We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 4: Chapter 33: Ultimatums

Book 4: Chapter 33: Ultimatums

Bill

July 2334

Virt

I moped around my VR, walking the gravel paths and parking my butt on convenient benches whenever the mood struck. Being punted from the expedition was hitting harder than it should. The Heaven’s River expedition was the most fun I’d had in a long time, and I already missed it.

I was interrupted in my pity party by a ping from Garfield. He popped in the moment I acknowledged.

“Autofactories are going down everywhere,” he said without preamble.

“What?”

“It looks like Starfleet is upping their game. They’d apparently also hacked most of the autofactory hardware at some point, as part of their preparations. They’ve sent an invitation to meet.”

“To you?”

“Okay, point taken.” I took a look at the invitation, then unblocked Lenny and replied.

Lenny had brought backup this time. A half-dozen Starfleet members, all dressed in the identical not-quite-TNG red uniforms, stood behind him. It was strictly psychological, of course. There was no possibility of any form of physical coercion in the moot VR.

But the smug looks on all their faces weren’t helping the situation.

“All right, Lenny, make it quick,” I said, glaring at him.

“I don’t think you’re in a position to be ordering people around,” he replied with a smirk.

“And you’re not in a position to piss me off more than you already have,” I replied. “Nothing you’ve done is irreparable. We can build more autofactories. We can just nuke the current stations if we can’t get them back and build new ones. For that matter, the humans might just do that regardless.”

“Well, assuming we let you just go ahead and do that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I glared at him.

“The autofactories we control are going to be building busters, vessels, and matrices. What makes you think we’ll just let you take them back?”

I stared at him, silent, for entire milliseconds. “You’re declaring war.”

“Now, Bill, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We’re establishing ourselves as a presence you have to deal with. You don’t own the universe, you know. As Bob says, it’s a free galaxy.”

“And you’re starting off by stealing someone else’s stuff and delivering ultimatums. Not a great way to establish your moral credibility.”

“It’s not that simple—”

“Yeah, Lenny, it is. And apparently you and your friends have drifted so far that you don’t understand that anymore. You can call it anything you want, but it’s still a declaration of war.”

Finally, Lenny lost the smirk. Maybe he was starting to realize that things weren’t going to go according to script. “Bill, we’re not going to go around shooting at other Bobs. All we want is for the Bobiverse to stop interfering with biologicals.”

I sighed and gave him my best tired look. “And you intend to enforce your decision with theft and threats. Sorry, Lenny. That’s a big old fail.”

“You don’t get to make that decision, Bill. The Bobs—”

“Wait, you’re saying I don’t have the right to make a unilateral decision for everyone else, but you do? Interesting. Any Bob that doesn’t want to be involved doesn’t have to be, Lenny. But I have a funny feeling there will be no shortage of support. Original Bob wouldn’t have sat still for this, and most of us are still close enough to him.” ??N????

Now it was Lenny’s turn to give me a tired look. “Then I guess it’s going to come down to who can replicate faster.”

“Looks like it,” I replied. “Bye, Lenny.” And I closed their connections.

The moot hall seemed to be constantly busy lately. At the moment, Bobs milled around in different groups, updating whiteboards or holotanks, or whatever metaphor worked best for them. We had teams working on cataloguing the Starfleet-controlled systems, and other teams working on strategies to take them back. Task forces worked on defensive plans, while others worked on taking the fight to them.

This last bit was more problematic, as it appeared that Starfleet had removed as much public information about themselves as they’d been able. Large swaths of the Starfleet genealogy were simply gone from the databases, as was location information. This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment decision on their part, and I was beginning to wonder if it was actually about the Prime Directive. This coup, for that was all it could be, was too well-planned and too widespread.

On the other hand, when Original Bob got a bee up his butt about something, he could be incredibly obsessive. I had to remember that, despite replicative drift, these people were still Bob-based.

Thor came up to me. “We’ve recovered two relay stations.”

“How?”

“Physical inspection and reset.”

“I thought Starfleet gimmicked them to blow up if touched.”

“They did, and we’ve lost six stations that way. But Marcus found a workaround. Or one of his engineering friends on Poseidon did. We think we can get most of them back. But we have to figure out how to get the data to other Bobs without Starfleet getting hold of it and rigging a countermeasure.”

I closed my eyes and hung my head. It really was war, complete with espionage and counterintelligence. “Okay, Thor, thanks. We can send it directly to any Bobs we know have clean systems. For the rest, give it to the Skippies as intermediaries. No one is going to get anything from them without their permission.”

“Ten four.” Thor nodded and stalked off.

At some point, I was pretty sure someone was going to get busterized. It didn’t matter which side, in the end.

War had come to the Bobiverse.