We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Chapter 56: Bill - March 2167 - Epsilon Eridani

Chapter 56: Bill - March 2167 - Epsilon Eridani

The orbital schematic display laid it all out, and I didn’t like the message.

I looked over at Guppy. No help there. Admiral Ackbar stared back at me, blank fishy expression revealing nothing.

“Can we still save the iceberg?”

[Probability greater than 50%. However, we may not be able to save the asteroid-moving equipment]

I rubbed my forehead, and tried not to swear. “Okay, Guppy. You take care of the course corrections. I’ll set up a script for the drones for retrieval of the drive. Maybe we can cut some corners.”

The iceberg coming up on Ragnarök was one of the biggest we’d found so far in the Kuiper Belt. This particular piece of ice had come in a little off course, and we were going to have to run the asteroid drive at maximum until the very last moment to get it into the proper trajectory. I didn’t want to fumble it and have the berg sail off into the sun. Or worse, impact the planet at speed.

Guppy began applying course corrections, with the changes registering on the schematic in real time. I watched the display absently, while I weighed my options. If necessary, I was prepared to let the drive go down with the iceberg and just build a new one. For a smaller chunk of ice, I’d have just shrugged and let it sail on past the planet, but this baby was huge. I could lose every other incoming chunk for the next six months while I built a new drive, and still come out ahead.

But if I lost the drive, I’d have no control over the pieces following this one. If one came in dead center, I would have to watch it go splat.

We were shepherding chunks of ice from the Kuiper belt, spaced about a week apart. Garfield found them and sent them inwards using his asteroid-moving drive, and I caught them at this end with mine. In another ten years, we would have dropped enough ice on Ragnarök to connect its small seas into actual oceans. My long-term plan was to make the planet fit for humanity to colonize.

“Thanks, Guppy. How much time will I have to get the drive off the berg?”

[650 seconds]

Wow, that was tight. I reviewed the script that I’d written for the drones. Twelve minutes required for a clean retrieval. That was with some wiggle room, but still…

There were twelve separate structures that had to be released from their anchors and flown off the interplanetary iceberg before it hit atmosphere. I’d already written off the anchors – they would take far too long to extract. Hopefully they wouldn’t do too much damage when they hit the ground.

Garfield popped into my VR. “How’s it looking, Bill?”

He was watching the whole drama unfold, and thankfully hadn’t tried kibitzing. There wasn’t anything he could do, anyway, from his location in the outer system. Twice the number of drones wouldn’t have been enough to save all the equipment.

I grinned at him. “Just another day at the office. Nothing to see here. Move along…”

[Shutdown. Begin retrieval]

I ordered the drones to start the retrieval process. From here on, it was up to the AMI artificial intelligences controlling the drones. All I could do was stay out of their way and not joggle their elbows. Either they’d save the equipment, or Ragnarök would have some new craters.

Six hundred and fifty seconds later, the ice asteroid hit atmosphere. We were out of time. If the berg was left to itself, it would skip through the upper atmosphere and sail on into the sunset. Quite literally. Instead, I activated a number of explosive devices, and the iceberg fractured into a huge number of chunks, small enough to be melted before they made it through the layer of atmosphere. As the air dragged at them, they separated into diverging trajectories. They would all melt at high altitude, and fall to the ground as rain over the next several days to weeks.

Except for a bunch of anchors, and two drive segments, which would suffer a slightly different fate. Nuts.

I looked at Garfield and shrugged.

“Well, I did warn you that could happen. Far be it for me to say I told you so…”

“No, of course not.” I grimaced at the video. “The next chunk of ice is due in a week. It’s going to go splat, I’m afraid. Nothing we can do about that one, but if you can fly a couple of segments here ASAP, I can catch the ones after that.” ????BÊS?

“And then build some spares?”

“Short term, yes. Longer term, Garfield, the whole anchoring thing bugs me. Slows down the installation, slows down the removal. Something was bound to go wrong, eventually. I’ve been thinking of ways to do this without actual ground contact.”

Garfield looked surprised. “Seriously? Like, just position the segments in orbit around the ice chunk?”

“Mmm, hmm. It would require two separate drive channels, but there’s nothing wrong in principle with the idea. It would speed things up a lot. And I need a break from the Android project. Working the bugs out of that thing has become a game of Whack-a-Mole.”

Garfield laughed. “Okay, old man. I’ll pull a couple of segments and head them your way.”

***

Despite my comment to Garfield, as soon as I had parked the surviving drive segments, I opened up my Android Project file. A video window opened up, showing my current prototype, located over on one of the orbiting labs.

The android was currently powered down and draped on the support rack. Bullwinkle was a quadruped design, about the size of a moose, and every bit as pretty. The external comms array on its head was strangely reminiscent of a famous pair of antlers. Probably not coincidence. Did I mention I’m not very mature?

This was Bullwinkle version five kajillion or something. The basic concepts weren’t that difficult. Artificial skeleton, made from carbon fiber matrix, muscles made from memory plastics that would contract when a current was applied, and sensors to replicate the normal five senses. Package the whole thing up with a remote control system, and a replicant—like yours truly—should be able to control it as if it was my own body.

Well, that was the theory. Getting it working was an ongoing exercise in frustration.

Bullwinkle was working fine, mechanically. The problem was with senses, reflexes, and communications. Wiring for touch, heat, and cold sensitivity required micro precision akin to neurosurgery. Printers could only help so much. And the more of the contextual processing I built into Bullwinkle, the bigger the required local computer system. The more of it I designed to be handled remotely, the greater the required bandwidth. And the more that light-speed latency screwed things up. FTL communications would alleviate that, but I was still nowhere near making a SCUT small enough to fit into the moose.

I ultimately wanted controlling the android to be an immersive experience. I wanted to feel myself running across the ground. I wanted to feel heat and cold and touch, and the wind on my face. This was a far cry from controlling a drone or buster, which was more like playing a video game. I was ninety percent there, but the last ten percent was turning out to be a real PITA.

With a sigh, I closed the folder, and re-opened the asteroid-mover project. Back to work.