West of Nothing

49. The Fishbowl

"Hey guys, you might want to take a look at this." At first Mason thought the YouTube video must be a prank. Dozens of spiderbot vids were flooding in by the minute. Several popular YouTube personalities had joined the fray, extemporizing on the meme-of-the-moment; some were fast approaching a million views. The trendiest ones had catchy titles like "Spiderbot Demolishes Oreo," "Spiderbot vs. Real Orb Weaver," and "The Spiderbot Torture Chamber." This latter video was a collage of various attempts to inflict damage on an X-Bot by smashing, stretching, sawing, blowtorching or electrifying, all with no effect. This came as no surprise. Most hobbyists didn't have access to the sort of high precision laser-cutters needed to penetrate its graphene composite armor.

Although virtually indestructible, immobilizing an X-Bot turned out to be surprisingly easy, and soon there were videos pronouncing, "Fight back against the Spiderbots!" and "Spiderbot invading your home?—you need to watch this!" Peanut butter was the favorite method, no doubt adopted from the common practice for dealing with wood ticks, but paint and glue worked well too. Anything that sealed off its oxygen pores would do the job. Before long, people were walking around with cans of cherry red spray paint like an army of graffiti artists. The paint not only immobilized the spiderbot but made it a bright red target in case it managed to scurry away and hide. It was also easy to un-do; just spray on some paint remover. It turned out suffocation didn't kill them, at least not for a long time.

This technique was so simple and effective that spray cans were ordered up for the Bridge. At this rate, they were going to need them soon. The X-Bot count was up to nine, another three having arrived that morning.

Mason should have felt relieved. The X-Bots seemed harmless enough and the wave of new discoveries took some pressure off the research team. But the situation reminded him of a player cheat in his favorite first-person shooter game. Ordinarily, one's choice of gear dictated one's strategy. Snipers, with limited high-powered bullets, had to make every shot count. Melee fighters with semi-automatics refreshed their ammo from fallen enemies. But someone with the unlimited ammo cheat could afford to be careless, firing at will. With more X-Bots popping up everywhere, Mason got the uneasy sense that there was an inexhaustible supply of them.

His role as Internet monitor had begun as a self-appointed sideline but, as information flooded into cyberspace, it took on more of an official, full-time status. He was certainly more comfortable with social media than an old-school dinosaur like Skunkworks but not so proficient as Gabby and HotDamn. However, they had more important work to do.

Meanwhile, Doogie and Corny kept a close eye on what was coming out of the university and research laboratories. Most of the news broke on YouTube or Twitter first, where hashtag spiderbot brought up a bottomless tweetstorm. You just had to wade through a cesspool of clickbait and rinse off the sludge of bullshit that clung to every nugget of golden fact. How did you know something was a fact? There were two ways. Either you knew it already to be true (as part of the X-Bot research team, Mason had a head-start in this department) or you waited for confirmation from a reputable source like John Hopkins or the CDC, which had gotten involved due to fears of the spiderbots releasing biological agents. The Department of Homeland Security was now on the case, but they had so far offered little more than bland reassurances.

It was now well established that the spiderbots were not dangerous, at least not to anything larger than a gerbil. They did sting or, rather, took teensy nibbles through the hair-like probes that extended from their anal-port. The on-base lab reported that they metabolized most of what they took in but preserved tiny pieces of foreign DNA intact.

The sting was the equivalent of a mosquito bite. Afterwards, there was a localized feeling of numbness that wore off in a few minutes with no lasting effect. For the sake of a few thousand Facebook Likes, some people were willing to let the spiderbots crawl around on them or even balance on their tongue. One person went so far as to swallow one. Ten hours and some Imodium AD later, he passed it in his stool.