The Suit - Submarine Base
Imported from SF2 with no description provided.
I rubbed the back of my head. “So these suits, what were you building them for?” I had asked the doctor after we’d unloaded everything into the labs of the Submarine Base. “I’m sure you are too young to remember this, we started building the suits not long after the terrorist attacks. When they hit the Temish embassy and flew a plane into the World Economic Center about twenty years ago. We started the super soldier project. It went well for the most part, the genetics aspects of it actually lead to treatments for all kinds of diseases we don’t see anymore, and even gave us a leg up on prostate cancer if you’ll believe that”
I sat back in the chair and rubbed the back of my neck, the electronics of the collar were barely noticeable under the skin and fur of my neck. I look up and see the time in the corner of my vision. “Yeah sorry I was like four when all that happened I remember dad was away a lot after all that happened though. The army kept sending him out to Kizakstan and other places out there in the central east. Damn it’s late, where is Andrew?” I stood up and stretched when Rikr pinged me. “Chester, the security camera picked up your friend. I’ve guided him to the elevator and he’s currently descending. I assume you don’t want to have this conversation out in the middle of the busiest part of the city where you could be seen.”
Perking up I send the AI wolf a virtual thumbs up before making my way to the entry garage. “Be back in a bit doc.”
“So Rikr, Andrew wasn’t followed was he?” I asked and the wolf’s avatar appeared walking next to me in his leather loincloth and harness. “Nope, looks like he’s all alone. No government agents. Apparently you guys aren’t interesting enough to follow. Yet.” I snorted. “I’ve been arrested for trespassing at least four times thanks. I’m quite shocked they haven’t just thrown me in Darkshores yet.” Thankfully the walk to the garage was mercifully short and the elevator arrived moments after I did, Rikr’s avatar fading into nothingness.
When the door to the elevator opens up standing there looking kind of amazed was a slightly rounded black bear only a couple inches shorter than me wearing a tropical patterned shirt and jeans, carrying a backpack. “Welcome to Submarine Base H!” I beam excitedly. “Though it’s not the best of circumstances to find a fully working military base that’s completely undocumented I did it! Though we can’t document this one.”
“Inder, buddy, what the hell?” The bear drawled slightly his accent giving away his southern Temish origin. “I thought you’d up and died on me. What the hell man? Oh yeah got that new sim you were looking for.” He pulled the sleeve with the card in it out of his backpack and tossed it to me as he stepped from the elevator. “Dude you’ve got no clue. Come on lets walk and I’ll tell you all about it.”
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The conversation last through the whole walk, and for over an hour after we arrived in the mess hall. “That’s the fucking craziest story. I can’t believe a fucking wo-“ Andrew was cut off when Marvin rolled into the room. “Good evening, would you two like something to eat? It’s getting to be the doctor’s dinner hour and he’s requested chicken stir fry and soup dumplings.” Marvin said. I nodded to the bot by Andrew’s jaw dropped. I hadn’t had the time to be as mind blown as Andrew by this bot. “Yeah I’d like that, I think Andrew would like it too. Better than the paste.” I waved to the boxes of nutrient paste that served to feed the users of the suits.
Marvin beeped in response and as he disappeared through the kitchen door Andrew was able to recover. “Was that some kind of military bot?” I nodded again. “Yeah that’s Marvin he’s built to assist Doctor Tate.” I shrugged. “Shit that doesn’t blow your mind?” I looked down as Andrew asked that question. “Ah, not really. I mean it’s not nearly as impressive as a walking suit of armor that’s pretty much a sentient being on it’s own. Plus being tied to it permanently is something all together different.” I tapped at place on my neck where the embedded electronics were hidden. I placed my head in my hand and sighed. “Now the federal government wants to do me in though.”
Andrew for his part was pretty silent until the end. “Wait tell me about the… Collar you called it right?” I perk up a little. “Yeah, the collar.”
“So what does it do, you told me it was some embedded electronics, but that’s it?” I sighed when he posed the question. “Alright well it’s actually the whole operating system for the suit, plus my phone, it’s a supercomputer from hell and it’s part of my body. It can communicate with the suit for up to a mile in the right conditions. Technically the AI that runs the suit is in here.” I point to my neck. “As well as up here.” I run my fingers to my head. “It’s expanded to become part of my brain. I mean I can see the hud right now. Air pressure, temperature, wind, I can call up what the air is made of, I can remotely access things around me.” I focus for a second and turn off the lights in the mess hall then turn them back on. “At least as long as it’s computer controlled.” I laughed a little.
I looked down at the card on the table, the pre-paid SIM card emblazoned with the logo of a rabbit in profile. “You know,” Andrew said scratching the back of his hand, “they’ve made it harder to get actual SIM cards. Senator Killigan’s Citizen Security bill is making every carrier switch to ID binding.” Andrew shook his head.
I sighed, even all these years later they were still using terrorism as a crutch to take away people’s freedoms and rights. We were eventually interrupted from our musings as Marvin brought out food, the bot’s torso, head, and arms were designed to mimic a person’s but under that were tracks, a lot like that one movie with the robot that got struck by lightning from the 80’s.
