Bobiverse 2: For We Are Many

by Dennis E. Taylor

  I looked at the board. More than half of the Request-To-Speak indicators were lit up. I sighed, disconnected from my public avatar for a moment, massaged my forehead again, and wondered for the thousandth time how I’d let myself get roped into this duty.

  I hoped today they’d call for a vote.

  8. Farming Satellites

  Howard

  April 2189

  Vulcan

  The holotank glowed with overlapping information windows, all competing for attention. Several nodes blinked red, demanding immediate input. I cranked up my framerate a little. Not enough to overload the VR hardware, just enough to be able to get ahead of all the demands on my attention.

  “Guppy, you’ve got coordination of the drone mule-team, right?”

  [Affirmative]

  Good thing. I thought my head was about to explode.

  We were about to spin up the third farm donut, which would increase our capacity just in time for the arrival of the third colony ship.

  Farm-1 and Farm-2 were already in full operation, generating a comfortable .25 G in the rim. Riker and Homer had found through trial and error that crops didn’t do well below that level of gravity.

  Specialized drones maintained the farm sections, which were producing all the kudzu you could eat. Yum. Of course, I didn’t have to eat it, what with being a computer and all, but the humans were not so lucky. Until the colonies were to the point of being self-sustaining, everyone’s daily calorie intake was up to fifty percent kudzu. And because of kudzu’s digestive side-effects, meals and other social gatherings tended to be outside. Or involve open windows.

  One of the status windows dinged. Guppy was starting the spin-up of Farm-3. After a lot of debate filled with discussion of gyroscopes, compressed-air propulsion, and traditional JATO units, Homer had settled on a very old-school system for spinning up the orbital farms, which we were still using. We tethered four drones to the rim with cables, ninety degrees apart, and had them fly in circles until we achieved the proper RPM. Primitive, but effective.

  I watched the status displays as Farm-3 came up to speed. No issues. And more importantly, no sabotage. It seemed that VEHEMENT was either still completely confined to the Sol system, or they hadn’t acquired any assets here. But we didn’t know how many members might have gone out with the various colony ships. We would have to be vigilant until humanity was well-enough established to survive its own craziness.

  I shook my head. Enough daydreaming. I ran final checks on Farm-3, then directed Guppy to start planting operations. Farm-3 would grow regular crops. Vegetables, wheat, berries, stuff people actually wanted to eat. I really needed to get this right or there would be talk of lynching.

  * * *

  “Coming up on beacon. Fifty klicks and closing.” Sam’s image floated beside the system schematic. Exodus-3 was on track to merge neatly with the L4 point shared by the twin planets, Vulcan and Romulus. The Vulcan colony had declared a holiday, as it was unlikely anyone would be getting anything done anyway. I was transmitting my displays down to the Landing City network, which was broadcasting out to every TV in town.

  Exodus-3 slid up beside the communication beacon without as much as a wobble. Sam ran through his shutdown checklist and changed status to station-keeping.

  With the formalities out of the way, I popped over to his VR.

  “Welcome, Howard. Pull up a chair.” Sam waved a coffee mug in the general direction of a Victorian wingback.

  I looked around his VR. It had the feel of an old English drawing room, the kind of place Sherlock Holmes might have hung out. Sam was drinking a coffee, but a quick inspection of the menu showed that I could order from a broad selection of drinks.

  I decided to see how well Sam had simulated cognac. I indicated my choice to Jeeves, and sat down.

  “I’ve started to decant the setup crews,” Sam said. “I looked over the maps and resource summaries that you provided. Pretty thorough.” He grimaced for a fraction of a millisecond. “No doubt Cranston will still find something to complain about.”

  I accepted the glass of cognac from Jeeves and took a moment to taste it. Not bad. Quite good, really. Sam had obviously spent some time getting it right. I set a TODO to ask him for the template.

