We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 2: Chapter 39: Bob-Moot

Book 2: Chapter 39: Bob-Moot

Bill

August 2188

Epsilon Eridani

I hadn’t called the meeting to order yet. Forty-three Bobs milled around the banquet hall. Knots of people argued, discussed, or just hugged and got caught up. Bob-1 formed the center of a dense cluster of Bobs, describing his Deltans to a rapt audience. It was interesting to watch. Bobs more than a generation or two removed from him seemed to treat him with reverence, as though they were meeting the pope.

I looked around the room. These were all the Bobs that had upgraded to SCUTs, and some of them were physically up to thirty light-years away. I grinned at the heady feeling from that knowledge.

A dozen Jeeveses circulated, supplying beer, wine, coffee, and food of every kind I could think of. Virtual, of course. But still.

I’d adjusted the acoustics several times to keep the background noise down. That was cheating a little and generally frowned upon when hosting a VR. But this wasn’t really a social event, despite appearances.

The latest data from Hal had caused a firestorm of debate.

The weapon that the Others used was in fact some kind of gamma ray emitter. Theories about how it worked had been bouncing around BobNet ever since.

It was time to get this show on the road. I held an air horn above my head and tooted it twice. As expected, it got everyone’s attention. And a round of boo’s. We Bobs don’t really respect each other all that much.

“Okay, hold your love. It’s time for this meeting to come to order. We have about as much information as we’re going to get without some more concerted—and overt—investigation of the Others.”Nôv(el)B\\jnn

An undercurrent of growls greeted the mention of the Others. Medeiros had long since disappeared off the radar as our number-one enemy. The Others might not be aware of us, but we’d already declared war.

“Thor, you—” I waited as the laughter died down. Yeah, Thor. I guess it was inevitable that someone would eventually go in that direction, but we still all got a kick out of it. At least Thor hadn’t altered his physiology to match or started carrying around a hammer.

Someone at the back yelled, “Hell, yes!”

“Yeah, okay. We’ll probably vote on that at some point, but—”

Thor interrupted me. “I think a better question is, can we wipe them out? The mining vessel wreck that Mario found had superior tech, some of which we’re still trying to figure out. They have the Death Asteroid. They have better SURGE drives than us. They can beam power through SUDDAR...” ꞦaNo͍฿ÈꞨ

“And they’re building a friggin’ Dyson sphere,” Wally added.

“Here’s the thing,” Thor said, trying to regain the floor. “Right now, all we’ve done is make some random incursions around the edges. No real damage or anything. We’ll get exactly one chance for a surprise attack of some kind. After that, it’ll be toe-to-toe punch-ups and hit-and-run attacks on both sides. The million-dollar question is, can we win that war?”

Dead silence. Every Bob present understood the ramifications. If we picked a fight and lost, the damage would impact more than just our egos. Bob-1’s Deltans, human colonists, and any other intelligent species in the area might be drawn into the conflict, or at least exposed to future attack. It was a daunting responsibility. We had to be sure we could win before we went in swinging.

“And if we don’t do anything,” Garfield pointed out, “they’ll keep on raiding other systems to build their damned sphere. Hal calculated that they’ll have to clean out another hundred systems or so to finish that thing.”

“Plus or minus fifty,” Hungry added.

“Yeah, okay, the error bars are huge. But fifty to a hundred and fifty systems means maybe five to fifteen systems with life, based on our admittedly limited experience. And at least a couple will have intelligent life.”

“Yes, because that couple will include Deltans, Earth, and the colonists. A hundred systems requires them to go out at least thirty to forty light years, after you discount the systems with little to no metallicity. That covers the complete Bobiverse, as far as I know.”

I looked around at the audience for any other comments. No one seemed inclined to volunteer an opinion. “Okay, guys, time to wrap up the town hall part of this soiree, although you’re all welcome to stay as long as you want and discuss things with each other.” I waited a moment for any objections. “Our big issue seems to be the risk involved in going to war with a species that appears to be more advanced than we are and probably outnumbers us. Let’s meet in a week and see if we have anything new on that front.”

People immediately formed into small groups, and the Jeeveses began circulating again with food and drink.