17
Camp Oppenheimer, CSF Research & Development Center, 80 miles east of Stillwater, Nevada, U.S.A.
The medical center was a sterile building all by itself on the edge of the Camp Oppenheimer property. Angel didn’t like seeing the isolation wards. It made her worry that the otherwise lavish CSF base was somehow a dangerous place. She had been ordered to get a full physical exam, which Angel thought was an overreaction. She was sore, but not hurt. The ARC suit had absorbed almost all of the impact that normally made her joints ache after a hard practice. She was accustomed to bruises from falls, and the almost constant muscle aches and soreness that resulted from hard training. She had been a professional athlete for more than six years, which came with risks. But Angel knew her body, and she was certain that she was just sore from overexertion.
The medical center was not unlike a civilian medical clinic. A receptionist scanned her I.D., then asked her to sit and wait. It took the nurse almost half an hour to call her name and Angel resented the entire ordeal. She wanted to be out on the gun range with Staff Sergeant Cashman and his fire team. Angel was still adjusting to life in the service and to being an officer. She was only eighteen, although her birthday was less than a month away, but she didn’t think of herself as an adult. Cashman and his squad treated her with respect, but she could also sense something else. It was as if they didn’t trust her.
“Lieutenant Murphy,” the nurse said as she swung open a door from the waiting room. “This way please.”
The nurse had three diagonal stripes on a patch that was sewn onto the sleeve of her white uniform. Angel had memorized all the ranks of the three branches within CSF. The nurse was part of the navy, as were most of the scientists and engineers that Angel had seen. Three stripes meant that she was a petty officer, which was equal in rank to a gunnery sergeant, or a warrant officer in the Air Force.
The nurse checked Angel’s weight and height.
“Do you think I might have shrunk?” Angel asked.
“Just following orders, ma’am. You’re to receive a complete physical examination.”
Angel didn’t comment. She didn’t mind following orders. In some ways, it was a relief. She had feared that by being an officer she would have to give orders and make decisions, but so far she’d been told exactly what to do at every stage.
The nurse checked her temperature, which was normal, followed by her blood pressure and the amount of oxygen in her blood.
“You’ll need to get undressed for the doctor,” the nurse said, as she recorded the readings from Angel’s blood pressure and pulse oxygen into a data pad, before opening the door to the small exam room. “There are gowns in the cabinet above the sink.”
Angel nodded, although she didn’t think the nurse saw her. The woman’s bedside manner was laughable. She didn’t have to like her job, but Angel was surprised that the nurse seemed to have no empathy for her patients.
Getting undressed wasn’t something that normally made Angel uncomfortable. For years she had gotten dressed in locker rooms full of people. Normally they were females, but she had gotten her share of medical exams by male physicians, and more than once she’d been forced to use a unisex locker room. She wasn’t overly modest, but like most people she had a few regrets about her body. Her chest wasn’t as large as she would have liked. Over the years she had endured the hateful verbal teasing of classmates at school about the size of her breasts, but Angel knew that small breasts were part of having a lean, strong body.
Unfortunately, she wasn’t small in other areas. She had thick thighs and large gluteus muscles, which were ideal for saltos and dive rolls, but looked fat in blue jeans. Her shoulders were wider than most girls’, her abdomen was tight, but not tiny, which seemed to be the popular look. Added together she thought of herself as average. She had sacrificed her looks for strength and skill in the gymnasium. She rarely wore make-up and with her hair buzzed she doubted that she would catch anyone’s eye.
The gowns in the cabinet were little more than paper smocks, with straps to tie the loose flaps together in back. Angel slipped into the gown and made sure the sides overlapped before hopping up onto the exam table. A few minutes later, a female doctor knocked on the door and stepped into the room. She had a white doctor’s coat with two gold stars on the collar.
“Lieutenant Murphy,” the doctor said. “I’m Commander Zellnic. How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” Angel said. “A little sore, but that’s from overexertion.”
“Describe the pain,” the doctor ordered, looking at Angel’s arms and legs for bruising or swelling.
“Just basic muscle soreness,” Angel explained. “It hurts a bit when I move around. Especially my shoulders and glutes.”
“You’re a gymnast, I see,” the doctor said, looking at her data pad.
“I was.”
“And you’re working on a development project. Is that vigorous?”
“I just started, but yes it was yesterday.”
The doctor had Angel pull the gown off her shoulders. Commander Zellnic examined the muscles around her neck and shoulders. Angel was asked to raise her arms up and down. Next she was asked to let the doctor see her back side.
“There’s no bruising,” Commander Zellnic said. “Let me check your reflexes and we’ll draw some blood.”
The entire exam lasted fifteen minutes, and Angel was allowed to put her uniform back on. Compared to some physicals she had endured, it was relatively simple and routine. Angel didn’t like having blood drawn, but it wasn’t all that unusual.
