Bill continued. “And it doesn't help that for years we were rushing all over the galaxy saving humanity’s butt, dying in space wars, and generally acting as dragon fodder. The idea of being a replicant never really recovered from the negative perception of ending up as a disposable servant.”
Garfield pointed a finger at me by way of emphasis. “Don't forget too, that the governments of the day were characterizing replicants as non-human copies. Automata. No rights and so forth. A lot of that stuck.”
I nodded. “And are they bringing any back? The corpsicles, I mean.”
“Yes. A significant number have been revived when their condition became curable, thanks in large part to Howard and Bridget's cancer foundation. Most of the remaining corpsicles are up against the limits of gerontology. They still haven't conquered aging. At some point, replacing cloned organs becomes a game of whack-a-mole. And when the brain starts going, well, there is no longer any point.
“Then there are the other Bobiverse projects. The Skippies’ singularity project makes a certain amount of sense, but some of the others?” I paused. “Silkies? Like Van Vogt’s Silkies? Jaegers? Space dragons?”
Garfield laughed. “Remember when Marvin was trying to replicate the setting for every book he’d ever read in VR? Turns out he was thinking too small. The groups you're talking about are trying to replace our standard spaceship holes was something more, eh, imaginative. We've been making glib comments about being homo-siberia now. I guess some Bobs have taken the concept and run with it.”
Bill grinned. “I've subscribed to their blogs. It's harmless stuff. The singularity project may be slightly less. Starfleet a LOT less so, especially if they decide to do more than just talk.”
This last comment cast a pall on what had been a very interesting conversation, and an uneasy silence reigned for several mils.
I finished my coffee with a final gulp. Time to get down to business. “Very interesting, but speaking of interesting, there's the small matter of a megastructure or something to look at, shall we?”
“Here here,” Bill said, and I transferred us all to the control room. In virt it was nothing but a change of visuals, but original Bob had always been obsessive about detail, and we early generation replicants share that attitude. The control room had wall screens and consoles with a very science-fiction spaceship-ish tone. The only proper venue for exploring a new stellar system.
“So, what do we have?” Bill said, stepping up to the holotank.
“The ballistic scouts will have completed their sweep through the inner system, and we should have a complete picture,” I said. “System plants first, Guppy.”
Bill, Will, and Garfield all glared at me in tandem. I was stalling. They knew it, I knew they knew it, and so on, but my VR, my rules.
The holotank showed six planets, consisting of three gas giants farther out and three rocky planets considerably farther in, with one in the habitable zone. The large gap between planets two and three was glaringly obvious.
“That spacing doesn't look natural,” Bill said.
I nodded. Way too asymmetrical. Either planets had been moved to make room for the megastructure, or planets are missing.
“The Boogen-makers will most likely have originated from the second planet,” Will said. “What do we have?”
“No chlorophyll lines. Minimal oxygen lines. No radio traffic. No indication of organics at all.”
We turned to stare at Guppy. The last time we've seen a planet with those characteristics, it'd been Pav. Afterward.
“The Others? Isn’t this outside their range?”
“Others attack is unlikely. SUDDAR readings indicate significant metal concentrations.”
“Good. If the Others had hit this system, the metals would've been mined out. Let’s finish looking at what we've got. Then, unless there's a good reason otherwise, I'll send some scouts in, under-powered, to get a close-up look.”
I turned to Guppy. “Smaller bodies?”
“None. This system has been swept clean.”
“What, not even moons?”
“No moons.”
“Wow,” Bill said. “Someone has been busy.”
“Let’s set that question aside as well,” Will said. “Right now, we have two options. One: we can look at the megastructure data, or tow: we can beat the crap out of Bob.”
“Can we do both?” Bill asked.
I grinned at them. “My money's on a Dyson swarm.”
“Pretty thin one,” Bill said. “No solar shading at all.”
“Beat. The. Crap.” Will growled.
I laughed. “And now, the moment we've all been waiting for.” I nodded to Guppy, and he updated the holoimage.
We stared for what might have been entire seconds.
Finally, Will said “What the actual fuck?”
Bill flickered for a moment as a frame-jacked probably checking the archives. He was back before I could react. “Topopolis.”
“It looks like… spaghetti,” Will said. “Or a wire sculpture.”
I checked the schematic on the monitor. “That is one continuous cylinder, 56 miles in radius, stretching three times around the star, wound around itself in a sort of helical shape.”
“Torus knot,” Bill interjected.
“How is that even possible,” Will asked, ignoring Bill’s correction.
Bill shrugged. “It was discussed back on Earth, in original Bob's time. There’s relatively little information on the concept. Apparently, it wasn't as popular as O'Neil cylinders, Stanford tori, and Bishop rings, but it doesn't require particularly advanced technology. Just large-scale effort and brute force engineering.”
“What about gravity?”
“It's essentially an O'Neil cylinder, millions of miles long. It spins around the minor radius to generate artificial gravity.”
“But it's CURVED.”
Bill smiled at Will’s outraged complaint. “Think about the scale, bud. if the strand has a mile of bend for every million miles of length, you wouldn't even have to put in expansion joints. That's less than a 10th of an inch flex over each mile of length. The structure would flex less than the Golden gate Bridge when a single pedestrian walks across it.”
“But where would they get the material - ohhhhh.” Will nodded. “Missing planets.”
“On the grand scale of things,” Bill mused, “this is less impressive than what the Others were trying to do. Except the Boogen makers didn't invade other systems to get materials.”
“We don't think,” I said, glancing at Bill. “I haven’t
