Great. Violent, self-absorbed crackpots. On top of everything else.
I forwarded the missive to Homer, Charles, and Ralph, and also sent a copy on to Bill. Not that he would have any specific ideas, but I’d gotten in the habit of looping him in on everything. I smiled briefly at the thought. Universal Archives.
Homer popped in a few milliseconds later. “Number Two, I am forced to admit I’m coming up blank. These clowns trump anything I could possibly say, just by existing.”
“Yup. Just when you think humanity has found the limits of stupid, they go and ratchet up the standard by another notch.” I shook my head. “We’re going to have to modify our schedules to replace the calories that the cattle would have supplied. Got any ideas?”
Homer bobbed his head back and forth. “Could be. It’s just possible that I’ve been under-reporting production a bit, to establish a small surplus. I suppose now would be a good time to notice the error with a gasp of relief.” He grinned at me, and I smiled back. Homer was full of surprises.
That was fine for right now. But what about next time VEHEMENT struck? I had a bad feeling that it was going to get worse, rather than better.
15. A Visit From Bill
Mario
November 2180
Gliese 54
I stared in frank amazement at the header on this latest communication from Bill.
Plans for a Subspace Communications Universal Transceiver (SCUT) with zero latency.
Holy. Crap. On a cracker.
Well, the big guy had delivered. I examined the plans and attached notes. Bill was candid that this was an early version, and probably cantankerous. He also wasn’t sure about the range. Yeah, yeah, disclaimer, disclaimer. A hundred-plus years after our death and we still felt the need to lawyer at ourselves. Hmm, and keeping up the FAITH tradition of bad acronyms, too.
Simple math said other stars had received the plans already. I didn’t know if any of them had Bobs crewing the stations rather than AMIs. That would have been a decision made by the Bobs involved at the time. But there was a good chance I’d be able to get a line all the way back to Bill. The specs indicated that the system took care of discovery, routing, and encryption. Cool!
I was lucky to have been still in the system when I intercepted the radio transmission. Bill was obviously beaming the plans to all stars within some arbitrary radius of Epsilon Eridani, but if I’d been between stars, it probably would have missed me entirely.
With no further ado, I suspended all other projects and turned every printer and roamer I had to the task of building myself a, er, SCUT.
*
It wasn’t visually impressive. Kind of kludge-looking, really, almost steampunk. I held my virtual breath and flipped the switch. Within moments, connection confirmations began to flood onto the console.
Tau Ceti
Omicron2 Eridani
Sol
Epsilon Eridani
Epsilon Indi
Alpha Centauri
Delta Eridani
Pi(3) Orionis
Eta Cassiopeiae A
Kappa Ceti
I checked the console menus and found that I could register myself on the global directory, which would get me on email, IM, and chat.
Very nice.
I set up my account, then pinged Bill.
“Bill here.”
“Wow. That is truly amazing stuff. Bill, this is Mario at GL 54. I have—”
“Really? Mario?” And with that, Bill appeared in my VR, sitting on the other side of my desk.
“Holy—”
Bill raised a coffee cup at me in greeting. “Dude! Long time!”
“Yeah, well, that’s what I get for aiming for the far reaches.” I gave him a quick smirk, then turned serious. “So, the light-speed report won’t reach you for a couple of decades yet, but we seem to have a problem out here. Here’s the relevant data.” I shoved a set of files over to him.
Bill’s avatar froze for a few milliseconds as he went into frame-jack and scanned the files. When he came back, his eyes were haunted.
“Entire planets… an entire intelligent species…”
“Yeah, buddy. We thought Medeiros was our biggest problem. On this scale, he doesn’t even tweak the needle.”
Bill looked down at his coffee for a bit. I understood the feeling of shock, so I let him work through it uninterrupted.
Finally, he looked up. “This has immediate ramifications. We’ve got humans out here to worry about too.” At the expression of surprise on my face, he waved a hand dismissively. “Stuff’s been happening. Read my current-affairs blog when you get a chance.”
Bill put his coffee down on the desk, and I was momentarily bemused by how well the VR was meshing over a 23-light-year distance.
“This is not the way I envisioned a First Contact situation,” I mused. “I sure hope this isn’t the norm in the universe. Although it would explain the Fermi Paradox.”
“Second.” Bill flashed a wan smile. “Bob beat you to first place by a couple of years. His is more of the good kind, though. Like I said, read the blog.”
He visibly shook himself. “I’ve been running a lot of projects here. The SCUT is just the most dramatic. I’ll pull a few other files and send them your way—stuff you can use for making weapons.”
I nodded. “Anything that’ll help. I don’t get the impression that busters are going to be enough against someone who can zap a whole planet.”
“Yeah, I’ll bump up the priority on anything that looks like it can be weaponized.” He picked up his cup. “And I’ll push this info out to every Bob in the directory. You’d be amazed what can come out when all the Bobs get together to brainstorm. You guys are on your own, though, physically. Even if we assembled a flotilla, it wouldn’t get there for a couple of decades.”
“I’ve already started. I built four to begin with— Bashful, Dopey, Sleepy, and Hungry, believe it or not.”
Bill threw his head back and laughed. “So, uh, Dopey? Really?”
“One of them suggested a name of one of the dwarves, then it became kind of a thing. Before they could grow some collective sense, they’d all taken dwarf names.”
Bill chuckled and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hungry? So, fifty dwarves?”
I laughed in response. “Ah, yep. Half a century later, we’re all still working from the same material.”
*
I’d been working on another cohort of Bobs. This was certainly worth a small delay to modify the plans to add FTL communications, and to upgrade them to version-3. I didn’t expect any reports back from the first cohort for another decade. If I could send the new Bobs in the same directions, they’d intercept the return messages in four years or so and forward them to me via SCUT.
Once again, I scrapped my schedule.
16. Hunted
Howard
September 2189
Vulcan
The buster struck the raptor at just shy of Mach one, spreading fragments of carnivore over the hunting party, other raptors, and most of the nearby vegetation. The red cast that it added to the greenery lent an eerie, dangerous aura to the scene.