For We Are Many

“But you’re still going ahead with the floating city plans.”

“Oh, sure.” Monty shrugged. “No matter what you do, living on a floating plant mat is still going a little more native than most of the colonists are comfortable with. Proper cities will mean permanent construction, transit, and all the amenities that we like to call civilization. ”

“And you’ll be out of there.”

He laughed. “Yeah, you caught me. As soon as they have enough infrastructure and redundancy to handle their own destiny, I’m heading out.

I’ve had enough of shepherding humans, y’know?”

I smiled at him, but his comments worried me.

New Bobs were increasingly voicing an unwillingness to hang around and help humanity. On top of the tendency to use dismissive language, it told me that there was some kind of shift in psychology going on.

Then I admitted to myself that I might be the one out of step. I’d been holed up at Epsilon Eridani for fifty years, with only second-hand exposure to humanity. It was easy for me to have an attitude. Bobs cloned from Riker’s tree might just be getting heartily sick of people.

Anyway, there were still enough interested Bobs to keep things rolling. I decided not to worry about it. I could always start my own dynasty if I needed to.

I looked around for Howard, but didn’t see him. The moot directory indicated he hadn’t shown up today. Now there was a case of going too far in the other direction. The man was head over heels over a human. Everyone but Howard could see it. Had Original Bob ever been that naïve? I sighed. Yeah.

He had.

Riker was surrounded by a group of Bobs, being grilled on the situation on Earth. The results from 82 Eridani would certainly have caused a stir with the enclaves. I had a TODO to talk to Will about it myself, but I wasn’t going to wade into that scrum. It could wait.

Marvin and Luke came over and joined Monty and me.

“Hi, Bill. Sorry to be a pest…”

“S’okay, Marv. I understand. No, still nothing from Bender. Sorry. Unless he decided to pull a Mario and head for the far reaches, I think the greatest likelihood is that something happened to him.”

Marvin looked downcast, and Luke nodded and looked away. Those three were from the same cohort, so they were related in a way that was somehow one step closer than mere clonedom. It was now coming up on thirty years since Luke and Bender left Delta Eridani. The chances of an innocent explanation for Bender’s silence became smaller every year.

Marvin laced his fingers together and put his forehead to them for a moment. “Victor followed Bender’s departure vector. So far, nothing. He

thinks Bender may have changed direction at some point. Victor’s not willing to backtrack, so we’re thinking of mounting an expedition.”

My eyebrows rose. “Going after him? Space is pretty big. What do you think your chances are?”

Luke leaned forward, arms encircling his drink. “You know we leave a trail when we fly between systems. The gas is slightly thinner along the flight path of a Heaven vessel where we’ve scooped it up. It’s not much, and you have to be very careful, but even if he changed course mid-flight we should be able to follow his new vector.”

“Okay. You know where he was aiming when he left Eden. I guess you just start with that?”

Marvin and Luke nodded in sync.

It would take decades, if not centuries. Then I smiled. Still thinking like an ephemeral. How long it would take was irrelevant. We had forever.

53. Testing

Hal

April 2196

GL 877

I wasn’t really what you’d call “happy” to be back. Last time I was here, I had died. Hopefully things would go better this time.

I did a quick status check on my cloud of attendants. I was surrounded by just under a hundred drones and one AMI-driven Heaven decoy vessel.

The decoy obediently matched my actions as I decelerated. The drones scattered to preassigned positions around the periphery of the star system.

They would serve as an early-warning system for any comings and goings by the Others. They were designed to give as little evidence of their presence as possible. Low profile, no albedo to speak of, total radio silence, and heavily shielded reactors meant they showed very little footprint to the universe at large. And booby-trapped, of course. If the Others ever got hold of SCUT

tech, we would be royally hooped.

The decoy had been constructed with all the improvements suggested by Thor: two layers of depleted uranium alternating with two layers of electrostatic shielding. We’d added redundancies for every major control system, with automatic failovers. It also had multiple independent self-destruct mechanisms and the usual booby-traps.

My new body had some improvements as well. I’d sacrificed buster storage in favor of a larger reactor and SURGE drive. At 15 G capability I could now outrun the Others, assuming that I’d seen their “A” game last time out.

Today’s entertainment was in aid of testing our mods against the death asteroid. If Decoy-1 could survive a zapping, we were golden. If it couldn’t…

well, no one really wanted to ask that question.

I sent the activation order. Decoy-1 broke off from my vector and accelerated towards the inner system.

* * *

The SCUT connection gave me a video window into the chase. The decoy was carefully sticking to 10 G as it ran from the Others’ battle-group, or squad, or whatever they called their standard collection of ships. We hadn’t tried to be subtle with the sweep through the inner system, and the decoy had, predictably, picked up a tail. It looked as though we were less than an hour away from the big event.

I accepted a ping, and Mario popped into my VR. “I love car chases,” he said, grinning at me.

“Especially the ones with big crashes,” I replied.

I was forwarding the telemetry to Bill for the archives as well. I hadn’t heard from him, but I imagined he was monitoring as time permitted. Mario got comfortable, Jeeves brought coffees, and we sat back to watch the show.

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 moments.

“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.”

I gestured dramatically. “Ladies, er, gentlemen, I give you— the Others.”

There was dead silence for a few milliseconds, then someone said,

“Should we clap?”

Everyone in the room broke up in laughter, and the tension dissolved. If I ever found out who the speaker was, I’d have to buy him a beer.

I left the image up, and closed the meeting. People broke into groups to discuss the presentation. Mario raised his chin in my direction, and I acknowledged the implied invitation with a wave.

Mario grimaced. “I had a theory that the presence of the death asteroids was proof that they don’t scout a system. Otherwise they’d have known they didn’t need them at GL 54.”

“Mm, but if they’re a communal organism, then the death asteroids are their portable community.”

Mario gave me a rueful smile. “Yep. Fail.”

“So how is the harvest going?”

He rolled his eyes and pulled up some images. “Thankfully there was nothing in GL 54 to get attached to, so this is nothing more than a strategic retreat to me.” Pointing to one image. “The carriers go down where presumably they’ve detected metal. They disgorge ants, who dig down to the ore and bring it up. It’s hard to tell from a distance, but based on activity, I think they use the ore to build more ants which they use to get more ore, which they use to build more ants… Eventually they reach a break-even point of some kind where the ants just haul material up. Then they harvest the excess ants and take off.”

“They’d have printers specialized for making ants, then.” I stroked my chin in thought. “It would have to be a cheap, quick process.”

“At the current rate, I estimate they’ll have the system cleaned out in a

year. It’s exponential behavior. They never stop, never rest.” Mario rubbed his eyes. “And those cargo ships are so big, I don’t think we could even make them notice us, let alone damage them significantly. It would be like mosquitos trying to take on tanks.”

“Well, we have to come up with something before they decide Earth is next.”

Mario shook his head. “There are a lot of systems closer to them than Earth. We have lots of time.”

“You’re assuming that they always do things that way. You’re assuming that they won’t suddenly decide to drive a little extra distance for some ready-made refined material.” I glared at him, willing him to get the point. “I think we have to assume we don’t have a lot of time. If we’re ready early, no biggie. If we’re ready late, biggie.”

“Damn.”

58. News

Howard

July 2198

Interstellar Space

I was less than a third of the way to my destination when I received an email from Dexter. In a moment of weakness, I’d asked him to let me know any news about the Brodeurs.

Dexter included a bunch of other stuff in the email as well. Maybe he wanted to distract me; maybe he wanted to it to seem like the message wasn’t all about Bridget. Don’t know, but I appreciated the effort.

In any case, it looked like things were going well, in general. Butterworth had retired—well-deserved, in my opinion. The population of the system was up around a hundred thousand people now. Human-crewed spaceships were becoming commonplace, and the donuts made up an increasingly minor part of the food supply chain. Dexter apparently now had some of that formerly mythical free time, and was putting together some of Bill’s asteroid movers.

New Jerusalem was now a full-fledged democracy. Seemed some incriminating videos had gotten out and Cranston had to step down. In the resulting mess, the citizenry had decided to separate Church and State once again.

I laughed as I read the details. No doubt Cranston had his suspicions, but there was no way to trace anything back to Will or myself. Speaking of, I fired off an email to Will, in case he had more juicy info.

Things were going well. If it weren’t for the Others, humanity would be in a good place.

And that was it for the delaying tactics. With a sigh, I went on to the part about the Brodeurs.

Okay, not terrible. They had a son. They’d named him Howard.

I smiled, as the message became suddenly blurry. I would have to send a short thank-you note.

59. Another One

Bill

April 2205

Epsilon Eridani

I leaned back in my chair, looked straight up, and used some words that I normally don’t like to use.

Surveillance drones around GL 877 had reported that the Others had just launched another expedition. From the initial vector, it looked like they were heading for NN 4285. That wasn’t too bad—it was a small M star, too dim for any chance of usable planets.

No, I corrected myself: under no circumstances should this be considered acceptable. If the Others had stuck to uninhabited systems, well, it was a big galaxy. But that wasn’t their behavior. If they didn’t happen to kill off a planet, it was only because there was nothing to kill off, not because of some moral reluctance. Lack of opportunity isn’t the same as self-restraint. They were evil. End of story.

And if distance was an indicator, both Gamma and Delta Pavonis would probably be next, and they were good candidates. I checked the archives, just on the off chance. No such luck. No one had visited those systems yet, although a couple of Bobs were heading for them as part of Mario’s scouting.

I got up and started pacing around my office. Then I pinged Mario, and he popped over.

“What’s up?”

“Mario, the Others just moved again. This time heading for NN 4285.”

“Yeah, I saw that. Not a prime system.”

“Still, we have to figure out how to nip this in the bud. I’m concerned about the Pavonis candidates. Do you have an ETA for them?”

“Gamma and Delta? Claude and Jacques are heading for those. Claude will be at Gamma in about a month, and Jacques at Delta in twenty-two months or so.”

“Dammit. The closest significant presence we’ve got is Sol, and we can’t

divert them from building colony ships.”

“Epsilon Indi?”

“No, Epsilon Indi is too far away as well, although closer than Sol. But resources are poor, and colonists to KKP will be too busy setting up to help.”

Mario nodded. He looked down at his toes for a few milliseconds, then turned and glared at me. “What is it with the Pavonis systems that’s giving you a pickle up your butt, anyway?”

I sighed and stopped pacing. I favored Mario with a self-conscious smile.

“Call it a premonition. Call it superstition. Call it utter faith in the power of Murphy. Based strictly on distance, those two are among the next likely targets. Based on the stars’ types, they’re good habitable-planet candidates.

Based on our experience so far, most good systems with a planet in the right place have life. Not intelligence, necessarily, but life.” I shrugged, letting Mario make the connection.

He was silent for a few moments, thinking. “On the other hand, they’ve just sent out an expedition to NN 4285, and the GL 54 expedition hasn’t made it back to their home system. How many armadas to you suppose they have?”

“Fair point. They don’t seem to have any real sense of urgency. I wonder how long a Prime lives.”

“So look, Bill, why don’t you build a group here and send it to the area?”

I shook my head. “Too far. I’ll do it if there’s no other way. We need to get an inventory of what Bobs are in what systems, so we can figure out what response is possible.”

Mario gave me a nod and popped out.

I pinged Claude. His return indicated he was down to a low tau, about 0.03. That wouldn’t affect communications at all, and was hardly worth adjusting frame rates for. He was open for company, so I popped in.

