I opened my mouth to point out that technically, by her belief system, only original Bridget had the soul, but realized in time that that would be the exact opposite of reassuring. Maybe I was finally learning when to keep my cake hole shut.
“And on a more personal basis,” she continued, “the new Bridget would be cut off from Howard and from our children. I know I wouldn't be able to share them with her, and Howard told me flat out that he be completely weirded out by the idea. I try to imagine myself waking up and realizing that I’m the copy - that I’ll never again be with Howard and the kids.” Her lips quivered as she'd struggled to regain control. I waited quietly, giving her as much time she needed. Finally, she said, “I couldn't do that to myself. Or to other me. So I’m going to accept that I'll be working away from home for a while, and I make it up to them when I'm done.”
“Okay, Bridget. Either way, it's good to have you on the team.”
She flashed what Howard referred to is one of her nuclear smiles, and I felt my IQ drop. Fortunately, Bill and Garfield picked that moment to pop in.
“Hey all, got the latest from Hugh,” Bill waved a bound report at us as he threw himself into his chair. Garfield settled in with a little more dignity. I summon Jeeves, who brought in coffee, little sandwiches without crusts, and a perpetually full and fizzy glass of Coke for Will when he showed up.
Bill held up one of the sandwiches. “You’ve served these a couple of times now. I like them, but where did the idea come from?”
I grabbed a sandwich and scrutinized it. “Dunno. Random memory from original Bob, I guess. I'll probably get tired of them eventually, but you can put a lot of different things in sandwiches.”
Will popped in, waved, and flopped into his beanbag. “Okay ladies and germs, let's do this.”
Bill grinned at him and tossed the report into the air. It morphed into a video window, and Bill waggled a finger to pull summaries and sub windows. “Androids are coming along. It’ll be a good six months yet before they're ready, assuming they pass all functional tests. We’re were working with a lot of new techniques here, so I don't want to rush anything.”
Bill motion to Garfield, who took up the thread. “The Gamers went through a ton of scenarios, but couldn't come up with anything tricky that would get for Quinlan-sized bodies through the airlock and passed the Boogens, so they’ve suggested we just bore through the outer shell, then work our way into the elevator system internally.”
“That seems risky, what if the Boogens notice?”
“Well, the Gamers suggested that the Boogens can't be too hair-trigger about the outer shell. After all, even with the amount of in system cleanup they've done, there will still be a certain number of micrometeor impacts every year. If they came running each time there was a tremor, they be doing nothing else.”
“Good point.” I cocked my head. “Are we going to test it?”
“I figure we'll just pick a point between two airlocks and start digging. If they come running, we either run away or self-destruct, and come up with another plan.”
Will grinned. “Well, it does have the virtue of simplicity.”
“Yeah,” I rubbed my eyes. “Alright, let's give it a try. Garfield, can you be in charge of implementation?”
“Sure thing.”
“Next order of business,” I said. “What we do when we get in?”
“Damned if I know,” Bill answered. “We have absolutely no indication that Bender is even in Heaven’s River, let alone where he might be. This makes a needle in a haystack look like a sure thing.”
“Except we don't really need to find Bender,” Garfield interjected. Heads turned to him. “All we need to do is establish contact with whoever has him. Or failing that, with whoever runs the ship, assuming they're not the same group.”
“This isn’t a blind search. It's more like detective work.”
“True enough. We’ll be working blind, initially.”
I was silent for a moment as I went to the options. “As we learn more, we can narrow things down a little. Maybe get more of a sense of direction, metaphorically speaking.”
There were nods around the circle as each person work through the implications. This was the open-ended aspect of the project. We had no idea how long it might take to narrow things down, because we had very little idea what we were going to find.
“It's worth noting,” Garfield said into the silence, “that there aren’t that many Boogen airlocks. If you assume that Bender's matrix went in through one of them, it really narrows things down.”
“True. There are, what, nine entrances?”
“Yes. And most of them appear to be inactive, which makes sense if they aren’t doing anything beyond cleanup patrols.”
“Could we send in multiple teams?” Bridget asked.
Bill shook his head. “We talked about that. More teams would mean more delay and more likelihood of exposure. Once the topopolis controllers discover our existence, they'd likely institute some kind of large-scale search, and maybe take other defensive postures. Remember, we don't know that they'll be friendly. Our only contact with them so far has been them blowing up Bender, and then Bob's drones. I don’t want to take a chance on how they might react to an invading force. Keep it small. Don't look dangerous.” He grinned at us. “Having said that, if we run into a brick wall, there's always the option of sending more teams. Bob can
