SNAP!

The rat trap clamped its plastic claws shut in the crawlspace of Lee’s home.

Back on Earth, Lee returned to his favourite hideout, away from curious onlookers, far from paparazzi and their pesky drones — his home, his cabin in the woods.

Half-asleep, he looked up at the stars, but it was not the white, sparkling dots that woke him from a late evening nap.

A tiny black shape, outlined by stars, galaxies and planets, grew bigger, as if…

As if a spider was dropping from the ceiling.

It was.

Lee ran through the mental map of his head, the unexplained red bumps and festering sores of the past two days quickly coming into focus.

* * * * *

Guin straightened her posture, reaching for the perfect core dance position.

Her dance instructor, a teacher of teachers, Plantainyifan, made Guin adjust her position by sucking in her stomach a quarter-inch more, turning and tilting her head an eighth of an inch back and to the right.

“There!  Now hold your position for five minutes! When I return, I want to see you have not moved.  If so, then we will start this all over again until you get it right!”

Guin sighed by letting a single cubic centimeter of air puff out of her nose.

* * * * *

Rolenmec completed repairs on the replicator.

Meant to simulate the physical quirks and habits of Earth-based humans, the electromechanical products of the replicator, known in the trade as “Daft Drafts,” acted on behalf of their original counterparts, carrying out tasks and taking adventures that the Earth-based humans desired but did not want to increase biochemical damage from space travel and extended living periods on Mars’ surface.

* * * * *

Lee watched as the spider dropped to a futon armrest.

The spider’s eyes reflected the flame of a coffee-scented candle Lee had lit for smells he could not get on Mars.

An object like a ninth leg stuck out from the spider’s body.

Lee realised the spider was not natural-born.  The ninth “leg” was an antenna.  This was a land-based drone, designed to use web-like strands to move between distant objects, avoiding even the tiniest whirring sound of a flying drone.

Lee ran a systems check of his body, a habit he had dropped two days ago for no explainable reason after returning to his home planet.  Sure enough, he detected foreign objects in his skin and blood, objects which had attached themselves to many internal body parts.

He kept a few strips of artificial skin in case of emergency cuts.  Reaching into his pants pocket, he applied a strip of skin to his forehead and pulled the bedcover over his head, exposing only a small area in the center of the artificial skin.

Thirty seconds later, Lee felt the spider insert its “jaws” into his artificial skin.  Lee closed the bedcover around the spider and flicked it into a beer bottle on the end table beside him, pressing a coaster over the beer bottle opening as he carried it to his closet laboratory.

* * * * *

Guin felt sore but relieved after the six-hour dance training session.

Having cracked her ribs too many times to remember, often in line with the 11 times she’d had a head concussion, dancing either made her rib cage hurt or feel better.

Today, she felt better, thanks in large part to her friend, fellow dance instructor, and personal masseuse, Bai.

Bai had been working with Guin for a few years, showing her the way African dance movement flowed right into the Western dance techniques Guin had learned as a child.

Guin grew up on a farm, playing with cows and breaking in horses, in addition to her boxing matches, offroad races and skydiving shows that kept her upper body in shape and her reflexes heightened for quick, athletic weekend ballet performances.

She married her sweetheart soon after high school, presumably “until death do us part,” but, six years later, Guin found herself in a lawyer’s office, revising a divorce agreement over custody of a dog.

Not just any dog.

Not natural-born, anyway.

Her dog and the dog’s sister were identical clones.

Although she had cloned the dog herself while at a veterinarian’s office — the vet a friend of Guin’s father, both of whom had taken Klingon language classes together and spoke the language fluently, a passion not passed on to Guin — Guin’s soon-to-be ex-husband had grown fond of the dog and wanted to take custody even though the dog had been cloned a year before he and Guin were married.

* * * * *

Lee placed the artificial skin patch under a microscope and zoomed in on the area where the spider had inserted a few foreign objects.

Lee spoke out loud.  “Self replicators?”

He watched as the objects reproduced themselves, splitting apart like single-cell organisms, but instead of identical copies, the next “generation” seemed to be specialized for attachment to specific chemical signatures.

That at least explained why the objects in his body seemed to congregate at certain points and in only a few organs.

