We Are Legion (We Are Bob) (Bobiverse, #1)

by Dennis E. Taylor

But any discussion of Von Neumann probes was like catnip.

Fans packed the restaurants twenty-four-seven, but the waitstaff didn’t complain—nerds tend to overtip. I’d heard that the casinos were less happy with the level of gambling. Turns out nerds understand probability.

Carl had managed to navigate the tricky pathway of being an employee and becoming a friend, without looking like he was brown-nosing.

“Did theologues limit themselves to logical or consistent behavior in your day?”

‘Stereotypes are valid first-order approximations.’

Well, I doubt I’d end up worse off being caught in a polite lie, rather than being honest about my opinion of religion.

Needless to say, debates are low on logic and high on rhetoric.

Appraising the situation had taken only milliseconds–I was really starting to love being a computer–so the roamers hadn’t broken stride.

The minister’s offhand reference to me as ‘it’ and ‘replicant’ had stung at a level I was just now starting to appreciate.

It was an interesting philosophical issue. How are you supposed to feel if you are forced to do what you would have done anyway?

Well, that’s double-plus ungood.

The last, very important item that I had located was the endocrine control system. More than any other thing that they’d done, this enraged me. Well, to be honest, it made me mildly annoyed, but I knew that original me would have been furious.

but it was considerably better than my current defensive armament, which consisted of harsh words and heavy disapproval. Probably not effective against Klingons.

Guppy nodded, and I wondered, not for the first time, how much of this was me talking to myself and how much was a separate entity.

And what if I didn’t like myself? What if it turned out I was a jerk? That would be hard to live down.

Geese wandered randomly around the park. I still wasn’t sure about the decision to include them. I’d gone for Canada Geese because I was familiar with the breed. But even for geese, they were bad-tempered, and I was too obsessive about realism to tweak their personalities.

I guess I was coming to realize that exploration for its own sake was kind of pointless.

I don’t think Riker would have taken Homer if he’d been able to think of an excuse to reject his own progeny.

It seemed Bob’s reluctance to clone was contagious. We were turning out to be a pretty poor example of a Von Neumann probe, based on results so far.

Project planning isn’t about avoiding changes, it’s about controlling them. No project plan ever survives contact with the enemy.”

“How does the old joke go? I like people in the abstract but not in the concrete?”

She berated me for several minutes. Typical politician. Never use ten words when a thousand will do.

I carefully catalogued the monologue. Very likely there were a lot of scatological and sexual references in there, and learning to swear in any language is always interesting.

I rubbed my forehead. People’s capacity for turning dogmatic stupidity into political movements never ceased to amaze me. “We’ve knocked off 99.9% of the human race, and somehow the crazies still manage to survive. It just defies the odds.”

I couldn’t decide if they were being philosophical or fatalistic.

He now required voice commands, however you define voice in a computer system that talks to itself.

And because we have always been a cautious person, reconnaissance was going to be a major priority.

That was from Elmer, who had never been particularly enthusiastic about this venture. I think maybe quantum differences had left him a little light in the spine department.

We took a minute to enjoy the joke—belly laughs are one of the best things about being sentient, and you should never miss a chance for one.