Nanomorph
"Time travel isn't real. How do I know? Because if it was, the future me would have gone back in time to choke the life out of the mother of the guy that invented Nanomorphs. One of them tore up my whole squad. It wasn't even defending the place we were going into, it was just there... looking for food. Never did find out where it came from."
What's a Nanomorph?
This is a shapeshifting nanotech robot. Its intelligence is distributed through its body, and its smart matter structure is capable of rapid self-repair. In addition to assuming whole new shapes, it can also extrude spikes or talons at will. Unlike most robots, nanomorphs have bioconvertor power systems that consume food, although they aren’t very fussy about what they eat – they devour most organic substances, including plastics. Their structures are body-centered cubic bioplastic nanites that can interlock in several configurations in order to harden or soften (or liquify) as needed.
They are generally short lived. While stable examples have been made, the nanites that make up their bodies require an increasing load of organic material to metabolize before they burn out, and the only solution to this is to make new nanites to replace the inefficient ones, leading to eventual collapse.
They are generally used as weapons for conflicts that will not last more than a skirmish or single battle, becoming battlefield hazards and area denial machines. Other nanomorphs are less harmful and used to clean up waste and trash, such as the ones prowling Terra Vista's sewers or the annual Machine Flow Festival on Olympus Mons, which the Martians started as a simple street cleaning effort but eventually became a whole celebration.
Three Suns Paradisio has been known to manufacture "Parasite Seeds " which turn a human body into a Nanomorph, preserving their personality and memories, effectively replacing a person with a loyal Shackled AI, but instead of a cricket you have the nanomorph's SI shackling a digital ghost program. The process is horrific to both witness and think about. Psychojacks have been known to use a less refined version of this which simply plunders a human body for carbon to create the nanomorph, making an effective terror weapon.
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