We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 5: Chapter 26: Building Dragons

Book 5: Chapter 26: Building Dragons

Howard

August 2342

Trantor

On the screen, a skeleton floated in an assembly pod, secured by tensor fields, while more fields carefully added layers of artificial muscle, tendon, nerves, and circulatory system. It was a finicky process, and one that couldn’t yet be simply printed from the bottom up in the manner of the very first printers. Components had to be constructed, then assembled to produce the end result.

“It looks more like a bat right now,” I commented.

Bridget ignored me, closely scrutinizing her notes. “This one should be good enough to pass inspection by a real dragon when it’s complete.” She put down her martini and pulled up a video window. A small drone, disguised as a local bird, was providing a feed from the surface of Jabberwocky and the village that we’d picked for observation.

“Got a name yet?”

“Nah, still calling them dragons.” She sat back. “I’ve been observing several villages. Interesting thing. There doesn’t seem to be a general name for the inhabitants. They all identify themselves by their village.”

“Huh. So like, no word for human, but you’re a Bostonian or Seattleite or Angeleno?”

Bridget frowned at me. “Those are cities from old Earth? If so, yes, like that. There’s some indication that dragons consider other villagers just barely above talking animals. That seems like it would create some tension.”

“But they trade, right?”

“FAITH trades with the Vulcan heathens, too.”

I winced. “Yeah, okay. But this would tend to restrict travel. Don’t we want to roam around?”

“I’m not sure if it’s a problem yet.” Bridget sighed and gazed absently into space. “There are some indications that dragons do travel around without too much trouble. I’m still working on it.”

“How about a break? We could visit Takama.”

“How about Newholme? I haven’t been there in a while.”

“Sold!”

*****

The Bobs had always been careful planners, allowing for all sorts of contingencies, so it was no surprise that we’d managed to hide a good deal of our assets from local governments through various not-quite-illegal strategies. Several lawsuits had been launched on different colony worlds after the Starfleet War, but most of our holdings had been liquidated and siphoned offworld before the plaintiffs could get properly started. At least that’s what it looked like. In reality, most of our net worth hadn’t gone off-planet but had been converted to some other form of asset. The Bobiverse was still a collective billionaire on pretty much every colony world. It was just well hidden.

But on Newholme, the Gamma Pavonis colony, things had taken an additional twist. The Newholme government had decided to implement facial recognition in all things, presumably to make it difficult for Bobs to operate anonymously. Public surveillance, personal account access, identification, and even applying for a job would require you to show your face to a scanner.

This had been tried in some countries on old Earth, with varying levels of success. But the people who survived the Solar System War and lived to colonize the stars had developed an attitude of personal freedom and mistrust of government that made early-twenty-first-century America look like a hippie lovefest. And it didn’t help that the Newholme government had been showing some authoritarian leanings even before Starfleet.

The public reaction had been a massive revolt. No violence, just the biggest collective spanner ever tossed into the works, and not just once. Holographic masks, makeup designed to mess up the reference marks used by facial recognition software, and even weird Groucho Marx glasses and fake noses. In one particular week, every single citizen had gone out wearing a mask of the Newholme president, Adrianne Hernandez, committing misdemeanors and public mischief—and attempting to access her accounts at every opportunity. So far, the government had not backed down on its policy, although it wasn’t marketing it with nearly as much vigor anymore.

Our local Bob, who had named himself Xavier Charles, greeted us as we stepped out of the manny pods. Publicly, he was a freelance writer with no resemblance whatsoever to Bob Johannson, and he lived in a small house in the suburbs. Privately, the house had a few extra sublevels, courtesy of some careful excavation and construction by roamers.

“Greetings, fellow foreign spies,” he said with a grin. “What brings you to our secret lair today?”

“Morbid curiosity,” Bridget replied. “We’ve come to watch the dumpsters burn.”

“And burn they will. This week it’s hoods with clown faces painted on. But the meme specifies that the clown faces have to match reference marks for sitting congress-critters.” Xavier looked up briefly. “I’ve ordered a couple for you. They’ll be on the output tray by the time we get upstairs.” ?????Ë?

As we followed Xavier up to the living level, he continued to talk. “Just so you know, you’re in mannies based on the new tech developed for the Heaven’s River project. I’ve upgraded, too. The old mannies had a lot of metal in them and were pretty easy to detect.” He turned and gave us a significant look. “That includes feature modification circuitry, but don’t use it unless you’re in a pickle. You have IDs on you that match your current faces, and you don’t want to be caught with an ID that doesn’t match up. That’s a felony.” He turned back to face forward, and I overheard him mutter, “Along with everything else.”

Not ominous at all. Nope.

*****

Xavier had offered to guide us around, but Bridget declined. Newholme wasn’t quite a fascist state yet, although I was recognizing a lot of troubling signs that I remembered from when I was alive. In any case, we weren’t going to do more than wander around and maybe have lunch.

We called up an autocab and gave it instructions to drop us off downtown. As the cab drove on its way, I tried to examine everything. The automobile traffic seemed to be all self-driven. I didn’t spot a single person holding a steering wheel or otherwise making driving decisions. This wasn’t a bad thing, though. Traffic moved smoothly, with reasonable distances between vehicles.

