Autonomous

by Annalee Newitz

Threezed and Med stood in piles of garbage, bright yellow air pressure guns in their hands, shooting what looked like jumbo-size hard candies at Paladin and Eliasz. Blotches of virus paste spread over Paladin’s torso, sealing the bot’s guns inside her chest. The pink goo was a novel, experimental substance, and the bot had never been hardened against it. She tore at the spreading patches, but they swarmed onto her fingers, making mittens out of her digits. Med stepped forward, strands of metal twitching in her stump while her undamaged arm fired off another round at the man, who had started to scream. Everywhere the virus marbles hit him, bizarre forests of fine hair seemed to spring out of his skin. His face was growing a riot of glassy curls, and his eyelashes tangled shut. Eliasz gasped through his mouth as his nasal passages filled with tiny stalks. Somehow, the viruses had wriggled under Eliasz’ skin and eaten through his bio-glass perimeter wires. All those millions of microscopic fibers, kept under constant tension, had sprung out of his skin and formed a disabling tangle of fiber-optic fur.