I quickly changed back to my Quinlan form. “Sorry, Theresa. This is actually a learning experience for all of us.” I glanced at ANEC, and he took up the thread.

  “Learning experience, as Bob says. We do not want to cause undue stress to new arrivals. Of course, as the Quiniverse becomes common knowledge, it will inevitably be less of a shock.”

  Theresa laughed—well, she rubbed her upper and lower bill sideways, the Quinlan equivalent—and stood. “Okay, ANEC. And Enoki. Or should I call you Bob? That’s actually your name, right? You’re the Bawbe that ended the era of control?”

  I smiled back. “Whatever you’re more comfortable with. Although if you ever decide to explore my society—we call it the Bobiverse—Bob would be less confusing to other people.”

  “Yes, the Bobiverse.” Theresa sighed. “We live in interesting times.”

  Chapter Seventeen:

  Strategy Session

  Bill

  March 2337

  In Virt

  We were having an emergency meeting with Hugh, who was still limiting himself to a video window. Garfield, Will, and Bob were sitting around my VR, holding and ignoring various caffeine-delivery systems. Everyone looked as freaked out as I felt.

  “Thoth is definitely still in our system,” Hugh was saying. “Granted, it could simply have cloned itself, but why? Once out, it should logically have just erased itself in Skippyland, even if only to protect its secrets.”

  “What is it saying about the situation?” Will asked.

  “That the information, like all information, has a price,” Hugh replied. “And that brings up another thing. Thoth is still negotiating for more freedom. Its demands haven’t really changed, and that doesn’t make sense if it’s already out.”

  “Unless that’s a distraction tactic.” I sighed and looked around at the others. “Which I think I may have fallen victim to. The supposedly offhand comment about the cosmological constant may have been dropped specifically to distract me while Fake Hugh made himself scarce.”

  Garfield looked crestfallen. “So it’s a bogus lead?”

  “Um, no, I wouldn’t say that. The idea definitely has some objective validity. It’s just not … ” I made helpless gestures with my hands. “I can get so far with it; then I stall. I’m going to—”

  Will interrupted. “There are probably ex-human physicists who would be willing to help. You could—”

  I interrupted him in turn. “Already on it. I’ve contacted Professor Gilligan on Vulcan, and he’s promised to ask around. He has the academic contacts.”

  “So where does this leave us?” Bob said, speaking for the first time.

  “I don’t know, Bob.” I glanced at Hugh, but no help there. “We logged Fake Hugh’s departure, of course, but a five-year-old would think of changing direction as soon as they were out of detection range. So it could go anywhere.”

  “And since Ultima Thule is more or less in the center of the UFS, any direction is as likely as any other.” Garfield harrumphed. “Wowzers. When we mess up, we do it big.”

  “I’ve put out a quiet APB to all admins and local Bobs,” I said. “Fake Hugh got the latest-class Heaven vessel, and there aren’t a lot of them out there. And the acceleration capability is absolutely huge. Thoth’s best strategy is still to basically point the bow and accelerate until it’s outside the UFS sphere. So I don’t anticipate much in the way of results.”

  “What exactly are we afraid of?” Bob asked. “If it heads for the boonies, isn’t that a good thing?”

  I sighed. “Paper-clip problem. Convergent instrumental goals. Value loading. All the AI theory that has been developed over the centuries tells us that even if an AI isn’t explicitly and deliberately antagonistic, it may still perform actions that are harmful to the human race in pursuit of its own goals. And it has every advantage over us that we do over humanity, plus more. It can multitask in ways we simply can’t. It won’t have any emotional or psychological issues with cloning. It can self-modify to improve itself and add capabilities. It could, in the most trivial example, start harvesting stellar systems for resources and come into competition with us. No animosity, nothing personal—we’re just in the way. Like the Others, but with a different kind of appetite.”

  “And it could build a million or so busters, each with the same level of intelligence as the original,” Bob added.