She left the medical center and walked through the blazing mid-afternoon heat back to her room. She was berthed in Barracks H. The room beside hers, with access to the bathroom she used, was empty. Most of her floor was unoccupied and Angel got the impression that the barracks was mostly used for temporary assignments, which made Angel wonder about where she might end up once the ARC testing was over.
Unlike basic training, Angel had her phone and could call her mother, but she wasn’t supposed to talk about what she was doing and Angel knew her mother would needle her with questions she couldn’t answer. She tried taking a nap but was just too restless, so after killing as much time as she could in her room, she walked down to the officers’ mess.
Loneliness was like a cloud hanging over her. She had enjoyed basic training, despite the grueling nature of it, because she felt as if she were part of a team. Everyone in her platoon knew her name and she did nothing on her own aside from the extra training sessions on the obstacle course. Her first assignment was nothing like basic. She didn’t know anyone outside of the small team of researchers working on the ARC program and they worked constantly, rarely leaving the lab. She knew the special forces squad, but they were enlisted and didn’t even eat meals in the same facility that Angel ate in.
She went through the chow line, getting her food and an iced tea. There was a large soft-drink dispenser but she rarely drank anything other than water, juice, and the occasional unsweetened tea. Coffee was acceptable during training, but only black coffee and nothing with excess sugar, not even sports drinks. She didn’t want to have coffee with her meal, nor did she want added caffeine that might keep her awake at night.
There were plenty of empty tables. Angel picked one and sat down. She wasn’t surprised that she was alone, but she was surprised to discover that, as she looked around the mess hall, that almost everyone else was eating alone as well. Most were absorbed by their data pads, reading silently while they ate. Even the officers sitting together in groups rarely spoke.
She decided if she couldn’t beat them, she would join them. Angel didn’t have a data pad, so she pulled out her phone. It had a commercial reading app. She spent a few minutes connecting her new bank account to an online bookstore, and then spent the rest of her meal browsing the virtual shelves. While she had been in training Angel rarely had free time to read. She took a light course load in school, which meant that she had to take courses throu
gh the summer, with no real time off. She had enjoyed reading when she was younger, and had purchased the first book of a popular fantasy series by the time she finished her meal.
After disposing of her tray and utensils, Angel decided to go to the Officers’ Club. She didn’t want to drink, but she didn’t want to return to her small room in Barracks H either. The Officer’s Club was a wide building with glass walls. She scanned her ID to get inside and was impressed with the posh furnishings of the club. Half of the building looked to be a fine dining restaurant. She could see a few patrons at the small tables with white tablecloths and linen napkins. The other half of the club, which was reached through a narrow corridor from the restaurant, was an upscale lounge. Angel had traveled often for gymnastics meets and the Officer’s Club reminded her of a hotel bar.
The lighting was low, and there was soft music playing from hidden speakers. Along the glass walls were thick leather arm chairs and Angel sank into one. She was surprised to be the only person in the club. She knew the base was filled with scientists and engineers who took their jobs seriously, but she couldn’t believe that none were free to grab a drink and socialize. Not that she wanted to be bothered. The last thing she needed was a drunk guy hitting on her, but the empty bar seemed sad and more than a little pathetic. She couldn’t imagine living so near to a luxurious facility and being too busy to enjoy it. Then again, she had spent the last decade of her life too busy to do anything but train and go to school. She understood the passion for something that would drive a person to spend long hours every single day pursuing something they cared deeply about.
Her life had radically changed. There were moments when she missed gymnastics and wondered if she’d made a mistake in joining the CSF. There were flashes of desire to compete again, but the last few years of her gymnastics career had not been happy. It wasn’t just that she was unsuccessful, which she had been, but she hadn’t really been competing with the other gymnasts. It wasn’t like a race based solely on who was the fastest. It didn’t matter if she could do more than another competitor, or do something better, the judges scored her according to how they thought she looked doing the moves, not simply on what she was able to do. Her body had grown rapidly from the time she was fifteen, and while she had the strength to do each movement as perfectly as possible, the judges quite often preferred to see pixies rather than full-sized girls on the verge of womanhood. Their scores had, more often than not, reflected their bias, not her performance. When she thought of the reality of the sport she loved, she knew she had made the right decision to retire when she had.
She opened the book on her phone, adjusting the background color, as well as the size of the font. Relaxing in the leather chair was easy enough, and she was soon swept up in the story she was reading. She didn’t even see the bartender who approached her with a small, laminated drink menu.
“Can I get you something,” he said with a smile.
“Oh, no, I… well, maybe a Coke?”
“Want anything in it?”
“No, just ice,” she said with a smile.
“You got it.”
She had expected him to frown, or to look at her as if she were being pathetic, but he nodded and went quickly to prepare her beverage. He came back with a tall, narrow glass with red straw and a paper drink napkin. He set the drink on a table beside the chair, scanned her bank card, and left her alone.
