We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 4: Chapter 12: Expedition Prep

Book 4: Chapter 12: Expedition Prep

Bob

November 2333

Outskirts, Eta Leporis

The spy drones had multiple duties, so they’d be busy for a while. In addition to finding a way to eavesdrop on the Snarks and learn their language, the drones would be doing biological surveys and surveys of the towns and infrastructure. The drones had been given a search algorithm by the Skippies, which according to them would help to gather the required raw data in a more efficient manner. I didn’t necessarily distrust them, but I’d nevertheless rigged a hardware monitor into the drones. It would be completely undetectable unless you knew the access protocols and keys. Bill’s paranoia seemed to have colored my experiences with the Bobiverse in general.

There was plenty to do, meanwhile. We had enough basic info to start on fabbing an alpha version of the Snark mannies. Details could be filled in once the Skippies finished their biological survey. And there was still the question of getting Bridget involved, at least for consulting on the Snark biology.

I was working on the manny design when I got a ping from Bridget. She and I didn’t hang around together, so this was unlikely to be just out of the blue. I suspected someone might have said something to someone. I sent an accept, and a moment later she popped in.

Bridget spent a few mils looking around at my library. “I very much approve. Howard had a library motif for a while, but never this many books. Are they real?”

“All of them, right down to content,” I said. “I’ve raided every human database I can find. BobNet contains the sum of human and Pav written knowledge.”

“Well, it’s great to have a hobby.” Bridget hesitated, then launched right into what she was really here for. “Bob, I’d like a position on the Snark exploration op when it’s ready.”

“I mean, I’m a biologist, and I have lots of exp—wait, what?”

I grinned at her. “Honestly, I was trying to figure out how to bring it up. I was planning to take the coward’s way out and talk to Howard.”

“I am simultaneously offended and gratified,” she replied. “Still, results are what count. I see you’re working on mannies. How much work to do a female version?”

“Ah, Snark sexual dimorphism is minimal. Females have a slightly larger head, but it’s probably mostly about pheromones. So, not much.”

“Good. Bill tells me you have the Skippies doing the survey. You trust them?”

I raised an eyebrow at that comment. My earlier conversation with Bill about the subject was an intra-Bob kind of thing. To have a third party concerned about the Bob variants put a whole new level of significance on the problem.

“Why in particular do you ask, Bridget?”

“Oh, they haven’t started chanting ‘One of us, one of us,’ or something equally nefarious. It’s just that they really aren’t Bobs anymore. It would be less unsettling if they changed their appearance like the Borg cosplayers, but they still look like Howard, or a pod-person version of him.”

“You’ve watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers?”

“Bob, I’m married to Howard. What do you suppose we watch on movie nights? Wuthering Heights?”

I laughed and she smiled in return, and I was reminded once again what Howard saw in her. Among many other things.

I shook off the moment with some effort and changed the subject. “The Skippies originally figured a couple of weeks at most to get a complete picture of the local Snark culture. Which we’re almost at the end of. We all acknowledge that there may be regional differences with over a billion miles of potential spread. But we’ll deal with that, if and when.”

“Accents or even different languages, cultural drift, nationalism … I get it. Depends how long they’ve been cooped up in there, too.”

“Not long, I—”

Bill popped in at that moment. “Bridget, hey! Has Bob managed to convince you to come on the expedition?”

Bridget gave me a smile and an eye roll, then replied to Bill, “Yes, he has. Took a lot of work …”

“Horse puckey.”

Bridget laughed, then turned back to me. “You were saying?”

“Oh, based on our survey of the Snarks’ home planet, residual radioactivity, and number of forest fire tracks, we figure it became unlivable somewhere around a few hundred years ago. I’m not sure what that means in Snark generations.”

Bridget nodded and glanced at Bill. It occurred to me that Bill was here for something, so I tilted my head at him in a silent invitation to speak.

“Right,” Bill said. “I came here for something. The Skippies delivered a preliminary report. Mostly ecosystems and general survey—they’re still having a slow go of it on the language and cultural stuff. Although they did give me a couple of things. The natives call themselves Quinlans. At least that’s the closest phonetic rendition. And the topopolis is called Heaven’s River.”

“Cool. Okay then, the Snarks are now officially Quinlans.”

“Have they compiled a detailed report on biology?” Bridget asked.

“Hugh gave me some general notes and said he’ll have a formal report for us within forty-eight hours.”

“Hugh?” Bridget asked. “I thought the Skippies all use numeric designations.”

