RoboToys Chapter 0x007

>:-?

It was a very dark, starless night. A thick mist had fallen upon Cyburg City, muffling the sounds made by the few automatobiles that were still on the road. The streetlamps had reduced their luminosity to a minimum, in order to save power: they would switch themselves back on as soon as a pedestrian or a car passed by.

It was very cold and, by that time, almost all the kids were already in their beds.

Ricky, Tiberius’s friend, was breathing heavily under a comfy layer of bedcovers too.

Ricky was exhausted after an evening spent video gaming with his Web-bot spider. Actually, it should have been his Christmas present but, as was to be expected, Ricky hadn’t been able to control his curiosity and had opened his robotoy early, while most of the kids, the good and diligent ones, were dutifully waiting for Christmas to open up their presents instead.

After he had video gamed all night, Ricky had put his Web-bot spider down on his bedside table, and had fallen into a deep sleep.

The Web-bot spider, the robotoy all children wanted as a Christmas present, now lay still on the bedside table. It really wasn’t very pleasant to see, though: it had six fully jointed robotic legs and a big electronic head it could point anywhere it wanted to, two tiny eyes with multiple vision, the kind that flies have, and a truly aggressive expression.

You could make out the digital control circuit, teeming with luminous and flashing little worms in the central abdomen, right underneath a layer of rubbery, semi-transparent and squishy plastic. A great number of sensors were arranged like a mohawk on the perimeter of the web-toy.

The socket to recharge the battery was the sole standard detail and it was, as usual, in the back.

The Web-bot spider was the toy of the moment, the most sought-after toy by children all around the world, at least by those who could afford to buy a cool robotoy: they weren’t exactly cheap.

In the darkness of Ricky’s bedroom, something near the Web-bot spider started to gleam: thread-like metal structures began to come out of the robotoy head.

They looked like robotic tentacles, moving along the bedside table and crawling to the floor. They then slithered up the pillow and gently rested on Ricky’s head…

The tentacle tips began to explore the lobes of the boy’s head looking for the right point: they stopped to the back of his neck. A smaller and thinner pseudopod detached itself from the tentacle-like structure and slowly began its descent. A tiny mechanical hand fitted with four fingers came out of the pseudopod, making way among Ricky’s hair, around to the forehead area. A thin probe descended slowly from the mechanical hand and stopped a couple of millimeters away from the skin. This metal probe then connected itself to the kid’s skull through some kind of suction cap: Ricky was now mechanically and neuronally connected to a web-toy.

The web-toy spider tentacles started to swell up and to pulsate in a luminescent green light.

A transparent little tube inside the tentacles was extracting something which was being sent to the robotoy. The latter, in turn, was showing intense internet activity.

The same thing was happening in other houses too: all those children who couldn’t wait for Christmas to open up their Web-bot spiders or the revision 2 web-puppies were now lying with their head connected to the thin pulsating metal structures. Something was being taken away from their skull and transferred to the internet.

In Ricky’s case, the telematic activity lasted half an hour, after which the web-toy withdrew all of its tentacles and probes: the download was over.

The Web-bot spider face now smirked mockingly, whilst Ricky’s sleep continued, but in a much more troubled state than before.