We Are Legion (We Are Bob)
Book 4: Chapter 21: Earth Abides

Bill

September 2334

Virt, Earth

I pinged Charles, and received an invitation to drop in. I was surprised by his VR; it appeared to be the hotel suite that Original Bob was staying in on the day he died. I couldn’t keep a perplexed expression off my face.

Charles laughed. “I know, Bill. It’s been called everything from morbid to macabre. But it grounds me, somehow. Reminds me where we all came from, y’know?”

“Yeah, okay. At least you’re still trying. Most VRs I visit these days are just Bob-1’s default library theme.” I invoked a La-Z-Boy, sat, and accepted a coffee from Jeeves.

“So to what do I owe the pleasure?” Charles asked.

I replied with a helpless shrug. “I’ve been popping around everywhere, evaluating damage from the Starfleet attack. I guess I just wanted to take a break in a location that I already know isn’t affected.”

Charles nodded slowly. “I’m still not sure if we were just lucky, or if they left us alone out of some kind of respect.” He gestured to his picture window, where Earth hung in the heavens. “Or maybe we’re just irrelevant.”

I was sure Charles was just trolling me. No Bob would think that about the Earth Rehabilitation Project. Of course, there was some question about whether Starfleet could be considered Bobs anymore.

“Charles, you’ve been one of the more prolific cloners. Do you have any kind of feeling about whether Starfleet’s last common ancestor was of your line?”

Charles shook his head. “I can’t contact all my clones, but none of those who I’ve talked to can identify a candidate. And I’m going fifteen, sixteen generations down.”

“The ones you can’t contact are …”

“Out of range. Either temporarily until they build a station, or indefinitely because they aren’t bothering.”

I sighed and tasted my coffee while I considered the possibilities. “Pretty much everyone in the first couple of generations says the same. We all have descendants who’ve gone dark that way, so it’s not specifically a drift thing. Something in Original Bob, maybe a tendency to run away, I don’t know.”

“I think you’re overanalyzing it, Bill. Drift is drift. You’re going to get convergent evolution as well. Same end behavior from different lines.”

“I suppose.” To change the subject, I gestured at the image of Earth. “How’s it going?”

“Pretty good. We’ve halted the Ice Age, and the glaciers are starting to retreat. We’re taking it really slow, of course. We don’t want to overdo it with the warming. We’ve already shut down three mirrors. Current estimates are that we’ll be back to an interglacial in another hundred years.”

“That’s fast, geologically speaking. Any luck with DNA sampling?”

“I’ve got a fleet of drones doing nothing but scanning for carcasses. Between the Svalbard library and our efforts, we’ve probably got complete DNA for eighty percent of species, not counting insects.”

“Mmm. I get that those are harder. But what about museums and universities? They’ve always had huge bug collections.”

“Yeah, working on that angle, too.” Charles gazed at me for a few mils, head cocked slightly. “So getting back on topic, Bill, I gotta say you seem sort of morose these days. Is it the Starfleet thing, or something else?”

“Starfleet’s part of it. I guess I’m just disappointed with the way things are evolving. We had a pretty good thing going for a while. Everyone was pulling in the same direction, humanity was finally getting their collective shit together, and a post-scarcity, utopian civilization was looking like an achievable goal. Even a couple of alien species to make the UFS title something other than ironic. Now, ffft. Gone.” ɌαNȎ฿Êš

Charles took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t think it’s gone, Bill. But things go in cycles, y’know? We all pulled together for the war against the Others, and that felt good. Now everyone’s doing their own thing. The trouble with being immortal is you’re living long enough now to see these things come and go. Just wait a hundred years or so, and I bet it’ll come around again.”

I laughed, then stood and put my cup down on a side table. “Yeah, you’re right. I guess I need to get some of that perspective.” I gestured to the image of Earth with my chin. “There’s a good chance we’ll have the tensor field printers perfected by the time you’re ready to repopulate the planet. Then we’ll be able to literally print living cells.”

“Good. I’d like to see it brought back to the way it was before.”

“We’d all like that, Charles. See ya.”

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