Not that we had a huge need for them, but we wanted to do this as a proof of concept, so Bridget suggested we pretend we were live people. We’d even built kitchens, sanitary facilities, and infrastructure.
Bridget stood to one side, watching the monitor, hands balled into fists, willing the city to behave.
And well she should. This was actually Rivendell mark 2. The first iteration lay somewhere far below in the murky depths, probably melted into slag by now. Forgot to carry the two again.
“At depth,” I said. “Guppy, release the plates. Slowly.”
Guppy nodded without comment. The plates disengaged, and after a small bobble, Rivendell settled into equilibrium.
[Pressure is stable. Stress sensors well within limits.]
“Thanks, Guppy. We’ll take it from here.”
Guppy nodded and vanished.
“I always used to wonder, when you mentioned Guppy.” Bridget smiled at me, shaking her head. “I sometimes thought maybe you had a screw loose.”
“Confirmed!” I yelled, giving a fist pump.
“Oh, yes. And so much worse than I could have imagined.”
“I’m glad I can still surprise you,” I said, giving her a peck on the cheek. I waved a hand and the control panels for our androids appeared. “Shall we?”
Bridget took my hand, and we connected…
* * *
I undraped myself from the cradle and looked to my left where Bridget’s android was just doing the same. A quick glance around didn’t reveal any obvious problems. Bridget took a few moments to get used to the android form—walking around in circles, clenching and unclenching her hands. Then she looked at me and gave me a wide smile. Wordlessly, I grinned back and her and nodded toward the door.
We exited to a grassy field surrounded by low buildings on three sides. In front of us, the clear curve of the city dome rose from ground level, curving up and over us to cover and contain Rivendell.
Without a word, Bridget and I hurried to the edge of the dome. Placing our hands on the transparent fibrex, we gazed in awe out at Odin. Flocks of krill wafted by, blown about by atmospheric currents. Small predators chased the krill, larger predators chased the smaller. A pod of blimps floated by in the distance, shadowed by the usual mantas, hoping for an incautious juvenile to stray. For layer upon layer, above and below, different ecosystems dominated, shading from one to the next.
We watched this panorama, totally entranced, until we were startled by a thump, accompanied by a slight shaking. I looked around in surprise. About two thirds of the way up the dome, a blimp had attached itself to the city. It appeared determined to hold on, and…
“Uh, it’s…” I pointed, at a loss for words.
“I’d say it’s definitely a he,” Bridget replied, chortling.
“So he’s... It looks like he…um…”
“He likes us.” Bridget bent over and began to laugh, full belly laughs, arms wrapped around herself.
“Not a single one of my engineering courses covered this,” I said.
Bridget fell over onto the grass.
Up above, the blimp continued to prove its love.
Detection
Riker
April 2257
Sol
Eighty thousand observation drones generated a lot of false positives. Even with the filtering algorithms I’d worked out, I still had to check a significant number of flagged items every day. After all, false positives were tedious. Skipping a real positive would be disastrous.
Just the same, the process had become a humdrum routine, to the point where I almost went right past the first significant signal in twenty-seven years of monitoring.
I jerked in my seat as the details registered. Far too regular to be background noise, too persistent to be an instrumentation glitch. The readings were barely detectable, but they still screamed danger. I skipped forward through several hours of log entries, and finally had to accept that I wasn’t going to be able to explain this away.
With a feeling of dread, I sent a text to Bill. Positive detection.
Within moments, Bill popped in. “Way to ruin my day, Will. Okay, let’s see it.”
Wordlessly, I gestured to the monitor window. Bill sat down, pulled the window around so it faced him squarely, and began to scan. I could see his eyes moving as he went over the readings, his expression turning into a frown.
He finally pushed the window away and sat back with a huff. “Well, that’s it. We’re being invaded. I notice that the incoming is well off a direct line from here to GL 877. They expected us to be watching for them.”
I nodded. “Or at least allowed for it. Too soon to get a good picture of numbers, but I think we’ll have that by the end of the day. Do we wait to make an announcement?”
