Again, I turned away. The altercation appeared to have taken the air out of the room. There were no more questions. If this followed normal Bob-like behavior though, people were just waiting for the formal moot to be over so they can talk one-on-one, and that was fine with me. If Pissant came at me again, I’d black hole him.
The moot was over, and most of the Bobs had gone back to their own private VRs. I sat in the pub with Bill, surrounded by empty tables.
“So what the hell, Bill? Mind filling me in?” I glared at him for emphasis over my beer.
“You’ve been out of touch for a few decades, Bob. And I understand why you’ve been keeping yourself. The whole Archimedes business would be several emotional kicks to the crotch for anyone. But you’re missing things. The Bobiverse is evolving. We’ve got some Bob's here that are 20th generation, and more. Replicative drift is becoming significant enough that some of these Bob's really only look like you, and for that matter, there’s a lot more playing around with appearance, and I don't just mean facial hair. A half-dozen or so Bobs have started walking around as full-time Borg.”
Bill appeared momentarily embarrassed, then invoked a Cone of Silence over us. That was jarring to me. Normally they were used to cut down on distracting background noise but Bill's action was in this case intended to prevent eavesdropping.
“Honestly, Bob, if you haven't changed your encryption keys and passwords since your last cloning, you should really do it just on principle. I already have. I don't actually distrust anyone yet, but I'm beginning to recognize that one of these times we’ll run into a descendant who thinks the ends justify the means. You know?”
I nodded and sent a text to Guppy to do just that, and immediately. “So what about Howard and Bridget?” I asked, more or less changing the subject. “And Henry Roberts?”
Neither Bridget nor Henry is cloned. In the former case, that has produced a lot of disappointment and some grumbling in the Bobiverse, which is probably a good part of why she hasn't. She doesn't want to be seen as the default All-Wife, I think.”
I snorted. Original Bob was pretty progressive, but I can still see a certain implicit expectation being a problem.
“Yup, anyway, Henry doesn't show up your much. He’s sailing quilt right now.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Wait, what happened with Poseidon? Did he finish early?”
Bill laughed. He gave up after he got eaten the third time, ship and all. He says there wasn't much point anyway. If you’re gonna sail, you should be sailing to something.” Poseidon, well, yeah. All ocean, no something. “Bridget and Howard continue to catalog all life in the cosmos,” Bill continued with a smile, “despite you know the infamous Prometheus expedition.”
I shook my head. “Well, they’re never bored, anyway.” I hesitated, not sure how to continue. A couple Bobs came over, detected the Cone of Silence, and veered off to find other conversational partners, or possibly just a beverage. Finally, I decided to try to beat around the bush with Bill was pointless.
“So getting back to replicative drift, what was with the nameless mouthpiece? Are we getting political parties now?”
“It’s a little more than that, buddy. Bobs in general have always been a herd of cats, but it's getting both more and less pronounced. Bob are forming groups, and some of those groups are tending to the bizarre. There’s a group trying to build a Matryoshka brain, for instance.”
“Uh…” I drew my head back and frowned. “With a Casimir power source, we don't need…”
“… the central star for power, yeah. But heat management is heat management, and a gravity well is handy for keeping things organized. My understanding is that they’re building it around a grey dwarf. Anyway, I'm more concerned about them creating something straight out of a Vernor Vinge novel.”
“Or Lovecraft.”
Bill chuckled and dismiss the cone of silence. “Anyway, Bob, you should read my blog to get caught up. I don't pull any punches, so you’ll get a good overview of where the Bobiverse is going.”
I nodded and raised my glass in salute. Bill turned to someone who had been waiting to get his attention, and I went looking for Luke and/or Marvin. I couldn't suppress a snort as I scanned the gathering Bobs as Borg now. Cthulhu would not approve.
Bill was probably right. I’d done my usual turtling thing, and effectively cut myself off from society in general. I needed to fix that. I might as well start with a visit to Will. He had, according to his blog, finally retired from colony administration at 82 Eridani and gotten himself a place on Valhalla, where he was involved in the ongoing terraforming of the largest moon of Asgard. The air on Valhalla was still a little thin for humans, but a Manny wouldn't care. I pinged will and in short order received an invitation and address for a guest Manny. I took the address and popped over.
A few milliseconds of diagnostics and I open my eyes to find myself on an outdoor deck looking up at the sky more of a mauve than blue. Hanging in the middle of the expanse was Asgard, looking perhaps three times the size of Earth from Luna. Will was sitting on an Adirondack chair, holding a coffee and grinning at me. He wore the standard Bob Johansson Manny but no longer sported a neat Riker-like beard. His hair was uncombed and stuck out in random spikes, and the beard was more like what you get if you simply stop shaving.
The Manny, so called because the early models had resembled department store mannequins, was dressed in something that was closer to a lumberjack outfit than