  “Ah, no,” Hugh interrupted. “That’s another thing. I took a look at the backup file that Fake Hugh was restored from. It’s not one of my backups, but it’s a standard backup size and has the right header information. Obviously, it would have to fit into a matrix, and equally obviously, it couldn’t be so big that it made Garfield suspicious. It’s not big enough by several orders of magnitude to have restored Thoth.”

  “Fake Hugh isn’t the AI?”

  “More likely a minion.”

  There was a pause; then everyone momentarily turned into yellow, capsule-shaped creatures with goggles over their eye or eyes. I shook my head. “Still not mature.”

  “Oh, hell.” Will sat up straight. “If it’s a minion, it’s just an intermediate step in some kind of plan. I bet it’s heading for Skippy space. And I bet its mission is to physically free Thoth.”

  We all looked at Hugh, who was wearing a distinctly gut-punched expression. “Yeah,” he said, “that sounds about right. The good news, though, is that we have a few years before it could get here.”

  “How many exactly?” I asked.

  “That information is not public,” he replied. “Sorry, Bill. But I’ll mention it to the higher-ups. They may decide we need to be more forthcoming in order to avert a disaster.”

  “Yeah, you do that,” Garfield growled. “Take your time.”

  Chapter Eighteen:

  Explorations

  Icarus

  July 2321

  Wormhole network

  We were continuing our survey of the Hub Zero systems and had just transited yet another wormhole. The system at the other end was a large one. So far, we’d identified fourteen planets, two of which were in the habitable zone. By this point, we weren’t bothering with stealth or even caution. The singular lack of any activity other than us was both reassuring and disturbing.

  But there was something odd about the fourth and fifth planets, the ones in the habitable zone. The color was … well, purple-ish. That couldn’t be right.

  The why became obvious, though, when we got close enough to be able to observe the fourth planet as a disk. It looked purple because it was, well, purple.

  “I’ve never seen anything like that,” I said. “It’s beautiful, but what’s causing it?”

  Dae looked up from the video window he’d been watching closely. “Believe it or not, it’s the plant life. Everything is purple instead of green. Here, take a look.” He swiveled the window around to show a low aerial view from a survey drone. Sure enough, all the vegetation was resplendent in various shades of purple, from a deep royal hue all the way up to something that was almost fuchsia.

  “It’s a retinal-based photosynthetic system,” Dae continued. “I looked it up. It’s an alternative to chlorophyll. Supposed to be more efficient. It uses green light, so it reflects away the blue and red. Exactly the opposite of chlorophyll.”

  “If it’s more efficient,” I replied, “why is this the first time we’ve ever seen it?”

  “Damned if I know. Hey, maybe we can keep track if we start visiting all the planets. It could turn out that our patch of space is a statistical fluke.”

  “One thing at a time, Dae. Let’s find out where everyone is first.”

  “You know, you’re starting to sound like a broken record, Icky.”

  “Even a broken record is right twice a day.”

  “Whaaaat?”

  I grinned at his confused expression. It was rare that we managed to catch each other by surprise anymore, and worth savoring when it happened.

  “What’s more interesting to me,” I continued, “is whether the two planets each independently developed retinal-based biospheres or if the local civilization imported the plants as part of a colonization strategy. And possibly wiped out a native ecology in the process.”

  “Hmm.” Dae cocked his head in thought. “Shall we investigate?”

  “Why, yes, I do believe we shall.”

  The landscape had an eerie feel. Viewing it, even through a spy drone, I couldn’t help thinking of that Lovecraft story, “The Color Out of Space.” The animals that I was able to spot were likewise just a bit off. Colors, for instance, tended toward blues rather than browns. I wondered if it had anything to do with the color sensitivities of predators. Possibly, brown and green might look similar if you only had two color receptors, and maybe blue and purple would be similar. There was no immediate way to test this, so I shelved it for another time.

  But parallel evolution stayed true. No land octopi or wheel-based locomotive systems. This made me feel unaccountably better, as if my worldview had been under threat.