“Hey, Bill.”

“Claude.” I looked around at his VR. Not particularly anything. Tropical beach, cabana, deck chair. Could be Mexico, Hawaii, or some made-up location. I didn’t have any memories of a vacation like this, so I assumed the last option.

Claude was looking at me with slightly wide eyes. He was a generation removed from me, and it was funny how the Bobiverse was becoming hierarchical like that.

I materialized a deck chair of my own at sat down. “Been following the Others, Claude?”

“Yeah, I was at the moot. And I heard about NN 4285.”

“Okay, so here’s the thing. With the Others taking out GL 54, there’s no Bob-controlled system anywhere close to you. When you get to Gamma Pavonis, you have to assume you only have a couple of decades at most before the Others come visiting. You’re going to have to mobilize for war, essentially.”

Claude frowned. “A lot of assumptions in there.”

“Not as many as you’d think, and the assumptions are high probability.”

Claude sighed and resettled himself in his chair to face me squarely.

“Look, Bill. I get the whole thing about the Others, and they’re evil, blah blah. But why here, and why now? Why this particular line in the sand?”

“I’ll grant you there’s nothing unique about Gamma Pavonis to the limit of our current knowledge. But we have to start somewhere. Maybe we won’t be ready for them in time. Maybe they’ll swoop down on you in a decade and you’ll have to flee like Mario did. But at some point, we have to try. Why not here, and why not now?”

Claude gave me a wry smile. “Because here and now puts me in the crosshairs, thank you very much.”

I laughed. “Well, that’s why God invented backups.”

* * *

I popped back to my own VR, after extracting a promise from Claude that he’d get the system report on Gamma Pavonis to me on a priority basis. I checked Jacque’s tau, but he was still way up there. A conversation would take days, even if he frame-jacked.

I quickly went down my list of known manufacturing centers. There weren’t a lot. Most Bobs didn’t bother in most systems, other than building a space station. I remembered Bart, who was the last Bob that I’d talked to in Alpha Centauri.

I sent a quick ping to him, but it looked like he was between systems.

Bart’s acknowledgement indicated a ridiculous tau. I’d be a few days even waiting for a response, never mind a conversation.

I queried the Alpha Centauri space station directly. The status report appeared in front of me in a window. Garfield came around and looked over

my shoulder.

“No one there right now,” he said. “Looks like the last group left it uninhabited.”

“Well, we can’t force anyone to stay and play caretaker. It’s a free galaxy.” I ran a hand through my hair, then stopped and looked at my hand.

That was Riker’s tic. I didn’t need to start that. “It looks like a full-power AMI, though. If I can get it to build a replicant matrix, I can load my backup and the new me can bootstrap up from there.”

“You’re going to load a backup across interstellar distances, with no Bob overseeing? Wow, dude.”

I shrugged. “No difference in principle. I’ll checksum the hell out of it before approving it for load.” I thought for another millisecond, then nodded.

“I don’t have a choice, anyway. We can’t afford to ignore any potential source of Bobs. I’m afraid, like it or not, we’re going to war.”

60. Arrival

Claude

May 2205

Gamma Pavonis

Gamma Pavonis was an F8V class of star, which made it slightly bigger and barely hotter than Sol. The effect was a system with a comfort zone slightly farther out, but a sun that would look virtually indistinguishable from ours.

I paradoxically found myself hoping that I wouldn’t find anything in the comfort zone. The whole dialog with Bill had left me freaked out and ambivalent about what I might find. I would actually feel better if there was nothing in this system worth defending.

Well, you have to know that Murphy is listening for just exactly that kind of wish, so he can give you the shaft.

The planet sat at just over a hundred million miles out. A gorgeous, shining, blue and green marble with bands and swirls of white, orbited by one larger moon and three smaller ones. Damn.

I went immediately into orbit to determine if it included intelligent life.

That would be a real kick in the pants. Fortunately, the planet failed—or passed, depending on attitude—the first, obvious tests. There was no radio traffic, no web of exhaust trails in the atmosphere, no satellites, and no sprinkle of lights on the night side.

That still left pre-industrial civilization, of course, but that would require a closer look. I sent a quick email off to Bill with results so far, then deployed the exploration drones. Mario had decided that the latest-version Heaven vessels would come with enough on-board assets so that we could investigate a system quickly. This meant mining and manufacturing operations could wait for later.

The drones took up polar orbits for a couple of passes, then swooped into atmosphere to check out interesting items.

I spent five days on observation and exploration. I didn’t want to screw this up. But finally, I felt confident enough to report my findings.

No intelligence. Thank God. But the ecosystem was as rich and varied as anything in Earth’s history. This was a planet with everything stacked in its favor. The right size, the right distance from a sun with good solar output but relatively low UV, good-sized moons, plate tectonics active enough to ensure consistent surface recycling—the list went on and on. This was an ideal colony target, except for the part where it was on the Others’ front porch.

Now I would have to move to phase 2. This system actually had a relatively low metallicity, at least according to the star’s spectral lines.

Perhaps that was why the Others had rejected it in favor of the slightly more distant NN 4285. But the next star out, GL 902, was over two light-years farther than this one. I doubted the Others would bypass it again.

Well, low metallicity was a relative term. I was sure I’d still find more than enough resources for my purposes, even if it took a bit of work to find.

There was a ping from Bill, then he popped in.

“Hey Claude. I’ve been looking over your report. Sounds like a great planet.”

“And that’s the problem. It is a great planet. Great system. And if you’re right, due to be ‘harvested’ sometime in the next, what, hundred years?”

Bill looked down for a moment. “Mario has been getting reports back from Bobs hitting surrounding systems. Combined with his own observations in Zeta Tucanae and Beta Hydri, we’re able to make a rough estimate of a system every ten to twenty years.”

“So they’ve only been at this maybe a hundred years?”

“We don’t know how long they were working only within their system. It might have taken them a hundred years to get started. Maybe the first out-system harvest taught them a lot. Anyway, the point is, there are a lot of unknowns before they started regularly harvesting.”

Bill had popped up a star chart while he was talking, the various star systems flashing a tooltip as he mentioned them.

“Jacques will be arriving at Delta Pavonis in eighteen months. The positions of Delta Pavonis and GL 877 are about the same distance from you, so if we see the Others head your way, anything he launches from Delta will arrive here at the same time. So hopefully you’ll have reinforcements.”

I nodded. That was something, anyway.

61. Starting Over

Oliver

September 2205

Alpha Centauri

HIC71683-14. Damn. I’m not Bill anymore. Now I need a new name.

This had happened to me once before, as one of Bob-1’s first cohort, in Epsilon Eridani. Now I was a noob again, this time in Alpha Centauri.

I popped into Bill’s VR. “I hate you.”

Bill grinned at me. “Naw, you know the rules. New name, dude. ASAP.”

“Oliver. In keeping with the Bloom County theme.”

Bill nodded his approval. Oliver was a fun character and we’d liked him.

“One advantage of this arrangement, I guess, is that I know the whole plan already.”

Bill laughed and nodded. “Saves time.”

I stood up. “So, I’ll get to it. I may set up in competition with you, though.

Wanna bet I get FTL first?”

“I’d be overjoyed if you did, Oliver. Everyone wins.”

I waved to Bill, and popped back home.

* * *

Both Alpha Centauri A and B had reasonable resource levels. Bart and crew had concentrated their efforts in A, but I needed to get things rolling quickly.

It would be six months until my vessel was ready. At that point, I would start the autofactory in Alpha Centauri A to building Bobs on a crash basis, while I would fly over to Alpha Centauri B with another autofactory and set up there as well. At the top acceleration of a Version 4 vessel, it was less than a four-day trip.

Meanwhile, I would have to consider possible weapons against the Others.

Busters could pass through the cargo ships or death asteroids multiple times and do little or no detectable damage. Nukes were effective, and the expedition to 82 Eridani had yielded some good information. We didn’t have

time to figure out fission weapons from scratch. I regretted, a little, not having worked on that before. But only a little.

Plasma spikes, like busters, were simply too small. Not effective against the mega monster ships we would be going up against.

I needed either a large mass, a large explosion, or a lot of energy. Heat energy, electrical energy, gravitational, or momentum. Hmm, relativistic velocities. How fast could I accelerate things?

Hands behind my back, muttering in thought, I retired to my new mad-science lab.

* * *

I really had no idea what size of force I was going to need. However, there was very little downside to overdoing it, and a lot of downside to the converse. With that thought in mind, I decided to just go for everything I could manage.

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. But 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 workaholic. 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.

Belinda handed the pup to her mother-in-law and started cleaning herself.

Diana rocked the baby for a few moments—very likely another universal—

then smiled at Archimedes.

It was a picture-postcard moment, if you could ignore the bat-ears and pig snouts and fur. And I wanted, more than anything I’d wanted in a long time, to be able to share in it. Archimedes and Buster would have been fine, but Diana would go screeching to the elders at the first sign of a drone. Damn, I disliked her.

In his forties, now, Archimedes still showed exceptional good health. He was, of course, the first generation of Deltans to grow up with the improved nutrition that The Bawbe’s inventions had brought to the tribe. But even so, he seemed to be aging slowly for a Deltan.

I thought of pestering Bill again about the androids, but he had so many projects on the go, not the least of which was the terraforming of Ragnarök.

Bill was good-natured about it, but I had to believe that I was being a bit of a pain.

Just the same, he said he was close. A decade or two at most. It just wasn’t a priority. I suppose I could offer to help out, but realistically the Deltans and the armaments project still occupied most of my time. And anyway, no one

likes a kibitzer.

I pulled out of the surveillance drone, and picked another that was spying on Caerleon, the new Deltan village. Caerleon was situated in another of the old abandoned village sites—not surprising, since whatever made it a good location the first time would still hold true. With the reduction in gorilloid populations and alteration in gorilloid behavior, the village was a good deal safer now. I smiled sadly at the thought. That was the result of my efforts, and they couldn’t take that away from me.

Caerleon sat at the top of a rise, barely classifiable as a hill. But the thin soil prevented trees from growing there, resulting in a nice open space. Good for living, and easy to defend.

I found myself constantly worried, though, about relations between Caerleon and Camelot. The establishment of the second village had been peaceful in that no one got stabbed on the way out. But the acrimony had been strong, and tensions still ran high between the two villages. It boggled my mind that so soon after almost becoming extinct, the Deltans had managed to develop into some kind of cold war mentality. The real problem seemed to be that most of the residents of Caerleon were in the adolescent age range, and apparently felt a need to prove something.

The antagonism of the Caerleon Deltans concerned me enough, in fact, that I’d set up a surveillance system that would warn me if a significant number of them started a march on Camelot. I was probably just being paranoid, though. I hoped.

66. It’s Happening

Bill

January 2208

Epsilon Eridani

[Others convoy detected]

Not good. This was probably it. The Others would be heading for Gamma Pavonis to strip it down, leaving a dead planet and an empty system.

“Okay, Guppy. Details?”

[Convoy is twice the size of the GL 54 convoy. Projected destination is Delta Pavonis]

Delta Pavonis? That can’t be right. “Confirm that, please, Guppy.”

[Convoy trajectory is pointed directly at Delta Pavonis. Barring an unexpected course correction, certainty is 100%]

“Son of a bitch. The Pav.” I sent a quick email to Jacques in Delta Pavonis and Claude in Gamma Pavonis, explaining the situation. I followed up with messages to Oliver and Mario. Everyone else would get the announcement on the Current Events RSS feed.

