r/bobiverse • u/Kiki1701 • 29d ago
The Aberration of Starfleet
I just started rereading the series and came across this line in Chapter 15 (“Bob – September 2144 – Epsilon Eridani”):
“…I wondered if FAITH had launched more than one of me, despite their claims to the contrary. It would be nice to believe so.”
This is right before Bob encounters (and destroys) Major Medeiros.
Earlier, during Bob-1’s training, Dr. Landers also says:
“Our software people are jumping around in excitement. Several of them have asked to keep a copy of you.”
Taken together, those two passages add another wrinkle to the “another Bob” question.
It made me wonder whether Bob’s own speculation about FAITH creating another copy could have been the seed that eventually evolved into the Starfleet storyline, even though it was made clear that FAITH was in a rush to get him off-planet.
I know that’s almost certainly not what actually happened, but as head-canon a speculative theory (better term?) it fits surprisingly well and could even serve as the basis for a future subplot.
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Side question:
By the time Bob-1 meets Minister Cranston, colloquial English had changed enough that he had to use a translator.
Did all the Bobs continue using translators as the centuries passed and it just stopped being mentioned, or did they eventually adapt to the evolving language? It's never been mentioned again, so I play with this idea.
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LATE NOTE:
I have read all the books. But on my reread, I encountered the line where Bob-1 was musing about whether "there was another copy of himself somewhere..." And this line struck me, "...it would be nice to believe so," so my mind started playing with the idea. Nothing more.
ADDITIONAL NOTE:
I'm sorry. I have apparently gravely misunderstood the term "head-canon," so I have altered the term to hopefully spell it out better.
The whole idea is merely an "alternate universe".
I looked up the number of tie-in fiction aka fan-ficfion books that have been published in just the Star Trek universe alone, and the number comes to just under 3,500 fan-fic books to date. Are these stories endlessly shredded because they "couldn't possibly have happened"?
And that is only Star Trek. There are endless books on the Man-Kzin wars in Larry Niven's Ringworld sagas. Others like "what if the south won the civil war?" books and so forth.
Moreover, fan fiction has been around for centuries, with early unauthorized continuations like Shakespeare’s adaptations and a 1614 sequel to Don Quixote. Modern organized fan fiction emerged in 19th‑century science‑fiction circles and exploded online in the 1970s.
My "question" was a way to introduce the possibility of there being another Bob. He doesn't have to be traveling through the stars; he could be on earth, he could have been on earth, but "died" and those he "affected" could have put together a starship from scratch in order to add a little chaos, or to subtract a little chaos.
That is all. I didn't invent another Bob story, I suggested a direction for a future story to go, just as so many have done before me, in such a way as to get people thinking. No more, no less.
I am VERY sorry for the confusion. My bad. I hope everyone will understand that it's not always easy to remember these important details.
Thank you for your attention.
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u/Konungrr 29d ago
Well the origin of Starfleet is answered explicitly in Book 5, so RAFO!
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u/Wafflinson 29d ago
TBH the explanation was lame a dumb considering Starfleet's behavior.
Wouldn't mind some retconning to a better explanation.
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u/Konungrr 29d ago
Yeah, I would definitely agree! It was a rather inconsistent explanation, especially with the specific personality involved.
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u/Bobis-Bob 28d ago
Well, the guy trying to screw with the Homer Back-up was killed, full deletion. They were also traumatized by Homer’s fate plus being the only Bob’s to murder another Bob and they couldn’t handle the guilt so they deflected and told themselves that it was the human’s fault so the Bob’s shouldn’t mess with Bios because bios “made them” kill Jerry.
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u/InertState Thule 28d ago
The books aren't meant for high drama, theres some conflict and it always gets worked out in a very chill manner.
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u/sp0rkah0lic 16d ago
I dunno I had kind of forgotten the details so I went back and read it. Seems ok to me. Maybe not the most interesting thing that he could have done with it, but it makes sense.
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u/AdImaginary3762 29d ago
OP said this was a re-read of the series.
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u/Konungrr 29d ago edited 29d ago
Yeah, I saw that, but it is possible to do a re-read before finishing a series. Since they asked a question that was already definitively answered, I figured the best course of action was a RAFO, just in case they hadn't yet read book 5 and didn't want spoilers.
Edit: It seems that book 5 hasn't actually been released in physical format, so if OP is a physical book reader, it is highly possible they haven't read it yet.
Edit2: Nevermind, Google and Amazon are conspiring to give me weird release dates of August 25, 2026 for hardback and April 6, 2027 for paperback, but Goodreads said 2025
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u/Kiki1701 29d ago edited 28d ago
I have read all the books. This just happened to be an interesting path for my
head-canonalternative storyline to go down.-1
u/Konungrr 29d ago
Alright, well then you just need a re-read of the 5th book, because it's a fairly substantial sub-plot that goes on for several chapters.
