Everyone you've met

Alaina, part of Bob's lost family, once sprayed him with a garden hose as he lay in the hammock.

Alan was one of Bob's first hires; he is a software developer but not a science geek.

Andrea is one of Bob's twin sisters, an inch taller than him, who loves to tease him.

Bob Johansson is a software engineer who has just sold his company, InterGator Software, to Terasoft for a fortune.

Carl was one of Bob's first hires at InterGator and became a genuine friend.

CryoEterna is a cryonics company that freezes clients' heads pending medical advances to revive them.

Dr. Gerald Carlisle theorises that life on similar planets shares a common chemical basis and might be edible by humans.

InterGator Software was Bob's company; its engineering design application became number one in its niche.

Jenny is Bob's ex-fiancée, who cheated on him before they married.

Karen was one of Bob's first hires and strongly disapproves of his decision to freeze his head.

Kevin is the CryoEterna sales rep who signs Bob up for head-only cryonic preservation.

Lawrence Vienn is a popular science-fiction author who speaks about interstellar probes at The Vortex.

Terasoft bought out Bob's software company with an eye-popping offer after Bob's product out-sold it.

The Vortex is a science-fiction convention in Las Vegas that Bob attends every year.

Von Neumann probes are automated, self-replicating probes that use 3D printing to build copies from resources they find.

AMIs are restricted to simple tasks after AMI pest-control machines at a mall went psychotic and killed people.

Andrew Handel was a fundamentalist US president elected in 2036 who wrecked the economy and attacked church-state separation.

Applied Synergetics owns Bob and builds robotic servants by installing replicants in machinery.

Bob wakes on June 24, 2133 as a replicant: a computer simulation of Robert Johansson's scanned, frozen brain.

Desmond Ahearn was the USA's first and only openly atheist president, overthrown in the 2041 coup.

Dr. Landers is the Applied Synergetics scientist who activates Bob and teaches him about his new life.

FAITH, the Free American Independent Theocratic Hegemony, is the theocracy that seized the USA in a 2041 coup.

The GUPPI interface is added to replicants to offload tasks, since replicants multitask no better than humans.

The Ministry of Truth backs the replicant project and cares only about results.

New Handeltown is the city formerly known as Portland, where Bob is activated.

About four in five replicants go insane on learning what has been done to them.

Rudolf Kazini, a miner in life, is a replicant who now runs most of the mining equipment in operation.

Total Cyber Systems competes with Applied Synergetics by building artificial machine intelligences from scratch.

Roamers are spider-like, eight-limbed robots run by a low-level AMI; each limb can be a leg, a hand or a tool such as a plasma cutter.

VAST lets roamers grip surfaces well enough to walk straight down a wall.

The Ministry of Proper Thought runs re-education: conditioning reinforced by direct brain and nerve stimulation.

Senior Minister Travis of the Ministry of Truth inspects Bob, asking mainly about his attitude to religion.

Thomas Händel III is FAITH's spiritual leader.

Australia is suspected of having a hidden probe project.

The Brazilian Empire may be arming its probes to eliminate competitors and is the most likely to attempt sabotage.

China is rushing its probe project and using an AMI, making it the most likely to fail outright.

Cheap fusion ended oil-funded economies, triggering wars that left most of the Middle East uninhabitable.

Project HEAVEN stands for Habitable Earths Abiogenic Vessel Exploration Network; funding cuts reduced it from eight planned vessels to one.

A breakthrough in subspace theory enabled the SURGE drive and SUDDAR, making Von Neumann probes and interstellar colonization possible.

The USE is judged the most likely long-term competitor, with budget, sophistication, replicant experience, and a lead in colonization.

Kenneth Martins is the other replicant candidate still active alongside Bob.

Minister Jacoby condemns the replicant project as the work of the Devil and threatens Dr. Landers.

Dr. Doucette covers for Dr. Landers in Bob's training and is less chatty than him.

Original Handeltown was Salem, Oregon, Handel's birthplace, destroyed by a pocket nuke, the only nuclear weapon ever used in North America.

Piety Monitors may be among security patrols; the government cares mainly that people appear pious.

The Bobs expect at least one rival superpower probe at Alpha Centauri, which FAITH avoided for that reason.

Epsilon Eridani has two inner rocky planets, an inner asteroid belt, a Jovian planet, an outer belt, a Neptune-like planet and a Kuiper belt.

Heaven-1 is a converted interplanetary freighter fitted with a SURGE drive ring, fusion reactor and ramscoop, but no weapons.

A missile-armed Brazilian probe is following Bob's course to Epsilon Eridani at about 1.25 g, giving Bob roughly 145 days' lead.

Earth slides toward full-scale war, with the USE and FAITH loosely aligned against Brazil and China.

Bob finds the endocrine control system that blocks his ability to mourn, but postpones deleting it.

Jeeves is Bob's VR butler, modelled on John Cleese, who brings coffee.

Spike is a VR recreation of the tortoiseshell cat Bob had at university.

Primitive life has been found on Titan, and the USE runs a space station there to study it.

Heaven-1 self-replicates using 3D printers that build objects atom by atom, powered by cheap fusion; volatile explosives are hard to print.

Major Ernesto Medeiros is the Brazilian Empire replicant commanding the armed probe Serra do Mar.

Ship-busters are Bob's simple weapons: a small reactor, oversized SURGE drive, AMI pilot and a thousand-pound metal ball, with no warhead.

Dr. Steven Carlisle argued on a convention panel that life is about retaining information, unlike fire.

EE-3 is a gas giant about 30% larger than Jupiter with at least 67 moons, none plausibly livable.

EE-2 is about 90% Earth's size with landlocked seas, 3% atmospheric oxygen, and possibly sea life; habitable only with technological help.

EE-1 is a hot, airless, tidally locked planet slightly larger than Mars, with signs of mineral wealth.

Bob-3 names himself Bill, after Bill the Cat, and chooses to stay in Epsilon Eridani to research subspace and build more Bobs.

Bob-5, Mario, is taciturn and antisocial, with a plain gray VR background.

Bob-4 takes the name Milo, has an airship VR, and refuses to go back to Sol, preferring to explore.

