Bob
January 2296
Above Eden
Space is big.
I know that sounds like a duh statent, and Douglas Adams already made it anyway, but when you’re looking for a single spaceship over literally interstellar distances, space gets right in your face with its bigness.
Bender had been missing now for more than a hundred years. Despite Bill transmitting the SCUT plans for FTL communication to every system that Bender could possibly have reached, despite searches along his probable path by Victor and later by his clone-mates Marvin and Luke, we hadn’t found hide nor hair of Bender. Or bolt or deck plate, what with him actually being a sentient spaceship and all.
I should explain that, I guess. Bender is a computer who thinks he’s one Robert Johansson, an engineer slash nerd who died in the early 21st century. As are all the Bobs, including . I was the first replicant, launched from Earth in 2133. Every single Bob is my descendent, because that’s what Von Neumann probes do. We make copies. We’re up to thousands of Bobs now, spread over an almost one-hundred-light-year radius centered around the Sol System.
Bender was from my second batch of clones, constructed in Delta Eridani. He took off in the direction of Gamma Leporis A, and he’s never been heard from again. Lots of Bobs have died over the years in battles, and so without the benefit of a backup. But Bender just disappeared without a trace and without a reason.
I knew Bender’s original destination, but then so did Victor, Marvin, and Luke, and they hadn’t found diddly. Specifically, they couldn’t find any sign that he’d ever reached Gamma Leporis A. No autofactory setup, no mining activity, no communications relay station, and no Bussard trail in or out of the system.
I had just returned to Delta Eridani after my big pilgrimage back to Earth. It had been an emotionally loaded trip for —the Earth would probably be drastically altered once it ca out of this ice age, so in a way it was my last visit to my ho in any recognizable form. It was ironic that humanity had solved the global warming problem by implenting a nuclear winter. And killed off 99.9% of themselves in the process, but who’s keeping score anymore? Stupid humans.
The Delta Eridani system was pretty much as I’d left it. Autofactory support systems continued to collect raw materials from the asteroids, ferrying them back to be ford into ingots against any future need. In the absence of any specific orders, the autofactories slowly produced more autofactories and spare parts for all my various chanical servants.
Satisfied with the status quo, I invoked my virtual reality system and settled into my La-Z-Boy recliner, surrounded by my library. Shelves full of books, floor to ceiling, never failed to relax . Spike imdiately jumped up and settled herself on my lap, purring contentedly, and Jeeves brought a fresh coffee.
The VR environnt was an essential part of my existence. Without it, I was just a disembodied mind. In VR, I had a body, and pets, and a ho. And before the addition of the personal VR, four out of five replicants went insane. I’m pretty sure there’s a connection.
“Sorry, bud, but I need to concentrate right now,” I said to the cat. I turned to Guppy, who was standing at parade rest as usual. “Suspend Spike’s program and bring up a representation of the stellar neighborhood, centered on us, radius forty light-years.”
Huge fishy eyes blinked.
[Acknowledged]
Spike disappeared in a scatter of pixellation. A mont later, a sphere appeared before , filled with nurous points of light, all conveniently labelled. All the star systems within forty light-years of Delta Eridani, categorized by stellar type.
I drew a line with my finger from Delta Eridani to Gamma Leporis A, Bender’s presud flight path. He’d taken off in the right direction, back in 2165, but had never reached the destination. The options were foul play, misadventure, or deliberate decision.
The first two explanations might leave so kind of trace—debris, cross-trail of so theoretical attacking force, radioactivity, whatever. The third would at least show up as a redirected Bussard trail. But to detect any of those alternatives, I’d have to be crawling along at 5% of C. That would require 320 years to completely scan Bender’s projected path. Of course, if I found sothing, I wouldn’t do the whole route, but it would still be a whole lot of not very much for a long ti.
We’re immortal, being computers. But we also operate at millisecond resolutions, so several hundred years would be an eternity to .
Now, back to the third option—deliberate decision. If Bender had noticed sothing and turned to investigate it, perhaps soone following his path would see the sa thing. Luke and the others hadn’t noticed anything, but they had probably been closely scrutinizing their own course rather than looking around. Bender, facing a long interstellar jump in pre-SCUT days, would have been looking for sothing to cut the tedium.
