We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 3: Chapter 58: Arrival

Book 3: Chapter 58: Arrival

Herschel

April 2257

Sol

I was jittery with excitement. In a few more minutes, we’d have decelerated enough to be able to VR-sync with stationary Bobs. We were never really out of touch, of course, but email was such a dry method of communications. No one used it for anything but reports and updates.

Finally, my latest ping gave a positive return. With a whoop, we threw our VRs open and sent a sync request to Riker.

25

“What?” I looked at Neil. “Are we in the dog house?”

He shrugged, plainly as perplexed as me. “I hope not. If I’m going to be in trouble, I want to have earned it.”

25

“Oh.” Well, that made more sense. There was a limit to how many people you could host in your ship VR. We must have just caught him at a bad time. I sat back, ordered a coffee, and tried to relax.

Finally, Riker popped into our VR. Usually, it would be the other way around, but today didn’t seem to be running per usual so far, so I didn’t comment.

“Hi guys. I’m glad to see you’re finally here.”

“What’s going on, Riker?”

“It’s Will, now, Herschel. I’m trying to leave the Star Trek thing behind me.”

I nodded, and waved at a seat.

Will sat down, accepted a coffee from Jeeves, and took a moment. “Guys, remember when the Others started blowing up surveillance drones around GL 877, then stopped? And Neil…” Will inclined his head in an acknowledgement to him. “…pointed out that they might have launched something while we had a temporary blind spot?”

We nodded, silently. Will was doing a lot of summarization. Probably not just to shoot the breeze. Something was definitely up.

“We’ve detected their fleet.” Will put the cup down and turned to face us squarely. “It’s big. I mean really big. I’m not sure we can beat them. I am sure we can’t beat them before they get close enough to Earth to start zapping. And we have to assume that’s what they’re going to try to do.”

“Holy…” Neil’s eyes were like saucers. “How many people left? How many stasis pods do you have?”

“We managed to build three million. And lucky to have managed that many. Your report says you have five. Unfortunately, we still have a little under fourteen million people on Earth.”

I groaned. “Six million short. Can we double them up?” It was a stupid comment, and I knew it. The pods were engineered for one person each. It wasn’t just a matter of jamming bodies in. Luckily, Will recognized it as a rhetorical comment and didn’t reply.

“How much time do we have?” Neil asked. “Could we build bigger stasis rooms?”

“No time for anything like that,” Will answered. “And you still need the same amount of equipment for each person.”

Neil nodded. “What are we going to do, Will?”

Will looked at us, shook his head, then rubbed his face with his hands. “I don’t know, Neil. The meeting I just got out of was to discuss that very thing. Right now, it looks like we take as many as we can off-planet, and just hope that we can hold off the Others well enough to spare the rest.” ??????S

“Shuttles?” I asked.

“That, at least, isn’t a problem. We’ve been considering the transportation issue for a lot of years. We can move a million people at a time. Mind you, it makes a third-world airline feel like First Class, but if your life is at stake, you’ll put up with a chicken in your lap.”

Neil and I exchanged a glance. Things were getting scary.

“Will you guys be ready to load?”

“We’re all set up with our pods,” Neil replied. “We’ve prepped several bays for your pods. We prepared for a full fourteen million, so overkill, a bit.”

I shrugged at Will. “We’ve been considering issues for several years as well. I think we’re ready for whatever you throw at us.”

Will nodded. “Let’s hope we’re as ready for the Others.”

“How will you decide who to load?”

Will groaned audibly. “That is an issue that I admit I’ve been carefully avoiding thinking about. We’ll be abandoning almost half of the population of Earth to whatever fate the Others are able to dish out. No matter how you phrase it, this is going to be difficult.”

Neil stared at the ceiling for a moment. “Lottery?”

“That would be the most fair, I guess,” Will replied. “But I think we have to worry about efficiency. So biggest enclaves first, and move in an efficient path from one to the next. We can’t hop all over the planet just because of a random draw.”

“Wow.” This was mind-boggling, and not in a good way. “You’re going to make arbitrary decisions about who lives and who dies. How do you live with that?”

Will’s face took on a haunted look. “I don’t know, Herschel. I just don’t know.”