West of Nothing

38. Hatching an Egg

Mason came to on a hospital pallet in a small room. There was a counter with hand disinfectant and other sundries. The walls were beige and bare except for a poster with the title How to spot the first signs of AL Amyloidosis. Some kind of infirmary or nurse's office?

An IV line ran from the back of his left hand to a nearly deflated bag on a stand. A slim figure in military khakis, which he took for a guard, was sitting in a chair staring into a tablet.

"What happened?" Mason croaked. His mouth was dry and tasted of scorched metal.

"You went into hypoglycemic shock and blacked out," the guard said without looking up. "You've been doping yourself up with enough Fritos and Mountain Dew to kill a horse. Doesn't help that you're pre-diabetic. You should really consider going on a diet. Oh, and get that nose fixed or the next time you pass out you'll break your face."

"Did the doctor tell you this?"

The guard looked up from his tablet to glower at him. "I'm a medic. At least I will be if I ever pass this exam I'm cramming for. If you want to lose the IV, drink up and eat that." He indicated a plastic bottle and some sort of nutty bar on the stand next to Mason's pallet.

Mason gulped down half the bottle in one go. Gatorade. The bar had a peanut butter vibe with something squishy like raisins or cranberries. Pretty revolting but he did feel better after eating it. Recalling the events on the Bridge that had landed him here, a sense of dread began to set in. Finally, he worked up the courage to ask. "Am I being sent away?"

"Sent away to where?"

"I don't know. Guantanamo Bay or someplace like that. You know, where they send the terrorists and spies?"

The medic shrugged. "Are you a terrorist or spy?"

"No."

"Then why would the government waste good tax payer dollars on you?"

The question had a reassuring logic. "I can go back to the Bridge then?"

"Once you've finished your—"

"Done." Mason held up the empty bottle.

On the way to the Bridge, Mason was having serious second thoughts. He had mostly gotten over his fear of being whisked away by armed guards, but he was still worried about what the other team members would think. Would they believe he hadn't posted that picture to the Internet?

He didn't have long to stew over it. Corny met him at the doors with an uncharacteristic grin. "Come on, you're going to want to see this. I can't believe you almost missed it. You have the worst timing."

"About that whole Internet image thing," Mason began, trying to sound casual. "I don't know how that picture of the X-Bot got there. I didn't upload anything, I swear."

"Of course you didn't put it there," Corny said. "Even you couldn't be that stupid."

"But if I didn't do it, then someone must have..."

"Found another X-Bot and snapped some pictures of it. For all we know, it could be the Chinese. Anyway, you may want to sit down for this next part. We wouldn't want you passing out again."

Mason did as instructed. Someone had placed a veggie tray on the shelf next to his workstation. How thoughtful.

"Direct your attention to Jumbo three," Corny said.

Mason had been eyeing the screen since he walked in, but he still couldn't make sense of what he saw there. What could that partial geodesic pattern have to do with anything?

"Remember that twisty tadpole thing the X-Bot does when you put it in a vacuum?" Corny said.

"That's to protect its legs when it re-enters the atmosphere, right?"

"More or less. Skunkworks can explain it better."

"What was that?" Skunkworks missed his cue. "Oh, right. The atmospheric re-entry dilemma. If the X-Bot were flying head-on into a high-speed wind tunnel, then the coiled-up legs would fit safely inside the slipstream. But as anyone who has ridden an airplane knows, the atmosphere contains pockets and eddies which cause turbulence. Even minor buffeting would expose the legs to searing heat, and that's before you add the clompy feet on the end."

"In other words," Corny summarized, "the X-Bot should have burned up in the atmosphere but obviously it didn't. Below the hard hat, it looks as pristine as if it hatched from an egg."

Mason looked to the screen then back to Corny, who was clearly relishing his cluelessness. "That's interesting, but I'm still not making the connection, I guess."

"It's because the X-Bot did hatch from an egg!"

This did not cause any lights to go on for Mason. "You don't mean egg as in like what birds lay?"

"Don't get caught up on what it's made of," Corny said. "Think in terms of shape and function."

"So that thing up there is..."

"Part of the X-Bot's re-entry shell."

"Where did you find it?"

"Right under our feet. Or right under the X-Bot's feet, you might say. That's just one of eight sections which fit together to form a protective shield around its lower body. Once it's on the ground it doesn't need the protection any longer, but it would be an awful waste to throw away that much useful mass. So the shell splits apart, the separate pieces fold up, and then they redeploy in a completely new configuration."

Suddenly it clicked. "Noooo..."

"Yesssss."

"You're telling me it has origami eggshells for feet?"

"Graphene polymer, origami eggshells, to be precise," Goat added. "The mat-lab sent this diagram over a few minutes ago. I thought they got their files mixed up until I read through the analysis."

They were still marveling over this latest finding when a K-Pop riff blasted through the sound system. Whoa-oh—better watch out! Gabby had taken to using the bombastic music as a way of getting the team's attention.

"Does sound system have volume control?" said Johnny, who had been spending some quality zen time on the Bridge that morning.

Exciting news deserves an exciting intro, Gabby said.

"OK, as we say in America, lay it on us!"

I think I know what those long strings of SDNA are for.