We Are Legion (We Are Bob) Book 5: Chapter 3: What’s Up?

Icarus

June 2312

Interstellar Space

Iwas reconfiguring my VR when Dae abruptly popped in. He opened his mouth to say sothing, then stopped and looked around at the black walls, floor, and ceiling with horizontal and vertical yellow lines.

“Cute,” he said. “Enterprise holodeck.”

“It seems like an appropriate taphor for a VR reset,” I replied. “Although kind of ta, if you think about it. You generally ping before popping over. Sothing’s up.”

Dae shrugged. Even from a Bob point of view, we knew each other’s behavior far too well. “Uh, yeah. The surveys I’ve been doing of passing systems … ”

“You found sothing? What?”

“Sothing.” Dae chuckled. “That sounded Guppy-like, even to . Nevertheless. I need your eyes and your opinion.”

“Sure thing. Entertain .”

Dae growled under his breath but popped up a window. I spent several mils examining the teletry. A system that we’d just recently co even with was emitting microwaves. Not a ton of them, and only from a couple of spots. But …

“That’s not natural,” I said.

“Yup,” he replied. “Rember we were talking about reasons to stop?”

“Uh-huh. Ask and ye shall find. GUPPY!”

Guppy appeared.

[You rang?]

Ignoring the gibe, I replied, “Begin deceleration, maximum safe rate. Contact Dae’s Guppy and coordinate. Let us know when you’ve established an expected date to have dropped to galactic orbital velocity, and we’ll set up our destination system.”

Guppy nodded and disappeared.

“He nodded,” Dae said. “You programd that?”

“No, I think he just picked it up from us. But it’s an improvent from just disappearing, so I’m gonna go with.”

Dae chuckled. “I guess we should squirt a preliminary report back to Bill as well.”

“Yep. Looks like we’re back on the clock.”