We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) (24 page)
Read We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) Online
Authors: Dennis E. Taylor
Homer and I looked at each other in amazement, then back at the message.
Plans for a Subspace Communications Universal Transceiver (SCUT) with zero latency.
Homer shook his head in disbelief and admiration. “Sumbitch. He did it.”
I nodded at him, sharing the emotion. “I think this qualifies as a good reason to interrupt the printer schedule.”
***
We examined the finished product. It was obviously not built with marketing in mind. Not a trace of chrome, no logo… but according to the notes, communications should be instantaneous across interstellar distances. Almost shaking with excitement, I turned it on.
Connections available:
Epsilon Eridani
Omicron
2
Eridani
I examined the menus, registered myself with the software, then pinged Bill.
Bill’s video image popped up immediately. “Hey, Riker. Long time.”
No kidding. Seventeen years, from Bill’s point of view. Less for me, thanks to Einstein. I sat back, arms crossed, and looked over at Homer’s video window. He was grinning ear to ear.
Bill waved at Homer. “Dude, I see you’re still in one piece. And I see you no longer use the cartoon avatar. Any causal connection?”
Homer threw his head back and laughed. “Yeah, pretty sure. Number two is actually talking to me these days. I must be slipping.”
I gave him the Spock eyebrow. “Yeah, but I don’t need you now.”
Homer looked shocked and Bill grinned at both of us.
“Well, it’s nice to see some things haven’t changed,” Bill said. “And now that we’ve gotten the reunion warm-and-fuzzies out of the way, I’ve got a bunch of software updates and VR improvements as well as some hardware upgrades I can download to you.”
“Anything that implements an ignore list?” I glared at Homer.
Bill looked from me to Homer, grinning at both of us. “Now, the big question. What’s the situation with Earth?”
I pulled up my logs. “Here, I’ll send this to you. Faster than explaining it. This setup allows all normal VR interfacing, right?”
“Yep. This is just a different transport layer. Same object interface.”
I nodded and pushed the files toward him. Bill did a momentary frame-jack as he absorbed the information, then came back with a wide smile.
“That is so cool!” Then he lost the smile. “Uh, not the part where 99.9% of the human race is dead. The survivors part. And the relatives part. Of course.”
I nodded. “S’okay, Bill. We’ve all had the same foot in the same mouth. So listen, have you got anything back from other Bobs on possible new homes?”
“Ah. I guess I’ve got a file for you…”
***
“Twin planets?” Colonel Butterworth’s eyes were wide.
“Yeah, just like the file says.” I knew I was grinning like an idiot. I couldn’t stop. After the years of worrying, this was such a huge relief.
The colonel looked at me with one eyebrow cocked. “I doubt you’ll give us both planets. I expect we get first choice, and the Spits get the other. That about right?”
I looked at him in surprise. He had to be testing me. He couldn’t possibly be that dense.
“Colonel, we won’t be giving an entire planet to twenty thousand people. We could put all fifteen million on one of them, in theory. If any travelling Bobs find more planets, we’ll expand the choice of destinations, but at the moment
everyone
is slated for Romulus or Vulcan.”
The colonel gave a small smile. Yep, testing me.
“As you say. Although I might suggest that some re-balancing of populations would be in order if more worlds are found.”
I nodded. “We’ll play it by ear, colonel. There are still too many unknowns to make any hard and fast plans. But at least we have a destination.”
“True. That means no delay once the ships are ready.”
“Mmm, hmm. Well, I’m going to make a general announcement to the community. I guess you’ll want to be there.”
The colonel smiled. “I’m also delighted that we no longer face the specter of living under domes on Epsilon Eridani Two. I’m not sure if I’d see the point of going at all, unless things got far worse here.”
Colonization of Ragnarök had been a topic of conversation off and on since we’d first started the emigration plans. The general consensus was that it was a last-ditch option. I agreed with the colonel. It was nice to be able to set that option aside.