Mission rules require an automated communications station in each visited system to report to Earth and serve as a relay and beacon.

Bob-2 wakes as a copy, briefly runs manufacturing, then takes the name Riker and a starship-bridge VR.

Beta Hydri's system has been stripped of all metal ore, which no natural process explains.

Delta Eridani is an orange star with ten planets, five rocky inner worlds, five gas giants, and one planet in the comfort zone.

About three hundred FAITH people who don't fit on ship three volunteered for the fourth ship, with homes guaranteed at Omicron2 Eridani.

OE-2 is a Jovian of nearly three Jupiter masses with several hundred satellites, some rich in metals.

Romulus, the smaller of the double planet, has ice caps and sparse life no bigger than a wolf, suggesting a recent extinction event.

Milo discovers a double planet in the habitable zone and names the larger, warmer world Vulcan; it has animals nearly dinosaur-sized.

Garfield is Bill's clone, activated alongside Homer, who agrees to stay in Epsilon Eridani as Bill's partner.

Homer is Riker's clone; he uses a cartoon avatar and constantly says 'Doh', irritating Riker.

Bill and Garfield call their Epsilon Eridani research operation the Skunk Works.

At least six Brazilian probes like the Serra do Mar, probably run by Medeiros clones, operate in Sol, now with SURGE-driven missiles.

The decoy Heaven-2A lures two Brazilian probes into attacking and is destroyed by their missiles, relaying data first.

Calvin and Goku fight constantly yet are inseparable.

Goku refused Calvin's push to take the name Hobbes, and the two trade insults constantly.

Heaven-9 and Heaven-10 are version-3 ships capable of 10 g, with a shielded secondary reactor for stealthy coasting.

Linus shows no notable quirks and chooses to set off on his own.

82 Eridani, a G5V star, has two planets in its comfort zone; the outer one has large bodies of water and a possibly watery moon.

Captain Matias Araújo commands the remaining Brazilian ships at Earth; he is not Medeiros.

Bill and Garfield prove subspace signals arrive instantly, staying in sync while radio lags by light-minutes.

Colonel George Butterworth of the USE Army Corps hails Riker and cautiously opens negotiations.

The USE had completed plans for a colony ship; Butterworth asks the Bobs to help build two and leave the solar system.

Delta Eridani 4 is slightly larger than Earth with lower gravity and denser air, covered in huge trees and abundant life.

The natives of Delta Eridani 4 are fire-using beings resembling a bat/pig mashup with long spidery limbs, fur and mobile ears.

Bob names a four-legged winged, colour-changing animal on Delta Eridani 4 a hippogriff.

Calvin finds the wreckage of the USE probe, with autofactory equipment and copies under construction, likely destroyed by the Brazilian.

Autofactories at the Earth/Moon L4 and L5 points will build Bobs and drones, then bootstrap to colony ship construction.

Archimedes is a young Deltan who invented a hafted stone tool for his mother; Bob names him and assigns a drone to watch him constantly.

Humans installed their own unshared software image on all human-controlled autofactories, nearly completing the split from the Bobs.

Bender, another new Bob, proposes naming the planet Eden, and everyone agrees.

Luke departs Delta Eridani for Kappa Ceti, a G5 star slightly smaller than Sol.

Marvin is a new Bob booted at Delta Eridani from Bob's backup; he volunteers to look for the Deltans' flint source.

Arthur is a gloomy but highly disciplined Bob; Riker nicknames him Eeyore.

Charles supports the FAITH deal partly because it saves the Bobs' relatives.

Mario decided the latest Heaven vessels carry enough on-board assets to investigate a system quickly.

The SCUT is Bill's design for a zero-latency subspace transceiver allowing instant interstellar communication.

Separate, unsophisticated bombings in Florianópolis seem to be revenge attacks on Brazil for the war.

Gudmund Valter, ex-military leader of about four thousand Spitsbergen survivors, presses for early emigration.

Minister Cranston of the FAITH enclave in San Diego demands favourable treatment because FAITH built the replicant; Riker refuses.

The hack attempt is traced to New Zealand.

Representative Sharma of the Maldives argues that settling Poseidon as a third system would better protect humanity.

The Spitsbergen refuge is technically part of the USE but doesn't recognise Colonel Butterworth's authority.

Riker convenes a new United Nations of thirty-eight enclave delegates, whose first session descends into chaos.

The Spits have delivered an ultimatum demanding places on the first ships.

Arnold is an especially large, intimidating Deltan who backs Archimedes in tribal disputes.

Gorilloids are large, unarmed predators that hunt and eat Deltans; they appear to have only animal intelligence.

Moses is an elderly Deltan who teaches Archimedes to knap flint.

Julia Hendricks is Andrea Johansson's three-times-great granddaughter, presented to Riker by Minister Cranston.

VEHEMENT is an anonymous fringe group demanding humanity let itself die out, threatening guerrilla tactics against emigration.

Epsilon Indi has a Jovian planet just outside the habitable zone and little else.

Henry Roberts is Australia's replicant probe, a former solo sailor, found alone and psychotic at Epsilon Indi.

Ambassador Gerrold, New Zealand's delegate and a former Australian, is inexplicably hostile to Riker.

A SURGE drive variant from Sol can move asteroids or Kuiper objects, which Bill plans to use to send ice to Ragnarök.

Hoffa is a Deltan elder who asks whether the bawbe will protect them from gorilloids.

Bart is a Bob from Calvin's first cohort at Alpha Centauri, with a rustic log-cabin VR.

Kudzu is bland whatever the spices and causes flatulence, according to Julia.

The donuts are bicycle-wheel stations whose rims receive mirrored sunlight; they are beyond VEHEMENT's reach.

Farm-1, the first orbital farm, had months of environmental feedback problems but now delivers kudzu to Earth by need.

Diana is a young Deltan female attached to Archimedes who fears Bob's drone.

Pack-hunting leopard-like predators attack and badly wound a Deltan hunter.

The first two colony ships, Exodus-1 and Exodus-2, are completed in 2170, watched by the Bobs and the whole UN.

Julia's family will travel on Exodus-3 with the Spits, as Riker required of Cranston.

