Robo-Bug by Bill Bowler

Am not I

A fly like thee?

Or art not thou

A man like me?

- Wm. Blake

Frank Stein and Lionel Plankton bumped heads as they leaned across Lionel's desk from opposite directions.

"Will you please be careful!" Lionel rubbed his scalp.

"Sorry, Lionel." Frank winced.

Both men gazed down at the photo on the desk between them, a hi-res aerial reconnaissance view of a walled compound. The word "CLASSIFIED" was printed in red across the top of the image.

Frank wiped his glasses and studied the picture. "Looks like you've got a coffee stain there, Lionel."

"It's not a coffee stain, Frank. They're scrambling the image."

"They can do that?"

"Apparently."

"That's not good."

"No."

Frank took a closer look at the smudge. "So what do you think they're hiding?"

"We have good reason to believe..."

There was a knock.

"What is it?" asked Lionel.

The door opened and a young woman entered. "I found the file, Admiral."

"Come in, Tamara." Lionel smiled. "Frank, this is my assistant, Miss Hari."

Frank nodded. Tamara smiled demurely. Her clinging blouse was open three buttons down the front, drawing Frank's gaze to the hills and shadows and the unexplored depths. As his eyes continued their journey south, he couldn't help but admire her slender waist. He noticed that her skirt was shorter than might be expected in a professional office environment and that her thighs were tanned and muscular, like a tennis player's.

Tamara put the file down on Lionel's desk. Her eyes fell briefly on the satellite photo.

"That shot's kind of blurry in the middle."

Lionel turned the photo face down.

"That will be all for now, Tamara."

"Yes, Admiral." Tamara swung her hips and sashayed across the carpet on stiletto heels. She paused at the door. "Nice to meet you, Frank."

"Likewise. Me, too," Frank mumbled. He looked down but looked up again to admire the rear view before the door closed.

Alone again with Lionel, Frank took a breath and picked up the satellite photo. "If they're scrambling the image, what are they hiding?"

Lionel lowered his voice. "We suspect, with good reason, that they're enriching Exorbium at this site."

Frank's eyes went wide. Lionel continued.

"It's a violation of the Non-Dispersal Treaty. Not that we signed the treaty. The boys upstairs want to play it safe and blow the place up, hit them with a surgical strike."

"But," said Frank, "the Exorbium could detonate. It could set off a chain reaction."

"Can't be helped."

"They'd retaliate. The situation could escalate."

"We have to take that risk." Lionel's face was grim.

"Listen, Lionel, we're shooting in the dark here. We need to get inside the perimeter and take a look around, find out what they're up to."

"We've already tried that, Frank. Three infiltration missions have failed. Each time, our local assets have been identified by the enemy and neutralized. We're running out of options."

Lionel put the satellite image in a top secret folder and locked it in his desk drawer.

"I'm telling you, we can do it!" said Frank.

"I appreciate your enthusiasm, Frank, but-"

"We can get in there," Frank insisted.

"How?"

"Cyborg micro-drone."

Lionel rolled his eyes.

"We're ready," said Frank. "The test results have been spectacular."

"They won't buy it upstairs."

"Just give me one chance, Lionel, one chance."

"I don't know."

"Come with me," said Frank. "I'll show you."

Frank opened the door and bumped into Tamara, who was bending over in the doorway. She dropped a sheaf of papers that scattered on the floor like autumn leaves.

"I'm so sorry!" said Frank. "Here, let me help you."

Frank knelt down beside Tamara and helped her gather the strewn papers. Her thigh brushed against his, and something seemed to pass between them, something that excited Frank and took his mind off the project, if only for a moment.

* * *

Frank and Lionel took the elevator to the sub-basement and walked down a drab hallway past uniformed guards to an unmarked door at the end of the corridor. Frank looked into the retinal scanner, the door clicked open, and the two men entered a spacious laboratory. Rows of tables with large glass tanks, heat lamps, plastic piping, and hundreds of test tubes in wooden racks filled the room. Men in white lab coats were bending over test tubes, peering into microscopes, adjusting gauges and dials, typing at keyboards, and milling around the room talking among themselves.

