We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 4: Chapter 32: Losing on Purpose

Book 4: Chapter 32: Losing on Purpose

Bob

July 2334

Three Lagoons

Bushes: rattling of, process for. I had to admit, it wasn’t really in my wheelhouse. We did have one simple tactic, based on previous experience—go out in public together. But without a full midpoint station, that was out. Or was it?

We only had to go out long enough to make the association. The AMI controllers could handle an instruction like “follow Bob.” If there was a wood cutting of our images out there, it should trigger something.

I sat in our surprisingly spacious hotel room, silently exchanging looks with the other three mannies. The AMIs weren’t geniuses, but they could handle simple directives, as long as they didn’t have to talk. The others were dialed into their mannies well enough to be able to give them verbal commands and receive basic audio-visual input. Good enough for the current operation, but as an ongoing thing it would be completely unworkable.

I was certain I could feel the crew metaphorically standing over my shoulder, ready to kibitz. Nonsense, of course, but a hard feeling to shake. Finally, I got to my feet. “Wow, what a talkative bunch. Let’s get this done, shall we?”

“Braaaaains …” said Garfield’s mannie.

Taking their cue from me, the mannies stood. I opened the door and we trooped out, heads down, like a chain gang being led off to a day of hard labor. Bridget had suggested we should proceed toward the local library, pointing out quite reasonably that our pursuers would probably have staked it out, given our prior behavior. It wasn’t a bad strategy, but I couldn’t shake a certain “lamb to the slaughter” vibe.

As it turned out, I needn’t have bothered my butt over it. Halfway to the library, Will said over the intercom, “You’re being followed.”

“Well, good,” Bridget replied. “Maybe we can get somewhere with this mess.” She paused. “I see them. Two males about twenty yards back?”

“Uh, no,” Garfield said, bemused. “A male and female, paralleling us on the left.”

I barely managed to avoid rolling my eyes. “Outstanding. I’ll give you this, Bridget, your plans work.”

She didn’t reply, but I imagined a slightest trace of a smile.

“They’re not together,” Will said. “There’s no coordination between them. Not bracketing you, not trying to keep the spacing even. If anything, I’d say one group is following the other group.”

“Maybe we can use that when the time comes. For now, though, let’s just continue on, oblivious.” I demonstrated by slowing down to check out some of the wares in storefront displays. I was probably being a little obvious, but then maybe I wasn’t being objective.

I was getting that itchy feeling between the shoulder blades. I kept telling myself they didn’t all have guns, but it wasn’t as reassuring as I’d hoped. Even a thrown blade would certainly do some damage. Despite myself, I started rolling my eyes around to check in every direction. I quickly spotted the two groups of stalkers.

Now came the risky part. While I was okay with getting nabbed, I couldn’t take a chance on three unmanned mannies being taken, with the inevitable questions it would raise. Fortunately, we’d scripted this. I turned and huddled with the mannies. After a few seconds, the other three started back the way we’d come at a deliberately casual pace. I, meanwhile, continued on, trying to project urgency from every follicle.

“One group seemed like they were considering following the other mannies, but then decided you were an easier target,” Bridget said. “Both groups are now on your tail.”

I soon reached the library, and sure enough, the plaza was almost completely clear of people. I wondered how the Quinlans managed to do that without creating a spectacle. On Earth, if someone had tried getting people to leave an area, they’d end up with an audience twice the size. Here, people seemed to understand the concept of “go away.”

And I said almost, right? A couple of groups of Quinlans around the periphery were making a laughable attempt to appear casual, just standing around, not talking, while fingering something hidden by their backpacks. My mind immediately conjured up Gollum, wondering what they had in their pocketses.

I stopped dead, swiveling only my very mobile Quinlan eyeballs. And that was the cue for the party to start.

The two groups of Quinlans that had been waiting turned and made for me, pulling out the usual pigstickers. Before they could get ten feet, one of our two groups of stalkers pulled out trank pistols and started shooting. So much for no guns. The other stalker group immediately made for them, pigstickers in hand. The gun-toting Quinlans appeared to be getting the upper hand when yet another group ran into the plaza and jumped them.

I stood in the center of the maelstrom, seemingly totally forgotten. “It’s nice to be popular, isn’t it?” Garfield observed.

“But maybe not conducive to a long life,” I replied. “I’m having second thoughts. I vote for bugging out.”

“Yup.”

“Agreed.”

“Move it.”

