We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 5: Chapter 23: Huey

Book 5: Chapter 23: Huey

Howard

August 2342

Trantor City, Big Top

Isighed theatrically as I closed the door to our apartment. Bridget looked up from her computer, gave me a brief smile, but didn’t otherwise comment.

Things had settled back into a routine for us, since the end of the Heaven’s River escapade. And I was glad to have my wife back full-time. Or as full-time as a career-obsessed exobiologist could be. There had been some casual talk of adopting another brood, since most of our latest batch of children were now becoming grandparents. But neither one of us was feeling a lot of enthusiasm at the moment. Instead, Bridget had latched onto Mario’s latest find, a planet harboring an intelligent species, and it was consuming most of her free time lately. And I had my human–manny interface project to keep me busy. It was generally considered a truism that immortality would make it harder and harder to fill the years and decades, but so far, the two of us still didn’t have a couple of spare minutes to rub together.

I came up behind her and peered at the screen. “Where’s my martini, dammit?” I said, overacting for all I was worth.

“Same place as usual. In the bottles. Make me one.”

Our ritual greeting having been satisfied, I assembled two martinis and handed one to her. “How’s it coming along?”

Bridget took a sip, made an appreciative sound, and leaned back in her work chair. The mechanism obediently swiveled out a leg rest, and she settled into a three-quarters recline. I whistled, and another chair scooted over and placed itself behind me.

“Jabberwocky?” I interrupted.

“He discovered the planet; it’s his right to name it. However unoriginal.” She gave me a glare. “As I was saying, I’ve started manufacturing survey drones. I’ll have a better picture soon.”

“I thought Mario had already done that?”

Bridget took another sip, then put the martini down on her chair arm. The chair reconfigured to support the glass safely. “Planetary survey, sure. Mario’s looking for Others, and once it was clear there were none in this system, he more or less lost interest. It’s the standard Bob survey—lots of facts about the system and the planet, not so much on the local population. Other than pictures, of course.”

“Ah. So you’re going for … ”

“Language, culture, details of biology … the same stuff we did for the Quinlans. And we learned a lot from that exercise. The Gamers extracted a lot of detail in a short time, and pioneered some brilliant techniques in the process.”

I chuckled. “Let’s make sure we dot all the i’s on slang and idiom this time. We don’t need to go through what Bob did.” I reached past Bridget and scrolled her document. “Flying monkeys.”

“Stop saying that. Other than having the right number of arms and legs—”

“And wings.”

“Yes, okay. But they’re not anthropoid, not really. Honestly, given the shape of the head, if it wasn’t for the scaly feather things replacing fur, I’d go with rats or squirrels.”

“Same thing. But no, definitely not flying squirrels.”

Bridget frowned and looked at me quizzically. She also had that expression that said she knew a punch line was in the works but couldn’t help herself. “Why not squirrels?”

I pointed. “No goggles or aviator hat.”

Bridget made a low growling sound. “You’re lucky there are martinis in this world. Makes you almost bearable.” She held out her now-empty glass to me.

Taking the hint, I made another round. As I delivered the new drink, I said, “I love the floating islands, though. Not held up by monopoles, right?”

“Is that how they explained the floating rocks in that movie with the blue aliens?” She shook her head. “But no. They’re actually alive. Hydrogen-filled balloon animals, something that’s rare enough on a terrestrial planet at any size. Big enough, in this case, for entire ecosystems to grow on their backs. Commensal, I think. I’ve dubbed them leviathans.”

“And the natives build villages on them. Do we have a name for the intelligent species yet?”

“Mario calls them dragons. That seems a stretch, because they look more like—”

“Squirrels. Yeah. Pretty big stretch, that. Maybe we’ll get a name we can use from their language. So when will we be ready to go in?”

Bridget gave me the hairy eyeball. “A couple of months, oh impatient one. We learned a lot from the Quinlan Affair, but we still aren’t magicians.”

My face must have betrayed something, because Bridget looked slightly alarmed and said, “What?”

“Uh, you know how we’ve been working on tensor field printers that would be able to assemble almost literally anything? Including biological items?”

