Daedalus
Names: DaedalusDae
First appears in Book 3: All These Worlds, chapter 6 (Launch)
Appearances
What you know
Book 3: All These Worlds
- Ch 6Daedalus is one of Bill's newest clones, assigned to oversee one of the plate-driven planets.
- Ch 6Daedalus considers the plan a Hail Mary worth trying, since failure leaves the Bobs no worse off.
- Ch 17Daedalus is the more methodical of the pair, insisting on regular status checks and synchronization.
Book 5: Not Till We Are Lost
- Ch 1Daedalus and Icarus are clones of Bob Johannson's mind, travelling together at just under light speed toward the galactic core.
- Ch 1Daedalus has turned the SURGE drive field into a lens, making a huge refractor telescope to survey passing star systems.
- Ch 3Daedalus's survey detects microwave emissions from a couple of spots in a passing star system, which Icarus judges not natural.
- Ch 8Daedalus flies through the first wormhole to a nearby star system eleven light-years away, which is a leaf node with no other wormholes.
- Ch 8Daedalus habitually sits in a Star Trek–style captain's chair in his VR.
- Ch 14Daedalus has been making significant, unexplained changes to his VR and seems frustrated.
- Ch 18Daedalus reminds Icarus they cannot explore the whole empire in detail; the plan is to get the basics then involve the Bobiverse.
- Ch 37Daedalus suggests communicating visually, since visual intelligences, even AMIs, try to identify whatever they see.
- Ch 43Daedalus finds it spooky that every civilization they visit is abandoned and fears they may never learn why.
- Ch 48Daedalus thinks Centaurvania's collapse is unrelated to the empire's, since it was never connected to the wormhole network.
- Ch 52Daedalus and Icarus decide to stop flyby surveys and investigate one civilization in detail to learn where everyone went.
- Ch 52Daedalus has no VR Spike of his own because his VR is now a farm with barnyard animals.
- Ch 54Daedalus notes every visited planet, whatever its species, was emptied the same orderly way, and fears the explanation.
- Ch 56Daedalus complains their ships are crowded with mannies, roamers and drones, as they were never designed as cargo vessels.
- Ch 60Daedalus explains antimatter is the densest power source, worth using when monstrous power is needed and supply is easy.
Connections
- copy ofBill
- ally ofIcarustravelling together toward the galactic center
- friend ofIcarustravelling partners
- ally ofBill
- copy ofBob Johansson
- member ofBobiverse
- enemy ofSentry shipscaptors
- ally ofGunther
Key moments
- Book 3 · Ch 6Planet-moving mission launches
After a successful short-range test of the mover-plate arrays on Epsilon Eridani 1 and an ex-moon of Epsilon Eridani 3, Bill sends his clones Daedalus and Icarus off on a possibly suicidal Hail Mary mission.
- Book 3 · Ch 17Icarus and Daedalus plan a trip to the core
En route on their high-tau mission, Icarus and Daedalus decide that once their 'delivery' is complete they will travel to the galactic core.
- Book 3 · Ch 69GL 877 destroyed
Icarus and Daedalus release two relativistic planetary masses into GL 877 from opposite poles, causing the star to explode and sterilize the Others' system.
- Book 3 · Ch 70Victory and the end of the Others
Bill tells Herschel and Neil that the Battle of Sol is won at heavy cost, and reveals that Daedalus and Icarus have destroyed GL 877, ending the Others.
- Book 5 · Ch 1Voyage to the galactic core
Fifty-two years into their near-light-speed journey toward Sagittarius A*, Icarus and Daedalus discuss the chance that FTL will be invented behind them and the growing lag in news from home.
- Book 5 · Ch 1Daedalus's SURGE-lens telescope
Daedalus reveals he has made the SURGE drive field into a refracting lens and has begun surveying passing star systems for planets, signals and anomalies to report home.
- Book 5 · Ch 3Anomaly detected; deceleration begins
Daedalus shows Icarus microwave emissions from a passing system that appear artificial. Icarus has Guppy begin decelerating and coordinate with Dae's Guppy so they can stop and investigate.
- Book 5 · Ch 5Discovery of the wormhole
Approaching the radiation sources, Daedalus notices the stars within a ring of empty space are seen from a different angle. Icarus realizes it is a wormhole held open by the two flanking stations.
- Book 5 · Ch 5The abandoned civilization
Spy drones and then a powered fly-in reveal an inhabited-looking system that ignores them completely. Drones landed on the home planet find spotless, empty cities, as if the inhabitants packed up and left.
- Book 5 · Ch 8Probing the wormholes
A drone sent through one wormhole fails to emerge from the other, showing they lead elsewhere. Daedalus crosses to a system eleven light-years away and finds no further wormholes.
- Book 5 · Ch 8Icarus reaches the hub
Icarus flies through the second wormhole and finds himself 1,700 light-years away in a system detecting hundreds of wormhole signals, a major hub.
- Book 5 · Ch 12Decoding the gate addresses
Icarus and Daedalus find the radio frequency that makes wormhole satellites reply with address packets, identify source and destination fields, and map them to galactic coordinates.
- Book 5 · Ch 12Plan to follow the network
Seeing long-distance links, Icarus proposes using the network to travel around the galaxy, choosing a destination about seven degrees around as the next hub.
