Chapter 39: Bob – October 2165 – Delta Eridani
I sat back in my chair, coffee in hand, and watched the fusion signatures of Luke and Bender as they accelerated out of the Delta Eridani system. Picking destination systems for them had been difficult and contentious. There were a lot of M and K class stars relatively close to this system. The problem with those is that they tended to be small and dim, with comfort zones very close to the star. A couple of the candidates were what you’d call marginal, and there was some argument about whether we should even bother with them. In the end, it was up to Luke and Bender. Luke was heading for Kappa Ceti, a G5eV star, just a touch smaller than Sol. Bender had selected Gamma Leporis A, an F6V star, a bit bigger and brighter than Sol. Bender was going to have a long trip—his target was more than 16 light years away. But hey, we’re immortal.
“Report went off to Bill all right?”
[Affirmative. The space station is fully operational. AMI controller is now in charge. The report was handed off for transmission]
I tented my fingers and drummed them together. “Excellent.”
Marvin sat across the desk, nursing a coffee of his own. I watched that for a second, frowned, and asked, “Hey which of us is supplying the VR for your coffee, you or me?”
Marvin rolled his eyes. “Geez, way to break the spell. To answer your question, I am. You’re just supporting the visuals at your end. Crying out loud, we all invented this stuff.”
“Sure, but we’ve also all been hacking away at it and sharing mods. I’d have to really sit down and go over the code to understand what it’s doing nowadays.”
“Hmm,” he said, then changed the subject. “Did you notice with Luke and Bender that they really weren’t carbon copies?”
“Yeah, but I, we, had that discussion with Bill way back about Milo and Mario, remember? Each of us is a bit different. Differences in hardware, quantum effects…”