Frank gestured toward a table on their left. Lionel observed a glass tank, like an aquarium, covered with thin mesh and filled with swarming bugs. He began to feel itchy.

Beside the tank, a large glass tube rested upright on a stand. A thin metal rod ran the length of the tube. Attached to the rod was a brown flaky mass. As Lionel watched, the flaky mass slowly peeled open, and a large damp insect crawled out and unfurled its wings.

Frank pointed to their right, and Lionel saw a technician holding a grub with a pair of tweezers. The technician inserted a tiny metal sliver into the flesh of the larva and placed it gently in an empty test tube with a metal rod in the center. The larva crawled up the rod and began to weave a cocoon.

"This is all very interesting," said Lionel, scratching himself, "but-"

"We grow the micro-electronics inside the pupae," said Frank. "By increasing oxygen levels, we obtain greater payload capacity."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"The bio-electronic interface facilitates remote control."

"But Frank-"

"Listen to me, Lionel. We're talking about non-traditional air power here."

Lionel scratched his head.

Frank continued, "We can modulate take-off, landing, heading, and velocity."

A glimmer of understanding flitted across Lionel's face.

"These things can be mass-produced rapidly." Frank drove the point home. "Our remote control operators can deliver a unit within five meters of a designated target."

"I think I see where you're going with this, Frank. Can you hook up a little camera to one of these buggers?"

"No problem."

Lionel knit his brows and scratched his chin.

"All right then, Frank. We'll deploy. Let's see what those sons of bitches are hiding. This is your baby. I want you in charge of the mission. I'll hold them off upstairs, but if anything goes wrong, they'll pull the plug on the whole project, and you'll be back testing bug spray in the private sector."

"Don't worry, Lionel. We're ready to roll. What could go wrong?"

* * *

"It's odd we keep running into each other like this," said Tamara.

"You know what they say," said Frank. "Twice is circumstance."

"Or maybe destiny?" Tamara grinned.

They stood in the parking lot, smiling awkwardly at each other.

"You know, Frank," said Tamara, "I was just wondering. Do you... Oh, never mind. It's silly."

"What?" said Frank. "Do I what?"

"I don't know why I thought of it. Do you play tennis?"

"Um, no. I mean, I don't, but I could."

"I could teach you. It would be fun."

"I'd like that. Very much."

Tamara's face lit up. "Then it's settled. Here's my number. Call me."

"I will."

"By the way, what were you showing Admiral Plankton in the lab? He seemed very impressed when he came back to the office."

"I'm not supposed to talk about it, Tamara."

"I know." Tamara lowered her eyes. "But you're such an interesting man, Frank. I want to know all about you. Everything." She was standing right beside him, almost touching him. Frank felt the closeness of her aura and her magnetism.

"I, ah..." Frank cleared his throat. "I don't know where to begin. It's boring really, and kind of technical."

"Nothing about you is boring." Tamara touched his hand. "Please."

"Well," Frank glanced around, "we're developing autonomous micro-electric cybernetic organisms."

"But that's fascinating. I've always been attracted to intelligent men. It's clear you have a brilliant intellect, Frank."

"Aw, not really." Frank blushed. "Anyway, we insert the micro-electronics during the larval stage..."

* * *

A gigantic, black, hairy fly the size of a bumble bee flew down the side of the mountain. It crossed a dusty road, flew through a sentry post, up over a brick wall, past an armed guard dozing in a chair, and buzzed along the shaded side of a concrete blockhouse.

The fly banked left through an open window, circled a table in the corner of the room, extended its legs, and commenced final approach. Once at rest on the tabletop, the fly rubbed its forelegs together and looked around the room.