“Uh-huh. ‘Items’ means living things, right?”

“Yeah. So Bill has a working model. I use the word ‘working’ loosely, but it’s produced living masses of tissue. No differentiation yet if you want living tissue—not fast enough. But soon … ” ???????

She shook her head. “You still need a design to print. Once you have one, you can print copies, and maybe even vary some details. But it’ll still be a process.”

I shrugged without comment. Bridget was right anyway, and she could tell when I was being stubborn just to be stubborn. That never ended well. A change of subject seemed in order. “I’m popping over to Vulcan. You want to come?”

“Something you need to be there in person for?”

“We’re going to be running a huey test. I want to see it up close.”

Bridget shut down her Canvas with a swipe. “Hot damn! Let’s go!”

I grinned and held out my arm, and we headed for the bedroom to park our mannies. We had long since arranged custom mannies on Vulcan, and we stored them at MannyPark Remote Services LLC since that was reasonably central to everything. And because we owned the company.

*****

I gazed out the window as the technicians fussed with the test subject, a woman who had been introduced simply as Terry. At the moment, she was festooned with cables and various sensor packages, making her look more like some kind of techno-bush than a human being. Most of the equipment was for testing and monitoring, of course. The actual huey control hardware consisted of a combination head cap and neck ring. With just those basic items, an operator would look like they were wearing a toque and scarf. And even that would likely be trimmed down in the production model.

The view out the window was of far more interest to me at the moment. We were about eight floors up in the city of New Landing, one of the floating cities that were increasingly replacing land-based versions all across the UFS. And why not? Floating cities didn’t require clearing natural growth or covering up watercourses or any of the various ways that humanity had always scarred up the land. Or dealing with Cupid Bugs or Ickeys or giant mutant ninja mosquitos, or any of the other monstrosities that the universe insisted on throwing at us. The worst effect for the ecosystem was the occasional shadow drifting overhead. Hell, clouds did that.

From here, I could see down past the edge of the city to the riotous jungle that still covered pretty much the whole planet of Vulcan. Somewhere down there, brontos were attempting to eat trees without forgetting to breathe in the process, and raptors were attempting to eat, well, pretty much anything. Cupid Bugs were no longer a problem, even assuming any were left—my Cupid Bug hunters had been gratifyingly successful. And rabbits were now officially an invasive species.

I had to fight off a momentary wave of nostalgia. Vulcan was no longer the frontier planet that I’d helped settle some hundred and fifty-odd years ago. Beside me, Bridget said softly, “It’s beautiful, Howard, and I’m glad we were here for the start of it.”

I smiled without turning and took her hand. A silent squeeze was all the communication we needed.

“I think we’re set,” one of the techs said, breaking my reverie. Terry was carefully laying herself down on a gurney, techies crowding around and making sure nothing got folded or kinked. To one side, a generic android form lay in its pod, hairless and pallid. We’d taken to calling them hueys, a sort of mashup of human and mannies, just to differentiate the project.

“Activating,” Terry said. She closed her eyes …

And the huey opened its eyes, sat up, and looked around. “Colors are okay. Depth perception is still off,” it said. The voice was generic manny, but the tone was all Terry.

On the gurney, Terry twitched a few times as her huey climbed out of the pod and started doing some basic movements. One of the techs, observing this, muttered something about requiring more suppression and made a note. Meanwhile, the huey touched its toes, did some twists, ran in place for a few seconds, then settled into a ta-dah posture, arms held wide.

I smiled despite myself. This was going to explode into UFS society when it hit the public feeds. And somehow, despite our almost total lack of interest in the subject, Bridget and I were going to become even wealthier.

Oh, the pain.

Terry and the techies started working through a long checklist of items, the techs carefully writing down each result. I glanced at Bridget, who was already losing interest, then nodded to Mark Harris, the project manager, as he came over. Mark was missing the lower half of his left arm from just below the elbow. When asked, he always claimed it was a chainsaw-juggling accident. The grow cuff on his stump was covered with scrawled signatures. The new appendage would be completely regrown in a couple more months, from the look of it.

“This part is duller than watching paint dry,” Mark said. “Want to get lunch?”

