Finally posting this. Trimmed a lot of stuff off the end, re-ordered some scenes.... and came up with a better way to build such heavy armour than out of tin-scraps... and explain something as complex and invasive as Jet can be triggered by something as small as a pint of wave.
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
Quote:“Oh my god, that must be awful.”________________________________
That's people's first reaction. It used to be annoying...but I’ve long gotten used to it. I look at them and wonder why they feel the need to sympathise, I certainly don't feel the need for it. Truth is, I got what I wanted from the 'wavium. Not quite how I wanted it mind.
Now, I got my first can when those guys launched that Navy ship. I agreed to help them build it in exchange for a spare can of the goo. All was fine and good. The ship got built, they took off to the stars. I didn't go with them.
I had my own crazy idea.
I wanted to go to space, sure... but I didn't want to do it in a bodged together boat, or a kludged up car. I wanted to swim in the ocean of stars, not cling desperately to a small boat that might spring a leak, or run out of fuel halfway between Mars and infinity. I didn't want the claustrophobia of a car's cabin... I wanted to be out there, to be a part of the vast emptiness, to be in creation rather than clinging to a bubble of the world. It was the same reason I rode a motorcycle... you're part of the world you’re riding through, able to drink in all the sights and sounds and smells around you, rather than cooped up in a cage of a car.
People and vacuum don't mix very well, unfortunately. While it's not quite a case of a surprised look followed by a very messy pop... I still wasn't too keen on gasping for air that just wasn't there.
So I sat down, and thought about how I'd achieve a motorcycle in space. I had plenty of time to think about it while the GUBU’s questioned me over the ship, threatened me with prison if they found even a spec of the goo on my clothes, and just plain made it a pain to live for the next couple of months.
My first thought was that I should’ve gone with them. I could’ve worked in orbit as easy as down here. My second was to...well... handwave my motorcycle. Add some sort of wave to my leathers to make a spacesuit, Bob's your uncle. Some air tanks, some armour, and it'd be grand.
The obvious question. But what if I fall off?
Falling off a bike on a main road hurts, even when wearing armour. Coming off a bike halfway to orbit will also hurt, but only after a very long fall with plenty of time to contemplate whether I'd go thud or splat. Getting knocked off in space, and sitting there waiting for my air to run out, didn't bear thinking about.
So, I added a basic drive to the suit ...liberated from a crashed model jet I got cheap... with some wings to help stabilise everything and a pair of radio antennae. It was enough to let me get somewhere if I came off anywhere away from solid ground. Add an emergency beacon, radio and navigation equipment - hacked out of an iPhone – and it was starting to look a lot like spacecraft in itself.
That's when inspiration struck.
Ditch the bike, go with some sort of flying space suit. Things just snowballed from there. If this is going to be a spacecraft, it's going to have to be enclosed. If it's going to have life support, it's own drive system, it’s going to be heavy when it lands, so it has to be power-assisted. Space is full of junk and debris, so it's going to have to be armoured as well.
I didn't want a stray bolt taking my leg off.
The Bubblegum Crisis fan within me recognised that I was building a spaceworthy hardsuit, and I ran with that concept. It made life easier. I could feed my handwavium on BGC art, images of Sabers in their armour, stills captured from the Blue-Ray edition and prose descriptions from my own fanfics. I think I dumped about two printers worth of ink into printing all that stuff out. Mix that in with a nice selection of metals, plastics and some sand for bulk. I had a massive amount of it ready to go, more than enough.
I built it to fit me, using my own leathers as a base. I built the actuators on top of this. I bashed the armour supports out of scrap steel. I rigged my bike helmet to what was supposed to be the life support system, adding hookups to a display, to a waved iPhone which could handle all the communications and navigation and general computer stuff. Batteries were stripped from old laptops, while the radio transceivers were built using a pair of bloody expensive SDR modules.
I did such a good job building the thing that it actually come close to working. The batteries died after about thirty seconds, and the actuators jammed up... but given a few million dollars and some corporate backing... in a few years I might've had a working prototype.
A few more years after that, and I'd have built a working suit.But I was impatient. If I’d had the cash, I could’ve machined the armour itself out of mild steel, and just waved the actuators. But I didn’t.
