There were quiet nods around the table. “Yeah,” Garfield said, “we really weren’t good at things like chess, for just that reason.”
The moment of contemplative silence was broken by Thor. “Yeah, whatever. Look, we can calculate when they’ll probably consider it too late for us to do anything. That’s when they’ll ping. We just have to make our move sooner.”
“Okay, Thor, you’ll handle that?” At Thor’s nod, Bill looked around at us. “Let’s try to get stealth drones out there. Let’s also send a salvo of stealth nukes as well. Anything that we can take out early will be one less item to worry about later. And send out the Jokers. Have them get into position early.”
I jerked as I received a ping, and Bill looked at me with an eyebrow raised.
“Seems Herschel and Neil are here.” I grinned at the others. “So at least we might be able to get the humans out of the way.”
Bill nodded, and swept his gaze around the table. “Right, we all have our tasks. Moot’s in two hours, let’s be ready for that.” He popped out, followed in moments by the others.
Arrival
Herschel
April 2257
Sol
I was jittery with excitement. In a few more minutes, we’d have decelerated enough to be able to VR-sync with stationary Bobs. We were never really out of touch, of course, but email was such a dry method of communications. No one used it for anything but reports and updates.
Finally, my latest ping gave a positive return. With a whoop, we threw our VRs open and sent a sync request to Riker.
[Connection refused.]
“What?” I looked at Neil. “Are we in the dog house?”
He shrugged, plainly as perplexed as me. “I hope not. If I’m going to be in trouble, I want to have earned it.”
[Recipient indicates he is at max capacity.]
“Oh.” Well, that made more sense. There was a limit to how many people you could host in your ship VR. We must have just caught him at a bad time. I sat back, ordered a coffee, and tried to relax.
Finally, Riker popped into our VR. Usually, it would be the other way around, but today didn’t seem to be running per usual so far, so I didn’t comment.
“Hi guys. I’m glad to see you’re finally here.”
“What’s going on, Riker?”
“It’s Will, now, Herschel. I’m trying to leave the Star Trek thing behind me.”
I nodded, and waved at a seat.
Will sat down, accepted a coffee from Jeeves, and took a moment. “Guys, remember when the Others started blowing up surveillance drones around GL 877, then stopped? And Neil…” Will inclined his head in an acknowledgement to him. “…pointed out that they might have launched something while we had a temporary blind spot?”
We nodded, silently. Will was doing a lot of summarization. Probably not just to shoot the breeze. Something was definitely up.
“We’ve detected their fleet.” Will put the cup down and turned to face us squarely. “It’s big. I mean really big. I’m not sure we can beat them. I am sure we can’t beat them before they get close enough to Earth to start zapping. And we have to assume that’s what they’re going to try to do.”
“Holy…” Neil’s eyes were like saucers. “How many people left? How many stasis pods do you have?”
“We managed to build three million. And lucky to have managed that many. Your report says you have five. Unfortunately, we still have a little under fourteen million people on Earth.”
I groaned. “Six million short. Can we double them up?” It was a stupid comment, and I knew it. The pods were engineered for one person each. It wasn’t just a matter of jamming bodies in. Luckily, Will recognized it as a rhetorical comment and didn’t reply.
“How much time do we have?” Neil asked. “Could we build bigger stasis rooms?”
“No time for anything like that,” Will answered. “And you still need the same amount of equipment for each person.”
Neil nodded. “What are we going to do, Will?”
Will looked at us, shook his head, then rubbed his face with his hands. “I don’t know, Neil. The meeting I just got out of was to discuss that very thing. Right now, it looks like we take as many as we can off-planet, and just hope that we can hold off the Others well enough to spare the rest.”
“Shuttles?” I asked.
“That, at least, isn’t a problem. We’ve been considering the transportation issue for a lot of years. We can move a million people at a time. Mind you, it makes a third-world airline feel like First Class, but if your life is at stake, you’ll put up with a chicken in your lap.”
Neil and I exchanged a glance. Things were getting scary.
“Will you guys be ready to load?”
“We’re all set up with our pods,” Neil replied. “We’ve prepped several bays for your pods. We prepared for a full fourteen million, so overkill, a bit.”
I shrugged at Will. “We’ve been considering issues for several years as well. I think we’re ready for whatever you throw at us.”
Will nodded. “Let’s hope we’re as ready for the Others.”
“How will you decide who to load?”
Will groaned audibly. “That is an issue that I admit I’ve been carefully avoiding thinking about. We’ll be abandoning almost half of the population of Earth to whatever fate the Others are able to dish out. No matter how you phrase it, this is going to be difficult.”
Neil stared at the ceiling for a moment. “Lottery?”
“That would be the most fair, I guess,” Will replied. “But I think we have to worry about efficiency. So biggest enclaves first, and move in an efficient path from one to the next. We can’t hop all over the planet just because of a random draw.”
“Wow.” This was mind-boggling, and not in a good way. “You’re going to make arbitrary decisions about who lives and who dies. How do you live with that?”
Will’s face took on a haunted look. “I don’t know, Herschel. I just don’t know.”
