[Message received from Milo]
I looked up, momentarily irritated by the interruption. I’d been going over growth projections for the mosses, lichens, and grasses that I was cultivating. I’d built one of Homer’s farm donuts to grow as much base stock as I could manage before introducing it to the surface of Ragnarök.
“He went to… 82 Eridani, right?”
[Correct]
“So…”
[Message contains a description of a very positive potential colonization destination. Message also contains a record of the destruction of the Heaven vessel]
“What?!”
I filed my work, cleared my desk, and pulled up the message from the in-queue. I could hear Milo’s enthusiasm as he described the early survey of the system. And his fear as he relayed the information about the approaching missiles. There was a differential backup attached, but I had a bad feeling…
“Guppy, any chance on that backup?”
“Damn.” There was a lot of information on this in the libraries. If I attempted to kludge something anyway—to forcibly restore him, basically—there was a very good chance that the result would be insane or simply non-viable. As sad as I was to lose one of us, I had no desire to see myself in that condition.
“Okay, Guppy. Archive the backup, mark it In Memorium. We’ve got four version-3 Bobs being built right now, correct?” At Guppy’s nod, I continued. “Start another four as soon as physically possible. Give all of them extra busters. We’re going to extract payment for Milo.”
[Aye]
This Medeiros character was really turning into a thorn. First Epsilon Eridani, then Alpha Centauri, now this. Time to take out the trash.