Book 4: Chapter 26: Winding Down
Bill
September 2334
Virt
I examined the star map in the holotank. Annotations attached to individual stellar systems indicated the current status of stations, autofactories, and public opinion. It wasn’t good.
A few comms stations had been recovered, but in the end most had either successfully self-destructed or been nuked—probably out of frustration. Most autofactories had been recovered, but at the expense of significant downtime. The humans had put together their own software image, which they weren’t sharing with us, and installed it on all human-controlled autofactories. It appeared the divorce was all but complete.
Starfleet had succeeded in their goal, after a fashion, or maybe exactly in the way they’d intended. We hadn’t ceased contact with humanity, but it would be through a much more narrow interface in the future. We no longer owned or controlled any comms stations and had very few autofactories anywhere in human-controlled space. This left the Bob-controlled systems, naturally, but there was precious little of that, Epsilon Eridani and Alpha Centauri being the biggest examples.
I remembered that one private conversation I’d had with Lenny. I hadn’t discussed it with anyone, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to. It had been disquieting, but without any kind of possible resolution. Just questions, no answers. At least not yet. I’d been doing some quiet poking around, and I had perhaps the first inklings of a possible explanation, but—
My ruminations were interrupted by a ping from Will. I invited him over, and he appeared a moment later.
“Hi, Will, what’s up?”