“We can do that? Dude!” Neil said.
I stared at Bill. “Someday, some species is going to observe that explosion and wonder what the hell is wrong with their stellar models.”
We let the silence stretch for a few milliseconds, content with the moment. Then Bill continued, “Mario will be sending out Bobs to do sweeps of the outskirts of GL 877 and surrounding stars. And we’ll implement patrols for a century or two in the stellar neighborhood. But barring any nests we might find, I think we’re done with the Others.”
I lost my smile. “So, we’ve just wiped out an entire species.”
“I hear you,” Bill said, looking at his shoes. “And philosophically, it’s a heavy thought. But given what the Others have done to us and to other species, I don’t regret it one bit.”
We nodded, once again silent.
“There’s something else…” I said, looking meaningfully at Bill.
He closed his eyes slowly. “Oh, God. How many? And how?”
“The zap that grazed the Earth. Cuba. About a hundred and fifty thousand people.” Bill opened his mouth to say something and I cut him off. “We checked.”
Bill nodded, silent. After a few milliseconds, he nodded to me. “My responsibility. I’ll tell Will. You worry about the people you have on board.”
“Speaking of which,” Neil looked at me. “Should we make an announcement to our passengers?”
“Oh, yeah, guess so. Time to go home.”
*
We unloaded the humans in reverse order, last-in-first-out. The first wave of transports had just left, and we faced a quandary.
“Is there any point in decanting the humans that are currently in stasis? We’d just be sending them back down to a planet that’s barely habitable these days.” I looked at Will and Bill, eyebrows raised.
Will’s eyes were haunted, and he was slow to respond when addressed. “I’ll check with the UN reps who are awake, but my feeling is, no, there’s no reason to. With them in stasis, existing supplies will stretch farther, and we can drop off our waking population in the best locations.”
“How long will they be in stasis?” Neil asked.
“You mean, before you leave, I presume,” Bill answered. “With all the debris from the battle, plus what you brought in the Bellerophon, Will no longer has a shortage of raw material to worry about. And all the autofactories that have been constructed for the defense effort can now be turned to producing nothing but stasis pods. We can produce the last six million in less than a year.”
“Well, hell,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
Recovery
Bob
June 2233
Delta Eridani
It had been a hard month. I’d occasionally tried to activate the village VR and observe, but couldn’t stand it for more than a few moments at a time. I hadn’t had much experience with death when I was alive—none of my close relatives had died, and the few distant cousins who passed away were little more than names on annual Christmas cards. Archimedes had been a friend, had been family. This would be what it was like to lose a parent or sibling. I wept a couple of times for what I must have put my parents and sisters through.
The insult to the injury, though, was how little of a ripple it made in Camelot. Life went on. Even Buster and his family, after a day or two, went back to life as a routine.
Archimedes had mattered. He’d made a huge difference to the lives of the people there, and I found it offensive somehow that he was so completely and so soon relegated to the past.
In my more rational moments, I wondered what exactly I expected. Parades? A monument?
Hmm, a monument. Interesting idea.
I’d long since taken a genetic sample from Archimedes, of course. The question of his DNA differences from the Deltan archetype was an ongoing topic of research. It took a few days to stabilize the sample, using the techniques developed on Earth—and incidentally used on my human brain. One more day, and the monolith on Eden’s largest moon had an additional entry.
I had a vague worry that I was going over the edge into some kind of obsession. Being an immortal, insane computer would be a Very Bad Thing, with capital letters. Hoping to get some perspective, I pinged Marvin, and received an invitation.
I popped into his VR and looked around. Marvin was continuing his self-imposed task of replicating every environment in every book and movie we’d ever read or seen. It had become a contest between us, where I’d try to identify the scene with as few hints as possible.
This one had me flummoxed, though. As near as I could tell, it was just a small town. I stood outside a small café, and I could see Marvin inside, grinning at me through the display window. I turned to survey the scene. Normal people, doing normal things, normal businesses for the early 21st century. But horses and carriages instead of cars. Hmm.
I shrugged and walked into the café. I sat across from Marvin, and Jeeves placed a coffee in front of me.
“Jeeves is a waiter in a beanery now?” I raised an eyebrow at him.
Marvin grinned and shrugged. “It’s not relevant, in case you’re wondering.”
I nodded, and let a few milliseconds of silence pass. Then, leaning forward, I began to talk.
Marvin, bless his cloned heart, listened without commenting, even when tears started to course down my cheeks. When I was done, I leaned back and wiped my face with a napkin.
“Jeez, Bob. A friend that you’ve known for almost seventy years just died. What were you expecting? To just shrug and move on? This is life, dude. The sucky part, anyway.”
“We’re not alive.”
“Yeah, we are. We’re not biological any more, but we’re still alive. We make friends, we grieve, we apparently still fall in love… Let it happen. Mourn. And don’t get all bent out of shape when other people don’t mourn as deeply. They have their own lives.”
I sat back and nodded. Marvin was right, of course. But something about this still bugged me. Suddenly, I had it.
“Y’know, Marvin, we kid Howard about his lifestyle choices, but at least he’s evolving. I think my problem is I stuck myself back into a rut first chance I got, and I’ve been there for seventy years. Still trying to be human, still trying to deny reality.”
Marvin grinned at me. “Say, you’re pretty perceptive today.”
“Nyuk, nyuk. Anyway, Archimedes’ death provides a clean break—and the emotional jolt to take advantage of it. I’m a post-human computerized starship, and maybe it’s about time I started acting like it.”
I finished my coffee and stood up. “Thanks for the talk, Marv. I’ll be in touch. By the way, the town—Nantucket, right? Stirling?”
Marvin grinned and nodded. We still couldn’t fool one another.
*
I walked slowly through Camelot. More of an amble, really. I had no particular destination or goal in mind.