Chapter 6: Bob – July 19, 2133
“Dammit!”
Dr. Landers leaned back with a surprised expression. “Problem, Bob?”
“Sorry, doc. I was reading up on current electrical engineering standards. You yanked me in mid-paragraph.”
Dr. Landers looked down at his tablet and cleared his throat. “Ah, yes. Bob, you’ve been in that simulation for two days subjective time. During that period, nothing went outside of specs, despite everything we threw at you. That’s very impressive. The logs from your GUPPI indicate that you’ve set up some interesting monitoring interfaces and scripts. Our software people are jumping around in excitement. Several of them have asked to keep a copy of you.”
“Is that possible?”
“Technically, of course it is. We back you up every night. Just a matter of doing a restore, assuming we had a matrix of our own big enough to hold you.” The doctor blew out a breath and shrugged. “Unfortunately, FAITH owns you, as they are financing this project. So we don’t have a lot of leeway.”
“On that subject, when are you going to tell me what I’m being groomed for?”
Dr. Landers cocked his head. “What one of you is being groomed for. There’s still one other candidate.”
“Wait, we lost two more? When?”