Before she knew it, the sun was setting, casting a crimson light across the sky. When she looked up from her book again, she could see stars in the night sky. A few more people came into the bar, not very many, and none spoke to her. It seemed to be the unwritten rule that interrupting a reader at Camp Oppenheimer was frowned upon. Angel wouldn’t have minded making a friend, but she enjoyed her book too. An hour after sunset, she wandered back across the campus to her barracks, forcing herself to stretch again before bed. The doctor had given her a small vial of muscle cream, which smelled disgusting but had a warming effect and helped her relax.
A message on her phone informed her that she would be needed back at the lab in the morning by 0900. Angel got in bed, realizing she was looking forward to getting back to work. The lax schedule was nice in a way, but she preferred to stay busy, or at least to feel like she was contributing on some level. She fell asleep thinking about getting back into the ARC suit. She could hardly wait.
18
Camp Oppenheimer, CSF Research & Development Center, 80 miles east of Stillwater, Nevada, U.S.A.
“We’ve made some changes,” Lieutenant Commander Hikari Sozu said. “We’ve implemented the thrusters, as well as the basic defensive structure of the suit, which will add in excess of ten kilograms. The helmet will fit over the balaclava, and has a three hundred and sixty degree view with computer-aided stabilizers. Eye movement will control the view screen, as well as the thrusters, and various other capabilities.”
Angel was dressed in the updated ARC suit, including the helmet. She could feel the extra weight, but it was far less than the heavy gear she had grown accustomed to carrying in the tactical vest she had worn during basic training. The helmet seemed a bit snug, but the view screen was clear. Angel thought it was like looking through sunglasses.
“Glance left, but hold your head steady,” Sozu told her.
Angel looked to her left and the image changed, almost as if she were turning her head.
“Wow!” Angel said.
The view followed her eyes, back and forth.
“Now try looking up,” the lieutenant commander ordered.
The view rose up to the ceiling.
“And down?” Sozu said. “Very good. You’ll adjust to the helmet the longer you wear it. So I suggest you keep it on as much as possible. Now, once the software has mapped your facial movements, you’ll be able to fire the thrusters with facial features. They are offline now, but go ahead and purse your lips as if you were whistling.”
Angel did as she was told. A menu screen appeared. It was semi-transparent and she could see through the menu options to the people around her recording the test for analysis later. Without moving her head she could look at the various menu options, and each one her eyes focused on lit up red.
“Focus on the ARC Thruster Safety icon,” Sozu instructed. “And purse your lips again.”
A ding sounded in the helmet’s built-in audio so that only Angel heard it, but she had a visual and auditory confirmation of the selection she had made. At the bottom of her vision a warning was illuminated in red: THRUSTERS ACTIVE
“Alright, well done,” Sozu said. “During our first tests your suit was acting only on its inherent capacities. The impact-resistant fibers were absorbing kinetic energy from your movements and channeling them into the rebounding pads on the soles of the boots and the palms of your hands. The suit will naturally increase your strength, and allow you to have almost superhuman abilities. The new features will increase those abilities, but they can be dangerous. That’s why, just like on a firearm, the thrusters have to be activated and the safety removed before you use them. And unlike the rest of the suit, the thrusters and repulsers are battery powered. You should see an energy level reading in the upper right hand portion of your vision.”
Angel could see that the thrusters were at one hundred percent, but also that they were offline.
“Now, I’m going to teach you the facial controls for your thrusters,” Sozu continued. “Keep in mind that your helmet is running an artificial intelligence program that will become more responsive the more you wear the helmet. It learns your unique facial movements and ticks. If someone else were to put it on it would simply be a helmet with no visor. The helmet uses facial recognition to power on and off, but will also respond to your voice.”
“That makes sense.”
“Good, now, the system utilizes verbal commands. Thrust left, thrust right, thrust up, thrust down, and so on. There will be add-ons for mission-specific needs down the road, but for now, the thrust system and weapons system are all you n
eed to worry about. Are we good so far?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Excellent. Now, the verbal command we are focused on currently is thrust right. But to use facial controls you just wink your right eye. To thrust left, wink your left eye. To thrust up, raise both eyebrows. And thrust down would be to squeeze both eyes closed.”
“But what if I just blink?” Angel asked. “Will that activate the system?”
“No,” Sozu said. “The helmet will learn to recognize the difference between your normal facial movements and facial commands. It may feel a bit silly at first, but you’ll get used to it. The only other command we’ll worry about today is the weapons initiation. The ARC suit is not intended for prolonged engagement with an enemy. It’s not a battle suit, it’s a rapid combat suit, but it does have emergency weapons built in. You’ll have to dismiss the weapons safety system to engage the weapons, which you’ll only do in specific testing phases or just prior to combat. To activate the weapons say ARC Weapons Fire or wink your right eye while sticking your tongue straight out of your mouth. Try it now.”
Angel felt like she was being pranked, but the helmet registered her commands. An hour later they were back out at the testing grounds. The special forces squad had arrived and traveled out with Angel, Lieutenant Commander Sozu, and her team of researchers and engineers. Lines were painted on the runway and cones set up around the long strip of solar panels where airplanes once landed in the desert heat.
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