“I don’t think so.” Bill scrubbed his face with his hands, then looked at me with a weary expression. “There’ll be a moot. We want to give people time to get organized. I’ll send something out, with a promise of more information in, what, three hours?”
I nodded, and Bill stood up. “Okay, I’ll get it started. Keep the drones well outside the Others’ detection range. No sense in letting them know we’ve seen them. And forward me the update as soon as you have it.” With that, he disappeared.
* * *
As it turned out, we didn’t get as far as the moot. The readings resolved into individual signals in less than an hour. I guess we’d all forgotten just how big the Others’ ships were. Fifty smaller objects, which were probably death asteroids, and one hundred larger objects, cargo carriers, most likely filled with fighter units of one kind or another.
I sent a text off to Bill, and received a response immediately. Organizing something.
Ten milliseconds later, Bill, Oliver, Jacques, Garfield, Thor, and Claude popped into my VR. I noted the complaint from Guppy as the VR memory usage ballooned, and turned off Spike and Jeeves to compensate.
“Well, that sucks,” Bill said as he looked at the display wall I’d put up. “I think they’ve probably sent everything they have at us.”
“Except the Delta Pavonis expedition, which arrived back at GL 877 well after this bunch likely launched.” Jacques looked around at us, his arms crossed. None of us were fans of the Others, of course, but Jacques seemed to have internalized a really visceral hate. Couldn’t blame him, really. I had a similar attitude toward the memory of VEHEMENT.
“Thor, you have an analysis of the cargo carriers’ probable contents?”
Thor nodded an acknowledgement to Bill. “Sure, but you have to remember, at Delta Pavonis the Others were provisioned for the possibility of a local planetary defense. This time, they’ll be provisioned for the virtual certainty of a defensive force that’s space-based, has had decades to prepare, and knows what the Others bring to the table. They’ll have loaded everything they can.”
“Everything they had ready, you mean,” Claude replied. “The timing of the drone destruction back at GL 877 limits how long they could have taken to prepare.”
Garfield shook his head. “Sure, but they could have just loaded a bunch of raw material into the carriers, and built stuff during the trip. It’s not like they have a shortage of resources.”
“Damn.” Claude rubbed his head. “So, how much subjective time did they have to build up a fighting force?”
“Hmm…” Bill thought for a moment. “Twenty-eight point one light-years. The cargo carriers aren’t capable of
more than five G, and they wouldn’t be here yet if they’d been pulling much less. So I expect they went for minimum travel time instead of trying to extend their personal time during the trip. That puts it just a shade under two years subjective.” He looked around the group. “That’s a lot of time, but I think if they had loaded the cargo vessels to capacity, they’d have extended the trip. Thor, can you work with that?”
Thor nodded, then his avatar froze as he frame-jacked to work the models.
He was back in moments. “It’s still not good. I figure they can put at least twenty thousand fighters and flying bombs, maybe closer to thirty.”
“Oh my God,” Claude said. “And we have what?”
“Five hundred Bobs, a thousand AMI-crewed dreadnaughts, three thousand nukes, and five thousand busters.”
“Plus plasma spikes and lasers, not that those will be hugely useful, with light lag.”
“Well, hold on,” Garfield said. “Light-speed limitations work against them, but we could make it work for us.”
We all turned to him, and he continued, “If we can get some cloaked observation drones in close enough, we can track their location real-time and fire the lasers and spikes to intercept them.”
“Sure, but if they do that mega-ping thing, they’ll see the drones and know we’re on to them.”
Garfield shrugged at Thor. “But if they do the mega-ping, they’ll be announcing their presence. They might be reluctant to do that until the last second.”
I rubbed my eyes with thumb and forefinger. “Damn, I wish Butterworth was still around.”
Bill grinned at me. “I don’t think I’ve ever actually heard you say that before.”
“I didn’t dislike him, Bill. We just always seemed to be at loggerheads.” I shrugged. “Anyway, this kind of reading-the-other-guy’s-mind tactical stuff is what he was good at. Original Bob, not so much.”
All These Worlds (Bobiverse Book 3) Page 19