24. Pods

Academy Hill, Vidako

Imperium Stellarum
September 27, 2847

For an interminable moment, Arc felt distant from his own body, as if connected by only the most tenuous string. He heard the noises of the other cadets and the corpsmen moving around the training pods, the hushed murmur of conversation and the scuff of boots against stairs, but none of it touched him. It was as if those things were happening to someone else, perhaps an actor in a holo-drama. He had the surreal sensation that, with the slightest tug, that string would give and he would simply float away, untethered to anything physical.

Connection established, Iceni said, and all at once sensation came flooding in.

Rather than the darkened simulation pod, with the flat-screen mounted just in front of him which Hospital Corpsman Third Class Varnell had used to authorize the simulation, Arc found himself looking out on a wide, flat field of tall grass and wild flowers. Everything seemed terribly small—as if the world was little more than a model or diorama in a museum, built in miniature. Or as if he were looking down from a height of approximately sixteen meters. Arc lifted his left hand, looked down at it, and saw the articulated, mechanical fingers of a T-3 Tyro training mech flex at his mental control.

The action of raising the hand, however, moved several tons of arm: RSiNC armor plating, graphene-based fiber type artificial muscles, power cables, and more components than Arc could name. That movement shifted the center of balance of the mech in a way that was just different enough from how a real, flesh and blood human body moved that Arc found himself swaying, suddenly out of control.

Out of instinct, he lifted a foot to take a step and catch his balance—but there, again, everything was different. The feet of a Tyro were wide, built sturdy enough to support thirty-five tons of weight. Compared to Arc’s own body, it was like trying to take a step with cement boots on. One movement led to the next in a series of desperate, half-conscious adjustments, and then he was falling. The simulated Tyro hit the meadow like a cannonball, digging furrows through the soft earth and sending sprays of dirt up in every direction. Arc let the mech lay there for a moment, because it was the first time since lifting that hand that he’d managed to keep the mech still.

Six percent of right arm RSiNC plating was practically destroyed, Iceni reported. Much of it is actually still there, but crumpled and broken from the force of the impact. Three percent effective armor loss on our torso, and four on our right leg. Visual display updating.

A wireframe of the mech’s shape appeared to the lower left of Arc’s field of vision. Most of the image was drawn in green, but the right arm, leg, and side of the torso blinked between green and yellow, with armor percentages listed beside each. Beneath the wireframe, a horizontal, stylized image of a battery was also painted in green, with the words: ‘Battery Charge: 99%’ written beneath.

They haven’t given us any weapons at all, Iceni grumbled, her voice laced with a very human approximation of human frustration. Even the guns that should be attached to the shoulder hardpoints aren’t actually there.

“That’s fine,” Arc said, and he felt the phantom sensation of his lips moving, somewhere back in the real world where his physical body remained. The dual sensations made his stomach clench, and he resolved not to speak any further. We need to worry about getting back up on our feet before we worry about shooting anything, he added, silently, knowing that the AI would understand him clearly.

The training program is advising you to roll onto your hands and knees, Iceni related. I’m muting it. We don’t need three people talking here, and I can relay what it wants just as easily.

I’m not certain that’s exactly what the lieutenant commander has in mind, Arc grumbled, and then set about, very slowly and carefully, following those instructions. At the beginning of the simulation, he’d moved without thinking, as if he’d still been maneuvering the body he’d spent his entire life growing into. Now, he resolved to make each motion deliberate, careful.

Left hand, palm down, fingers open, onto the ground first. It was the undamaged arm, and so, Arc judged, more likely to support the mech’s weight without buckling. He pushed against the earth, mechanical fingers digging into the grass and crushing wildflowers, until he’d levered the Tyro’s torso up off the dirt. Then, he brought the right arm around and got that under him. He paused there a moment, on the mech’s hands and knees.

