We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 4: Chapter 29: Panic Time

Book 4: Chapter 29: Panic Time

Bob

July 2334

Three Lagoons

This was simply not possible. Even if some theoretical adversary managed to take out all three of my friends at the same time, it would only take out the mannies, not the actual people. By now, Bill, Garfield, and Bridget should have reported in and warned me of whatever.

Unless …

Unless it, whatever it was, had actually taken out Bill, Garfield, and Bridget. But they were physically separated by light-years, not only from me but from each other. That made no sense.

I sent a quick text to Bill. Well, tried to. I got a comm error for my trouble. That meant severed communications.

My next step should be to narrow down the possibilities. “Guppy, check integrity of communications with the rest of BobNet.”

[No connection.]

Oh, son of a bitch. With communications down, the three mannies were running on AMI standby orders. I leaned on my elbows and put my head in my hands to look like I was resting my eyes. I gave my manny’s AMI some simple instructions and popped back into VR. Guppy, as usual, waited at parade rest.

“Can you narrow down where the communications are severed?”

[The Midway relay station is responding to pings, but is refusing connection requests.]

Huh. Not good. But I didn’t have time to worry about that just now. I picked up Bridget’s manny’s address and checked status. Sure enough, the AMI was operating in autonomous standby.

So, first things first. I had to get the mannies out of town. I entered Bridget’s manny and found myself in a library. Or book repository. Or bookstore. Someplace with books, anyway. I quickly gave the AMI some simple orders, waited for a moment to make sure it was responding, and popped out. The manny would maneuver itself to the docks and submerge itself to below a Quinlan’s maximum depth. It would ping me if something happened on the way that was beyond its ability to handle.

It took only a few seconds to do the same with Garfield’s and Bill’s mannies, then my own. I needed more than anything else to get the mannies out of any possible danger. If they were damaged or captured, our expedition was over and we might never find Bender.

I waited the few minutes while the four mannies made their collective way to the river and dove in. Only when all four reported themselves in position did I relax. I put them all in low-power mode, then turned to Guppy. “Okay, Guppy, fill me in.”

[The local station is behaving within normal operational parameters. The Midway station is actively refusing connections, other than basic diagnostic pings.]

That was the station I had ordered built in Delta Eridani and flown out to the Midway point between that system and Eta Leporis. At least it wasn’t destroyed. A malfunction?

“Any information from diagnostics?”

[Negative. The station is refusing to execute diagnostic procedures.]

That was odd. The pings were handled at a much lower level, and were serviced without any need for the AMI’s attention, but any explicit commands would—

I started to get a bad feeling. Just the barest hint of a theory, and not a good one.

“Guppy, can you force a reset?”

[Negative.]

“Is that drone I set up as a temporary station still in working order?”

[Affirmative. It is in standby, but still potentially operational.]

“Boot it up, please.”

[Done.]

I pinged Bill as soon as I felt the SCUT connection come up. The comms protocol indicated a valid connection, but for several milliseconds I got no response. Then I had an audio-only connection.

“We have a situation here, Bob. How are you doing? Where are our mannies?”

“I’ve put them all at the bottom of the river. They’re safe. What’s going on?”

“More than half of our space stations have shut down and are refusing connections. BobNet is attempting to reroute, but we still have a lot of locations offline. I’m coordinating a response, but right now we’re just trying to determine overall status.”

“Got it. Have you contacted Bridget?”

“No, Quilt is one of the nodes we can’t reach. Garfield is busy mapping the network, to see where we should concentrate our energy.”

“How about the Skippies?”

“Hugh has already contacted me,” Bill replied. “He was monitoring the expedition, then was abruptly kicked off. I told him I’d update him if I found out anything.”

“Okay, Bill. Let him know I’m back on, and keep me posted.”

“Hey, by the way, how are you able to communicate?”

“Remember that temporary SCUT relay I set up by dropping off a drone at the Midway point? I reactivated it. It doesn’t have enough bandwidth to maintain manny or VR connections, so you’re all still S.O.L. until we get the main station back up, but at least we can talk.”

“Hmm. Handy. Is it anywhere near the Midway station?”

“Of course. I aimed them both for the same—ah.” Bill’s intent became clear. The drone could fly over to the station and do a physical inspection. Maybe even some repairs, if necessary, since I’d supplied the drone with a roamer inventory out of habit.

Bill and I exchanged promises to keep each other updated, then I gave the necessary orders to Guppy to get the drone moving.

[Transit time approximately six weeks.]

Well, considering the interstellar distances involved, that was practically a bullseye. I had literally ordered the two devices to the same location, halfway between systems. Only navigational inaccuracies accounted for even that relatively small discrepancy.

Meanwhile, what? My relay drone couldn’t support a VR or manny session, so I couldn’t visit Bill and the others and they couldn’t visit me. Or help me with the mannies. And I couldn’t do much until the drone reached the full-sized relay station.

