Of Men and Spiders

She supposed the tool user's reactions to her saving the male were to be expected. It was a little too much to think they'd suddenly understand that She meant no harm and to trust her hands. Anything that guileless probably wouldn't survive long enough to attain this level of sapience.

Still, when the female had suddenly grabbed her sharpened stick and imparted its no-so-subtle threat, She decided it was best to back off and let them recover however they saw fit.

At least She was able to use the distraction to steal a piece of the smoke-dried meat with one of her eyes. Upon further examination, not only was the meat similarly free of microbial life like that which the tools users had seared in fire, but it also seemed strongly resistant to further microbial growth. This was clearly a form of preservation and a clever one at that. She supposed her tool users' bodies were too inefficient to store the energy in perpetuity themselves. If so, this was an innovative way to overcome that weakness.

In fact, she'd noticed a trend in that direction. Where all of She's weaknesses were overcome from within through genetic manipulation, these tool users solved all their problems from without. Given the nature of tool users, that was to be somewhat expected, but seeing it applied to such a broad array of threats and challenges was quite astounding.

She wondered what upper limit of problems they could solve this way? It seemed clear that their inflexible genetics limited them to one body and one mind, so the amount of information they could sustain would be limited to the capacity of that single body. How many clever tool-based solutions could one tool user have? One hundred? A thousand? Maybe even a million? It would be far from enough to attain something like stellar travel, but perhaps these clever beasts could form societies of some limited complexity with each other. If so, She might be able to work with them to their mutual benefit. All She had to do was show these beasts that, in a way, She was a tool that could solve many of their problems. The best tool any of their kind will ever experience!

Meanwhile, She was making clear progress on deciphering the tool useres vibrations. She'd already gathered that they addressed each other as "Munchkin" and "Brother." However, whether that was a reference to their role in their organizational hierarchy or, a more general term for their particular sexual dimorphic characteristic, or even something else altogether was too inconclusive to assume. What further complicated things was their unnecessary habit of providing things with multiple labels. For instance, when the water was flowing in the ground, it was called "creek," but when it was being consumed, it was called "drink." This was further complicated by the use of the same vibration having multiple meanings, like the aforementioned "drink" being both a part of a label for a thing and the description of an action.

It would take a little longer than previously assumed to sort this mess of vibrations out, but at least She was making clear progress.

-

After waking in the morning, Scott stayed huddled in the lean-to he'd slapped together last night, wondering what his next course of action should be. It's true that the spider monster had backed away from his sister rather than bite, but had that been mercy or self-preservation? As big and scary as the spiders were, Scott was bigger still. It seemed more likely the spider had simply left after being confronted by what it perceived as a larger predator.

But why had it been watching their campsite this whole time? Judging by the number of tracks Scott found, it was either one monster that had spent a lot of time watching or many spiders that were coming and going. He wasn't sure which possibility disturbed him more...

Still, the smoking had gone as planned, which meant he had plenty of food. Now, he just had to figure out how to transport everything. His improvised cloth backpack wouldn't carry enough or work over long distances. It would be better if he had a sled to work with. He could lash some branches together, which would require a better rope than the few shreds of cloth he had left from the tents. So he needed to make rope.

Getting up and looking around at some of the nearby dead trees, he found several whose bark was loose enough to pull off large sections. Laying those down, he started peeling off portions of the fibrous material from the inside of the bark, then breaking those down into thinner and thinner strands until they were small enough to work with. Once he had enough, Scott started twisting them to the left until they were tight, then grabbing another piece of the strand and twisting it to the right around the taut piece, making it so the strain of untwisting one strand fought the other, giving the new cord far more strength and flexibility than the wood scraps had held on their own, braiding in new strands as needed to lengthen his new primitive rope.

He was making good progress when Alice awoke. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes as she sleepily asked, "What are you making?"

Scott held up the length of cord he'd already made. "I'm making rope! We can use it to lash some branches together to make a sled to carry all our supplies."

