West of Nothing

2. The X-Bot

The Gray Man led Mason into a wide corridor with exposed sprinkler pipes running overhead. Taxpayer dollars had not been wasted on paint, which might have been army green once but had long ago faded to penitentiary pea-soup. Looking out of place, a geometric, silver object was suspended from the ceiling by wires, casting angular shadows onto the concrete floor.

"Nice sculpture," Mason said by way of making small talk. What is it, a giant shark tooth?"

"It's a tribute to the Hopeless Diamond."

"Is that anything like the Blood Diamond?"

The Gray Man looked at him, blinked. "It's the concept behind the F-117 Stealth Fighter. The diamond shape makes it virtually invisible to radar but nearly impossible to fly."

"Oh, cool," Mason said, feeling like an idiot.

The few people they passed in the corridor were martial and serious, and the steel doors irregularly spaced along the walls looked impenetrable. The theme music to Mission Impossible played in Mason's head as the Gray Man stepped up to an access panel and swiped his badge. The steel door opened with a hiss of hydraulics and the Gray Man waved him through.

Mason was expecting a SpaceX-style rocket factory or a high-tech workshop where they made the latest James Bond spy gear. What he was not expecting was an office cubicle farm.

The beige partitions with their matching ficus pots gave the place a Minecraft feel. A couple engineer types were making conversation in the aisle, but they retreated to their cubes when they saw the Gray Man approaching. Polarized screen protectors shielded their monitors from prying eyes and the bulky computer cases tucked beneath their desks were eerily quiet. No CPU fans. Liquid cooling then, like what high end gaming rigs used. Maybe the work here wasn't so ordinary after all. You didn't need that kind of silicon to run Excel spreadsheets.

The Gray Man ushered Mason into an empty conference room and hooked his laptop up to a shoebox-sized projector. When his screen flashed onto the wall, his email program was briefly visible. Phrases jumped out like vegan menu, Section 38 and radiography scan.

"Shit. Pretend you didn't see that," he said.

A video application came up and a clip began to play. From the first image, Mason sat glued to the screen.

The Gray Man paused the video as it was entering its third loop. "So, Mr. Donnelly, what do you make of that?"

Mason felt like he'd just been jolted out of a trance. "Is that thing for real?"

"It's real all right. An engineer's kid found it crawling around in his backyard."

Mason stared wide-eyed at the still-frame image. The microbot was deceptively simple, even a bit crude at first glance, part granddaddy long legs and part scale-model reaper machine from War of the Worlds. Eight spindly legs projected in a ring from a spherical body. A narrow band ran around its circumference along which moved a single, red eye. The top was covered by a gray dome, featureless except for a starburst pattern that resembled a blast scar. The dome was slightly wider than the body, extending in a short rim.

The legs were peculiar, not like insect legs or tentacles but something in-between. Each leg was made of around forty, vertebrae-like segments and terminated in a two-toed boot with a fringe of micro-fibers. In a freeze frame view, it looked a bit ridiculous. But once it began to move, it was like nothing he'd ever seen—and when it came to microbots, Mason thought he'd seen just about everything.

"Did the military make it?" Mason asked. "DARPA, right? Aren't they the real government tech spooks?"

"Sorry to say, it wasn't our side," replied the Gray Man.

Mason felt a sudden shift in the Force. "The Russkies? No, wait, the Chinese! Or maybe that secret organization from the da Vinci code, the Freemasons?"

"I think we can rule out the Freemasons," the Gray Man said deadpan. "The Chinese, on the other hand, we're not so sure about."

"It's got to be some sort of special effect. Hold on..." Mason glanced around suspiciously. "Am I being pranked? Like on that YouTube show. There's a camera in here somewhere, isn't there?"

"Mr. Donnelly," the Gray Man's voice became stern. "I can assure you that you are not being pranked. Having shot the video ourselves, we are highly confident of its authenticity. Now please try to suspend your disbelief long enough to provide some meaningful observations, or I'm afraid our professional acquaintance may be a very short one."

This sobered Mason up. "Does it have a name yet?"

"We're calling it the X-Bot."

"Cool, like the game console. The X stands for extreme?"

"The X is just a placeholder until we learn more about it. Which, to the point, is why you're here. You are something of an expert on the workings of miniaturized robots, are you not? Think of yourself as a consultant."

"My expert opinion then." Mason felt the need to clear his throat. "Its legs must use some sort of flexor system like mine does, though I bet that's not fishing line in there. The way the segments come apart to make that whipping motion—that's freaking amazing! I mean, did you see what it did there? It actually broke the glass."

"It was just a pickle jar. What's so amazing about that?"

"Just a pickle jar? When you're the size of an M&M, ordinary things take on these super properties. Raindrops are like water bombs, a sheet of paper like a brick wall. And glass, well, it might as well be steel. Even a desert scorpion couldn't break through that."

"It did take the X-Bot a while," the Gray Man said. "Long enough to be transported here in fact."

"That just proves my point. It used the spike of its foot like a pickaxe to chip away at the same spot. That takes some pretty good aim, not to mention a lot of juice. Say, what's its battery life like?"

"We're not sure," the Gray Man said. "It's been going for two days now."

"No shit." Mason whistled. "Let me guess, there's a charging port on the bottom?" The video hadn't shown any good views of its underside.

"It has a pinhead-sized aperture, but its function is still up for debate."

"Maybe it charges by induction," Mason speculated. "Still, two days on a single charge is pretty impressive. Most smartwatches can do that, but they're not moving around. Locomotion amps up the energy usage by a crazy amount. Speaking of which, this thing moves weird. Maybe because its legs are in a circle and not just along the sides like a normal spider. So instead of shifting its body to change direction, it just rotates its eye around. Did you see where it got some water on its feet and did that skating thing? It must be streaming live data so the big cloud-brains can crunch over it and beam back new instructions."

"It's in a shielded room," said the Gray Man. "No signals go in or out."

Mason looked at the screen with even greater appreciation. The X-Bot was frozen in an action pose with its hammer-foot cocked back over its body. "Whoa. That thing is seriously smart. Have you run it through an obstacle course?"

"Not yet. But perhaps you could be of some help in that regard. How would you like to study it in a more hands-on capacity?"

"Seriously?" It was like being asked if, after winning the lottery, you really wanted to collect your money. Well, fuck yes! "When can I see it?"