“That we are,” Australia Man said, nodding. “If Australia is shrinking, then you know I’m going to have an opinion on that.”

“Yes. I’m sure I can guess your opinion…fairly accurately.” Lucy said. “And of course, you’re more than welcome to put a stop to it, Brian. I won’t interfere. Preserving my land is only beneficial for me and my kind.”

“You won’t?” Australia Man asked, cocking a brow.

“There are…factions among the optic spiders. Some of us see the shrinking land as a call to action to abandon my ‘frivolous’ plan to seek the stars. While we all understand that shrinking land is bad, some of our more misguided individuals will act to protect the hole in order to force our people to become expansionist.

“I don’t think either of us want that,” Australia Man said.

“They’re young and don’t understand the…fluctuating state of the world. Expansion would work for a while, until a human Triggers with the exact power set required to wipe us off the face of the Earth.”

“Alright, sounds like we should get to it before they can form an organized defense,” Aussie Man said, nodding and turning to leave.

“They already know you’re coming. Our inter-net is fairly robust after all.”

“Crikey.” Aussie Man muttered, glancing at his team contemplatively. Many of them would not survive an ambush from several optic spiders.

Hell, Backdraft would’ve been a goner in most circumstances, and Bob, while fast, wasn’t faster than light. If the spiders knew who he was and why he was there, like Lucy was suggesting, they would erase Bob’s head first, followed by Backdraft, then mop up Dirt and finally Natura in a matter of seconds, forcing Aussie Man to fight entirely on his own

“I have a solution.” Lucy said. “A…token that will allow you to enter the hole without interference.”

“Lay it on me,” Aussie Man said with a shrug.

“Her name is Lam.”

“Her?”

“In order to prevent civil war, all the factions have been donating to common breeding pool while separately working on their own bloodlines. Sometimes this leads to strange mutations.” Lucy said as Perry noticed a little form descending silently from above them.

“In fact, one such mutant proved to have traits more suited to both faction’s goals than their current best, making her wildly valuable to both of them.”

“Lam stands for Low-oxygen, lung-augmented mutant. Say hello, Lam.”

“Hello there!” a tiny voice squeaked as the football-sized spider descended from the ceiling, waving at them with a single leg while the rest held onto a thin strand of optic thread that scintillated in rainbow colors that made Perry think of an oil slick...or some kind of prism that caught and scattered light wider than its own size.

It was interesting to look at to say the least.

“Oh my god, she’s so cute!” Heather said, offering Lams her arm. The little optic spider dropped down onto Heather’s arm, perching there like a bird of prey.

“Why, thank you,” Lam said. “As you can see, I can talk!” the hawk-sized spider reared up proudly and tapped her torso with her forelimb. She was bald for an optic spider, without the characteristic phosphorous hairs, and her dark chitin was almost skin-like…

In short, creepy as hell. And Perry thought regular spiders were creepy. Spiders with skin were just…

Perry clamped down on a shudder.

“Yes, I noticed,” Australia man said, glancing at Lucy.

“It’s not my faction that has been working on lungs,” Lucy said with a shrug. “But don’t tell me you haven’t noticed that those who don’t have a voice of their own are treated ‘less than’, among humans. In that respect, she has a strong future as a diplomat, or simply a survivor of the eventual apocalypse.”

“I understand. So they won’t try to attack us while we have a hostage?” Aussie Man asked.

“Lams is more suited to both space travel and remaining on Earth in the absence of The Tide than any of our most specialized bloodlines. She represents a total paradigm shift among our people. None would dare harm her.”

“I’m special!” Lam said.

“She is a little stupid, though.” Lucy admitted ruefully.

“I’m special!” Lam reiterated.

“I hope that isn’t a problem going forward.” Lucy mused aloud as she studied the hawk-sized spider perched on Heather’s arm.

“Well, she’s a child, right? They start out dumb.” Perry said.

