abcnovels
Book 4: Chapter 7: Looking Forward
Book 4: Chapter 7: Looking Forward
Book 4: Chapter 7: Looking Forward
Will
June 2333
Virt
The search for information on topopoleis turned out to be one of those good news/bad news things. Good news: I’d found an expert. Bad news: he was dead. Good news: he’d arranged to be replicated. Bad news: he’d gone right back to work and was really hard to get hold of. The whole Keystone Kops act would be giving me a headache if I were still subject to such things, so I decided to take a break and do some work on a personal side project I had going.
I pinged Conan and popped over as soon as I received a response. Conan was the current Bob rep in the Omicron2 Eridani system. It hadn’t been a heavy-labor position for a long time—Vulcan and Romulus having long ago become independent of our help—but we had always maintained a physical presence, for our family’s sake if nothing else.
I looked around as I settled in. Conan appeared to have replicated the Vulcan jungle, with his home in a treehouse. I smiled to myself. I knew enough about Vulcan’s wildlife to realize this was completely unworkable in real life. Even without the now-extinct Cupid Bugs, there was still more than enough variety—of the bad kind—in the wild to kill any human dumb enough to be out without an exo-suit.
Conan saluted me with a can of Coke. I sat in the nearest chair and, there being no Jeeves in view, invoked my own can.
“What can I do for you, O great ancestor?” Conan said.
“Are you one of mine?” I replied, and he nodded. Ancestry had never been a big deal in the Bobiverse, but with all the fragmenting lately, people were starting to pay more attention to chains of instantiation, with an eye to cataloguing behavioral DNA. As with a lot of Bob projects, it was ad hoc and casual.
“I’m concerned about the family, Conan. FAITH has been getting more influential on Romulus the last couple of decades, and that can’t be anything but bad news.”“I get it, Will. But a lot of people like the sense of certainty that religion gives them, and FAITH is all about nice, easily packaged black-and-white answers. Even if they’re factually wrong.”
I waved a hand in dismissal. “I frankly don’t care what the justification is. I want our family out from under. We’ve seen the rise of the Far Right too many times in the last half-millennium to not recognize the signs.”
“Okay. And?”
“I have a small side project going on. I want to set up a society with an innocuous name like Outward Bound or something, for people who want to emigrate from this system. If you have the time, I’m hoping you’ll take care of the setup and admin.”
Conan grinned. “This hasn’t exactly been a pressure-cooker job. Howard started divesting us of responsibility as soon as he could, and we’ve continued with that tradition. I’m more like a local ambassador than anything.”
“How’s that working out lately?”
“Yeaaaaaaaah … I’m curtailing my appearances these days.” Conan made a deprecating gesture. “Bobs are not their favorite people, even on Vulcan, never mind Romulus. So as it happens, I have lots of free time. Any specifics?”
“Nothing complex. We just need a legally incorporated society, no special requirements, board of directors, et cetera. I’ll email my family contacts once you have it set up, then we’ll go from there.”
Conan nodded. “So you’re forming a prospective colonial group composed exclusively of Johansson descendants?”
“Not exclusively. Not even predominantly, if we get enough interest. But I want as many of ours out of here as we can manage.”
“FAITH might step in. They don’t have the clout right now, but by the time you’re ready to shove off …”
“Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that, too. The constitutional guarantees, plus the original documents of agreement they signed with me back on Earth, will establish the legal requirement to let the colonists go. We need to be ready, though, if they decide to go for brinksmanship. Let’s talk about in-system assets that are still Bob-controlled.”
Conan smiled and popped up a graphic. Almost as if he’d been expecting this.