West of Nothing

5. Glass Frogs

Mason's roommate the previous semester was a herpetologist with a passion for glass frogs that came close to rivaling Mason's obsession with micro-robotics. Naturally, they had struck up a lively debate over whose field of study was the superior one. To keep the argument from spiraling into armed jihad, they decided to reverse roles. Mason took the position glass frogs were amazing and microbots sucked while his roommate argued the opposite.

"Robots don't have sex," Mason pointed out. "Need I say more."

Roommate. "I fail to see the exemplary quality of frog sex."

Mason. "Don't frogs have these giant orgies where the male frogs throw down for the ladies and then everyone starts humping each other?"

Roommate. "Yeah, it's real kinky stuff all right. Picture a moist bag of gummy candies where they're all sticking to each other. When a frog is really getting his mojo on, his mouth gulps open and his pointy butt does this twitchy thing like someone stuck an electrode up his anus. It really gets inside your head. You'll be making out with a girl and all you can think of is twitchy frog butts."

Mason. "At least you get to make out with real girls. All I ever get to do is jack off to porn."

Roommate. "You can't blame your not getting laid on robots. That's all due to your twerpy personality."

Mason. "Of course I can blame it on robots. I spend all my time in the fab-lab putting them together one teensy little part at a time. But look at frogs. They come out of the egg all pre-assembled and pre-programmed. If you want to study them, all you have to do is go down to the riverbank."

Roommate. "Not for glass frogs. For those, you have to go deep into the rainforest. We're talking real Heart of Darkness shit with giant pythons and spiders the size of dinner plates."

Mason. "Sounds like a vacation compared to the fab-lab. I think there's a scabies epidemic."

Most of the debate had just been meaningless banter, but on occasion the mock arguments had been compelling enough to make Mason question whether he had indeed chosen the right field of study.

"The thing about frogs is that they actually exist," Mason said in one of his more impassioned rants. "You can study them, take them apart and see how their organs work. They do all these amazing things like jump around and catch flies and shit—literally shit, as in turning flies into energy and smelly, harmless byproducts. And they do it so naturally, like they were born knowing what to do, which I guess they were. You don't even have to charge them up. You just set them loose in a jungle and they go about their little froggy business. If some of them die, no big deal, they self-replicate. Maybe one day, say in a hundred years, robots will be like that, but now they're just these klunky things that can't tell the edge of a table from their own ass. Forget about hunting and eating and making little robot babies. I wish some super genius, or maybe God, had already made a kick-ass microbot just so I could see how it was done."

As Mason skimmed through hours of footage of the X-Bot, he couldn't help thinking, Someone had really done it. They had created the miniaturized robot of his dreams. Not God surely, just some ordinary government or corporation, but they might as well be God in his book. It was humbling to see yourself outclassed on every front, yet how could he not stand in awe of the achievement? Especially when the X-Bot could do something so amazing as eat glass.

Watching the video clip unfold, Mason felt his own surprise echoed in the reactions of the group.

"Does that water droplet look a bit odd to you?" Doogie remarked, zooming in on the bottom of the pickle jar near the breakout hole.

Corny grunted. "Really, we're analyzing water droplets now?"

"Can we get a better angle on it?" Skunkworks asked.

There was a pause of a minute or two in the dialogue. Ordinarily, this was where Shouter would jump in with some inane (or occasionally insightful) remark that would spur further brainstorming, but it seemed Gabby and Shouter had not been part of the group back then. The team went by their real names and there was some guy called Daniels that hadn't spoken much.

"You're right," Skunkworks said at last. "That's not water there. It's part of the glass. The bubble-up effect is just an illusion."

"Maybe a chip broke off?" Corny said.

"Not likely. It's not in the shatter zone and it's too smooth and rounded."

"You think the X-Bot could have made it?" Corny asked.

"Only one way to find out." Doogie ran the video in reverse, causing the X-Bot to skitter backwards into the jar as glass shards re-jigsawed themselves back into place. Trapped once more, it hammered away at the glass (that part looked little different running backwards), pausing every now and then as if to take a breather. During one of these breaks, it squatted on top of the spot where the divot was to appear. The video shifted back into forward-time. When the X-Bot raised itself up, it left behind a shallow crater.

"Did it just take a bite out of the glass?" Doogie said.

"I don't think so," replied Skunkworks. "Even if it had teeth, I doubt it could get enough leverage to chomp into it like that. Besides, I don't see any scrape marks."

"Maybe it used some sort of acid?" Corny suggested.

"Hydrofluoric acid might do the job. I would expect to see a residue, but maybe it reabsorbed the corrosive agent along with the dissolved silicates."

"Why bother?" Doogie asked. "It didn't help it break out of the jar."

"Maybe it has some way of converting it into useful materials or energy. Hell, for all we know, it might use it to spin a web with."

"Hold on a minute," the guy called Daniels spoke up for the first time. Mason had taken an instant disliking to him, though he couldn't have said why. "This all seems too pat. Some engineer's kid just happens to capture this advanced micro-robot in a pickle jar. Next thing we know, it's taking nibbles out of the glass and busting its way out. Doesn't that seem a bit coincidental to you? I mean, why a glass jar? Why not a plastic container or a metal toolbox—something it couldn't escape from so easily?"

"Are you saying it might be a setup?" Corny said. "That someone wanted us to find the X-Bot and arranged things so it could show off its party tricks?"

"That would certainly explain a lot," Doogie agreed.

But Skunkworks wasn't so sure. "If it really was caught by a kid, they would have grabbed a pickle jar over something bulky like a toolbox. Whatever that stuff is, I bet it would do areal number on plastic and cardboard too. In that case, it would have escaped before it could be brought in. Metal might be a different story, but who knows? However you slice it, what we have here is an enigma, wrapped in a mystery, in a glass bell."