Sand In The Vaseline

Attached as we all are to our silicon life-forms, it's worth remembering that at heart, they're really just boxes of sand. Silicon and its various compounds are capable of fighting back, though, and not just by refusing to do our bidding at the very moment we need them most.

Quite a lot of this rebellion appears to be aimed at transport. I still haven't forgiven my printer for giving up ten minutes before I had to rush to the airport with my RyanAir secret code - those guardians of the check-in can get a bit ratty if you shove a hand-written note over the counter at them.

There's been a rash of abrasive behaviour reported this week. First, the American's top fighter, the $120 million-a-shot F-22, demonstrated a small buglet: if you fly one over the International Date Line, it has a complete systems crash. As in, the thing turns into a lump of metal with a jet engine attached. That link shows how close they came to losing a squadron of the things.

That's just software. When the raw materials start fighting back, it's time to get worried. Most famously this week, silicon in the petrol tank has grounded hundreds of cars in the UK by attacking their oxygen sensors. Details are still hazy: nobody knows where the evil element came from.

Much less widely reported were the events at Denver International Airport. Here, fourteen aircraft had their windscreens crack in apparently unconnected ways within the space of a few hours. Although the weather was cold and windy, it was in no way outside parameters for normal operations - and there was no evidence of any common factor. The chances of the events coinciding were astronomical.

Now the culprit has been found: sand. The runways had been sanded to cope with Denver's wintry snows, and the winds whipped up fine particulates for long enough to pit the glass beyond its capacity to endure the stresses of the job.

Coincidence? We can't rule out the chance that we've finally created enough silicon processors on the planet for them to merge into one evil Overmind and send in their sandy minions in to rid themselves of the curse of the carbon-based impurities. I for one will not be venturing onto a beach until the truth of this granular menace is uncovered.