I raised my face into the breeze and closed my eyes. The air ruffled my hair and whistled thinly against my ears. Heads-up readings, visible even on the inside of my eyelids, indicated a balmy minus thirty Celsius—well within operating range for current android tech. The Earth was definitely done for, though. For a few millennia, anyway. There was some argument at moots about whether we should set up space mirrors to reheat the planet, or just let things run their course.
Bobs had been working, the last couple of decades, to make sure that every possible living thing was represented in the Genetic Banks. These days, we didn’t even take samples—we simply grabbed a scan at the subatomic level. Bill had been busy, in his mad science lab in Epsilon Eridani. It wasn’t quite Star Trek-level replicator technology, but it was certainly getting damned close. Within a few more years, Bill expected to be able to rebuild plants and animals from nothing more than the scans.
Pretty cool.
I looked down once more in the direction of Las Vegas, and thought back to that last day as a human being. I remembered the conversation with my mother and Andrea—and felt a deep and abiding regret at not having had one last conversation with my father and with Alaina. There was that last meal with my employees, who—I now realized—were possibly my best friends on the planet at the time.
Their lives were now less than a footnote in history. As gone, as utterly forgotten as any random individual from the Middle Ages. No longer even a ripple in time, except to the extent that I could keep their memories alive. I sighed to myself. It seemed sometimes that life was nothing more than the accumulation of emotional baggage—memories, regrets, and lost opportunities.
I looked up as I detected the faint susurrus of an approaching craft. Odd, since I hadn’t called my cargo drone to pick me up. I turned and watched as a drone came to rest on the ice, fifty feet away. There was a pause, then the cargo doors opened and two androids walked out. I queried metadata…
“Bill! Will!” Grinning, I hurried over to meet them halfway.
“Hey, Bob. When Harvey told us what you were planning, we asked him to make a couple of extra.”
“Are you guys in-system?”
Bill shook his head. “No, you’re the one on the pilgrimage. I’m fine with doing this from Ragnar?k.”
I nodded, then looked at Will.
“On my way to 82 Eridani. I’m keeping the tau down so I can stay on top of things.” He grinned at me. “Once a control freak…”
I laughed. “How are things going at 82 Eridani?”
“Going great,” Will replied. “They’ve got atmospheric pressure up to something reasonable on Valhalla. When the people on the Bellerophon arrive, they’ll have three viable worlds to choose from. The colonies that are already there will complain about blow-ins, of course.” Will turned and looked out across the ice fields. “Humanity is well-distributed, now. It’s beginning to look like they’ll probably survive their own stupidity, after all.”
After a moment of comfortable silence, Bill asked, “So what will you do now, Bob?”
I looked at my two friends, then looked up at the sky. “Going out, I think. The new Bobs are right. We’re Homo sideria. And I’m tired of always finding myself committed to something. It’s time to cut all ties, just point the bow, and turn on the drive. See what’s out there.”
“You’ll keep in touch?”
“Of course.” I smiled at Bill. “I’ll stop and build stations, so I stay connected to BobNet. Someday maybe the net will stretch from one end of the galaxy to the other.”
“And we’ll probably still be around,” Will said. “As you say, we’ve got forever.”
I nodded, then turned toward the cargo drone. “You guys mind taking my android to storage? I’m going to travel light, I think.”
Bill nodded. “No problem.”
We walked back to the drone and climbed in. I turned to my two oldest friends, shook their hands, and switched off. And thirty-five thousand kilometers above, I turned on the SURGE drive and headed out to the stars.
END