We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
Book 4: Chapter 1: Escape

Bob

July 2334

Three Lagoons

I stared, stunned, at the radio. “What. The. Hell.”

“You can’t be more surprised than me, Bob. Last time I saw you, you didn’t have fur.”

“Last time I saw you, you weren’t commanding an armed resistance group of otters. I—”

“What is this?” Natasha snarled. “What language are you speaking? Speak Quinlan, or this meeting is over!”

I gave the radio an OK hand gesture, which didn’t particularly mean anything to a Quinlan, but would to Bender. It occurred to me that I didn’t actually know if the radio had a video feed. Bender’s comment about my current couture could have been an assumption based on me supposedly looking like a Quinlan. “Sorry, your highness. Turns out your representative here speaks my home dialect.”

“That didn’t sound like any Quinlan I’m familiar with.”

“Salty Seas Creole,” Bender interjected. “Like two howns mating is the normal description.”

Natasha had no answer, but I noticed that her face quirked in a suppressed smile. I decided I’d have to listen to some Salty Seas Creole at some point.

Bender hurried to press his advantage. “It turns out that Bob is from a Salty Seas clan that got scattered.”

“And we’ve been trying to find more of us to group up with,” I added, hoping I hadn’t just shot Bender in the foot.

“How does this change anything?”

“You know the legends about the Salty Seas people,” Bender replied. “Even allowing for a lot of exaggeration, they were fierce warriors and tough athletes. Now assume some exaggeration on the part of our agents, partly to excuse their own incompetence, and suddenly you have Quinlans who can fly.”

“How did he throw Popeye across the room?”

“We have a form of fighting where we use the opponent’s weight and momentum against him,” I volunteered. “Popeye was coming at me; I just redirected him toward the wall.” It was not quite a lie, and a pretty plausible description of jiu-jitsu. Especially for someone who hadn’t been there.

“So he doesn’t know anything? And we’ve revealed ourselves to him?”

“You haven’t revealed anything that isn’t already part of rumor or legend in the general populace,” I said. “You aren’t nearly as secret as you think. Neither is the Administrator.” Wow, I was really racking up the lies. I hoped my karma meter wouldn’t throw a sprocket. 𝑅𝐚ƝŏβÈŠ

Natasha came over, grabbed a chair, and sat across from me. Philip scritched his chair over to give her some space. “So what shall we do with you, Bob?” she asked. “The safest thing would be to dispose of you.”

I nodded. “Mmm, yep. Assuming you can without me causing a lot of damage on the way out. And assuming my friends don’t get wind of it and come after you. And”—I held up a finger in a dramatic gesture—“assuming you really aren’t any better than the Administrator and their minions. I mean, this whole thing about fighting for the people and so forth, well, it could be just so much fertilizer.”

Natasha gave me a thin smile. “A very transparent attempt at manipulation, Bob.” She turned to the radio. “What do you think, Motorola?”

“He’s not our enemy. At worst, he’s neutral.”

“He knows who we are, though.”

“I know who you are, personally,” I interjected. “What am I going to do with that? Run to the Administrator? Assuming I can even find them.”

“Nevertheless …” Natasha became thoughtful for a moment, then grimaced in apparent distaste and turned to Philip. “Kill him. Make it quick.”

Philip didn’t hesitate. I think maybe I’d hurt his feelings earlier. He grabbed one of his larger implements of destruction and stabbed straight at where my heart should be.

Computer reflexes or not, breaking the manacles slowed me down. I didn’t want more damage to my wrists, so I had to avoid yanking on the chains with my full strength. Unfortunately that meant I wasn’t quite able to get out of the way of the knife.

I twisted, and watched in slow motion as the blade slashed across my chest, opening a long, shallow cut in my skin. Fake blood spurted, then slowed as internal systems went into high alert. I grabbed Philip by the wrist and shoulder and helped him continue his journey in a straight line ending against the wall. He bounced with a most satisfying thump and fell to the ground. Quickly I kicked my feet, breaking the last links holding me.

Natasha pulled one of the tranquilizer guns and took aim. I spared a moment to wonder if she was a double agent. But no, more likely they’d liberated the gun from one of the Administrator’s minions at some point.

All very interesting, but she was about to shoot me, which could be bad in so many ways. At minimum, when I didn’t drop to the ground and drool on the carpet, my cover would be blown. At worst, the dart might hit a critical system; I wasn’t invulnerable by any means.

