I leaned back in my chair, fingers tented, staring at nothing. I’d flown back to the scene of my recent battle and parked near my former construction site. I had some thinking to do about my future.
I found myself wrapped in a vague sense of disappointment. No ringed planets, no double planets, no alien civilization—hell, no life at all that I could see. Not even a particularly good colonization target. Assuming anyone back on Earth was still alive to care. The next system might be better. Or it might be even more barren. And either way, so what? Was this what I wanted, to wander the galaxy like some kind of Flying Dutchman?
The issue with exploration drones, at least, would be easy to fix. The design of the mining drone could be easily adapted for other purposes—the ship-busters were a good example—and the libraries had lots of information on various kinds of environmental sensors. With the 3D printers, I had virtually unlimited flexibility.
And speaking of building things… I glanced over at Guppy. Yep. Still glaring. If I hadn’t done all that code cleanup, the mission imperatives would be exerting their influence and I would have already started building the space station and Bob clones. But with those removed, I was an unconstrained entity, with free will. And apparently, some kind of anxiety about cloning myself.
It was time to put up or shut up. I had no more delaying tactics up my sleeve. I could fly off into the sunset, I could sit here with my thumb up my… uh… paralyzed by indecision, or I could get with the program.
I looked over at Guppy again. I knew what he wanted, of course. He continued to glare back at me, fishy impatience written all over his face. His operating system was in firmware, so in order to cure him of his obsession, I’d have to build a whole new core. Which meant a new ship. Which brought us back full circle to my immediate problem.
So what the hell was the issue? As near as I could tell, I was concerned about what cloning myself would say about my uniqueness as an individual and the existence of some kind of soul. Which, for a humanist, was a shocking admission.
And what if I didn’t like myself? What if it turned out I was a jerk? That would be hard to live down.
I sighed and rubbed my eyelids with the tips of my fingers. This was pointless. I knew, logically, that sooner or later I’d have to go ahead with it. Delaying and kvetching was just stressing me out more.
“Okay, Guppy. Deploy manufacturing systems. Let’s get the party started.”
Guppy couldn’t smile, thank God. That sight would probably scare me out of a year’s growth. But he did stand up straighter, and he went immediately into his command fugue. I felt the ship shudder as drones started launching. Within minutes, I was at the center of an expanding sphere of robotic servants with one mission—build more Bobs.
Bob – July 2145 – Epsilon Eridani
And that’s the idea behind panspermia. I’ve been asked many times why panspermia isn’t just another layer of turtles. People have commented that moving the creation of the basic building blocks of life from Earth to space just adds a step and doesn’t make their creation any easier to explain. Yet in fact, it does. We’ve detected the basic building blocks of RNA and DNA in space. Conditions are ideal. The raw materials are there, the energy is there, and the components can come together through simple Brownian motion without requiring a solvent.
… Dr. Steven Carlisle, from the Convention panel Exploring the Galaxy
I leaned back in my La-Z-Boy, enjoying the moment. The fire crackled and popped in a very realistic manner. Spike had abandoned me to curl up on the bear skin rug in front of the fireplace. Books lined the shelves, floor to ceiling, and I even had a wheeled ladder to reach the upper levels.
I cradled a coffee in my hands as I examined the hologram floating in front of me. The image depicted a cubic kilometer of space, located on the inside edge of the inner asteroid belt and centered on the Heaven-1.
The area was a beehive of activity. Five version-2 HEAVEN vessels were under construction, one of which was a trade-up for me. The new designs included a bigger reactor and drive, a rail-gun, storage and launch facilities for busters, replicant systems with twice the capacity of version one, more room for storing roamers and mining drones, and more cargo capacity in general.
The manufacturing systems cranked out parts as fast as the roamers could feed in the raw ore. Other roamers gathered the parts and assembled the ships. Two large reactors supplied power for all the equipment. A couple of smaller printer operations cranked out more roamers and the components for more ship-busters. I had considered using explosive warheads, but I had an aversion to anything that included the word “explosive.”
I looked over at the corner of the holoview where the space station was shown. Part of the mission instructions included a directive to build an automated station with powerful interstellar communications capability in every system I visited. Its first task would be to send an encrypted status report back to Earth, and all the planetary surveys that I’d just completed. After that, depending on whether or not the system was a viable colonization target, it would act as a beacon and communications relay for me and any incoming colonists from Earth, and later as an in-system communications hub. It would be ‘staffed’ with an AMI and would have its own limited manufacturing capability.
Mind you, all that presupposed that Earth still harbored a technological civilization. Sooner or later, one of me was going to have to go back and check it out.
So far, I hadn’t picked up any radio transmissions from Sol directed at me. But realistically, I didn’t expect any. The point of the HEAVEN project was for information to flow from me to them. There would be no conversations, certainly not with a 10.5-year wait, each way.
I glanced over at Guppy, who hadn’t moved since the last time I had asked a question. Definitely not a sparkling conversationalist. So back to my earlier question. I’m giving version-2 Guppy enough memory space to potentially develop a personality matrix. Am I asking for trouble?
“Status on my favorite subjects?”
Guppy blinked once.
[HEAVEN 2 through 5: 90% complete. 5 days to completion]
[Replicant matrices for HEAVEN 2 through 5: Two are complete, two are thirty hours from completion]
[Heaven-1A: Undergoing final tests. Pass/fail decision within 24 hours]
[Relay station: 40% complete. Two months to completion]
“Okay, good. In three days, we can activate the other me’s. They’ll have complete ability to control the work in the yard, right?”
[Replicant matrices have complete GUPPI systems built in]