Finally, I made the armour itself out of the handwavium I’d mixed up, casting it all in place on top of the structure using some fiberglass moulds. I left it overnight to bake. I think when it was done, it must’ve been half-wavium or more by mass. A big near-solid lump of the stuff.
What I got in the morning when I pulled the moulds off was a Knight Saber hardsuit. It had Sylia's wings as long as my arms, Nené's antennae, Linna's legs and Priss' figure all in a nice bright pearlescent white.
Bugger.
It was as tall as I was, thanks to the long boots... but inside, it was obvious it was designed to fit someone a good bit shorter than me. I tried anyway, in case any of those handwavium quirks might make it an adaptable fit but no, my foot got jammed in it. Actually a stupid thing to do, considering what happened later, but I didn't know better then.
The fact that all the mass of handwavium had even managed to modify the moulds I’d used, should’ve been something of a warning.
I bench tested it... and it seemed that if I found someone to fit it, it'd work. Drives spooled up, actuators responded to signals, expert system computer and NAVstar systems booted up happily. I could pick up nearby radio stations and avitation traffic on the radios, before switching them into a Radar mode. The suit even seemed to have developed it’s own expert system AI. The armour... I couldn’t dent it if I tried. I had a go at it with a tungsten drillbit, and barely scratched the paint. It was cold to the touch and felt like metal, but at the same time, it insulated like a ceramic. It was an epic thing.
It was exactly what I wanted. The only problem was, it wouldn't fit. The reason why was obvious with hindsight.
It included elements from all the Knight Sabers, that was obvious to see. There was one thing the Knight Sabers had in common with each other. They were all women. It was only natural for the handwavium in the suit to adopt that characteristic. I started laughing.
Well, time to try again. I didn't dismantle it... it was too cool to tear apart, and it did work. It just didn't fit. I stored it away for display, or on the off-chance I’d find someone who could wear it. It made a nice display element beside the prototype railgun made out of scrap, the charred remains of a polyphase coilgun and the jet-powered snowblower built out of an old turbocharger.
Well, I just needed to find a male hardsuit. There were a few pictures out there... not many, but maybe enough to actually be useable. I decanted some of the known-good handwavium away into some old empty Guinness bottles I had lying around. I wanted to keep some of the stuff .
I stored them bottles in an empty crate in the corner of the shed, somewhere where I thought I'd remember what they were, then set to work on the new suit.
It was more of the same, using a kevlar riding jacket as a base this time and an old Nokia phone because the iPhone was now at the core of the other suit. The parts weren't as good and I didn’t have the cash for a new USRP module, but the pre-waved result was still a little better. I could walk in it, roughly, but it moved. I got a few clunky steps out of it before the batteries died.
It was a thrill to be wearing it. I started remixing the wavium... there wasn't much in the male hardsuit department out there, but there was some. Hopefully enough.
Why didn't I use Iron Man instead, you might ask? Well guess what, I just never thought of it. I focused in on the phrase 'hardsuit', and stuck with that in my mind. Iron Man never even got a look in. A crit' fail of an intelligence test maybe, but it wasn't my first, and it definitely won't be my last. I guess it might've saved me a lot of trouble if I'd been more of a comic fan, but BGC was what was fresh in my mind, and BGC was the solution my mind locked onto. That led to the result you see here. I was the architect of my own 'downfall' and I freely admit it.
Anyway, back to the suit.
I waved it same as the other one, building the armour up, left overnight to simmer, then opened the door the next morning and was greeted by a...well... a mess. Parts were male, parts weren't. One hip was shiny and chromed and manly, the other clearly soft, white and feminine. Parts mixed and matched into an awful hodge-podge that reminded me of the end result of mixing all the individual coloured clumps of Play-Dough together into one multicoloured sludgeball.
Bugger.
I'd basically ruined the handwavium. There was no way of getting the original Knight Saber 'impulse' out of it. I could just try wash it out with a massive dose of male Saber armour. Which didn't really exist.
Bugger.
Remember, I just couldn't make the jump to Iron Man. I had my mental blinkers on. It was hardsuit or bust. My thought process changed from getting the suit to fit me, to getting me to fit the suit. Can't bring the mountain to Muhammed, bring Muhammed to the mountain.
I took one look inside the hardsuit... at the shape I'd have to adapt. And decided against it. I might've used that as a plot device in a fanfic, but that was solely because a male Bu-33-S would be regarded as 'pushing it'.
