We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 5: Chapter 24:Arachnophobia

Book 5: Chapter 24:Arachnophobia

Icarus

August 2321

Wormhole Network

Another day, another exploration. It was hard not to think of this process as tedious, despite the utterly breathtaking brilliance of the whole experience. It felt like every day was Christmas, but in both a good way and a bad way. Each new wormhole brought new planets, new vistas—not always surprises but certainly spectacles. It was like being on one of those European cruises where you visit a new country every day.

But the downside was that the constant excitement could eventually make you numb. Seeing a planet covered with floating, domed cities and muttering “meh” was a warning sign for sure. I admit I was being at least a little self-mocking, but the idea that I’d start dismissing each new experience with a shrug left me profoundly disappointed in myself.

By this point, we’d seen civilizations belonging to what had to be dozens of different species. Their urban philosophies ran the gamut, from skyscrapers to urban sprawl, to underground ant-like networks. And although most were in good shape, some were less so, ranging from encroaching decay all the way to total collapse. Dae had commented that the last group had probably turned off the maintenance systems, which might mean they didn’t plan on coming back. Or didn’t expect to.

“Notice everything’s inhabited?” Dae said into the silence.

“What?” I looked up from my video window, which had been showing the front view from a drone doing a flyby of the current planet.

“Every system we’ve investigated has been more or less Sol-like. No Trappist systems, no systems with hot Jupiters, no supergiant suns, no real planetary weirdness. None of the stuff that early exoplanet searches were constantly turning up.”

“Uh … ” I stopped, at a momentary loss for words. Then, “Well, it might be selection bias. Wormholes get established at systems with planets that are either inhabited or habitable. They might have a few connections to oddball systems, or they might even have an entirely separate network for those, accessible only for research purposes. I mean, who knows? But I’d bet it’s not an accidental omission.”

“You may be right,” he replied. “Anyway, I’m just about done here. As soon as you’ve got enough video footage, we can move on to the next one.”

*****

Another day, yet another exploration.

It took two days to actually reach the lone habitable planet, and we immediately released the usual complement of drones to do flybys. We’d long since given up on worrying about stealth or security and would have been overjoyed to have one of our drones shot out of the sky just to have someone to talk to.

Then the images started to roll in.

“Oooookay, this is a little different,” I muttered. Dae made a gesture, and I rotated the video window I’d been examining. The “city,” if you could call it that, seemed to consist of giant cables strung between mountainsides. There didn’t appear to be any organization; they weren’t arrayed in squares or anything like that. Large nodules looking something like coconuts hung from the cables at random locations, varying in diameter from twenty feet or so up to hundreds of feet.

Somehow, despite the seeming chaos, there was also an impression of organization, as if the placement of the objects wasn’t actually random.

“Is this some native animal?” Dae said.

“Um … ” I sent an order to the drones, and they did a close-in SUDDAR scan. “Interesting. The cables are mostly organic, something like silk. But there’s a base structure of carbon-fiber nanotube-based cables, deliberately designed to look like the natural stuff, woven into the whole.” I paused, examining the scan more closely. “And there’s a lot of metal in those nodules. Refined metal, shaped. Artifacts. I think this is a city.”

“So the dominant species is spiders?”

“Or something like it. I’m being chauvinistic, but I’m kinda glad this particular civilization isn’t still around.”

“We’re not arachnophobic, Icky.”

“No, but that doesn’t mean I want to cuddle up to one. Tell you what, Dae, let’s finish this survey as quickly as possible and get out.”

Dae gave me a funny look, then smiled. “Fine, Chicken Boy. I’ll launch some more drones.”

*****

The spider world survey had turned out to be extremely interesting, but I was still happy to be done with it. As Dae had said, Original Bob wasn’t arachnophobic, but I appeared to be. Replicative drift was a real thing, apparently. ?Å????s?

Regardless, we could only spend a limited time at any world if we wanted to get a report back to the Bobiverse in this millennium, so we reluctantly (at least in Dae’s case) packed it up and moved on.

Now we were once again back at Hub Zero, and once again faced with a surfeit of choice. So another random number generated, gate selected, and we glided through.

And were immediately accosted.