We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 2: Chapter 61: Starting Over

Book 2: Chapter 61: Starting Over

Oliver

September 2205

Alpha Centauri

HIC71683-14. Damn. I’m not Bill anymore. Now I need a new name.

This had happened to me once before, as one of Bob-1’s first cohort, in Epsilon Eridani. Now I was a noob again, this time in Alpha Centauri.

I popped into Bill’s VR. “I hate you.”

Bill grinned at me. “Naw, you know the rules. New name, dude. ASAP.”

“Oliver. In keeping with the Bloom County theme.”

Bill nodded his approval. Oliver was a fun character and we’d liked him.

“One advantage of this arrangement, I guess, is that I know the whole plan already.”

Hands behind my back, muttering in thought, I retired to my new mad-science lab.

* * *

I really had no idea what size of force I was going to need. However, there was very little downside to overdoing it, and a lot of downside to the converse. With that thought in mind, I decided to just go for everything I could manage.

Taking a lesson from Bob-1’s experience, I decided I would start by doubling my production capability. Accordingly, my first production run consisted entirely of new printers. I then assigned a couple of printers to do nothing but produce more printers, while the rest started working on drones. I was going to invest some up-front time in ramping up my capacity, which would hopefully pay off later.

It took almost two years before I was ready to start building actual Bobs. The speed at which a printer could produce an item was dependent partly on the size of the item, but also very much on the level of detail required. 3D printers delivered individual atoms using a number of tuned carbon nanotubes, each sized for specific elements. Building something like itself required the maximum level of detail and precision, as you had to place individual carbon atoms, one after another, with zero defects. This made 3D printers one of the most complex items that a 3D printer could be asked to build. Only something biological would be harder.

Anyway, finally, I was producing Bobs. After much discussion, Bill and I came up with a blueprint for a Version 5 Heaven vessel—a virtual dreadnaught compared to the original Heaven-1. I felt a little intimidated just looking at the plans. РâΝǒbƐs

Bill was still working on the SUDDAR cloaking from the 82 Eridani mission, but we knew enough about it to build around the requirement for now. I also put together a design for a stealth buster, very similar in overall structure to Medeiros’ stealth fission bombs.

Howard had managed to extract H-bomb blueprints from Butterworth. I guess the colonel considered the Others to be enough of a threat to override military secrecy. Unbelievable that they were still even thinking in those terms, with 99.9% of the human race gone.

Three years after waking up at Alpha Centauri, I had my first cohort of battle cruisers.