The houses were surprisingly cookie-cutter. They seemed to come in perhaps four different designs plus mirror images. Most of the individual variation was in color selection and landscaping. The transition from suburban to urban was abrupt as well. Literally, one side of a large avenue was houses, and the other side was condos, apartments, and malls.

In another minute or two, the autocab delivered us to the location we’d specified. This was downtown Moncton. It didn’t at all resemble its Canadian namesake, and I’m pretty sure it was simply named after some recent dead politician rather than being a historical shout-out.

“Let’s start with some food,” Bridget said. “Then maybe a show or something.” As usual, I was content to let her set the agenda.

It didn’t take long to find something. Eateries of various kinds are probably the most common business in the known universe, and the variety of offerings has always been endless, if not always palatable. I stepped up to the door, reached for the handle—and stopped dead. The sign said, “No replicants.”

And just inside the door was a very obvious metal detector.

I glanced at it as we walked through. They couldn’t possibly be serious. Sure, it would detect the old manny bodies, but it would also detect phones, belt buckles, zippers … or was it a minimum-size thing?

Bridget must have been following my thoughts, as she commented over the intercom, “I think it’s more of a statement than an actual attempt to stop mannies.”

We sat at a table and placed an order with the auto-attendant, but the joy had been sucked from the outing. I found myself glancing around constantly, expecting some wag to jump up, point a finger, and yell, “J’accuse!”

*****

We were back at Xavier’s place, having cut the day short. He noticed our expressions and replied with a sympathetic shrug, “Yeah, that’s life in meatspace these days. The Luddies are everywhere. We’re having to bury our tracks deeper and deeper to avoid being identified. And not just on Newholme. I’ve talked to some of the other resident agents, and it seems like everyone is going anti-replicant.”

“Any idea what’s driving it?” Bridget asked.

“I can’t speak for the UFS in general, but I think it has to do with our tendency to live long and prosper.”

Bridget sighed and rolled her eyes, and Xavier grinned. “Sorry. Couldn’t help it. But literally, that’s the problem. We’re effectively immortal, so we tend to accumulate wealth. We don’t die and pass it on, so no inheritance taxes. We generally depend on conservative, long-term investments, which tend to be more dependable ways to accrue net worth. So we inevitably get richer and richer.”

“Wouldn’t matter anyway,” I interjected. “Corporations and trusts have been doing an end run around inheritances for centuries. I think it’s more about the fact that we unfairly hang around to enjoy the ill-gotten gains instead of conveniently dying.”

Bridget nodded and glanced at me before continuing. “So really, if humans had a good shot at immortality, and the ability to control a manny, it would remove the reasons for the hate.”

“About right. Got any of that?” Xavier replied.

“I am unable to comment on that subject at this time,” I said with a deadpan expression. Then, “We should go. I think the air’s been let out of our holiday anyway.” We got up, said the obligatory goodbyes, and headed for the manny pods.

*****

Back in our apartment, I prepared a couple of martinis. Bridget had commented on several previous occasions that fairness dictated that she take a turn on bartender duty, but I insisted that I didn’t mind. The truth, which I would never mention, was that she was terrible at it. How you could screw up a straightforward process that involved known ingredients and simple measured quantities was beyond me. I suspected she might be deliberately sabotaging her efforts—another thing I would never, ever bring up.

I handed Bridget her drink and sat on the couch beside her. “Well, that was a total downer. You think Xavier is right?”

“We’ve been directly experiencing something similar for decades, Howard. Although I think there’s more involved now. Something is turning simple, undirected envy and dislike into active hate.” She looked at me and paused. That meant something big was coming. I braced myself.

“We have the Huey Project going, Howard, and that’s great. But I think we need to consider life extension as well.”

My eyebrows rose. “Bridge, we’ve talked about that. Immortality sounds great, but it’s such a bad idea—”

“Is it necessarily, Howard? I know the usual arguments—overpopulation, concentration of wealth, extreme conservatism, loss of innovation—but we don’t have any actual proof that any of those things are inevitable.”

“But—”

She cut me off. “Okay, let’s aim a little lower, at least for now. Not immortality, but maybe greatly extended life. With most diseases and cancers all but eradicated, and the ability to regrow body parts, human life expectancy is up to about a hundred and thirty, but in the end, senescence just becomes overwhelming.”

I nodded slowly. Somewhere around the one-twenty to one-thirty point, it was like a switch had been flipped. What used to be decades of encroaching old age and slowly sinking health was now compressed into two to three years of being hit with virtually every gerontological malady at once. When the decline became obvious, people often decided to bow out on their own terms. Most were still placing themselves in stasis rather than going with replication, though.

“FAITH takes a dim view of life-extension therapies,” I pointed out. “Their influence is most of the reason why there’s not more work being done in that area. Even on planets other than Romulus, they’ve got a presence. And some political sway.”

Bridget made a face. “FAITH can go fuck themselves. We don’t have to go public with this, but I think it’s worth it to throw some money at the idea.”

“Okay. Let’s do it.” I knew that Bridget would attack this problem with the same ferocity that she brought to any project. And God help anyone who got in her way.