Alice blinked a little, still struggling to catch her waking mind up with the here and now. "Carry them where?"

Scott waved absentmindedly off into the distance. "I don't know, out there. Somewhere, far away from here, far away from those spider...things!"

This time, Alice tilted her head to the side. "But...why?"

Scott lowered his rope and looked at his sister, perplexed. "What do you mean why? Because either there's a lot of those things all around us, or there's one very persistent one following us day and night! The one advantage we have over those things is we can move much further and faster than they can!"

Rather than being mollified, Alice only seemed to get more frustrated. "But they're good spiders! One of them saved me yesterday!"

Scott couldn't believe his sister's naivete and shook his head. "More likely, it was trying to get a quick and easy meal. It just ran off when it saw I was bigger and scarier than it!"

Alice crossed her arms and all but audibly harumphed. "I don't think it's a bad spider! I think it was trying to help!"

Throwing up his hands, Scott lost his patience. "Spiders don't help! Not intentionally, anyway! They're all instinct and reaction and lack any kind of thinking the way you or I understand the word! All they do is kill, eat, and reproduce! Think of what they did to our camp! Think of what they did to our Mom!"

Alice's eyes got really big at that, and she suddenly looked unsure of herself. "What do you mean, Mom? What did they do to mommy?"

Scott wasn't thinking. He was scared, exhausted, frustrated, and angry, so he lashed out. "They ate her, alright? They ate Mom! And they'll eat us, too, if we give them half a chance!"

He regretted the words as they were leaving his mouth and was already trying to think of a way to apologize when Alice took off running, tears in her eyes. Scott was so stunned at his own words it took him a moment to chase after.

-

She watched as the two tool users ran out into the forest. At first, she thought the female was following the male, but it soon became apparent they were headed in different directions and so must have separate objectives. She didn't have enough eyes close at hand to follow them both, and this was the first time She was aware that the smaller male had taken the initiative to act on his own, so She decided to follow him.

The male ran for quite a while, enough that She initially lost track of the tool user, but signs of its passing were clear enough to follow. It didn't take long to catch up to the male, as it had apparently found what it sought. Now, it was curled into a small ball, with its manipulator limbs wrapped around the large limbs it used for locomotion while it produced more air vibrations and leaked liquid from its ocular sensors.

She'd seen something like this the first day after the tool users had set up their new nest, but this was the first time the male had done this on his own. Perhaps this is a sign of it finally attaining physical maturity? Or maybe it's some other behavior whose purpose would only be made clear through observation, like searing and smoking meats.

She watched for a while longer, noting that the metabolic requirements to power these behaviors far exceeded the last set of nutrients the tool user had consumed. Of course, it had a supply of nutrients stored away in its fatty tissue, though it could only release those nutrients at a fixed rate, and given their species' reliance on its metabolic function to stay within its functioning thermal limits, She became concerned that if it maintained this behavior too much longer, it would find itself vulnerable.

Thankfully, the tool user eventually uncurled itself and seemed to take in its surroundings. After a moment of orientation, it turned back and began following its path back to its nest, though She noted it was slightly off course. She'd expected the male to course correctly to find its nest, but eventually, it slowed, then turned and began walking in a new direction that led even further away from its nest. At this rate, it would be alone in the forest during the cool of night, when it might be unable to maintain a proper temperature through metabolic function alone.

Perhaps this was all part of whatever task it had set for itself, but She was becoming less confident of that by the hour. After all, She had disrupted the tool users' original nest, and they were no longer in familiar territory. It's possible that whatever method for navigation the male tool users used wasn't up to the task of adequately orienting itself in this new terrain.

As She considered the problem, She decided that perhaps now would be a good time to once again prove how useful She could be to the tool users while resolving the male's navigational inability.

Having decided, She reached out with a hand to guide the male home. At first, the male seemed hesitant to approach the hand, but with some time and coaxing, it eventually seemed to relent and allowed the hand to approach. The male even rested one of its manipulation appendages on the hand as it followed She back to its nest.