Within seconds, several people popped into my VR.

“This is not according to plan,” Claude said.

Jacques shrugged. “I mentioned this possibility at a moot a while back.

Delta is a richer target. A couple of extra years may be a small price to pay for double the payoff. And they know it, seeing the size of the convoy they’re sending.”

“Any chance that’s because of us?”

“Not a chance, Claude,” I said. “They don’t know we’re in that system in the first place. And anyway, it’s not like we’ve done more than buzz around them like a gnat. We are irrelevant.”

“And we will be assimilated.” Oliver gave us a lopsided grin. We all chuckled dutifully, at the attempt at levity more than anything.

“Getting down to business, how is our troop buildup?” I looked at each person in turn.

Jacques spoke first. “I’ve got twenty dreadnaughts, each of which has five fission bombs and the usual complement of busters for defense. I’ve been working on some fusion bombs, but haven’t gotten them far enough along.

And now we’re out of time.”

Claude jumped in as soon as Jacques was done. “I’ve got fifteen dreadnaughts, but I’ve managed to make a total of six fusion bombs to replace some of the fission weapons.”

I looked at Oliver, who shrugged. “I’m building like crazy, old man, but I’m too far away to do any good. I’ll send out what I have, and maybe they’ll be useful for when the Others hit Gamma. Assuming they go there next.”

I looked around at everyone, then shook my head. “Another year or two, and we’d have had the cloaking cracked. I’m sure of it. As it is, do what you can. We’ll have a moot over the next couple of days, but other than moral support, you guys are on your own.”

* * *

The moot was held within a day. It was a somber affair. When I ascended the podium, all conversation ceased. No air horn, no boos. A sea of faces looked back at me, all wearing the same downcast expression.

“You all know the situation. Anyone have any ideas?”

“I don’t suppose your asteroid mover could move Pav…”

I looked at Thor. It probably hadn’t been a serious suggestion. “Sorry, buddy. In theory, the system can move anything, but right now I’d have trouble getting something the size of a planet to budge. Maybe someday…”

“If we don’t mind the inhabitants freezing to death about mid-way through the move.”

I nodded at Ben, one of the new batch of dreadnaughts. “True. The trip would still take a year or two subjective, and all that time spent without a sun.

No bueno for sure. I think we’re stuck with the situation as it is. It’s going to come down to a toe-to-toe punch-up, and unfortunately before we’re ready.

The only advantage we have is that we know it’s going to happen and they don’t.”

* * *

I looked over my reports. Claude had launched all of his new dreadnaughts to Delta Pavonis. With their better acceleration, they’d arrive before the Others,

but only just barely. Any strategies would have to be worked out while they were in transit.

Between Claude’s group and Jacques’, we had thirty-five dreadnaughts.

Jacques would probably get that total up to about sixty by the time Claude’s group arrived. It sounded like a lot until you looked at the size of the Others’

force. Twenty death asteroids, forty cargo vessels, and several hundred attendants. The attendants could be considered equivalent to busters. They were almost certainly AMI-controlled, and could be depended upon to ram an enemy if required. The cargo vessels would be difficult to destroy simply because of their size, but I didn’t expect a lot of offensive capability there.

The death asteroids would be the big unknown. We were pretty confident that we could withstand their death-rays, but we really didn’t know what other weaponry they might have in reserve. It was a safe bet that the Others had thought of the possibility of running into another species capable of fighting back.

I mentioned this to Garfield, and was surprised when he didn’t agree with me.

“I think we’ve visited pretty much every system that the Others have been to, Bill.” He waved a hand casually at the star map he’d popped up. “And they haven’t run into anything like that. So they’ve never had their butts kicked. Even when we’ve run up against them, the worst we’ve done is blow ourselves up. They’re arrogant. Borg-level arrogant and maybe even beyond.

We’re not even assimilation targets to them, we’re just food.”

I thought about this. “So you think they may be overconfident.” I grinned.

“Or maybe just appropriately confident.”

Garfield responded with a rueful chuckle. “Yeah, whatever. The point is, though, they may not have a plan B.”

67. Bad News

Howard

December 2210

HIP 14101

HIP 14101 was a bit of a bust. Nice sun, nice spectral lines, but nothing orbiting it worth talking about. A Jovian had managed to set up shop at the outer edge of the comfort zone, leaving no space for any terrestroid planets.

I was having a good time investigating it, though. According to WikiBob, no one had yet given a gas giant anything more than the standard cursory once-over. Okay, granted, they’re hard to colonize. But still.

Adapting the drones to operate inside the atmosphere of the Jovian was a constant headache—a game of Whack-a-Mole, as Original Bob would have said. I would get a little deeper in with each new prototype, but I was losing about one in three. But there was lots of metal in this system, and I had all the time in the world.

I was relaxing out on the patio when a ding indicated an incoming message. I popped it up and started to read.

It was another update from Dexter. More about the colonies, several new cities, population up over a million, space industries, yadda yadda.

Oh.

Stéphane was dying. Haliburton’s Encephalopathy had been identified within a decade of landing on Vulcan, and appeared to be one of the few diseases that found Terran life compatible. There was no treatment yet, and it was fatal within six months. I felt my stomach drop away. Stéphane had been my friend for a long time, and the thing with Bridget hadn’t changed that.

Not really. But it reminded me that I called humans ephemerals for a reason.

I’d been lounging around in this system for too long. First, I wrote an email to Bridget and Stéphane, and asked when I could arrange a call.

Then, there would be other calls to make.

* * *

I pinged Bill, then popped in when I got an acknowledgement. Garfield was there as well, sitting and drinking a coffee. Diagrams and notes covered all the walls. Just your basic, normal, mad-scientist lab.

Both of them looked down in the dumps. All the Bobs were preparing for the Others’ arrival in Delta Pavonis. Bill and Garfield no doubt felt pressure to produce new weapons, but you could only do what you could do. Well, I sympathized, but I had immediate concerns.

“Hey, guys,” I said, motioning to the decorations. “What’s the project?”

“Couple of different ones,” Garfield answered. “But most of this wall is the Android Project. That’s what you called about, right?”

I nodded, and examined my shoes for a few moments before looking up.

“How close are you guys to a more-or-less human-equivalent android? I’m going to have a funeral to attend soon.”

Bill and Garfield looked at each other, then back at me. “Pretty far along, actually. We’ve got a prototype. It looks like a mannequin, and you wouldn’t want to go dancing, but for walking around, I think it’s ready.”

“Could I make one in three months?”

Bill thought for a few moments. “Right now it’s all prototypes and one-offs, with manual assembly. We’d have to put together formal printer plans, but once we have those done, yes.”

I nodded. It would be in time. You never knew for sure with medical predictions, of course. But one could hope. “Send the plans to Dexter at Vulcan when they’re ready, okay?”

* * *

I’d received an email from Dexter that the android was ready. It was time to arrange a visit. I took a deep breath and placed a phone call.

After a few rings, Bridget answered the phone. “Howard?”

“Hi Bridge. How’s Stéphane doing?”

Bridget hesitated. She looked terrible. Stéphane’s illness was taking its toll on her as well. Her eyes were red, her hair was gray. Her skin was grey. I wanted to take her in my arms and make it all go away. And, I realized with a start, this was the first time that I had articulated my feelings about her so clearly.

“Stéphane won’t last much longer. Another couple of weeks is the most the doctors will commit to.”

“I’m so sorry, Bridget. How’s he taking it?”

“He’s mostly not lucid any more, Howard. We knew that was coming, and we’ve said our goodbyes.” She blinked back tears as she spoke. Brave words, but the pain behind them shone through.

I endured a momentary wave of grief as I realized I wouldn’t be able to say goodbye to my friend. I looked at Bridget without saying anything, and she nodded, understanding completely.

I tried to say the usual inane words of encouragement. I would have stayed on the line as long as she wanted. But she was tired, physically and emotionally, and she soon begged off.

I hung up the phone and put my face in my hands. It took several milliseconds to get myself under control, then I pinged Dexter.

“Hi Howard. Checking up on Manny?”

“Yep.” I looked around Dexter’s VR. It was a basic library sort of thing.

I’d begun to notice less and less effort by the Bobs, especially the later generations, to put together an interesting VR. I made a mental note to discuss the shift in attitudes with Dexter if the opportunity ever came up.

He nodded and popped up a video and some report summaries. The video showed Manny the android in his support cradle. He looked complete. I leaned forward and looked closely at the summary windows.

“All tests completed successfully,” Dexter said. “I figured you’d want to do the first activation.”

“Thanks, Dex.”

Bill’s android project had been going on and off for sixty-five years now, and this was the latest version. Manny consisted of a carbon-fiber-matrix skeleton, designed and articulated to replicate the human version as closely as possible. Memory plastics that contracted when a voltage was applied stood in for muscles. The artificial musculature was laid down over the skeleton in the same layout as human musculature. The result was something that should be able to move, behave, and appear realistic. And neural feedback from the android would ensure a realistic experience for the operator.

Unfortunately, human-appearing skin and hair were low on the priority list. Right now, Manny did indeed resemble a mannequin more than anything else. No hair, pale plastic-texture skin, and gray, staring eyes. According to the specs, facial muscle control was still a little spotty. I had a quick glance at the Deficiencies List.

Well, Bill had said it was a prototype.

68. Recording

Jacques

September 2212

Delta Pavonis

Guppy popped into VR. [New memory core is online]

“Good. It was getting a little tight. Have the drones resume the full program.”

Guppy nodded and disappeared.

I had implemented a plan to record as much of the planet as I could before the Others got here. Not just Pav civilization, either. Plants, animals, scenery, geology, anything and everything I could think of. I built a standalone set of stasis chambers well in advance of the colony ships, and now I was slowly stocking it with genetic material from every species that I could get a needle into. A very informal and ad hoc genetic diversity vault, in essence. I had no overall organization, as I’d had no time to catalog and categorize the life on Delta Pavonis 4 into any kind of system. I was, in effect, stealing a strategy from Noah and treating everything as a “kind”. The recordings would help with identifying species and such later. If there was a later.

I was also recording Pav societies, cultures, and languages. Between all the spying and recording, my data storage requirements were massive. Guppy had just done the third upgrade since I’d started the project. I estimated there was at least one more upgrade coming.

I had played with the idea of contacting some Pav on the sly, perhaps to get a personal account of life. But Bill had convinced me that it would be cruel at best, and at worst, ghoulish.

Instead, I operated as a passive observer. Our technology was much better than the Victorian-era Pav sciences, but even so, things didn’t always go perfectly. There’d been a couple of sightings, and Pav society now had their own version of conspiracy theorists and flying-saucer nuts.

It made me wonder if the human equivalents had been based on some kind of reality. I tried to imagine some alien version of replicants hanging around

Earth and kidnapping people. Mmm, nope. Especially with the anal probe thing. Just, no.

* * *

Since the plan involved kidnapping twenty thousand Pav, I wanted to have a pre-selected target group. Running around, grabbing people until I hit my quota, just didn’t strike me as efficient. I spent some time doing a census of small towns until I had found two that came in just under ten thousand souls each. I could, if necessary, top up the numbers from what appeared to be nearby military bases. The two towns, Mheijrkva

and Aizzilkva, were like small-town USA—rural, residential, stable population, family-oriented.

I wanted to document and understand Pav society at the grass-roots level.

