We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 2: Chapter 61: Starting Over

Book 2: Chapter 61: Starting Over

Oliver

September 2205

Alpha Centauri

HIC71683-14. Damn. I’m not Bill anymore. Now I need a new name.

This had happened to me once before, as one of Bob-1’s first cohort, in Epsilon Eridani. Now I was a noob again, this time in Alpha Centauri.

I popped into Bill’s VR. “I hate you.”

Bill grinned at me. “Naw, you know the rules. New name, dude. ASAP.”

“Oliver. In keeping with the Bloom County theme.”

Bill nodded his approval. Oliver was a fun character and we’d liked him.

“One advantage of this arrangement, I guess, is that I know the whole plan already.”

Bill laughed and nodded. “Saves time.”

I stood up. “So, I’ll get to it. I may set up in competition with you, though. Wanna bet I get FTL first?”

“I’d be overjoyed if you did, Oliver. Everyone wins.”

I waved to Bill, and popped back home.

* * *

Both Alpha Centauri A and B had reasonable resource levels. Bart and crew had concentrated their efforts in A, but I needed to get things rolling quickly. It would be six months until my vessel was ready. At that point, I would start the autofactory in Alpha Centauri A to building Bobs on a crash basis, while I would fly over to Alpha Centauri B with another autofactory and set up there as well. At the top acceleration of a Version 4 vessel, it was less than a four-day trip.

Meanwhile, I would have to consider possible weapons against the Others. Busters could pass through the cargo ships or death asteroids multiple times and do little or no detectable damage. Nukes were effective, and the expedition to 82 Eridani had yielded some good information. We didn’t have time to figure out fission weapons from scratch. I regretted, a little, not having worked on that before. But only a little.

Plasma spikes, like busters, were simply too small. Not effective against the mega monster ships we would be going up against.

I needed either a large mass, a large explosion, or a lot of energy. Heat energy, electrical energy, gravitational, or momentum. Hmm, relativistic velocities. How fast could I accelerate things?

Hands behind my back, muttering in thought, I retired to my new mad-science lab.

* * *

I really had no idea what size of force I was going to need. However, there was very little downside to overdoing it, and a lot of downside to the converse. With that thought in mind, I decided to just go for everything I could manage.

Taking a lesson from Bob-1’s experience, I decided I would start by doubling my production capability. Accordingly, my first production run consisted entirely of new printers. I then assigned a couple of printers to do nothing but produce more printers, while the rest started working on drones. I was going to invest some up-front time in ramping up my capacity, which would hopefully pay off later.

It took almost two years before I was ready to start building actual Bobs. The speed at which a printer could produce an item was dependent partly on the size of the item, but also very much on the level of detail required. 3D printers delivered individual atoms using a number of tuned carbon nanotubes, each sized for specific elements. Building something like itself required the maximum level of detail and precision, as you had to place individual carbon atoms, one after another, with zero defects. This made 3D printers one of the most complex items that a 3D printer could be asked to build. Only something biological would be harder.

Anyway, finally, I was producing Bobs. After much discussion, Bill and I came up with a blueprint for a Version 5 Heaven vessel—a virtual dreadnaught compared to the original Heaven-1. I felt a little intimidated just looking at the plans. ?â?????

Bill was still working on the SUDDAR cloaking from the 82 Eridani mission, but we knew enough about it to build around the requirement for now. I also put together a design for a stealth buster, very similar in overall structure to Medeiros’ stealth fission bombs.

Howard had managed to extract H-bomb blueprints from Butterworth. I guess the colonel considered the Others to be enough of a threat to override military secrecy. Unbelievable that they were still even thinking in those terms, with 99.9% of the human race gone.

Three years after waking up at Alpha Centauri, I had my first cohort of battle cruisers.