We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Chapter 32: Bill – October 2158 – Epsilon Eridani

Chapter 32: Bill – October 2158 – Epsilon Eridani

[Communication received from Milo]

“Right on time.” I grinned at Guppy. Predictably, he returned a fishy poker face. “I wonder if he found Vulcans.”

[Not quite]

I raised an eyebrow. That was a far cry from the flat “no” that I’d normally expect from Guppy. If he responded at all. Now my curiosity was way up.

I’d been deep into one of my pet projects—creating realistic artificial bodies. The ultimate problem was producing a muscle analog that worked, looked, and generally acted similar enough to the natural thing. Gears, pistons, and cables would never produce a workable android.

I forced myself to close the project folder, invoked a coffee, kicked off a goose that had settled into my lawn chair, and sat down. Spike ambled over, ignoring the angry goose, and set up shop in my lap.

“Sorry, your highness.” I smiled at the cat and resumed justifying my existence.

He popped into my VR and pointed at his face. “Does this look boggled enough?”

We shared a laugh, and he continued, “It’s awesome. We have a place to put people. Assuming there are still people.” Garfield grimaced. “That would be just the kind of sick joke the universe likes to play. Let’s hope not this time.”

I nodded. “Yeppers. You know, it’s funny. When I left Earth, I just wanted to get away from humanity. Now I find myself acting like some kind of, I dunno, shepherd or something.”

“How does the old joke go? I like people in the abstract but not in the concrete?”

“Hmm, well, we’ll know in a few years. Meanwhile, how’s the Kuiper mapping going?”

Garfield popped up a schematic. Because of the time required to get a chunk of ice from the Kuiper to Ragnarök, we were taking the time to look for the biggest chunks. The extra effort up front would pay off later. Most chunks seemed to be too small to bother with, but Gar had found a couple of good icebergs and dropped beacons on them. I still hadn’t quite decided how I was going to get them moving in the right direction. ṜаNՕbЕṥ