We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 5: Chapter 52: Re-Arrival

Book 5: Chapter 52: Re-Arrival

Icarus

July 2337

Hub Zero and Roanoke

The trip back from Centaurvania to the closest wormhole had taken another eight-year bite out of our schedule, to the extent we even had one. We decelerated into the Hub Zero system at a leisurely pace, scanning ahead as we went. There was no reason to believe someone was suddenly lying in wait for us, but Gunther and the sentries had shown that there was still the possibility of activity in this ghost town of an empire.

The wormhole gates in this system were arranged in several concentric orbits, obviously not astronomically stable; there simply weren’t that many Lagrange points. There had to be a mechanism that kept the gates evenly spaced.

We coasted into a random orbit, and I invited Dae over. He popped in immediately, grabbed Spike, materialized a coffee, and plopped into a patio chair.

“I guess we need to talk about what we do next,” I said, pointing to the map of the system. “So far we’ve just established locations and done flybys of some planets.”

“You’re right. We’ve been creeping through the walls like rodents, being careful not to disturb anything—”

“Fat lot of good that did,” I interjected with a snort.

“Yeah, well, I think we’re done with that phase. If we’re going to figure out where everyone went, we’ll have to do some detail work.”

“On the other hand, we still haven’t visited the core,” I mused.

“Jeebus, Icky, you’re giving me whiplash. Look, why don’t we make that a reward for when we’ve completed our investigation.”

“That sounds good.” I tapped several spots on the map. “We haven’t gone farther inbound or outbound than mapping the first hub in each direction. Which, uh, means we don’t actually know if we can get to the core.”

“We’ll go as close as we can. But first we have to get down to work and make some real progress on solving this mystery.”

After more discussion, we settled on a plan. We would first have to pick a civilization to explore. For starters, it would have to be reasonably intact. Not all the civilizations we’d looked at were well preserved and maintained. Some had just been allowed to disintegrate.

It would have to be not too advanced or too large. Something the size of Trantor or Coruscant would be simply too overwhelming, and finding anything like a library would be nearly impossible. Of course, if any library we found turned out to be completely online, we’d be SOL anyway. There was no way we’d be able to hack into the computer systems of a civilization that was demonstrably more advanced than us and alien and used an unknown language. We needed a civilization small enough to still have individual cities, and young enough to still have something like printed matter, even if only for purposes of tradition. A local Library of Congress, in other words.

The trouble was that we hadn’t looked closely at enough civilizations.

“I’m gonna guess that the center of the empire will be the most advanced. And biggest,” Dae said, lazily waving a hand toward the center of the map. “So we should lean toward the edge of the empire.”

“But they are less likely to have the tech to keep things in good repair,” I countered. “Most of the ruins were around the end hubs.”

“But not all. The first one we found, right near home, was in decent shape. I commented it felt like Roanoke, everything still sitting ready.”

“Then let’s just go there.”

“Eh?”

I shrugged. “There’s no point overanalyzing this. We’re mostly wild-ass guessing anyway. Roanoke fits all the requirements. Let’s stop finessing it.”

Dae bobbed his head. “You are not wrong. And I can’t come up with a good counterargument. Or even a bad one. Let’s do it.”

“And y’know what else?” I added. “Let’s build a couple of mannies.”

*****

Wormhole networks were wonderful things, and I decided everyone should have one. In fact, if we were able to dig up the technological basis for them while exploring, that would be just fine. I didn’t want to poke at the actual gates or satellites, since I had no idea what might cause a gate collapse or what that might look like. And it would be peachy beyond belief to take down our only means of getting back to our home territory. Caution therefore seemed appropriate. But we did make a point of taking some deep SUDDAR scans of the wormhole satellites. ?Ä?????

It took only a couple of days to get back to our very first alien civilization, a scant fifty light-years from Earth. I actually had a moment where I got that feeling you get when your plane is coming down into your home airport, like being back in your neighborhood.

Roanoke the planet was idyllic in many ways. The locals had apparently conquered the issue of overpopulation or had never suffered from it. Cities were surrounded by greenbelts, and transportation lines between cities were minimal and followed the contours of the land. They also appeared to be some form of public transit, since they were generally suspended monorails rather than roads. Of course, I might be reading too much into that through my human preconceptions, but privately owned monorail cars seemed like a bit of a stretch.

Our first target was a small to midsize town, on the theory that they wouldn’t necessarily have the most modern, up-to-date versions of everything and might have the kind of old-fashioned library we were looking for. We landed several cargo drones, which released roamers and spy drones to scatter throughout the city.

“Now we wait,” I said. “The units will attempt to identify buildings by function, and we’ll build up a map of the town.”

Dae nodded, patting Spike absentmindedly. I cocked my head and examined him more closely. It occurred to me that he always went for Spike when visiting. Did he not have his own Spike? How could he not? She was, after all, just an NPC.

Sensing my attention, Dae met my gaze. “No, I don’t have a Spike. Doesn’t really fit my VR these days.”

“Oh, that’s interesting. When are you going to invite me over?”

“Anytime, Ick. I mean, it’s nothing nefarious. It’s a farm. With barnyard animals. I’d have to modify Spike to have her not have a heart attack, and I just don’t feel like doing that.”

I chuckled. The original Spike had been very much an indoor lap cat. The one time she’d accidentally gotten out, she’d almost died of fright. And the VR version was as true to the original as we could make her.

I got a ping from a spy unit and pulled up the video. “Oh, this is interesting. Have a look.” I spun the window around so Dae could see it. In the video, a quartet of some kind of mechs was replacing a ground-floor window. The operation was quick and precise, obviously well within their repertoire.

“So ongoing maintenance is confirmed,” Dae mused. “Not really surprising, I guess. Bill’s Skunk Works installations have been around for several centuries now, and I doubt he’s going around himself doing touch-ups.”

I nodded. “When the maintenance system gets complex enough to maintain itself, it’s self-perpetuating. Although eventually, the buildings themselves might need replacement.”

“Nanites could take care of that aspect.”

Over the next few hours, our spy drones observed a couple more instances of repairs in progress. Nothing dramatic, but as Dae had said, nanites would take care of the structural stuff.

Then we hit paydirt. A roamer reported a building that seemed to match the specs for a library. We quickly pulled up the video window; then we did a simultaneous war whoop.

“A book repository!” I exclaimed.

“It might be a bookstore rather than a library,” Dae countered.

“That’s not really a horrible alternative. Books is books.”

“True. So how do we get in?”

“Uh … ” I stopped, nonplussed. Dae was right. There wasn’t anyone home, so it seemed unlikely that they’d have left their doors—

“Well, hold on. How do the mechs get inside to fix things if everything’s locked up?” Without waiting for an answer, I ordered the roamer to attempt to open the door.

And success! It was a simple latching mechanism, designed for appendages not too different from human hands. Perhaps a bit larger. The roamer scuttled in before the door could swing shut.

“What now?” Dae said.

“All hands on deck. This is job one.” I prodded the video for emphasis. “I’m sending all the roamers in to start examining the inventory. And”—I held up a finger—“let’s see how our mannies are coming along.”