I walked slowly around the VR of the native encampnt. Drones had taken enough high-quality footage that I was able to create a life-size replica of the actual village. I had no idea about the slls, so I just went with Earth-equivalents. But the heat, humidity, and the texture of the plants and ground were all accurate.
I watched the tribe mbers in their daily routines. They didn’t react to my presence, since these were recordings. But it gave a good feeling of scale and movent.
I spent a few days observing the natives—whom I was starting to refer to as Deltans—both through live video and VR simulation and by listening to recordings of their speech. The Deltans seed to have two genders, a tribal structure, and loose pairing, by which I ant that certain Deltans seed to prefer each other’s company. There didn’t really seem to be anything formal, and a couple of individuals were seeing multiple significant others. Tsk.
The males tended to hang out together, and the females and children ford the core of the tribe. Or at least the center. It seed to be closely analogous to how anthropologists believed that primitive humans were organized. In fact, the more I watched them, the more I realized how similar they were to primitive humanity. Was that because the environnt naturally constrained behaviors, or was there sothing inevitable about the tribal structure? I hoped that we—the Bobs, that is—would eventually gather enough samples to form a theory. Even if it took millennia.
The Deltans seed to have a high level of vigilance. There were always males on alert, patrolling the edge of their territory. Weapons consisted of clubs, handheld rocks, and pointed sticks. I hadn’t yet seen what they were guarding against. Other Deltans? Animals?
Their vocalizations weren’t particularly complex. Nothing like dolphins, thank goodness. By the 22nd century, we still couldn’t talk to dolphins. I was slowly building a list of standard sounds and sound groups for the Deltan language. I hoped soon to have enough to do so analysis.
Another batch of observation drones was delivered from the autofactory, which was both good and bad news for . The good news was that I could set up permanent lines-of-sight for watching the Deltans, then send drones to other locations. The bad news was that overseeing all the moving drones was getting to be a strain. Replicant I might be, but I still could only concentrate on one thing at a ti. I needed more Bobs.
Light bulb! Why not do just that? I could build the AI cores in advance of the vessels and set the other Bobs to monitoring various groups of drones. They wouldn’t mind. I knew that they’d enjoy it because, well, Bob. Actually, no. I hoped they’d enjoy it because Bob. It really wasn’t a sure thing.
I transmitted instructions to the autofactory to bump up priority of computer cores at the expense of vessel assembly. Fortunately the standard templates included plans for cradles to hold disembodied cores.
***
The Deltan female was cutting open the carcass of a prey animal that one of the males had brought back. This didn’t seem like anything particularly special. In fact I’d been cataloguing her technique for a while before I realizedthat her sharp stone had a handle. This was special, as every other Deltan that I’d watched just held the naked stone. I was archiving all surveillance footage, so I ran a quick search of anything featuring this particular Deltan. It took only a few minutes to find the source of the tool: the female’s, uh, son? Male pup? Crap. Might as well just go with anthropomorphizing them. I know I’m going to, anyway. Son it is.
Anyway, the boy seed to always be playing with sothing. In this case, he had split a branch using a sharp stone, stuck the stone into the split, then wrapped the stick with sothing unidentifiable. His identification was C.3.41, which placed him in tribe C, cohort 3, mber 41. Now he’s Archides. I assigned a drone to stay on him 24/7. Well, 29/7 on Delta Eridani 4.
Over the next few days, I kept careful tabs on Archides. He was always at sothing. While his peers were sitting around in the shade or engaged in gas of tag, Archides walked around, picking up rocks and attempting to break them. I think he was looking for more rocks that made sharp edges, like the flint he’d made into a tool for his mother. There didn’t appear to be any flint in the area, so the tools were at a premium. It made wonder where the flint had co from, though. I set an explorer drone the task of finding the nearest exposed flint deposits.
[Incoming call]
“Hi, Bob. This is Marvin.”
I rematerialized my VR. Another Bob’s image appeared in the holotank. “Hi Marvin. Were you just booted up?”
“That is correct. HIC17378-1, since we’re no longer numbering Bobs.”
“Well, it does get a little hard to coordinate numbering between star systems. Welco, Marvin. Pull up a drone. Things are getting interesting.”
I filled Marvin in on what had happened since the backup of mine that he was restored from. He imdiately volunteered to look for the flint source. That made feel better. At least one of them was interested enough to help.
Over the next couple of days, two more Bobs ca online. Luke and Bender were as enthusiastic about the project as Marvin and jumped right in.
***
I spent a significant portion of my days watching Archides. When he slept, I took care of autofactory control and surveying other parts of DE-4.
“Eden,” Bender said, out of nowhere.
“Er, what?”
“Let’s call it Eden. Birthplace of humanity, birthplace of Deltans…”
“I like it.” I nodded. Marvin and Luke weren’t in VR at the mont, but a quick IM to them netted positive comnts. “Eden it is. Cool.”
I turned back to the drone that was spying on Archides. I had finally discovered what he used for twine. It was a smallish vine that Archides would harvest, split into strands, and let dry on a rock. The result seed to be quite tough but still flexible. I didn’t see anyone else in any of the tribes doing this, so I had to assu it was unique behavior. ⱤÃ₦𝙤ΒÊS
My God, the kid must be lonely. No one understands him, I bet. In fact, Archides seed to spend most of his days alone, wandering around, poking at things. He was constantly working at sothing: either picking apart plants, or smashing rocks, or smashing things on rocks, or digging in unlikely places. It was obvious to that he was investigating and cataloguing his world. He would have gotten no help from his parents—they and everyone else seed to be in the pointy-stick stage and quite satisfied with that. They weren’t even straightening the sticks, so the things couldn’t really be called spears.
I sat back and sighed. This was so frustrating. I found myself wishing that I could go there, sit down with Archides, and show him a few things. Then I smiled as I realized I no longer saw a furry pig/bat—just a lonely kid.
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