12.      Bob Calling

Bob (Riker) attends to administrative tasks at the Sol colony, reviewing sabotage reports from Charles about two distinct attack groups, checking on food production with Homer, and then participating in a UN session debating whether to send colony ships to Poseidon or concentrate resources on Omicron 2 Eridani.

Riker begins his day reviewing his TODO list while grappling with the absence of his family aboard Exodus-3 in stasis, heading to Omicron 2 Eridani for seventeen years of subjective time. Charles reports on sabotage investigations, revealing that VEHEMENT, a radical environmental group, is responsible for sophisticated attacks on food infrastructure, while separate attacks on Florianópolis appear to be local Brazilian resentment unrelated to a coordinated organization. Riker decides to keep his investigation methods private, suspecting VEHEMENT's technological sophistication could compromise Bob-to-Bob communications. He then checks with Homer on space-based food production, learning that the farm donuts are offsetting Earth's deteriorating climate caused by the war's aftermath, though only 30,000 people have been moved off-planet against a remaining 15 million humans. Riker attends a UN session to debate allocating Exodus-4 and -5: Representative Sharma argues for settling Poseidon (discovered by Mulder at Eta Cassiopeiae) to spread humanity across three systems rather than concentrating all resources on Omicron 2 Eridani, making a compelling case for species-wide risk distribution.