I dismantled the deformed hardsuit, salvaged a few things that looked interesting such as the linear actuators, then tipped the empty hulk into a skip. The handwavium used for it was ruined, so was 'disposed of'. No, I had no idea what it would do to the rats. I kept the other good suit, and the 'wavium that'd make it, just in case.
I knew I'd need fresh stuff to do anything new however. Getting fresh handwavium in this country was like getting water from a stone. The ship-launchers were lucky, one of them had a contact. I didn't.
So, for the time being, that was the end of my experimentation. I considered using the stripped actuators and sensors to build a more hardtech suit, but just couldn't figure a way to make them fit. That was that. I used them to make a push button gearshift for my bike instead.
I kept an eye out for any handwavium leads and generally just got on with my life. The hardsuit was a talking point to show friends I trusted, and someone in the States managed to get one working using a similar technique and a good deal less handwavium than I’d used, but that was about it.
Over the next six months however, I forgot about my dreams of spaceflight. I could see the fen sparkling overhead, I'd probably never join them. It would be a 'danish life for me, unless I found another crew to get a lift off of... but there weren’t any. As far as the ‘wave was concerned, the country was a backwater.
It was Heavy Gear games night; a bunch of us left behind by the launch still met up and played. Since our usual venue had been shuttered by the recession, it was being held at my place. They drank beer and spirits, I drank Guinness. Halfway through, I ran out. A bit sozzled, I staggered down to the shed, found six bottles that felt full and put five of them in the fridge.
The sixth.... Somebody had said I couldn't neck a pint in one go, and I was determined to prove them wrong. There was more than a little money riding on it. I cracked the top, and without even looking inside, I drank the whole damn thing. I slammed the entire bottle right down, and felt entirely proud of myself for doing it.
It was only after I was finished, that I caught the metallic aftertaste. It must’ve taken up the flavour from the residue left inside.
I killed the realisation before it formed in my mind. Just a bad pint. I felt fine. I won fifty quid. Back to the game. The first cramps didn't start until ten minutes later, right when my character was doing something interesting with a Gear. It got worse, and worse, to the point where I could barely sit up.
They wanted to call an ambulance, but I waved them off. Going to hospital for a biomod would be a certain prison sentence. Handwavium possession was a ten year sentence.
I felt like shite, but I knew it wouldn’t kill me. Just wait and see... I’ll call in the morning with a new tail or something, or scales or as Stretch Armstrong.. We called a halt to the night, while my body started to tear itself apart inside.
It starts getting fuzzy from now on... Probably because of the drink I’d taken. For some reason I went to the shed, I think to confirm what I'd just done to myself. I was barely standing, sweating sticky buckets, burning up inside, panting for breath as I could feel myself melt. It was a weird feeling, like I was an amorphous balloon of goo sloshing around inside my skin. I remember propping myself up against the hardsuit, looking down at the crate where I'd stored the handwavium bottles.
There were six empty spaces.
I pull my arm off the suit, and feel my skin stretch and peel like sticky honey. Blood and metal mixes in nightmarish strings, sagging from what my mind knows should be an agonising wound... but it tingles giddily. Even the bone was melting like overheated jelly.
And.... I’m not sure anymore. The next I know, I'm lying on the ground, and I feel fine. All systems one hundred percent operational. It was the next day. I knew the exact time, 13:27:23 hours. I knew something was wrong, because I could feel something covering my body. It was hard, scraping across the concrete. I took a breath... and felt all strange inside in a way I just couldn’t describe. There was more air inside me than I’d inhaled.
I looked around, noticing how strangely vibrant the world looked. The colours on the old oil tank seemed to pop, like someone had turned the colour saturation up. The orange
The rack where I’d stored the hardsuit is empty, the helmet on the ground in front of me, paint scratched lightly after falling on rough concrete. Now, I was scared... I knew I'd done something to myself, but I had no idea what.
I remember whimpering. “I don't want to be a bloody catgirl.”
Well, I wasn't. I checked the top of my head and felt nothing but long hair through cold, numb fingers. Moving my fingers down to where my ears should be I met... plastic. Like I was wearing headphones. I could hear fine. Crisp and clear and digitally sampled. I picked myself up of the ground, having a hell of a time getting steady on my feet. Everything below the knee was solid. It felt like I was standing on my tiptoes on stilts. It felt perfectly natural to stand that way.
