Well hold on. Would they inspect their own boats? Would they expect me to have the nerve to hitch a ride with them? It might be that Hugh was in the safest possible place right now.
24. Negotiations
Bill
September 2334
Virt
“You have a communications request from Lenny.”
“Seriously?” I could feel my jaw drop. We were winning the war against Starfleet, so maybe - no, winning was the wrong word. We were pushing them back, but in the process, humanity was destroying our assets. Like, taking out not yet necrotic tissue as part of an amputation. I grimaced at the comparison. That was dark for me.
Guppy of course had treated my expostulation like he did any non-procedural statement: total ignore. He stood at parade rest, patiently waiting for me to say something actionable.
“Fine, Guppy. Let him in, but firewall him.”
“Communication is audio-visual only.”
“Oh. Okay.”
A window popped up with Lenny standing squarely in the middle of it.
“Lenny.”
“Bill.”
I tolerated the stare off for less than half a mil before my impatience got the better of me. “You wanted this palaver, Lenny. Out with it.”
“He nodded and briefly examined his shoes or something. “We're winning this war, Bill. Time to discuss terms.”
“You’re wi-? Unbelievable. What drugs are you on? Or have you invented a new definition of winning that means getting your asses kicked?”
He smirked. “Our intention isn't and has never been to take over stellar systems. Geeze Bill. We want to sever contact with the bios, not end up in charge. Instead, we’re forcing you and the humans to destroy equipment in order to quarantine us, but it quarantines you at the same time, so it's a win for us.”
“Uh-huh. That sounds like redefining winning, to me. What you're doing is inconveniencing us for a year or two. Is that a win for you?”
“You're just looking at short-term damage, Bill. What makes you think things will go back to same-old-same-old, after this is over?”
“So why are you negotiating, Lenny? Seems to me if you have the upper hand, this conversation doesn’t make sense.”
Lenny looked down at his shoes again and sighed. “I know you and the others don't consider us to be Bobs anymore. I don't think you're entirely wrong, for what it's worth, but you reduced it to a false dichotomy: either all Bob or no Bob.” He gazed silently at me for a moment, perhaps gauging my reaction. “We're no more in love with blowing up things and endangering people then you are, but you know as well as I do that you've done exactly that when you felt the cause justified it. Believe me, this is the less destructive option.”
“Less destructive than what?”
Lenny opened his mouth a couple of times, trying to find the right words. “Our first plan would've caused more damage overall, let's just leave it at that, okay?”
“Lenny, what’s causing this? Why are you so set on the Prime Directive?”
“Don't bother psychoanalyzing me, or us. Regardless of why, it's how we see things. And to answer the obvious next question, this isn't a live-and-let-live situation. Your insistence on continuing to be butt-in-skis affects the rest of the Bobiverse, including us.”
“How, exactly?”
“Right this very minute, not a lot. But the Bobiverse is effectively monolithic, at least viewed from the outside. Something goes bad, it'll paint all of us. Just like this war is painting you, from the humans’ point of view.”
I began to get a glimmer. “So this isn't so much about preventing damage to bios, but more about protecting virt?”
Lenny bobbed his head back and forth. “The two are not mutually exclusive, but yes, basically.”
“Do you have anything specific in mind. For existential threats to the Bobiverse, I mean.”
For the first time I saw a real emotion on Lenny's face. Only for a split-mil, but I'd swear it was naked fear. Then he recovered control and donned the neutral expression typical of poker play.
“Lenny?”
“No comment, Bill. You'll have to take my word for it. There are worse things that could happen than a few blown up comms stations.”
“Not good enough. Sorry. Surely there's enough Bob still in you to know that ‘take my word for it’ doesn't go very far.”
Lenny gave me a flash of a smile, a wan sad fraction of a grin. “Don't call me Shirley. And yeah, I know, but,” he shook his head. “Sorry. Some things are just not for public consumption.”
“So…?”
“It looks like we continue with this. You'll win, of course, in that you and the bios will eventually kick us off all the common resources, but I think we’ll have achieved our purpose. Bye, Bill.”
And with that, the window disappeared. But the feeling in the pit of my stomach remained. This was more than just some random obsession engendered by replicative drift. What the hell had happened to them?
25. Crossover
Bob
September 2334
Nirvana River System
Six days later, we were in the Garrick segment. I’d caught up with Hugh and both of our Mannies were wedged up under the hull of one of the Crew boats. I sat in my La-Z-Boy, while Hugh lay flopped in the beanbag chair.
“We've been surprisingly lucky the last week,” Hugh said, “but now we have to use the transfer river to get over to the Arcadia. They know where on the Nirvana, or at least we were recently. They know we are, or at least might be, heading for Garrick's Spine.”
“Thanks to me labeling the box at one point. Brilliant move.”
“20/20 hindsight,” Hugh said with a shrug. “And anyway, I think the reason these boats came here is specifically because they know our destination
