66.      It’s Happening

Oliver, a newly instantiated Bob copy, arrives at Alpha Centauri and begins planning defensive preparations against the Others. Over three years, he develops a strategy to exponentially increase production capacity and design advanced weapons, culminating in his first cohort of battle cruisers.

Oliver awakens as a new Bob instance at Alpha Centauri and must choose a new name, selecting Oliver after the Bloom County character. He discusses strategy with Bill, learning that Bill and Bart have already established operations in Alpha Centauri A. Oliver plans to set up competing operations and aims to achieve FTL capability faster than Bill. He analyzes the threat posed by the Others and determines that existing weapons like busters and plasma spikes are ineffective against their massive ships. Concluding he needs either large mass, large explosions, or significant energy, Oliver considers relativistic velocity as a potential weapon. Taking a lesson from Bob-1's experience, Oliver decides to double his initial production capability by having printers manufacture more printers in a cascading sequence before attempting to build Bobs themselves. This ramp-up takes nearly two years due to the extreme precision required in 3D printing (individual carbon atoms must be placed with zero defects). After much collaboration with Bill, Oliver develops blueprints for a Version 5 Heaven vessel—a virtual dreadnaught improvement over the original Heaven-1. Bill continues refining SUDDAR cloaking technology from the 82 Eridani mission. Oliver also designs stealth busters modeled on Medeiros' stealth fission bombs, using H-bomb blueprints extracted by Howard from Butterworth. Three years after awakening at Alpha Centauri, Oliver completes his first cohort of battle cruisers.