We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Mario

May 2180

Gliese 54

This time, I was lucky. Unlike Beta Hydri and Zeta Tucanae, Gliese 54 was untouched.

I had no clue about what might determine the course of whatever beings had stripped the two other systems. If they travelled as a single unit, and they were travelling in a straight line, they might never meet up with any of us. My concern was that, if they were mining that much metal, they were probably building something. The obvious answer to that would be more of them. And that would be bad.

This was not a particularly interesting system. The primary was a small K, almost a red dwarf. It had a single lonely planet orbiting in close, and a bunch of space junk. Of course, space junk was what I needed. Although the overall metallicity of the system was low, most of it hadn’t aggregated into planets.

The manufacturing process was routine, even if I only had memories of having done it once as Bob-1 in Epsilon Eridani. It took a couple of months to build and deploy the space station. Once it was up, I squirted every bit of information I had on the Others back to Bill. The station had the added bonus that I would be able to transmit to it from any of the stars in the immediate area, and it would relay my messages to Epsilon Eridani.

I also decided that I didn’t want to be alone, so I started construction of four more Bobs. Bashful, Dopey, Sleepy, and Hungry all agreed to accompany me to deal with the potential threat. Yes, they named themselves after dwarves. And yes, it was pointed out at some length that there was no Hungry in the original crew. Hungry didn’t care. Apparently I can be very perverse. And stubborn. Anyway, there’s that joke about the fifty dwarves…

We sat around the desk in my treehouse, sipping tropical drinks with little umbrellas. Except Hungry, who refused to go along with the theme. He had a coffee. I suggested we rename him Surly and received a middle finger for my trouble.