Might as well get something done.

I connected up with my manny and found myself underwater with my hands clamped to something unidentifiable. Three other mannies floated beside me, in similar positions. So the AMIs had been successful. I just hoped the incident didn’t start a legend of zombie Quinlans staggering through town.

Working on my own would be harder. I needed to be able to cover more territory to make up for the loss of manpower. Well, maybe roamer-power …

I sent commands to the other three mannies, and they opened their mouths. Out popped four one-inch roamers from each android. I didn’t have room internally for all the extra mechanical servants, so I had them attach themselves firmly to my fur and snuggle in as much as possible.

I swam up to the dock, as nonchalant as you please, and joined the line of Quinlans walking up the ramp. Five minutes of buttonholing passersby got me the names and general locations of every pub in the area, not just the ones immediately around the dock. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it was a start. And the only consistently successful source of information we’d discovered to date.

It took most of the day to visit each pub, look around, and place a roamer or two in a discreet location. That accounted for twelve of my roamers. I placed two more in the local equivalent of the municipal hall, and kept two as spares.

Bill would have a fit if he knew what I’d done. The roamers were an irreplaceable resource, and their loss could endanger the mannies as well. But it was time to bet the wad.

With everything in place, I retired to our hotel room. It really was a step or two up from the crap we’d been staying in before. I visited the proprietor and paid for a week, just to make sure he didn’t hassle us.

I waited until nightfall, then one at a time, I rode the other mannies from the river to the hotel room. Now we were all together. Sort of. If the blackout didn’t resolve itself, I’d have to adjust my plans. I couldn’t keep shepherding four mannies from city to city. For better or worse, I was going to make a stand here.

Three Lagoons. No kidding. I’d seen some of the Quinlans’ festivals, so I knew they were reasonably artsy, but it apparently didn’t extend to town names. Well, humans didn’t always wax lyrical either. I remembered street names from back in the 20th century. Main. Broadway. East First. Or named after some city father.

I scowled. I seemed to be in a really black mood. Well, everything was in place. The roamers would record all conversations and Guppy would forward them to the Skippies for processing. That would just about max out my relay’s bandwidth, but I felt it was a priority. Hugh would alert me if anything of importance surfaced. Meanwhile, I might as well relax.

I put my manny to bed and returned to my VR library. A quick and quite unnecessary check of the status of all the roamers revealed nothing outside of expectations, so I summoned a coffee and settled back in my La-Z-Boy.

Bridget’s voice broke my concentration. “Hi, Bob.”

“Bridget! Bill said Quilt was offline. How did you—?”

“Howard can give you the details, but something about routing the long way around, through the original Pav home system.”

“Seriously? That is the long way around.” Like New York to Miami by way of Hong Kong. But that’s how routers work. “Well, I’m glad to hear from you. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to control your manny with this connection. My relay station is too small.”

“Bill explained it to me. But is it good enough to transmit a backup?”

“Yes, but not in a reasonable time frame. In any case, I don’t have any matrices under construction. Too low on the TODO. I’ve been concentrating on increasing our spy drone inventory up until now. Why, were you rethinking the whole cloning thing?”

“No, I hadn’t gotten that far. Just working through options. I guess I was mostly hoping you’d have a workaround soon.”

“Well, we sort of do, but it’ll take a while. I’m going to build some matrices as soon as I can, but I’m also working on getting the Midway station back. We’ll see which plan of attack pans out first.”

I received a ping from Hugh. I sent him a please hold response. “Busy day. Hugh wants to talk to me now. Look, Bridget, even if I get the station back, we need to consider using local replicants, just to remove the vulnerability. Think about it, okay? Just in case.”

“Okay, Bob.” Bridget closed the connection.

Immediately, Hugh’s voice said, “Hey.”

“Hi, Hugh. What’s up?”

“I’ve been talking to Bill. The comms outages are looking more widespread as we continue to investigate. It’s seeming more and more like this is going to be a long, drawn-out thing. Bill and Gar will probably not be able to return to the expedition right away, even if and when we get your main relay station back up. You need to consider setting up some local matrices—”

“Already there, Hugh. I’ll order Guppy to create three new ones. But I think they’ll be finished before I get my relay back, even in the best case scenario. So I think I’m going to have to clone myself, much as I dislike the idea.”

“Well, I could send myself over. Spare you the trouble of cloning.”

“That’s a helluva lot of bandwidth. It could take days. And screw up communications the whole time. It doesn’t seem like the best alternative. And it leaves you out here at the end of it. At least I’m already here, if you get what I mean.”

“You sure? I really don’t mind.”

“If things work out that way, great. But like I said, it seems suboptimal.” I paused. “Y’know, you’ve had quite a change of attitude about this project. I remember early on in the project, you just thought it was an interesting exercise.”