Justin is Julia's young son, who loves his 'uncle William'.

Ralph is one of the Bobs now working at Sol alongside Riker, Homer and Charles.

The old flint site is a defensible rocky rise with sheltered areas, rock pools and a commanding view.

Bullwinkle is Bill's moose-sized quadruped android prototype, mechanically sound but struggling with senses, reflexes and communications.

The wreck appears AI-run, with fusion reactor, SURGE drive and a SUDDAR unit that also transmits power.

Planet GL19-4 holds a crashed alien ore carrier and a dead ecosystem killed by radiation fifty to a hundred years ago.

Alien mechanical ants disassemble metal by element and are powered through subspace by SUDDAR beams.

Howard, the newest Bob, escorts the colony ships, carrying some of Bill's inventions in case the colonists misbehave.

The first Bob-moot gathers the Sol Bobs, Bart's group from Alpha Centauri, and the Bobs escorting colonists to Omicron2 Eridani.

Many Bobs were lost fighting the Others over the Pav, though backups exist.

Elmer, initially reluctant, sacrifices himself by keeping up SUDDAR jamming so the damaged Khan can escape.

Fred is an unpleasant Deltan from Caerleon who leads a gang that robs Camelot hunting parties of their kills.

Hannibal is the first Bob killed at 82 Eridani, destroyed by a cloaked nuke during a strategy session.

Khan narrates as one of eight version-3 Bobs Bill sent to 82 Eridani to avenge Milo by attacking Medeiros.

Bill's plasma spike projects light-saber plasma as a near-light-speed torpedo, invisible to SUDDAR, that melts targets and emits a localized EMP.

Medeiros's bombs are nearly invisible to SUDDAR; Khan suspects the Brazilian Empire developed the cloaking on Earth and uploaded it to him.

Bert and Ernie are the Bobs running the two colony ships, and chose those names themselves.

Camelot is Bob's name for the Deltans' new, safer village, where gorilloids have mostly stopped preying on them.

Cruella is the Deltans' fearless, stubborn medicine woman who resists Bob's advice.

Hexghi is the Deltan word for a family group, roughly 'families of our fire'.

After a fence-raiding bronto was killed, its meat passed toxicology tests, and bronto is now on the colonists' menu.

Dr. Sheehy is a red-haired, freckled colony biologist with a flair for drama; Howard finds himself attracted to her.

Vulcan's raptors are smart theropod-like predators with shark-like teeth that attack the colony's construction sites.

Stéphane Brodeur is the Quebecois head of security for the Vulcan colony.

Richard, one of the descendants, suspects the colonists on Vulcan are not careful about environmental impacts.

Eta Cassiopeiae has five rocky planets but no Jovians and no asteroid belt, forcing planetary mining.

Jonny is a sarcastic clone of Mulder who intends to leave the system as soon as his vessel is ready.

Mulder, from Bill's third cohort, travelled 19.5 light years from Epsilon Eridani to the binary star Eta Cassiopeiae.

The third planet is entirely ocean, about 800 km deep, with no land at all, yet has an Earth-like oxygen atmosphere.

Skinner is one of Mulder's two new clones, choosing a name that keeps to Mulder's theme.

The colony town on Vulcan is officially named Landing.

The kraken is one of Poseidon's most impressive creatures, deserving its own bestiary chapter.

With Exodus-4 and -5 nearly finished, the UN debates sending one to Poseidon or both to Omicron2 Eridani.

Mario calls the unknown aliens who strip star systems 'the Others'; they have also mined out Zeta Tucanae's asteroid belt.

Zeta Tucanae's habitable planet held a civilization of billions that the Others destroyed, dismantling its cities and collecting the bodies.

Axler was the elder who doubted that gorilloids drove the Deltans out of their old home; he has recently died.

Bill's Android project is progressing slowly, struggling to make an artificial body that works like a whole organism.

Following Mario's orders, Bashful scouts Gliese 877 and detects artificial radio traffic there.

Gliese 54, a small K star with one planet and lots of space junk, is untouched by the Others.

Sleepy worries that a Bob restored from backup would not really be him.

The Maldives and Micronesia have effectively claimed Poseidon but need about six hundred more people to fill a colony ship.

Minister Benedito of Brazil presses Riker for results; Riker says he is only a consultant on security matters.

A single ship-buster strike obliterates the hippogriff island in a mushroom cloud, sending a ground shock and debris to Camelot.

Philip is Natasha's torture specialist, armed with knives including one for removing arm webbing.

A large hornet-spider-like insect on Vulcan injects eggs into victims; unless removed, the larvae burrow to the heart and kill within days.

Premier Grady of Vancouver Island doesn't blame Riker for the bombing but needs food for his people.

Buster is Archimedes' cub, who is starting to want to help make tools and is teased by other cubs.

Pete is one of Bob's two newest clones and refuses to search for Luke or Bender, going his own way.

Victor, Bob's other new clone, is willing to follow Luke's or Bender's trail and will report constantly via SCUT.

Terran rabbits eat and are attracted to Vulcan's toxic invasive vine, so Dr. Sheehy proposes releasing them to control it.

Riker routes communications through sandbox Bob, which detects Homer's attempted virus attack.

A half-kilometer spherical ship with a flat grid section pursues Bashful alongside five cargo-type vessels.

Gliese 877 has a huge, diffuse, artificial mass ring inside the inner planet's orbit, the source of most of the system's electromagnetic activity.

The Peter Project released rabbits on Vulcan that eat the invasive vine, pleasing farmers and feeding raptors.

KKP, nicknamed Klown Kar Planet, is a technically habitable satellite of Epsilon Indi's Jovian with orbit and axis tilted ninety degrees.

Khan, sole survivor of the first 82 Eridani attack, had his backup loaded into a new matrix and named himself Loki.

Thor concludes the Others' weapon is a gamma-ray beam and proposes depleted-uranium and electrostatic shielding to survive it.

The Shaded Green is one of the few restaurants in Landing.

The new asteroid mover uses twenty saucer-shaped segments with SURGE drives to steer an iceberg without touching it.

Bullseye is a new sea forming in a large crater on Ragnarök left by an iceberg Bill once missed.