* * * * *

Rolenmec scanned the latest batch of Earthian profiles, amazed at how commonplace most of the tasks and adventures that were requested by timid Earth-based humans afraid to take the long trip here.

Why did no one want to conquer the planet or make Mars a jumping off place for points unknown, one’s replicated body nearly indestructible, able to travel light-years with little maintenance required?

One profile caught Rolenmec’s eyes.

To protect Rolenmec from knowing whether a replicated body he met on Mars was one he had replicated himself, the names of the Earth-based humans was not part of their profiles.

Surely, though, Rolenmec would know this “person” when he met it.

It was no person at all.  The profile requested that the body shape be that of a spider, a spider that was to return to Earth with a batch of life science experiments.

The spider’s sole function was to “bite” people, insert a few microorganisms that contained code which caused their reproductive offspring to spread through their host and turn into a large broadcast antenna, sending signals from a source not mentioned in the Earth-based human’s profile.

“Now that’s what I call a real dream!”

Rolenmec activated the profile and started the replicator.

* * * * *

Guin noticed her dog had been acting strange lately.  She compared her dog to the dog’s sister and noted an infection had caused the dog’s joints to swell.

She took the dog to the vet because Guin did not recognize the genetic code of the infection.

The vet, too, was perplexed.

* * * * *

Lee felt a strange sensation.

It was as if he had suddenly received all the memories Guin had lost after a bad wreck in a Mars dune buggy race a few years ago.

Arguments, pain, years of childhood dance lessons, horseback rides on Earth, schoolwork, love, migraine headaches…

His thoughts were overwhelmed by new thoughts not his own.

He walked into his office and sat down as the central nervous system mapping station.

* * * * *

Rolenmec felt dizzy.

He put his left hand to the wall and slid to the floor, stopping himself with his right hand, which looked red and puffy.

He ought to remember what he was just doing but he couldn’t.

The…the replicator?  Was it still on?

A spider flung itself out of the replicator and landed on the wall above Rolenmec, followed by another.

Rolenmec’s head swam.  Were the spiders heading for the lab hallway?  How many were there?

* * * * *

Guin’s dog playfully bit the vet on the wrist, jumped up and down, its tail wagging, and bit Guin’s little finger.

The vet shrugged her shoulders as if to say the dog was just overexcited.  “I’ve taken a blood sample and will let the ISSA Net analyse it overnight.  You should have the results before you wake up tomorrow.”

Guin and the vet absentmindedly wiped drops of blood from their new wounds.

Guin took the dog for a walk and then returned to her flat in the main Mars compound.

* * * * *

Lee sent a mental image directly to Guin’s thoughts across the ISSA Net emergency message channel, reserved for important interplanetary communications.

“What was the last memory you remember before the wreck?  What is the first memory you remember making after the wreck?  Must know immediately but I think I can give you the answer already.  Don’t open your regular message inbox until after you’ve responded to this one.  See if I’m right.”

Lee returned to the futon and fell into a deep dream state.  He wouldn’t wake up for the next four days.

* * * * *

As soon as Guin saw Lee’s message in her thoughts, she recorded a response and sent it back.  She waited a few hours for Lee to answer but received nothing, not even the normal acknowledgement.

Feeling tired, Guin lay down with her two dogs and took a nap.  She wouldn’t wake up for the next 3.893 Martian sols.

* * * * *

Acting like an automaton, Rolenmec stood up, walked down the hallway and opened a door into the life science lab.  Several spiders followed him.

A few did not.

Instead, they headed toward the sleeping habitation rooms that specifically contained personal pets.

* * * * *

Lee woke up, having forgotten all the items on his daily to-do list.

Guin’s memories flowed through him as if they were his now.  He could not tell the difference nor was self-aware enough to know that he couldn’t tell the difference.

* * * * *

Guin woke up, her first thought that she needed to take her dog with her to work.

* * * * *

The veterinarian tried to reach Guin for four sols.  Meanwhile, she noted that the microorganisms the ISSA Net had isolated from the dog’s blood were remarkably able to modify their genetic code much faster than could be explained by natural evolution.

The vet sent a request on the vet hotline for crowdthink.

While waiting for a reply, the vet went from cage to cage biting the pets in her animal hospital, unaware she was doing so.