Reconciliation
Howard
October 2230
Odin
I was standing at the fibrex wall, staring out into the Odin airscape, when Bridget came up and put her hand on my shoulder. The subdued and silent approach made me turn to look at her, already expecting trouble.
Her eyes had a look—haunted, surprised maybe, but not horrified, not panicked. I cocked my head, waiting for her to talk.
She tried several times to smile, before finding her voice. “I’ve been invited to a wedding.”
“Those are always nice. Whose?”
“Howie’s.”
My eyebrows went up. “Hasn’t he skipped a few steps?”
Bridget smiled. “I’ve missed quite a bit of my children’s lives, it seems. But your idea of having Riker’s relatives—” she grimaced. “—you know what I mean, of having them talk to him, seems to have helped.”
“So he’s talking to you.”
“Um. And Lianne will be there. According to Howie, I should give her some time and she’ll come around.”
“Rosie?”
Bridget shook her head. “She laid down an ultimatum. If I show up, she won’t. Or if you do, for that matter.”
“She seems pissed.”
Bridget winced, and I immediately regretted the flippant comment. “Sorry, Bridge.”
“It’s probably permanent, Howard. She is who she is. She won’t back down. Howie said he wanted his children to be able to know their grandmother. He had to make a choice.”
“So, when?”
“It’s in less than a month. I’ve already asked Dex to make me a Bridget android. And you’re invited as well.” She gave me the hairy eyeball. “And yes, you’ll be wearing a suit.”
* * *
I was wearing the suit and tie, again. That was okay, though, because I got to see Bridget in full get-up. She wore a green dress, of course, to go with the red hair. You’d think it would be cliché, but apparently not, when done ri
ght.
In my opinion, it was done very, very right.
Bridget had held on to her apartment in Landing. Originally, I think it was just nostalgia on her part, but now it was turning out to be useful. We could keep our androids here when not in use, and otherwise have a permanent address on Vulcan.
At the appropriate time, we called for one of the communal transpods and gave the AMI driver the address of the church.
The wedding was, well, wedding-like. Catholic, of course. Howie looked a little older, a little more mature. His bride, Angelina, was beautiful as only a bride can be. I found myself tearing up, which surprised me a little. It wasn’t actually my family, after all. But that didn’t seem to matter.
At the reception, Bridget finally came face-to-face with her son. There was a moment of hesitation, and I braced myself to intervene. But it passed, and Howie embraced his mother. The hug lasted longer than you’d normally expect. Neither seemed inclined to break. I took that as a good sign.
Finally, they moved apart, wordlessly. Then it was my turn. I stuck out my hand. “Congrats, kiddo.”
He took the hand and grinned at me. “Thanks, Howard. I don’t really have to call you uncle anymore, do I?”
I laughed. “Call me whatever you want, Howie. It’s all good.” I looked at Bridget, who was barely holding back her own tears. “And call me whenever you want, as well. We’re always around.”
We moved aside to let the line advance. “That wasn’t bad,” I said to Bridget. She didn’t answer, and I noticed that she was staring off into the distance. I followed her gaze, and saw Lianne. Oh.
“I’ll, uh, I’ll be over at the buffet. Food calls.”
Bridget nodded, and walked toward her daughter.
* * *
I was just polishing off some excellent roast beast, when Bridget sat down beside me.
“And?”
She sighed and looked at me. “Rosie is emigrating to Romulus.”
“Seems a bit extreme.”
“That’s Rosie, Howard. Never back down, never compromise. She’s cut off her brother and sister.” Bridget’s eyes were tearing up. “Howard, am I being selfish? Should I just leave?”
“Oh, Bridget, there comes a point where you can’t be the one always doing the accommodating. Everyone’s tried with Rosie. It’s now time for her to do a little compromising. And I don’t see it happening.”
She nodded, but she was still not happy.
“Look, you can try reconnecting with her children, eventually. Assuming she has any. Remember, we’ve got forever.”
Bridget sighed and nodded again. I pointed to Howie, who was dancing with his bride, and Bridget’s face brightened.
Family. Good, bad, or nasty, you had to deal with them.
Sneak Attack
Riker
April 2257
Sol
Bill had put up a number of display walls in the moot room. Two hundred Bobs filled the hall, and several hundred more attended remotely. For the first time since he’d built it, the moot VR was maxed out.
The display walls all showed the same image—a graphic of the Others’ projected course into the Solar System, terminating at Earth. At various angles to that approach, with tooltips attached, were our counteroffensive units. We would be taking the battle to them, hopefully before they realized we were aware of them.
“We have to take out as many of them as we can,” Bill was saying, “before they have time to react. They have the size and power advantage in a toe-to-toe. But hit-and-run attacks favor us.”
Thor stepped up and pointed to one group. “Cloaked fusion bombs are going in first. Three minutes. These babies have mechanical backups, so even if they zap them, the bombs will still go off at the preset time.” He looked around. “We hope.”
I looked up at the countdown timer. Less than three minutes to first engagement. The tension in the room was palpable.