In a secure bunker in the sub-basement of a nondescript building in Fairfax, Virginia, a series of images flickered on Frank's screen: a window, the interior of a room, a table top, and finally, the backs of two men sitting at a computer monitor.

"Hold it right there, Lou," said Frank.

The operator steadied the joystick.

"Can you see what they're looking at?"

"No, sir."

"We need a closer look at that monitor."

"Yes, sir."

Lou pushed the throttle. The fly took off, adjusted its heading, and buzzed towards the men. The top half of the enemy monitor began to come into view. The image on Frank's screen suddenly rotated clockwise and disappeared in a blur of motion.

"Damn!" muttered Lou. He jiggled the joystick and started pressing buttons on the console panel.

"What happened?" asked Frank. "I want to see that screen. Go back to the screen."

"That could be a problem, sir." Lou let go of the stick and began typing commands through the keyboard. "The unit is not responding."

"What do you mean, it's not responding?"

"We're transmitting, the signal is received, but the unit is not responding."

"Well, keep trying!"

"I am, sir."

Lou tapped keys on the keyboard, pushed buttons on the console panel, and jiggled the joystick. The fly circled the room.

Frank began to mutter under his breath. Lou pulled a cord from an in-put, blew on the tip of the connector, and reinserted it into the neighboring slot.

"Will you hurry up, please?"

"I'm on it." Lou pushed the stick right. The fly turned left.

Lou's analysis of the problem was correct. The little fly's nervous system had received the command to bank right, but the little fly brain was conflicted. An overpoweringly attractive aroma was wafting from the left.

Lou tapped the keys and tilted the stick. Right came the command. Bank right.

The fly considered banking right. It wanted to bank right. It was prepared to bank right. But the most alluring fragrance was reaching its sense organs from the left, and the better part of its little brain had the irresistible urge to go left.

"It's still glitching, sir," Lou reported.

"Can't you do something?" asked Frank.

"I don't know, sir. We could try a full-power reset, but we would lose contact with the drone for a short period, and it might not work, anyway. We need to do some trouble-shooting. We don't know if the problem is hardware or software."

Frank threw up his hands. "I don't believe this."

"Look, sir." Lou pointed at the screen.

Blurred images flashed by, the screen turned white and then came into focus. The close up image of a white granular surface rippled with dunes appeared on the monitor. It looked like the Gobi Desert.

In the blockhouse control room, the fly had disobeyed a direct command, turned its back on the enemy computer, and veered off towards the aroma. It flew across the room, went into a nose dive, and plopped down face first, knee-deep in confectioner's sugar on top of a half-eaten donut.

The image came into focus and Frank stared at the rolling white dunes on the screen.

"What's that? Where is it?"

"I don't know, sir."

From out of nowhere, a flat, rubbery, spatula-like surface came smashing down. The rush of wind propelled the fly forward as the fly swatter slapped down on the donut. Skewed images flashed by on Frank's screen in quick succession as the robo-bug frantically corkscrewed through the air towards the ceiling.

"Look out! Look out!" Frank shouted at Lou. "You're going to crash!"

Lou expertly manipulated the joystick. The fly leveled off, and the image on the screen stabilized.

Lou pushed the stick forward and the fly headed towards an open window. A hand appeared and pushed the window shut.

"Watch where you're going!" Frank shouted again.

Lou calmly pushed the stick left. The fly banked sharply, avoiding the windowpane, and began to climb.

"We have regained control of the drone," said Lou.

"That was close," said Frank. "Do you think they know?"

"Hard to tell," said Lou.

The fly went into a holding pattern, circling the room near the ceiling. A door opened, and a security guard entered the room with an aerosol spray can.

"Go! Go!" said Frank.

Lou pushed the throttle to full and the fly accelerated out the open door as the spray can hissed behind it.

"You made it!" said Frank. "Good job. Now let's get out of there."