“I guess there’s still some Bob there, because they’re pretty easygoing about it. They’ll use nicknames when dealing with the rest of us.” I turned to Bill. “Have you talked to Will yet?”

“Yep. He’s okay with the plan. So, me, you, Garfield, and Bridget, with Will as backup.”

“Good. I’ll ping everyone when I get the final report, and we’ll meet here and discuss it.”

Will was the last to show up. Bridget raised her coffee cup in salute as he popped in. That was a habit she’d picked up from me—well, from Howard. I had it on good authority, though, that her coffee was espresso-level-plus and would dissolve any spoon unlucky enough to be dunked therein.

Will parked himself in a beanbag chair that I’d materialized for him, accepted a Coke from Jeeves, and motioned to me with one hand.

“So, here it is,” I said, waving a sheaf of paper. The report wasn’t actually on paper, but it made a good metaphor in virt. “Megastructure layout, ecology, Quinlan culture, language (both written and verbal), customs and taboos, and very little history.”

“What? Why?”

“Hugh reluctantly admitted the Skippy group that worked on this wasn’t sure—he looked like the admission gave him constipation—but the Quinlans just don’t seem to talk about it much, and what they do talk about seems to be heavily mythologized. The library they checked out had nothing in the way of objective historical records. So we’re still in the dark about that. One more good reason for the expedition.”

Bridget looked up from her copy of the report, which she was perusing on a tablet metaphor. “The Quinlans appear to be a species that evolved on the banks of rivers. Like river otters or beavers—”

“Both of which they resemble,” I interjected.

“Yes. With a little bit of platypus thrown in,” Bridget said with a smile. “But all their habitations are close to water, either the main rivers, tributaries, feeder rivers, or small lakes. All freshwater, too. I’m not sure how the megastructure maintains that. There must be filtering going on.”

“There are impellers of some kind set periodically along the bottom of the river,” Bill said. “That’s an efficient way to keep current flowing along a billion-mile-long river that’s actually level the whole way. They might also perform a filtering function, as well as turning over the water.”

“We have some information on local flora and fauna, farming and animal husbandry, and so on,” Bridget said. “Sociological stuff is almost nonexistent.”

“I think the Skippies might have skimped on that aspect a little.” I grinned. “Not very interesting.”

“So it’ll be a learning experience. That’s fine.” Bridget sat back and tossed her tablet on a side table. It bounced as if made of Nerf. “Now, about the androids …”

“Ah, yes, I think you’ll be pleased.” I vanished the report and popped up a schematic in the center of the group, then gestured to Bill to take the floor.

“Android tech has been improving steadily, thanks to its popularity. And a lot of feedback from you and Howard.” Bill nodded to Bridget. “I think your current mannies back on Quilt might be a couple of generations behind the bleeding edge, though.” A Quinlan form materialized beside the generic android schematic. “The latest mannies no longer contain any metal at all. Circuitry, even the SCUT interface, is all quantum-bionics and metamaterials. We’ve gone to great lengths to make the density of the internals similar to bio physique, so mannies are no longer ludicrously heavy for their size. And we’ve introduced a circulatory system that contains fluid indistinguishable from blood. It acts as lubricant, coolant, and transport for repair nanites. We even have digestive systems that will convert food into, uh, quite believable waste products.”

“Just can’t resist the potty jokes, can you?” Will grinned at him.

“You bet, number two.”

Garfield, Will, and I laughed while Bridget rolled her eyes and shook her head. Still not very mature, nope.

“Now, we’re maybe up to the beta version of a Quinlan manny,” Bill continued. “Translator interface is still in development, and a lot of the reflexes are probably not realistic. Bridget, we’ll need your help to refine that. Space is tight, because we are trying to build as much self-repair capability as possible into the units. If something goes wrong in-country, you won’t be able to just take it into the shop for repairs.”

Bridget nodded, her gaze glued to the schematic and supporting windows. “How is it with heat dissipation?”

“Ah, yeah. Not great, with the fur and the short, dumpy profile. A human manny can run full speed all day. A Quinlan manny will have to stop and cool down. Although in water they will probably be okay.”

“Well, we are entering new territory, aren’t we?” Bridget replied with a smile. “I think I’ll talk to Marcus, though. He’s probably the expert on non-humanoid mannies these days.”

“Bob, I have a concern,” Bridget said to me a few moments later. The others had already popped out and it seemed she’d been waiting to talk to me alone.

“Okay?”

“This expedition is looking like it could be a long-term thing …”

“Well, yeah, it’s pretty much open-ended. We’re not just doing research—we’re also looking for Bender, or at least some indication of what happened to him.”