I looked down.
And I found the hardsuit.
That was the first sanity roll I failed. The second one came when I tried the unlock switches and found that I couldn't take the suit off. The third was when all the electronics started up and I felt myself...expand into them. I had a HUD over my eyesight, radar running in my brain going haywire in an enclosed space. I was picking up FM radio in my ears, and WiFi and cellular signals from the iPhone deep inside. The house router demanded a password when I thought about it, answered happily when I gave it, and pulled up google when I asked for it. It was more than stuck on as a clingy costume, the suit was a physical part of me.
It was the traditional 'oops I biomodded myself' response, multiplied by ten. Yeah I panicked... well, wouldn't you? I went beyond scared, past fright and straight through into abject terror into full blown sanity loosing panic. I think I might even have screamed “My God what have I become?” without any trace of irony. I'm laughing when I think back on it, but well... I went utterly batshit screaming and pulling at where I remembered I'd built the seams. I tried sticking a blade in, and snapped the blade off. I tried a hammer, and managed to just about scratch the paint. I tried again and again, and managed to smash half the shed in the process.
That lasted until I saw the folded wings on my back. That killed all traces of panic dead. It was a dash of cold water. As soon as I wondered about how to actually make them pop out, they did. I felt them move, like I was moving my own arms or legs, actuators sliding inside me. They sprang out straight on either side, before telescoping to just a little shorter than my arms.
With another thought, they retracted. Chack-ak. Just like that. Then out again with a sharp Chack-ka. Then back in. Then out, one last time.
I took a deep breath. Okay... that’s weird.
Now I started to feel a little giddy as I began to remember why I built the suit in the first place. A little curious, I stepped outside into a winters day, and looked up at the clouds above. A jet was flying overhead somewhere beyond... I could hear it.
Radar data invaded my mind, pinpointing it three kilometres above my head. I shuddered and willed it away.
How do I start?... I felt the thruster on my back spool up, a whine building in my 'ears'. The flow of power began to warm me inside gently. Little vibrations tickled and fizzed, while engine parameters announce themselves in my mind.
Okay. A little nervous now, I steadied myself, planting steel boots into the ground as firmly as I could. If I could control the wings with my mind, maybe I could...
With a scream of a jet engine and howl of terror, I shot into the sky. It was terrifying, it was stunning, it was a hot electric current of power running through my body, pumping through the thruster... I closed my eyes and screamed as an onboard altimeter hit three figures. It took more than a few moments before I finally plucked up the courage to watch where I was going.
I think I might've made a reference to what God flushes down the toilet at that point.
Over a kilometre up and still going, I could feel the cold breeze whipping and curling around my body, chilling steel and stinging my eyes. I kept going, punching through the clouds and up to the blue sky beyond. The air was frozen cold, but the sun was still hot and warm on the bare skin of my face.
I tried to stop, only for the thruster to cut out. With a sickening lurch, I felt gravity reassert its dominance. In a flash of panic, the engine kicked back in, tumbling me head over heels. Flailing through thin air, I struggled to grab on to something... anything to keep me from making a messy crater in the ground.
Deep breath. Focus. First, stop spinning. The ground below had turned into a blurred mass of green and grey, tumbling over to a bright blue sky, and then ground again. Without even thinking I could do it, I called up some sort of artificial horizon onto my vision.
I spread my arms and legs wide, instinct taking over. Drag slowed me down, stabilising me for a few moments before I finally figured out that I could use my arms to kill the roll. Panting, I found myself on my back. I rolled upright using the ailerons on my wings, before arching my back and pulling up into something that resembled a level flight.
That was when I started laughing. I was flying, really flying. I snapped through a quick aileron roll, whooping like a cowboy as I pulled myself back up through the clouds.
I kept going, revelling in the joy of actually flying under my own power, only stopping when I realised that I was looking down on the same airliner I'd heard minutes earlier, rather than up at it. The jet was a spark twinkling in the sunlight, laying a bright white contrail behind it. I looked to the right and could see a blue arc along the horizon, the sky above dusky and dim. My altimeter told me I was 20 kilometres above the ground. Below me, was nothing but a solid carpet of cloud and the traffic coming in and out of the city’s airport.