Everything slowed in my perception as I frame-jacked as much as possible without losing the connection with my manny. I watched the barrel of the gun and tried to calculate the trajectory as I moved to the side at maximum speed. Natasha’s expression turned to surprise and panic, and she pulled the trigger. I could just make out the fléchette as it passed to my left.

She attempted to correct her aim and lead me, and I reversed direction. The second shot went past me on the right. I dove to the ground and slid into her legs, and she went down on her face.

I jumped up, grabbed the gun, grabbed my backpack, and stopped. Looked at Motorola. Bender.

Aw, what the hell.

I grabbed the radio, tucked it more or less under my arm, and made for the door. Just as I got there, the door opened to show Jeeves, his face finally registering something other than disdain. I straight-armed him with the backpack and ran over him as he toppled.

Right into a roomful of Quinlans.

The group who’d grabbed me in the first place looked up from their meal. Apparently, Jeeves had followed through on the offer of nourishment. A frozen moment of mutual inspection was broken as they all jumped to their feet, plates and food scattering in all directions. The cleaning staff would have their work cut out for them.

But meanwhile, I had a backpack in one hand, a gun in the other, and an antique radio under an arm. This would severely limit my fighting ability.

Time to take a cue from all those Jackie Chan movies.

I hooked a footstool with a foot and flicked it at one of the henchcritters, then tossed the radio to Frieda. I jumped at the third and knocked him over before he could react, then grabbed the radio back from Frieda and bashed it into the face of the first. He fell over backward onto a side table, smashing it. Natasha was not going to be pleased.

Frieda took the opportunity to grab a convenient short sword and made to poke me with it. I parried with the radio, being careful to avoid having her stab straight into it. I needed the electronics in one piece.

She stepped back and started edging toward the door. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to get out and raise the alarm or prevent me from leaving. Neither was good.

I put the radio on the table, grabbed a couple of plates, and flung them at her frisbee-style. One missed, the other struck her in the thigh, and I learned a new Quinlan swear word. Nope. Several. Must have hurt a lot.

But that was my chance. I grabbed the radio, then stopped. Lying in the wreckage of the side table was what looked for all the world like a security card. What would a pre-steam level society need—

Didn’t matter. If there was one thing that years of Adventure and D&D games had taught me, it was that anything and everything was useful and should be taken.

One problem: not enough hands, too much loot, and too many opponents.

The Quinlan on the ground was starting to get up, so I smacked him upside the head. Down he went for nappies. I grabbed another plate and beaned my erstwhile frisbee opponent, earning another curse word. I lobbed the radio in a high arc in the direction of the door, grabbed the security card, stuck it in my mouth, grabbed the trank gun, and charged for the door. I took a second to kick Frieda’s remaining leg out from under her on my way past, scoring bonus points and yet another swear word, and caught the radio as it reached the end of its arc.

I hit the door with a shoulder, smashing the latchwork, and bolted down the hallway to the front entrance, trank gun in one hand, radio tucked like a football in the other arm, backpack held by one strap, flapping up and down on my back, and card in my mouth. I was developing an appreciation for all the little details those Adventure games had left out.

At this point though, facing the great outdoors, my plans got a little vague. I couldn’t steal a car, or even a bike. And with the radio in hand, I couldn’t go aquatic. That meant a straight sprint. The manny would overheat quickly with that kind of punishment, so I’d need to be as far away as possible before having to stop.

Well then, uphill. Quinlans trying to take a water route would be swimming upstream, and Quinlans engaging in a straight foot pursuit would eventually tire. Plus they’d be much slower.

I took off up the hill, radio held in a death grip against my chest, while trying to both not bite through the security card and not drop it. Ten minutes of running, jumping, and dodging got me into a small copse not visible from Natasha’s estate.

I placed the security card on the ground, and spit out my only remaining spider, instructing it to climb a tree and keep watch for approaching pursuers. Then I sat down to cool off and try to get a grip on my day.

I took a few seconds to examine the trank gun. It looked exactly like the one that Garfield had grabbed. I guess there was just the one model. This one, though, had a full magazine, less the two shots Natasha had taken. The gun went into the backpack.

Then I picked up the supposed security card. I had to admit to myself, that had been a huge leap to a completely unwarranted assumption. But the thing looked like a credit card or a security card, and it was on the end of a lanyard. Even the size and shape were—huh.