“We have to stay with our mannies full-time, except when sleeping, right?”

“Yes, but you can pop out during the sleep cycle, or even just frame-jack for a moment to take care of something. I went years on Eden and never had a problem.”

“But you don’t have children. My kids are human. I have to deal with them in real time, and on a human schedule. Plus there was that movie, with the tall blue aliens …”

“Avatar?”

“That’s it. Remember the main character left his avatar sleeping, and it almost got run over before he could get back to it?”

“Oh, yeah. Kind of a downside, I guess.”

Bridget dropped her gaze, silent for a mil, then sighed. “I guess I have three choices. I can drop out, and I’d never forgive myself. I can simply bite the bullet and go into this full-time, and do short visits with Howard and the kids when the opportunity presents. Or I can …” She took on a pained expression. “Replicate.”

“Whoa. A Bridget clone? You’d be the first non-Bob to do so.”

The pained expression grew cloudier. “Well, I’m not particularly concerned about firsts. Not in that way, anyway. The thing is …” She hesitated again.

“Other Bobs?”

“Yes, especially the later ones. It feels sometimes that there’s this expectation that I should replicate and be everyone’s girlfriend. It doesn’t work that way.”

“I know, Bridge. And I’m sure the other replicants do as well, at least on an intellectual level. But they see you with Howard, and you know, the train of thought is hard to resist.”

“But Howard is not just another Bob. He’s unique, and our experiences together are unique.”

“Yeah, I know, but Original Bob, for all his intelligence, was not all that emotionally self-aware. And the model hasn’t improved over time.” I cringed inwardly, thinking of some of the things I’d learned the hard way about myself, back on Eden.

“I get it. And I haven’t actually been approached or anything. But if I do replicate myself for this expedition, it might be like the floodgates opening in terms of expectation.”

“Understood. I’ll help out any way I can, as will Bill and Garfield. But it’s your decision. We’ll accept whatever you decide, and we could probably get Will to take your place with minimal convincing. Although he might have an objection to a female manny, if you wait until we’ve already built the units.”

“Well, there’s a rumor—”

“Still unverified.” I grinned at her. “And they’d have to be really late-generation. Original Bob had no uncertainties about his gender.”

She laughed. “It would be pretty cool, though, to have another woman in here.” Then she turned somber. “I’ll think about it and let you know, Bob. Sorry for the headache.”

I had never been to a moot quite this raucous. Officially, the subject under discussion was the Heaven’s River expedition comma planning for. In reality, Starfleet had come to the moot loaded for bear. They consistently torpedoed any attempt at discussion with points of order and derails of various kinds. Bill showed a lot more patience than I thought a Bob was capable of. I was sure I’d have lost it by now.

They were actually wearing something that was close to but not quite TNG command uniforms. I guess they wanted to make the point without being out-and-out laughable. A lot of Bobs seemed to think they’d failed on that last bit, judging from the derisive comments.

At the moment, a red-uniformed “officer” was spouting off. “You don’t know if they purposely decided on this life. That’s the point. You’re going in, you claim, to ‘see if’ they’re captives, but you’ll do the damage before you know if it’s necessary. Assuming it’s necessary.”

Starfleet paused to take a breath—totally unnecessary in the Bobiverse, but a habit ingrained through thirty-one years as a human—and Bill took the opportunity to jump in. “And you’re assuming prima facie that we’ll be doing damage. Of course you are, because you consider interacting with them to be damage. Then you point to the interaction as proof of the damage. Circular argument. No Kewpie doll. Sorry.”

“We have a responsibility—”

“Argument by assertion.”

“… to keep from interfering in the affairs—”

“Prejudicial language, and you haven’t proven the assertion yet.”

Starfleet gave Bill a murderous glare, and another red-suited member took up the attack. “Look at your history. Deltans, Others, even humanity. Every time you interact, you cause damage—”

“Others? You’re using the Others as an example?” Bill’s expression of bristling disbelief was probably at least partly acting, but if there was ever a justification, this was it. “The Others weren’t just sitting around minding their own business, you know. The damage they were doing—”

“There’s always a rationalization, isn’t there?”

I stopped listening. Sadly, it was like most political arguments. No one was willing to debate their base assumptions, or justify them, or compromise on them. The simple tactic being that if you repeated your assertion often enough, with enough emotion and volume, the opponents would somehow be forced to see things your way. Never worked, of course, at least it never had with Original Bob, but that didn’t stop people from trying. Even Bobs, apparently.

