EXILIUM REX

Chapter 18

Exilium Rex: Rise of the Xenobots

The afternoon of the following day of Alfredo Apostol’s assignment to deliver the usb drive to Number 21 Escadilla Street, 4pm. In a secret room inside the Baylon abode, two shadows are in animated conversation:

First voice, “Are you sure these so-called xenobots you smuggled are going to work?”

Second voice, “We have completely profiled all the subject’s bodily systems and it revealed 99% compatibility; and all our work as well has been thoroughly peer-reviewed by both local and international medical experts and practitioners who have been in our pockets and each of them, let me just say, has been on a retainer’s fee.”

First voice, “So how much time do these xenobots need to seep into the blood system of our subject?”

Second voice, “Enough time. Enough time before the next part of our grand plan to introduce Exilium Rex to the entire world!”

*

The Meeting (Part 1)

“I have often wondered how many disputes could have been settled easily had the disputants only dared to define their terms.”

- Ninoy Aquino

Same day as indicated, 8:34pm, somewhere in Binondo, Manila.

“Uy, pare, kumusta na? I came as soon as I received your text message…”

The man in pure-white polo acts surprised by the voice approaching his seat in the restaurant, calmly – almost robotically - takes a piece of creased pink tissue from the silver stand; with it, thoroughly wipes the lip of one of the beer bottles served and strategically places the same bottle across his far side of the table. With fingers dexterous, he then rolls and rolls the delicate paper on his sweaty palms, until it has become a tiny orb the size of a school boy’s playing marble. Clearly, something which has more or less been preserved frozen in his mind these past four hours is now beginning to thaw and is now about to reveal itself. The xenobots.

Seemingly satisfied with the tissue ball’s present density and dimension, Alfredo Apostol – Alfred – flicks it into the gaping mouth of the ash tray with startling precision; then stares simply back at Angelo del Mundo – Angel – who has just settled in fresh on a chair at the other side of the four-seater table.

“Nothing.” Alfred deflects coldheartedly. I just have to be the most tactful guy in the world! – he repeats to himself; or, more like, his brain is rewinding this for him to play over and over again. Alfredo Apostol does not fully understand it, but the xenobots are already fast taking over his entire body systems.

The xenobots. Stolen by a crew of rogue NBI agents hired by Tourism Secretary Panfilo Fernandez and then smuggled into the country by the same current alter-ego of the Philippine President, xenobots, in an online article written by Robby Berman last January 18, 2020, are explained, thus:

While we typically think of robots as being constructed from metal, circuitry, and plastic, a team of researchers from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts and the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont have just announced the creation of task-specific robots made of living cells scraped from frog embryos. (They are not called "ribits.") Biologist Michael Levin tells The Guardian, "They are living, programmable organisms."

Levin and his colleagues call the tiny automatons "xenobots," after Xenopus laevis, the African clawed frogs from whom their cells came. They're proofs of a larger concept the researchers have invented: a method, or "pipeline," theoretically capable of creating living bots for all sorts of tasks.

Aside from being a somewhat shocking development, the robots raise obvious ethical and practical issues. "These are entirely new lifeforms. They have never before existed on Earth," points out Levin. Team member Sam Kreigman says, "What's important to me is that this is public, so we can have a discussion as a society and policymakers can decide what is the best course of action."

The primary purpose of the research is the development of a workable, scalable pipeline that produces robots selected, or "programmed," for specific capabilities. It works like this:

Computer algorithms set to work iterating 500 to 1,000 virtual 3D structures using models of actual cells — whose behaviors are known — as building blocks. For the xenobots, models of passive and contractive (heart muscle) skin cells from frog embryos were used. Upon identifying designs that function in a desired manner, the scientists then painstakingly construct a real-world version using the actual, living cells.

In the case of the xenobots, the contractive skin muscles contract and expand, like an engine. Through this action, a xenobot can move itself around on a pumping pair of stumpy legs. One xenobot has a hole in its middle that's been formed into a pouch allowing it, theoretically, to carry a tiny payload of some sort. The xenobots can survive for about 10 days.

Since the research is really about the pipeline, the xenobots are primarily intended as a demonstration of the system's potential. If you're wondering why we might want living robots, you're not alone. According to senior researcher roboticist Joshua Bongard, "It's impossible to know what the applications will be for any new technology, so we can really only guess."

Unbeknownst, of course, to its discoverers, a secret society called the Exilium Rex has already perfected the most cunning use ever for these so-caled xenobots. Reprogrammable mind control.

“Nothing.” Alfred repeats somewhat awkwardly and without any show of emotion. For a moment, Alfred appears like he has been worried more by a document folder accidentally falling out from his numbing hands than anything else. He may even forget the thing thrusted to him by Fiscal Baylon had been with him in the first place and doubtless, leave and lose it in a public toilet somewhere. His mind, it seems, is dead set on the one mission the xenobots have programmed him to do.

Recruit Angelo del Mundo to the cause. And, if failure to this mission is imminent, to eliminate Angelo del Mundo.

No other reprogrammable mission for the xenobots more important as this. For now.