Book 8 – Interlude Part 2

From his garden, an augmented ex-human watched through the camera feeds as his patient stirred awake.

Talen. That was what the nametags had said. Very different compared to the humans he’d known and called friends. Names there had multiple compounds, designating role, rank, first name, friendly name, and family core name. This one didn’t follow any of those rules.

One single name for it all was a little overloaded and less understandable. Although he would be a hypocrite if he brought that up as an issue. His own name was a single word too. Two letters less than ‘Talen’ even.

The operation had taken thirty two minutes, and halfway through, there hadn’t been any further point to remain watching over in person, so he’d left to go tend to his garden. Of course, he continued to remotely pilot the operating table. Multitasking.

Instead of greeting the human in person as Talen woke up, he decided to simply wait and see what happened next. The man began with a small moan, before opening his eyes in a flash. Practiced movements made him roll off the operating table for cover, hand going down for his belt, searching for something that wasn’t there. Likely the pistol that had been there.

Interesting reflex choice. And he could see the movements of the man were suboptimal, as if compen- ah. No, they were made clearly to avoid using the abductor muscles, the ones where the stomach wounds had been. Thus Talen was likely moving with an attempt to limit further damage. Likely hadn’t yet noticed his wounds had been healed and moved on pure instinct.

All that within the same moment he woke up?

Almost five seconds passed as Talen remained crouched by the table, assessing what was around him. His hand reached to his stomach and patted it, then patted again with some surprise. He finally glanced down to check over it.

In his garden, still watching through the camera, the augmented human felt pleased at his work. Not only had he removed the impalement, he’d also resown all the punctured stomach regions, without cheating by shortening the stomach itself. It was messier work, his own stomach had been neatly rearranged and improved in efficiency so long ago, he’d forgotten what a normal human stomach was supposed to look like.

Whoever had designed the rat’s nest of wiring for the human body had clearly not cared to do a good job. But he wasn’t here to critique evolution’s poor craftsmanship.

Talen stood up, spotted his utility belt laid on the table, and made a quick dash to grab it. Weapon out first, the belt placed next.

Threat assessment immediately appeared over the camera feed, and judgements were made.

The gun could stay, if Talen attempted to attack him with that, the bullets wouldn’t do any harm at all. But the blade Talen had arrived with? That was a threat, and he’d made sure not to leave it within the local area.

Soon the human began to explore around the home, looking at the crash site, then creeping through the hallways and rooms. The house he had here was haphazard. Rooms were added as needed, or by whim. All of it was made for his full size, so the human looked like a child walking through the estate.

Talen made a valiant effort in fixing the exo-suit. This was the part the augmented ex-human was most curious about that. The pilot clearly knew his way around the different emergency options, and even made a few inspired repairs. Removing muscle fibers from the neck region of the armor felt like a misstep, that would force the pilot to move the entire chest each time to look around. But Talen didn’t simply unhook the spare muscle fibers, he also loosened up the helmet’s own inner locks and safeties. Meaning it could now freely rotate around. Which meant the human was planning on using his own neck muscles to move the helmet around. Certainly possible.

As the current architect of all these different suits, his own approach to field repairs was far different compared to Talen’s. The spinal muscle fibers were what always removed first when cannibalizing sections of his suits, but in this case, those had already been stripped to repair the arm at some prior time.

Interesting repair philosophy. It felt earned and well tested. Unfortunately, the suit needed far more than a few critical muscle fibers repaired. The entire thing was never going to work again, but there was no way a human without augmented eyes like his could see it immediately.

Fifteen minutes and some change, Talen gave up the attempts. Instead, he continued to search around the house.

That eventually led him outside, to the agricultural gardens and his small lake.

In the meantime, the garden needed attention, this time he was going with a wild grove pattern. No rows of highly organized crops, but instead small clusters and communities of plants all naturally supporting each other. It should grant a greater yield, in theory.

And he liked how it looked.

The destination Talen took was a scouting pattern, and inevitably he spotted the garden where he worked on… and the original exosuit still waiting on hooks for the next expedition out. The one that wasn’t a strange copy.

Watching through the cameras, he could clearly see Talen change his tune and start creeping towards the suit instead, weapon drawn, prepared. Not realizing he was being watched from the very moment he’d woken up.

Perhaps he should stop the strange human there, his personal exo-suit was more powerful than even his augmentations. But the armor wasn’t immune to his blade’s ability to cut through anything. And both his personal blade and the odd… replica blade that Talen had come with, were safely stored away.

He also had several hundred fractals all etched out under his skin and grafts, ready for use as usual. But the killing blow here was simple: With a thought, he could shut down the armor remotely at any distance. He had all the network connections and system admin permissions.

Stolen story; please report.

He’d built them all after all.

Plus it was more comfortable speaking to humans while looking at them through a camera. It would let him avoid eye contact. Speaking across this additional layer always made socialization easier. Perhaps this pilot would appreciate it too. So he let the human believe he was correctly sneaking up to the waiting unused exo-suit.

There was some curiosity at how well a human could pilot his suits. He’d never even considered that possible. This many modifications beyond the original template made it a small nightmare to pilot without the ability to multitask a few hundred operations at once.

Talen swiftly came up to it, holstered his pistol and slipped into the armor from the back. The move was practiced, rapid and quick. Muscle memory clearly letting him drive his feet and hands all the way to their base without taking time to feel around. Interesting.

But then again, a human didn’t need to go through the extra steps of folding up their arms and legs like he had to in order to fit into the chassis. The sizing was originally made for normal un-augmented humans in mind.

The armor closed up behind Talen, fully powered. It lacked the decorations and additional items this pilot had plastered over time to the copy-suit, which must have included all the internal customizations this human was used to. But surprisingly the exo-suit easily moved in one go, clearing itself from its dock without any difficulty, showing the human had some experience with unaltered exo-suits?

And then the armor began to move with an uncanny grace.

That was… unexpected.

Moving around inside his own creations, they’d always felt like lumbering behemoths to him. Each step a stomp, each motion done with all the power of a small god.

Talen made it look like an assassin instead.

Muscle fibers he rarely used were now fully engaged, helping the armor’s gait. Almost like a natural extension of the human body.

The human was… actually sneaking around with an exo-armor? How?

Midway through repotting of a tomato plant, his hands stopped as he stared through the camera feed at this bizarre oddity.