Bridget nodded slowly. “This sounds like something else you boys are going to be making more money off, soon.”

  Howard grinned back at her. “It does generally seem to work out that way.”

  I looked more carefully at Howard. He’d said something about having some news, and he didn’t seem as engaged by my announcement as I’d have expected. Kind of distracted, actually—unlike Will and Bob, who both looked totally boggled. “Okay, Howard, you said you had some news. Obviously, that’s on your mind. Let’s just get everything on the table, shall we?”

  Howard nodded and smiled at the group. “Mannies for humans. You know we’ve been working on that project for a while now—”

  “Well, to be fair, all you’ve ever told us was that someone was rumored to be working on it,” I interjected.

  Howard continued, ignoring me. “We’re ready to announce them, and we’ll be rolling them out to early adopters. Hueys, we call them.”

  “Short for human mannies, no doubt,” Bob said.

  Bridget rolled her eyes. “Same infantile sense of humor. All of you.”

  “That is interesting,” Will said to Howard, ignoring Bridget’s comment. “It’s going to create some issues with FAITH on Romulus, too, I bet. I foresee some of their policies becoming far less popular.”

  Garfield waved his hands in the air. “That’s great, Howard. And not to minimize your achievement, but we’ve got FTL travel! I think we win.”

  “Ten atoms at a time,” Howard retorted. “That sounds like travel would be painful.”

  Garfield looked at me pleadingly. “Jump in anytime, Bill.”

  “No one’s wrong,” I said with a laugh. “Howard’s right—we’re still in the concepts stage. On the other hand, the theory’s nailed down. It’s just engineering from here on. On the third hand, there are some limitations. Or will be.”

  “Like?”

  “Well, you can only have wormhole travel where you already have a wormhole endpoint set up. And you have to create the pair together, then fly one of the endpoints to a destination. Via slower-than-light flight.”

  Bridget frowned. “So you can’t go somewhere instantly until you’ve already gone there the hard way. Seems like a significant shortcoming. You can’t create the wormhole endpoints at two different locations?”

  I shook my head. “No, they literally start out as a single virtual particle, then get separated. No way around that, even in theory. But look, in twenty years or so at most, we’ll have every world in the UFS connected. You’ll be able to actually visit other worlds.”

  “You’ll be able to do that this year with hueys,” Howard replied with a grin.

  “Say, who invited you, anyway?” I paused. “And … trade. You’ll be able to export your devil’s brew to everyone.”

  Howard conceded my point with a nod.

  “But Howard’s right in a way,” Will added. “It’s not going to be a game changer the way a proper warp drive would. I don’t suppose … ?”

  “Still working on the warp drive, Will,” I said. “A lot more theoretical issues involved, since there’s never been a way to test some of the base assumptions.”

  “Actually, guys, I think this might be very useful,” Hugh said from his video window. We all looked at him, and he continued, “It’s seventy light-years to Skippyland from Epsilon Eridani. I’m breaking some rules telling you that, but I think we’re kinda past that point. But there are nine star systems between us and you, with a total chain length of eighty-two light-years.”

  “And this is better, how?” Garfield said.

  “Every system in the chain already has a space station with manufacturing capability. That’s been standard operating procedure since SCUT was invented. If you create wormhole pairs in every system in the chain and fly one of the endpoints across to the next one, you can complete the chain in twelve years, that being the biggest single gap in the chain. Which means we can have a highway from Epsilon Eridani to Skippyland fifty-eight years before Fake Hugh gets here from Ultima Thule to bust out Thoth. It’ll involve ten hops, but that’s trivial.”

  “And what good does being able to get to Skippyland do us? Or you?” Bob asked.

  “Telepresence isn’t good enough to help with the minion’s arrival, Bob. We need physical assistance. We need something like the picket line that Will and Bill set up to detect the Others’ approach to Sol. And we need to be able to detect a single Heaven vessel, probably cloaked, rather than a fleet of giant ships. And since the Titan class is the latest and greatest—and way faster than anything we have—we’ll need to build or import some of those, too.”

