We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Bill

June 2345

Epsilon Eridani

Iwas strolling through the woods on Ragnarök in manny form, enjoying the peace and quiet, when I got a ping from—from Icarus? I was so surprised I checked the head’s-up twice, but no mistake. I spun on my heel and began jogging for the lab building while I picked up the call.

“Icarus? Shouldn’t you be a hundred or so light-years away? Something happen?”

“Hi, Bill. Yeah, things didn’t go quite according to plan. So hey, why audio only? And what’s with all the extra firewalling? Have I missed something interesting?”

“Oh, much more than something. It’s been that kind of century.” I paused. “So is this a social call? I’ll be back in my lab in two minutes; then I can switch to virt and invite you over.”

“Ah, well, it’s kind of a good news/bad news thing, Bill.”

“Isn’t it always. Give.”

“So the good news is, Dae and I found a technological civilization. Actually, a federation. A hundred and fourteen species, according to the Archivist.”

“Wow. Pretty good—wait, according to the who?”

“Long story. Anyway, the bad news is we’re all going to die.”

I sighed theatrically. “Seems like the week for end-of-the-world scenarios. Hold on—okay, I’m in virt. Come on over. I’ve white-listed you and Dae.”

I had just accepted a coffee from Jeeves when Icarus and Daedalus popped in. My VR was still identical to the Ragnarök lab building in real, so they spent a few moments looking out the French doors at the view of primeval forest. Well, maybe not so primeval. The trees were all fairly young and close to the same age. But the biosphere was about eighty percent complete now, and the animal populations were booming. As we watched, a herd of elk slowly marched across our view.

When I judged they’d had enough time to absorb it, I turned to them to restart the conversation, but Icarus beat me to it. “So what did you mean about the week for end-of-the-world scenarios? Something else going on that we missed?”

I nodded. “Someone named George headed straight up to galactic north, out of the disk entirely. Maybe a couple hundred years ago. Anyway, he sent back a report of a dwarf galaxy, which he named Nemesis, that is on the direct opposite side of the galaxy—”

“And heading straight for us,” Daedalus interjected.

I frowned at him. “Are we talking about the same thing? Heading straight for our galactic core? Going to hit in about a couple hundred thousand years?”

“We saw it from a lot closer, Bill. Your friend George would have been ninety thousand light-years away from it. We were less than forty thousand at our closest point. It’s only about five thousand light-years from the edge of the galaxy, and it’s coming in fast. It’ll start plowing up the galaxy in about fifteen thousand years, and it’ll hit the core in a little more than a hundred thousand.”

“Whoa, it would have to be going half of light speed—”

“No, because it’s going to start pulling the Milky Way’s core toward it long before that. It contains a supermassive black hole, Bill. Fifty times the size of Sagittarius A*. And it’s going to be a direct strike.”

“How can you know that?”

“The Pan Galactic Federation has been studying it for literally thousands of years, refining their measurements. To the limits of error, it’s a line drive right down the throat of our resident central black hole.”

“Okay, but a hundred thousand years—”

“It’ll sterilize the galaxy, Bill. It’ll be the granddaddy of gamma-ray bursts when the accretion disks collide. The gravity waves when the black holes collide will destabilize star systems for tens of thousands of light-years. The entire population of the Federation realized this and hightailed it out of the galaxy centuries ago.”

“Wait, how did you guys—”

“Wormhole travel, Bill. We bring you new technology.”

“We have that, thanks. But I appreciate the offer.”

It was worth any amount of money to see the totally poleaxed expressions on their faces. So much so that I actually flipped polarity and began to feel sorry for them. “Lots has happened in the last century, guys. You need to do some reading to get caught up.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” Icarus’s face lit up. “But hey, we did get to the center of the galaxy. Twenty-six thousand years early!”

“You actually saw Sagittarius A*?”

“Yup. Got pics and everything.”

“Okay, now you’re talking.” And just like that, it was nerd time. Still, there was going to be a moot, and it was going to be loud and rowdy.