I tapped my chin for a few milliseconds, working through the options, then turned to Guppy again. “I think I need to attack this from all angles. Have the autofactories build a hundred or so of those long-range scouts we used in the battle of 82 Eridani. Make sure their SURGE drives are powerful enough for interstellar travel.” ŔâΝ𝐨𐌱ƐⱾ
[Acknowledged]
Once the drones were ready, I would send them along Bender’s projected path at 5% C, looking for anything unusual. anwhile, there was no reason for to wait around. I treated myself to one last long look at the planet Eden, rotating below , then left orbit, heading for Gamma Leporis A at 5 G.
Travel between stellar systems is uneventful—thank God. It’s hard to think of sothing eventful out between the stars that wouldn’t leave as a cloud of free-floating atoms.
I considered limiting myself to 0.75 C so that I could continue to interact with the Bobiverse in general. SCUT allowed instantaneous communications over BobNet, but if my tau got too high (or too low—there was so argunt about how we should be expressing tau), I wouldn’t be able to interact in real ti, even fra-jacked. But I was just too impatient to test my theory, and anyway the Bobiverse was starting to get weird and cliquish these days. Bobs were getting less Bob-like, and going off in directions that I think would have left Original Bob baffled. Well, if they hit the singularity or sothing while I was out of touch, hopefully Bill would leave a note with instructions.
I passed the ti by reviewing my archived surveillance vids of the Deltans. A primitive race of humanoids, the Deltans resembled a sort of bipedal pig/bat mashup. I’d more or less adopted them and beco the great sky god for a generation or two, before joining the tribe in android form. It had been 63 years since I’d walked out of Calot for the last ti, after Archides’s funeral. I desperately missed my friends and the feeling of family that I got from living among them. Bill had scolded on more than one occasion about the dangers of transferring my affections to a bunch of alien primitives. Well, tough.
As it turned out, things got interesting before I even got up enough tau to drop out of touch. About two months subjective ti into the voyage, sothing triggered one of the monitoring scripts that I’d set up.
We were playing baseball in the Bobmoot VR when a Guppy popped in unannounced. Every Bob on the field stopped dead. Having soone’s Guppy show up in the moot couldn’t be anything but interesting. tadata indicated that he was mine, so I put down the bat and gave him a raised eyebrow. As usual, he completely ignored it. Facial expressions didn’t an much to the GUPPI interface. Or sarcasm, taphor, irony, body language, or social conventions, for that matter. Guppy stared back, waiting for to say sothing.
“Well?”
Apparently, that was enough.
[Astronomical monitoring has picked up an anomaly. You asked to be advised imdiately.]
Anomaly, to Guppy, could an anything, though. Mario’s Guppy had once reported an entire dead planetary ecosystem as an “anomaly.”
Luke and Marvin rushed over and hovered. They knew I was following Bender’s trail, and this might be news.
I glanced at them, then said to Guppy, “Elaborate.”
[System Eta Leporis displays unusual infrared signature, together with periodic dimming of the star’s light.]
Luke and Marvin exchanged a glance, then Luke said, “Like a Dyson Swarm signature? You think there’s so sort of gastructure? Bender would have investigated that.”
By now most of the field was gathering around us. Baseball was doubtless done for the day, an opinion that Bill shared. “All right, guys. I think we’re done. I’ll waive the five-inning minimum for this week. To the pub!”
The players gave a ragged cheer, then began to pop out of the baseball VR.
I dismissed Guppy, then transferred to the pub VR with Luke and Marvin and signaled the resident Jeeves for my usual.
We grabbed a table, and Luke glared at . “Okay, talk.”
“Hmm, well, you guys know I’ve been scanning for anything unusual around as I follow Bender’s original flight path. My theory is that he saw sothing and changed course, and we’ve just been unable to pick up the faint bend in the Bussard trail.”
“Yeah, yeah. Get to the punch line.”
I gave Luke a smile that said I’m going to draw this out as much as I can and continued. “Granted, I had no idea what Bender might have been watching for, and what he might have seen, so I’ve been basically looking for everything I could possibly imagine. I’ve had to double Guppy’s mory so he could keep up.”
“And you found a gastructure signature?”
“I appear to have found sothing that could be interpreted that way. The question is, do I commit to a course change to investigate? If it turns out to be a false alarm, I’ll basically have to almost start over from Delta Eridani. Forget the ti required to circle around—eventually, between all our follow-up trips, we’ll have trashed up the interstellar dium so much we’ll never learn anything.”
