We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Chapter 18: Bill – September 2145 – Epsilon Eridani

Chapter 18: Bill – September 2145 – Epsilon Eridani

Seeding a planet with these organics from space doesn’t make life possible on the planet, but it does make life quicker to develop. The organics will have come together in space when the planet was still just a cloud of dust. By the time the planetary environment is ready for organics to survive, they’ve already been raining down for millennia. It saves time, and more importantly, it means that life based on these compounds will develop before anything local gets the chance to evolve. Thus, anywhere that carbon-based life is possible, it will probably be DNA-based, and it will probably be made from G, A, T, and C.

... Dr. Steven Carlisle, from the Convention panel, Exploring the Galaxy

I watched the fusion signatures as Bob, Mario, and Milo left the system. I smiled sadly. There was a lot of parting going on in my life, these days.

And lastly, Mario. He was a weird duck. I’d talked to him a couple of times, and he did warm up once you got him going. But very introverted. As Bob said, Mario got a double-dose of anti-social.

Mario was heading to Beta Hydri. It was a bit of a surprise choice. Not that it was an unsuitable star, but it was so far away. There were closer stars that had just as much potential. Mario responded that he didn’t want to live in the suburbs. Bob had looked confused, but I understood. Mario wanted to get outside the sphere early. Oh, we’d work our way out to him eventually, but my bet was that he’d already have moved on.

I checked out the vessels for the two new Bobs, and the third vessel that Riker had asked for. It was a version-1 with a more heavily shielded reactor, and it would be piloted by an AMI. Riker would only say that he had a plan.

I sighed and shook my head. Bob had practically sprinted out of the system in his haste to get away. I think the whole cloning episode lived up to Bob’s worst fears. Well, that’s what you get for having children. ɽaƝÒᛒËš