I scanned the audience idly while waiting for Starfleet to get tired of beating their collective head against a brick wall, and was surprised to see two unfamiliar faces. I tried to check metadata, but I was blocked, so I sent a low priority text to Bill. He responded during Starfleet’s next tirade, evidently not listening any more than I was.

Couple of replicants, clients of Eternity Solutions. From Asgard.

That was interesting. The people who chose a replicant afterlife were buying into strata-title virtual reality systems—computer systems orbiting in the Oort in their local system—rather than setting themselves up with a spaceship. From what I understood, you could purchase different packages, which got you access to different levels of computer power, different VR options, and even access to mannies for physical interfacing in real. They had access to BobNet as well, as did anyone, but mostly they’d kept to themselves.

We had security policies set up, of course. They were guests in the computer sense of the word as well as the social sense. But Bill had an open-door policy regarding the moots. If anyone wanted to visit, or even play some baseball, that was fine.

The woman appeared bored; the man was trying to look in every direction at once, totally overwhelmed by the experience. It was obvious who had brought whom to the moot.

They weren’t making any waves with the Bobs, either. Not like when Bridget or Henry first joined the moot. It must have become at least somewhat commonplace.

I brought my attention back to the argument when the currently speaking Starfleet rep abruptly made a cutting-off gesture and said, “Enough. This is pointless. I can see you’re not going to do the right thing on your own. So be it.” He nodded to his group, and as one, they winked out. The moot erupted into pandemonium. More than before, I mean.

“That,” I said to Bill in a low voice, “was a veiled threat.”

“Yeah, but what, exactly?” He frowned. “Well, maybe we can get this meeting done, now. And you and I will have to discuss this later.”

Hugh was sending updates every twenty-four hours. For all that made the Skippies weird on paper, they were a lot more civilized and courteous than Starfleet, whom you’d think would be almost mainstream in the Bobiverse.

Language and customs were coming along, finally. We seemed to have crossed some kind of cusp, where blocks of disparate information began coalescing into a more complete picture. We could actually go in with what we had at this point, in an emergency. We’d just pretend to be from far away. And in Heaven’s River, far away really meant something.

The Borg had finished their android design based on the complete report on biology and had given me an autofactory blueprint for one generic native Quinlan, male or female, with editable parameters suitable for producing distinct individualized units. According to the notes, Quinlans differentiated each other primarily by facial shape and features, just like humans, plus some color variations in facial fur. The complete package included software and hardware support for generating unique faces. The notes also stressed that some field testing would be required before the design could be considered ready.

It was funny. For all the divergence of the Bobs, give them a problem to solve and the differences disappeared. I would be very sad when I met a clone that lacked that quality. That would no longer be Robert Johansson in any sense that mattered.

The exploration crew, including Will, was due for a meeting at 16:00 to go over our status. So I was a little surprised to get a ping from Bridget five minutes early. I invited her over and she popped in right away.

“Hi, Bridget.” I gestured to her favorite chair, and she dropped into it, looking uncharacteristically unsure of herself.

“That thing we were talking about earlier?” she said, and waited for me to nod. “I’m not going to clone.”

I waited for Bridget to continue, but it looked like she was waiting for me to comment. “Okay. You’ve discussed it with Howard?”

She nodded. “He’s not happy, mostly because I’m not happy. I mean, he’s happy I won’t be cloning, but …”

“I know what you mean. I have to be honest, Bridge, I don’t entirely understand why you and Henry are so much against replication. I mean, I’ve never been what you’d call a fan, but we are heading for ten thousand Bobs by now.”

“Many of whom don’t self-identify as Bob clones anymore.” Bridget waved off my incipient reply. “I know, that’s not relevant to your decision, but it is relevant to ours. Plus, your being a humanist helps—you don’t see yourself as being any more or less Bob than Original Bob or any of your clones. For someone with, um, a more metaphysical view of life, it’s not that simple. The best I can describe it is that I feel like each of us—myself and my clone—would end up with half a soul.”

I opened my mouth to point out that technically, by her belief system, only Original Bridget had the soul, but realized in time that that would be the exact opposite of reassuring. Maybe I was finally learning when to keep my cakehole shut.

“And on a more personal basis,” she continued, “the new Bridget would be cut off from Howard and from our children. I know I wouldn’t be able to ‘share’ them with her, and Howard told me flat out that he’d be completely weirded out by the idea. I try to imagine myself waking up and realizing that I’m the copy, that I’ll never again be with Howard and the kids—” Her lips quivered as she struggled to regain control. I waited quietly, giving her as much time as she needed.

