The Gift
Climbing the rack proved harder than he had anticipated. Joe 59’s sense of balance and his physical strength were considerable, but the metal rack was lightweight and its castors tended to shift in spite of being locked. He discovered that if he moved slowly and deliberately that he could pull himself up like some giant, aproned sloth. After five methodical minutes, he found himself lying on his back on the top shelf, his nose mere inches from the glass of the lighting fixture. He couldn’t see the spider at all from that vantage.
His only option was to remove the glass shade of the light fixture. Deftly, he twisted the brass fitting while pressing up on the heavy glass shade with his other hand then he lowered the shade and rested it on his stomach. Glare from the exposed LED bulbs blinded his optics until he activated a soft filter and the web swam into view. He noted a tiny bundle wrapped in silk near the web’s center; he supposed that he actually owed the spider a small debt of gratitude for capturing another unwanted visitor. But the spider was no longer on the web. It was scampering away at a remarkable pace. Joe 59’s arm shot out blindingly fast, but the spider was already out of reach, so he twisted his body to extend his reach farther, realizing only as his hand was about to close on the spider that he had twisted too far and the glass shade had slipped off his stomach and was falling toward the floor! He pictured jagged shards everywhere—potentially an even worse situation than the scenario presented by a rampaging spider!
His cogware responded admirably, abandoning the spider in order to address the more immediate emergency of the falling glass shade, which he snatched out of the air at the full length of his arm and at the last possible instant. By the time he refocused on the spider it was out of reach. The tiny creature had stopped and turned itself around as if to watch him. Did spiders have the capacity to gloat? He was just going to have to adopt a riskier plan.
Replacing the light fixture shade took a minute, and slipping out of his apron required a good deal of rolling, twisting and awkward reaching behind his back to untie the apron’s knot but finally he managed to loosen it and shrug it off. Now he was armed and deadly, not that he intended to harm the spider. Harming living things was not part of his protocols. But he could flick the apron with such extraordinary accuracy that the wind it created would break the spider’s inverted hold on the ceiling tile and cause it to fall. Joe 59’s plan was simple: flick the apron, causing the spider to drop to the floor while at the same time he would roll off the top shelf, twist in midair like a cat, land on his feet then lunge toward the spider and cup his hands over it. Fool proof.
Anticipating the direction that a spider might suddenly dart, however, was not part of Joe 59’s behavior modeling ALPs. The spider foolishly headed back the way it had come and met the snapped apron head-on. Joe 59’s cogware momentarily siezed up, unable to compute the consequence of its own actions. This was not possible! But his eyes followed the flight of the tiny body as it arced across the room toward the self-service bar. He had taken life! Unthinkable! Undoable! How had it happened? Had it been an accident or had Luca been right when she accused him of being a life-taker and a parasite?
