Spider facts!

  Category: Anatomy/Physiology

  Subcategory: None, general

  The spider body is easily differentiated from that of other arthropods such as insects by the number of segments. Rather than the three segments seen in insects, chelicerate arthropods such as spiders have two: the cephalothorax and the abdomen, otherwise known as the prosoma and the opisthosoma. In the case of spiders, the cephalothorax contains the eyes, mouth, venom bearing fangs (chelicerae), pedipalps and legs, as well as numerous other structures, while the abdomen contains many of the vital organs including the heart, respiratory tract, majority of digestive tract, and web-spinning spinnerets.

  The darkness receded, and Jon’s new world snapped into view.

  As he had suspected, his sight had improved significantly from before his subspecies selection. His vision as a human was 20/20, and his new eyes seemed just as good. His field of view was also much, much wider than it had been as a human. It was like sitting in an I-max: there was a detailed view just ahead, which turned blurry and grey as it reached the edge of a normal human’s vision, though motion still registered clearly. He could tell the grass either side of the path he was on was waving without shifting his gaze. He could almost see directly behind himself.

  Additionally, Jon’s eyes could move without his body once more. It seemed jumping spiders had analogous structures to the extraoccular muscles of humans.

  He glanced around at his surroundings. He was on a dirt road in a meadow, surrounded by tall grass with forest to either side. The sky was blue, with the sun just peaking over the horizon. There was a weird color gradient dividing the sky into quadrants. It was a little disorienting to look at, and Jon focused back on the ground.

  The path was as wide as a two-lane country road back home. It was hard to be sure on the proportions of everything in a brand-new world, but Jon guessed the top of his head was around a meter off the ground, as the wild grass on either side of the road was a little taller than he was. Taking into account how much of the road he took up, the size of the grass, and how long his legs looked, he thought his new form was about the size of a very large dog. Maybe something like a Great Dane.

  Jon remembered Herman’s instructions, and knew he needed to run. The prompt from the system had offered him 90 seconds, and he wasn’t sure how much he had used up already. He noted a little flash in the top-right of his visual field as the thought occurred to him. A translucent timer appeared, and began counting down. It read 88 seconds, and ticked to 87 seconds as he watched. Processing this, he made his first attempt to move his new legs.

  Jon scrabbled forward along the road in a disorganized jumble of limbs. For a few steps, he tried to move all four legs on one side, and then all four on the other. Falling felt like it should be impossible with this many legs, but he still nearly managed it as he shimmied his way forward.

  He began to panic; he wasn’t moving fast enough. Then Jon felt a haptic buzzing sensation behind his eyes, and understanding flashed through him. His movements became smoother and more fluid as he intuited how to make his movements efficient.

  He began to alternate his legs, moving the first and third legs on one side at the same time as the second and fourth legs on the other. He stumbled a couple of times, but it soon felt natural. He noted the timer at 83 seconds, and began to increase the pace.

  Jon’s new claws dug furrows in the dirt road as he went, propelling him forward. The road began to curve, and as he rounded the bend he saw a fork in the road around four hundred meters ahead. He also realized the distance was closing much faster than he expected.

  As a teenager, Jon had ran a four hundred meter dash in 58 seconds. It was an acceptable time, but Jon never made the varsity squad for his track team. He had mostly kept running to hang out with his friends. He remembered the regional champion that year ran the four hundred in around 46 seconds. Jon had been excited when he broke a minute for his personal record, but it was mind-blowing to him when a high-school student had averaged over 30 km/hr.

  As Jon reached the fork, only 23 seconds had passed. 60 seconds remaining. If his estimate had been correct, he just ran that four hundred at over 60 kilometers per hour. Fast enough to run down a horse.

  He ground to a halt as he reached the fork, causing a minor eruption of dirt all around him.

  He was tired, but not yet exhausted. He could make it another 60 seconds. He could feel the air entering a space at the front of his abdomen as it heaved behind him, as well as two smaller openings further back on either side. His heart pounded: it felt higher up than his lungs, but still in the abdomen. He supposed he didn’t really have a chest at all anymore, and he was surprised how much it bothered him. He missed the familiar rhythm of his life where it should be, and each beat was a reminder of how much things had changed in the last few minutes. His ‘cephalothorax’ was like having his shoulders and hips fused just beneath his head.

  Shaking off the bizarre state he found himself in, Jon examined his new surroundings.

  There were three diverging paths forward. The paths weren’t long, ending after only a dozen meters or so. The paths were labeled by unfamiliar glowing script suspended in mid-air over the paths. Beneath the script, at the end of each path, was a circle of material on the ground.

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  The first circle was made from stones, the next from wooden blocks, and the final one was made from green and yellow mushrooms.

  56 seconds.

  As he stared at the signs, he felt the haptic feeling again, and he understood the meaning of the words, though he still couldn’t read them.

  “Village”

  “Forest”

  “Subterranean”

  Jon immediately went to the subterranean sign, entering the circle. The mushrooms of the circle lit from within with a chartreuse glow, and Jon felt a shift. The ambient light dimmed considerably.