- Book 5 · Ch 14Mapping the hub network
Icarus and Daedalus hop along hub systems, mapping thousands of systems. Connection counts peak at one hub, which they name Hub Zero, the likely center of the empire.
- Book 5 · Ch 14Entering Hub Zero's gates
After mapping six hubs spinward, they return to Hub Zero, face over a thousand gates with no clue to the home planet, and pass through one at random.
- Book 5 · Ch 18Discovery of the purple planets
Surveying Hub Zero's systems, Icarus and Daedalus find a system with purple, retinal-based plant life and abandoned cities built by non-humanoid inhabitants.
- Book 5 · Ch 24The spider world
Icarus and Daedalus survey a planet whose cities are cable webs built by a spider-like species. Icarus, unexpectedly arachnophobic, wants to leave quickly.
- Book 5 · Ch 24Accosted at last
Back at Hub Zero, they pass through another randomly chosen gate and are immediately accosted.
- Book 5 · Ch 28Captured by sentries
Passing through a gate from Hub Zero, Icarus and Daedalus fail to give a valid response to automated sentry ships and are towed by tractor beam to an asteroid station.
- Book 5 · Ch 28The dead prisoner
Surveying their prison, they find another long-held automated ship that has run out of fuel and died, hinting at their own fate.
- Book 5 · Ch 37First contact with the sentries
Icarus and Daedalus establish communication with the sentries through pixelated images, teaching math and logic and negotiating permission to leave.
- Book 5 · Ch 37Escape with the alien probe
With the sentries' consent, Icarus and Daedalus return through the gate to Hub Zero, using drones to push the dead alien probe with them.
- Book 5 · Ch 37Alien probe revived
After a week of careful surgery installing a Casimir generator, the alien probe powers up and scans them with SUDDAR, and Icarus begins teaching it too.
- Book 5 · Ch 43Learning to talk with Gunther
After more than a week of lessons, Icarus and Daedalus can converse with Gunther and learn about its centaur creators.
- Book 5 · Ch 43Survey of an abandoned purple world
En route to Centaurvania they survey Gunther's first destination, an abandoned civilization with purple retinal-based plants, and probe a second wormhole there.
- Book 5 · Ch 48Gunther returns to a ruined home
Icarus and Daedalus follow Gunther to Centaurvania and find its technological civilization collapsed long ago, with only villages remaining.
- Book 5 · Ch 48Gunther stays to rebuild
Learning nearly seven hundred Earth years have passed, Gunther decides to rebuild its people; the Bobs supply equipment and technology before moving on.
- Book 5 · Ch 52Icarus and Daedalus choose Roanoke
Back at Hub Zero, Icarus and Daedalus agree to investigate one civilization closely and pick Roanoke, the intact world near home.
- Book 5 · Ch 52A library is found on Roanoke
Drones and roamers map a Roanoke town, observe automated maintenance, and discover a book repository that a roamer manages to enter.
- Book 5 · Ch 54Scanning the Roanoke library
Roamers scan the library's books while Icarus and Daedalus, in mannies, study Roanokian writing and the planet's abandoned state.
- Book 5 · Ch 54SUDDAR sweep finds no Roanokians
A three-day planetary SUDDAR survey finds no hidden population, convincing Daedalus that the whole population left in an orderly manner.
- Book 5 · Ch 56Questioning the sentries in Roanokian
Using a drone speaking Roanokian, Icarus learns from the DMZ sentries that all member civilizations went through a gate, and that Security Central has been silent for millennia.
- Book 5 · Ch 60Following the antimatter caravan
Icarus and Daedalus follow an automated transport delivering antimatter to a space station, then trail it back through wormholes to the galactic core.
- Book 5 · Ch 60Discovery of the antimatter fountain
In the galactic core they find the antimatter fountain and contact the Central Antimatter Works of the Pan Galactic Federation, which gives them communication protocols.
- Book 5 · Ch 65Visit to Sagittarius A*
Icarus and Daedalus reach the galaxy's central black hole and record every possible measurement before starting the seven-year trip back.
- Book 5 · Ch 65The galaxy faces destruction
Questioning the Central Antimatter Works by SCUT, Icarus learns the Federation emigrated to escape the galaxy's imminent destruction and is sent to the Capital Archives.
- Book 5 · Ch 68Arrival at the Federation capital
Icarus and Daedalus reach the Federation capital via Hub Zero, bluff their way into a registration application and are permitted to contact the Archivist.
- Book 5 · Ch 68Questioning the Archivist
Through a frustrating queue, Icarus learns the Federation's 114 species fled the galaxy's imminent destruction, plus the fountain's history and Federation's founding.
- Book 5 · Ch 70Icarus reports to Bill
Icarus and Daedalus call Bill and tell him the Federation fled the galaxy because the dwarf galaxy Nemesis will sterilize it in about a hundred thousand years.
- Book 5 · Ch 71The moot on Nemesis
Bill calls a huge moot where he and Icarus reveal the abandoned Federation, the coming galactic collision and the Federation's flight to the Large Magellanic Cloud.
- Book 5 · Ch 71Post-moot discussion
Over the buffet, the Bobs discuss the Federation wreckage on Jabberwocky, FAITH's political crisis and plans to contact the Federation via WormNet.