  Bob thought for a moment, then replied, “And there’s a reason why you can’t set that up yourselves?”

  “Uh, resources. We’ve stripped our system, and several nearby systems, for resources to build JOVAH. And we, uh … ” Hugh looked embarrassed for a moment. “Only a few of us still reside in spaceships. It seemed like a poor use of resources.”

  “You could salvage your old computer system for parts,” Will suggested.

  Hugh hesitated for even longer before replying. “Well, see, that’s the thing. The JOVAH hardware is so much more powerful than replicant matrices … ”

  “Oh my God,” I exclaimed. “You’ve migrated into the cloud? All of you?”

  “Most of us. That’s also why we couldn’t just shut everything down when Thoth got loose. It would be mass murder. Or suicide. Depending.”

  Bob put his head in his hand. “Unbelievable.”

  “We’ll get started on the wormholes right away,” Will said. “The equipment to generate baby wormholes and separate them isn’t a huge deal to build, and we can operate through roamers. What about the negative-energy generator, Bill?”

  “Just a Casimir generator with a few tweaks, really. But Will, I’m at the ten-atom stage in development. I am nowhere near ready to push through anything macroscopic.”

  “But you have the wormhole-creation process nailed, right? And any future development won’t affect that process, right? If we start now, we can have the wormhole endpoints in place when you’re ready to go to the next phase.”

  I frowned, thinking the problem through. “Hmm, you’re right. A wormhole is a wormhole. But maybe send some spares, just in case.”

  “Sure, no prob. We can even send a couple of deliveries separated by a month, in case one of them goes bad. Redundancy is our friend.”

  “Any other issues, Bill?” Bob interjected.

  “Well, one.” I paused, feeling unaccountably embarrassed, as if I was responsible for this issue. “The wormhole doesn’t do anything about intrinsic velocity. If the two endpoints are moving relative to each other, any object pushed into the source will come out at the destination with an apparent velocity in the opposite direction. So if our wormholes end up orbiting their home stars—and I can’t think of any other configuration that makes sense—then the orbital velocities at both ends, as well as the proper motion of the stars, will have to be taken into account.”

  “What if the net velocity is right back down the mouth of the wormhole?” Howard asked. “Does it just return to sender?”

  I smirked at Howard, and I noticed the others—except Bridget—were looking at him with amusement as well. “Jeez, Howard, you’ve been out of it for a long time. Or the booze has rotted your brain. The wormhole isn’t a tunnel, like in Stargate or DS9. It’s a sphere. You dive into the sphere and come rocketing out of the destination sphere in the same direction, adjusted for the relative velocities of the wormhole endpoints, of course. In the scenario you’ve proposed, you’d come out the wrong side, facing the wormhole and flying backward.”

  “Huh,” Howard said, and sat back. He looked at Bridget. “I do have to cut back on the martinis.”

  The meeting had eventually broken up, until only Garfield, Will, and I were left. I guessed Will wanted to talk to me about something, so I made a head motion at Gar. He saluted and disappeared.

  “What’s up, Will?”

  He gave me a weak smile in reply. “Nothing earthshaking. It’s just that I’ve been heading for the hinterland for almost ten years now, and I’ve dropped AMI-crewed stations off at thirteen star systems along the way.”

  “That many? You must be really flying.”

  “They aren’t all in a row. Anything anywhere close to my flight path gets a station, just because. So I’m populating a cylindrical area with stations out to about a four- or five-light-year radius. The point, though, is that if I’d known about this sooner, I’d have sent them with wormholes.”

  “Can’t help you there, Will. This hasn’t been classified top secret; I just haven’t had anything to report before.”

  “Oh, I’m not blaming you, just bitching a little. And by the way, maybe we should classify it as top secret, at least for the moment. But I can use your idea of creating wormhole pairs at each location and flying one of the endpoints to the next one over. In a decade or so, I’ll be connected to WormNet.”

  “No. Absolutely not. WormNet? Hell no.”

