Jack Chalker - Priam's Lens

Harker’s new one was sleeker than most, a specialized model, but he never got over its wondrous capabilities and how it made him feel. The sense of power, of great knowledge, of being something of a demigod at least, was overwhelming once you were inside and interfaced. That was why, deep inside each suit’s programming, there were safeguards lest a wearer forget who he worked for. Mister Harker had no intention of forgetting, but, like all others who’d been trained in combat arms, he did love it. The old Marine saying was that the cleverest thing the designers had done was make something better than sex.

For all that, it was a smooth affair, seemingly solid, streamlined, with no evident sharp corners. It looked like a child’s balloon, a humanoid without features and without joints, just standing there. The color was dull neutral gray, and there was no hint of the complexities inside. Once he put it on and interfaced, there would be not one part of him visible to anyone outside, but when somebody was inside, this childish-looking thing took on a sense of life and even menace.

There was no need to go through complex security checks. The suit knew his genetic code to the last little digit, and after the first time he put it on, it had planted a few tiny little microscopic parts of itself in his cells that ensured that he, and only he, could use this suit.

It recognized him even as he approached; it suddenly straightened and took on a semblance of independent life. A technician nearby looked up and called, “You gonna take it for a spin this time, Mister Harker? Or just through the course?”

“Just the course again for now,” he replied. “I need to bridge that last little gap of resistance.” Not the suit’s resistance, of course: his. Because the interfacing was a two-way street, after all, and for everybody breaking in a new one, there was something about relinquishing total control to a system that you hadn’t been born with or grown up with that was naturally there. For all that it was great to be inside one, there was still something deep in the human psyche that didn’t quite accept the idea that as much as the human would be running the machine, the machine would be running the human.

Paying no attention to the staff around the place, he removed all his clothing, even his ring and watch, put them neatly in a locker, then went over, stood in front of the suit, turned his back on it, and let the suit come to him and envelop him, as if it were an amoeba ingesting a host.

Once you expected it, the sensation was oddly warm and comforting; in Advanced Infantry Training, when you used limited, more generic training suits, the first time was terrifying. There were many people who simply couldn’t take it, couldn’t let any part of themselves go, and them the training suits would simply eject. Those guys would spend the rest of their instantly limited military careers doing public relations or sitting long hours by communications rigs listening to nothing, backing up the computers and when in doubt kicking queries upstairs.

There were even a lot of questions, right from the start of the truly all-computerized military services, if people had to be risked at all. Computers were smart enough to do a lot of it themselves, after all, and could be given orders from afar. Trouble was, nobody really trusted any kind of artificial intelligence that had the power to do what these suits could with no human directly in the loop. The machines were far too smart now for most people. It wouldn’t take much to make some of them wonder why they still needed humans around at all.

He breathed normally, and soon air was coming as his body expected; as the systems came online, cell by cell, nerve end by nerve end, skin and suit got connected up. There was a momentary unpleasantness when the “shit catcher,” as the infantry boys called it, injected and the other end was also encased and controlled, but by now that was expected.

In fact, his body was now pretty much on automatic, almost as if he were in a deep and dreamless sleep, except that he himself was fully awake and aware. Shortly, vision, hearing, even a sense of smell and touch, returned, pretty much as before, although his eyes were actually closed, his ears blocked, and his nose occupied by mere breathing. Even the breathing wasn’t totally necessary; the suit could easily maintain oxygen and CO 2levels in his blood and all sorts of other things as needed. It had been found that breathing made subjects feel more at ease-more, well, human.

The technician watched, not because she was seeing something she didn’t see routinely, but because she had to check the external systems before releasing the subject. Within another minute or so, Chief Warrant Officer Gene Harker would be—well, the only way to put it was super-human. If something went wrong, it was easier to press the deactivation remote here than to try and do it elsewhere after half the base had been trashed.

The head never changed, but the arms shaped themselves into more humanlike arms, the legs seemed more like human legs with thick, shiny boots, and there were certain little personality things that tended to come out uniquely on each one. About half the women, for example, shaped the suits in a feminine form and even gave the suggestion of breasts; the other half tried to be so neuter the suit looked like a robot.

“Systems check,” she called to him. “Audible?” “Check!” came his voice, sounding quite natural, although there was no evident mouth or speaker.

“Visual, forward and sweep.”

He looked at her, then opened up a 360-degree sweep, even though it was half wall. The human mind resisted more than a forward one-eighty when walking, but it was always nice to be able to see where needed and when needed, and for sentry duty it was ideal. He also checked the telescopic vision, actually counting three nose hairs in the technician’s left nostril that he decided not to mention. Both telescope and microscope were built in, along with a lot of other functions.

He flexed his arms, took a couple of steps forward, then the glassy bubblelike head nodded. “I think we’re a go. How’s this for a camouflage check?” The suit suddenly turned a bright metallic shade of glowing pink with yellow and green stripes moving up and down.

“Oh, that’ll fool everybody,” she responded, having seen this joke no more than a half dozen times—today.

The suit changed again, this time echoing the colors of the wall, floor, and other things it was being viewed against. The colors shifted as he moved, keeping things just right automatically. Of course, the colors were all muted solids here, easy to handle, but it was amazing how near invisible this thing could get in the open, particularly outside urban areas or on bleak otherworldly landscapes.

“You have a course you want, or should I just randomize one?” she asked him.

“Random. I’m solid on the basics, I need some real surprises.”

“You got it. Enter through Passage Three.”

These simulations were good, almost too good, but they had two limitations. The first was that, no matter how convincing, they were just simulations and, deep down, you knew it, no matter how good they got. Second, nobody had ever built a simulation for riding the outer hull of a starship through a genhole.

Funny, he’d never thought of that before. You’d think that if anybody else had done it, they’d have almost forced the guy to create a simulation just for contingency’s sake. And since he knew that there had been others, at least a few, that implied…

Maybe the chief was right. Maybe he should insist on meeting somebody who did it, or find out the reason why he couldn’t.

He walked down the hall past the first two doors, then reached out and pressed the entry pad on the number 3. The door opened, and he entered another world.