We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse Book 1) by Dennis E. Taylor Page A
Authors: Dennis E. Taylor
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the security window back into its frame and were bolting it back in place.
“I guess we’re back to operational. There were three fatalities, and several injured. Really, it could have been a lot worse.”
I bobbed my cameras by way of response.
In a video window, I watched the scene from across the hall.
***
The roamer moved carefully through the air ducts. The little robots were capable of a very light touch, but a hundred years of progress hadn’t come up with a replacement for galvanized tin as air-duct material. I didn’t want to announce the roamer’s presence to the whole complex.
The guerilla raiding party had shot up my roamers so thoroughly that any kind of inventory was impossible. As near as I could tell, no one realized that one unaccounted-for roamer was wandering the building.
So far I had identified numerous offices, the cafeteria, workshops, and storage. 3D mapping software had built up the layout of the office building. Interestingly, I hadn’t found any trace of a nuke in the basement, or any area that might have been walled off to contain one. Perhaps it was a bluff.
Meanwhile I’d narrowed down the building layout to two possible locations for the computer room.
As I moved the roamer through the ducts, I carefully checked for surveillance equipment, trip-switches, infra-red beams, or any other traps. The roamers were a very impressive bag of tricks and capabilities. I wondered if the FAITH techs really understood everything the roamers were capable of, when the various functions were combined.
Finally, the roamer arrived at one of the two areas that were still blanks in my map. And sure enough, it was on a separate air system. Definitely a good sign. It took me twenty minutes to exit the general duct-work and break into the isolated system. I moved carefully through the air conduit until I came to the room exhaust panel.
It was a standard computer room, mostly. Cables, blinking lights, air conditioning, rack-mounted computers. I guess rack-mounting was still the most efficient way to organize computers, even with a hundred years to improve things.
But in the center of the room sat something very new to me. Five cubes, each one just under a half-meter on a side, sat in a line on a low platform. Two of the cubes glowed an eerie blue, with multi-colored indicator lights blinking at their bases. The other three were dark.
I engaged magnification and pulled in a close-up of the panels at the base of the cubes.
Kenneth Martins
Jiro Tanaka
Neves Reijnder
Robert Johansson
Joana Almeida
This was it. This was us. The candidates. The glowing cubes were Kenneth’s and mine. The other three candidates were dark. I could see their power switches in the off position. Another thing that hadn’t really changed much in a hundred years, I guess. But really, how many different ways were there to design a rocker switch?
I stared at the tableau for what seemed like forever. I could turn Kenneth off, right now. But would it do any good? Could I sabotage him? Should I? Would they figure it out?
I felt shame as I realized what I was contemplating. I wasn’t going to be that guy. Not even in theory. I’d let myself be switched off before I’d save myself by climbing on someone else’s back.
With a heavy heart, I turned around and left.
Bob – August 6, 2133
I was in the roamer room, working on an exercise, when I realized that Dr. Landers wasn’t alone. He always stood at the window, watching me and talking, and it took me a few moments to realize that the steady stream of commentary had stopped.
I directed one of the roamers to give me a video feed. Dr. Landers was talking to someone that I would have sworn was Minister Travis’s brother. Seriously, did they have that look listed in the job requirements? MUST LOOK LIKE SCARY GUY FROM POLTERGEIST 2. Jeez.
Dr. Landers had turned off the intercom system, but that represented about three milliseconds worth of inconvenience. Amateur.
I
“I guess we’re back to operational. There were three fatalities, and several injured. Really, it could have been a lot worse.”
I bobbed my cameras by way of response.
In a video window, I watched the scene from across the hall.
***
The roamer moved carefully through the air ducts. The little robots were capable of a very light touch, but a hundred years of progress hadn’t come up with a replacement for galvanized tin as air-duct material. I didn’t want to announce the roamer’s presence to the whole complex.
The guerilla raiding party had shot up my roamers so thoroughly that any kind of inventory was impossible. As near as I could tell, no one realized that one unaccounted-for roamer was wandering the building.
So far I had identified numerous offices, the cafeteria, workshops, and storage. 3D mapping software had built up the layout of the office building. Interestingly, I hadn’t found any trace of a nuke in the basement, or any area that might have been walled off to contain one. Perhaps it was a bluff.
Meanwhile I’d narrowed down the building layout to two possible locations for the computer room.
As I moved the roamer through the ducts, I carefully checked for surveillance equipment, trip-switches, infra-red beams, or any other traps. The roamers were a very impressive bag of tricks and capabilities. I wondered if the FAITH techs really understood everything the roamers were capable of, when the various functions were combined.
Finally, the roamer arrived at one of the two areas that were still blanks in my map. And sure enough, it was on a separate air system. Definitely a good sign. It took me twenty minutes to exit the general duct-work and break into the isolated system. I moved carefully through the air conduit until I came to the room exhaust panel.
It was a standard computer room, mostly. Cables, blinking lights, air conditioning, rack-mounted computers. I guess rack-mounting was still the most efficient way to organize computers, even with a hundred years to improve things.
But in the center of the room sat something very new to me. Five cubes, each one just under a half-meter on a side, sat in a line on a low platform. Two of the cubes glowed an eerie blue, with multi-colored indicator lights blinking at their bases. The other three were dark.
I engaged magnification and pulled in a close-up of the panels at the base of the cubes.
Kenneth Martins
Jiro Tanaka
Neves Reijnder
Robert Johansson
Joana Almeida
This was it. This was us. The candidates. The glowing cubes were Kenneth’s and mine. The other three candidates were dark. I could see their power switches in the off position. Another thing that hadn’t really changed much in a hundred years, I guess. But really, how many different ways were there to design a rocker switch?
I stared at the tableau for what seemed like forever. I could turn Kenneth off, right now. But would it do any good? Could I sabotage him? Should I? Would they figure it out?
I felt shame as I realized what I was contemplating. I wasn’t going to be that guy. Not even in theory. I’d let myself be switched off before I’d save myself by climbing on someone else’s back.
With a heavy heart, I turned around and left.
Bob – August 6, 2133
I was in the roamer room, working on an exercise, when I realized that Dr. Landers wasn’t alone. He always stood at the window, watching me and talking, and it took me a few moments to realize that the steady stream of commentary had stopped.
I directed one of the roamers to give me a video feed. Dr. Landers was talking to someone that I would have sworn was Minister Travis’s brother. Seriously, did they have that look listed in the job requirements? MUST LOOK LIKE SCARY GUY FROM POLTERGEIST 2. Jeez.
Dr. Landers had turned off the intercom system, but that represented about three milliseconds worth of inconvenience. Amateur.
I
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