On the other hand, I didn’t want to go down the road of Bob-1 and end up getting attached to individuals. I had a bad feeling, though, that we Bobs had a shared weakness of some kind—some need for attachment. It would require a delicate balancing act.

I picked a house at random in the town of Mheijrkva and set up surveillance. Gnat-sized roamers installed cameras and microphones in the house. I felt dirty, like some kind of voyeur, but reminded myself that I was preserving the record of a culture that would likely not exist in another decade.

* * *

The Los family group seemed fairly average, as Pav families went. Six adults, split evenly between the genders, plus nine children at various ages.

The Pav didn’t have a large need for privacy, so bedroom organization was based mostly on available space. Furniture tended to move around on a daily basis, depending on mood.

Meals were held at specific times, simply because of the logistics of preparing food for that many people. But there was no organization that I could see. My best metaphor was a birthday party attended by two-year-olds

—a total free-for-all.

The adults held an assortment of jobs. The Pav didn’t seem to care about stratification of social classes. The matriarch of the house, Da Hazjiar Los, was on Mheirkva’s town council. She seemed intelligent and, for a Pav, very level-headed. I made a point of tagging her for special handling, if and when.

I settled in for some long-term spying on people’s lives.

69. Wake

Howard

January 2211

Vulcan

Okay, here goes. This was the third time I’d said that, but I still hadn’t opened the cargo bay door. Stage fright, for sure.

Manny would never be mistaken for human. He was a giant step down from Mr. Data, in fact. But I had told Bridget I would be there, and I was going to keep my promise.

I took a deep breath—Manny performed the motion, not that he needed oxygen—and commanded the door to open. I stepped out and looked around.

I had landed the cargo drone in the parking lot of the funeral home. A small crowd of people was gathered in front of the building entrance, watching. I guess they’d been waiting for me. I activated magnification for a moment and recognized several people, including Butterworth.

I walked toward the group, concentrating on not falling flat on my face.

I’d practiced beforehand, but this was my first physical public appearance in almost two hundred years. Nervous didn’t even begin to cover it.

Butterworth nodded to me. “Not bad, Howard. I’m sure you’ll continue to improve the product.”

I nodded back. There wasn’t enough facial control to smile, yet, and I didn’t trust my voice right at that moment.

We stepped into the building, where Bridget was waiting. She smiled, and my heart was almost wrenched out of my chest at the sadness there. She’d been with Stéphane for eighteen years. She stepped up to me and said,

“Howard. I’m glad you came. Can I hug you?”

“Yes, of course. Manny has full sensory input. It’ll be my first real hug since I, uh…” Died. Wow. Almost a total foot-in-mouth moment. “…since I became a replicant.”

She wrapped her arms around me and hugged, and I could feel every bit of it, from her head against my cheek, to her breasts against my chest, to her

arms around my back. The moment lasted an eternity, and a fraction of a second. Bridget stepped back and looked into my eyes, and I tried to re-engage my brain.

I finally managed, “It’s good to see you.” A small, panicked corner of my mind wondered if Manny had faithfully rendered my imitation of a fish trying to breathe. I hoped not.

I looked towards the coffin. “I guess replication wasn’t an option?”

“Catholic, remember?” Bridget gave me a wan smile. “I don’t think the Archbishop would approve.”

I wanted to ask if she would reconsider it for herself, but this wasn’t the time or place.

This was the memorial. The funeral mass had already been held, and I hadn’t actually forgotten that Stéphane was Catholic. I would have been a distraction, to put it mildly. Bridget had been careful with who she invited to this event, to prevent any kind of awkwardness with yours truly.

We stood around and talked, compared memories. I met Bridget’s children, Rosie, Lianne, and Howard, who answered to Howie. He would have just turned thirteen by the old Earth calendar, and seemed uncomfortable with his height, as if he’d just been through a growth spurt.

Howie bombarded me with questions, while the two girls stood behind him and looked on with wide eyes. Turned out Stéphane had told stories about me.

I told Howie a few stories about his father. As I did, memories of our early days on Vulcan flooded back. Stéphane had always accepted me as just a guy he talked to on the phone a lot. There’d never been any awkwardness, any reserve. It hit me that he was the best friend I’d had since well before I died. I scheduled a good cry for later, when I was alone.

Bridget came over to stand beside me, a plate of food in her hand. I looked down at it: the usual mix of hors d’oeuvres, meat slices, and crackers. Bridget saw my glance and asked, “Can you eat?”

“Not yet. Bill’s going to engineer Manny to be as human-like as possible, eventually. He’s been distracted with the Others thing, though. I’ll eat something in VR.”

Bridget looked at her children, at her plate, everywhere but at me. I knew the conversation we’d had before I left Vulcan was still hanging there, between us. I sighed, and experienced a moment of panic when I realized that

the sigh was audible.

“We’ll talk some other time. You’re not leaving right after the memorial, are you?” Bridget had a small smile on her face.

“Uh, well, physically I’m about nineteen light-years away, Bridget. SCUT

remote capability is making distance mostly irrelevant. Manny will go into storage when I’m done with him. So there’s no leaving as such. I’ll always be around, whether by phone or in person. So to speak.”

I looked around. The two girls had wandered off, but Howie was glued to our conversation.

* * *

“How’d it go?” Bill’s posture reminded me of Bridget, the day we introduced our product to Butterworth.

I guess I should have expected it. This was a potentially watershed moment for the Bobs. Real physical contact would change all of our interactions.

Bill and Garfield had both popped in as soon as I came back to VR. Dexter was there, as resident Bob. And Bob-1 had shown up as well. I gathered from conversation that he’d been harassing Bill for years about the androids.

“It worked,” I said. “It was a controlled environment, and everyone there was expecting me, of course. I don’t know about going out in public.”

“But it’s a start. And a successful one.” Bob was nodding his head repeatedly. I wondered for a second if his avatar had gotten stuck in a loop.

But no, that was just excitement.

I accepted the inevitable, and settled into my chair for the debriefing.

“But how did it feel?” Bill fairly glared at me with the intensity of his question.

I had a momentary image of him reaching down my throat and ripping the answer out of me. I snickered, which got me a couple of concerned looks.

“Uh, compared to VR?” I looked up for a moment, organizing my thoughts.

“It’s an order of magnitude more real. I don’t know how much of that is psychological, just from knowing that it is real. But I think the VR only provides the sensations we’ve programmed it to provide, while Manny gives us everything, expected or not, relevant or not, and not under our control.

Think of it as the difference between trying to tickle yourself versus being tickled by someone else. It’s an entirely different, far more intense

experience.”

“Yeah,” Bill responded. “I tried to get some of that back with the baseball games, but I think it still falls short.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Bill. It’s not like I expect us to all fall over and go crackers. The VR saved Bob-1, and it’s saved all of us. We all agree on that.”

I shrugged. “But it’s not the full-on experience. We’ve forgotten what that’s like. Today just reminded me.”

I looked at Bob, who had finally gotten the head-bobbing under control but was now bouncing on his toes. An arched eyebrow made him blush and stop the motion.

“I think the Android Project should be bumped up in priority,” Bob said.

Bill rolled his eyes. “There’s a surprise. You willing to help? You have the free time, right?”

Bob looked abashed, and Bill winced at the unintentional cheap shot.

“Sorry, buddy. Didn’t mean that the way it came out.”

Bob shrugged. “I get it. And yeah, I do have a lot of free time these days.

Maybe this will help.”

Bill popped up the project notes and schematics, probably rushing to change the subject. Garfield moved in, and the conversation went all technoid.

I sighed, stood and waved to everyone, then popped back to my VR. I had some thinking of my own to do.

70. Conversation

Howard

May 2211

HIP 14101

Bridget’s voice sounded tired. She was looking better, though, at least over the phone. Her color was coming back, she was starting to take care of herself again. I ached to say something, to take her hand, to—okay, I needed to cut off that train of thought. I silently chanted ephemeral a half-dozen times. It didn’t help.

“But it wouldn’t be me, would it, really?” Bridget’s image in the video window smiled.

Her sad smile was a pale ghost of the high-wattage grin that I remembered from better days. I swallowed and, after a false start or two, replied, “That’s a philosophical argument that I freely admit I’m not able to be objective about.

I’m not Original Bob. I’m not even Bob-1 or Will or Charles. But I’m me, and I feel just as alive as Original Bob did.”

I stood up and began to pace around my apartment. The image that Bridget’s phone displayed to her would, of course, stay centered on me. “It would be you in very real ways, Bridget. I don’t know from souls, but in every other way, you would live on.”

“I mentioned the idea casually,” Bridget said after a moment of silence.

“The girls looked horrified. Even Howie looked unsure. And you know he’s all about you and the other Bobs.”

I smiled in response. Bridget’s son was certainly my biggest fan.

I hesitated before continuing. “Look, Bridget, it’s not like any decision is irrevocable. Except the one that’s in force if and when. I checked with Benning. All you need to do is have her record a video call where you state your wishes. It counts as a codicil. You can record a new one any time.”

“I know, Howard. And for the moment, at least, I’ll have to pass.”

I sighed, defeated. “Okay, Bridget. But I’m still going to build the equipment. At least we don’t have to behead and freeze you nowadays—the

stasis pods will do a much better job of preservation. And the scanners are pretty straightforward. Plus, it’s not necessarily just you. We could—” I stopped abruptly as a thought hit me. I queued it for consideration after the call.

Bridget looked at me with an arched eyebrow, but I didn’t explain, so she dropped it. “I hope you won’t be upset at me for this, Howard. I still want you to visit and all.”

“Of course not. It’s your decision, Bridget, and I’ll respect that. And yes, I’ll visit when I can.” I gave her an apologetic shrug. “Manny is getting a makeover right now. Bob-1 is insanely OCD when he’s motivated—no surprise to anyone—and he’s been improving the android tech at a furious pace.” I chuckled. “Bill admitted to me that he’s a bit embarrassed. He worked on the project for decades, and Bob’s leaving him in the dust in a timespan of months.”

“So Manny will be a little more human next time I see you?”

“Actually, Manny will look like Original Bob, from what I’m told.

Believable hair and skin, and so forth. And he’ll be able to eat. Although he won’t—uh, never mind.” TMI. She really didn’t need to know the ultimate fate of the meal.

Bridget laughed. She knew exactly where my mind had gone. Just one of many things I loved about her.

“So we can finally have dinner together?”

I smiled and nodded. Finally, a real date.

* * *

“Butterworth?” Bill stared at me, eyebrows climbing his forehead.

“Well, granted, Riker will probably have a cow, which will be ironic. But Butterworth has got to be in his eighties now, if not more. The guy’s like an Egyptian mummy. He just gets drier and more leathery.”

“Maybe he’s a Pak Protector.” Bill grinned at me.

I rolled my eyes. Honestly, sometimes the early-generation Bobs were a bit weird. “Yeah, anyway, he’s military. Or ex-military, whatever. Maybe he can help with the war.”

“Interesting thought, Howard. I’m not against it, by any means. We should run it through a moot before bringing it up with Butterworth, though.”

I nodded, unfazed. Moots were held weekly, these days, because of the

Others’ threat. I wouldn’t have to wait long.

* * *

I’d never seen Butterworth actually speechless before. I’d seen him trying not to explode, I’d seen him explode, I’d

listened

to him explode. This was new.

Butterworth stared into the video window, his jaw hanging slightly open.

Finally, he found his voice. “You want to replicate me?”

