We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Book 4: Chapter 15: Functional Testing

Book 4: Chapter 15: Functional Testing

Bob

May 2334

Quin

The cargo drone settled carefully onto the very dead lawn. Or lawn-like flora, anyway. Whatever the plant once was, it had been used by the Quinlans as a lawn-equivalent. I glanced sideways at Bridget’s manny, an action made easy by the Quinlan form’s very mobile and independently movable eyes. The resulting double-image was hard for human minds to handle, but I was figuring out how to pay attention to one eye and ignore the other. It was something the Quinlans did easily and routinely, so it would probably be noticeable if the people in our group never did it. Like a human who never moved his eyes but only swiveled his head.

Bridget turned and smiled at me as the cargo bay doors started to open. Actually, she performed a beak-rubbing motion, which was the Quinlan equivalent. As had been standard procedure since my days on Eden, the manny operating system converted human expressions into native equivalents so that we never had to worry about the actual action. Language was handled in a similar manner, so we spoke and heard English, including colloquialisms. The O/S also chose English name equivalents for local proper names, and kept track of which substitutions were used.

The cargo doors finished opening, and we stepped out onto the surface of Quin. Bridget did a slow and probably unnecessary three-sixty, carefully examining the environment. “No obvious damage in this area. Any deaths here would have had to be from less obvious methods—radiation possibly, or biological. I don’t know if there will be anything to dissect.” She glanced at the drone hovering by her shoulder. Part scout, part beast of burden, part courier, it currently held her medical tools in its small hold.

The city, for city it was, had been built on the shore of a large, slow-flowing river. Instead of a maze of streets, the metropolis was crisscrossed by canals. The infrastructure had been set up so that the river flow turned over the contents of the canals, but with a mild current. That also meant that a design based on right angles would be suboptimal. The actual shape was more like slightly rounded diamonds, with the long axis along the direction of flow. Even if nothing else had been different, it would have made for a more elegant, less utilitarian design than the typical Earth city.

But in addition, the Quinlans seemed to enjoy embellishment for its own sake. Buildings were rarely just simple solid rectangles. We saw cantilevered terraces, elevated walkways between buildings, and even buildings with deliberately engineered gaps through their middles, like the dragon gates in some Hong Kong skyscrapers. Although I doubted feng shui was involved.

And the windows. Quinlans used both placement of windows and color tints to make the side of every building a piece of art. Like giant stained glass murals.

“These people loved their art,” I said in a hushed voice.

“That they did.”

We walked past one building, and I couldn’t help but chuckle. The facade around the entrance had been sculpted into what might be some kind of fairy-tale scene. Unless they actually had a species of giant rodent with a mouth that big ... I wasn’t sure if I’d want to bring my children to see this montage. But then I reminded myself that people used to read Grimm’s fairy tales to children.

We walked along a path that ran beside a canal. We could see half-submerged boats and barges in several places. It was likely that the Quinlans used rivers like humans used roads. I wondered idly what rush hour must have been like. Would they use transit? Or would it even be a concept if you could swim like an otter?

The buildings we passed were multistory, but not the high-rise monsters that many Earth cities contained. I didn’t see anything over about six stories or so. Perhaps the Quinlans didn’t like heights. Or maybe they just didn’t see the point.

The most notable feature, though, was the amount of square footage set aside for green space. Every building had a terrace in front of it, and most canals had a treed path running along one side or the other. All brown and dead now. But it would have been beautiful before ... just before.

We finally turned and headed back to the building on whose front lawn we’d landed. We had picked it deliberately, after an aerial survey, as the most likely place to find governmental stuff. It had a certain look of officialdom that seemed to transcend species barriers. A combination of pompous self-importance combined with lack of artistic touch or any kind of individuality, perhaps. Or I might be overthinking it.

Getting into the building wouldn’t have been a problem in any case for android muscles or roamer plasma cutters, but fortunately the front doors weren’t locked. We gazed around the large lobby and spotted a directory.

“Hmm, definitely governmental,” I said, perusing the listing, while the heads-up popped up translations. Licenses, statistics, taxes, all the usual things that seemed to infest civilizations everywhere.

“I’m most interested in finding corpses. Emergency Management sounds like something that would be staffed right up until the end. Fourth floor.”

Bridget pointed to a solid looking door near the elevators. We checked the door, and sure enough, it was locked.