Well, there was a consensus anyway, reinforced by my already receding butt. I dropped to all fours and prepared to put on some speed. Immediately, the feuding groups found their own consensus, which seemed to consist of not letting me get away. Abandoning their battle, the still-standing combatants turned as one and made after me. ?????Ê?

“They have guns,” I said.

“Some of them,” Bridget replied.

“Definitely tranquilizer pistols,” Hugh said.

“You’re sure because …”

“Victims didn’t drop like they would from shock. It’s more of an ouch, stagger, fall thing.”

Bridget gave that a moment’s thought. “Okay, if you get shot by one of those things, you should act appropriately.”

“What, you still want me to get captured?” I didn’t try to disguise the surprise in my voice. The others were silent for a moment as I navigated a quick turn around a fountain.

“Jury’s out at this point,” Bridget replied, “but we might find ourselves—”

“Oof!” I grunted as I was hit by a most professional-feeling tackle. The defender had come around the other side of the fountain and taken me by surprise.

When the rolling stopped, I found myself looking up at a Quinlan. He seemed as surprised as me. We stared at each other for a second while I tried to decide if I wanted to be captured. Then the decision was taken away from me as some large number of Quinlan bodies piled on. I honestly doubt that I could have heaved them off, even going full manny.

They slapped manacles on me. Quinlan manacles were interesting; they attached to all four limbs, and they included a device in the center that would open like a parachute if I dove into the water and tried to swim away. Quite ingenious. I spent several seconds inspecting it.

Probably too intently. The group leader waved a pigsticker in my face and said something in a sharp voice. I realized that I hadn’t been paying attention—a consequence of not actually being in personal danger, I guess. I’d have to do better. I couldn’t afford to have them take the manny apart, and I didn’t want them to get the idea I wasn’t a flesh-and-blood Quinlan. I rewound and played back her comment in frame-jack.

“I’m not seeing any of this super-Quinlan stuff our upriver correspondents reported. I guess maybe they’re just incompetent.”

Her crew laughed at her comment, then went quiet as she raised a hand. This one was tough, and they knew it. I resolved to act properly intimidated as she leaned in close.

“You give us any trouble, moochin, and I’ll carve your flaps off.”

That was a real threat. A Quinlan with their arm flaps missing would never be able to swim properly again. It would be kind of like the medieval practice of cutting off a hand.

I wasn’t sure if it was a realistic threat or just bravado, but I wasn’t going to push it. After all, technically, this is what I’d wanted. What we’d wanted. Okay, what Bridget had wanted. The crew was busy at the moment, chivvying their mannies back into the river. It hadn’t taken us long to realize that the losers would be going for the rest of our group, just to have something to show their bosses.

My captors grabbed me under my arms and started hustling me along. I looked around but couldn’t spot any of the other groups of pursuers. I received a slap on the back of the head from one of the crew, a wizened character that for some reason reminded me of Popeye. “Keep your head down,” he growled. I almost decked him, but reminded myself, yet again, that this was according to plan.

“Can you identify which group caught you?” That was Garfield.

“Yeah,” I replied. “The sword-critter group.”

“We think our mannies are being stalked by the pistol-critters now,” Bridget reported.

“I’ve got one of the small roamers,” Garfield said. “I’m trying to keep Bob’s group in sight. It would have been nice if we could have been stocked with drones, ya know.”

“No room,” I replied. “I thought about it, believe me.”

I received another slap on the head from Popeye, for no reason that I could see. I decided that in the fullness of time, I’d be returning the attention with interest.

In short order, we entered a nondescript building. Two flights up, and we were in a surprisingly spacious apartment. “I like what you’ve done with the pl—” I was driven back a step as Popeye planted the butt of his sword into my midsection. Based on Quinlan anatomy, it should have had exactly the same effect on a Quinlan as it would on a human. Or a Deltan. Or a Pav. Interesting.

I shelved that thought for the wee small hours and turned to Popeye. I hadn’t folded in the expected manner, and there definitely hadn’t been an oof. It wasn’t lost on him, as his face was showing a bit of the Quinlan equivalent of widening eyes. I glared at him. “Do that again, and all the spinach in the world won’t protect you.”

His fear was replaced with bemusement. I doubt that spinach had translated well. But he certainly understood the threat. He raised his pigsticker to give me another whack, and the boss-lady said his name sharply. I instructed the translator to associate it with Popeye in the future.

Popeye lowered the sword but gave me an evil grin. “Anytime, moochin.”

