We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 4: Chapter 24: Interlude

Book 4: Chapter 24: Interlude

Bob

July 2334

Virt

Hugh sat in a beanbag chair, nursing a coffee and staring into space. I’d forwarded our logs for the last few days, and he’d immediately invited himself over.

“Tranquilizer guns, huh?” He took a sip. “Interesting choice of weapon.”

“How so?”

“There are so many easier and less complex ways of taking out an opponent, starting with stabbing them and working up to a proper pistol with bullets. Heaven’s River isn’t a space station—you wouldn’t have to worry about making a hole. The shell material wouldn’t even notice a bullet up to a considerably larger caliber.”

“Okay. Anything we can learn from that?”

“Assuming the gun was stolen, which is reasonable, the Administrator seems to want to be careful not to kill anyone.” Hugh was silent for several moments more. “And the scattering. I think you’re right about the interpretation. Again, it would be easier to just kill people.”

Hugh opened his mouth several times to speak, then got a funny look. “Not sure. It could just be that Quinlans don’t like killing each other. Except …”

“Yeah. Quin. The planet.”

“Listen, Bob, you still have that spare manny buried near the transit station. Have you thought about activating it and sending someone off, maybe upstream?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s a spare, Hugh. In case we total one of ours. We need to stay a foursome.”

“Hmm. Too bad. I’d like to be able to try one out.”

“There’s still the test units on Quin. I understand Will and Howard have been playing around with them.”

“And breaking them, apparently,” Hugh replied. Then, at the look on my face, he added, “Oh, you didn’t know. Uh, don’t let Bridget find out.”

“Howard broke one?”

Hugh’s only reply was a grin. He put down his coffee cup and stood. “I got the scan done of Galen Town. Nothing unusual, right down to the limits of resolution that I had time for. In particular, no electronics or forbidden tech that I could find.”

“Which might mean the Resistance doesn’t have it, or might mean they don’t keep it in town. What about the trank guns?”

Hugh shrugged. “They don’t register as electronics, so I’d have to specifically scan for them. And I just didn’t have time before the heat sink burned out. And for that same reason, random scanning is a nonstarter. I had to retire a drone to get what I did, and I’ll be shorthanded until I can fly in a replacement.” He held up a hand. “Talk later.” And popped out.

On a whim, since I had some time to spare, I decided to visit Will on Valhalla—our last meeting had ended abruptly. As soon as I received an acknowledgement, I popped over. ???????

It took only a second to unrack my manny, and I glanced around. Instead of Will sitting in a chair, I found a two-foot roamer waving a leg at me. The roamer began walking, then paused significantly. Presumably it was giving me an impatient look or something, but because the devices were symmetrical, it was really hard to tell.

The roamers hadn’t changed that much in the two hundred years since they’d been invented. At least not in principle. Lots of improvements had been made, like the Casimir power source, better materials, more compact electronics, and so on. But it was still an eight-legged general-purpose robot run by a moronic machine intelligence. I frowned in thought as I followed the device. Maybe the Skippies had the right idea. The creation of a practical AI, whether it was truly conscious or just zombie-level capable, would have a huge impact on society, maybe even more than subspace theory and the accompanying technologies had.

The roamer led me out of Will’s home and down a long sequence of staircases, some constructed and some cut right out of the native stone. I was beginning to wonder if I’d misunderstood the roamer when we finally came to a flat area on the south side of the promontory on which Will’s home was built.

Will stood and waved to me as the roamer did an about-face and headed back to the house. With no need to allow for humanoid limitations on the return trip, the roamer was going straight up the rock face. Show-off.

“Hey, Will. What have you got here?”

Will smiled and motioned to the miscellany of potted plants and plants in earthen rows. “Experimental garden. I’ve got Terran plants and native plants here, and I’m testing for compatibility. We don’t want any surprises when we start full-on agriculture.”

I nodded slowly. “It’s interesting that Original Bob wasn’t much of a gardener, but both you and Bill have turned into real plant specialists.”

“Terraforming puts a whole ’nother spin on the problem, bud.” Will motioned toward a set of Adirondack chairs near the edge of the garden area. I sat and took a moment to admire the view. Will had picked a location for his home that overlooked a huge lake, surrounded by low mountains. The tree line, or whatever it was, only extended about halfway up the distant slopes, probably due to the still-too-thin atmosphere.

Will followed my gaze and guessed the direction of my thoughts. “The tree line is moving up the slope by several feet per year right now, and it’s accelerating. By the time it stabilizes, you’ll be able to see plant life all the way to the top of these mountains. And by that point, humans will be living here without having to wear supplemental masks or live under a dome.”

We were silent for a few seconds while I admired the scenery. Will seemed to be content with whatever pace I set. Finally I turned to him. “Last time I was here, we were talking about Starfleet. Mostly. But there’s Starfleet, the Borg, the Gamers, the Skippies …”

“And those are just the ones that have nicknames,” Will replied. “The Bobiverse is going in a lot of different directions, Bob. Literally and metaphorically. A lot of replicants have finally decided to take the Von Neumann Probe job description seriously. For instance, we’ve actually got a couple of thousand Bobs that are actively heading away from human space. Some are stopping and building stations, some are just accelerating.”

“Yeah.” I examined my hands. “It’s just that I have a bad feeling. The Bobiverse was a post-scarcity society for a while, and a utopia, at least for most of us. But what happens to a post-scarcity society when part of the society wants power over the rest of that society?”

“I think you end up either a dystopia, or with two societies.”

“And the transition may or may not be orderly and peaceful.”

Will sighed. “I haven’t got an answer for you, bud. We’re just going to have to wait and see how far Starfleet is willing to push.”

I sat back and crossed my arms, glaring at the scenery without seeing it. It appeared utopia was an unstable state.