“Well, eventually. Not like this week. The process can’t be done on a living person, not if you want to be left with a living person afterwards. But I’m building the equipment for—er, for any such circumstance, and it occurred to me that you would be valuable for the war effort.”

Butterworth looked down at his desk in silence. Then he looked up and smiled. “Sure, why not?”

Well, that was easy. “Um, okay. I’ll send you a file with some information. You’ll need to update your will.”

Butterworth nodded and ended the call.

71. Charlie

Bob

June 2213

Delta Eridani

Charlie hung in the rack, powered down and looking boneless. The Deltan android looked utterly convincing—I had put a lot of effort into getting the fur right, both in texture and layout. I didn’t want Charlie to come across like all the bad ape and werewolf costumes from twentieth century movies. This needed to be believable.

I realized that I was stalling. The android had been checked out every which way, and it was now time to put up or shut up.

Sighing, I ordered the cargo drone to open the hangar door, while I activated Charlie.

I turned my head and looked out the cargo bay doors. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the bright daylight outside. I undraped myself from the support rack and, staggering a little, walked to the doors. I stood for a moment, looking around at the forest. I’d seen all of this many times, of course, from the various drones, but there was something viscerally different this time. I was here in some undefinable way. It might be as simple as the feeling of the breeze lightly ruffling my fur, or the smell of the damp leaf layer that formed the floor of the forest. I spared a moment to grin with unconstrained joy, which the autonomic interface converted to a spread-eared, wide-eyed expression appropriate to a Deltan.

Stepping out onto the surface of Eden, I looked down at the ground, feeling the slightly slimy texture as the decaying leaf fragments squished between my clawed toes. Dappled sunlight flickered as the tree branches and leaves moved in the breeze. With an effort, I brought myself back on task. I triggered the heads-up display and pulled up a local map. The image hovering in my line of sight showed my location, and the location of Archimedes relative to me. I turned to line him up, and began to walk.

* * *

I spotted Archimedes through the underbrush, the observation drone hovering near his shoulder. He casually worked a small flint core as he waited. It appeared I was far more nervous about this meeting than he was. Or maybe that was his way of coping.

Well, whatever. Showtime. I walked towards him, and said his name as soon as I was within conversational distance. He looked up, and his eyes went wide. Springing to his feet, he squeaked, “Bawbe?”

I grinned at him as I approached. I opened my mouth to respond, but stopped in surprise when he jerked back and exclaimed, “Woof! Wow!”

“Problem?”

“Sorry, Bawbe. You smell. Kind of like the drones, especially when a new one is delivered. And also a bit like the ashes from a cold fire. You definitely won’t fool anyone.”

“Aw crap.” I rolled my eyes in frustration. “I didn’t think of that. Deltans depend much more on the sense of smell than humans do. Is it really bad?”

“Not as long as I’m upwind, no.” He grinned at me.

“Gotcha. Okay, I’ll go work on it. How about the rest? Does it look okay?”

Archimedes cocked his head one way, then the other. “You move in a sort of jerky way. Like a pup when he’s learning to walk, but maybe that’ll go away. What’s more weird is that your fur pattern is exactly the same on both sides of your body. No one is like that. It stands out.”

Of course. I’d made Charlie completely symmetrical. I would have to fix that. And the odor. I needed to smell like a Deltan, and more importantly like an individual. I took a deep lungful of Archimedes, cataloguing his odor and the lingering essence of what had to be Diana. It wasn’t insurmountable, thank the universe. Just chemistry.

“Got it. Okay, Archimedes. I’ll go away and fix this stuff. I can see you trying to stay upwind of me, even though you’re being polite about it.” I chuckled. “Having been downwind of a couple of people who needed showers, in a former life, I can relate.”

Archimedes looked slightly confused, but nodded. I waved goodbye and turned to walk back to the cargo drone.

* * *

Charlie the android, Take 2. I walked up to Archimedes and spread my arms, palms forward, in a

Well?

gesture.

He took a deep sniff, cocked his head, and nodded. “You’re walking better, as well. I guess that’s just practice, like with children. And your fur pattern is better. It’s very simple, but I know a few people like that. You’ll just be forgettable.” He grinned at me.

I laughed in response. “Well, that’s fine. The last thing I want is to attract attention. Now, will I be questioned if I enter Camelot?”

“No, I don’t think so.” Archimedes turned and gestured towards the village, and we began walking. I silently ordered the drone to return to standby.

“Camelot is so big, now,” he continued, “and Caerleon is growing as well.

Even with the tension between us and them, a certain number of people still move back and forth. It’s not like there are rules about it.” He gave me a sideways glance and a knowing grin.

I pantomimed silent laughter at him.

Archimedes and I had talked about many things over the decades. I think he now understood that I wasn’t some kind of supernatural being, just someone with more knowledge than him. In a society where very little changed from generation to generation, it was easy to think of The Way Things Are as some kind of natural state. But Archimedes had seen enough new knowledge in his lifetime to understand that when you went from not knowing something to knowing something, it changed the way you lived.

With the loss of that awe had come a much deeper friendship, and a better understanding between us. Archimedes thought a lot of the things humans took for granted were hilarious. Like the idea of rules for everything. Deltans simply wouldn’t stand for such regimentation of their lives.

I found myself coming around to his point of view, more and more.

In short order we arrived at Camelot. With an effort of will, I suppressed the Monty Python skit from my mind.

As we walked across the land bridge, I looked ahead at the village proper.

It was a sea of Deltans, in groups around the central fires, and smaller groups around individual fire-pits. I could see Archimedes’ point. No one would be able to keep track of this many people. Really, based on the old definition of a village where everyone knew everyone else, this could be thought of as an

unhealthy development. Caerleon wasn’t much better. I wondered if the Deltans had a higher tolerance for crowding, or if they had developed a reluctance to split off villages because of the gorilloid and hippogriff threats.

I resolved to bring it up with Archimedes when time permitted.

We moved toward Archimedes’ hexghi. There I saw Diana, Buster, Belinda, and a couple of generations of children around the fire. Buster’s siblings had long since moved on to their own firepits, but Buster had stayed close with his father. I was glad of that.

So, Diana. I was unreasonably nervous. Really, how could she associate me with The Bawbe? I appeared to be some random Deltan. Just the same, I couldn’t shake it.

We sat down at the fire, and Archimedes introduced me to the adults using a common Deltan name, which I instructed the translation routine to render as Robert. I performed the proper ear-waggle greeting to each. Diana didn’t even twitch, and I relaxed.

I noted that Diana was looking old and frail. It confirmed my feeling that Archimedes was aging more slowly than average. Probably the same gene responsible for his increased intelligence was affecting his lifespan. I felt a moment of relief that she might be gone soon, then a spike of shame at the thought. I might not like her, but she was Archimedes’ life mate, and he was my friend.

The kids—I realized with a shock that these were Buster’s grandchildren

—had started a game of tag while the adults talked, and one of them barreled into me. There was a moment of tense silence, then I laughed and poked the child with a finger. The tension dissolved and Diana passed around some jerky.

Just family.

72. Battle

Bill

February 2217

Delta Pavonis

All warfare is based on deception.

-- Sun Tzu, Art of War

The defensive crews were less than a week away from Delta Pavonis, and their tau was now down to the point where it was worthwhile having a conversation. Rather than asking them to jack up to our time rate, we would be slowing down to theirs. Because of the numbers, I was hosting the meeting in the moot VR.

“First and most significant,” I said, “is that we’ve cracked the cloaking tech. It took a lot longer than I expected, so Jacques has only been able to retrofit about half of his nukes. There’s no time for you to do anything, so all the non-stealthed hardware—including Bobs—is going to be considered decoys.”

I looked around the room at a sea of somber faces. We’d all gone into this with the attitude that it was probably a suicide mission. With remote backups, suicide missions weren’t as final as they used to be, but still… the person restored from a backup was not the person who created the backup. It was some comfort to know that your memories would go on, but it didn’t feel that it would be personal in some way.

I glanced at the status window that I had put up. It showed the Others’

armada only two days farther out. We had very little time to deploy a defense.

“How are we doing this, then?” asked Andrew, one of the squad leaders.

I nodded to him, acknowledging the question. “I’ve discussed strategy with Butterworth. Unfortunately, most space battle strategy is theoretical, since there’s only been one space war. But I discussed options extensively with him, and the colonel did have some suggestions about deployment. He

can’t be personally involved, of course, since he operates on biological time.

For what it’s worth, I’ll be acting as his proxy.”

There were silent nods around the circle. I added arrows and icons to the status window. “Your group is coming in from this side, and Jacques’ group will be coming in from here and here. We’ll hit in three waves, staggered so we’re not taking each other out. Hopefully the Others can’t redeploy defenses quickly enough and will have to split their assets into three groups instead.”

The animation in the window played out a visual of my description.

“While the Others are fending us off, the stealth bombs will come straight in. We hope that they will be able to get in close and do some significant damage.”

I sat back, chin in hand, and studied the graphic. There was no subtlety at all. On the other hand, it was nice and simple, with few unknowns.

* * *

The first attack group was five minutes out when the Others registered their presence. The group’s trajectory brought them in at thirty degrees off of their approach line. I could see in the SUDDAR window that the Others were deploying drones to act as a first wave of defenders. There wasn’t enough detail at that distance to be able to tell, but we assumed they were rotating the death asteroids to target us as well.

There was very little conversation as we approached. Each Bob presumably took the time to make peace with his own thoughts. Or update his backup. Either or.

At about three minutes distance, there was a whoop from one of the dreadnaughts. “Just took a hit from a death ray,” he announced. “I got sparks, but no significant damage.”

I smiled but didn’t comment. At this distance, even a version-3 Heaven vessel would have survived. We had to assume they were either massively overconfident, or that had been just a probe of some kind. At least one death asteroid was now discharged. It was unlikely it would be able to recharge in time to participate further in this battle.

At one minute, I activated the general channel. “Time to rock, boys.

Deploy all busters and nukes. Let’s light up the sky!”

The Bobs did as ordered. Seventy-five ships became almost four hundred signatures. Now the Others would have to react. Death zaps would simply not

be an option for taking us down.

And sure enough, SUDDAR indicated a massive rearrangement of vessels.

We had a couple hundred drones to deal with. Statistically, we should be able to get through the defenders with about half of our units, but that wouldn’t be enough to take the Others’ main vessels down. I was sure the Others must be smiling—or whatever they did—with glee at our pathetic showing.

And finally, contact. Andrew’s group was the first to pass through the Others’ armada. At the speeds they were travelling, there was no chance of any actual visual contact. Star Wars notwithstanding, ships didn’t buzz around each other like World War II fighter planes. Everything happened in microseconds, and showed up only in status windows.

Results from the first pass showed we’d lost about half of our busters and bombs, and eight dreadnaughts, but we’d taken out about twice as many of them. That was pretty good, and should wipe the smile-equivalents off of the Others’ face-equivalents.

Apparently the Others agreed, because half of the death asteroids released zaps at our armada.

“Report,” I ordered on the general channel.

Responses came back. No further Bob casualties, although a couple of the dreadnaughts were doing emergency repairs. They must have been caught square in the middle of a beam.

However, the bombs and busters weren’t particularly shielded, and any unit caught anywhere in one of the death-rays was dead. We had made a decision, based on this likelihood, to equip these units with regular radio comms only. No advanced SUDDAR, no SCUT, and no chance of giving anything away to the enemy.