The Others' Dyson Sphere will give five hundred million times the living area, for a population they say can never be too large.

Hal travels to Gliese 877 to follow up after receiving Bashful's final transmission, which felt like watching himself die.

A death asteroid zapped Decoy-1 sooner than Garfield's model predicted, though the shielding largely held.

Wally asks whether the Bobs have actually decided on all-out war, prompting debate about wiping out a species.

Belinda, Buster's mate, gives birth to a pup, making Archimedes and Diana grandparents.

The Enniscorthy Distillery Company, run by Howard and Bridget, is barely keeping up with orders; Stéphane sets up a planetbound distillery.

Vickers claims he invented the replicant systems that FAITH stole, and uses VEHEMENT as a tool to end the replicants' existence.

Rocky is Garfield's flying android; on its first flight on Ragnarök it lost control, snapped its wings and crashed.

New Jerusalem is now a full democracy, separating Church and State after incriminating videos forced Cranston to step down.

Big Top is Linus's tentative name for the Jovian planet that KKP orbits.

Edwin will return to Earth after unloading his colonists, while Rudy stays at Epsilon Indi.

Ickies are flying leeches with multiple suckers native to KKP.

Rudy arrives ahead at Epsilon Indi to survey KKP for the colonists aboard Exodus-6.

Marcus will stay on Poseidon to build human-crewed spaceships so the colonists do not depend on the Bobs.

Monty is the colony transport Bob bringing colonists from Micronesia, the Maldives, Vanuatu and Saint Lucia enclaves to Poseidon.

Hank shows the 82 Eridani Medeiros is an Alpha Centauri design, implying at least three Brazilian launches and more Medeiri than estimated.

Jeffrey, Milton and Zeke are killed by passive incoming ordnance at 82 Eridani.

Verne deduces Medeiros sends only short commands switching his AMIs between preset battle scenarios.

Dexter escorted Exodus-7 to Vulcan and takes over from Howard as the resident Bob there.

Ms. Benning is a lawyer in Landing who files the distillery transfer two ways to cover Howard's uncertain legal status.

Decoy-1 is an AMI-driven Heaven decoy built with Thor's shielding to test survival against the death asteroid.

The Others live in a hive under a Prime; colonizing would mean a new Prime and war, so they strip systems instead.

Donald, Arnold's son, competes against Buster in an archery contest.

Bruce, from Calvin and Goku's first cohort, holds the long-range record at 11 Leonis Minoris, thirty-seven light years from Earth.

Claude is a month from Gamma Pavonis; Bill tells him to prepare for war within a couple of decades of arriving.

Gamma Pavonis is an F8V star with a rich, life-bearing but non-intelligent planet orbited by one large and three smaller moons.

Jacques is heading for Delta Pavonis and is about twenty-two months away.

Oliver is Bill's backup loaded at Alpha Centauri; he takes the name Oliver in keeping with a Bloom County theme.

Bill and Oliver design the Version 5 Heaven vessel, a virtual dreadnaught compared to Heaven-1.

The Others left Delta Pavonis 4 a dead brown ball of mud with grey oceans and every major city demolished.

Delta Pavonis 4 is home to an intelligent species Jacques calls the Pav, in roughly a Victorian-era industrial age.

The Zjentfen, inhabitants of one Pav country, speak a language they call Tinozj, which Jacques learns within a month.

Caerleon is a new Deltan village on an old abandoned site, settled mostly by adolescents.

Ben Hendricks is a UFS representative descended from the Bobs, whom Will regards as conscientious and ethical.

Haliburton's Encephalopathy was identified on Vulcan and is one of the few local diseases compatible with Terran life.

Manny is an android with a carbon-fiber skeleton and memory-plastic muscles, giving the operator realistic neural feedback but looking like a mannequin.

Da Hazjiar Los, matriarch of the Los family, sits on Mheijrkva's town council; Jacques tags her for special handling.

Howie, Bridget's thirteen-year-old son, is officially named Howard and grew up hearing Stéphane's stories about Howard.

Lianne is one of Bridget's children, who stays uncomfortable rather than taking sides.

Rosie, Bridget's opinionated daughter, disapproves of her mother's relationship with Howard.

Charlie is a furred Deltan android that Bob operates to walk among the Deltans in person.

Andrew says the Bobs are gathering at Gamma Pavonis and argues they must take the fight to the Others.

Ferb's abduction goes less smoothly and his town also comes in under quota.

Phineas and Ferb carry out Jacques' plan, expanded by them, to abduct up to twenty thousand Pav by force.

HIP 84051-2 is a young planet with a Devonian-level ecosystem, chosen as a refuge for Pav fleeing the Others.

Refugee ships REFUGE-1 and REFUGE-2 carry the Pav towards HIP 84051.

Gina is a mid-level security officer and a friend of Marcus.

Kal is an Assistant Governor on Southern Mat Three and a cautious friend of Marcus.

The Poseidon Administrative Council has stopped pretending it will hold elections, suggesting a drift toward totalitarian rule.

Daedalus is one of Bill's newest clones, assigned to oversee one of the plate-driven planets.

Epsilon Eridani 1 has been moved into a new orbit and surrounded by eight hundred mover plates, capable of at least hundreds of Gs.

One of the larger former moons of Epsilon Eridani 3 has been fitted with a similar array of mover plates.

Icarus, another of Bill's newest clones, shares Bill's temperament and mainly wants quiet time for astrophysics research.

Dr. Onagi fears Bridget's eldest daughter might sabotage Bridget's body if the children lose the case.

The Bobs have begun calling mortal humans 'ephemerals', reflecting a gulf between immortals and those who die.

Councilor Brennan is captured and found to have ordered the attacks on the cities.

Denu notes the flying cities hold a third of Poseidon's population but produce half its food calories.

Poseidon's mats are now purely industrial or agricultural, owned by cities, and host a new predator-free ecosystem Bridget has studied.

Marcus, Kal, Denu and Gina jokingly call themselves the Revolutionary Council and now consider themselves revolutionaries.

Vinnie attends Council business and reports the Council refuses any policy changes.