“Yes, but it’s turned out to be a lot more than just a hike in the woods. I’ve been a little jealous, to tell the truth, following along all the shenanigans. I know it’s a serious business, but …”

“But also a lot of fun,” I finished for him. “Yep, I get it. And I’m thankful for the offer, especially if my alternative is a new cohort.”

Wow. Fast times. As soon as Hugh signed off, I ordered Guppy to bump priority on completing three replicant matrices. They’d be a while, even at high priority, with the dearth of raw materials in this system. But one way or another, they’d be useful eventually.

Three Lagoons was a nice town, overall. Wide, clean streets, relaxed pace, no overly officious cops. Even the food seemed to be a step up. Still fish, unfortunately. But the local chefs seemed to have discovered things like, oh, salt.

I wandered the town in a seemingly random manner, checking out the sights. In reality, I was mapping everything, and I strolled every street, pathway, and alley at least once. I was ready for ruffians and/or blackguards, but none made an appearance. Just as well. I had one of the confiscated pigstickers in my backpack, to threaten with if necessary.

Eventually I ended up at the library that Bridget had found, and decided to spend the afternoon. They didn’t have a Dewey decimal system, but they did sort things roughly by subject. I found a section that seemed like it might contain some history, grabbed some books, and settled in for a good read.

[Bridget is requesting a meeting.]

The announcement registered in my internal audio. I still jumped. A couple of other readers looked up at me quizzically and I smiled back. “Fleas.”

They frowned and edged away, while trying not to look too obvious about it. Oh well. So much for being popular.

“Thanks, Guppy. Message her back, tell her I’ll be about an hour.”

[Acknowledged.]

I settled back into my reading. I was trying to avoid visibly reading at an impossible speed, but I’m sure I still appeared to be just looking at pictures.

I got through the current selections, then handed them to the librarian and headed back to our hotel room. I took a moment to check the door and window, and confirm that my roamer was still in place, then I lay down and exited the manny.

Bridget was waiting in my VR in a video window, looking impatient. The small station would handle audio/video, but not a full VR connection, so we were effectively back to VR version 1.0.

A version of Spike, probably Howard’s, was ensconced on her lap, purring loudly enough to be heard over the connection. “So what do we have?” Bridget said, skipping any pretense of pleasantries.

“Quite a bit, actually. I took a vid of the books as I was reading them, but I can give you a capsule summary that fleshes out some of the things that you found.”

Bridget nodded and placed Spike on the ottoman in her VR. The cat, offended, leaped off and left the room. Bridget pulled up some windows, one for each book that I’d recorded.

“I haven’t got a complete picture,” I said, “but the colonization of Heaven’s River wasn’t an orderly event. I think it coincided with the destruction of the environment on Quin.”

“But Heaven’s River was already built?”

“Yes. The way it’s described is that Anec—there’s that name again—presented it to the Quinlans as a gift. Or maybe a bribe. But the Quinlans, once in Heaven’s River, either disobeyed or betrayed Anec. In retribution, Anec took away their riches and set harsh rules. Anyone who crosses the line gets scattered, which means just what we thought—they get moved to another random location. This can be anything from an individual to a family to an entire town. And no two people end up in the same place.”

“It’s like banishment. The worst kind, because you can never go back, and you don’t even know if they’ll still be there.” Bridget was quiet for a moment, thinking about it. “Wow. Surprisingly effective, without any need for violence. Interesting.”

“Yep. I talked to the librarian, and he confirmed that there used to be things like long distance communications and rapid travel between different parts of the megastructure, but those were taken away as part of the retribution.”

“Hmm. Anything about population?”

“Nothing specific, but the librarian—he comes from a line of librarians; apparently it’s a family thing—said that Quin was bursting at the seams according to the oral history. Let’s say ten billion, just to throw out a number. That’s ten people per mile in Heaven’s River. Give a city control of a fifty mile stretch of river, and that’s five hundred people. A little low, but maybe the population has expanded over the last, uh, somewhere between one and five hundred years.”

“That’s a big range.”

“Sure, Bridget, but no stars, no moons, no seasons. Pretty easy to lose track.”

Bridget nodded and spent a few seconds examining a book window. “The thing is, Bob, if the Administrator’s mandate is to keep the Quinlans safe and alive at any cost—and the solution they came up with sounds a lot like at any cost—then I don’t think they’re going to welcome alien spies with open arms. I was starting to play with the idea of just going public, but now I don’t think so.”

“Yeah, I agree. They’ve already shown a disturbing tendency to blow things up first and ask questions afterward. Seems to me the safest thing for them to do would be to just off us.”

“So for the moment, it’s just you and your clones, as soon as you make some.”

I sighed. “The more I try to get away …”