I’d never noticed it before, but the standard proportions for cards had always been pretty close to the Golden Mean. The Golden Mean occurred all the time in nature back on Earth, and it would appear that it was a universal of some kind, even to the point of influencing technological designs.

Which was all very interesting, but now was not the time for a deep philosophical soliloquy. I had no freaking clue what the card would be useful for, so at the moment it was moot. Into the backpack it went.

Now, the radio.

“Bender?”

Nothing. I realized that the little indicator lamp was out, so no power. Very likely all the recent kinetics had done something unfortunate to the insides.

Two minutes later, I had the back open and was inspecting the innards. The technology resembled mid-to-late twentieth century electronics—still mostly discrete components, but a lot of large-scale integration on the circuit boards. Oh, and a couple of batteries that had been joggled out of place. Derp.

I pushed the batteries back into their holders and turned the radio around. “Bender?”

“Hey, Bob, long time no see. Er, talk. Holy God, am I glad to hear your voice though.”

“No video on this thing?”

“No such luck, boss. The Resistance has enough trouble pilfering the components for an audio-only device. I have video in the room where they’re keeping me, though, or I’d have gone completely crazy by now.”

“So you’re a Resistance fighter, are you?”

“Meh. My choices are limited, at least until I can grow legs. Speaking of which, how is it that you are walking around as a Quinlan? You are a Quinlan, right? No one has mentioned you and your friends being hairless and tailless.”

I gave Bender a quick rundown of Bill’s work with androids over the last century or so. He was suitably impressed.

“Now. Your turn. How did you get where you are?”

“Yeah, that,” Bender replied. “I was heading for Gamma Leporis A when I spotted an anomalous—”

“I’ve already figured out everything up to the point where you got shot out of the sky. Let’s fast-forward.”

“Okay, O impatient one. I don’t remember this part, of course, but I’ve been told what happened. The Heaven’s River patrol bots shot me down because I guess I neglected to give the secret handshake. The Administrator had them cut my matrix out of the wreckage and bring it back, where the Resistance managed to intercept the shipment and steal me. It turns out a significant percentage of Crew are double agents. Anyway, the Resistance eventually figured out how to power me up, and since the Administrator had included all my primary interface circuitry, we were able to communicate.”

“Wow, and you volunteered to help them against the Administrator?”

“Well, volunteered is a strong word. The gist is that I could be a useful source of information or I could be taken apart. I went for door number one.”

“A reasonable choice. How realistic was the threat?”

“Not as much as you’d think. The Administrator controls everything and has all the tech. The Resistance has managed to stay mostly tech-savvy, and they have books, but it’s been quite a few generations since they were part of a technological civilization. Stuff has slipped, you know? I doubt they actually had the tech level to reverse-engineer an optoelectronic cube. And the Administrator doesn’t hold university courses for Crew. They get the training they need to do the job they’re assigned.”

“Yeah. Look, we can continue this later. Right now, where are you? Is there any way I can bust you out?”

“Well, I can tell you I’m not in a town. People are always ‘heading into town’ or ‘coming in from town,’ so I’m at least some distance from it.”

“No mention of the town name?”

“Halep’s Ending has been mentioned numerous times. Hopefully it’s a town and not an epithet.”

“Uh. Crap. Never heard of it. What else ya got?”

“Hmm, if it helps, I don’t think we’re too far from the town. Maybe a couple of hours for a Quinlan. And the room I’m in is very modern. Looks more twenty-first century than eighteenth, if you know what I mean. Maybe some kind of high-tech hideout. And no windows or anything. It feels kind of like an underground military base.”

“Damn.” I sat back, leaning against a tree-like thing. Sesh, my translator interface informed me. Then I sat forward as I got an idea. “There was a transit station in the rail terminal. Surely they’d have, I dunno, some kind of map or transit listing or something.”

“A billion miles of megastructure; that’s a lot of towns.”

“It’s all we have at the moment, buddy. But we’ve noticed time after time that the Quinlans think and behave a lot like humans. So if they’re mentioning Halep’s Ending, there’s a good chance that it’s the name of the station as well as the town. Or maybe even only the station.”

Then I had a thought. A billion miles of megastructure. But Quinlans didn’t have SCUT, so light speed was a limiting factor for any communications using Quinlan technology. “Bender, I need to test transmission latency. Can you frame-jack in your current situation?”

“Yep. They powered up everything rather than trying to figure out what was and wasn’t necessary. You want me to turn around a ping for you?”

