West of Nothing

46. Smoking in the Boy's Room

Have you been on the Internet lately? Gabby messaged Mason. The X-Bot is back.

Mason went straight to Google and did an image search for spiderbot. It wasn't on the first page of results but he didn't have to scroll far. Did someone find a way around the filters? he asked.

Google is letting them through now. Pictures of X-Bots have been circulating on the Dark Web and the Chinese Internet for days now. Baidu, the Chinese search engine, never blocked them to begin with. Why would they when they were blaming them on the Americans? It was quite embarrassing really, the Chinese accusing the U.S. of censoring the Internet—and they were right! Google and Co couldn't suppress them forever, not with dozens of independent sightings in over ten countries, along with several here in the U.S. Now that people have their eyes peeled, I expect that number will rise quickly.

Something about this didn't sit right with Mason. So all this time it's been on the Chinese Internet?

It just picked up steam in the last few days, around the time you spotted the first one on Google.

So you knew about it? How come you didn't tell me sooner?

You do tend to obsess a bit over this stuff.

Mason had to admit she had him pretty well pegged. Just while they were chatting, he must have clicked the refresh button on his browser half a dozen times. Guilty.

Don't sweat it, Gabby said. We've all got our faults.

What's yours?

A girl doesn't talk about her indiscretions. ;)

Fine. I'll just ask around on your blog. What's that web address again? The daily algorithm?

DON'T YOU DARE!

Mason grinned, until he realized he had just clicked refresh again. This time he didn't have to scroll at all. There were two X-Bot images on the first page.

Several minutes later there came a call from the lab asking for Johnny. They needed him to review the latest results for something or other. He had left the lab twenty minutes ago. Had he come by the Bridge? No, he wasn't there either.

Mason had a hunch where he might have gone. It happened to correspond with his need to pee. Both of the door guards were still accounted for, but that didn't mean anything. Johnny had his own dedicated guard since he was back and forth between the lab and the Bridge so much.

As expected, Johnny's guard was standing outside the men's bathroom. Inside, Mason's working nostril picked up the scent of something herbal and skunky. Marijuana here? Maybe one of the engineers needed a little chemical help mellowing out? The lapse in military discipline was uncharacteristic. The bathroom was so spotless it could have doubled as an operating room.

It wasn't hard to tell which stall Johnny was in. It was the only one closed and there was a rattle coming from inside.

"You ok?" Mason asked. He was only going to knock on the stall door but when he put his fist against it, it swung inward. Johnny looked up from the toilet. His knee was twitching, bumping against the toilet roll dispenser, which was causing the rattle. Although his pants were bunched around his ankles, the tails of his button-up shirt covered his privates. But it was his face that caught Mason's attention. It was flushed and drawn. Mason guessed it wasn't from constipation.

"Stinks in here, doesn't it?" Mason said. "I think someone's been hitting the weed."

Johnny lifted a small white cylinder to his mouth, breathed in, then slowly exhaled through his nose. The joint wasn't like any Mason had seen before, not that he had much experience with the stuff. It was a slender white cocoon with a pink, leafy logo printed on it.

"Very bad nerves," Johnny said. He held out his hand, which was visibly shaking. "Doctor prescribe this to me. Works good most of time but now maybe not so well."

"Are you feeling nervous about something?" The words were out of his mouth before he realized how ridiculous they sounded. They had ET in a bottle and the great nations of Earth were at each other's throats.

Johnny took another hit on the joint. "I never think this day will come. There is good chance life exist far away on extrasolar planet, maybe on Mars or moon of Jupiter if lucky. Probably single cell organism. We find bio-signature first and organize space mission to explore. By that time, I am very old or dead already. Chance aliens find us very remote. More like, how you say, an experiment of thought."

"Are you afraid the aliens coming to Earth will be like when the Europeans found the New World and wiped out all the natives?"

"Not like that. Specimen not like conqueror, more like scout. Aliens still very far away. Will take many thousands of years get to Earth. Maybe they never come." Johnny held out the joint. Mason thought he was offering and was seriously considering accepting, but the biologist shifted his shirt tails and tipped ash into the toilet. He took a long drag and held in the smoke for a while before blowing it out.

"This one time I go to Henderson Island to make nature documentary," Johnny resumed. "It very remote island in South Pacific, almost no one live there. Some call it most remote place on Earth. But no place safe from garbage and beaches fill up with junk, causing major dying of sea gulls to happen. We want to capture junky beaches on camera, do our part to save planet, but I not think many people watch our show. First thing we do when we get to island is make autopsy of dead gull. We find stomach and intestines all full of plastic. Digestion is, how you say..."

"All clogged up," Mason filled in.

"Yes, very much clogged up. Gulls starve from lack of nutrition. They have fast metabolism, must eat many times in day. We check stomach of ten gulls, all same, all full of garbage. Seem like simple case of cause and effect. We shoot lots of sad video and call plane to come pick crew up in the morning. But at night I not able to sleep, keep thinking, Why sea gulls eat so much garbage? Maybe they think garbage look like food, but sea gull is smart bird. I never see one eat garbage before. When morning come, I get up before rest of crew and go out to beach to watch gulls feed. They eat type of soft-shell crab, swallow in one bite. Crab hard to see because it is same color as sand. I cannot help to step on some, there so many. Then I notice strange thing. First I think little pieces of trash are being moved by wind but air is still, not even blow hairs on my head. When look closer I see many crabs carry around bits of trash in claw. Some have parts of bag or plastic straws, pieces of net or many other things. Remind me of colony of ants when go out on forage."

"What were they doing with all that trash?" Mason asked.

"They not do anything with, only carry. They put down to dig in sand for food then pick up when done. If wave comes and trash starts to wash away, crabs chase after. Sometimes fight happen between crabs over piece of garbage."

"But if they weren't using it for anything, then why was it so important to them? Did they just have a trash fetish?"

"Makes no sense to me at first. But then I watch gull eat crab and swallow garbage in one bite."

"So the crabs were using the garbage to choke the sea gulls?"

"Crabs have tiny brain, not able to think ahead and make future plans. But maybe some crab survive when trash gets stuck in throat of gulls or gulls die and crabs escape from stomach. Then adaptive trait spread through whole population. This is what I think anyway. Not have chance to conduct full scientific study. Airplane arrive soon and we depart island. Not think about this for long time but now memory come back to me."

"I get it," Mason said. "It's like a parable. You've got these two groups, the gulls and the crabs, and the crabs get their hands on this new piece of technology and use it to overthrow the gulls."

"Is no parable," Johnny said, pursing his lips to get the final draw out of the joint. "Life is complex system with many feedback loop. Maybe all sea gulls die out or maybe they learn to pick out garbage from crabs. I never find out. Only know when something upset balance of nature, nobody guess what happen next."