Boss Lady pointed me at a chair. As I sat, one of the crew unlatched my leg and ran the manacle through a gap in the furniture, then re-manacled me. It seemed amateurish. Even at Quinlan strength, I could probably smash the chair and free myself. But maybe the point was to just slow me down.

The manacles themselves appeared to be some form of dense wood—metal being at a premium in Heaven’s River—connected by a tightly braided rope. I estimated that I could just about break them if I needed to. I turned away from my captors and opened my mouth. A couple of flea-sized roamers popped out and started climbing down my fur, with orders to strategically weaken my bindings. Just in case.

Boss Lady came over, pulled a chair around, and sat in front of me. I quickly ordered my fleas to continue their journey under my fur. While it was unlikely that she’d try to groom me, I couldn’t afford to have her get a close look at my passengers.

“So what do we call you?”

Well, that was a good deal more friendly than I’d expected. “Bob. And you?”

“You can call me Frieda.” The translation software automatically assigned a random human equivalent to whatever she actually said. “So, now, Bob, why don’t you tell me about you and your friends?”

I had a pretty good idea how this was going to play out, but I decided I might as well follow the script. “My friends and I have all recently reached adulthood, and we decided to embark on a sabbatical to explore the river before settling down. It’s pretty common, at least where we come from.”

Frieda started at me for a moment in silence, then sighed. “Okay, Bob, I guess we have to go through the standard lies first. We initially thought you might have been spies for the Administrator, but you seemed interested in the oddest things. And you followed Skeve, but not to do him harm as it turned out. I admit to being perplexed. Are you another resistance group?”

“Logically, to answer that, I’d have to know what resistance group you are. But short answer, we aren’t part of any resistance group. Nor are we part of the Administrator’s group. We actually don’t know anything more about the Administrator than most people.”

“So what are you?”

“Like I said, travelers.”

Frieda glanced over top of my head and nodded. Immediately I felt a blinding pain. I arched my back reflexively as internal systems went into damage control. I turned my head to see Popeye standing there with a couple of wires in his hands, insulation stripped off at the ends. My gaze followed the wires back until they terminated in what were almost certainly some batteries wired up in series. Well, that explained it. Mannies wouldn’t be any more resistant to electricity than any bio. That was a real problem, and I added an item to my TODO to look into countermeasures.

“Hurts, doesn’t it?” Popeye grinned at me. “Why don’t you threaten me again, moochin?”

“Okay. Next time you use that on me, I’m going to throw you through the nearest wall. Happy?”

“Let’s try to stay on topic, shall we?” Frieda said, interrupting the stare-off. “Bob, sooner or later you’ll give us what we want. Why not spare yourself some pain? We’re not really your enemy.”

I turned back to her. Maybe simple candor would work. “Look, Frieda, cards on the table, we’re looking for a friend. I mean it. We’re not associated with the Administrator or any underlords or Lords of Flatbush or any resistance to or against any of the above.”

“Paper on the table? Lords of … flat bushes?” Frieda frowned at me, then with a weary sigh, she nodded over my head.

“No, do not—” Again, searing pain, but this time I had the sensory feedback filters dialed up, so it registered more as data than as agony.

Then Popeye snickered. “Wanna threaten me some more?”

That did it. The fleas had made a good start on my wrist manacles while we’d been talking. Time to test the results. I stood up, and before anyone could even begin to react, I yanked upward. The manacles snapped exactly as I hoped they would, although my telltales registered some blunt-force damage around my wrists.

I reached, grabbed a handful of Popeye’s fur, and flung him at the nearest wall. He didn’t quite go through it, which I suppose qualified as false advertising on my part, but he definitely damaged the drywall. His unconscious form slid slowly to the floor, leaving a more-or-less Popeye-shaped indentation a couple of feet above the baseboards.

I turned back to Frieda to make some snappy comment and found myself staring at the pointy end of several pigstickers. The sword-wielders all had a kind of wide-eyed, semi-panicked look that very clearly stated that they would react badly to, um, just about anything.

I cocked my head and said, “Well, I did warn him.”

It took a few minutes, but I finally convinced them that I wasn’t about to go on a killing spree or make a run for it. We were once again seated, although Frieda’s chair was placed a couple of feet farther away than before. I glanced at the wires, which were still lying on the floor where Popeye had dropped them. No one had volunteered to man his station. Popeye had been helped to another room, where, presumably, he was receiving some medical attention.

“I’m a little surprised,” I said, gesturing to the wires. “I thought that level of technology was banned.”

Frieda tried to smile, and did a credible job, honestly. “We don’t tend to be law-abiding, as a rule.”