“If this is a set of stairs,” I said, “as it appears to be—oof!” The door bent and sprung off its hinges as we gave a concerted push in unison—android muscles, remember—to reveal stairs going up and down. “Yep. And locked at ground level, just as they would be on Earth. So we can assume a similar level of distrust in Quinlan society.”

We proceeded up three flights of stairs, the rise and run looking odd to me but feeling perfectly natural when I went down on all fours. Like the Pav, Quinlans seemed to prefer to be on their hind legs but would go quadrupedal when travelling any distance. I couldn’t shake the image of a fat river otter when watching the videos of them getting around.

We reached the fourth floor and walked down the hall, examining doors and information plaques. The manny O/S didn’t automatically translate written information, but our in-vision heads-up display showed a pop-up translation when desired.

We soon found the offices of Emergency Management. The door wasn’t locked. Presumably there had been traffic in and out right up until the end.

There was no working lighting, of course, but Quinlan eyes had a large effective range to allow for both above and below water operation. Our android eyes were even better and covered a larger portion of the visible and surrounding light spectrum.

“There,” Bridget breathed, and made her way between the desks. A single dried husk of a corpse sat at a desk, head still cradled in its arms, as if the victim had simply fallen asleep at their desk and never woken up. I hoped it had been that peaceful.

Bridget gestured to the drone, which had kept up with us all this time. It floated down to desk level and the cargo door popped open. Bridget reached in and began removing items. “You going to watch?”

“Half a point? I was robbed!” I responded, laughing.

We both sat down at the same time, curling ourselves on the dead non-grass.

“That was awesome,” Bridget said. “It’s almost like flying. Better, in some ways. And I know flying!”

“True. You’ve done enough of it. I think you hold the record for most species emulated, don’t you?”

She smiled at me. “I think Howard might actually have me by a couple. I’ll have to check. But anyway, this will be my first aquatic effort. Serious long-term one, I mean. The test with the dolphins on Poseidon was a, uh ...”

She glared at me, knowing what was coming, and I said, deadpan, “Dry run.”

“I so hate that I see those coming now.” She started to lick her fur, then stopped with a jerk. “Oh, God. That’s gross.”

“Part of the Quinlan persona, Bridget,” I said, resisting the urge to groom myself as well. “Maybe we’ll turn that off for now and just let the maintenance roamers clean us off.”

“Works for me.” She glanced up as the cargo drone descended from the sky. It settled to the ground and we climbed in.

I placed myself on the rack beside her. “Okay, then. Let’s park this baby and go home.”

Bill flipped through the video window. “Looks pretty good. Couple of glitchy items, but those are all software. I’d say the androids are good to go.” He tapped the window. “Only one other concern, and that’s how the androids will handle vacuum. The new circulatory system might be subject to boiling under low pressure. Or worse, rupture.”

“No prob,” Bridget said. “Simple to test. Take one upstairs and open the cargo door. Contamination isn’t an issue in that scenario.”

“Good enough.” Bill turned to Garfield. “Can you take care of that?”

“Yessss, master.”

Bill snorted. “We can call in some Skippy help, if you prefer. Or your Gamer buddies.”

“Nah, it’s okay. Gives me a chance to use the android anyway.”

“On that subject,” Bridget interjected. “Will, if you want to practice using the androids on Quin, there’s lots of planet to explore, and I’m sure lots to learn yet.”

Will visibly brightened. “Hey, great idea. I can do that!”

“And go for a swim. It’s unbelievable!” I added.

“Are we good on the sociology front?” Bridget asked.

“The Skippies say they’ve extracted as much as they can from the current dataset. They’re spreading out as the spy drones move farther afield, but diminishing returns is probably rearing its ugly head. There’s not much more to learn from simple observation.” Bill closed the window. “The Gamers have the entrance tunnel all dug, and they’ve widened the hatch from the foyer to accommodate the mannies. There’s no indication that we’ve been detected so far.”

“Think about it,” Will said. “A billion miles of megastructure. How many cameras would you have to be monitoring to cover everything? And they’ve got mechanical sensors on equipment to detect most issues, so why bother? As long as we don’t break something, or turn something on, we’re golden.”

“Don’t break something.” I smiled. “An excellent motto for any age.”

“Do we have anything else outstanding, besides Garfield’s vacuum test?”

“Not really, Will. As soon as that’s done, we’re ready to start building the production models. Anyone want to make a speech?”

“We hate speeches,” said Garfield.

“Well, okay, then.”