Perry could feel the massive spider’s gaze turn to him, the sheer weight of her attention at his unprompted interruption making his hairs stand on end.

“An optic spider emerges from the egg-sac as keen of wit as they will ever be.” Lucy said, the voice rumbling from the entire room

“Probably because their intellect is Tide-given, while hers has to mature along with her brain, like a mammal’s.”

“Humans grow more intelligent as they age?” Lucy asked, extrapolating Perry’s statement as she scanned the group of humans.

The seven of them nodded as Lucy’s gazed landed on each of them.

The author's content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Terrifying. I’ll speak to my science team and revise our notes.”

“You know, I’ve got some experience as a bio-Tinker, and I’d be happy to come by and help with your space program when I’m not constantly putting out fires. The suit I’m wearing right now is an actual living thing I designed,” Perry said, prompting the Mark 9 to unfold from him and stand off to the side.

“Even though you’re practically shitting your pants right now?” Heather whispered into Perry’s ear, bringing Lam way closer to him than he’d prefer.

“Hey, you don’t get the chance to help design a space-faring species every day. It’s damn cool, and I wanna be a part of it.” Perry muttered, clamping down on his amygdala which kept trying to ramp up his adrenaline until he did something stupid.

“A Bio-Tinker?” Lucy asked.

“Among other things.” Perry replied.

“Hmm. Do you have a cell phone?”

“I surely do.” Perry said, giving her the digits for his dad’s infinite-range cell phone. He still hadn’t gotten around to making his own. It was probably one of the many ways his dad was tracking him, but it was nice to know your loved ones were surveilling you.

After digits were exchanged, Perry re-sealed himself in his suit, locked the joints and turned off the mic.

Mic: Off

Joints: Locked

Once he was back inside the protective layer of armor separating himself from the absolute nightmare going on outside, he shuddered from head to toe.

“Oh…my…God! AGH! YUCK! The webbing has the grossest amount of flex and they’re scuttling all over everything with those skittering movements, and that spider HAS SKIN, WHAT THE FUCK!?”

It didn’t matter to Perry’s stupid amygdala that he was seven hundred times smarter and stronger, that he could probably win just about any fight with these things. Survive at the very least.

None of that mattered to his stupid phobia which kept revisiting him regardless of how much he tried to rationalize it away or clamp down on his reactions.

I am going to have so much fun trying to sleep in the future.

Already, Perry knew he was going to dream about getting wrapped up in claustrophobic silk, injected with poison, eggs laid inside of him…skittering legs…

“Paradox, you coming with?” Bob asked as they began to file out of the horrifying creature’s face-office.

Mic: On.

Joints: Unlocked.

“Yep, just writing something down,” Perry said, taking a deep breath and following after Wraith, who was having an engaging conversation with the abomination perched on her shoulder.

Within biting distance of her eyeball.

Hey, it’s not for me, but she seems to be handling it just fine.

“Your silk is so beautiful!” Wraith said as the seven of them came to a halt at the edge of the vertical hallway.

“Thanks, I made it myself!”

“How does it get that rainbow effect when nobody else’s does?” Heather asked.

“Well, its…I don’t know. Mom keeps trying to explain it to me.”

“It’s acting as a prism, incrementally bending light in a radius exponentially wider than the thread itself,” Perry said.

“Yeah, that!” Lam said.

As for how it was bending light without actually being there, that was a whole different story.

Dragor’s Kinesis.exe

“Alright, just step out into the hall, I made a plane of force.” Perry said, demonstrating by walking out first.

Naturally, Wraith followed first, which put her shoulder right next to his, and Lam, the low-oxygen, lung-augmented mutant spider FREAK climbed up onto his shoulder.

Perry’s vision tunnelled as he prioritized maintaining focus on the spell, so he didn’t drop anyone to their deaths.

Breathe in, Breathe out.

His phobia didn’t care that there was no way Lam could get through the armor.