  I put the glass down and leaned forward. “Your colonists will really need to tread lightly on Romulus. Milo was right—there was a recent extinction event, and the ecosystem is still very shallow. No large-scale clearing, and especially don’t let any Terran biota get loose. Make sure both colony groups understand that.”

  Sam nodded, eyes focused on infinity. With an obvious effort, he turned his attention back to me. “You’re really lucky, Howard, getting to see the colonies in the early stages like this. A lot more exciting than driving a bus. I’ll be leaving in a month or two, to go pick up another load.”

  “Sure, Sam, but I keep a blog. And lots of videos of anything that’s even remotely interesting. Yeah, it’s not real-time, but the universe is our playground, now, y’know?”

  He grinned in response. We spent a few seconds getting caught up on gossip, then moved on to the serious business of setting up a colony of ten thousand people on an alien world. Just another day at the office.

  * * *

  Only two days after the first FAITH and Spits personnel were decanted, and everyone was already at war. Or maybe back at war was more accurate. The three-way battle between the USE, FAITH, and the Spitsbergen enclave for berths in the first colony ships had been a major pain in the ass for Riker back at Earth. It appeared that not much had changed, and now I’d inherited the problem.

  You couldn’t actually come to blows in a videoconference, of course, but the blustering and yelling more than made up for the lack of bloodshed. I put my head in my hand and shook it slowly back and forth.

  It took a few seconds for everyone to notice, then the yelling petered out.

  “Tell you what,” I said, “How does pistols at dawn sound? Three ways. That should be interesting.”

  President Valter looked slightly sheepish, Minister Cranston indignant, and Colonel Butterworth amused. But at least they’d shut it. The three colony leaders settled themselves behind their desks and waited for me to continue.

  “I understand a certain amount of competitiveness,” I said, looking at each person’s image in turn. “But isolationism will just get you dead. And I sure as hell will not buttress any such attitude with extra support.”

  Cranston’s face turned red. “You are not in charge, replicant. We will make our own decisions about what’s best for us. What makes you think you have the right to dictate? Or for that matter, the moral high ground?”

  I tilted my head and smiled innocently at the leader of the FAITH colony. “Hmm, I’m trying to remember now. Of all of us here, everyone who didn’t participate in a war that virtually destroyed the human race, please raise your hand.” I raised a hand, and waited a moment to see if anyone else would have the gall to do so. “I’m a neutral party here, Mr. Cranston. Yeah, even with jerks who treat me as a piece of equipment instead of addressing me by name. But I’m also a volunteer. I’ll help who I want, and I’ll leave if I want. As a good leader, you should take that datum into account when deciding how much of an idiot you want to be.”

  I glared at the three video windows. No one responded.

  After a moment of awkward silence, Valter said, “Very well, we will trade some of our decanted livestock. If necessary, for future considerations. Howard, I am hoping you will act as adjudicator in such cases.”

  “Absolutely, Mr. Valter. And thank you. Colonel, some breeding stock now will help you until we’ve finished force-growing the animals in the artificial wombs.” I turned to Cranston. “Minister, your repayment should consist of setting up and running a large batch of artificial wombs to take the pressure off the Spits. The both of you can pay them back with interest once your own stock is high enough.”

  I looked around at the
various windows. No one commented. With a sigh, I checked my agenda for the next discussion item.

  * * *

  “You show a lot more patience than Riker ever did.” Colonel Butterworth raised a glass of Jameson toward me.

  “Thanks, Colonel. I think. We Bobs are definitely different as individuals. I wonder why they never picked up on that back on Earth, when they were working on the whole replicant thing.”

  Butterworth shrugged. Science-y stuff like that didn’t interest him, except to the extent it affected his job.

  He poked at a pile of paper on his desk. “This native vine that I mentioned before is turning into a significant problem. The level of invasiveness puts anything from Earth to shame, except possibly bamboo. If we don’t get ahead of it, we might end up expending all our energy just beating it back.”