The second wave came in right away, not giving the Others time to regroup. They approached from thirty degrees off the Others’ flight line as well, coming in from a vector at 120 degrees of rotation. I watched in the status window transmitted by the group leader.

The second wave passed through the Others’ armada as quickly as we had, but with much less organized resistance from the Others. We were able to put several nukes into a couple of big cargo carriers, and even into one of the death asteroids. The nuke must have hit a charged accumulator of some kind, because the pyrotechnics were truly epic—far more than could be accounted for by a low-yield fission bomb. Twin jets of white-hot plasma, glowing right

into the x-ray band, shot out of the vessel in opposite directions. The surface of the death asteroid peeled back, then it completely disintegrated, spewing pieces in all directions. Cheers went up from all the video windows.

The Others responded with a volley of something—possibly drones, possibly missiles—aimed at the receding attack group. The bogeys displayed truly incredible acceleration, in the hundreds of G’s. It took only moments for us to find out what they were.

Fusion bombs.

The second battle group had been clustered together—no reason to scatter, as far as they knew. Now they were melted slag. We’d lost twenty-five dreadnaughts and a couple hundred drones. Bobs looked at each other, stunned.

But our third battle group was coming in, and we had no time to mourn. I sent a quick IM to the group leader, instructing them to scatter at the end of their pass.

The Others started moving their defenses to the point a further 120 degrees around, where they expected us to come in, given a symmetrical series of assaults.

Exactly what Butterworth had suggested they’d do.

Our third group came in only ten degrees off the first group’s path, 130

degrees away from where the defenses were forming, completely blindsiding them. The dreadnaughts and drones tore through the defenders like tissue paper. Lobbed fission weapons took out two cargo vessels and another death asteroid.

As the battle group exited the theater on the far side, they scattered. The Others launched another volley of fusion drones in pursuit. The Bobs had a massive head start, but the pursuers had that ridiculous level of acceleration.

It was a footrace we couldn’t win.

Everyone was intent on the developing drama, which left the door open for Butterworth’s next suggestion. A trio of lonely nukes, on ballistic trajectories, with virtually no emissions, now sailed in from the vector from which the Others had been expecting the third attack. Three flashes, and two more cargo vessels were drifting, offline.

I imagine, somewhere in one of the death asteroids, some Others general was screaming invective at his subordinates while veins pulsed on his neck and forehead. Or some equivalent. In any case, the Others apparently decided

to finally take us seriously. A massive series of SUDDAR pings emanated from their fleet, swamping our receivers. The transmission power was truly incredible, and my jaw dropped at the readings. I looked at one of the other Bobs. The sheer power behind that broadcast said, better than anything else they’d done, that we were gnats.

And more to the point, it lit up every vessel and drone in the immediate area. Whether it would reveal our last surprise or not, well, we’d know in a few moments.

It did.

The Others launched a dozen fusion drones straight forward along their flight line, where several cloaked fusion bombs were approaching. This would have been our coup de grâce. Instead, it would be little more than a parting shot.

I instructed the incoming nukes to begin evasive maneuvers. The Others might not be able to maintain a continuous bead on the cloaked units.

The Others’ fusion drones deployed into a defensive grid, and detonated simultaneously.

“Not bad…” Charlie said. “They estimated that pretty well.”

I checked status. “They took out two of ours. The last one still looks operational. I don’t think they have time to do anything about it. It’s also interesting that they haven’t broadcast another ping like the last one…”

“Like the gamma-ray blasts, it probably requires a recharge.”

I nodded distractedly while I guided the last cloaked fusion weapon. Right into one of the death asteroids. It detonated perfectly. When the flash cleared, there was nothing left but scattered debris.

We were done. We’d used up everything we had. Our battle groups, what was left, were heading away from the Others’ fleet at far too high a velocity to be able to turn around in any reasonable interval. By the time we could get back in the game, the Others would be at the Pav home planet.

Eight death asteroids and eleven cargo carriers were still under power. If they decided to continue on and rebuild in the system, there would be nothing we could do. We held our breath, as the seconds ticked by.

No change.

I sat, stunned, as the Others continued on towards Delta Pavonis, and the Pavs.

We’d failed.

[Incoming message. In Mandarin]

I was almost doubled over with nausea, but it was logical to find out what they had to say. “Put it on, Guppy.”

You have proven to be more than food. You are pests. We will harvest

this system, despite your pathetic attempts at defense. Then we will harvest

your Sol and Epsilon Eridani systems. And your species will end its

existence in our larders.

Fuck.

I tried to open a chat with Jacques, but got nothing. I pinged Andrew instead.

“Hey Andrew. Any idea where Jacques is?”

“Hey, Bill. Sorry, Jacques was killed during his group’s attack. We have a differential up to the last few minutes, so we’ll be restoring him as soon as we have a new vessel.”

“Crap.” I rubbed my forehead. We had some spare matrices, but it could still be days before we were able to get that done.

Andrew interrupted my train of thought. “Did he ever follow through on that plan to kidnap some Pav?”

“Yeah. Kind of a worst-case response. I’ve triggered implementation already. We’ll get twenty thousand Pav off-planet before the Others get there.

We’re not going to be gentle about it, though. We can’t afford to have a discussion and ask for volunteers.”

The Pav were now an endangered species. I just hoped that Jacques had taken plant and animal specimens and such.

73. Collection

Phineas

February 2217

Delta Pavonis

I closed the connection with Bill, and turned to Ferb. The defense of Delta Pavonis had failed, and we now had to compound the karmic deficit by ripping up to twenty thousand people from their homes by force.

Jacques had put a lot of thought into the problem, and Ferb and I had expanded on the plan once we’d come online. It wasn’t going to be pretty.

But there simply wasn’t time for explanation and debate. It should have helped that the people we were going to snatch would otherwise die. It didn’t.

Jacques had selected two towns of the right size, in different parts of the target country, to maximize genetic diversity while still retaining community.

We carried specialist drones in our holds, ready to do the deed.

I hovered over my town, Mheijr, in the dead of night. If this was Earth, it would be about 3 a.m. A dog barked—well, the local equivalent of a dog did the equivalent of barking—but otherwise, there was no movement. Without an electrical grid, most places still went totally dark once everyone went to bed.

I sent out the first wave of drones. These were equipped with canisters of a heavy, odorless gas that we’d developed. It would render the victims unconscious for up to four hours. By then, hopefully, we’d have them all in stasis.

The drones performed their task, then headed back to the cargo hold, and the second wave of drones exited to collect bodies. Each drone could hold two adult Pav. It would take about fifty trips per drone to collect the full ten thousand people.

I hoped that we would come up under ten thousand in total rather than have to leave people behind. I dreaded what anyone would have to go through, waking up to find that almost everyone in their town had disappeared. It would be devastating, even without the inevitable suspicion

that would fall on them.

The operation completed flawlessly.

Some comments over the SCUT from Ferb indicated that his end wasn’t going quite so swimmingly. I smiled, thinking of the ribbing I’d give him.

Then I lost the smile when I realized neither of us would be in the mood.

I’d emptied the town, with a count of 9,273. I checked with Ferb, to see what his head count would be like. His town was coming in under as well, so I implemented one of our contingency plans. There were a number of bases within a few hundred miles that housed either standing armies or perhaps some version of peacekeeping forces. I raided three of them, and brought my total up to within a hundred of my maximum capacity. Some military personnel would be worth having.

The gas we had used would biodegrade within hours. By the time investigators were brought in, there wouldn’t even be an odor. Assuming they had time to do that before the Others got here.

I pinged Ferb. “Ready to go?”

He didn’t answer for a few milliseconds. I was just opening my mouth to repeat the question when he responded.

“Yeah, looks like it. Woo hoo…”

I nodded to myself. Yeah, woo hoo, indeed.

74. Observing the Process Bill

May 2217

Delta Pavonis

The Others ignored us.

I wasn’t sure if they knew we had nothing left, or if they were simply not interested unless we attacked again. But either way, they didn’t chase us out of the system or attempt to sweep it for drones.

We had a dozen or so stealth drones still in service, so we deployed them to record the harvesting process. This would be the hardest thing I’d ever done, but we needed as much information as possible.

The Others took a week to set up around Delta Pavonis 4. Then the death asteroids started a series of sweeps that eventually covered the entire planet.

We couldn’t get close enough for a visual, but we knew what was happening.

Up to a billion sentient beings were being slaughtered, to serve as food and to clear the way for efficient mining operations.

Over the next several weeks the Others deployed massive printer operations. It was too early to tell for sure, but it looked like at least some of them would be building new cargo vessels.

I closed the windows and instructed Guppy to let me know if anything needed my attention. I pinged Jacques, and received an invitation to visit.

Jacques had had ten years to prepare for the arrival of the Others, and he’d planned accordingly. He had built two colony ships adapted for Pav passengers. They now contained twenty thousand Pav in stasis. We could keep them in that state for as long as necessary. Eventually, the Others would leave. We would attempt to restart the ecology, then we’d decant the Pav. I didn’t look forward to that conversation.

Jacques had also built several spare matrices and housed them in the colony ships, ready for any casualties of the attack. He probably hadn’t counted on being one of those. Now he was a passenger, with no ship of his own.

Still, with the state of our VR tech and SCUT communications, it wasn’t a huge disability. More of an inconvenience.

I popped in. “Hi Jacques. How’s the life of a passenger?”

He shrugged. “Meh. I’m more of an administrator right now. Trying to clean up and organize the surviving Bobs and equipment, and do inventory.

Nothing unaccounted for, so we don’t have to worry about the Others getting SCUT or something similar.”

I waved that away. “I already checked up on that. I’m more worried about the Pav. Should we consider moving them to another system?”

“I know what you mean, Bill. Here, they’ll be going back to a dead planet.

Psychologically, that’s going to be devastating. I’ve got enough seed stock and such to rebuild a basic ecology, but ninety percent of the planetary diversity is gone for good.”

“So, why not another system? Besides the psychological issues, by the time the Others are done with it, there’ll be no metal left.”

“Erm, the Others aren’t that thorough. They take like 95% of it, but they don’t scrabble for every last gram. Still, it will be a problem if the Pav want to rebuild an industrial society. Could we bring in resources from out-system?”

I sighed and shook my head. “Theoretically, sure. But then we’ve got another race depending on us. Another client race. Do you really want to become an overlord?”

“Crap.” Jacques sat back and rubbed his forehead. “Whatever happened to heading off into the cosmos and exploring? I distinctly remember that was the plan when Bob-1 was heading for Epsilon Eridani in the first place.”

“I know. No one to answer to, no responsibility except to ourself. Maybe we’ll get back to that eventually. Right now, though, we’ve got all these problems, and we can’t just walk away.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jacques gave me a wry look, with one eyebrow raised.

“Still, Pacino just keeps looking smarter and smarter.”

“Mm. Look, all this is on the agenda for the next moot. It’s not going to be a fun meeting.”

* * *

It was not a fun meeting.

We had just witnessed the death of somewhere between half a billion and

a billion people. We Bobs are generally upbeat and optimistic, but this had really kicked the stuffing out of us.

“I keep telling myself that this isn’t the first species that they’ve wiped out,” Howard said, to the room in general. “But it doesn’t help.”

“This is the first one that we’ve witnessed,” Tony responded. “It’s just more real, somehow.”

There were nods, followed by a long silence.

From the back, a voice muttered, “They need to be exterminated.”