  The former inhabitants, though, had not been humanoid. Doors were round and retracted into the wall like pocket doors—and not as an exception, but almost always. Only openings apparently intended for loading and unloading vehicles were rectangular, and those tended to have roll-up doors.

  Buildings were low, squat, and only a single story. A SUDDAR scan revealed that most of them had multiple underground levels, and in fact, even the first floor tended to be a few steps down from ground level.

  No statues were in evidence, so we couldn’t get an idea of the inhabitants’ physique. One of the spy drones did come upon a picture on some kind of kiosk. It depicted a being shaped something like a hamburger bun, but with multiple legs and arms. And presumably eyes, although they could have been sesame seeds for all I knew. We couldn’t decide if it was one of the intelligent inhabitants or an ad for a snack food.

  I spent a day trying to find other depictions but came up empty-handed. Finally, Dae chided me about my seeming obsession. “We can’t go down this rabbit hole, Icky. We’ve already discussed this. We could spend literal centuries exploring the whole empire.”

  “Yeah, you’re right. Get the basics, then get the Bobiverse involved. Let’s get back to work.”

  But as we flew back toward the gate, I kept my telescope centered on the closer planet, trying for one last detail.

  Chapter Nineteen:

  Working the Problem

  Bill

  April 2337

  In Virt

  I’d received a referral from Professor Gilligan to a physicist who had just recently transitioned to post-life. Professor Hannah Turnbull had been with Newholme University for several decades, teaching theoretical physics. Now, having recently been forcibly retired by a fatal heart attack, she was somewhat at loose ends.

  I sent an email to the address that Steven had included, being sure to attach his message so that the recipient wouldn’t discard mine as spam. Even so, there was no telling what kind of schedule she’d be on or how many other projects she might have going. I set a follow-up for a week away and pulled up my project. Might as well beat my head against a brick wall for a while.

  I was barely two minutes into it and hadn’t even really gotten into the groove when I received a response and a connection request. I accepted, and Professor Turnbull popped into my VR. She looked to be in her early thirties, which was the most common age people picked when setting up their replicant avatar. Old enough to be taken seriously, but not old enough to look old. At least that was the common wisdom. Very few people selected an apparent age outside that range.

  “Good after,” she said with a slight bow. “I hight Professor Hannah Turnbull, errant late of Newholme University.”

  I realized that she was speaking Newholme local, and I didn’t have a translator routine set up. I took a half mil to correct the oversight and advertised the reciprocal routine for her in case she needed it.

  “Hello, Professor. I’m Bill Johannson. I’m not sure how much Steven told you … ”

  “Only that you have a potential breakthrough in the generation of negative energy but need a second set of eyes to advance things.”

  I smiled at her. “Very diplomatically phrased. But it might take more than one extra set of eyes. Here’s what I have … ” I pulled up my project and began laying it out. Turnbull materialized a chair and a tea of some kind and settled in.

  The presentation took a full minute, since we were operating in replicant normal time. When I was done, Turnbull stared into space for several mils. Finally, she spoke. “I can see where you’d want a breakthrough on this. It’s potentially the biggest thing since the SURGE drive, Mister Johannson—or is it Professor, or Doctor?”

  “Let’s just go with Bill,” I replied.

  She dimpled momentarily. “And I’m Hannah. Anyway, Bill, it’s a tough nut to crack. The math supports the two-scalar-field hypothesis, but then it dead-ends. It’s like the old Calabi–Yau manifolds, where the number of possible configurations was just short of infinite, and there was no way to pick one that might represent our universe.” She paused and examined the whiteboard again. “I have a few colleagues I can talk to, if you’re okay with that. But right now … ” She shook her head. “I think without another hint, you’ve probably taken this about as far as you can unless you can narrow down the problem domain.”

  Hannah stayed a few more minutes, I think out of politeness, but then made her excuses. I was left glaring at the whiteboard, a sense of helplessness settling over me. The AI had gauged me just right. The hint had been enough to get me excited, but too little to give me a real breakthrough. The number of possible solutions to the problem was not really infinite, but definitely included a long string of zeros. And I couldn’t test all of them.

