hotmtlnovel Book 2: Chapter 17: We’ve Lost a Drone
Book 2: Chapter 17: We’ve Lost a Drone
Book 2: Chapter 17: We’ve Lost a Drone
Bob
May 2171
Delta Eridani
The conversation with Bill had been both awesome and depressing. The idea that humanity was down to fifteen million people was devastating. On the other hand, it sounded like that number had come close to dropping to a big fat zero.
On the plus side, I wasn’t surprised that he’d cracked the subspace problem, but I was impressed by how quickly he’d done it. It left a small, nagging question in the back of my mind as to whether I could have pulled that off. How different from me was Bill?
Meh. No matter. The problem had been solved, Bill and I were working on merging the VR source from our two independent development branches, and real-time communications between Bobs was now a reality, at least in principle. I grinned to myself at the idea of a galactic internet. There still weren’t a lot of Bobs online, but that would change as Bill’s message spread through the local sphere at the speed of light.
I was overjoyed to find out that I had the official First Contact position sewn up. But I doubted I would be the only one.
Luke and Bender hadn’t come online yet. I hoped they would eventually intercept Bill’s transmissions so we could get caught up. Just in case, I instructed the local space station to periodically retransmit the SCUT plans along their flight paths. One way or another, they’d eventually receive the plans.
The lack of significant progress on Bill’s Android project was a little disappointing. A lot of the basic tech was being developed back on Earth when Original Bob was still alive. But it was proving difficult to put all the concepts together into an artificial body that could operate like a complete organism. Oh, well. Sooner or later, Bill would make some breakthroughs. Meanwhile, I had my own projects.
Marvin had taken delivery of the exploration squads and was deploying them into his search grid covering the Deltans’ original territory. At the level of detail we were trying for, he expected to be finished in three months or so.
* * *
“I just lost a drone.” Marvin popped into my VR unannounced. He had a perplexed expression on his face.
“Then there’s this.” Marvin popped up a couple of images. One was a closeup of the damage to the drone, and the other was a close-up of some bones.
“Interesting...” I reached out and pointed to a spot on the picture. “That looks a lot like the bite impression on the drone.”
“Yeah, I’ve got a number of similar examples. Whatever this is, it used to snack on Deltans.”
“Could that be why the Deltans migrated out of their original area?” My eyes got wide at the thought. “They weren’t moving to a more dangerous territory. The gorilloids were the lesser evil.”
“Or they didn’t know, or care, about the gorilloids.” Marvin’s voice was hushed.
“Then the gorilloids chased them over the mountain range to the location where we found them.”
We sat in silence for several milliseconds.
Marvin finally broke the silence. “I still don’t have enough information to narrow the search.”
“Well, we know they’re big enough to eat a Deltan.”
“Or pull a drone out of the sky.”
I did not like this. Not a bit.Nôv(el)B\\jnn