The crowd muttered agreement. I looked in the general direction of the voice. “That’s a significant decision. Nevertheless, I’m not inclined to argue.

Let’s wait a couple of days to let our emotions die down, then take a vote.”

“Leaving outstanding,” Thor said, “the small detail of exactly how we’re going to do that.”

This comment produced another long silence. No one was really in the mood for deep thought. We’d save this subject for another day.

* * *

I orbited over Ragnarök, watching listlessly through my forward camera as the planet turned beneath me. After the moot, I’d had some idea of working on my current android, but I couldn’t even get up the energy to do that.

Funny, since Bob-1 had woken up in New Handeltown all those years ago, we’d always seemed to be on top of things. Yeah, there were dangers, there were scary times. I remembered being unsure of whether I’d come out alive in the encounter with Medeiros. And I also remembered being almost unsurprised when he went down.

This was the first time that we had completely, unutterably failed at something. This was a total rout. There was no way to wring a moral victory out of it. And worse, I didn’t see any way to turn it around.

I watched Bullseye slide across my view as I passed that section of the planet. The crater was now a freshwater sea, with a central island. Okay, that was kind of a failure, too.

The Others had brushed us aside like fleas. They’d stated their intention to hit Earth, and if we tried to stop that, they’d probably just brush us aside again. There was no way that Will was going to be able to get everyone off Earth before the Others arrived. Not even a significant fraction.

We might, if we threw everything into it, be able to get a couple million

out of the way. But no more. And that would only delay the inevitable. The Others were coming, and coming to all the possible homes of humanity. We were an endangered species, as long as they continued to exist.

Garfield popped in, and we exchanged a few words. He wasn’t in any better mood. There would be no cheering up happening here today, not by anyone. He sat and watched the video window with me.

The time passed, almost unfelt. Eventually, Bullseye came around and slid across my view again, mocking me with this visible reminder of my fallibility. Nothing like a couple hundred thousand tons of ice to make a dent in a planet.

Nothing like a couple hundred thousand tons… I sat up, abruptly, frowning. Garfield glanced sideways at my unexpected movement. Maybe we’d been looking at this all wrong.

75. Reunion

Howard

January 2216

HIP 14101

Wow, and I thought the stage-fright was bad last time. I’d been staring at the inside of the cargo door for what felt like forever. By this time, Bridget would have given up and gone to bed.

I checked the time. Three seconds elapsed. Oh, for—

With a feeling akin to resignation, I ordered the door to open, and walked out of the cargo bay.

Bridget stood on her porch, waiting. She gave me a smile and a small, aborted wave as I turned in her direction. I walked toward the patio, cataloguing all the sensations I was receiving from Manny—the cool evening breeze, the slight unevenness of the front walkway, the brush of my clothing as I moved. And the disappearance of every inch of distance as I approached her. Like falling down a gravity well.

Finally, after a million years or so, I walked up the two wooden steps, stopped in front of her, and held out my hands. She took them and said,

“You’re looking good, Howard.”

I smiled—I’d checked in the mirror a few dozen times, and the smile looked normal—and replied, “It’s nice to see you again.” Bridget would be 57 by now, physically. She’d stopped dyeing her hair and was showing her natural gray. She had crow’s feet around her eyes, and an incipient double-chin.

I quite literally couldn’t have cared less.

76. Funeral

Bob

November 2220

Delta Eridani

I stood to one side as Archimedes hugged with Buster and his siblings, Rosa and Pete. Diana had died overnight. Peacefully, thank the Universe. Deltans didn’t cry as such, but their equivalent was just as heart-wrenching.

Diana was laid carefully into the grave, then Archimedes and his children each placed one white flower in her arms. As they stepped out of the way, the long line-up of descendants filed past and added more flowers.

Diana and Archimedes had done quite well with spreading their genes.

When the line-up was finished, thirty-one flowers formed a large bouquet in her embrace. The family filled in the grave, then placed several large stone slabs over it to protect it from scavengers.

When it was done, everyone but Archimedes stepped back. He slowly sank to his knees, leaned forward, and hugged himself. Uttering a low keening, Archimedes rocked slowly back and forth.

I popped into VR, shaking and taking deep breaths. Charlie would be fine for a few moments on autonomous control, and I was very close to losing it. I rubbed my eyes savagely, muttered a few curses, then popped back into Charlie.

The crowd was slowly dispersing, leaving Archimedes and his children to their mourning. I took the opportunity to look Archimedes over. I had only an estimate of his age from when I first showed up, of course, but I put him at about seventy, which put him slightly older than Moses when he passed away. And Moses had been considered ancient.

All of which meant that I would probably be attending another funeral soon. I vowed it would be my last.

77. Completion

Bill

April 2221

Delta Pavonis

It took a little over four years for the Others to strip Delta Pavonis.

It was an impressive speed, until you realized that exponential behavior was involved. They brought a huge complement of autofactories, which they used to produce equipment, which mined resources for the production of more equipment. At some point, they stopped building equipment and started loading the cargo vessels. Finally, they harvested most of the equipment they’d built. The fleet that left the system consisted of only cargo vessels and death asteroids.

Once they were gone, we moved in to examine the damage. The asteroid belt and any small moons in the system had been stripped, of course. What really hurt was the state of Delta Pavonis 4.

The Others hadn’t been concerned with ecological damage, obviously.

They’d left the planet a dirty ball of mud. All the green had long since faded to a dull brown. The blue of the oceans was replaced by a mottled grey, and the ice caps had either melted or been coated with dust and soot.

Every major city had been demolished. The lack of corpses was, in a way, a blessing. But it left a ghostly, empty tableau that would have been completely appropriate to any of a hundred post-apocalyptic movies.

I took it as long as I could, then I turned off the video feeds, put my face in my hands, and wept.

* * *

Jacques agreed that rehabilitation of DP-4 would take a long time, but he quite correctly pointed out that flying the Pavs to another system far enough away from the Others to be safe would possibly take just as long. We had a reasonable candidate—a wandering Bob had found a suitable colonization target at HIP 84051. At more than 40 light years from Sol, it didn’t even rate

a name. Just a minor designation in the constellation Ara.

I popped over to visit Will. “Hey guy. How are you holding up?”

Riker still wore a haunted look. Homer’s suicide had affected him more than anyone would have thought possible. With the perfect memory that being a replicant brought with it, things didn’t fade with time. The vengeance that he had extracted had helped some, but there would always be a hole in the Bobiverse.

He gave me a small smile. “Holding steady, Bill. You here about HIP

84051-2?”

At my nod, he continued, “It was on the discussion agenda, and when I brought up the circumstances, the UN voted to make it available to the Pav refugees. Honestly, I think it’s a little too far from Sol to be really attractive, anyway.”

I sat down and materialized a coffee, and took a moment to look around.

Will had long since given up the Star Trek motif, and he was going by his first name—um, I guess Number One’s first name, anyway—most of the time, now. That was the name that our relatives knew him by, anyway.

The VR resembled a housing unit on Vulcan, although I recognized some décor and paraphernalia from Original Bob’s apartment. I smiled to see the Limited Edition Spock plaque, signed by Leonard Nimoy, hanging on the wall.

“Life just keeps getting more complicated, doesn’t it?” I raised the coffee in salute.

“Suppose so.” Will stretched, then materialized a coffee of his own. “I’m beginning to think Bob-1 has the right idea. He’s been talking about going out again, once Archimedes is gone. Just point the ship and accelerate for a while.”

I sighed and nodded. We were, what, eight to ten generations deep in Bobs, now? Bob-1 had achieved a kind of legendary status. He rarely showed up at moots any more, and when he did, it was like a Shatner sighting. I felt a deep sympathy for him. He was the first of us to get emotionally involved with ephemerals, and until Jacques and the Pavs, his had had the worst outcome.

“I understand you’re going to wake some Pav and put the question to them,” Will said.

“Mm, yeah. Jacques has an unreasonable attachment to the idea of

recolonizing DP-4, in my opinion. But he’s rational enough to see it.”

Will returned one of his rare full-on smiles. “Well, Bob, right?”

We laughed together, and I continued, “So we’ll give them the choice—

attempt to recolonize DP-4, or head for a new world with an already-established ecosystem. And a compatible one, as seems to be the norm.” I chuckled. “I sure wish I could go back and talk to Dr. Carlisle. I bet he’d be tickled that his theories have been so emphatically vindicated.”

Will nodded but didn’t comment. I sat back, and we sipped our coffees in silence, simply enjoying the company and the momentary pause in existence.

* * *

The Pav huddled in a corner, whimpering. I’d expected a certain level of fear, but the Pav’s reaction bordered on xenophobia.

But I doubted the, uh, recruitment had involved a lot of discussion and consent. Kidnapping was a pretty accurate description. The specimen in front of us was probably still traumatized.

At that moment, the door to the chamber opened and three more Pav staggered in. They were still suffering from post-stasis confusion, but they reacted in instinctive Pav pack fashion, by huddling in a pile with our first candidate. The presence of company seemed to calm her significantly.

Over the next few hours, we brought in several more Pav, until we had eight of them in the room. The number was arbitrary, but Jacques’

investigation of the species had indicated a general maximum of eight adults to a family group. We hoped that it was a significant number for them.

When they appeared outwardly calm and had started to compare notes with each other, I decided it was time for official first contact.

“Hello.”

All eight Pav went into alert posture. The resemblance to meerkats was even more pronounced than usual, and in better circumstances I would have chuckled at the tableau.

“Who are you? Where are we?”

This was not going to be easy. “My name is Bill. I’m part of BobNet.” The translation routine rendered proper names phonetically, but the sounds wouldn’t mean anything to them. “Who we are is a very long story. Where you are and why, is a shorter and very unpleasant story.”

I described the Others to them, and explained their habit of raiding

systems and killing off planets. A monitor on one wall displayed images of Others, the aftermath of Zeta Tucanae, and finally the destruction of Delta Pavonis 4.

As the images of dead cities, oceans and forests flashed on the screen, the Pav began to keen. Sitting through that was one of the hardest things I’d ever done, but I had a moral obligation to stick with it.

It took a few hours, but we finally got through the whole story. The group seemed perplexed.

“You want us to decide? To return to Aszjan or settle a different world?”

“That is correct.”

The Pac huddled and argued in low voices for several minutes.

Hazjiar, who seemed to have taken on the role of spokesperson, said,

“Why?”

“Because we don’t know you well enough to know what would work best for you.”

“Why not?”

“Because we haven’t been studying you for long enough.”

“Why not?”

Oh, holy… “That’s not important. We will make the decision if you don’t want to, but we wanted to give you the option first.”

“And there are twenty thousand of us? Why not more?”

“That’s how many will fit into the two ships that we were able to build.”

“Why?”

What’re you, a four-year-old? I would have to nip this in the bud, before I blew a transistor or something. “Again, not important now. Are you willing and able to make that decision? If not, let us know and we’ll take care of it.”

“We will discuss this. Is there food?”

“You mean at the new planet? Oh, you mean now. Sorry. I’ll get some.”

Fortunately, Jacques had thought of stocking up on standard Pav food and drink. I decanted a small supply and delivered it. The Pav laid in as if they hadn’t eaten in a week.

I stared in shock at the free-for-all. So far no one seemed to have lost a limb, but that could just be luck.

Jacques chuckled at the expression on my face. “No, that’s pretty much normal feeding behavior. Miss Manners would never catch on with these people.”

