We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 5: Chapter 58: Special Delivery

Book 5: Chapter 58: Special Delivery

Bill

September 2344

In Virt

And finally, after almost two years of heads-down engineering, we’d hit paydirt. Garfield and I were in VR, with video windows showing the two ends of our test wormhole, on opposite sides of the Epsilon Eridani system. In normal light, there wasn’t much to see. Each wormhole was like a hole in space that showed the scene at the other end. And since it was a spherical hole, you could orbit the wormhole in any direction and look straight through it.

No, spherical wasn’t really the right description. There was no spherical surface. Rather, it was a flat, disc-shaped hole, like a stargate or the DS9 wormhole, but it was a flat, disk-shaped hole no matter which direction you looked at it from. Even multiple observers at different angles would see a disc-shaped view through to the other end of the wormhole. There was also a little bit of distortion around the edge, reminiscent of black-hole animation videos.

Of course, out in the Oort cloud, you’d only see stars, and it was virtually impossible to tell where the local starfield left off and the view through the wormhole began without a star chart to compare with.

The view in the microwave spectrum was more informative. The wormhole, even wedged open with a rotating charged negative-energy field, emitted a constant stream of virtual particle pairs around the edge, each of which put out a small microwave flash as they suicided.

We’d placed the two negative-energy-generating stations at opposite sides of the wormhole. Since we didn’t want someone coming through the wormhole to accidentally smack into one of the stations, we’d decided that, as standard policy, they would always be aligned with the galactic axis.

“Drone’s ready,” Garfield said, interrupting my thought train. “All sensor equipment is in the green. SCUT channels at both ends are trained for the drone’s signal.”

Garfield gave me an eye roll, then hit the big red button. The drone shot toward the wormhole mouth, on a vector directly toward galactic center. It hit the middle of the target without any indication of anything unusual. From the observation drone’s point of view, it simply continued to coast directly away. From our angle off to one side, though, it disappeared.

“SCUT signal picked up at the other end,” Garfield said. “It got through successfully and is still operational. Transit time is … a big fat zero.” He paused. “Uh-oh.”

“Jeebus, I wish we could retire that exclamation,” I said. “I hate uh-oh.”

“Yeah.” Garfield poked at a few icons. “The drone’s hull has stress fractures. New ones, in case you’re wondering. I don’t think the trip is as routine as we’d like.”

“Fine. Let’s debug.”

*****

We were back in the moot pub, with the Ancient Ones. No Howard and Bridget this time, and no Hugh. I would send him a summary later.

“I have—” I started to say.

“Good news and bad news,” Bob finished for me. “Quelle surprise.”

I leaned back and glared at him. “Y’know, when even we Bobs are getting tired of our shtick, it may be time to start worrying.”

Bob smiled back at me. “Not wrong.”

“So anyway … ” Will said.

“Oh, uh, yeah.” I paused to regroup. “Good news, we’ve sent several drones of various sizes through the wormhole and received working drones at the other end.” ???ó???

“That sounds like the good news, all right,” Bob said.

“Uh-huh. Bad news, they were a little dinged up. The trip through seems to momentarily squeeze the drone. Hard.”

“Can’t you just make the mouth bigger?” Will asked.

“It’s not squeezing through a small aperture, Will. Although that’s what immediately pops to mind. But there’s no drag. The squeeze is inward from all sides and doesn’t result in any net deceleration. It’s just an effect of the transit.”

“Is it fatal? Or potentially damaging? I mean—” Will paused. “You already said there was damage, but is it potentially destructively damaging?”

I sighed. “Dunno, Will. We’re going to keep increasing the size of both the wormholes and our test subjects. I’ll let you know. But right now, it looks like we’re just about ready to set up wormhole transit systems, once the shipments arrive at their destinations.”

“Good, because we’re less than a year away from when the first wormhole endpoint arrives at its destination system. We can delay for a while, but within three years, all the wormhole deliveries will be in place, WormNet will be ready to activate, and then it’s fish or cut bait.”

“That’s not all,” Bob interjected, “although this isn’t really a critical issue. Howard took it upon himself to arrange the same wormhole deliveries at most of the populated UFS planets. Once we can deliver a working system, the Enniscorthy Astronomical Transit Matter Exchange is ready to open for business.”

I pinched the bridge of my nose and sighed. “You have got to be kidding. ‘EAT ME’?” I looked at Bob. “The sense of humor is a given, but did you know you had this mercenary streak in you?”

“Well, I did create InterGator software.”

“And sold it for a crapton of dough,” Garfield added with a laugh.

“Did someone mention to Howard that I wanted to keep it secret for a bit?” Will asked.

“Yes, and he’s fine with it,” Bob replied. “For a while, anyway. He has a whole marketing thing ready, though.”

“And all members of the Bobiverse are automatically shareholders in anything Howard cooks up, so we’ll all ride this wave,” Garfield said with a grin.

“And what do we need money for?” Will complained.

“To pay lawyers,” Bob replied. “Personally, I think when we get to the heat death of the universe, there’ll be a bunch of lawyers waiting there for us.”

I nodded. “Not wrong.”