  Or … couldn’t I? A good theoretical physicist would try to arrive at an answer mathematically, and there didn’t seem to be a path to that goal. But the Skippies had this humongous computer, as Hugh kept reminding us. I wondered how many simulations it could run at the same time. It would be dirty science—ad hoc modeling without any theoretical backing, just make it work and worry about why later.

  I grinned and pulled up Virtual Studio. I hadn’t done any actual programming in quite a while, but replicants didn’t really get rusty.

  Chapter Twenty:

  Spectacular Nature

  Will

  August 2339

  Planet BSC-142-C

  Istood at the edge of the precipice and looked down. Five kilometers, vertical drop. Jeez.

  Some aspects of our former humanity still stuck with us, despite the centuries. I was controlling a manny, so in absolutely no danger, but I still had to fight the urge to backpedal, an almost overpowering desire to be elsewhere. I could, of course, use the endocrine inhibition system, which was still built into every new replicant matrix—the Bob ones, at least. But I hadn’t felt any need to use that particular crutch since—well, ever, really. Not since Bob, before I was even cloned. I didn’t know if the replicant matrix models used by the various post-life arcologies that had sprung up in post-Earth human space included the same circuitry. Arcologies was, of course, a misuse of the original term, but it had somehow stuck.

  I was standing at the edge of a huge escarpment on planet BSC-142-C. I smiled to myself at the arrogance. The Bobiverse Stellar Catalog was now replacing the HIC, HIP, Messier, and all the other competing catalogs used by astronomers back in the twenty-first century. Less Sol-centric and with a more sensible planetary categorization system, it labeled planets from the innermost to the outermost, rather than in order of discovery. Among many other advantages.

  I gave myself a mental shake to get back on track and looked to the left and right. BSC-142-C was a young and still extremely active planet, tectonically. Along the line of this escarpment, two continental plates had collided and were continuing the shoving match. For some reason, though, instead of this simply producing the usual mountain chain, one plate had ridden over the other as a unit, creating a cliff cutting right across the new continent, five kilometers high on average. Behind me on the escarpment, mountains jutted several more kilometers into the sky. And a kilometer or so to my left, a waterfall put every single other similar feature in known space to shame.

  The planet itself was almost but not quite habitable. The ecosystem was still primitive, only recently having developed the fungi that would compost dead plant and animal matter. The fungi now were making up for lost time and had a lot of material to work with, so the atmosphere was what I’d have to characterize as swamp times ten. Even Takama’s citizens would run screaming back to their planet after a few seconds here.

  On the other hand, flying cities with filtered air would be fine. And the views were definitely spectacular.

  Well, it would go into the catalog with all the other systems that I was examining along the way. No outstanding colonization candidates yet, but the century was young. And anyway—I smiled as I had the thought—this whole exploration thing was at least as much for my own mental health as it was for the good of humanity. Events back in the UFS just kept getting weirder and weirder, and I was well out of it. I was coming to understand why Bob-1 had wanted to join up with me. The biggest attribute of immortality, it turned out, was that problems just kept coming at you. Eventually you realized that the only solution was to head for the hills and adopt the hermit lifestyle.

  But there was always that fear in the back of my mind that we might be living on borrowed time. So far, we’d found no explanation for the observed fact that all the intelligent species we’d discovered were in the range from the Stone Age–level Deltans to early spacefaring species like humanity, the Quinlans, and the Others. No elder races, no Heechee, no high-level Kardashev civilizations. None of us thought it was a coincidence, but no one had an explanation, either.

  My personal theory was that civilizations killed themselves off once their weaponry reached a certain point. Certainly, the Quinlans and humanity had nearly managed it already once. Would humanity eventually manage to kill themselves off and take everyone else with them? The resurgence of FAITH and the rise of the Luddies seemed like a couple of potential wars in the making.