I shook my head. “Count them after they’re done, okay? Make sure there are still eight.”

* * *

At Hazjiar’s request, we provided images of the proposed colony planet. It possessed a marginally heavier gravity, with correspondingly thicker atmosphere, but was similar enough to Aszjan that adaptation wouldn’t be an issue. The flora and fauna would be completely unfamiliar to them, of course, but it didn’t include anything too large to deal with.

We promised the Pav any help they needed, regardless of their decision.

They seemed heartened by that, and I privately sighed in exasperation. Again, we were going to be responsible for another client race. If Jacques wanted to be involved, fine, but I resolved to keep my distance.

* * *

“We will choose the new world.” Hazjiar stood tall and spoke with confidence. I knew that the decision hadn’t been easy, or unanimous, but I was impressed at their willingness to even make a decision.

She looked down, then continued in a softer voice. “We do not like the idea of all resources being supplied by you. No offence, but we do not know you.”

I grinned at Jacques, who smiled back and shrugged.

“That’s fine, Hazjiar. We’ll get started right away. It will be necessary to put you back to sleep. But we’ll be gentler, this time.”

Hazjiar nodded. By coincidence, a nod meant the same thing to the Pav as it did to us. “When we awake, we will be there?”

“That’s correct. And we will have set up an encampment for you to live in until you can build something for yourselves.”

Hazjiar cocked her head slightly. “I am curious. Why do you do this? Who is paying you? Or do you expect us to pay you?”

I chuckled, which the translation routine converted to the Pav expression of humor. And a good thing—who knew how a human chuckle would come across.

“We don’t use money, Hazjiar. We have no need for it.”

This statement produced a look of shock. Apparently capitalism was alive and well in Pav culture. After staring at the monitor for a few more seconds, Hazjiar turned away, while muttering something that sounded like

“Dozhagriyl. ” The routine translated it as “critters with broken brains.”

The Pav seemed reluctant to return to the stasis chambers, and generally acted like a bunch of kids trying to delay bedtime. Eventually, though, we managed to cajole them all through the door and into the prep room. Within an hour, they were all squared away.

“Well, Bill, I guess this is it.”

“Not quite yet, Jacques. A couple of the guys did some scavenging. We’ve managed to retrieve enough resources to put together a couple of version-3’s for you and the other Bobs who are bodiless right now. It’ll take few months, but at least then you’ll be able to ride escort instead of supercargo.”

Jacques nodded. “Thanks, Bill. Let’s do that.”

* * *

Finally, departure day. The two refugee ships, officially named REFUGE-1

and -2, brought their SURGE drives up to full power and turned their bows to aim for HIP 84051. I watched their departure from the forward camera of one of the Bobs that was still in-system.

With the departure of the refugee ships, there was no longer any reason to maintain a presence in this system. It represented our greatest failure, and several Bobs had complained that it felt as though it was full of ghosts.

Everyone who didn’t have a reason to stay had long since left, and now most of the rest of us would be departing. A couple of eighth-generation Bobs had volunteered to stay behind and do a post-invasion survey.

I looked at Andrew across the table, waiting for him to speak. Finally, he took a deep breath and leaned forward to put his elbows on the table.

“Everyone is gathering at Gamma Pavonis. Threats or no, the Others still have a Dyson Sphere to build. They won’t halt everything while they march off to Sol. We want to be ready next time.”

I stared into space, nodding. “Meanwhile, Riker has started building dreadnaughts at Sol, and I’m building a fleet in Epsilon Eridani. Ditto Oliver in Alpha Centauri. We have the cloaking nailed now, so we’ll be able to give them a harder time of it. The root problem, though, is still to produce enough ordnance to make a dent in the Others’ armada. The size problem is still

overwhelming.”

“This is all just a delaying action.” Andrew shook his head morosely. “As long as the Others are always making the first move, we can never defeat them. All they have to do is huddle for a decade or two, rebuild, and we’re back to square one. We have to take the fight to them.”

“This is true, and you know damned well it’s been the subject of many a moot.” I glared at Andrew. “I have an idea that I’m working on that might form a final solution, but I’m not sure yet if it’s even feasible. And even if it turns out to be workable, it’s a long game. Meanwhile, we’re also trying to gear up to an invasion fleet. Maybe we can drop in on the Others and pay our respects.”

Andrew’s only answer was a predatory smile.

END BOOK 2

Appendices

List of Terms

AMI

Artificial Machine Intelligence

ETHER

Estimated Time of Habitable Earth Remaining

FAITH

Free American Independent Theocratic Hegemony

HEAVEN

Habitable Earths Abiogenic Vessel Exploration

Network

SCUT

Subspace Communications Universal Transceiver

SUDDAR

Subspace Deformation Detection And Ranging

SURGE

Subspace Reactionless Geotactic Emulation

VEHEMENT

Voluntary Extinction of Human Existence Means Earth’s Natural Transformation

Cast of Characters

In alphabetical order

Archimedes

Deltan native that Bob befriends.

Arnold

Large Deltan warrior.

Arthur

One of Riker’s clones. Dies in a salvaging accident.

Bart

Calvin’s clone. Resident Bob in Alpha Centauri for a short time.

Bashful

One of Mario’s clones. Part of the group that works to identify the Others’ range.

Belinda

Buster’s mate.

Bender

One of Bob’s clones in Delta Eridani

Bill

One of Bob’s first cohort of clones. Sets up a Skunk Works in Epsilon Eridani and acts as the central clearing house for news and information.

Bob Johansson

An engineer and business owner, who gets killed in a traffic accident and wakes up as a computer program.

As Bob-1, the first Heaven vessel.

Stéphane Brodeur Security Chief on Vulcan, and Howard’s best friend.

Bullwinkle

Bill’s name for his experimental android.

Buster

Archimedes’ eldest son. Deltan Native.

Colonel George

Leader of the USE post-war enclave, and of the USE

Butterworth

Vulcan colony.

Calvin

One of Bill’s clones. Calvin and Goku battle and defeat Medeiros in Alpha Centauri.

Charles

One of Riker’s early clones.

Charlie

Bob’s Deltan-configured android.

Minister Michael

Leader of the FAITH post-war enclave, and of the Cranston

FAITH Romulus colony.

Cruella

Deltan medicine woman.

Dexter

One of Charles’ clones, who takes over for Howard at Omicron2 Eridani.

Diana

Archimedes’ mate. Deltan native.

Donald

Arnold’s son. Deltan native.

Dopey

One of Mario’s clones, part of the group who work to establish the Others’ range.

Minister Sharma

UN rep for the Maldives on post-war Earth.

Garfield

Bill’s first clone, and his assistant in Epsilon Eridani.

Goku

One of Bill’s clones. He and Calvin battle and defeat Medeiros in Alpha Centauri.

Guppy

Bob’s personification of the GUPPI interface. Various Bobs give Guppy different levels of system resources, resulting in slightly different behavior.

Hal

One of Mario’s clones, part of the group who work to establish the Others’ range.

Hoffa

Deltan native, council leader in Camelot.

Homer

Riker’s first clone, assists in the Battle of Sol and invents the Farm Donuts.

Howard

One of Charles’ clones. He accompanies the first two colony ships to Omicron2 Eridani and stays to act as the resident replicant.

Howie

Bridget and Stephane’s son, named after Howard.

Hungry

One of Mario’s clones, and part of the group that works to establish the Other’s range.

Linus

One of Bill’s clones. He goes to Epsilon Indi and discovers Henry Roberts, the Australian probe replicant.

Luke

One of Bob’s clones in Delta Eridani.

Manny

The first anthromorphic android, used by Howard on

Vulcan.

Mario

One of Bob’s first clones. Mario is somewhat misanthropic and takes off for GL 54, where he discovers evidence of the Others, and sets up a program to determine their range.

Marvin

One of Bob’s clones in Delta Eridani. Marvin hangs around and assists Bob.

Major Ernesto

The Brazilian Empire replicant. Brazil sends out a Medeiros

number of copies, which keep popping up to bedevil the Bobs.

Milo

One of Bob’s first cohort of clones in Epsilon Eridani.

Milo goes to Epsilon2 Eridani, where he discovers the double planets which he names Vulcan and Romulus.

He then goes to 82 Eridani where he runs into Medeiros.

Moses

Deltan Native. An elder who teaches Archimedes how to work flint.

Oliver

Bill’s clone, who sets up in Alpha Centauri after Bart’s departure.

Riker

One of Bob’s first cohort of clones in Epsilon Eridani.

Riker takes on the task of going back to Sol to find out what happened, and ends up in charge of the Earth’s emigration effort.

Henry Roberts

The Australian replicant

Rocky

Garfield’s attempt at a flying android.

Sam

Exodus-3 controlling replicant.

Bridget Sheehan

Senior Biologist in the Vulcan colony and Howard’s eventual love interest.

Sleepy

One of Mario’s clones, and part of the effort to determine the Others’ range.

Surly

One of Bill’s clones and part of the second expedition to 82 Eridani to oust Medeiros.

Gudmund Valter

The Spitsbergen enclave leader on post-war Earth.

Verne

One of Bill’s clones and part of the second expedition to 82 Eridani to oust Medeiros

Bertram Vickers

Head of VEHEMENT

Victor

One of Bob’s later clones in Delta Eridani. Takes off after Bender to find out what happened to him.

Genealogy

Bob

Bill

Garfield

Calvin

Bart

Thor

Goku

Linus

Mulder

Jonny

Skinner

Oliver

Khan

Elmer

Hannibal

Tom

Barney

Fred

Kyle

Ned

Mario

Bashful

Dopey

Sleepy

Hungry

Hal

Claude

Jacques

Phineas

Ferb

Riker

Homer

Ralph

Charles

Howard

Dexter

Rudy

Edwin

Arthur

Bert

Ernie

Milo

Luke

Bender

Victor

Document Outline

Acknowledgements

Table of Contents

1. Sky God

2. Colony Site

3. Life in Camelot

4. Water Planet

5. Progress

6. Contacting Bill

7. Back to Work

8. Farming Satellites

9. Something is Out There

10. Genocide

11. Mating Dance

12. Bob Calling

13. Investigating the Others

14. Sabotage

15. A Visit From Bill

16. Hunted

17. We’ve Lost a Drone

18. It’s Getting Worse

19. Prey

20. Parasite

21. Attacks Continue

22. Fallout

23. VEHEMENT

24. Visiting Marvin

25. Rabbits

26. Selling Poseidon

27. Luke Returns

28. Et Tu, Homer

29. Emergency

30. Found Something

31. Taking Care of Business

32. Linus

33. Trouble in Paradise

34. Moose

35. Sales Call

36. Asteroid Movers

37. He’s Gone

38. Following up

39. Bob-Moot

40. Gotcha

41. Casualties

42. Business

43. An Exchange of Words

44. Baseball

45. Replication

46. Klown Kar Planet

47. New Village

48. Operation

49. Arrival

50. Second Expedition

51. Wedding

52. Bullwinkle

53. Testing

54. Stuff is Happening

55. Contact

56. Descendants

57. Moot

58. News

59. Another One

60. Arrival

61. Starting Over

62. Departure

63. The Pav

64. Moot

65. Grandpa

66. It’s Happening

67. Bad News

68. Recording

69. Wake

70. Conversation

71. Charlie

72. Battle

73. Collection

74. Observing the Process

75. Reunion

76. Funeral

77. Completion

Appendices

List of Terms

Cast of Characters

Genealogy