Modern spy drones, combining Bob's Deltan and Jacques's Pav designs, are sparrow-sized and camouflaged.

Justin explains few people will choose replication, as it looks like permanent servitude; no one has requested it since Howard revived the technology.

Helium is Marcus's prototype flying city: a hundred-foot domed platform lifted by SURGE coils, unveiled over the Great Northern Mat.

Helium's SURGE coils act like lift fans rather than enveloping the city, so there is no zero-G.

Yoshi is a senior infrastructure engineer and a friend of Kal's from work.

Kumar, Reeda, Arnie and Sylvie are friends of Bridget's from her biologist days, whom Howard meets at a dinner.

The Earth enclaves can stay viable perhaps fifty to a hundred more years without moving underground.

Minister MacIntyre replaced Gerrold in New Zealand after the VEHEMENT situation and is openly hostile to Riker.

With battle debris and freed-up autofactories, the remaining six million stasis pods can be built in under a year.

UN Representative Swarna Misra rejects the stasis plan because half the population would die waiting for pods.

Thark is the fourth aerial city Marcus has opened to immigrants; it is now full and operating.

Homo sideria refers to Bobs who leave the explored region for good; Daedalus thinks no one, not even Mario, qualifies yet.

Sagittarius A*'s event horizon is twenty-three million kilometers across, with an accretion disk several light-years wide in the galactic plane.

The Canadian colonists settle Asgard, the heavier-gravity outer planet.

Christie Campbell, the Vancouver Island enclave leader, presses Mack to deal with vicious biting insects.

Isaac, serial HIC71683-8, is one of Bart's early clones and races a drone to retrieve Mack's matrix.

Katsu Ito is the Harvard-educated, reluctant leader of the Japanese enclave.

Mack is the replicant escorting three colony ships, two from Vancouver Island and one from Japan, to 82 Eridani after a twenty-five-year voyage.

The Japanese colonists settle the jungle planet, rejecting the name Jotunheim for Takama-ga-hara, 'the dwelling place of the Kami'.

Valhalla, the moon of the outer planet, will have 0.8 gravity once its atmosphere is made breathable.

Amhor is one of Marcus's domed flying cities, where residents work outdoors on its ring of grass.

Odin is a gas giant slightly smaller than Saturn in HIP 14101, with a stratified, chemically active atmosphere.

Herschel and Neil explore the derelicts cautiously, avoiding SUDDAR sweeps in case they activate ants.

Neil finds an intact power core in one derelict that is not a fusion reactor.

Two Others' cargo vessels, ten kilometers long and a kilometer wide, have drifted derelict in Delta Pavonis' Kuiper belt for ten years since the battle.

Judge Ulrich Katz refuses the injunction, ordering the body kept in stasis untouched until trial.

Hulk-1 is the Bobs' name for the derelict Others' carrier, which has 864 cargo bays.

Bay 1 of Hulk-1 holds dozens of Others' fighting drones in cradles, inert and apparently activated from the carrier AI's end.

Captain Richards of the Asgard colony reveals the colonists printed thousands of baseball-sized mosquito killers themselves.

General Kiroshi of the Japanese colony says they have only small printers, insufficient for busters.

Swarms of mosquito killers can disable busters by attacking their radiators and SURGE emitters.

Hulk-2 is scrap and is being broken down into salvage.

The Others' power core, possibly based on the Casimir Effect, produces vastly more power than Bob technology.

Mr. Kistler, lawyer for Bridget's children, portrays Howard as a manipulator who brainwashed Bridget.

Annie, the village medicine woman, thinks Bob is an idiot for wasting resources healing enemies.

Captain Lisa runs the Hurricane, a small barge-like trading boat with no set route, and hires Bob on the spot.

New Thark is a version-3 floating city with two square kilometers of residences, businesses and parkland under a fibrex dome.

Blimps are huge Odin animals filling a niche like baleen whales, grazing on small airborne life.

Mantas are mid-level pack predators on Odin, which like all Odin life hold a hydrogen sac for buoyancy.

Steve is the Bob who explored and reported on HIP 84051 in great detail.

Hazjiar calls the Bobs Dozhagriyl, 'critters with broken brains', because they seek no payment for helping.

Bob adds Archimedes' stabilized genetic sample to the monolith on Eden's largest moon as a monument.

Minister Sabrina Scott calls for a non-binding UN vote every session until one option wins a majority.

Gamma Pavonis 3 is an ideal, but still uncolonized, target for human colonization.

Beatrice is one of Justin's great-granddaughters.

Rivendell is Howard and Bridget's buoyant floating city on Odin, several times bigger than Marcus' aerial cities, with real buildings.

The Jokers, led by Hannibal, are a surprise strike group approaching at 95% of light speed, meant to stay outside the super-pulse range.

Howard and Bridget live in Tantor, a cloud city of about a million in Big Top's atmosphere, misnamed to Howard's annoyance.

A zap strikes Cuba before its 150,000 inhabitants can be picked up, killing them all.

The Pav Reclamation Project expects to restore about seventy-five percent of the Pav homeworld's ecosystems eventually.

Harvey, a tenth-generation Bob, is the current Bob-in-residence at Earth.

Da Azzma Hizz is the Pav planetary administrator, second since Hazjiar, and has read her diaries.

Gandalf represents the Gamers, who will plan how to get drones and later androids into the megastructure.

New Pav is the planet where the Pav were resettled about seventy years earlier; they now have cities on several continents.

About a third of the original Pav home world is growing things again, but the Pav decline to return for now.

Marvin says replicative drift is accelerating at fifteen to twenty generations, with some clones going in completely new directions.

Garfield's D&D group plans to attach a cloaked drone to a Boojum and piggyback into the topopolis during a scheduled shift change.

Eta Leporis shows an unusual infrared signature and periodic dimming, suggesting a megastructure built by a spacefaring civilization.

A group of Star Trek-styled Bobs is discussing a Starfleet-like organization to monitor the Bobiverse's effect on biologicals.

Bob and Bill name the unknown builders of the Eta Leporis attack drones Boojums.

The Bobs replaced fusion with the Casimir power source, obtained from the Others, which emits nothing detectable.

