Miles - Webbing and DNA 2

I glance around the AC unit before asking Ganke for the biggest favor I ever have.

“Can you look up if there’s a way to boost whatever’s in the webbing that’s making the nanobots lose steam?”

“Way ahead of you,” he says.

As usual. I grin.

“I took a sample of the web with me as I left, and it seems to be made of a nylon-like material? Long-chain polymers knitted together like chains of amino acids, clearly synthesized quickly, most likely upon oxidation. Is it… it’s liquid before it’s launched, right?”

“Yup,” I say. “To that last part, anyway.”

If I’m honest, he was talking so fast I barely got a word of what he said earlier.

“So,” I say, pulling my knee up against my chest, “can we make it stronger? Chemically, I mean?”

***

“A chemical formula that contains traces of ethanol! When we were attacked earlier you had blood dripping from your hand. I think some must have got on the web-shooter. It wasn’t just the webbing that reversed the transformation, it was your DNA too!”

***

“Basically, although there are thousands of different kinds of nanobots out there, most of them exhibit some kind of reaction to ethanol-based antiseptics, and even hydrogen peroxide. These nanobots are no different, apparently. Like I mentioned, I took a sample of your web. Here.”

***

“Well, I was hoping to get my hands on some nanobots to test out the theory, but uh… the hosts weren’t too keen on me getting too close. I tried looking at a couple of their feathers, but none of the bots actually made it into those cells. Just the roots I guess, telling the body to grow them. But what I suspect is that, since you were bitten by a genetically altered spider, something in your DNA has antiseptic properties that Spider Man 1.0 doesn’t have. You said his web doesn’t work on them, right?”

I think back to watching Peter webbing bird creature after bird creature, only to have them fight back just as strong, ripping through web nets as fast as he could throw them.

“Nah, it was just mine after I got cut,” I say.

“So even though the bots are mechanical, there’s some thing in your body’s chemical composition, like the antiseptic spider venom properties that article mentioned, that’s scrambling them. We know ethanol can break the nanobots down and disable them, just like how it works in a sanitizer. When your webbing mixed with your blood, the two antiseptic traits working together were able to reverse the bird effect on that man.”

***

Chapter 14-15