I looked up, momentarily irritated by the interruption. I’d been going over growth projections for the mosses, lichens, and grasses that I was cultivating. I’d built one of Homer’s farm donuts to grow as much base stock as I could manage before introducing it to the surface of Ragnar?k.
“He went to… 82 Eridani, right?”
[Correct]
“So…”
[Message contains a description of a very positive potential colonization destination. Message also contains a record of the destruction of the Heaven vessel]
“What?!”
I filed my work, cleared my desk, and pulled up the message from the in-queue. I could hear Milo’s enthusiasm as he described the early survey of the system. And his fear as he relayed the information about the approaching missiles. There was a differential backup attached, but I had a bad feeling…
“Guppy, any chance on that backup?”
[Negative. The transmitted backup was cut off before completion]
“Damn.” There was a lot of information on this in the libraries. If I attempted to kludge something anyway—to forcibly restore him, basically—there was a very good chance that the result would be insane or simply non-viable. As sad as I was to lose one of us, I had no desire to see myself in that condition.
“Okay, Guppy. Archive the backup, mark it In Memorium. We’ve got four version-3 Bobs being built right now, correct?” At Guppy’s nod, I continued. “Start another four as soon as physically possible. Give all of them extra busters. We’re going to extract payment for Milo.”
[Aye]
This Medeiros character was really turning into a thorn. First Epsilon Eridani, then Alpha Centauri, now this. Time to take out the trash.
Riker – January 2168 – Sol
I popped into Homer’s VR. “Hey, number three.”
Homer grinned back at me. “You know that’ll never be as funny as number two, right?”
“Meh.” I shrugged. “Now that you’ve gone all establishment, you need a nickname.” I popped up the list he’d sent me earlier. “You’re really going for this ranch donut, aren’t you?”
“Why not? We way over-engineered Farm-1, to the point of embarrassment, honestly. We’ve learned enough that I think we can give a half-gee at the rim without coming anywhere close to failure. And now that we’ve figured out atmosphere controls…” He raised his eyebrows knowingly at me.
In fact, the first couple of months of Farm-1 had been a nightmare. Every aspect of the environment kept going into positive feedback loops. We’d ended up putting four full-time AMIs on the job until we were able to figure out how to dampen the resonances.
“Okay, General Bullmoose. Just remember the little people, okay?”
Homer laughed, and I called up a coffee. Things were looking up.
The donuts, as we’d taken to calling them, looked like fat bicycle wheels. Carbon-fiber cables ran from the hub to the rim, providing most of the structural support. Three thicker spokes provided elevator access from rim to hub. The donut was oriented perpendicular to the sun, and mirrors between the rim and hub reflected sunlight into the interior through the transparent roof of the rim. Everything was designed as simply as possible, to minimize construction time and material requirements.
I sipped my coffee in silence for a few moments. “What I’m really liking is that VEHEMENT can’t get at these things. Sabotage-proof.”
“Unless they develop ground-to-space capability,” Homer replied in an off-hand tone.
I glanced at him, but I don’t think he was suggesting it as a serious possibility. There had been more attacks on food supplies Earthside, and we’d been shifting supply schedules to compensate. The new farm would hopefully take the pressure off.
Farm-1 was delivering raw kudzu on a regular basis, allocated by population and by need. I had been assured by Julia that no amount of inventive spicing could make kudzu anything other than, well, kudzu. Plus it had digestive consequences similar to beans. Hmm. Good time to be a replicant. Homer had come up with endless variations on the Beans, Beans song, some of which had caught on Earthside.
The second space farm would be going into production in a week, and my calculations indicated that it would bring us into a comfortable food surplus situation for the next three years. After that, falling Earthside production would again become a significant issue.
The third station, which was still about half finished, would be a mix of crops, both for dietary variety and nutritional health. Homer was talking about establishing ranching on the fourth one—cattle, pigs, and chickens. Sheep, if the New Zealanders didn’t eat all the stock first. There was genetic material in the Svalbard vault, but we would have to build the artificial wombs if we wanted to use that.
Homer had turned into an industrial tycoon. He was understandably proud that his idea had worked, and so well, and it had become an all-consuming pet project for him.
I finished my coffee and stood up. “Back to the salt mines, I guess. Try not to blow anything up, okay?”
Homer saluted me with one finger as I popped out.
Bob – June 2166 – Delta Eridani
The Deltans were attacked again before we pulled up camp, but not by gorilloids. I had become so obsessed with the gorilloid/Deltan struggle that I’d forgotten that this planet had a full-on ecosystem, as diverse and rich as anything Earth had ever produced.
And that included more than one apex predator.
In this case, the attackers were something that filled the same niche as a leopard or other jungle cat. Except that this species hunted in small packs. They took down a hunter who had stepped a few paces too far from the group. The rest of the Deltans jumped to his aid and laid into the predators with spears. It was over in moments.
Fortunately for the intended victim, I guess, the leopard-analogues (I was not going to call them leopardoids) didn’t kill their prey instantly. Like many big cats, their strategy was to get a death grip and suffocate the victim. The bad news was that the hunter was left with some pretty significant wounds. As they helped him back to the camp, one of the other hunters joked that he’d be entitled to one of the carcasses for being such good bait.
“I really like these people,” I said into the air.
Marvin turned to glance at me. “Damned good thing too. Otherwise you’d have to work up a fire and brimstone routine.”
“Hmm, yeah. Brings up a point. I’m going to hang around and help them for a generation or so, but I’d better let myself fade into legend after that. I really can’t afford to let them become dependent on me.”
“Right. And that’s probably when I’ll take off.” Marvin pulled up a star chart of the space around Delta Eridani. “Places to go, species to meet…”
In the silence that followed, I reflected again on how little I looked forward to Marvin leaving. We’d diverged since he was created, into two distinct people. But we got along, which wasn’t a sure thing. I smiled to myself as I remembered one of Bill’s transmissions detailing some of the fireworks of Riker and Homer’s early days. Wish I’d been there for that. It sounded like a great show.