“I think you have to, Bob,” Marvin said. “If it cos down to it, I can order the Delta Eridani AMI to build a new Heaven vessel and matrix, then I’ll clone myself into it. That’ll be faster than you circling around or one of us heading over.”
“Fair enough. Give a second.” I popped back into my personal VR. Guppy was, as usual, standing at parade rest. For the millionth ti, I wondered if I should retire the Admiral Ackbar image. And for the millionth ti, my juvenile sense of humor balked.
“Turn us to head for the anomaly, Guppy. Let know estimated travel ti when you’re done. Low priority, don’t pop into the moot for that.”
[Acknowledged.]
I popped back to Marvin and Luke, to find Luke tasting my beer. “Hey, boundaries, guys!”
“What, I’m going to give you germs?” Luke grinned at . “That’s a pretty good red. I was a little surprised, since I rember us as a mostly dark-beer drinker.”
“Bla Howard. Vulcan has a thriving beer industry, and Howard keeps transferring the templates into VR. He introduced to this last ti I visited.”
Marvin nodded slowly. “He’s setting up interstellar trade routes.”
I frowned. “With transit tis of years? You can’t—”
“Turns out you can, O great all-father. Stasis pods are highly effective for preserving beer.”
I glared at Marvin, both for the correction and the glib dig. “I thought he got rid of his interest in Enniscorthy Distillery.”
“He did. Gave it all to Original Bridget and Stéphane. And her kids inherited it when she died. But Enniscorthy specialized in hard spirits. Rember the Great Romulan Presidential Scandal?”
The thought made us all laugh. Cranston had deserved every bit of what was done to him, and had never been able to co up with any evidence that Howard engineered the whole thing.
“Howard and Bridget bought up a few microbreweries on Vulcan,” Marvin continued, “and it would seem they have so kind of natural talent for the creation and marketing of the devil’s brew. Or maybe just good business sense. They’re now one of the three biggest breweries in the Omicron2 Eridani system.”
“Hmmph.” I tapped my chin with a finger as I thought it through—a nervous tic that I seed to have developed all on my own. Original Bob had never done that, nor did any of my clones. “Well, you can’t print liquids, and there’s no point in emailing the recipe without having the actual ingredients available, so I guess physical exports are the only way.” I raised my glass in salute. “Here’s to Howard, the family entrepreneur.”
I glanced around the pub as I slowly sipped my beer. There seed to be a lot more variation in dress and style these days, and the clumps of Bobs had a tendency to match, as if we were self-filtering by fashion sense. I could swear that so of them were just short of cosplay. Oh, there were no Klingons or Chewbaccae strutting around, but so of the clothing was reminiscent of TNG uniforms or Jedi robes. There was even a Bob in a suit and tie. Why in God’s na would anyone voluntarily wear a suit and tie?
I frowned and tilted my head in the direction of the suit, glancing at Marvin. He replied with a baffled smile and a shrug. “Don’t ask , Bob. Replicative drift seems to be accelerating. I think we’re approaching fifteen to twenty generations, and it’s no longer just a matter of enhanced or suppressed attributes of Original Bob. The differences are accumulating, and so clones are going in completely new directions.”
“Uh-huh. And the almost-cosplay outfits?”
Marvin’s bemused expression didn’t change. “So of those are probably just for fun. Or making an ironic comntary. But the rest, well, I’m not sure if the clothes are influencing the attitudes or the other way around. The TNG guys are talking about forming an actual organization in the vein of Starfleet to monitor—that’s the word they’re using—the Bobiverse’s effect on biologicals.”
“Oh good grief. And how are they going to do that? Pass laws? Create a police force?”
“I think it’s just discussion, Bob. No one is actually pushing for organizational changes. At least not yet.”
“Is this anything to do with Thor and his lobby group, after the war with the Others?”
“Not really, no. Thor and his group were stating their preferences, not trying to impose anything on the rest of us. This”—Marvin made a small gesture toward the TNG guys—“has a more intrusive feel about it, if you get my drift.”
I shook my head, refusing to give the matter any more psychic energy. I raised a hand and Jeeves appeared with another beer.