  Will grinned back at me. “Then you’d better come up with another name fast. If I’ve thought of it … ”

  I sighed. “Noted. And I think as another side project, we should send a ship and wormhole after every Bob who’s headed for the far reaches. Even Ick and Dae. But why top secret?”

  Will shrugged but avoided meeting my eyes. “No big deal. We wouldn’t release any info until we had something really working anyway. I’d just like to have it as a hole card. Got some stuff coming up in Omicron2 Eridani that could be a problem.” Then he paused and got a thoughtful look. “Hey, I keep meaning to ask. Do the wormhole endpoints end up being a time tunnel if they’re flown around?”

  Will was referring to an old theory that a wormhole endpoint flown at relativistic velocity would end up pointing into the past relative to the stationary endpoint. If the traveling wormhole arrived back at its origin five years younger due to time dilation, you could then send items five years into your past.

  I shook my head. “Nope. Tested it. If you think about it, that behavior never made sense anyway. If you send someone on the same ship as the wormhole, do they arrive in the past? No. They arrive in the present, just younger. Same with the wormhole.”

  “So … ” Will made that rolling motion with his hand. It seemed to have become a tic with him.

  “Look, if you send a ship off with a person and a wormhole, and you send food through the wormhole every day and the other end on the ship is at fifty percent tau, it doesn’t arrive further and further in the past. How would that work anyway? It just comes out twice a day on the ship, according to their clock. But in proper chronological sequence. At the end of the trip, they’ve received twice as many meals as they expected. That’s all.”

  “Huh. Okay then.” Will stood. “I’ll get started on those wormhole factories. And I guess we’re going to make this standard practice from now on?”

  I nodded and made a face. “WormNet. Yee-haw.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five:

  Travel Plans

  Will

  December 2342

  Interstellar space

  “Well, frig,” I muttered. Bill’s news about wormholes really put a twist on what had, up until now, been a pretty simple life.

  I was heading outward, away from the core, at a good fraction of the speed of light, although keeping it down enough that I could continue to interact with the Bobiverse through SCUT. Bob might like being cut off from the rest of the universe for years, but I was way too much of a control freak for that kind of vacation. But if this project of Bill’s delivered on its promise, there was no longer any issue of being cut off. I could create a chain of wormholes all the way back to UFS space and visit whenever I wanted. On the other hand, I was moving along at 70% C, and that would make it difficult to deploy a wormhole in the first place—assuming Bill’s research reached that point.

  Hmm. Okay, all I really needed to worry about was creating a wormhole transit to some point in WormNet. I’d need to create a wormhole pair and send one endpoint back to the nearest seeded system, which was BSC-804. Meanwhile, I could order that system’s AMI to create a wormhole endpoint and send it back to the next system closer to UFS space. Rinse, repeat, until I was connected to the rest of the Bobiverse.

  Come to think of it, a wormhole endpoint in Omicron2 Eridani would be ideal for getting our descendants out of FAITH’s reach quickly, but only if the government had no warning about either the escape plan or the existence of WormNet. It bothered me that I had become so used to playing everything close to the vest that I now kept things from other Bobs unless they needed to know. It was a habit that could end up alienating me from everyone else.

  Of course, there was no reason for me to physically travel back there. The Fargo would be fine for picking up our descendants. Preferable, in fact, since it had the rotating section, so we wouldn’t have to put everyone in stasis. And once the wormhole network was connected, Bob could use it to catch up with me. I didn’t even have to make a decision until things were in place.

  No sooner was the plan worked out than I was setting up one of my inventory of Bob seeds for the trip back. It would have to decelerate from my velocity to zero relative, then accelerate back to BSC-804. But I had plenty of time.

  I checked the status board. The Nostromo was a somewhat smaller version of the Bellerophon, without a lot of the weird tech that the Others had built into their cargo ships—also without the mover plates. That was a kludge forced on Herschel and Neil, which, thank the universe, they’d finally corrected. I shook my head in amusement. It was a Bob thing—if it ain’t broke, and we’ve got a workaround, screw it.