***
The news was met with joy, enthusiasm, and—surprise, surprise—loud complaints. I guess I should have expected it, and if I hadn’t been personally so giddy with the news, I would have seen it coming. No one wanted to share a planet. From the biggest city to the smallest enclave, they all wanted one to themselves.
Colonel Butterworth and I looked at each other, and I could tell that he’d expected this.
I let it go on for a while longer, then I asked for the floor. “Okay, okay. Look, here’s the thing. Right now, we have two planets available. That’s it, sorry. We can’t delay emigration until we get more, because the Earth is becoming uninhabitable. So here’s how it’s going to go. When we’re ready to ship a group, if there’s nothing else available, they’ll go to Vulcan or Romulus. If and when a new planet comes available, groups will get right of first refusal in the order in which they emigrated.”
“And meanwhile, they’ll have settled in,” Valter yelled into his camera.
“Yeah, and given the warm welcoming feeling you’re projecting, I’ve no doubt they’ll want to stay put.” I held a moment of silence for effect. “Look, this isn’t ideal, but this is a survival situation. We’re abandoning a sinking ship, and we’re spending too much time arguing about who is going to end up in what lifeboat with whom. Let’s think about surviving, first, okay?”
“As if it matters to you. You have no skin in this game. Or at all.” That was Ambassador Gerrold, the delegate from New Zealand, a former Aussie. For whatever reason, he had never liked dealing with me. I was mystified by his animosity, as there didn’t seem to be any reason for an attitude, pro
or
con.
This time, I simply smiled at him. “I can leave any time. Just put it to a vote and vote me gone. I’ll respect the decision, pick up my football, and go home.” I looked around the videos. “No? Then let’s get back to realistic discussions.”
Without so much as a heartbeat of hesitation, the argument re-erupted.
The update from Riker and Homer had been interesting on so many levels. The Svalbard seed vault was a pleasant surprise, and could be a real boon for terraforming Ragnarök. There were a couple of varieties of plants and moss that conceivably could be made to grow on the as-yet bare soil. And if they took hold, they could accelerate the oxygenation of the atmosphere by millennia. Riker had promised to put a clone together to ferry some seeds out to me.
But the most exciting item was a variant of a SURGE drive that could be used on large bodies. Like asteroids. Or Kuiper objects. Epsilon Eridani 2 needed about five or six hundred cubic kilometers of ice dropped on it, in order to connect the seas into oceans. I’d been mulling over how to get those Kuiper objects into the inner system. Hohmann orbits would take decades to centuries. That wasn’t necessarily a problem for me, but for humans needing a place to live, a little more alacrity might be in order.
Anyway, the planetary body SURGE drive wasn’t complicated, though it did require a lot of construction material. It occurred to me that I could use it to accelerate a chunk of ice into an orbit heading for Ragnarök, then remove the drive and fly it to another chunk. Rinse, repeat. As long as I had the drive available when flying icebergs started showing up at the tail end, I’d be golden.
I discussed the idea with Garfield. He looked skeptical.
“I understand the mechanics, Bill, but you’d better make sure that nothing goes wrong. You’re leaving yourself no wiggle room for adjustments.”
I shrugged. “Well, if I fail to catch one of the chunks on the back end, it’ll just sail past Ragnarök and probably end up in the sun.”
“If you fail to catch one, you’ll probably be failing to catch a lot of them. Why don’t you do a couple of simulations?”
“I don’t think that’s necessary, Garfield. Why are you going on about this, anyway?”
“Look, Bill, you really have to stop treating me like Igor. I can do the math, too. Maybe you should take the time.”
Igor?
I looked at Garfield in shock. Had I been patronizing him? I understood the reference, and the emotional undertone behind it. Something was definitely up.
“What’s going on, Igor, I mean Garfield?” I grinned at him to show I was kidding.
He returned a brief smile, acknowledging the joke. “I know Bob-1 made that rule about the senior Bob being in charge, but I’m getting tired of being a sidekick. We get a lot of stuff done here, and I’d hate to have to leave, but I think our working relationship needs some adjustment.”
