Bill
July 2343
Sol System
Ihadn’t visited Charles in more than eight years. Maybe not surprising, though. He had webcams going so anyone could look in on the progress of the Earth project at any ti. It was one of the more popular BobTube video feeds.
The reclamation crew was making great strides with Terra, and two hundred years after humanity nuked the planet into a new ice age, more than fifty percent of the globe was now completely ice-free. Another fifty years, and they estimated they’d be back to normal preindustrial temps. The high CO2 levels helped as well, although there was a project underway to reduce that as well.
“I’ve been getting caught up on your progress, Charles. The planet is coming along nicely.”
Charles waved the comnt off. “The tensor field printers are going to make all the difference, Bill. We might have to take so liberties with cell structures, but we collected enough DNA to recreate ninety-eight percent of species, if you include insects. Even so that were already extinct in Original Bob’s ti.”
“And the climate … ”
“Back to interglacial. Weather patterns are still all over the place, but that will smooth out as the atmosphere and ocean temps settle into so kind of regular pattern.”
I stood and idly poked a globe of the moon, hanging on display, which showed oceans and clouds. “Is this real ti?”
“Pretty close. It started as a dare or sothing, but so group decided to terraform the moon. It’s going well, and they’re even starting to get a magnetic field going.”
“What? How? With next to no rotation—”
“They’ve got a lunar day down to about fifty hours. Mover plates. Not just for destroying stars.” Charles smiled as he said this, but I still noticed a reserve that didn’t used to be there. Did he suspect what I was really here for? Starfleet had never attempted any kind of attack in Sol. Did Charles wonder about that, too?
“Venus as well,” I said, pointing at one of the other globes.
“Uh-huh. Day length at about a hundred hours and still coming down. And Mars.” He pointed at the fourth globe. “All different problems, but a lot of the sa tools. We’d like to bring humanity back to the solar system eventually, and we want to give them options.”
“Hmm,” I said, frowning.
“What?”
“The thing is, Charles … ” I shifted in my chair. “Long term, I’m not sure if it’s going to be as attractive for humans. The flying cities are a controlled environnt, and other than considerations of gravity, it really doesn’t matter what the planetary environnt is like. The O’Neill Corp is building gastructures, and those will be able to orbit any star that isn’t too variable. Engineers are even talking about using a fusion light source like the Quinlans did, which would do away with the need for a star at all. Add mover plates, and humanity becos a truly interstellar species.”
“Hmmph. There will always be the back-to-nature types and the keep-it-simple types.”
“True enough.” I eyed him and got a blank look back. Normally, two Bobs would be relaxed and chatting away by now, but we were still essentially talking business. There was no animosity, just no real friendliness, either. Well, moving on … “So do you mind if I wander the system a little? Just to get a look around?”
Charles waved a hand dismissively. “Take as long as you want.”
*****
I was walking along the shore of Mare Humorum accompanied by Benny, one of the lunar terraforming crew. He had volunteered imdiately to show around and seed quite proud of the work they were doing. Ironically, the lunar maria, which had turned out to be lava beds, were actually the low points topographically, so they were now catching up with their nas. The waters lapped slowly against the beach, moving languidly in the one-sixth gravity.
Our mannies were the new standard exploratory model, which ant vacuum-hardened with high-capacity repair systems. The lunar atmosphere was still too thin to keep the temperature swings in the reasonable range—CO2 would still occasionally sublimate out of the air at night in so places.
I kicked at the ground. The lunar dust had succumbed to a couple of years of rain, and what hadn’t washed down into the ground was more the texture of sand and gravel. So lichen was growing in patches, but nothing else. Of course, I’d literally written the book on terraforming, so none of this was a surprise. 𝘙𝐀ＮỒ𝔟Ɛꞩ
“We’re trying to move the schedule along a lot faster,” Benny was saying. “You were developing the process as you went, so slow and cautious made sense. Now”—he gestured to the land around us—“we can multitask and overlap stages.”
I nodded while wondering how I was going to subtly bring the conversation around to my goal. Subtlety was not a Bob Johannson trait.
“So, Benny, have any of the crews found anything interesting while digging the Earth back out?”
“Interesting? Like what?”
“Oh, I dunno. A lot of stuff could get buried.” Then I had a minor flash of genius. “For instance, there was so speculation that Dr. Landers might have had an extra Bob Johannson backup stashed away where FAITH monitors wouldn’t find it.”
Benny laughed. “Oh, nothing like that, no. Although we did find so powered-down mining equipnt. Rember Rudolf Kazini? Yeah, he’s part of the crew now. You should et him. He’s, honest to God, the stereotypical Russian—accent, vodka swilling, and all. And he thinks mannies co directly from God.”
I laughed. That was at least one piece of good news. “Any other replicants?”
“Uh … ” Benny’s face fell. “We dug out the old institute building, but the replicant computer room had collapsed. No way to recover them. And there was that Hor backup that soone found … ”
Aha. I had to be casual, though. Don’t scare him. Don’t make him lock up. “I thought Hor destroyed all his backups.”
“I’m sure he thought he did. But soone nad Gerry found one. Or says he did.”
“Interesting. Do you know where I can find Gerry?”
Benny shook his head. “He was a collateral descendant, from several generations up. If I rember right, he was working with the asteroid-mining group. You could check with them.”
And I would. But anwhile, the moon tour was honestly very interesting. I looked up at the Earth, floating in the sky at first quarter, softened by the new atmosphere, and smiled. Howard would monetize this in a heartbeat.
*****
The asteroid-mining group wasn’t hard to find. They were a little, ehm, odd by regular Bob standards, though. Maybe it was a bit of a cosplay thing, but their private VRs were apartnts in their main moot, which was made up to look like the asteroid Ceres in The Expanse. Okay. Made sense, I guess, for asteroid miners. But how bored did you have to be …
Unfortunately, they couldn’t tell where Gerry was. In fact, Gerry hadn’t been heard from in decades. The Hor backup story was generally considered to be an urban myth, though, and the general consensus was that Gerry had just decided to go Von Neumann-ing.
I had another theory, though. One far less appealing.
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