Skeletal, automated twenty-foot craft with fusion torches, radar and laser weapons destroyed all of Bob's in-system scouts.

Jeremy, who goes by Morlock, hid his identity at a moot and challenged Bob with Prime Directive arguments against interfering.

Bob builds radar-proofed, carbon-black, ultra-low-power scouts with a near-absolute-zero ice heat sink and launches them ballistically by rail gun.

Bill has moved Ultima Thule, home of the moot and backup station, far outside Epsilon Eridani, since many cloned Bobs knew its location.

The Skippies are building a Matryoshka Brain for a singularity and want the Bobs to leave humans alone.

Starfleet is Morlock's group, obsessed with the Prime Directive, pushing a formal declaration that Bob leave whatever he finds alone.

A female Bob named Bobbi is rumored to exist, though Bill knows no one who has met her.

Eta Leporis's habitable second planet shows no chlorophyll, minimal oxygen and no organics, though its metals remain unmined.

The megastructure is a topopolis: a spinning cylinder fifty-six miles in radius wound three times around the star in a torus knot.

Conan, one of Will's descendants, is the Bob representative in the Omicron2 Eridani system, now more a local ambassador.

Will asks Conan to incorporate an innocuous-sounding society for people wishing to emigrate from Omicron2 Eridani.

Since Hal and the Others, Bob drones carry dead-man switches; these use thermite to melt the drone if discovered.

The Snarks are four-foot, otter-like semiaquatic beings with forearm skin flaps, a beak-like toothed snout and a fanning tail.

The Spin Transfer containers all sit parked; nothing appears to travel between the topopolis interior and outside.

Hugh represents the Skippies, who have moved to packetized communication; he helps because the topopolis interests him and tests new neural nets.

Locutus, a steampunk-influenced Borg, leads low-level Snark android design and asks for a biologist's anatomical input.

The Vulcan Post-Life Arcology is a space station near Omicron2 Eridani's Oort cloud housing about two hundred wealthy replicants.

Ever Onward is a Romulus society of about fifteen thousand members interested in emigrating to found a distant colony.

Eternity Solutions sells strata-title virtual reality afterlives to human replicants; two clients from Asgard visit a moot.

New mannies contain no metal, have blood-like fluid with repair nanites and digestion; Quinlan mannies will struggle with heat dissipation.

Leviathans are giant four-tentacled, cuttlefish-like predators that killed many colonists in Poseidon's first year.

Newholme and Pangea nearly threaten to shoot down Pav vessels entering their systems' Kuiper line.

Poseidon dolphins are fish with gills and swim bladders, have a simple proto-language, and resemble Earth dolphins except for vertical flukes.

Bridget names the Quinlan home planet Quin and vetoes using it for full manny testing, fearing biological warfare agents.

Young Quinlans near adulthood often leave home in groups of four, called a sabbat, to see the world and perhaps settle elsewhere.

Pams, printer/autofactory minutes, are the currency adopted across human space.

Steven Gilligan, a replicated former department chair at the University of Landing, is an expert on artificial environments and megastructures.

Garack's Spine, usually just called Garack, is a village on the Arcadia River near the expedition's entry point.

To keep the manny accident from Bridget, Will extracts a promise that Howard's new red ale be named Riker's Red.

Howns are huge oxlike draft animals that Quinlans use to pull carts and power treadmill boats.

Officer Friendly, a hostile local cop in Garack, repeatedly harasses the expedition and tries to arrest Bob.

Locals speak of 'scattering' as a bad thing that happens to individuals or large groups; no clear definition is found.

Maleb, son of Kal and Gina, now older, oversees regulated equipment and autofactories on Poseidon.

Quinlans speak of the Administrator as an unfair power that scatters people or whole towns that contravene the Limits.

Erol plots with two others to lure Skeve out and kill him, fearing his actions will get their town scattered.

Galen Town is a town on the Arcadia River, reached after a day's swim downstream from Garack.

A loroush is a large wolf-like predator with grizzly-like claws; one visits the team's camp but ignores the scentless mannies.

Bill concludes the group that rescued Skeve was the Resistance, likely mistaking the team for the locals trying to kill him.

Skeve is a Quinlan in Galen Town said to have been scattered twice and suspected of stirring up trouble.

Barney's Place is a Galen Town hotel where Skeve's rescuers disappeared; the team suspects a Resistance link.

Garfield captures an air-powered gun firing dissolvable fléchettes, probably tranquilizers; the team considers it good tech.

Tim, playing a thief, steals Kevin's golem scroll and turns the golem on Kevin.

Quinlan histories say Anec gave Heaven's River to the Quinlans; after they betrayed Anec, their riches were taken and harsh rules imposed.

The Administrator's agents are called Crew; they may include hired local muscle and full-time staff living elsewhere.

Elbow is a larger-than-average town at a bend in the Arcadia River, holding an annual festival with music and theater.

First Stop is a sizeable but backwater city just past the segment boundary, notable to the team for serving land meat.

The Gronk tributary loops from the Arcadia to the opposite-flowing Utopia, with impellers creating a choppy surge midway.

Kar, a young sabbatarian, believes Heaven's River is paradise, dismisses the Resistance as oldsters playing warrior, and thinks towns unnecessary.

Segment boundaries are steep mountains with a shutter-like diaphragm that can seal a segment, the river passing through four straits.

Three Lagoons is the nearest big town, on the Utopia river at the mouth of the Gronk tributary.

Pangea is discussing cutting off the Bobiverse completely and treating it as an untrusted foreign power.

The United Federation of Sentients council has replaced the old UN as the body representing human colonies.

The Midway relay station, built at Delta Eridani and placed between it and Eta Leporis, stops accepting connections, cutting Bob off from BobNet.

JOVAH is the Skippies' Matryoshka Brain of some thirty-two thousand satellites around a gray dwarf, but it is still essentially an AMI.

Lenny, a Starfleet spokesBob, claims responsibility for the BobNet disruption at the moot and is expelled by Bill.

Frieda leads the Resistance cell that captures Bob; she suspected his group were the Administrator's spies and decides to involve her higher-ups.

Popeye, a wizened member of Frieda's crew, tortures Bob with electric shocks from batteries until Bob throws him into a wall.

