We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 5: Chapter 20: Spectacular Nature

Book 5: Chapter 20: Spectacular Nature

Will

August 2339

Planet BSC-142-C

Istood at the edge of the precipice and looked down. Five kilometers, vertical drop. Jeez.

Some aspects of our former humanity still stuck with us, despite the centuries. I was controlling a manny, so in absolutely no danger, but I still had to fight the urge to backpedal, an almost overpowering desire to be elsewhere. I could, of course, use the endocrine inhibition system, which was still built into every new replicant matrix—the Bob ones, at least. But I hadn’t felt any need to use that particular crutch since—well, ever, really. Not since Bob, before I was even cloned. I didn’t know if the replicant matrix models used by the various post-life arcologies that had sprung up in post-Earth human space included the same circuitry. Arcologies was, of course, a misuse of the original term, but it had somehow stuck.

I was standing at the edge of a huge escarpment on planet BSC-142-C. I smiled to myself at the arrogance. The Bobiverse Stellar Catalog was now replacing the HIC, HIP, Messier, and all the other competing catalogs used by astronomers back in the twenty-first century. Less Sol-centric and with a more sensible planetary categorization system, it labeled planets from the innermost to the outermost, rather than in order of discovery. Among many other advantages.

I gave myself a mental shake to get back on track and looked to the left and right. BSC-142-C was a young and still extremely active planet, tectonically. Along the line of this escarpment, two continental plates had collided and were continuing the shoving match. For some reason, though, instead of this simply producing the usual mountain chain, one plate had ridden over the other as a unit, creating a cliff cutting right across the new continent, five kilometers high on average. Behind me on the escarpment, mountains jutted several more kilometers into the sky. And a kilometer or so to my left, a waterfall put every single other similar feature in known space to shame.

The planet itself was almost but not quite habitable. The ecosystem was still primitive, only recently having developed the fungi that would compost dead plant and animal matter. The fungi now were making up for lost time and had a lot of material to work with, so the atmosphere was what I’d have to characterize as swamp times ten. Even Takama’s citizens would run screaming back to their planet after a few seconds here.

On the other hand, flying cities with filtered air would be fine. And the views were definitely spectacular.

Well, it would go into the catalog with all the other systems that I was examining along the way. No outstanding colonization candidates yet, but the century was young. And anyway—I smiled as I had the thought—this whole exploration thing was at least as much for my own mental health as it was for the good of humanity. Events back in the UFS just kept getting weirder and weirder, and I was well out of it. I was coming to understand why Bob-1 had wanted to join up with me. The biggest attribute of immortality, it turned out, was that problems just kept coming at you. Eventually you realized that the only solution was to head for the hills and adopt the hermit lifestyle.

But there was always that fear in the back of my mind that we might be living on borrowed time. So far, we’d found no explanation for the observed fact that all the intelligent species we’d discovered were in the range from the Stone Age–level Deltans to early spacefaring species like humanity, the Quinlans, and the Others. No elder races, no Heechee, no high-level Kardashev civilizations. None of us thought it was a coincidence, but no one had an explanation, either.

My personal theory was that civilizations killed themselves off once their weaponry reached a certain point. Certainly, the Quinlans and humanity had nearly managed it already once. Would humanity eventually manage to kill themselves off and take everyone else with them? The resurgence of FAITH and the rise of the Luddies seemed like a couple of potential wars in the making.

Even the Bobs weren’t immune. We’d had the Starfleet War, and now we had the Skippies’ rogue AI to lose sleep over. Things just seemed to pile up.

I was going to have to start actively advertising for potential colonists. Maybe some version of Ever Onward on the other colony planets would stir something up.

I paused and sighed. Talk about taking the joy out of the moment. Time to rack the manny in the space station, disconnect from this system, and get back to work.

I stepped back from the precipice, took a couple of quick steps, and leaped. In the 1.05-G gravity well, I would fall a little faster than Earth normal. Engaging the internal SURGE drive, I described a graceful upward-turning arc and headed for space. I laughed out loud, enjoying the sheer rush, as my dark mood evaporated. It was like having a superpower. I still hadn’t brought this up with Herschel and Neil. Not having to deal with normal gravity, they hadn’t really put a lot of effort into improving the manny SURGE drive. I was a little more motivated, and wasn’t trying to rebuild a drive system in-flight. I’d have to bring it up, though, at some point.

Well, plenty of time. I hoped.