We Are Legion by Dennis E. Taylor
Robert Johansson recently sold his software business and is eager to live a more relaxed life. There are destinations to visit, publications to read, and films to see. So when he kills himself while crossing the street, it’s a touch unjust.
Bob awakens a century later to discover that he has been proclaimed the property of the state and has been declared to be a corpse without rights. He has been programmed into computer gear and will command an interstellar spacecraft searching for inhabited planets. High stakes are involved because the first claim to entire universes is at risk. If he declines, he will be turned off, and they will try again with a different person. He will become a prime target if he agrees. At least three additional nations use deceitful tactics to launch their own probes first.
In space, Bob is most secure as he travels swiftly away from Earth. or so he believes. Because there are many undesirables in the universe, and trespassers drive them furious—very mad.
We Are Legion by Dennis E. Taylor
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Bob, a successful software entrepreneur, purchases a policy with CryoEterna, Inc. to commemorate the sale of his software business. Later on that day, he gets killed by a car.
Almost a century later, he awakens a machine. His frozen brain has been destructively scanned, resulting in the creation of Bob 2.0, a piece of software known as a “replicant”. Replicants are employed to complete tasks that no human being wants to complete in a world where geopolitics and economics are becoming more volatile. After “activation,” a significant portion of replicants experience mental instability.
A faction of FAITH, the Free American Independent Theocratic Hegemony that has replaced the United States, is training Bob to serve as the sentient core of a Von Neumann probe. Bob is one of five contenders for their maiden mission in a new space race between FAITH and its four rival meganations for a spot in interstellar space. Although there is no FTL, the SURGE constant acceleration drive has been developed.
When the time for launch finally arrives, Bob has been selected, and his trainer has assisted him in opening at least some of the trapdoors that have been incorporated into his software, or him. This is fortunate since Colonel Ernesto Madeiros, a Brazilian replicant, tries to blow Bob and the space station where he is tethered out of space.
Eventually, Bob makes it to Epsilon Eridani where, somewhat to his own surprise, he chooses to do what he was created to accomplish and starts using the many slave devices he is carrying to produce more of himself. They choose various names to avoid misunderstanding, generally drawn from nerd lore. Bill is left in control of the “Skunk Works” at Epsilon, where new technology is being developed for upcoming generations of Bobships, as Bob departs for Delta Eridani.
Others travel to other star systems in search of entertainment, habitable planets, and sentient life. (Just one of those things – you’ll have to guess which one – is specified in the mission orders, but Bob long ago ignored them.) Together with duplicates of Madeiros, some of each of these items are discovered. As a sanitary precaution, the Bobs decide to stomp Madeiros out of existence.
Throughout the book, numerous Bobs each tell a first-person story. Each has a slightly different personality, and while their voices also differ, they all nonetheless have a fundamental “Bobness”—a phenomenon they ponder about but never truly understand.