I popped into my personal VR, sporting a pleasant beer buzz and a not-so-pleasant feeling of foreboding. I dismissed the beer buzz, but couldn’t do the sa for the foreboding. Bill was right that I didn’t go to moots often enough, but today’s revelations hadn’t been the kind of thing that would encourage to do so.
I had recently added an outside patio to my library, complete with deck furniture. The weather was perpetually late sumr/early fall, with warm sun and a cool breeze. Loons called across the lake, competing with geese and other waterfowl. Sighing with contentnt, I settled into a lounge chair, then invoked Guppy. “Fire up Spike and Jeeves, please. Then update on the course change.”
Jeeves appeared at my elbow with a pot of coffee and so small sandwiches with no crusts. Spike appeared on my lap, right where she’d been when I suspended her program. I scratched the cat’s ear and she began purring.
Finally, sandwich in one hand and coffee in the other, I was ready for business. “Status?”
[En route to Eta Leporis. Travel ti approximately 35 years, including ti required to change direction.]
“Wow, that’s a hike. Will we be in SCUT range when we get there?”
[Negative. It will be necessary to construct and deploy an intersystem relay station.]
Crap. More wasted ti. Well, it couldn’t be helped. I wasn’t about to do a side-hop to so nothing system just to build a communication station so I could still access BobNet. Of course, if Eta Leporis had no suitable raw materials when I got there, I was going to look pretty foolish.
“All right, Guppy. Send orders to the trailing drones to adopt a minimum-ti flight plan to get to where we changed course. I want the whole area mapped in detail, looking for Bussard-trail spoor.”
[Acknowledged. They will require approximately 24 months.]
“Noted. Let know when they arrive and start mapping, and give the completed report as soon as it’s received.”
Guppy blinked huge fish eyes and disappeared. I settled back into my La-Z-Boy and put my hands behind my head.
First problem: communications. I could—maybe—build a communications relay station when I reached Eta Leporis and send it back along my route to the halfway point. That was suboptimal, though. Beside the uncertainty of materials availability at my destination, I’d be out of touch for years. More years, I an.
Instead, I could direct the Delta Eridani autofactory to build a full-sized relay station with a SURGE drive and send it out. That would be faster, since I could get it started imdiately, but this option would still leave at least so gap during which I’d be incommunicado.
To handle that gap, I could take one of the drones in my hold, modify it to act as a SCUT relay station, and drop it off en route with orders to decelerate to zero velocity. It wouldn’t be ideal; no repair or upgrade capability, for starters. And not a lot of bandwidth, with the size limitation. Well, I wouldn’t be running any moots from Eta Leporis anyway. I could live with that. And I could stock it with so spare roars in case of breakdowns.
Anyway, it only had to operate for a couple of years, until the much larger and more powerful station from Delta Eridani was in position. And investnt of equipnt was minimal. I had enough spare drones and roars in my hold for basic necessities.
Okay, one problem solved. I queued up the required tasks on my TODO. Next, the Bender problem …
Item: There was a good chance that Bender had veered off and headed for Eta Leporis. But if that turned out to be wrong, I’d receive the report from my trailing drones long before I got there. I’d let Marvin know, and be able to swing around to pick up the trail again. So for the sake of argunt, consider that a given.
Item: Eta Leporis displayed characteristics suggesting a spacefaring intelligence lived there. One that had built or was building a gastructure. That thought brought back mories of the Others. I shuddered at the possibility of another protracted interstellar war.
Item: If you accepted that a spacefaring civilization had built so kind of gastructure and Bender had changed course to investigate it, then it was highly probable that sothing had happened to Bender in Eta Leporis. Otherwise, he’d have built a space station, which would be transmitting his logs back toward human space via radio by now. He’d also have long since received the SCUT plans and already be on BobNet thanks to instantaneous communications.
Conclusion: Caution is highly indicated.
I chuckled at the dry bureaucratese in that statent. Still, it was true. We normally approached a system at a tangent rather than diving straight for the star. But we retained enough velocity to turn in-system in minimal ti. Maybe a parking orbit in the Oort would be a better first step this ti. And heavy use of exploration scouts. Not cloaked, though—cloaking interfered with SUDDAR, our subspace version of radar.
I rubbed my eyes with thumb and forefinger—an action that had no real point in VR except that it felt good—and started an inventory of onboard assets. I would have to do so in-flight manufacturing. Wouldn’t that be fun!
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