The fly buzzed at full velocity down a corridor at ceiling height, and turned a corner. An intricately woven net of cables appeared on the screen.

"Look out! Look out!" screamed Frank, but it was too late. The fly flew into a spider web high in the corner of an alcove.

Lou switched into reverse and pushed the accelerator. The fly buzzed frantically, but could not pull free.

"We're stuck," said Lou.

"Oh, great," said Frank. "That's just great."

"Now what, sir?"

"Let me think, will you? There must be a way out."

Frank stared at the monitor, his brain racing through the possibilities, searching for the solution. Suddenly, a terrifying hairy speckled face with ferocious jaws and eight staring, unblinking inhuman eyes filled the screen.

"Oh my God!" Frank involuntarily took a step back.

"Uh-oh," said Lou.

Normally, the spider would have wrapped up its prey to eat later, but four days had passed since its last meal. The spider lifted the fly to its open jaws and bit down.

The screen went blank.

As the spider chewed on a tasty morsel, it chomped down on a piece of something hard and cracked a mandible. A sharp pain shot through the spider's jaw. It spit out the offending mouthful, rubbed its jaw, and returned to the edge of its web to wait for the next guest.

Frank gazed at the blank screen and turned to Lou.

"Spider-bot?"

"Sir," said Lou, "that was a real spider."

"Of course," said Frank. "Listen, can you scroll back before the glitch to the partial shot of the enemy monitor. Maybe we've got something."

Frank felt a nudge near his left buttock and turned around. A large dog stood behind him, drooling and wagging its tail.

"What's that dog doing in here?"

"She's a guard dog, sir," said a security officer standing near the door.

Frank looked at the dog's face. The dog looked back at Frank and seemed to be studying his features. Frank stared at the dog, and the dog stared back. It was no longer wagging its tail.

"Say, what's going on here?" Frank thought.

The dog walked around Frank, put its front paws up on the desk, and looked at the screen displaying the image from the surveillance mission.

The tail started wagging again. The dog studied the screen, and then slowly looked around at the four corners of the bunker, taking everything in.

There was something about the dog that Frank did not like. He couldn't put his finger on it, but the dog's behavior was odd.

Frank turned from the screen in disgust. The mission had not gone as planned. Unexpected external parameters had altered the mission vector. The brass would cut his funding now. He'd be lucky to still have a job. He looked around wondering, why me?

The guard dog was circling the room, sniffing the equipment. It studied the dials and gauges, looked at the computer screens. On a desk near Frank lay a black book marked "Top Secret/Classified." The dog put its forelegs up on the desk and nudged open the book with its nose.

Frank shook his head and smiled despite himself. What's the use? He decided to make friends, walked over, and scratched the dog behind the ear.

"Hey, boy. How are you? Good dog. Hey? What's this?" With his fingertips, Frank felt a small disc-shaped object under the dog's skin behind its right ear.

* * *

Frank banged on Lionel's door.

"Lionel, it's me. I have to talk to you."

"Come in," came a familiar feminine voice from behind the closed door.

Frank entered the Lionel's office. Tamara was standing behind Lionel's desk, smoothing her skirt. Lionel was straightening out some papers. He picked up his coffee mug, took a sip, and leaned back in his chair.

"That will be all for now, Miss Hari. Sit down, Frank. Would you like a cup of coffee?"

Frank took a seat and looked suspiciously around the room.

"What's the matter, Frank? You think they've bugged my office? Ha ha. Don't worry. We stay two steps ahead of them."

"I'm not so sure, sir."

"What do you mean?"

Frank took a tiny metal wafer from his pocket and placed on Lionel's desk.

Tamara watched as Lionel picked up the chip and examined it.

"What's this?"

"Microchip transmitter-receiver."

"Very nice work. Is it one of ours?"

"It's one of theirs, Lionel."

"Where did you get it?"

"Behind the guard dog's ear."

"What?!" Lionel stood up behind the desk.

