We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 5: Chapter 11: Frustrations

Book 5: Chapter 11: Frustrations

Bill

September 2336

In Virt

Garfield was visiting, and since I was currently upgrading the spare manny, we were in VR. These days, I was keeping my virt and real lab spaces synced as much as possible to avoid confusion. I told myself it was for efficiency, but I wondered at the back of my mind if I was just becoming cantankerous and inflexible. Wow, wouldn’t that be a downer—a senile, immortal replicant.

I shook my head in irritation, earning a bemused look from Garfield. He regrouped and continued with what he’d been saying.

“I’ve talked to Hugh a couple of times and tried to pump him for more information, but he claims to be as in the dark as anyone. And I can’t really accuse him of anything because it’s a perfectly reasonable scenario. Trouble is ... ”

“Either way, we got squat,” I finished for him.

I continued the thought out loud. “I’m almost at the point of cloning myself a bunch of times and getting each clone to work on a different possibility. But that would be a huge waste of time and resources ... ”

“Yup. I’d need a bank of Casimir plates the size of Jupiter to generate the required power levels, and there’s no way to bring all that negative energy together in one spot. So fail.”

“Do you have any advances to show for your time?”

“Yes, actually. I can isolate and capture microscopic wormhole pairs from the cosmic foam and keep them from collapsing back into each other. I can even keep the individual endpoints around for entire seconds. I’ve been able to separate them by a few kilometers. But the moment I try to push anything through them, even a photon, they collapse.”

“As expected,” Garfield replied, looking thoughtful. “What about the other one—the Alcubierre drive?”

I laughed out loud. “We’ve had designs for an Alcubierre-based spaceship since the early twenty-first century. Amazingly detailed and complete, except for the gray box that says warp drive goes here. There’s nothing to work on until that negative-energy order gets delivered.”

Garfield smiled back at me. “So I’ll keep working on Hugh. If he gives us anything. Even the smallest hint ... ”

“I know, Gar. We can only hope.”