We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
Book 4: Chapter 11: The War in Meatspace

Will

July 2334

UFS Council Session

I read the message in my heads-up twice, hoping that I’d misunderstood. Nope. The Romulus WorldGov had just preemptively nuked the local space-based autofactories. I supposed, after the Newholme and Pangea experiences, they kind of had a point.

I sighed and ordered the roamers to begin cleaning up my work area. I wasn’t going to be getting more work done on this water filter design anytime soon. The roamers would take care of putting everything away, so I walked over to a convenient Adirondack chair and made myself comfortable, then exited my manny.

I immediately connected to the UFS council channel and signed in. As expected, discussion of the nuking was in process at full volume. Representative Ella Cranston, the granddaughter of my old nemesis, had the floor.

“… And no, we will not be compensating the Bobiverse for the loss of their assets. Let’s not forget where the threat is coming from. In fact, if this becomes an ongoing issue, I will move to demand compensation from the Bobiverse for our losses, both equipment and productivity. We’ve lost billions because of the economic volatility, never mind direct costs. At this time, we are negotiating with our neighbors on Vulcan to pass legislation mandating only human-owned-and-operated autofactories in the Omicron2 Eridani system …”

She went on for considerable time, but the upshot was that all Bobiverse equipment in their system would be deactivated or nuked forthwith. They would be replacing the relay station with their own unit, which we were welcome to use as paying customers, just like everyone else.

Well, that was something. The Pangea colony was talking about cutting us off completely and treating us like an untrusted foreign power. To be fair, they’d had the worst experience with Starfleet’s strategies, so I couldn’t blame them.

A ding indicated a private conference request. It was from Representative Ben Hendricks, one of our descendants. That alone made him one of my favorite people. The fact that he was conscientious, ethical, and dedicated was just a bonus.

I pressed accept and his face came up. “Will, the agreement with Vulcan will almost certainly go through. The Bobs are going to be all but tossed out of the system. Is there anything we can do?”

“It’s not that bad, Ben.” I made a calm down motion with my hand. “The Bobiverse is the single biggest user of the relay stations, since everything we do is via SCUT. OmiComms LLC will no doubt be taking over completely in Omicron2 Eridani, and they’ll want to keep us as a customer, whatever the government mouthpieces are threatening. Plus, we’re a major shareholder, so we could force the issue.”

Ben smiled and nodded. As the owners of the communications and production systems for many years, the Bobiverse had accumulated huge wealth in the human economy, almost without trying. It was quite possible, in fact, that resentment of that fact was fueling at least some of the glee with which the humans were dismantling things.

“My real concern,” I continued, “is the talk of restricting manny use. It’s pointless, as we’d still be able to do business by video call, but it would socially isolate us. I’ve got our lawyers working the human rights angle—”

“And the government is contesting your right to be considered human,” Ben replied.

“Yeah. FAITH all over again, even if they aren’t calling themselves that anymore.” I frowned. “I don’t think they can win that, Ben. Unless they just start ignoring laws and daring us to do anything about it. I think that would take us and them down a road I don’t want to speculate on.”

Ben nodded. “Uh-huh. It would be a constitutional crisis, at minimum.”

I brought up the volume on Cranston’s rant for a moment, then turned it down and smiled. “Looks like her signal-to-noise ratio has dropped to zero. I’m going to keep a low profile on this, unless she and her allies go off the deep end. Keep me updated, okay?”

Ben nodded again and gave me a wave. I closed the conference, signed off the council session, and sat back.

It wasn’t likely that any colony government would be able to ban mannies outright. Lobbyist groups representing the replicant preserve companies, along with rich people who had signed up for replication, would bring a lot of pressure to bear. But the pattern was worrying. Replicant resentment plus Starfleet war plus Pav threat plus all the rumors circulating about the Quinlans were proving to be too much for the average human citizen. With too many threats from too many directions, Joe Average wanted to circle the wagons.

We’d spent a hundred years setting up a single galactic government that would provide some safety and stability for all sentients, and now it was unravelling. Ugh. As if I needed reminding of why I hated politics. ⱤＡɴôΒËṡ