Once again, he started with the left side, the undamaged side, which he trusted more. Iceni and the simulation both claimed that only armor had been damaged, but Arc didn’t entirely trust that. An impact could cause all sorts of damage beneath the surface, even problems that might not be visible at first glance. His father had once told him about how one of the old wheeled trucks used to get around the groves of mulberry trees outside the city had careened off the road when one of the other workers, an old drunk named Ray, hadn’t bothered to secure his safety belt. When he’d taken a turn faster than he should have, the weight of his body being jammed up against the driver’s door of the truck had popped the door open, and he’d gone tumbling out, while the truck continued on into the trunk of a mulberry tree.

Camden Sandhurst had been one of the workers who’d run over to help. He’d told Arc and Phoebe, that evening, that at first they’d thought they might be able to drive the truck back to the garage, because the damage didn’t look so bad. But once they’d opened the hood and actually looked, they’d found that the engine itself had cracked, and that oil was leaking everywhere. In the end, the company had decided it was less expensive to buy an entirely new replacement truck, rather than try to repair the old one.

Arc wasn’t a tech student; he didn’t have much of an idea of what could go wrong beneath the surface on a mech. If he’d been piloting a real Tyro, rather than a simulation, he would have asked his repair crew to pull the armor off both the damaged arm and leg, and go over all the internal workings with a fine-toothed comb.

Instead, with one foot under him and both hands firmly planted on the torn-up sod, Arc pushed the mech upright. Once again, his point of view moved higher than it had any right to, the sensors installed in the Tyro’s head giving him a view all around the meadow. Carefully, he brought the mech’s other foot, attached to the damaged leg, under him and got it planted, as well. Then, he just stood for a moment, without moving, letting the mech settle while he got a better sense of how it felt to just exist in a shell of metal.

Now that you’re upright, Iceni said, we’re supposed to make our way across the meadow to that waypoint. A white marker appeared in Arc’s vision, digitally painted on top of the image from his sensor feeds. The training program wants me to urge you to walk slowly, rather than attempt a run.

No worries about that, Arc sent back. Walking’s going to be hard enough. Slowly and carefully, he lifted one foot, pushing off with the other, and made his first attempt.

𝝮

That first attempt ended in failure, as did the third.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

By that point, the training program reset the simulation, because Arc had torn up the mech’s armor enough with repeated falls that the right leg was no longer moving properly. Once he had a fresh mech, and a meadow that wasn’t pitted and scarred from his failed attempts, he did finally manage to make it to the first marker—but that was only the beginning of the program.

As the session wore on, Arc was made to move uphill, and then downhill, rather than on flat ground. He was forced to maneuver around boulders, and then to walk along the sandy shore of a lake, which gave way beneath the Tyro’s foot and then sucked at the machine whenever Arc tried to lift a leg. By the time the afternoon training session was over, though his physical body had done nothing more than sit, strapped into a chair, Arc was utterly exhausted. He’d never even tried to run.

The sensation of disconnecting from the mech was just as jarring as connecting in the first place. Arc couldn’t help but feel overly aware of his own breathing, his own heartbeat. The Arc who had been a mech didn’t need to do either of those things. He felt too small, as if he’d been crammed down into a tight space. Being inside of the simulation pod felt claustrophobic, and he couldn’t get unbuckled and out into open air soon enough.

“Sit down right here,” Corpsman Varnell told him. “I need to check a few things before you can go. Here, follow this light with your eyes.” After waving a small flashlight back and forth, she disconnected the sensors she’d placed beneath his shirt, and once again took his blood pressure and pulse. “Do you have a headache? Are you nauseous? Dizzy?”

“No,” Arc said. “Just—weird. It feels like I’m too small. And I can’t stop paying attention to how I breathe.”

“That’s fairly normal for a first time,” Varnell assured him. “It’ll get easier and easier the more you do this, until eventually you hardly even notice the transition.”

“I’m ok, then?” Arc asked. “I can stay in the pilot program?”

“I don’t see any medical reason to be concerned about how your body handled the connection,” she said. “And my report to Doctor Seung will reflect that. Of course, I don’t actually make any of those decisions. But yes, you seem fine. Head on up the stairs, the lieutenant commander’s waiting for you all. And use the railing.”