I sighed, the more I try to get away.
30. Starfleet Attack
Bill
Same Day
Epsilon Eridani
Garfield popped into my VR without a ping or an invitation. He was generally pretty good about that kind of thing, so something was up.
“We’ve finished mapping the outages,” he said without preamble. “There’s a pattern of sorts.”
“Really? I haven’t been able to see one. They're all over the place.”
Garfield shook his head. “It's not spatial. The stations that were affected were all running more or less autonomously without anyone actively administering them, like systems without a resident Bob.”
“Oh damn,” I said. “That means it's deliberate. But there have been no announcements or anything, and no one has claimed responsibility. How many Bobs are still online?”
“One way or another about 30%. We’ll probably get back another 10 to 20% from systems where Bobs are able to physically access the station and do a reset, but that might take up to a couple more weeks.”
“Okay, time for a Bob moot.”
Without waiting for a reply, I sent out a BobNet-wide invitation. I brought the Moot VR to full power and popped over.
The moot hall had grown over the years. It had to, we now had literally thousands of Bobs, and were inching up on tens of thousands. It was a full-on post human civilization and would be a utopian dream, except for the issue of replicative drift. Bobs began popping in almost immediately. I cast up the whiteboard wall and began updating it with the status of various systems. The noise level rose steadily as discussions and arguments competed for airtime. No one was more surprised than me when there was a blat from the center of the room. I actually glanced down at my hand to check for the presence of the air horn.
Silence descended as all heads turned to the podium where stood a member of Starfleet. The not-quite-TNG uniform was unmistakable and provoked a brief undercurrent of snickers.
“I suppose you're all wondering why I've gathered you here.” he said. The standard Bob joke fell flat. The mood was tense anyway, and Starfleet wasn't well thought of.
The Starfleet spokes-Bob waited awkwardly for a moment, then stiffened his spine and continued. “My name is Lenny, and I am here to deliver a statement on behalf of my group.” He paused to look around. He had everyone's attention now. “Let me start by saying that the general disruption of BobNet is deliberate and it's our doing. We've come to the-”
Lenny very likely wasn't expecting the reaction he got. Bobs would normally listen, even to unpleasant news, at least to accumulate information. Not this time. Lenny was drowned out by hurled insults, and suggestions to perform unlikely acts. A few Bobs, even advanced on him, fists clenched. It wouldn’t have come to anything, this being VR. Nevertheless, Lenny stepped back, a momentary look of fear on his face.
I stepped up to the foot of the podium and held up my hand. The cacophony cut off, replaced by a profound silence.
“Why.”
Lenny drew back his shoulders. “We felt it was the only way to-“
“You imposed your will on us?”
“To keep you from continuing to interfere in-”
“You couldn't get your way, so you shoved it down our throats.”
Now Lenny was looking a little less certain of himself.
“It was the only way to ensure that-”
Again I held up a hand. “So this is about the Quinlans.”
“Not just about them. The Pav, the Deltans, humanity-”
“You're imposing your political views on us.”
Lenny stared directly at me. “Bill, we had to do something to prevent-”
“No,” I interrupted. “You didn't have to. You decided to. You decided to force us to do things your way.” I paused to look around the room. There was no sympathy for Starfleet. This was a done deal.
I turned back to Lenny. “You're out. You’re no longer welcome here, or in any BobNet environment. You're not Bobs.” I waved a hand and he disappeared.
I turned to address the crowd. “Start hardening your installations immediately. Change all passwords and keys, even if you already recently have done so. Establish a new VPN connection with my personal VR. I’ll push out new keys, ASAP. Meanwhile, audit everything. Look for Trojans, kits, or any kind of corruption. We need to be clean.”
Bobs nodded, and rapidly vanished. In milliseconds, the moot was empty, save Garfield, myself, and the Skippy. Metadata said it was Hugh.
“They'll have contingency plans,” he said.
I nodded. We can only do we can do though.”
“The Moot VR source code audit is going to be a big job.” Hugh cocked his head at me. Hy don’t you give me a read-only copy? We’ve got this huge computer system-”
I nodded slowly. If they found anything, I’d do the cleanup on the original. “I'll do that.”
“I'll set things up at my end. And why don’t you drop by my place when you're ready?” Hugh said, and disappeared.
I glanced at Garfield, who’s eyebrows were up as high as mine probably were. “He just invited you over? That was weird.”
I frowned. “Let's get things ready for that audit, Gar.”
I sent the source archive off to Hugh as soon as it was ready. Given the size of the file, I expected to have to wait anywhere from several minutes to even an hour or more for any results, but instead I received an invitation within a few mils.
I popped into Hugh's VR and looked around. I was a flat platform, seemingly floating in space. No walls, no ceiling. Overhead, rows of cylindrical satellites soared past, orbiting a distant sun. It was the kind of graphic you'd see in a science fiction movie, where the scale was distorted so that things were visible that should've been too distant to be seen.
Hugh gestured to a futuristic-looking easy chair, and I plopped into it. Then gestured to the overhead view.
“It's not intended to be realistic, of course,” Hugh said, sensing the question. “Physically, we’re orbiting a grey dwarf, and in only a single layer
