"I think something is wrong with Delta," Corny said. "About an hour ago, it started to act sluggish and uncoordinated, like what happened to Alpha when we pumped the oxygen out. It managed to drag itself up to the top of that mound before it collapsed and stopped moving. I thought it might have finally run out of juice, but the other X-Bots are still going strong. Something doesn't seem right."
"Maybe it's sick," Mason guessed. "It's part animal, right? Maybe it caught a virus or something."
"I wondered about that, so I checked with Johnny. He said it's possible, but he would have to examine it in the lab."
"Do you think we should wake up HotDamn?" Mason asked. The entrepreneur was now leader of the team in all but title.
"What could he do about it?" Corny bristled at the suggestion.
By the time HotDamn returned to the Bridge four hours later with drawn eyes and matted hair, another X-Bot had entered a torpor state and a third, this one in Johnny's lab, was showing signs of slowing down. Meanwhile, Delta hadn't stirred.
Around that time, the first reports of spiderbot torpor syndrome, or STS, started showing up on the Internet. By that evening, a substantial fraction had succumbed to it with numbers increasing by the hour. The condition followed the same course Corny had described: slowness and lack of coordination followed by progressive loss of leg function. With the last of its mobility, the spiderbot would seek out open ground. Within an hour or two, the eye would stop tracking and the paralysis would be complete. Best they could tell, STS had been triggered simultaneously around the globe.
Several dormant spiderbots were put to dissection, showing no response even when being sliced into. Biopsies were taken and examined with electron microscopes.
"This not case of simple paralysis," Johnny said. "Paralysis result from loss of executive function but organ tissue remain intact. This is catalytic breakdown at cellular level, maybe caused by release of digestive acid."
"They're digesting themselves?" HotDamn asked.
"In manner of speaking," replied Johnny. "We see breakdown of most cell structures, including cytoskeleton and mitochondria. Cell respiration stop and cell membrane burst into many small parts."
"They still look pretty normal on the outside," Mason remarked.
"Acid have little effect on hard parts like carbon shell and legs. Also, chromatin-bound SDNA bundles free of damage. Like inside of body being turned into soup with noodles—strips of membrane—and rice grains—SDNA bundles."
In other words, it's destroying the cellular structure but preserving the information, Gabby observed. Maybe it has reached the end of its mission parameters.
"So it's turning itself into a spider-shaped thumb drive?" Skunkworks said. "What good would that do if they just conk out on the ground?"
"Maybe the mothership will come along and scoop them up." The idea sounded ridiculous even to Mason. "Or maybe they beam up the data."
"Mothership my ass," Skunkworks grumbled.
"But if there were something out there to receive it, would they be able to get a message out?" Coming from HotDamn, the idea sounded more intelligent somehow. "Our phones connect to satellites, don't they?"
Skunkworks shook his head. "Handheld phones don't have enough power to boost a signal to space. That's why they talk to radio towers which in turn talk to satellites. And that's even with antennas, which the X-Bots are lacking."
"Maybe the legs serve as antennas," Doogie suggested. "They're certainly long enough and it's got eight of them."
"In theory it could pick up signals sent down from space. But it would still take a major boost to send an outbound signal back."
"Could they network themselves and amplify their signal?"
"If they were at a high enough elevation, but at ground level there are too many obstructions."
"What about in the ocean?" Mason asked. "They're saying STS spiderbots are rising to the surface and just floating there."
"The situation would be even worse on water. At least the ground can be counted on to stay put. Unless they sprout wings or start climbing Devil's Tower, I think we can rule out the ground-based transmission hypothesis."
"Then why bother finding an open spot?" Mason wondered aloud. "I saw a post where they were coming out of yards and going into STS right on the sidewalk. People could pick them off the ground."
"Could they tap into Earth's communication infrastructure?" HotDamn asked.
Any data system can be compromised, Gabby pointed out. But so far the X-Bots have shown little interest in human technology, and there have been no credible incidents of hacking or infiltration.
"Maybe they're time capsules," Mason said. "You know, like when someone buries a diary and digs it up a hundred years later to see what ordinary life was like back then."
"It's as plausible as anything else we've heard," Skunkworks remarked. "I've got to say, this STS thing has me pretty well stumped."
"One other thing I forget to mention," Johnny said. "Many gas pockets form in cytoplasm and more grow as we speak, creating much build-up of pressure. If you puncture shell, it cause spontaneous release of gas and cytoplasm. I learn this hard way."
"Spontaneous release," Skunkworks said. "As in an explosion?"
"Pop like firecracker," Johnny said. "Process is very violent, may cause injury at close range. Already damage one laser."
"Wouldn't the gas just escape through the respiration tubules?" Corny asked.
"Tubules blocked when STS starts," Johnny said. "Membrane form obstruction, like plug. Maybe this what cause STS in first place, not know yet."
"So basically they hold their breath until they pass out and later they pop," Doogie summarized. "And we have no idea why."
"Only can wait and see," said Johnny.
But humankind, at least the portion with access to the Internet, was not inclined to take a wait and see approach. Within twelve hours of the global "spideralysis," as it came to be called, the word went out: spiderbots were vulnerable. This was humanity's best chance to strike a lethal blow against the alien invasion which, according to the latest CNN web poll, had just surpassed government conspiracy as the leading school of thought.
What did the Internet think was behind STS? Aside from run-down batteries, killer viruses (War of the Worlds, anyone?), or intervention by a Higher Power, there were three leading theories.
Theory one: the spiderbots had accomplished their mission (whatever that was) and were now going into permanent shutdown mode.
Theory two: the spiderbots were metamorphosing into some new and probably more dangerous life-form to enact the next stage of their plan for world domination.
Theory three: some government or corporation had successfully hacked into the spiderbots' central processor and sent a power down sequence. Human ingenuity saves the day!
At first the US government remained silent but, as events began to spiral out of control, it threw its weight behind the latter theory. Both the Americans and the Chinese were now claiming credit for using their network of military satellites to send jamming signals that interfered with the spiderbots' brain circuitry and knocked them off-line. Why didn't the spiderbots all keel over at once? Because there was some variability in signal strength and circuitry, of course.
While Mason knew this to be a bold-faced lie, it was a good lie in that it was difficult to verify and backed by a lot of convincing technobabble. Arguably, the lie also did some good: it prevented mass panic, created a sense of security and, perhaps most importantly, gave people something to do.
According to this narrative, the spiderbots were only temporarily neutralized. Eliminating the threat for good meant rounding them up and destroying them. Easy to follow instructions were provided across all media outlets and could be performed with household objects in the safety of one's home. Never mind that such a scheme was completely impractical given the spiderbots' vast numbers distributed around the globe. Even so, maybe humanity could wipe out enough to thwart the aliens' mission and send a clear message, "Don't fuck with humanity." But Mason couldn't help wondering if it would just piss them off.
People were taking the purge seriously. Self-appointed "hunters," armed with metal cannisters, spray cans and a new model of lightweight graphene detector, fanned out across the countryside while sweeper crews went house to house. The largest of these vigilante groups called themselves the Home Defense Force, or Defenders for short.
The Defenders did not take a lenient attitude toward spiderbot sympathizers. Some of the stories were chilling. For the moment, the civilized world was largely living up to its reputation, but the crazies were starting to come out of the woodwork. Even more worrisome, otherwise ordinary people were starting to behave in irrational ways. Store shelves were emptied of bottled water and canned goods. Gas stations were drained of gas. Looting broke out in cities. A bunker mentality was setting in.
On the Internet, it was only a clash of words. But they were fighting words.