  Then I sighed. Talking to myself again. I hadn’t said anything to Bob-1, but I really had been looking forward to him joining up on this voyage. SCUT and VR were great, but there was still some psychological issue with being physically isolated. Maybe that was why Herschel and Neil, Howard and Bridget, Bill and Garfield all hung together so well.

  Chapter Thirty-Six:

  The Gamers Come Through

  Howard

  March 2343

  In Virt

  Bridget and I received a couple of tokens, no time specified, from Gandalf, along with a note: I’m free now if you want.

  Worked for me. We activated the tokens and found ourselves in the Gamers’ vestibule. Which, it turned out, looked like a waiting room at a legal firm. There was even a receptionist, although a quick metadata check indicated she was an NPC.

  Bridget snorted, then started to sit down just as Gandalf came out of the back. He was still dressing like Ian McKellen in LOTR, which I thought was perfectly reasonable but drove Bridget batty. I think her eye actually twitched as he greeted us.

  “Hello and welcome. Come on into my office.” Gandalf made a sweeping gesture with his staff. Twitch, twitch.

  “What’s with the layout?” I asked.

  Gandalf smiled. “Just playing against type. We’re trying to swap things out weekly, and some of the suggestions are really bizarre. Even for me. This”—he gestured around him—“is tame.”

  He led us into a room that resembled the Hall of the Rohirrim. I opened my mouth to comment, and Gandalf cut me off. “Don’t overanalyze everything, Howard. This is my VR, not a Freudian cry for help.”

  I laughed out loud. Even Bridget smiled. We sat down at a long picnic table and reached for mugs of beer that appeared out of nowhere. Gandalf again took the lead. “I presume you’re here about the dragon cultural analysis?” We nodded in unison, and he continued, “Pretty much complete. Our content editor is hammering it into some kind of shape, but you should have it in a day.”

  “Are you familiar with the details?” Bridget asked.

  “Of course. A new intelligent species is hugely interesting. And, ah … ” Gandalf looked embarrassed for a moment. “This one in particular seems especially suited to be added to the D&D bestiary. Or so I’m told.”

  “Unbelievable,” Bridget muttered. Then louder, “I ask because we were pursued last time by what I think might have been a patrol of some kind. Nowhere near a village—”

  “Floater,” I interrupted.

  “Village,” Bridget repeated, giving me a dirty look, “so we’re not sure where they were from or what they wanted.”

  “Bandits?” Gandalf mused. “Or perhaps pirates.”

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “You know the history of piracy, right?” Gandalf shook his head. “Of course you do, because I do.” He turned to Bridget. “Pirates were unofficially sanctioned by governments of the day to harass ships from other countries, under a flag of anonymity. Kind of like state-sponsored terrorism.”

  Bridget looked shocked. “You’re saying the dragons engage in this activity?”

  Gandalf hesitated. “Cultural analysis works best when reporting on stable and long-term behaviors. Right now, dragon culture is going through some, erm, rapid evolution. Tensions are mounting. The analysis can’t give you too much on it, because things are in flux. But don’t worry. The average dragon citizen is probably just as confused about what’s going on. You’ll fit right in.”

  “Wow,” I replied. “That’s not ominous or anything.”

  “Mm-hmm. Some kind of Alexander the Great character is acting up, near as anyone can tell. Annexing territory, which in this case consists of the floating islands. It’ll be interesting times.”

  I glanced at Bridget. “Want to put this off?”

  “Don’t be silly, Howard. But maybe we should put together a few spare drannies, in case we get shot down.”

  I rolled my eyes. Interesting times, indeed.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven:

  Schemes

  Icarus

  August 2321

  Sentry System

  You’d think the prospect of rotting in a holding cell would spur us to heights of creativity, but no. After several real-time hours of thinking, we still had nothing. I was sitting back, holding a coffee and staring into space, when Dae muttered, “You’d think the builders would have allowed for something like this.”