  “Hmm, the native ecosystem has the home court advantage, unfortunately. Doesn’t it serve as food for any native species?”

  “As far as my scientists can tell, it contains a toxin of some kind that the native browsers find disagreeable. Even the brontos won’t eat it, and they are the un-pickiest herbivores I’ve ever seen.”

  I laughed. The brontos would eat almost anything that provided net calories. They would eat all the leaves from a tree, then the twigs, then the bark from the main trunk and branches. What they left behind looked very sad. Fortunately, Vulcan trees could survive having their bark stripped.

  The brontos had even started munching on the fence, when they could get close enough. A couple of strings of electrified wire had nipped that habit before it could catch on.

  “How does it affect people?”

  Butterworth shook his head. “The vine is not edible as such. However, the toxin doesn’t seem particularly effective against Terran biology. As soon as we have some livestock, we’ll see if they’ll eat it.”

  I nodded silently. Colonizing an alien planet, as with everything else, was more complicated than TV and movies let on. Clearing the land and building houses was just the beginning. We had neither the resources nor the desire to commit planetary ecological genocide, and doing so would doom the colony anyway. But learning to live here was going to be a case of mutual accommodation.

  Fortunately, so far no alien diseases had found humans compatible. I wasn’t really surprised. Even Terran viruses were generally specialized for a specific species or lifestyle. Eventually something would make the jump, but by then we would hopefully be ready for it.

  The colonel brought up a few more minor items, then we signed off. So far so good, but my movie-conditioned mind was still waiting for the inevitable disaster.

  9. Something is Out There

  Bob

  September 2169

  Delta Eridani

  Marvin popped in and started to speak several times, without success. I couldn’t identify the expression on his face, but it reminded me of a fish that had just eaten a lemon. Something was definitely up.

  I’d been going over the autofactory schedule with Guppy. I turned back to him. “It doesn’t look like there are any surprises. Make the changes I’ve listed, and let me know if anything goes off-schedule.”

  [Aye]. Guppy blinked huge fish eyes once and disappeared.

  Marvin was still doing a pretty good imitation of a fish himself. I grinned at him. “Come on, Marv, spit it out. You know you wanna…”

  He took a deep breath. “Something, and by ‘something’ I mean damned if I know what, hunted the Deltans almost to extinction at their original location.”

  “Uh, say what?”

  “I found a number of disarticulated Deltan remains. In different places, so it wasn’t just a one-time thing. The damage was not indicative of gorilloids. We’ve seen their work. They’re lazy. They strip the meat, not even thoroughly, then go back for a new victim. Whatever this was, it did the full workup. And chew marks on the bones indicate something much bigger than a gorilloid.”

  I sat back and rubbed my chin in thought for a moment. “So there’s another apex predator out there. Great. I may have to break out the exploration drones and put them on a kilometer-by-kilometer survey.”

  “I think that would be a good idea, buddy. And if we have the printer cycles to spare, maybe print up a few more sets of drones.”

  “Of course. Because screwing with the autofactory schedule is never a problem.” I stood up, stretched, and wandered to the end of the library, gazing at nothing. After a moment’s thought, I pulled up the files from my initial exploration of Delta Eridani 4. I knew that my survey had been less than thorough. But I wasn’t a professional exobiologist, assuming such a job had ever even existed. And once I’d found the Deltans, everything else had taken a back seat.

  I replaced the library bookshelves with a blank wall and spread the images of the fauna I’d catalogued across its length. Pacing along the collage of images, I tried to imagine any of them able to take out a full-grown Deltan.

  Marvin materialized a La-Z-Boy and settled in with a coffee. Spike immediately assumed an invitation and hopped up to settle in his lap.

  The collage offered no inspiration. The leopard analogues and the gorilloids were really the only animals I’d encountered that would prey on Deltans, and they just didn’t fill the bill.

  I waved a hand and killed the collage. In frustration, I cancelled the room VR and activated my Deltan village VR. Marvin jerked in surprise, and Spike leaped up and fled. I felt a moment’s guilt for not warning him.