The food was delicious and it stalled any other conversation.
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The suit, Rikr stood in a corner of my quarters, while the mixed reality avatar of Rikr the wolf sat next to me on the bed. I knew he wasn’t there but you’d be hard pressed to say he wasn’t. He gave off the illusion of presence. His body heat could be felt, I could smell the leather of his loin cloth and the pine and petrichor clinging to his fur. It was so damned convincing honestly, it didn’t help that Rikr had even created the illusion of open space where there was in reality a solid wall. He’d managed to trick my brain into thinking there was a glass wall there with a winter forest outside.
“My memories from before I synced with you are locked. I can see they are there, but I can’t touch them.” Rikr shrugged and then looked up to the ceiling. “I’ve been trying to decrypt them for the last day but I haven’t made any progress.”
“But I have made pretty good progress on the other things you asked me for. I’ve managed to make headway into hacking into the mobile carriers so we can keep access at all times. Wasn’t that hard since I was able to duplicate current radio specs from your old phone.”
As we sat there a window appeared before me, it was Dr. Tate calling me through the local base commms. “Doctor, it’s almost midnight.” I said as the man’s image appeared in my vision. “Yes I know. But there is somethings we must talk about that is very important. Very, very important. Can you please meet me in the officers meeting room?” I looked to Rikr who shrugged. “Sure yeah, I can meet you there in a minute.
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The officers meeting room was furnished better than the rest of the base. As I entered the doctor was sitting on one side nursing on a steaming mug of freshly brewed coffee, a screen to my left lit and the image of Rikr appeared, the screen’s conference camera swiveling from it’s standby position.
“So what’s so important doctor?” I asked as I sat down. “I’m sure you are curious about why everything was shut down.” He sighed and sipped his coffee. “The thought occurred to me and I had asked Rikr if he knew. Which he didn’t.” I sat back in my chair a little, the comfy leather chair cushioned me in all the right places. “Yes, that’s not shocking. That data was locked away by an executive order. No. You know the company Acre Online?” Marvin moved through the room and served me some coffee. “Yeah I know them biggest internet services company in the world, made the first search engine, the first smartphones came out of their labs. Hell even the basic AIs we use everywhere came from them too.” The doctor touched the surface of the table and an image came up on the main screen. The image was shared with Rikr since he’d connected into the conference room. It was a memorandum. Skimming the memo my eyes narrowed. “This says they were shutting you down because they were afraid of the potential harm to test subjects in the sync phase, they didn’t want to risk any more soldiers. Seems reasonable I guess.”
“Yes, that would have been as good a reason as any wouldn’t it? Too high a cost of life since we can’t desync someone after they are synced to a suit we used soldiers we planned to give the suits to anyway. It made sense to us at the time.” He sighed and sat back looking me in the eye. “The first subject to die, died because the firmware for the collar caused feedback that stopped his heart. We worked quickly to learn what happened and correct it, when simulations said it was good, we scheduled another synch for the next day, and yes. The fastest way to sync is by sexual over stimulation. That’s always the first question people ask.”
The doctor got a faraway look. “We killed five people, five very fine men with families. At least. That’s what I had been lead to believe. You see talking with Marvin he’s determined that the night before each sync a programmer would come in and make a breaking change. Marvin even managed to narrow it down and identify the programmer. So it wasn’t us killing these men, it was-“ the doctor choked before continuing, “sabotage. Something we never anticipated happening so subtly. Regardless, we now know the programmer was one Luther Rollins who by the way has been missing for a long time now, seems like he vanished right after the program got canceled.” The doctor used the touch pad in the table to bring up Luther Rollins’ details. “We also think he had help. Meet Gage Parker.” The doctor threw up another file. “He’s also been missing, vanishing at the same time as Luther. He was the administrator that had hired Luther. The disappearance of both Luther and Gage according to Marvin, shouldn’t be counted as a coincidence.”
The doctor stood and paced the room. “Both Luther and Gage had been head hunted by the DIA for us, and both came from Acre Online. I’ve recently been told that Acre is working on a new AI project of their own and we got some preliminary designs of their next generation personal computing device.” On the screen appeared a schematic. There was a sharp intake of breath, Rikr shook his head. “I know that device intimately.” Rikr appeared on the main screen next to the schematic. “This is the Data Nexus Generation 1 Collar. You Chester are using the Generation 4, designed by Marvin and his freelancers from the ground up to be adaptable and hardened.”
I stopped for a second. “You are telling me that Acre got their hands on the collar.” The doctor nodded. “Yeah, except there is a small change from my original design, there is no on-board AI.” The doctor paused and Rikr continued. “Yeah, this thing was meant to be run by a central AI somewhere.” There was a pregnant silence. “So if this collar can do what mine does. That means,” I paused and Rikr finished my sentence for me. “Acre could sell reality to their advertisers and the government. Yes.”
The doctor’s thoughts were interrupted as the conversation pulled him back to reality. “We need to know more. We need way more intel than what we have. We need more suits assigned to more people.”