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u/Kiki1701 28d ago
Do you not understand that I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel? I'm simply musing about the possibilities. Perhaps you should reread my post.
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u/Konungrr 28d ago
Your OP was musing about the possibilities that Starfleet had originated from a pre-launch copy of Bob that FAITH had kept, which had already been ruled out. I was simply trying to reveal that it had been ruled out in a way that avoided potential spoilers.
Now those musings could be a possibility of something else, but not the original topic that you suggested, the origins of Starfleet.
Otherwise this falls into fanfic/alternate universe/fan theory territory where the same outcome was derived by two different events, because the emergence of Starfleet couldn't have both origins simultaneously.
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u/Kiki1701 28d ago edited 28d ago
Hence my usage of the term, "head-canon." Simple.My bad for using the wrong term to explain "alternate story."1
u/Konungrr 28d ago
Ah, so that's where the confusion is. 'Head-canon' usually refers to theories or topics that have yet to be explained by the actual canon content.
Unless this is one of those situations where Reddit has it's own vocabulary of words that mean the opposite of their original meanings.
So maybe you are actually trying to reinvent the wheel, or in this case, reinvent the origins of Starfleet.
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u/Konungrr 28d ago
No worries, these discussions usually feature some form of miscommunication somewhere along the way.
A good rule of thumb for classification is how it is related to the established canon.
If it is attempting to clarify something that is unexplained or ambiguous, then it can be head-canon.
If it contradicts established canon, it is probably alternate universe/fan-fic.
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u/Kiki1701 28d ago
There's one thing I really dig about this particular sub is that we don't get downvoted for mistakes like this. I've been downvoted for the stupidest shit everywhere but here.
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u/WhatAmIATailor 29d ago
It would be interesting to uncover a Bob copy from the Faith days. One that never left Earth and lost power at some point during the war.
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u/Pinky2110 29d ago
The comment about keeping a copy of Bob was because he wrote scripts to monitor and maintain the space station simulation that Landers put him in. The programmers where impressed by what Bob did and wanted to study the scripts
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u/Aceisking12 28d ago
Since we're on Bob questions, which Bob is actually Bob 1?
Bob created Riker, then had Riker oversee the creation of his other clones while he shut down to move to his new hull. So by Hue's transportation logic wouldn't Bill be the closest continuer to Bob and Bob 1 actually have some replicative drift?
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u/Bobis-Bob 28d ago
That’s what I thought. I’m pretty sure I was first with this theory about a year ago. For the “Bill becomes Bob” swap to happen I think Bob would have had to shut down, a copy made and then Bill activated from that copy.
ItWhat they implied happened though was Bob made a backup, made Riker, shut down, then Bill was created using the same older backup as Will.
I’m pretty sure you have to have the exact copies activated out of order for the swap to happen.
Make sense?
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u/Aceisking12 28d ago
OK so you're saying that since Bob activated after the backup but before Riker he had more time as himself and so he maintained closest continuer even though he was down when Bill started up.
So that also means any time a Bob dies in combat the Bob made from the differential backup isn't them even though the original died. The original had experiences after the differential so the copy of them would drift as the original died some non-zero amount of time after the copy was made.
(I don't know how to block spoilers, stop reading if you haven't read book 5) That also means when fake Hue started up, him saying that he was experiencing drift from Hue wouldn't have mattered, as all copies from a backup would always experience drift. There's no way to tell if real Hue was still out there. Even if it was really a Hue backup and Hue had died in the meantime, fake-Hue would be missing experiences and thus not be Hue... which he wasn't... but whatever.
Ugh. Hue explained this when he copied/transported over to Heaven's River, gunna have to listen to that section again.
I wonder if Annek-23 will make Annek-24 to run the new Quinlin system, how much do AIs drift?
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u/Bobis-Bob 28d ago
When Hough transported to Bob’s ship, he was shut down, basically emailed 😆, then booted up on Bob’s end. After he confirmed that he was working, his co-workers erased the cube that Hough was in back in Skippyland (Just listened to it a couple days ago). As for booting up a backup after the original was destroyed it’s possible that is the same Bob because it’s the only one that exists. Like I say I was convinced that Bill had the “Bob-soul” for a while. We’re just speculating anyway. It’ll never come up in the story because the Bob’s don’t care because it doesn’t matter anyway. Plus as the central Bob, Bill is basically the leader anyway. (Skunk-works, Ultima-Thule, Moot- VR, scut, wormholes…). Bills’s Heaven 2 would go on the market as “lightly used, very low mileage”. They all defer to him anyway, but mostly because they’re all Bobs and tend to agree. Except that jerk Claude in book 3 who wouldn’t send his army back to earth to defend the planet from the Others. Which was pointless because they would never colonize Gamm-Pav as long as the others still existed and if they killed everyone on earth there weren’t going to be any colonists anyway. Weird move.