Finally, she said, “I couldn’t do that to myself. Or to other me. So I’m going to accept that I’ll be working away from home for a while, and I’ll make it up to them when I’m done.”

“Okay, Bridget. Either way, it’s good to have you on the team.”

She flashed what Howard referred to as one of her nuclear smiles, and I felt my IQ drop. Fortunately, Bill and Garfield picked that moment to pop in.

“Hey, all. Got the latest from Hugh.” Bill waved a bound report at us as he threw himself into his chair. Garfield settled in with a little more dignity. I summoned Jeeves, who brought in coffee, little sandwiches without crusts, and a perpetually full and fizzy glass of Coke for Will when he showed up.

Bill held up one of the sandwiches. “You’ve served these a couple of times now. I like them, but where did the idea come from?”

I grabbed a sandwich and scrutinized it. “Dunno. Random memory from Original Bob, I guess. I’ll probably get tired of them eventually, but you can put a lot of different things in sandwiches.”

Will popped in, waved, and flopped into his beanbag. “Okay, lady and germs. Let’s do this.”

Bill grinned at him and tossed the report into the air. It morphed into a video window, and Bill waggled a finger to pull up summaries and sub-windows. “Androids are coming along. It’ll be a good six months yet before they’re ready, assuming they pass all functional tests. We’re working with a lot of new techniques here, so I don’t want to rush anything.”

Bill motioned to Garfield, who took up the thread. “The Gamers went through a ton of scenarios, but couldn’t come up with anything tricky that would get four Quinlan-sized bodies through the airlock and past the Boojums. So they’ve suggested we just bore through the outer shell, then work our way into the elevator system internally.”

“That seems risky. What if the Boojums notice?”

“Well, the Gamers suggested that the Boojums can’t be too hair-trigger about the outer shell. After all, even with the amount of in-system cleanup they’ve done, there will still be a certain number of micrometeor impacts every year. If they came running each time there was a tremor, they’d be doing nothing else.”

“Good point.” I cocked my head. “Are we going to test it?”

“I figure we’ll just pick a point between two airlocks and start digging. If they come running, we either run away or self-destruct, then come up with another plan.”

Will grinned. “Well, it does have the virtue of simplicity.”

“Yeah.” I rubbed my eyes. “All right, let’s give it a try. Gar, can you be in charge of implementation?”

“Sure thing.”

“Next order of business,” I said. “What do we do when we get in?”

“Damned if I know,” Bill answered. “We have absolutely no indication that Bender is even in Heaven’s River, let alone where he might be. This makes a needle in a haystack look like a sure thing.”

“Except we don’t really need to find Bender,” Garfield interjected. Heads turned to him. “All we need to do is establish contact with whoever has him. Or failing that, with whoever runs the ship. Assuming they’re not the same group. This isn’t a blind search, it’s more like detective work.”

“True enough. We’ll be working blind initially.” I was silent for a moment as I went through the options. “As we learn more, we can narrow things down a little, maybe get more of a sense of direction. Metaphorically speaking.”

There were nods around the circle as each person worked through the implications. This was the open-ended aspect of the project. We had no idea how long it might take to narrow things down, because we had very little idea what we were going to find.

“It’s worth noting,” Garfield said into the silence, “that there aren’t that many Boojum airlocks. If you assume that Bender’s matrix went in through one of them, it really narrows things down.”

“True. There are, what, nine entrances?”

“Yes, and most of them appear to be inactive, which makes sense if they aren’t doing anything beyond cleanup patrols.”

“Could we send in multiple teams?” Bridget asked.

Bill shook his head. “We talked about that. More teams would mean more delay, and more likelihood of exposure. Once the topopolis controllers discover our existence, they’d likely institute some kind of large-scale search, and maybe take other defensive postures. Remember, we don’t know that they’ll be friendly. Our only contact with them so far has been them blowing up Bender, and then Bob’s drones. I don’t want to take a chance on how they might react to an invading force. Keep it small, don’t look dangerous.” He grinned at us. “Having said that, if we run into a brick wall, there’s always the option of sending more teams in. Bob can build some more matrixes locally and do some cloning, if bandwidth starts to become an issue. But the mannies take a lot of time to build. Very finicky design.”

“The spy drones will continue to spread out, as well,” Will added. “In both directions, upstream and downstream. If they find anything unusual, we’ll be alerted, and we can make a beeline for that location.”

We all exchanged looks. “I guess we’re on track,” I said. “Let’s see how the tunneling works out, then we’ll meet and discuss.”