We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 5: Chapter 14: Network Tours

Book 5: Chapter 14: Network Tours

Icarus

April 2321

Wormhole Network

We could have very easily just hopped from hub system to hub system, pausing only to identify the next hub jump. But there was enough of the scientist in us to keep us on track. In six months, we managed to do eight hub hops, taking us about sixty degrees around the galaxy. We’d long since left the Orion Spur and were now hopping through the Perseus Arm, which was a lot thicker with star systems. Each hub we investigated connected to local systems up to a couple hundred light-years away. Most of the hub systems had somewhere between two hundred and five hundred connections, but the last one, a real monster, had more than a thousand.

We had also become increasingly aware, as we circumnavigated the galaxy, that the Milky Way had a previously unknown near neighbor—a large dwarf galaxy that was invisible from home because of the intervening galactic core, but became increasingly spectacular as our travels brought it more into view. I’d been taking pictures whenever possible and bundling them up into the reports we were preparing for if and when we got back to our own neighborhood.

I was examining the data window that listed the wormhole counts and locations while Dae sat and patted Spike. I said, “Y’know, the number of connections in the hub systems is trending upward as we go.”

“It’s not just this one skewing the stats?” Dae replied.

I shook my head. “Naw, the other seven graph generally upward. I wonder if we’re getting closer to the center of the empire.”

“Empire?”

“Unless we get shot at.”

I sighed and turned to face Dae. “Buddy, at this point, I’d welcome some hostilities. We’ve mapped more than thirty-two hundred systems across a sixty-degree arc of the galaxy, and we haven’t even gone inward or outward more than one hop along one of the radial lines. And every hub system is part of a radial line. And so far, with all this traveling around, we’ve found nothing and nobody alive. Doesn’t that disturb you just a little bit?”

“Well, yeah, but we’ve only closely explored two systems and landed on one planet. And since those seemed to belong to the same civilization, you can’t really conclude anything from that.”

“Granted, but we also haven’t seen any traffic. No one using the wormhole network. We haven’t been challenged. There’s been no radio traffic—”

“They are—or were—at least as advanced as us, Icky. They’d be using SCUT. You know there’s no way to intercept or even detect their comms if we don’t have the quantum keys.”

“There are still reasons for radio, Dae. The wormhole controllers, for instance.”

“Yeah, I think you’re reaching now. Look, if you want, we can go through a couple of gates to investigate local systems. But first, I’d like to go one more hub to spinward.”

“Why?”

“I want to see if the numbers increase or drop off. If you’re right about the trend, then we should keep going until the numbers start to drop. Then we know that we’re at or near the center of the empire.”

“As plans go, it’s not the worst,” I admitted. “Okay, let’s do it.”

*****

The next hub point was down in numbers, with just under six hundred systems linked to it, which implied that the previous hub serviced the center of the empire. We took the time to map all the systems since by this point, we had the process down to a routine. Even so, it took a month. But finally, we were ready to fly back to what we’d now dubbed Hub Zero, the theoretical center of things. ??????s?

Once again, I was staring at the map of the galaxy, as revealed by our wormhole explorations. Dae, unusually, was visiting only by video window, as he was making significant changes to his VR and didn’t want to mess mine up with bleed-through. But he had a copy of the map to refer to.

I broke the silence. “I’d have liked to keep going around until we got to the end of the hubs.”

“Wait, what? You agreed to this plan. And what makes you think we’d get to an end of some kind?”

“First, because this network doesn’t extend into our patch of the galaxy. We didn’t find a wormhole until we were eighty-odd light-years from Earth. And I checked the addresses on the first hub we found. No hubs to anti-spinward. That was the terminal hub. So it doesn’t circumnavigate the galaxy.”

“Hmm. Well, at this radius, anyway. Might go all the way around farther in.”

I nodded and tapped my map. Well, poked a finger into it. “And that’s the other thing. There are more hubs outbound and inbound, and we’ve yet to investigate any of them. I—”

“Jeez, Icky. I get the frustration, but we can only do so much. Unless you want to split up?”

“No, that’s when the chainsaw-wielding maniac starts taking us out one at a time.”

Dae chuckled. “So that’s a hard pass. We could also stop and do some cloning.”

“Which could take months. This civilization—or civilizations, I’m not sure it’s necessarily all one species—seems to have been around a lot longer than us. Long enough to have cleaned out any free orbital resources.”

“So what I’m hearing,” Dae said, “is that you hate this plan, but not as much as you hate all the other plans.”

“Still a joy to work with.”

“It’s not just a job, Icky, it’s a pleasure.”

I sighed and swiveled in my chair. “Dae, seriously. Yes, I acknowledge that I’m having trouble prioritizing. But c’mon, you can’t be as blasé as you make out. This is big!”

“Okay, okay. Look, the proper thing to do is to complete one task before moving on to the next. Let’s finish mapping the hubs, then we’ll come back to Hub Zero and look for their version of Trantor.”

“But that’s Howard’s—”

“Do not start with me.”

*****

It took us several months to determine there was a total of six hubs spinward of Hub Zero, making the empire slightly asymmetrical. But it wasn’t like there were rules. The connections at each hub dropped off in the expected manner, indicating that the empire had been growing outward from the central hub. We hadn’t gone inward or outward yet, so there might still be an opportunity to circle the galaxy at a different radius. But Dae and I agreed that once we finished this task, investigating Hub Zero was the next priority.

Dae was back visiting in person, his VR experimentation apparently having come to an end. Or maybe he just needed a break. I thought he sounded a little frustrated in his more unguarded moments. I wanted to ask him what he was working on, but the fact that he hadn’t volunteered the information made me reluctant to prod.

“About a hundred and twenty degrees,” I said, pointing at the map. “A third of the galaxy. And hubs every three or four degrees, plus or minus a bit. Interesting.”

“How so?”

“Five hundred degrees to a full circle would make the hubs five degrees apart by that measurement system. A nice even number.”

“And you pick five hundred because … ”

“Ten-bit bytes. Five-byte words. They seem to be locked into hemidecimal and decimal counting systems. We only use three-sixty because of the Babylonians. Maybe they didn’t have Babylonians.”

“Okay. And?”

“And nothing, really, Dae. Just thinking out loud. But they had been a civilization for a long time, from the looks of things. I mean, they made it a third of the way around the galaxy. And now they’re gone. I think finding out why has to be our highest priority.”

“So Hub Zero.”

“Yup.”

*****

Traveling from what we labeled Hub Six to Hub Zero took less than twenty-four hours, most of that time being spent moving from one hub gate to the next in the hub system. Wormhole gates were kept well separated, which seemed like a good idea on so many levels. Traffic jams would be nothing but bad.

Once at Hub Zero, we were faced with a quandary: more than a thousand gates, and really nothing to indicate which one might lead to the home planet of the empire. Even the physical map of system locations didn’t give any clues.

“Sadly,” Dae commented, “the information is probably in the identification packet, but probably in their version of a text banner.”

“So random pick?”

“‘Fraid so, Icky. Still don’t want to split up?”

“Leatherface is still out there, Dae.”

“And probably working on another sequel.”

We picked a random wormhole, girded our virtual loins, and glided on through.