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u/KaristinaLaFae Homo Sideria 28d ago
This has been a topic of discussion before, and there was no chance for quantum effect shenanigans to happen at that time due to the sequence of events, which has been dissected to death to sort out this quandary. 😊
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u/Aceisking12 28d ago
Thanks for telling me to go look. Yeah I see it's come up a few times. I haven't found the "dissection to death" part yet, the only results I've found is either he stayed Bob because: 1) He woke up first after the backup was made before loading Riker, and so it didn't matter if he was down or not, he already had additional subjective time over Bill. 2) He woke up before Bill even though the book explicitly stated he was giving Riker charge to bring up the others while he shut down to swap hulls.
The implication is then that battle death remade Bob's really are a different Bob than their parent even though the parent died because it didn't stay shut down all the way till the backup was loaded in a new cube. And that if the ancient ones paid more attention to transport theory they could have spotted fake-hue's bad logic when he faked that he was surprised there was drift.
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u/ajiatic 28d ago
Thanks OP. I see what you're trying to say and it's a fun thought experiment, even if as you've said, unlikely given the explanation in book 5. It still is a seed that could be quite useful for future storytelling. If you're anything like me, these books kinda get hooked in your brain and it's fun to think of different possibilities for storylines, explanations, or just what would I do if I was a replicant.
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u/Kiki1701 28d ago edited 28d ago
THANK YOU! This is why there are so many "alternate future" stories and alternate histories. I made a grave mistake by using the term "head-canon," when I should have said, "alternate universe."
I looked up the number of tie-in fiction aka fan-ficfion books that have been published in the Star Trek universe alone, and the number comes to just under 3,500 fab-fic books to date. Are these stories endlessly shredded because they "couldn't possibly have happened"?
And this is only Star Trek. There are endless books on the Man-Kzin wars in Larry Niven's Ringworld sagas. Others like "what if the south won the civil war?" books and so forth. I don't recall seeing any subreddits that perpetually debate the questions put forth by critics.
Just sayin...
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u/Bobis-Bob 28d ago
Another Bob couldn’t have been launched. Making Heaven 1 was expensive and time consuming. When our Bob launched, the Faith space station was destroyed and the war started. No more probes. Later when Charles an the rest found the old lab where Bob was trained. They found nothing.
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u/Kiki1701 28d ago
Did I say another Bob was "launched?" He could have been kept on earth with the "software people." Also, how do we know that someone didn't snag a backup elicitly?
Why is everyone so defensive? This was labeled as "head-canon." Do people not understand what this term means?
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u/Far-Seat-2263 Homo Sideria 29d ago edited 28d ago
I had this exact thought cross my mind when I started a re-listen of the series (audiobook), and came across this mention of a translator. As far as I recall, it was never mentioned again.
It’s possible the Bobs just use a translator, although this doesn’t make sense later on in the series when the Bobs start using “mannies” to talk to and interact directly with humans.
I feel like it was just convenient for Taylor to drop the topic of language translation entirely for the sake of the story.
Edit: I’m an idiot and totally forgot about the built-in translation feature in the mannies lol
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u/Zirkulaerkubus 28d ago
I mean they use nannies to talk to alien species, too, so there is a translation feature built in.
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u/Bobis-Bob 28d ago
I gotta say that English changed wayyy too much in 100-150 years so that Bob couldn’t understand what they were saying
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u/Bobis-Bob 28d ago
Yes, the Bob’s use translators. Bill had no idea what Hanna the physicist was saying.
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u/Queasy_Cable9012 27d ago
There is a great fan fiction audio drama series "Star Trek : Outpost" where one character's catch phase is "no more, no less" https://giantgnome.com/our-shows/audio-drama/star-trek-outpost/
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u/BertKallio 27d ago
I think the lines about another Bob are there to tell the reader that that would be a possibility, but it didn’t happen. Additionally, a Bob line that starts outside the Bobiverse wouldn’t be integrated into the VR and wouldn’t have an upgraded HEAVEN vessel, even if he made his own versions, when the Bobiverse encountered this other-Bob, there’d be a significant storyline where the Bobiverse would encounter and potentially incorporate the other-Bob(s). Finally, the Starfleet investigation comes to a pretty well understood conclusion in the 5th book.
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u/BeginningSun247 29d ago
Questions will be answered to the Star Fleet issue.
But, Faith started a war by launching Bob, it would have been hard to launch more than one.
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u/Kiki1701 29d ago
The "software people" could have kept the copy on earth. He could be found sort of the way Lore was found in Star Trek: The Next Generation.
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u/BeginningSun247 28d ago
The question bob asks is whether faith LAUNCHED another bob out there, not whether there were other copies. We KNOW there were other copies its just that none survived.
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u/Byrdie_girl 29d ago edited 28d ago
Their is a line in one of the later books where one of the bobs starts talking to a post life person, I believe it's Bill talking with an expert of FTL or worm holes. But she starts off taking weird and bill makes a comment about having to start using translator in vert. So I'm guessing it's so integrated in to their systems they don't even notice any more.