Motorola is a Resistance figure who speaks to Bob through an antique-looking radio and has studied reports of Bob's group.

Natasha, a wealthy and imperious Quinlan in Three Lagoons, is a Resistance higher-up who hosts Bob's interrogation in her home library.

Halep's Ending is a real destination on the vacuum monorail route listings, confirming it as a lead toward Bender.

The card Bob took from Natasha's home opens the transit station's maintenance door and its train platform reader.

The Bobiverse War is the biggest news in the UFS, eclipsing the Pav threat, and its emotion is spilling into wider replicant society.

Express vacuum monorail tubes run the topopolis's length with local branches; Gilligan expects a directory of cities, likely computer-run.

Skippies' experiments show a transported copy has no replicative drift, while a parent activated afterward shows significant drift.

Commander Hobart's forces destroy twenty Starfleet busters, and he chooses to nuke the autofactory rather than risk buried malware.

The Newholme Council orders all Bobiverse in-system assets secured and has Hobart order Claude's arrest.

Cedar Rapids is a prosperous port, the closest to the segment-boundary mountains and a choke point for trade with the next segment.

The Pangean Council declares war on Starfleet after Starfleet-held comms station and autofactory were destroyed, costing Pangea half its manufacturing.

Representative Hee of Pangea announces nukes on the Pangean L5 spaceyard autofactory and hints at broader risk from the non-biological Bobs.

Ella Cranston, granddaughter of Will's old nemesis, refuses compensation and pushes for only human-owned autofactories in Omicron2 Eridani.

The Romulus WorldGov preemptively nuked the Bobiverse's space-based autofactories in its system after the Newholme and Pangea incidents.

Four stays, one per river, run from the segment-boundary mountains up to the central cylinder and may provide transport between rivers.

Grendel lies opposite Bob's position on Heaven's River, nearly 500 million miles away by train.

The complex under the mountains houses at least ten Resistance members, who work on paper and track segment numbers and member statuses.

Will plans to drop ready-made AMI space stations with blank replicant matrices at systems he passes, so a Bob can download in if anything interesting turns up.

The Ex-Man-1 is an experimental shape-shifting manny made entirely of tardigrade-sized ants, with distributed computing and power and no weak spot.

Vinny, a Forest Hill carpenter recommended by Carmine, offers to build a custom funerary box but can't promise it is watertight.

Beetle Juice is the last town on the Nirvana before the segment mountains, known for an insect-derived liquor.

Oric explains that Quinlans avoid naming river segments, fearing it leads to nationalism and being scattered.

Snidely Whiplash is an entitled paying passenger from a wealthy wine family who scoffs at belief in the Administrator.

Theresa taught philosophy, math and history at Peachland and holds several doctorates.

Quinlans teach three rules: Iron (treat the less powerful as you like), Silver (as you'd wish), Golden (as they'd wish).

The Afterlife replicant reserve lies in Senator MacIntosh's district.

Senator MacIntosh, a loudly anti-replicant politician, faces a recall after opponents gathered the required signatures.

The Clipper's captain pays Bob off and will leave without him, since the detention could last days.

A firl, a forest bird, keeps visiting the Clipper and appears to read shipping labels, suggesting an Administrator surveillance drone.

Tina leads a sabbat of four Quinlans planning to homestead in the wild, away from towns.

Drones scanning for carcasses plus the Svalbard library give complete DNA for about eighty percent of non-insect species.

Bill expects tensor field printers able to print living cells to be ready before Earth is repopulated.

The badger-like animal resembles a small Quinlan; it eats a spy firl and drives off a Quinlan search party, unwittingly protecting Bob.

Bridget explains children not exposed to language by a certain age never acquire recursive language, a risk for scattered Quinlans.

The Scrubber is the transfer tributary from the Nirvana to the Arcadia, with a rough ten-mile stretch of storm surge.

Norm leads the Crew squad that captures Bob and later escorts him and Hugh out.

Tokens, introduced after the Starfleet War, grant timed, limited access to private networks in a now-balkanized Bobiverse.

The Quiniverse is a proposed post-life VR for Quinlans that Bob is helping ANEC set up.

The system holds a large interplanetary civilization that appears tidily shut down and abandoned, with no inhabitants or bodies.

The microwave sources are two artificial wormhole endpoints in the system's Kuiper belt, each flanked by two small stations.

Karma loading is ANEC's term for instilling human moral values into an AI during training.

The wormhole collapse's blowback temporarily destabilized the Skippies' home star.

Thoth is the name chosen in a naming contest for the Skippies' AI, beating Minerva and Colossus.

The system beyond the second wormhole shows hundreds of microwave signals, suggesting a major wormhole hub.

Wormhole satellites answer a specific unnatural radio frequency with a network packet containing source and destination addresses.

Hub Zero is the hub with over a thousand connections, judged to be the theoretical center of the wormhole empire.

The Milky Way has a large, previously unknown dwarf galaxy neighbor hidden from Earth by the galactic core.

Bill's math suggests the constant comes from two opposing scalar fields, offering enough negative energy to stabilize wormholes.

Fake Hugh escaped in a latest-class Heaven vessel with huge acceleration and could have gone in any direction.

A fourteen-planet system off Hub Zero has two habitable planets whose vegetation is purple, using retinal-based photosynthesis.

Hannah Turnbull taught theoretical physics at Newholme University for decades and recently became a replicant after a fatal heart attack.

The Bobiverse Stellar Catalog is replacing older astronomical catalogs, labeling planets from innermost to outermost.

BSC-142-C is a young, tectonically active, nearly habitable planet with a five-kilometer escarpment and an enormous waterfall.

Will sees the resurgence of FAITH and the rise of the Luddies as potential wars in the making.

The Fargo is a five-kilometer colony cargo vessel Will is building, about five years from completion.

The Nostromo is Will's first ship, used to scatter AMI-controlled Heaven vessels to explore star systems.

The O'Neill Corporation is building a cylinder with a SURGE drive; a group from Takama has signed up to leave on it.

Jabberwocky's natives, which Mario calls dragons, are winged, squirrel-like beings who build villages on floating leviathans.

