“Six months to move four units into position. One year for 12 units.”
Wow, that sucked. I had a feeling that Hugh's matrix had contributed significantly to that delay, but I would still rather have him around.
“How long to move one unit into position?”
“Three weeks.”
“Please do that.”
“Acknowledged.”
So, for the next three weeks, I was essentially searching blind. Even after that point, my single unit would have to scan up to 10,000 miles of topopolis at sufficient detail to be actually helpful. I did not feel overwhelmingly hopeful.
So, meanwhile… upstream? Or downstream? It came down to a flip of a coin. Hugh, when he activated, would take the other direction. Maybe I’d have some progress to show by the time Hugh’s clone woke up, which might make it unnecessary for him to go the other way. Yeah, that's the ticket. But how to start?
2. A Second Visit
Will
July 2334
Virt, Vulcan Post-Life Archology
I knocked on Professor Gilligan's door, and it opened immediately. Stephen stood there, beaming at me. “Will, come on in. Good to see you.”
I returned the smile. As I entered, my eye was immediately caught by the window. Instead of the Bishop ring that had been there last time, the view now showed a topopolis. As with most such graphics, the scale was all wrong. In any view wide enough to take in the entire topopolis, it would be invisibly thin.
I nodded to the image. “New project?”
“In a manner of speaking. I'm spending more time dissecting data from the expedition, than doing much in the way of design. But I'm learning a lot. Future lectures will have to be modified.”
Stephen waved to the couch and then sat in the easy chair as I made myself comfortable.
“That's partly why I'm here,” I replied. “although, there's more urgency about things, now that Bob is on his own.”
Stephen nodded slowly. “No doubt. The Bobiverse war is the biggest single news item in the UFS right now, even eclipsing the Pav threat. The level of emotion is, frankly, spilling over onto non-Bob replicant society. I've had to suspend my lectures for the nonce.”
“I'm sorry to hear that. Bill’s all over it, though, and we’re pretty sure we'll have things fixed soon. I don't know about back to normal though.”
“I agree. This is one of those things that fundamentally changes a society, I think. Even after everything is repaired, it won't be the same as before.”
Stephen hitched forward and called up a hologram. “Now onto less depressing subjects. I've been analyzing the scans as they come to me. Thanks for including me in the chain, by the way.” He pointed to a part of the image. “This is interesting. There's a baffle around the central cylinder at every mountain boundary. It stretches downward about a third of a radius. It appears that the diaphragm-like mechanism hidden in the mountains would mate up perfectly with the baffle to close off the end of a segment. Presumably, this was useful during construction and would be used to seal off a segment in case of catastrophic failure.”
“Interesting. Not immediately applicable to our situation though.”
“Hm, well, maybe a little bit. It also acts as a light baffle, to ensure that the sunlight from the next segment doesn't spill over. The segments alternate day and night, so only half are being lit at any time.”
“A little more applicable. Sorry Stephen, I shouldn't rain on your parade like this, but I'm focused on a particular problem.”
Stephen smiled to show he wasn't offended. “Okay then, there's this: the baffle is wide enough to contain significant infrastructure.”
“You mean, like the infrastructure under the mountains?”
“Exactly. I'd imagine it's probably more specialized for things that relate to the central cylinder, like power and holographic projection though.”
“And you'd access it how?”
“Through the struts that run from the central cylinder to the segment boundary mountains.”
“Wow. Okay. Additional areas to scan, and additional possible hiding places for Bender's matrix. Not what I'd call good news.”
“Here’s something that might be a little more helpful,” Stephen continued. “The vacuum monorail train network is quite extensive. There are express tubes that appear to run the length of the topopolis, and they branch off to multiple levels for local stops. Interestingly, they wind around the inner shell, probably to counter the rotation. I'm sure you could calculate something from that. But anyway, if you can get onto a train, you can go anywhere.”
“That would help, if Bob can just find the right city.”
“A billion miles of topopolis, Will. There must be a directory, probably staffed by a computer system.”
“But we don't even know if the original plan included the cities that are there now.”
“If Crew needs to get to a given city, it will have been added to the list. Even if every single city isn't in the directory, the important ones will be.”
I raised my head. “In fact, if a city isn't on the directory, it's probably not worth checking out.”
“That would be a reasonable conclusion, but not necessarily the converse.”
“Got it, no assumptions. Anything else, Stephen?”
“I think I’ve identified the entrances to the administrative area under the mountains. I can't get a lot of detail, but there's definitely something here and here.”
I looked closely where he was pointing. Sure enough, something that had to be an entrance was just a short walk from the river shore. Chances are it would be disguised in order to not break the illusion of wilderness. And not freak out the wildlife, of course.
“Nice. I'll pass that on to Bob. He might decide to check out the administrative section just on principle. Assuming he can get in.”
“I'm sure there will be security of some kind. Also, and I'm not sure how relevant this is, but I don't think I realized how artificial a megastructure environment truly is. Not viscerally anyway. The amount of maintenance, oversight, and surveillance required to ensure that, for instance, land or riverbed isn't