Thor continued to point at items and describe the tactics. My mind wandered as I reviewed the last hundred years. A hundred years to the month since I’d stopped the Brazilians from destroying the Earth; a hundred years since I’d first spoken to Colonel Butterworth. I would never admit it publicly, but I’d missed him greatly since he had gone to Vulcan, and even more since his death. I was more grounded than most of the Bobs, since I was the primary contact with our family; but I could understand the feeling of alienation that many Bobs were starting to complain about.
I shook myself and brought my mind back to Thor’s presentation. He was just winding it up, and confirming assignments for various groups. I nodded when he referenced my task group, then went back to watching the other Bobs.
Original Bob had never been a warrior type. Even in D&D he had tended to stick to magic use. Now, we were the front line in a war that would decide the ultimate fate of the human race. Not really where I’d expected my life to go.
I sighed, annoyed with myself for my lack of focus, and popped out with the others when Thor was done.
* * *
The Others had apparently considered the possibility of a sneak attack. Our scouts picked up picket drones outside their group at two light-minutes. Of course, they detected us as well, but we had two minutes more warning thanks to SCUT and instantaneous communications. We blasted their scouts and immediately changed course to be outside the zap cone when the Others inevitably reacted.
“Ah, crap.” Bill waved at the status board, where half of our bombs had just gone dead. “It would appear that they are better at predicting our moves than we are at predicting theirs.”
I looked at the board. “So they predicted that we’d scatter, and zapped at random.”
Bill nodded, but Garfield, leaning in, said, “No. Not randomly.” He put up a set of vectors on the board. “Look. See a pattern in those proportions?”
“Huh,” I said. “They seem to be very much in love with the Golden Mean.”
“Or they think we are. Isn’t it important in feng shui?”
“Yeah, the Magic Ratio. But…oh.” Bill slapped his head. “The Chinese probe. It was probably everywhere.”
“So they’re expecting us to act in a manner biased toward that ratio…fascinating.” I rubbed my chin in my best overacting style.
“Yeah, hey, Earth to stupids.” Thor glared at us. “We’re still down half our bombs. Can we get with the program, please?”
We all grinned at him and bent to our tasks. SCUT-controlled fusion bombs moved into the Others’ armada and detonated. A whoop went up from everyone at the nicely timed explosions.
It took several seconds for the area to clear enough to see the results. A couple of ultra-low-power wide-range SUDDAR pulses showed ten death asteroids destroyed or badly damaged, and twenty-two cargo carriers either missing entirely or drifting, offline.
Not a bad start at all.
Unfortunately, that took care of the element of surprise. Now the Others would go into—
And at that moment, the Others emitted the super-pulse that had so awed us in Delta Pavonis. With our greater understanding of the cargo vessels and the Casimir power generator, we were slightly less overwhelmed this time around. Just the same, the pulse lit up every significant mass within a couple of light hours, for a moment.
“Okay,” Bill said. “The sneak attack portion is over. Everyone move to main battle plan.”
The display walls changed graphics as we moved to phase II.
Foreshadowing
Bob
September 2232
Delta Eridani
Archimedes went into another coughing jag. Buster patted him on the back, looking worried. I grabbed the water skin and held it out. Eventually, Archimedes got the coughing under control and took the skin from me.
I turned away to give him some privacy and looked out at the rain falling gently in the village. The pergola—really, a tent with a frame and walls that could be tied open—kept us comfortably dry. I smiled to myself. Technology continued to advance in Camelot, and people’s
lives continued to improve. It was a good legacy to leave behind.
Archimedes’ coughing fits had been coming more often lately, and I was getting very concerned. Talking about ephemerals and funerals in the abstract was one thing; now, someone I’d known and loved for fifty years could be in his final days. Plans ran through my mind—sneaking a drone in and doing a SUDDAR scan; synthesizing medicine or even anesthetics. It was all wish fulfillment, of course. There was no operation to cure old age, even if I’d had the required skills.
It forced me to think about my future here, though. I’d been part of the tribe for almost twenty years now, and I had lots of friends beside Archimedes. I could continue to live here, occasionally modifying the android to simulate aging. Hell, I could even come back as someone else in a few years. The question was whether I wanted to do so. Was there a point? Or should I just go with my original plan and fade away?
I sat down close to Archimedes, and he smiled weakly at me. “I may be joining Diana soon, Bawbe.”
“Hey, ixnay on the awbe-bay.” I wasn’t sure how the translation routine would handle Pig Latin, but Archimedes chuckled.
“Sorry, Robert.” He paused to breathe for a few moments. Even that seemed to be more effort. “It’s been great having you around for all these years. It’s been a most interesting, and a very good life. But I think I’m done.”
I put my hand on his arm. “Hang in there, buddy. There’s so much more to see.”
Belinda came over with a wooden bowl filled with stew. We made sure Archimedes was sitting comfortably and she placed it before him. Archimedes ate slowly, methodically, more as a chore that needed to be done than out of any sense of enjoyment. At that moment, I truly realized that he was just waiting to die. An overwhelming wave of sadness almost incapacitated me. I had to take deep breaths to keep from having a panic attack. Which, when I thought about it, was pretty silly. Computer, remember?
But however I parsed it, my friend was dying.
Life in the Clouds
Howard
All These Worlds (Bobiverse Book 3) Page 20