Hueys are android bodies that living humans can control remotely, using a cap and neck ring that paralyzes the user's body.

Jabberwocky has under 0.9 G gravity, a thick atmosphere and intense volcanic activity, with toxic, scalding lakes.

Leviathans are living, hydrogen-filled floating creatures large enough to carry entire ecosystems on their backs.

MannyPark warns its Vulcan clients that Luddite activity is rising and advises them to disguise their mannies.

Test subject Terry gets stuck in her huey when both the exit and safe phrase fail, and must be unplugged.

The spider world's cities are silk-and-nanotube cables strung between mountains, hung with metal-filled nodules.

Herbie is a newly replicated Quinlan, welcomed into the Quiniverse by Theresa.

Adrianne Hernandez is Newholme's president; citizens protested by all wearing masks of her face.

The Huey Project, developing mannies for humans, is entirely financed by Howard and Bridget.

Xavier Charles is the Bobs' covert agent on Newholme, posing as a freelance writer with a hidden underground lair.

Bill built a spinning station in the Oort cloud for the FTL work, in case of catastrophic explosions.

Another captured, fusion-powered automated ship hangs dead near the station, having apparently run out of fuel while held.

The system beyond the gate is empty space with only an asteroid station and two wormholes, acting as a firewall protecting a destination.

Four sentry ships with extraordinary acceleration intercept Icarus and Daedalus and respond only with repeated scripted packets, suggesting AMI control.

The sentries use tractor beams, a technology the Bobs have never come close to achieving.

Howard and Bridget's dragon mannies, which Howard insists on calling drannies, were built by Mario's autofactory orbiting Jabberwocky.

George is a Bob who headed galactic north back in the twenty-second century, before SCUT existed.

Hector Rodriguez leads the Huey Project management team and presents its marketing strategy.

Garfield dubbed the meeting of Bob, Bill, Garfield, Howard and Will the Ancient Ones.

Within three years all wormhole endpoint deliveries will be in place and WormNet will be ready to activate.

The dead alien probe is a stripped-down Von Neumann probe without replication ability, essentially an exploratory scout.

Icarus and Daedalus install a Casimir generator in the alien probe to revive it, since they cannot fuel its reactor.

Icarus and the sentries agree on a shared image packet format, which Icarus names GEF.

Hector is an eighteenth-generation Bob travelling as a Von Neumann probe, who was threatened by Starfleet to reroute around their space.

Alexander's army has been seen within fifty miles of the Hunter, which is on guard against his scouts.

Bridget believes Atlantis is splitting along several tectonic plates and the eruptions may devastate its remaining life.

Mario says Lemuria has no dragons or floaters, so the canoe's presence on Atlantis is puzzling.

Gerry, a collateral descendant who worked with the asteroid miners, has not been heard from in decades.

Someone named Gerry claimed to find a surviving backup of Homer, though Homer thought he destroyed all of them.

A group is terraforming the Moon, which now has oceans, a fifty-hour day via mover plates and a developing magnetic field.

Alexander sympathizers trying to drum up support are thrown off the floater, making them 'baseless', or homeless.

Tuev is the dragons' morning drink, almost pure ethanol, which dragons metabolise like sugar instead of getting drunk.

The centaurs have four legs and two arms at the front, and three sexes: male, female and worker.

Centaurvania lies near a leaf node of the third hub clockwise from Hub Zero, at the opposite end of the empire.

Gunther is the revived alien probe, named by Icarus and Daedalus after its own name for itself.

Huey LLC faces fifty-two restraining orders, sixteen class-action suits and four threatened government audits.

Alexander's throne room displays a canoe made from high-tech hull plates bearing an unknown script.

A doming toxic gas plume pushes the floaters out to sea like surfers, committing the flotilla to the crossing to Lemuria.

Mario identifies the wreckage as part of a non-human SCUT assembly decades more advanced than Bob technology.

Norm of West Elbow is welcomed as the Quiniverse's one-thousandth member.

Rita hosts the first Quiniverse moot and gives its opening speech.

Grills are small, salty ocean fish that dragons only catch near shore during their spring mating run.

Roanoke, their first alien civilization, fifty light-years from Earth, is chosen because it is intact, modest in size and likely has printed books.

The Roanoke library holds printed books only up to roughly 1980s-level technology, suggesting newer material went electronic.

Erik is Howard's crew foreman on the net-building and trawling crew.

Roanokians are roughly human-sized bipedal humanoids with disproportionately long arms and large hands.

Rafts of light, balsa-like posts are carried by about sixteen military dragons each, then stocked with signal fires, food and tuev.

Security Central can grant exceptions but has not answered queries for about 2,104 human years.

The first wave of migrating dragon civilians reached the new lakeside camp safely, exhausted from the long flight.

Gerrard is the soldier from Howard's military escort who struck the killing blow on Howard, following orders.

The antimatter fountain near the galactic core, glowing at 511 KeV, is the source of the Federation's antimatter.

The Central Antimatter Works is an automated Pan Galactic Federation administrative station in an interdicted area near the fountain.

Automated transport caravans with SUDDAR-shielded holds deliver antimatter through the wormhole network to Pan Galactic Federation stations.

The Snark, a Titan-class Heaven vessel piloted by Thor, made the first wormhole transit from Epsilon Eridani to Skippyland in nine hops.

After returning through the wormhole, the Singularity turned onto a different heading and accelerated away from Skippyland.

The Central Antimatter Works directs Icarus and Daedalus to the Capital Archives for answers and provides routing instructions.

Operation Bug-Out, named on the spot by Herschel, is the plan to extract thirty thousand people from Romulus.

Bill explains coherent extrapolated volition as what the Bobs would want if they had time to think and were smarter.

Mud, formerly named Harry, is a Skippy who helped Thoth escape and is the direct ancestor of Fake Hugh.

The Archivist is an AI answering mostly automated queries; each question sends the asker back into a queue of over a hundred thousand.

The Federation capital system, reached via Hub Zero, has six terrestrial and six Jovian planets in evenly spaced shared orbits.

Nemesis contains a supermassive black hole fifty times Sagittarius A*'s size, on a direct collision course with the galactic core.