“I haven’t had a bronto burger in ages,” Bridget exclaimed. “Please tell me the caf has them.”

“They’re Veat now instead of actual bronto,” Mark replied as he led the way, “but I challenge you to detect a difference.”

We maneuvered through the cafeteria lineup, gathering sustenance according to our desires. Bridget and I didn’t actually need the calories, of course, being mannies, but manny taste buds were now so refined that recent ex-humans using mannies reported no difference in taste or smell—or even an improved experience for the older individuals who’d been dealing with duller senses in their later years.

Bridget had her usual burger and mountain o’ fries with way too much salt. Mark had picked a baked mac and cheese and was liberally applying ketchup. My mom would have had a bird, seeing perfectly good food desecrated like that. I had chosen a bowl of chili and a side of poutine. I blamed Stephane for getting me hooked on the latter, even if posthumously.

By unspoken agreement, we spent several minutes getting ahead of things, with nothing but the sounds of snarfing and munching to break the companionable silence. But finally, Mark sat back, idly poking at the remnants of his pasta.

“So I guess you’ve heard—Romulus has preemptively outlawed flying cities?”

I jerked my head up. “I had not. When did this happen?”

“Yesterday. You know that FAITH finally got their majority government with this last election—”

“Yes, pending verification of the vote. I still think they cheated,” Bridget growled.

Mark shook his head sorrowfully. “Wish that were so, but I think it’s legitimate, Bridget. That’s three wins in a row for them now. Anyway, they’ve wasted no time. They ran on a platform of reduced technology and getting back to basics, whatever that means. So no flying cities, heavy restriction of mannies, no post-life replication, no cloned meat—”

“Seriously?” I said, frowning.

“Not natural, not made by God, or some such.” Mark shrugged. “They aren’t giving up printers, though.”

“Of course not.” I sighed. “I’ll send a text to Will, just in case. He really needs to ramp up the effort to get our relatives out of there.”

“I expect diplomacy between Vulcan and Romulus is reaching an all-time low,” Bridget mused.

Mark sighed and nodded. “We aren’t quite anticipating war or anything, but borders may be closing—or at least tightening up.” He glanced at me. “You’d better make that text a high priority.”

*****

We arrived back at the lab to find the scene considerably more tense than when we’d left. Techs were muttering to each other and comparing things on their tablets while the huey paced back and forth, looking concerned—or as concerned as a hairless, pallid android could manage.

“What’s up?” Mark asked.

“Can’t exit,” the huey replied in Terry’s clipped tones. “I want to use the safe phrase, but the crew is trying to debug.”

I glanced at Terry, still lying on the gurney, and felt a moment of sympathy. The technology activated the same brain region that prevented movement during dreaming to allow the user to execute voluntary movements through the huey without moving their own body. But this meant that the user was paralyzed while the device was active. The design innovation was actually based directly on a suggestion made by Thoth in negotiation with the Skippies.

The process to deactivate the huey was supposed to be straightforward, but as a backup, we’d built in a user-configurable “safe phrase,” the utterance of which would also flip the switch.

One of the techs glanced at us, then said, “You might as well go for it, Terry. We’ll have to go through the logs to find out what’s going on. That’ll take a while.”

The huey stopped pacing and chanted, “I’m a little teapot, short and stout.” It stood for a moment in an expectant stance, then exclaimed, “Oh fuck! That’s failed, too. Pull the goddam plug!”

A tech hurried over and hit a button, then gingerly took the cap off Terry as she sat up. The huey, following standard manny programming for autonomous situations, placed itself in the pod and powered down.

“Do not like,” Terry said, glaring at Mark. “Not one bit. You better fix that glitch soonest. You get a stuck user going into a panic, and someone is going to be suing everyone in sight.”

Mark nodded to Terry, then grinned at me. “Don’t make plans for that dividend check just yet. Looks like we’re not quite ready for prime time.”

“Keep at it. We want it quickly, but it has to be done right. Can’t risk giving FAITH any ammo.”

“Or the Luddies,” Bridget added, referring to the anti-manny, anti-replicant activist groups.

I sighed and turned to go. “See you in a week, Mark.”