  He was in a crystal-lined tunnel a couple steps across, with the walls arching sharply upward to a ceiling several meters above. The walls had a sporadic covering of yellow and green lichen, which emitted a faint glow; Jon felt like someone cracked open a geode and threw him in it with a glow stick for company, with the crystals reflecting the light from the various fungi. Jon could see, but only about as well as late-twilight.

  The tunnel ended behind him, and the circle of mushrooms remained at his feet. One of the mushrooms in the circle had gone dark. There was a flash, and the circle disappeared. He had only one way forward. The tunnel behind him ended blindly.

  With his vision compromised, Jon began to focus on his other senses; some of the input was familiar, but some was foreign and disorienting. The air was cool and damp, reminiscent of walking down the stairs to a root cellar. He could also feel faint currents in the air, like having someone just barely brush his hair with a finger. The difference was it was all over his body, and almost constant.

  Jon could tell the direction of the air currents as they passed him by, eddying through the crystals all around him. He could also feel vibrations carried through the ground. He could taste the earth at his feet. He had been so focused on learning to run, he hadn’t paid the sense much mind before. It was not quite taste how he remembered it as a human. It was more like smelling something so closely and strongly he could feel it in his mouth. The sense was strongest from his leading clawed feet and the smaller appendages by his fangs, and comparatively muted from the remaining legs.

  The earth at his feet was musty, with a mineral aftertaste Jon associated with the well-water where he grew up. The earth was smooth and compacted, with no fungi or crystals. He collected himself, forcing focus through the sensory barrage.

  50 seconds.

  He began his awkward run again, though he felt it becoming smoother with each passing step. Jon went a bit slower than he had on the surface. He noted a branch in the tunnels about a hundred meters ahead. He saw three paths again as he drew closer.

  One path was going straight ahead and angled downward, with the fungal lighting descending until it was out of view. The second path to the right had a current of cool air flowing from it. That path sloped upwards. Finally there was a third branching path to the left, which curved out of view gradually but appeared to remain level. Jon noted faint vibrations in irregular intervals from that direction.

  Jon felt a pulling sensation from the base of his cephalothorax towards the tunnel on the left. He remembered his discussion with Herman: Herman had told him he would be directed by the IOU note into the correct tunnel. The left tunnel was dark, and Jon could not feel any currents in it. He angled himself towards the left tunnel and began to walk towards it, but paused as his feet smelled something new.

  Jon had settled on the term smell rather than taste, as the idea of licking the ground each step was a little too much for him right now. The smell that made him pause was an animal musk. It reminded him of the smell when a deer had just walked past your yard before you walked outside.

  42 seconds.

  Jon decided to proceed into the tunnel with caution. Instinctively, he drifted to the side of the tunnel as he stalked forward, and he had an idea. He placed one clawed foot onto the tunnel wall, and started trying to walk up along the side. His first claw slipped off the wall, then another buzz hit him behind the eyes. He pushed some hairs on his feet down by flexing at his ‘ankles.’. He could feel the hairs grasping the tunnel wall like a million tiny suction cups, and though his pace slowed considerably, he managed to stay on the wall. It was fortunate the crystals and fungi were more sparse here. It made wall-walking much easier, though it did make this tunnel’s illumination far dimmer.

  He quickly adapted to the new movement pattern, and Jon found it easy to continue walking briskly as he approached 90 degrees from his initial angle. He gradually moved his way up and around the curvature of the tunnel over the next few steps until he was fully upside-down. He had walked only a few more meters in total to get here, but his caution in transitioning to the ceiling had taken a relatively long period.

  32 seconds.

  Jon began to stalk forward along the ceiling.

  As a human, this would have felt very uncomfortable. Jon had a brief period in college where he had started trying to do hand stands as part of his regular work outs. He had to stop when he developed what he would later learn were subconjunctival hemorrhages. They looked like small bloody patches on the whites of his eyes. They thoroughly freaked him out at the time, but faded over a couple weeks.

  As a newly-born jumping spider, suspending himself on the ceiling felt little different than standing on the ground. He did have a far more acute sense of gravitational forces than he did as a human. It seemed all those little hairs covering him had a purpose. Walking on the ceiling did take more deliberate effort, and he had to continuously flatten out the hairs on the ends of his feet to prevent himself from falling. Jon would compare it to the difficulty of maintaining an awkward power-walk.

  Over the next 20 seconds he traversed another fifty meters in the curving tunnel. Even as slow as that felt now, it was still almost as fast as he had been jogging on earth when he was captured. As he walked, he felt vibrations in the tunnel wall from crevices and openings along the walls. Two of the openings were especially ‘loud’ to his new senses, and he also noted the animal musk smelled more strongly in this region. He moved carefully and quietly along the ceiling.

  The ambient light increased as he rounded another curve, and it became almost blinding as he reached the mouth of the tunnel exit.

  5 seconds remaining.

  Jon looked out, seeing a large white column in the distance. It emitted faint heat and bright light.

  He had made it; the cavern looked just as Herman had described it.

  “3”

  “2”

  “1”

  A system message popped into his vision:

  “World alert. A new integration has taken place. The native fauna has taken notice of fresh prey.

  For the prey: Run. Hide. Fight.

  For the predators: Feast

  Your Mission: survive the first hunt to find safety.

  Hint: Git Gud”