We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

“So what did happen to Old Handeltown?”

The pretty blonde at the window looked surprised for a moment, then laughed. Dr. Doucette was covering for Landers today. She wasn’t nearly as chatty as he was, though. I’d been trying to get her talking, so far with minimal success.

Dr. Doucette was a looker. I was happy to discover that I hadn’t lost my appreciation for beauty with the, uh, change in my lifestyle. Although my appreciation wasn’t as urgent now, so to speak.

She spoke with the standard 22nd century accent, so I was using my translation routine. I’d integrated it to the point where I didn’t even notice the different speech patterns. I knew that Dr. Landers was specially trained to deal with replicants, and had studied my era. Which included getting his patois under control. Dr. Doucette either had skipped that class, or wasn’t normally supposed to be talking to me.

It wasn’t an issue as far as I was concerned, and if Dr. Landers was okay with her, then I didn’t see a problem. Hopefully, the State wouldn’t have a cow.

Anyway, today I was coordinating a team of roamers to assemble ship components, assembly-line style. It was routine work. By now, I had written scripts for so many roamer activities that I rarely had to do more than show up. But, the good folks at Applied Synergetics had a checklist to run through, so I had to humor them.

Dr. Doucette looked down at her tablet—yeah, everyone came with tablets—then, satisfied that the status was still quo, answered my question. “Original Handeltown was Handel’s birthplace—Salem, Oregon. When he died, the city changed the name and set up a large memorial in his honor. Someone objected and decided to take it out with a pocket nuke.”

“Nuke? On American soil?”

She wagged a finger at me. “Uh uh. Hasn’t been American soil for a hundred years now. But to answer your question, itwasand still is the only nuclear weapon ever deployed in North America.”