Outside inspections complete the roamers entered the section of ship. I had multiple windows up trying to watch everything at once. Finally, I gave up trying to maintain my VR. I dismissed my library and frame-jacked. Now I could keep up with everything, and putting up with naked floating data windows was a small price.
One of the roamers bleeped for attention. I turned to the window and would have smiled if I currently had a body. The roamer had found the replicant matrix containment in the most heavily armored section of the ship, and no obvious damage. Then, elation was replaced by horror as the roamers opened the containment to find it empty. No not, empty - worse than empty. Not only was the replicant matrix missing, but all of the interface hardware had been carefully removed, probably as a unit.
This was NOT good. Someone had made a point of removing Bender and his support hardware in a way that implied an intention to study and possibly revive him. I remembered Homer, and cringed at the specter of Bender helpless and subject to torture. One thing was for sure though, the Boogens or their makers knew that someone else was around.
Having found Bender’s empty ship, I had now flip-flopped from panicked rush back to paranoid caution. I wasn't going to hurry anything. I wasn't going to take any chances on attracting the Boogens, or, well, running into an asteroid. The flight back to the autofactory area would take most of the week.
I had one quandary to deal with, meanwhile. Would I make an announcement now or wait until I knew more? Could I even keep quiet for a week? For that matter would Will be able to keep his trap shut? I hadn't actually asked him to, although I was sure he would wait rather than steal my thunder.
Screw it.
I pulled up my console and began writing a blog entry. I had a large following anyway, being the first Bob replicant, and I could be pretty certain that Luke and Marvin would be watching every post. It took a few full seconds of thought to get the tone right. Cautious optimism, mixed with a realistic appraisal of possible issues. Hope, but be prepared.
Finally, it was done. I hit ‘post’, then sat back and waited.
3, 2, 1.
Luke, Marvin, and Bill popped in at the same time all talking at once and waving their arms. I turned in my office chair and waited until the noise died down.
“Why yes, I'm free right now, come on over,” I said.
“Bite me,” Marvin replied. “Where is he?”
“Well that's the $64,000 question, isn’t it?” I materialized chairs for everyone, and Jeeves entered with coffee.
“Dammit,” Marvin muttered. “Dammit, dammit.”
“What's the next step,” Luke asked. “Do you have a plan?”
“Nothing concrete yet. I guess the first step is to find the Boogen base, or source, or whatever. There's a good chance Bender will be there. Hell, we can just fly in and SUDDAR the hell out of it, if it comes to that. Locate Bender’s matrix and go from there.”
“A raid?”
“If that looks like the best plan.” I stuck my chin out. “If someone has kidnapped Bender and is experimenting on him, I'm not sure diplomacy will be my first choice.”
“Easy there, Bob,” Bill said. “Let’s see what we find before we start building bombs, okay?”
“Yeah, I know. Don't worry, I'll be circumspect.”
There followed one of those silences were no one quite knew what to say. Finally, Marvin nodded, and he and Luke stood. He gave me a wave and popped out, which left… Bill.
“So, Number 2, what's up?
“Oh, ha ha. Listen, I wanted to ask you just how you plan to go in system looking for the Boogens, and how public you're going to be about it.”
“Public, what the fuck? Are you saying there's any question?”
“Of course not, Bob. Not from me or any of the others in our generation. But Starfleet is agita-”
“Starfleet? What?”
Bill sighed. “You still haven't read my blog yet, have you?”
“Uhh, no. Sorry, been busy.”
“Remember Morlock? We’re calling him and his group Starfleet now, because of their obsession with the Prime Directive. It's become gospel to them. They don't even want us to keep interacting with humans. They’re trying to generate support for a formal declaration of some kind that you should leave whatever you find alone.”
“Is a formal declaration anything like a law?”
Bill snorted. “We don't have laws. But if enough people got together, they could apply social pressure of some kind.”
“What, like, shunning?”
“Well, something like that, in principle. A loss of prestige anyway.
“For god’s sake, Bill. Original Bob never gave even a small fraction of a rats ass about that.
“Yeah, I know. But more and more Bobs are becoming less and less Bob-like. I'm starting to call them replicants, in fact, instead of Bobs, just to make the distinction.”
“And they’re more concerned about… prestige?”
“Given a random walk you can't very well drop below zero rats asses, but you can increase the value arbitrarily, so yes we're getting more replicants who are for one of the better word joiners. Performing mutual interest groups and all kinds of things. like Starfleet. And the Borg. And the Skippies.”
“Skippies? Skippies?!” I could feel my eyes bugging out even in VR. “What, they've changed their avatars to beer cans and started calling people monkeys?”
Bill snorted his coffee and had to take a moment to compose himself. “No, it's the group trying to build the Matryoshka Brain, you know? Singularity super AI and so on? I don't know who started the nickname, but the Skippies haven't complained yet. They also, by the way, want us to leave the humans alone. But in their case it’s because they think the humans are holding us back from our destiny or some such.”
“Are there any other… no, never mind, I’ll read your blog. God dammit, I go away for a few decades and the whole
