I laughed. “Right. So, is there a bigger picture?”
Bridget stared at the kettle for a few moments, perhaps willing it to hurry up. “Howard, you and the other Bobs, you’re kind of like bears or mountain lions—no complex society, mostly solitary animals, very little need to interact. And unlike those animals, you’re also comfortable with each other. I’m sure having very similar attitudes about most things plays into it. But when it comes to other people, it gets more complicated.”
I had to disagree about the no complex society comment, although I had a fair idea what she actually meant by it. But how to explain moots, the rules of VR visits, and so on? I decided to let it pass.
The kettle clicked and she was silent for a moment as she poured. “What I’d really like is for you to be old news instead of a novelty. Just an extreme amputation case, like you said. People need to see you as just another person.”
“People in general?”
“And some specific people.”
“Ah.” Yeah, there’s that. “Okay, Bridget. I’ve long since learned that you’re thinking several steps ahead. I’ll go along. Just as long as I don’t have to wear the damned tie again.”
“No promises. You have to suffer, too.”
I chuckled, and sat with her as she settled down with her tea. While she sipped, I used the time to think about that last exchange with Kumar, and everything that it implied.
Enclaves
Riker
April 2227
Sol
I watched with satisfaction as the latest colony ships accelerated out of the Solar System. The situation had improved a little when the first wave of ships started returning from their trips, ready to take out another load. Now, between new construction and returning transports, we were starting to get some throughput.
Still not nearly enough, though. We were coming up on one million emigrants. A hundred trips down, fourteen hundred to go.
I scanned the report from Charles again. It hadn’t magically changed since the first time. Damn.
I pinged him. “Hey, Charles. Just read your report. It’s that bad?”
“Hi, Will.” Charles popped in as he answered. “Yeah, we’re having to put more and more drones into scavenging, which is taking equipment away from the construction effort. And we’ve got printers sitting idle some of the time, waiting for supplies. Right now, productivity is down about twenty percent from where it could be, and it’s going to keep getting worse.”
I swiped through the report as he talked. “No new caches of metals?”
“Naw, nothing we can find. The problem isn’t that there’s no metal left in the solar system, it’s that there are no convenient concentrations of metal left. Everything accessible was long since mined out by humanity, and the war pulverized or vaporized a lot of the cities and military equipment. Most of the planetside metal is dust. Or rust. We’ve collected all the space junk that’s easy to find—anything else is probably in weird long-period orbits. I’ve even got squads of roamers walking in lines along the ground, picking up metal scraps. We’re really down to the dregs, Will.”
I rubbed my forehead. “We’re at, what? Eighty-two ships? Maybe we reach a hundred before it gets too difficult to find any more materials. Forty years per round-trip, average. That’s two point five ships per year. So twenty five thousand people per year. Five hundred and sixty years to finish the job.”
“We’ve talked before about building colony ships at other stars, Will. It’s still an option.”
“Yeah, I know. But there’s so much ramp-up required. Plus you’d have to get a Bob to stay put to supervise. So far, not a lot of takers. Oliver over in Alpha Centauri, for instance, is concentrating on preparations for an Others’ assault. Like it or not, Sol is still the best place to build colony ships. Except for the resources issue, of course.”
“We keep going over the numbers. It doesn’t get any better with repetition. We can keep the enclaves viable for maybe another fifty to a hundred years. And that’s with every trick we’ve been able to come up with.”
“Well, really,” I said, “we can keep the enclaves going forever.”
“Sure, by going underground or into the ice. Completely subterranean existence, completely dependent on the farm donuts and hydroponics.”
“And on us, because in that position they’d have no industrial base.”
“Um. The bottom line, though, is we’d be telling most of the population that they’ll be spending the rest of their lives in a cave.” Charles sat back and stared at the ceiling.
I looked up and realized that I’d never bothered to put any detail into the ceiling in my VR. It was a flat blue with no texture. I quickly added a popcorn finish, and placed a banner that said, “My eyes are down here.”
Charles let out a surprised, barking laugh. He looked down at me, grinning. “Y’know, Will, you didn’t used to have much of a sense of humor.”
I smiled sadly back at him. “I think I’m trying to keep a bit of Homer alive.”
Charles lost his own smile and nodded. We all missed Homer.
I stared into the middle distance, focused on nothing in particular. It wasn’t just Homer. Butterworth, Julia Hendricks, and a couple of other members of our extended family had passed away in the last decade. Not people I’d particularly known, except by name, but it reminded me that, given enough time, everyone I knew would eventually be gone.
After a few moments of contemplative silence, Charles said, “We could stick everyone in stasis…”
“I’ve thought about it, Charles. Fourteen million stasis pods. That’s about thirty colony ships worth of materials. Not only would we have to stop building ships, we’d have to cannibalize a dozen of the existing ones. I don’t see the UN going for that.”
“In the long term, it would make more sense.”
“People don’t think in the long term.”
“Have you brought it up?”
I sighed. “No, and probably due to cowardice. But you’re right, they should be allowed to decide. I’ll bring it up today.”
*
Representative Misra’s gaze never wavered as she asked questions. One of the most level-headed of the UN delegates, she never got upset. If I could get her onside, I had a good possibility of pulling this off.
“You can build fourteen million stasis pods?”
“Yes, as I said, we’ll have to cannibalize a dozen of the returning colony ships, as well as divert all future construction.”
“How long to complete all the pods?”
“I think around fifty years, mostly due to supply issues.”
“So, many of us will die of old age, regardless. Meanwhile, no new colony ships will go out.”