It was time for me to return. So I did. Whenever someone asked me where I went, I just told them, "I went on a vacation." They didn't believe me, as they shouldn't, but knew that I wasn't going to tell them so they dropped it. I could not let anyone know the true reason for my absence.
As it happened, I made the completely wise and intentional choice to return straight through the "oncoming storm". Yep, totally intentional. I was forced to attack them as I went through in my lightcycle, because lightcycles are just awesome. While I was away, I had the opportunity to create some electromagnetic guns, which turned out to be very effective against the bots. It was a bit of a gamble, I only had toasters to test on where I was. Luckily, that gamble paid off, I think I took down about 20 of them, but there were many more.
That trip turned out to be more worth than trouble, because I now have valuable intel on the size of the spambot invasion, and what type of spambots there are. They seem to have sent mostly the stupid ones that can't get past a Captcha, this may prove in our favour.