I nodded, thoughtful. “I know you’ve been pestering me about some projects that you wanted added to our backlog. Is that what this is about?”
“Partly. Also, more input on the stuff we
are
working on. Original Bob was a bit of a lone wolf, and you tend to work the same way, expecting me to tag along. That’s not working so well for me.”
I prodded my psyche. No surprise, I was offended. But I definitely didn’t want Garfield to leave. We worked well together, and accomplished a lot more than each of us could individually. Time to suck it up.
“Okay, Gar, point taken. But don’t expect a raise.”
He laughed and waved a hand at the schematic, which had been hanging in the air, forgotten. “Good. Now, have a look at the plan, and do the math. Take the time, and consider the downside if you’re wrong.”
I nodded in thought. One of the important details of the project was that the ice chunks couldn’t be allowed to slam into Ragnarök at interplanetary speeds. They’d have to be inserted into an orbit around the planet and broken up. The ice would come down as increased rainfall for a few weeks.
I did the simulations as Garfield suggested. Turned out that having two of the drives would allow me to get all the ice to Ragnarök within twenty-five years. Now there was a plan I could get behind.
***
Garfield caught the softball—barely—and after due consideration, more or less whiffed it back to me. I cringed a little, watching him. Original Bob had never been much for sports, and even in VR we hadn’t improved on the basic model.
“You know what you throw like?” I said with a smile.
“Yeah, like you. Tell me again why we’re doing this?”
“First, it’s a good test scenario for fine-tuning the VR. Homer commented at one point that some of the physics is still a little off.” I bobbed the ball in my hand a few times. “Second, and more importantly, I think we have to do more than just sit in libraries and parks and command decks if we want to really retain our feeling of being human. I don’t want to be reduced to some Doctor Evil cliché.” I tossed the ball. “This isn’t exercise in the physical sense, but it does remind our brains what it’s like to
do
things.”
The return toss went way over my head and landed in the lake with a splash.
“Oops,” Garfield said with a grin.
I gave him my best glare and materialized another ball. “I might build a bunch of Bobs and field a team or two…”
“Oh jeez no. Half of them will turn Canadian and want to play hockey instead, eh.”
I laughed and tossed the new ball.
The two colony ships were impressive, even in their half-built state. They would feature two drive rings and a massive reactor cooling section, all necessary to move the huge central cargo section. Since the cargo would be ten thousand human beings in stasis, a significant proportion of the mass of the vessel consisted of shielding. Overall, the colony ship would have looked like a military vessel to a science fiction fan of my day, but without the phaser banks or frag cannons, of course.
One of the ships was farther along than the other—the concession to the Spits resulted in some shifting of manufacturing capability. The third ship would be ready only four months after the first two. Now we were trying to even out the construction of One and Two so that they would be ready together.
I snorted with amusement, thinking of the last couple of UN sessions. Now that the yelling was over, this was more like a project from my former life. Technical challenges and engineering issues. With the manufacturing AMIs doing all the work, I didn’t even have to worry about labor issues.
Negotiations still continued, of course, back on Earth. No one was willing to quietly go along with being scheduled “somewhere down the road.” We still had the fifteen-hundred-trip issue to deal with. We didn’t know for sure that it would be a death sentence, but there was general agreement that the climate on Earth was getting worse. If it got bad enough, starvation was a real possibility, despite all our efforts.
Homer and his crew continued to scour the system. They’d also implemented some techniques for bringing metal up from planetside. That was slow and laborious, especially given the scale of our requirements. I’d allocated a half-dozen printers to Homer—Colonel Butterworth, predictably, had screamed like a stuck pig—with instructions to bootstrap themselves up to a viable operation. So far, Homer was doing better than expected. The amount of refined metal on Earth was considerable, even after the war and subsequent bombardment. He’d already returned the printers to regular ship production, after printing up new ones.
