“Keep me informed, please.” He wandered over and sat at his desk, rubbing his forehead. I enjoyed the few seconds of silence as he reviewed his notes.
“Farm donuts.” He said, looking up at me. “Those appear to be exceeding expectations.”
“Yes, Colonel. Bill came up with a lot of engineering improvements while breeding up the plant stock for release on Ragnar?k. He has something called free time. I hope to experience it someday.”
Butterworth snorted and gave me a wry smile. We were both going full-bore, getting the colony up and running. The fact that replicants didn’t need to eat or sleep just meant that I was available seven days a week, twenty-two hours and thirteen minutes a day. Or thirty-one forty-nine, on Romulus. Scheduling was going to be a headache once the Romulan colony was up and running. Funny, I couldn’t remember any science-fiction stories that actually dealt with how you’d handle timekeeping on a new planet.
“And that means,” Butterworth continued, “that we’ll be able to set up the Spits and FAITH colonies on an accelerated schedule. I expect you’re looking forward to your descendants coming out of stasis.”
“No one more than Riker.” I grinned. “I have to admit it’s been a pretty popular program in BobNet.”
Butterworth grimaced. “BobNet. Seven billion people on Earth in the early twenty-first century, and FAITH decided to replicate a nerd-slash-engineer with a Star Trek fixation.” He grinned at me to take the sting out of the comment and reached for the disconnect button. “Until tomorrow, then…”
17. We’ve Lost a Drone
Bob
May 2171
Delta Eridani
The conversation with Bill had been both awesome and depressing. The idea that humanity was down to fifteen million people was devastating. On the other hand, it sounded like that number had come close to dropping to a big fat zero.
On the plus side, I wasn’t surprised that he’d cracked the subspace problem, but I was impressed by how quickly he’d done it. It left a small, nagging question in the back of my mind as to whether I could have pulled that off. How different from me was Bill?
Meh. No matter. The problem had been solved, Bill and I were working on merging the VR source from our two independent development branches, and real-time communications between Bobs was now a reality, at least in principle. I grinned to myself at the idea of a galactic internet. There still weren’t a lot of Bobs online, but that would change as Bill’s message spread through the local sphere at the speed of light.
I was overjoyed to find out that I had the official First Contact position sewn up. But I doubted I would be the only one.
Luke and Bender hadn’t come online yet. I hoped they would eventually intercept Bill’s transmissions so we could get caught up. Just in case, I instructed the local space station to periodically retransmit the SCUT plans along their flight paths. One way or another, they’d eventually receive the plans.
The lack of significant progress on Bill’s Android project was a little disappointing. A lot of the basic tech was being developed back on Earth when Original Bob was still alive. But it was proving difficult to put all the concepts together into an artificial body that could operate like a complete organism. Oh, well. Sooner or later, Bill would make some breakthroughs. Meanwhile, I had my own projects.
Marvin had taken delivery of the exploration squads and was deploying them into his search grid covering the Deltans’ original territory. At the level of detail we were trying for, he expected to be finished in three months or so.
*
“I just lost a drone.” Marvin popped into my VR unannounced. He had a perplexed expression on his face.
“Define lost.”
“Have a look.” He popped up a video window. It showed a panoramic view of Eden from several hundred meters in the air. The drone was flying a search pattern, looking for clearings that could be potential former villages. Suddenly, the image began corkscrewing wildly and breaking up. After about half a second of this, the image disappeared.
“The hell,” I muttered. “I’m assuming that was an attack from above?”
“It would appear so. I did a frame-by-frame, and this was the best I could come up with.” He popped up a still image. It was out of focus and broken up by video interference lines, but there was an impression of something biting or chewing on the drone.
“I ran some filters and cleanup routines on it. The result is partly extrapolated.” He switched to a second image. This one was still grainy and lacking in detail, but I could make out what appeared to be a large beak or muzzle, filled with teeth.
“Wow,” I said. “I would sure hate for that to be the last thing I saw.”
“Guppy, are we getting any telemetry at all from the drone?” Marvin asked.
[Negative. Attack likely took out the power system]
“Hmm, well, I want to take a look at the wreckage. I’ll set up a SUDDAR search. Highly refined metal should stand out like a lamp in a cave.” Marvin stood up, gave me a salute, and disappeared.
*
The wreckage of the drone rotated slowly in the holotank. Marvin had found the destroyed unit several kilometers south of its last known location and had taken a full-detail SUDDAR scan.
The drone was bitten almost in half, and had two parallel claw marks dug into the shell. The units were designed to be lightweight—unlike the busters, there was no armor. Still, anything that could dent metal like that had to be dangerous. And whatever it was, it was airborne. Scary.
“Then there’s this.” Marvin popped up a couple of images. One was a closeup of the damage to the drone, and the other was a closeup of some bones.
“Interesting…” I reached out and pointed to a spot on the picture. “That looks a lot like the bite impression on the drone.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a number of similar examples. Whatever this is, it used to snack on Deltans.”
“Could that be why the Deltans migrated out of their original area?” My eyes got wide at the thought. “They weren’t moving to a more dangerous territory. The gorilloids were the lesser evil.”
“Or they didn’t know, or care, about the gorilloids.” Marvin’s voice was hushed.
“Then the gorilloids chased them over the mountain range to the location where we found them.”
We sat in silence for several milliseconds.
Marvin finally broke the silence. “I still don’t have enough information to narrow the search.”
“Well, we know they’re big enough to eat a Deltan.”
“Or pull a drone out of the sky.”
I did not like this. Not a bit.
18. It’s Getting Worse
Riker
Sept 2172
Sol