“Please.” I cranked my own frame rate up as high as I could. “Okay, one, two, three, <ping>>.”</ping>

“<ping>>. It’s not travelling at light speed, Bob, because this isn’t a radio broadcast. It’s a packet-switched network running on the megastructure’s backbone. So assume half light speed.”</ping>

Using the amount of time it took for Bender to return my ping, I calculated he was within ten segments or so. The ad hoc ping method didn’t allow any better accuracy than that, and I couldn’t resolve a lower limit. Still, it meant that Bender was less than ten segments away, and reachable in less than a Quinlan lifetime.

That was a big improvement from 1.8 million candidates.

“So assuming I find Halep’s Ending, how do I find you?”

“Look for the futuristic underground bunker?”

“Thanks, that’ll work. Actually, it does narrow things down, maybe. They seem to operate right under the Administrator’s nose. Is it possible you’re occupying management territory?”

“Actually, Bob, it’s virtually certain. The Resistance mostly survives by theft, stealth, and more theft. They have very little of their own technology.”

“How are they doing this right under the Administrator’s nose, er, beak?”

“Oh, the Administrator knows they’re there. It could, in theory, obliterate the Resistance in a day or two if it was willing to. Generally speaking, the Administrator leaves them alone.”

“That seems incompatible with scattering.”

“Scattering keeps the majority of the population in line, and keeps the tech level pre-steam. The one thing the Administrator is consistently strict about is the technological level of the general populace. Other than that, it tries to interact as little as possible. So trying to get rid of the Resistance entirely would be like playing Whac-A-Mole, and would draw attention to both the Resistance and the Administrator. And trying to vet each and every use of equipment over a billion-mile-long structure to make sure it’s Crew and not Resistance is just too much trouble. So the Administrator ignores them as long as they don’t become too much of a nuisance.”

“The Administrator seems quite accommodating.”

“Well, it doesn’t have any choice. It’s—”

Bender’s voice cut off abruptly. There didn’t appear to be any signal; even background noises were gone. I had to conclude that Natasha had sent them a message and they’d cut him off. I hoped that was all they’d done.

It was time to get the others involved again.

My first priority would be to find a safe place for the manny. The radio was no longer an asset, so I could leave it. The Resistance might even give up the search if they found it.

I placed the radio up on a rock so it would be visible from a distance, but hopefully without being too obvious about it. The roamer hadn’t seen any movement nearby, although there was a hint of activity to the east. I remembered spotting a small stream in that direction, so that was a good area to avoid anyway.

The Quinlans wouldn’t stay out after dark in a wilderness area. As Bridget had pointed out on more than one occasion, this was more of a nature preserve than a zoo, and Quinlans weren’t the largest things with teeth. So all I had to do was stay out of sight until sunset, then find a reasonably private spot. With scent and internal heat turned off, I wouldn’t interest a predator. I ordered the roamer to hop aboard, spent ten minutes or so putting some distance between myself and the radio, then dug into a corner by a rock outcrop and sent the roamer back out on sentry duty. A few broken-off bushes placed around me, and the roamer confirmed that I was well-camouflaged.

I lay back, closed my eyes, and returned to my VR library.

Jeeves (my Jeeves, that is) showed up with a coffee and a snack. Spike followed immediately to check out the snack. I patted the cat while shooing her away from the little sandwiches.

And realized I was stalling, without being sure why. Maybe there was enough going on without this extra complication?

I sent out a connection request to Bill, Garfield, Bridget, Will, and Hugh. Bill and Will replied that they were busy, but Garfield would fill them in. Garfield and Bridget accepted the connection right away. But with Hugh, I got voice mail. Yes, actual voice mail. “I’m not available for the next week or so. Please leave a message. If it’s urgent, please contact …”

Now that was weird. But I would pursue it later. For now, I had Garfield and Bridget on the line.

“So, I guess you’re wondering—”

“Why you’ve gathered us here,” Garfield cut me off. “Funny thing, turns out it does get old after a while.”

Bridget added her full-throated laugh. “Finally, someone agrees with me.”

“I am maligned,” I said. “I have news, but my feelings are hurt …”

“Hanging up now …”

I laughed. “All right, guys. So, short version, I found Bender.”

This produced the expected explosion of questions. I waited for it to die down, then said, “I’ll give you all the audio record. I’m also going to blog it, but first I have to mirror my blog over to your side of BobNet. My bandwidth is bad enough without half the Bobiverse trying to cram through my temporary relay.”

