We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Bob

June 2334

Heaven’s River

Five furred mannies packed into a full-sized drone’s cargo bay, breathing vacuum. Bill, Garfield, Bridget and I formed the primary expedition group, and Will was running the backup manny. Once we made it into the interior of Heaven’s River, we would hide the extra manny in case of future need. We hoped we wouldn’t lose anyone in the operation and find ourselves needing the spare. If we lost two, we would probably abort and re-evaluate our entry strategy.

The cargo door stood open, giving us a view of a solid wall of, well, something. Even with my eyes cranked up to full photomultiplier setting, I couldn’t make out detail. It could be concrete or smooth rock. It might even have color. Direct center on the framed view was an even darker circle, which I knew led through a hundred yards of tunnel to the gap between the inner and outer shells.

We couldn’t activate any lights, of course. The cargo drone had the usual ice core to keep its heat signature down, but having the cargo bay open was doubtless interfering with that tactic. At the levels of sensitivity that such things operated under, even the small amount of infrared radiating from the dark side of the topopolis strand would be adding to our heat load. Our mannies weren’t heat sunk either, so we glowed like miniature stars in infrared. We had to make the traverse to the entry tunnel as quickly as possible. While it was unlikely that any Boojum would pick that exact moment to do a sweep, we were all firm believers in the power of Murphy.

“Moving into position,” Gandalf said over the intercom. “Bob, you jump when I say. Everyone else, follow at three-second intervals. Roamers will catch you if you screw the pooch. Don’t do that.”

I winked at Garfield, who was second in line. I wasn’t sure how the autonomous systems translated that, but he smiled back. Or the Quinlan equivalent.

“Now.”