Book 4: Chapter 2: Working the Options
Bob
January 2296
Above Eden
Space is big.
I know that sounds like a duh statement, and Douglas Adams already made it anyway, but when you’re looking for a single spaceship over literally interstellar distances, space gets right in your face with its bigness.
Bender had been missing now for more than a hundred years. Despite Bill transmitting the SCUT plans for FTL communication to every system that Bender could possibly have reached, despite searches along his probable path by Victor and later by his clone-mates Marvin and Luke, we hadn’t found hide nor hair of Bender. Or bolt or deck plate, what with him actually being a sentient spaceship and all.
I should explain that, I guess. Bender is a computer who thinks he’s one Robert Johansson, an engineer slash nerd who died in the early 21st century. As are all the Bobs, including me. I was the first replicant, launched from Earth in 2133. Every single Bob is my descendent, because that’s what Von Neumann probes do. We make copies. We’re up to thousands of Bobs now, spread over an almost one-hundred-light-year radius centered around the Sol System.
Bender was from my second batch of clones, constructed in Delta Eridani. He took off in the direction of Gamma Leporis A, and he’s never been heard from again. Lots of Bobs have died over the years in battles, and some without the benefit of a backup. But Bender just disappeared without a trace and without a reason.
I knew Bender’s original destination, but then so did Victor, Marvin, and Luke, and they hadn’t found diddly. Specifically, they couldn’t find any sign that he’d ever reached Gamma Leporis A. No autofactory setup, no mining activity, no communications relay station, and no Bussard trail in or out of the system.