“I’ll take care of that for you, Bob. I can mirror it easily enough.”

“Thanks, Gar. One less thing to worry about. So now, there is bad news.”

“Isn’t there always.”

“Yep. I lost contact with Bender soon after I found him. I think his captors cut off communications. But before that happened, we narrowed his location down to a stretch of Heaven’s River within about five thousand miles of me either way. We could eventually get enough drones with SUDDAR scanning into the area, but between the resource scarcity and the necessity of sneaking them and maintaining a heat sink, it might take literally years to find him.”

“But you can run that in parallel while you continue to search, so I presume you have a point,” Bridget said.

“Uh, yeah. We don’t know when we’ll get back full control of BobNet. I don’t even know if I’ll be successful in getting my relay station back. If that fails, it’ll be years before I can put another one in place. I need at least one other person on this side working with me, and I was hoping one of you might volunteer to clone. Or Bill, when he has time to think about it. Otherwise I’ll do it myself, but I, uh …”

“You clone reluctantly,” Garfield said. “Yes, you are famous for that. It’s the most efficient way to go, though, Bob. Getting a backup across your temporary relay will take a week, whereas you could have a backup done locally in no time.”

“Yeah, I get that, Gar, but if I clone, they’ll have to use your mannies. I just wanted you to have first dibs.”

“I’ve already made my feelings clear on the subject,” Bridget said. “If your descendent wants to be a female Quinlan, go for it. Although I hope you’ll choose one of the other ones. Eventually we’ll get comms back, and I still want to explore.”

“Uh, speaking of bandwidth,” Garfield said, “I’ve just started doing prelims on the mirroring, and your bandwidth sucks. I mean even worse than you’d expect. Are you running a file transfer right now?”

“Not that I know of. I’ll look into it when we’re done here. So let me know when you’ve got the mirror done and the Name Services redirected. I’ll put up a blog post with all my audio and video files. Maybe it’ll give Starfleet a collective coronary.”

Garfield snorted. “If only.”

As soon as we all disconnected, I called up Guppy. “Do we have some large bandwidth-sucking operation going on our connection to BobNet?”

[Transfer of backup image in progress.]

“What? Whose?” On the one hand, that might mean I wouldn’t have to clone. On the other hand it might mean someone was trying to sneak in.

[Expedition member colloquially known as Hugh has requested that we receive his backup. He also redirected printer operations to complete a single matrix on a priority basis.]

Well, that was mighty presumptuous of him. Then again, I had given expedition members the run of the place. “He could have told me.”

[You were in remote operations. He left an email.]

I resisted the urge to slap my forehead. Instead I checked my inbox, something I kinda hadn’t gotten around to yet. Yep. Message from Hugh. With a sigh and a shake of the head at my own stupidity, I opened the missive.

Hey Bob—

It occurs to me that you need help, and your reluctance to clone is well known. So I’ve taken it upon myself to transport to Eta Leporis to help you out. The transfer will take a few days to a week, depending on other traffic, and I’ve instructed Guppy to concentrate on a single matrix to speed it along.

I’ll be offline until you bring me back up. I’ve attached a contact ID for one of my co-workers in case of problems.

Hugh.

Huh. Odd phrasing. And why would he be offline?

Whatever. I had bigger things to deal with. “Guppy, how many scanner drones can we get close to this segment of the megastructure”—I inserted coordinates—“without revealing our presence? And how fast?”

Guppy took several mils to answer, which surprised me. Normally even I didn’t notice his processing time. But this was a complex planning operation, mixing delivery times, heat sink limits, resource availabilities, and priorities of other projects.

[Six months to move four units into position. One year for twelve units.]

Wow, that sucked. I had a feeling that Hugh’s matrix had contributed significantly to that delay. But I would still rather have him around.

“How long to move one unit into position?”

[Three weeks.]

“Please do that.”

[Acknowledged.]

So for the next three weeks, I was essentially searching blind. Even after that point, my single unit would have to scan up to ten thousand miles of topopolis, at sufficient detail to be actually helpful. I did not feel overwhelmingly hopeful.

So meanwhile, upstream or downstream? It came down to a flip of a coin. Hugh, when he activated, would take the other direction.

Maybe I’d have some progress to show by the time Hugh’s clone woke up, which might make it unnecessary for him to go the other way.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

But how to start?

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