“Bill, what if Starfleet escalates?”
“Escalates how? Sends a war fleet?
“Um, well, if they did, we wouldn't be able to defend against it. They know as well as we do how we detected the Others’ fleet.”
“And they won’t make that mistake, except they won't send a fleet. Where they send it here? Eta Leporos? Omicron2 Eridani? Even if they were inclined to violence, this isn't about real estate or an entrenched foe. It's about political stances, and both sides of the argument are pretty spread out, physically.”
“Yeah, I get that, but I just have this bad feeling. They're not going to just throw their hands in the air, so they'll be looking for ways to enforce their point of view.”
“Like?”
Garfield sighed. “I’d feel a lot better if I could come up with even one half-plausible scenario, but other than the vague conviction that they'll do something, I'm coming up blank.”
I glanced at my data window one last time and closed it. “I talked to a couple of my bio-government contacts,” I said, turning back to Garfield. “They’ll bring it up with their bosses, they say, but I don't think anyone is taking me seriously. This is a VR problem, after all, and the problem with VR problems is it's hard to see how they relate to the real world.”
Garfield grinned. “If you die in virt, you die in real.”
“Horse pucky,” I laughed. “The Gamers die the time. Sometimes several times in one session.”
“You visited them, didn't you.”
“Yeah, Gar, as part of the negotiations for the Heaven's River project, they let me tag along and one in their LARPs. They go for the full meal deal, you know.” I shook my head in disbelief. “Full VR, fully armed and armored characters, total battle realism. They have a limiter on pain reception, just like we do with the Mannies, but basically, they can and do get stabbed, speared, slashed, burned, blown up, disintegrated, fireballed, electrocuted, drowned, eaten, and whatever other fates D&D and its spiritual descendants have come up with.”
Garfield grinned. “Nevertheless, I can see the attraction.”
“Sure. And in whatever Bob or Bob's bread the Gamers, that attraction became an obsession.” I paused. “The thing is, and this is the reason I brought them up, the Gamers aren't really opposed to Starfleet's attitude. I mean, about breaking contact with bios. They don't have a moral issue, they just see bios as a distraction.”
“Like the Skippies.”
“Yeah. It worries me a little. Could we end up being the minority viewpoint?”
“Maybe we should make ourselves a poorer target,” Garfield replied. “And move the moot and backup station.”
“Already done, Gar. Ultima Thule is now so far outside Epsilon Eridani that an expanding search would take centuries to find it.”
It occurred to me that even if I haven't published the location, I've done several cloning's since I built it, and some of my clones have cloned, so there are at minimum, dozens of Bobs who know where it is. Was.
Garfield hung his head. “I hate this.”
“Me too, buddy. It would appear that utopia is an unstable state.”
Garfield nodded, looking glum and popped out
Sighing I brought up my next TO-DO.
27. Just Passing Through
Bob
July 2334
Utopia River
Bridget spent some time walking around, talking to the crew. I knew she was trying to get sociological data, so I left her to it. I was more interested in the changeover to the Utopia River. I asked Malin about it, and she just turned and glanced at Kar. Apparently, he was either the official spokes-critter for this group, or the only one who had the energy to talk.
“We’ve switched rivers a couple of times,” Kar said. “It's a little rough in the middle part of the connector, which is why we like to hop on a boat, but you could go out on your own, if you had to.”
“Do you know why?” I said this as innocently as I could, but I was really interested in Kar’s level of knowledge.
He shrugged in response. “It's the way the world is. It’s how the Administrator made it. We don't question or judge.”
How the Administrator made it? That sounded an awful lot like a religious statement. Were Quinlan starting to think of the Administrator as a deity?
Bridget came back to our group and lay down. “We’re is centering the Gronk tributary now. That spit of land,” she pointed downstream, “is where it splits from the Arcadia. It does a half circle and dumps us out going downstream on the Utopia. Three Lagoons is on the far shore, so we’ll have to jump ship and start swimming right away.”
“You're going to Three Lagoons?” Kar asked. “Why bother? We’re looking for a good patch of shore to homestead. Why not join us?”
Bridget smiled at him. “We have plans, Kar. I'm a seeker. My friends and I want to go home, eventually. We’re not looking to start fresh.”
Kar shrugged, plainly not devastated.
We soon hit the section of Gronk where the river-bottom impellers were most noticeable. The river surface took on the appearance of a mild set of rapids, and the current became choppy and uneven. I knew what was going on. The impellers were creating a form of storm surge as the water was forced a pile up. A quick android eyeball estimate put the surge level at a couple of feet in height. The boat bucked and tried to turn off its heading, and one of the hounds bleated in fear. The other animals turned briefly to look at it without interrupting their measured gate on the treadmill. I was impressed by these beasts. They seemed capable of walking all day at the same plodding pace, fed and watered regularly by the crew, without even stopping. Perhaps it was hound heaven.
The battering lasted less than 10 minutes, although I had to admit to myself that it would've been pretty hard to endure in the water. At least for a native Quinlan. As we came out of