“We being the Resistance?”

She frowned at me. “You really don’t know? And yet you recognized the battery as forbidden tech?”

I frowned back at her. “Look, why don’t you think of me as someone who has just discovered this whole Administrator/ Resistance conspiracy thing and is still trying to figure it out? It’s actually true.”

“I’d say there’s a lot more to you than that. For starters, there are your physical abilities. There’s a report that one of you took a dart point-blank and just got mad. Then there are the weird phrases and slang you keep spouting.” She stared at me, thinking, then added, “You are definitely odd. Something new. I think we’re going to need to get the higher-ups involved.”

I nodded in what I hoped was a respectful manner. Inside, I was doing a happy dance. This might finally be a break. If these people were amenable to a little give-and-take, I could conceivably get some real information on Bender, finally.

They put me in a back room with a small, high window, far too small to fit through. A lot of bumping and banging on the other side of the door made me think they were reinforcing the lock. Probably with furniture. I had a feeling that this apartment had been specifically picked for its security features. Or maybe built. Could the entire building be a Resistance stronghold?

I’d have loved to check it out, but unfortunately most of my biggest roamers were ensconced in various pubs, listening for information about the Resistance, and I didn’t want to risk the rest. Hmmph. The whole spying thing seemed like an obsolete strategy, but I didn’t want the roamers to have to cross some unknown stretch of city to get back to me. I’d hold that plan in reserve for now.

Meanwhile, I figured now might be a good time to check in. I didn’t want to interrupt anything important, so I settled for a ping to my friends, just to let them know I was available.

“Hey, Bob,” Garfield replied. “How’s tricks?”

“You okay?” Bridget said.

“Hey,” Will said.

“I’m okay,” I replied to everyone. “I’ve been captured by the Resistance. They don’t seem to have a name beyond that. I guess there’s the Resistance and the Administrator that they are resisting. Not a lot of requirement for labels.”

“Humans would have come up with an acronym,” Garfield said with a chuckle.

“And it would have been terrible,” Bridget added.

“I’m afraid I lost you, Bob,” Garfield said. “I had to dodge some search parties. I doubt they know about roamers, and I don’t want to change that.”

I had a thought. “Listen, Gar, can you call in all the surveillance roamers? Their mission’s been rendered redundant at this point, and I’d like to get us all up to full strength.”

“No prob, Bob, but I’ll have to find you after I collect them.”

I nodded, even though no one could see that. “We’ll deal with that when we have to. For now, let’s make sure we keep each other updated. As soon as we have some useful info, we’ll reevaluate.”

The sun was going down, or however you phrased it in Heaven’s River, and I could hear the silence descending over Three Lagoons as people turned in for the night. I put my ear to the door to try to determine what my hosts might be up to. A couple of voices were engaged in desultory conversation. It seemed the night shift was on duty. Not that it mattered; I had no intention of escaping at this point, unless I decided my manny was in real danger.

But of more immediate value, I could look forward to being undisturbed for a while.

I laid down on the single bed and left the manny on standby. I materialized in my VR and sighed with contentment as I relaxed into my La-Z-Boy recliner.

The others had successfully maneuvered their mannies into the water, where they were now once again anchored at the bottom, well below maximum Quinlan diving depth. Garfield was getting all the roamers back to the hotel room. Hugh was trying to chivvy some surveillance drones closer to our location so they could follow my movement. Unfortunately too much activity tended to burn out the drones’ heat sinks, so every vector had to be carefully planned.

There was an email from Bill, reporting on progress against Starfleet. Apparently things were heating up. I read with growing alarm as I realized how much of the Bobiverse was inaccessible.

“Guppy!”

[You rang?]

“Change the keys on our autofactories, then do a full software audit. I want to be absolutely sure they aren’t compromised.”

[By your command.]

I smiled as Guppy signed off. His snark had increased over the years. I still hadn’t decided if it was genuine self-awareness or if he was just adapting to my command style. I didn’t really want to do a deep check, lest I be disappointed by the result.

I had an advantage, in that I built and set up the autofactories in Eta Leporis while I had only a low-bandwidth connection to the Bobiverse in general. Most other Bobs wouldn’t have the same protection. Bill hadn’t given specifics about who might be compromised.

I went back to the email from Bill and continued reading. It took only a few mils to come to the part about booby traps in the comms stations. Great. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to get all my equipment close to the big station, and I could decide what to do at that point. Maybe Bill and company would have figured out a work-around by then.