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"There's a poetry in the materials we use to construct our world of artifacts; it speaks of our long history as a technological species."
- William Gibson
 |
| Infiltrators | ||
| Surveillance devices, small and insectile. |
| As he drew the fission bomb out, he saw, on Larson's sleeve, a shiny metal bug; it clung there, riding along, its antennae quivering. For a moment Barris thought, It's an insect. Some natural life form that brushed against him when he was above ground, in the forest.
The shiny metal bug flew up into the air. He heard the high-frequency whine as it passed him, and knew it then. A tiny hammer, a version of the basic type. For observation. It had been aware of him from the moment Larson encountered him. Seeing him staring at the bug as it zipped away from them, Larson said, "Another one. There's been one hanging around me all day. It was clinging to my work smock for a while." He added, "Vulcan 3 uses them for relaying messages. I've seen a number of them around. |
| From Vulcan's Hammer,
by Philip K. Dick. Published by Ace Books in 1960 Additional resources -
|
Compare to the scarab robot flying insect from The Scarab (1936) by Raymond Z. Gallun, the commercial fly from The Simulacra (1964) by Philip K. Dick and the blurbflies from Nymphomation (2000) by Jeff Noon.
Thanks to SFFaudio for pointing this out.
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