“Whoah!” Backdraft murmured as they plummeted downward, slowing down at the last second as Perry desperately tried to get them down before he lost focus.

“So, you’re a tinker right?” Lam asked, tapping his helmet with her claw.

“Uhuh,” Perry grunted, setting the seven of them down at the bottom of the shaft and cancelling Dragor’s Kinesis before it could-

Cancel Dragor’s Kinesis.exe

The spell was canceled an instant before Perry accidentally used it to swat the hawk-sized spider off his shoulder.

Heather barely suppressed a snort of laughter at Perry’s stiff reply.

“Does that mean you’re like, super smart?” Lam asked.

Perry heaved in a long breath and refocused on his passenger.

“Not every Tinker is super smart. Mostly we’re just specialized on one specific thing or another, and whatever that is, we make that really good. That being said, I am ‘super smart’, yes.”

“The hole is this way,” Australia man said, nodding towards the northwest before he began walking down the spider-infested super-web highway, the others following close behind.

What followed was a long hike up a gradually sloping hill, accompanied by an endless battery of questions that tested Perry’s knowledge – not intelligence – and his ability to muscle down the fight or flight response: Why is the sky blue? What’s at the center of the Earth? Who wrote Cotton-eyed Joe (string instruments were understandably popular amongst spiders.) Do mammals taste better than bugs? Why would you ever want to cook something? Which spider faction should she side with? Where do babies come from?

Those last two, Perry masterfully dodged with every ounce of his – admittedly sparse – parenting experience.

They were just about to reach the top of the hill when Lam popped the ‘baby’ question.

“Why don’t you ask Wraith? She’s made babies before.” Perry said, holding out his arm for Lam to skitter over to her.

Lam didn’t take the hint, instead settling down on Perry’s helmet and allowing her legs to fall down over where Perry’s ears would be if they weren’t covered.

Perry suppressed a shudder.

“Really! There’s little Wraiths running around!?” Lam asked.

“Two of them,actually, but human babies are very different than spider babies. You could ask your mom, but Paradox knows just about everything about everything. He’ll probably tell you what he knows,” Heather said with a grin, using the ancient art of ‘ask your father’ to blow up his chances of divesting himself of the mutant.

“Just two? I have sixteen hundred brothers and sisters. Well…had. Most of them died to congenital defects or were eaten because they didn’t have shiny webs or lungs. I might actually have close to two left, actually. Nattie was very sneaky. She might still be alive.”

Perry really didn’t know what to say about that.

Thankfully before he had to formulate a verbal response to what would have been a deeply traumatizing event on any human, Aussie Man motioned them to join him at the top of the hill overlooking The Butthole, and their conversation was cut short by the sheer awe of The Butthole’s Magnificence.

Perry had to admit…that was kind of what it looked like.

“Oooh, the mammal-hole is so wrinkly,” Lam said, leaning forward on the top of his head to see better, occluding Perry’s view out of his visor. “Do actual mammal holes look like that?”

Desperately attempting to not slap her off his face, Perry was slow to respond.

In the midst of managing his own personal hell, Perry spotted a tiny, almost imperceivable shift in the surroundings. Some sixteen different pieces of land no bigger than a man, about half a mile distant each, shifted ever so slightly.

Oh, damnit. Kidnapping?

Perry modified the refractive qualities of the air around the seven of them an instant before a mind-boggling amount of light converged on the spider princess riding on top of his head.

The force was dulled, but the sheer impact blasted the tiny mutant spider off his head and sent her tumbling to the ground, smoking, yet seemingly still alive and not vaporized as was likely the original intent.

Not kidnapping…assassination?

“Humans. Leave the abomination where it lies, and you may pass.” The hills around them vibrated as webbing surrounding them transferred the elder Optic Spider’s words.

Wouldn’t dare harm her, my ass. Perry thought, scowling as he dove to heal the absolutely disgusting skin-spider child.

Lucy was just trying to draw out her competition, and used us as bait.