Homer had calculated the possibilities, and gone into his “good news, bad news” comedy routine. The good news was that we could eventually build a lot more colony ships from what he estimated we could haul up from Earth. The bad news was that everyone would be long since dead.
You would think that 3D printers would have solved the scarcity problem. In fact, the technology had just moved the bottleneck. We could build more drones to extract and haul the metal out of Earth’s gravity well, or we could build colony ships, or we could build more printers in order to produce more drones and colony ships during which time we would be producing neither. The calculations to determine the optimum path were finicky and had large error bars. Even thinking about them made me grit my teeth.
The drone had reached its destination. I ordered it to establish a sideways vector, then watched the video as the colony ship’s exterior drifted by. Unfinished sections allowed drones and construction roamers access to the interior. A steady stream of laden drones entering the hull was matched by a stream of empty-clawed drones exiting. The status window revealed no current issues. The printers were keeping up with parts demand, Homer’s supply crew was keeping up with raw materials demand, and the construction crew was kept busy twenty-four-seven.
I shook my head and closed the video windows. Inspection done.
***
Homer and Charles were in Earth orbit, taking a break from their outer-system patrols. We took advantage of the rare opportunity to have an all-Bobs meeting. Even without commentary from Arthur, the tone was a little gloomy. The climate of the planet continued to deteriorate, and was possibly accelerating.
“I think it’s a given that we won’t be getting fifteen million people out-system,” Homer said. “Which means we have to come up with some way to keep them alive here.”
“Triaging will help.” Charles poked a finger at his copy of the holographic globe. “Emigrate the most marginal groups first, move everyone else to the most equatorial locations.”
I shook my head. “Most of the equatorial locations aren’t habitable. Not because of climate—some of them are actually more temperate now—but because of a lack of infrastructure. Conventional bombings or falling rocks will make a city uninhabitable. Add in the problem of a lack of power and water, and you can’t just drop a bunch of people off in the jungle and expect them to survive.”
“A lot of the jungle isn’t jungle anymore,” Arthur retorted.
I grimaced in response. “I know, Arthur, but it doesn’t change the basic point. We can’t move that many people to anywhere that doesn’t have infrastructure, no matter how comfortable the climate. And I don’t see the point of building temporary infrastructure, when it’s going to delay ship-building.”
“And Butterworth will have a cow.” Charles smiled ruefully.
“Okay,” Homer interjected. “Spitballing, then. How about using space mirrors to warm up the Earth?”
I looked at him in surprise. “Not a bad idea in principle. A lot of unknowns, though, as it would be all new engineering. I think we’d need a minimum of a thousand kilometers’ radius for a mirror to have any appreciable effect. Plus, it wouldn’t do anything to clear the spreading radioactivity or repair the damaged and destroyed ecosystems, at least not within a human lifetime.”
“And Butterworth…” Charles said smiling.
“Will have a cow!” We all replied in chorus. Colonel Butterworth had become a bit of a cliché with his standard reaction to any change in plan.
Homer shrugged. He’d done the math, too. “Let’s pass it by the colonel, and see if he grabs his chest and falls over.”
“Space stations?” Charles ventured. “Same problem, though, I guess. Or moon colonies. Building all the structure and infrastructure to keep people alive in space would set the colony ships back decades. And you have to build for a population density sufficient to make a dent in the fifteen million or it’s pointless.”
I nodded, glum. I’d had all these thoughts. Not really surprising that the other Bobs had, too. But anything that we tried would detract from the ship-building. Any useful plan would need to either have negligible impact on the overall plan, or would have to produce significant enough results in a short enough time to be worthwhile.
“And the worst part,” Arthur said, “is that even if we stick to the plan as is, we probably can’t save everyone.”
I ran my hand through my hair. “We keep coming back to this. Nothing we can think of actually improves the overall prospects. I guess all we can do is keep on keeping on, and hope we stay ahead of it.” I looked around at the others. No one would meet my eyes.
