West of Nothing

54. Hunting Season

"I think something is wrong with Delta," Corny said. "About an hour ago, it started to act sluggish and uncoordinated, like what happened to Alpha when we pumped the oxygen out. It managed to drag itself up to the top of that mound before it collapsed and stopped moving. I thought it might have finally run out of juice, but the other X-Bots are still going strong. Something doesn't seem right."

"Maybe it's sick," Mason guessed. "It's part animal, right? Maybe it caught a virus or something."

"I wondered about that, so I checked with Johnny. He said it's possible, but he would have to examine it in the lab."

"Do you think we should wake up HotDamn?" Mason asked. The entrepreneur was now leader of the team in all but title.

"What could he do about it?" Corny bristled at the suggestion.

By the time HotDamn returned to the Bridge four hours later with drawn eyes and matted hair, another X-Bot had entered a torpor state and a third, this one in Johnny's lab, was showing signs of slowing down. Meanwhile, Delta hadn't stirred.

Around that time, the first reports of spiderbot torpor syndrome, or STS, started showing up on the Internet. By that evening, a substantial fraction had succumbed to it with numbers increasing by the hour. The condition followed the same course Corny had described: slowness and lack of coordination followed by progressive loss of leg function. With the last of its mobility, the spiderbot would seek out open ground. Within an hour or two, the eye would stop tracking and the paralysis would be complete. Best they could tell, STS had been triggered simultaneously around the globe.

Several dormant spiderbots were put to dissection, showing no response even when being sliced into. Biopsies were taken and examined with electron microscopes.

"This not case of simple paralysis," Johnny said. "Paralysis result from loss of executive function but organ tissue remain intact. This is catalytic breakdown at cellular level, maybe caused by release of digestive acid."

"They're digesting themselves?" HotDamn asked.

"In manner of speaking," replied Johnny. "We see breakdown of most cell structures, including cytoskeleton and mitochondria. Cell respiration stop and cell membrane burst into many small parts."

"They still look pretty normal on the outside," Mason remarked.

"Acid have little effect on hard parts like carbon shell and legs. Also, chromatin-bound SDNA bundles free of damage. Like inside of body being turned into soup with noodles—strips of membrane—and rice grains—SDNA bundles."

In other words, it's destroying the cellular structure but preserving the information, Gabby observed. Maybe it has reached the end of its mission parameters.

"So it's turning itself into a spider-shaped thumb drive?" Skunkworks said. "What good would that do if they just conk out on the ground?"

"Maybe the mothership will come along and scoop them up." The idea sounded ridiculous even to Mason. "Or maybe they beam up the data."

"Mothership my ass," Skunkworks grumbled.

"But if there were something out there to receive it, would they be able to get a message out?" Coming from HotDamn, the idea sounded more intelligent somehow. "Our phones connect to satellites, don't they?"

Skunkworks shook his head. "Handheld phones don't have enough power to boost a signal to space. That's why they talk to radio towers which in turn talk to satellites. And that's even with antennas, which the X-Bots are lacking."