  Marvin gave me the Spock eyebrow, and I answered with an apologetic grimace, then turned and started walking through the village. The recording was incredibly detailed, but still just a recording—no interaction was possible. I wished for the millionth time that I could interact with the Deltans through something a little more immediate than a floating mechanical football.

  Finally, I turned back to Marvin, who had refused to give up his La-Z-Boy. He was reclining, drinking a coffee, right in the middle of a group of Deltans who were skinning a pigoid. I laughed and he grinned back.

  “Okay, Marvin. Let’s get going on that search. Guppy?”

  Guppy popped into existence. [You rang?]

  Cute. I suspected that Marvin was feeding lines to Guppy just to bug me. “Printer schedule change, Guppy. Print up four more complete squads of exploration drones. Looks like we’re going snipe hunting.”

  Guppy’s huge fish eyes blinked. [This will result in another delay to the armaments project. I remind you that you have assigned that project high priority]

  “That’s fine. I think we’re ahead of the curve with the gorilloids. Attempted attacks are down to almost zero. We’ve got enough spare busters to bash their heads if they try any kind of large-scale attack.”

  Guppy nodded and disappeared.

  Marvin stood up and waved the chair away. “I’ll get started on the full survey as soon as they’re ready. Meanwhile, I’ll map out some search strategies.”

  We gave each other a wave and he disappeared. I closed the village VR and brought back my library.

  10. Genocide

  Mario

  November 2176

  Zeta Tucanae

  It took seven years plus change to get from Beta Hydri to Zeta Tucanae, although less than three years ship’s time. I spent almost the entire voyage going over the records from Beta Hydri 4. I didn’t want to believe that someone could have done that. I wanted so much for it to be a natural disaster of some kind.

  But the evidence was, if not conclusive, at least pretty damned convincing. Someone had killed off an entire planet and collected all the bodies—literally all the animal life on the planet—then mined all the metals from the entire system. My mind kept playing all the movies where aliens came in and tried to strip the Earth. This was worse. They killed everything, and they left nothing. But how? And why?

  I sighed and dismissed the theorizing for perhaps the thousandth time. I couldn’t know without more information. But I wasn’t going to
wait. I needed to report this to Bill. The Bobs needed to be warned.

  I couldn’t know in advance if Zeta Tucanae would be stripped of metal as well. If so, I would just skip to the next system, and keep doing so until I either found a good star system in which to build a space station or had traveled back close enough to simply transmit a message to Bill with shipboard comms.

  I did the usual cautious approach into the star system, watching for Medeiros, aliens, other probes… it would be funny if I wasn’t so nervous.

  I didn’t actually know if there were more Medeiros clones out in the galaxy, but since Brazil’s plan had been to keep producing them, it seemed a reasonable concern. Bob had prevailed against him in Epsilon Eridani, but that had been as much luck as anything.

  It took a week or so to determine the system layout. The star was a little more luminous than Sol and a bit bigger, but slightly less massive. The metallicity of the system was lower, but not so low as to make things difficult for me—as long as the Others hadn’t already cleaned it out.

  I found a single asteroid belt and several inner rocky planets. Actually, this system was similar enough to Earth’s to make me a little homesick. I headed for the asteroid belt, while I continued to scan for any activity.

  I went about halfway around the belt before giving up. The Others had already cleaned up here as well. I decided I would get a quick look at the single planet in the habitable zone, then continue on to the next system on my list.

  What I found was the worst possible outcome.

  Exploring the planet through various drone cameras, I could see that something had caused massive destruction. Based on the ruined structures, entire cities had been taken apart. Concrete pylons indicated where bridges might once have spanned rivers. Huge washouts indicated where dams had been disassembled without regard for the downriver effects. And junk littered what looked like roadways, where presumably the contents of some kind of vehicles had simply been discarded when the metal and the passengers were collected.