Life As We Don't Know It

What is alive? How would we know if we found it in outer space?!

Day 9: “It’s alive!” — Frankenstein (1931)

Nobody had expected this. A first of its kind event aboard Space Station Phi. Every big brass from the Guest Liaison Executive to Admiral Ronald Reyes was in attendance. Astrobiologist Jarred Grubelle used his virtual assistant to project the slide show in the air above the center of the table.

"This is footage from the ventilation system this morning," he described. A tiny maintenance robot scuttled through the shaft obliterating debris using its laser cleaning device. There was a
no audio but all of them could see the image distort and then static. When the camera came back online, the robot was in pieces. The wires arced triggering the automatic fire suppression system.

"What the hell?" Admiral Reyes exclaimed. "Did we get hit by a CME? Were there any other anomalies?"

Doctor Grubelle shook his head. "There were but all were fairly localized," he said. "Whatever took out the cleaning bot only attacked autonomous machines of a certain size; between 2 and 25 centimeters. All other station electrical and life support systems function as intended."

Reyes tapped the his jawline with one finger. "So why is an astrobiologist telling us about this development?"

"Are you familiar with the ancient earth ritual of dissecting owl pellets?" Grubelle said. "In the old days you could tell how big owls in the area were by the size of the prey they caught. This information was gleaned by picking bones out of hairballs the owl coughed up."

"Your point is?"

"Whatever this is behaves much like a predator." The Doctor said. "I believe that some organism that eats machines has taken up residence on Space Station Phi. Left unchecked, this entity could destroy vital infrastructure. If there's a breeding population, we could have major deleterious effects within a matter of days."

"So it could potentially kill everyone?"

"That is a possibility."