"It was implanted behind the dog's ear. We've got a mole. Someone is conducting surveillance through a remote-controlled canine. They've got a program just like ours, Lionel, but it's bigger. They're farther along. They're using animals, dogs, maybe cats? Birds? Fish? Elephants? Who knows what they're capable of?"

"Calm down, Frank. Let's work the problem. It may not be as bad as you think."

"I hope you're right, sir."

Frank pulled a photo from a manila envelope and placed the photo on Lionel's desk.

"We lost our micro-drone, but not before it gained access to the enemy base. We surveyed the area scrambled in the aerial reconnaissance image. Before we lost control of the drone, we captured this image."

Lionel and Tamara bent over the photo. It was a shot of two enemy agents looking at a computer monitor that showed another two men looking at another computer monitor.

"Hmm," said Lionel. "Those two men, they look familiar."

"Well they should," said Frank. "It's Lou and me. The enemy is watching us watch them."

Lionel straightened up and winced. The circular concept seemed to pain him. He stared straight ahead, expressionless. Frank waited patiently. Lionel turned and walked stiffly to the window. His movements were mechanical. He stood gazing out at a bird on a branch for several moments, still not saying anything.

"Sir?"

Lionel stood a moment longer, then came back to his desk and sat down awkwardly. He cocked his head at an angle, and with a blank look on his face and empty eyes, began to speak.

"I... I... I..."

"Admiral," said Tamara, "are you feeling all right?"

Frank had never known Lionel to stutter. He must be under a lot of pressure. Or, maybe... Frank went on his guard. He put his finger to his lips to shush Tamara, and peered around the room.

A faint, acrid smell reached Frank's nostrils. Something was burning. Frank sniffed the air, followed his nose, and noticed a thin wisp of smoke coming from Lionel's left ear. Lionel was still trying to say something.

"I... I... I..."

Tamara screamed.

"Guard!" Frank called out. "Guard!"

The door opened and two military policemen rushed into the room.

Lionel began to rattle. "I I I I I I..." His body shook, a small flame flickered, and he fell forward onto the desk, grey smoke streaming from both ears. His head knocked over his coffee mug, spilling cold coffee onto Frank's surveillance photo.

"Lionel!" Frank cried out. "Lionel!!"

Frank and the guards stood with their mouths open as the smoke from Lionel's ears wafted lazily out the open window. Tamara was crying quietly.

"He was acting strangely today. Cold. Distant. He wasn't himself." Tamara dabbed her eye with a tissue.

"Shh," said Frank. "Listen. Do you hear that?"

Tamara stopped crying and they looked around the room, straining to hear.

Frank heard it again, a muffled scraping sound. They all heard it this time.

"Over there," said Frank. "It's coming from the closet. Someone's in the closet."

The guards drew their pistols, and Frank flung open the door. Inside the closet, another Admiral Plankton was lying on the floor, bound and gagged.

"Get him out of there," said Frank. "Help me."

They untied the newly discovered Lionel and dragged him out of the closet into the office.

* * *

"They snuck up on me from behind!" said the real Lionel, breathless. "They've infiltrated the base. Their program far surpasses ours. Flies? Why should they worry about measly little flies, when they've got nice, big spiders, and dogs, and..." He broke off and looked at the robot sprawled face down on his desk. "Who's that?"

"No wonder he seemed so... cold." Tamara sniffed.

"Whoof, whoof." The droopy eared guard dog had nudged past the guards and stood wagging its tail in the open doorway.

Frank froze. The sensation of being watched by unseen eyes sent shivers down his spine. He squinted and peered around the room.

Just outside the window, on the branch of a flowering dogwood, a robin sat, singing. Frank stared out the window at the bird. The bird broke off its song and stared back.

"Close the shades," Frank said to Tamara. "Quiet, everybody. Don't worry. Everything's under control."

Copyright (c) 2009 by Bill Bowler