I realised I should've lost consciousness a long time ago, but I was breathing fine. The hardsuit's life support system was handling everything for me. It was a part of my body, and it was supporting me. A splash of information about O2 generation and CO2 filtration filtered through my awareness reassuring me that everything would be alright.
Now, how to I get back down?
Not quite sure how planes did it, I throttled back and glided down like a brick. I could dive and pick up speed, before pulling up and slowing until I stalled. Lather, rinse, repeat... it was like learning to walk for the first time. I could bank into a turn by leaning my weight into it... ailerons would roll me right, while my arm would drag me around.
Dropping below the clouds, it took me a few minutes to figure out where I’d gotten to. Far enough from my home that I couldn’t see it... but not so far that I couldn’t find it. It was just a matter of banking over, and slowing myself down as much as I could without falling out of the sky. Now for my first landing.
Aiming for a field near where I lived I flared up, like I'd seen jets do, trying a kick from my own thruster to slow me down. I hit hard with a yelp of pain, digging a nice trench in the dirt before pitching head over heels. Dizzy, I dug myself out, aching all over in a way I didn't think was possible.
A quick check confirmed I wasn't actually hurt. All systems nominal. I glanced around at some startled Sunday walkers, then took off running home at full pelt. I ran a kilometre in two minutes, easily. No running out of breath, no hard panting. I was running as fast as I could, and it felt easy. A day earlier, my idea of a strenuous run had been to catch a bus.
When I got back, I didn't have keys on me - no pockets - so I just boosted up over the back gate before crashing into the shed door, splintering it. Still had to work on the whole ‘landing’ part of flight then.
I think it was safe to say, I'd stopped panicking. I mean seriously... I could fly. I wasn't quite sure how to control it but that'd come with time. I snatched a drink of water, smashed the glass trying to pick it up, fetched another one and sat down, trying to figure it out. I was still giddy. I was still shaking inside. My heart was pounding with the excitement of it. I wasn't sure how I was supposed to feel. I mean, sure I was trapped in a suit of armour and I was a complete bloody freak, but at the same time, I could do some seriously cool things with it.
If this was a film I should've still been raging to get it off, hacking at myself with a hacksaw or something, but really, I just wanted to get up and get flying again. So I did.
Just like that. I wanted to fly, so I did.
And managed to nearly ram a 747. I'll never forget the look on that pilot's face. Scared spitless, I took a quick jaunt into town to get something to eat, realised I had no money or pockets, flashed back home, and duct-taped my wallet to my hip.
It held on at 400kph.
There was no traffic, no bus fare, just a nice cruise over the top of everyone's head. All thoughts of the 'horror' of what happened just dropped as I looked down on the city and the people far below. Some were looking up at me, pointing. I waved back and nearly hit a building.
I crash-landed outside a Burger King I knew to be good, destroyed a rubbish bin, surprised myself with how much I had to eat to keep my stamina up, before flying home again. People stared... of course they did, but the overall opinion was that it was a ‘nice costume’.
Which was a great way of reminding me it wasn’t a costume at all.
Next was a case of getting all the dirt out from earlier. I went and got jet-washed at a nearby garage. Not the weirdest thing the attendant had ever hosed down, mind. Like everyone, he just assumed it was a costume and I was lazy.
By the time I actually got home. I was still rattled, but at the same time, I was okay. I;d come to my senses enough to check my phone messages and find that the gamers from last night were wondering what I’d done to myself.
I told them I was okay, before wondering how to explain just what had happened. ‘Just a bad pint’ I told them, ‘I think I really did just poison myself’. Naturally, I replied by text message.
Really, I had no idea what else to say.
I had no idea how I was really suppose to feel either. I guessed I should’ve been horrified, but truthfully I was curious. I wanted to know what I could and couldn’t do.
The first thing I learned was that I got tired as the hardsuit’s batteries ran down. Not wanting to find out what happened when they went completely empty, I went to bed... well, I slept in the hardsuit’s rack, with the charger docked into my back. An amp or so of electric current flowing through my body warmed me to the core, buzzing at a soothing 50hz.
Next morning I woke up, going from dead asleep to wide awake like a lightswitch turning on. Still standing on the rack. Congratulations, I remember thinking... it wasn’t a nightmare.
I had a breakfast, and decided that there was no way in hell I could go to work as I was. I rang in sick, pretending to be a nurse to explain the voice. It was a week before I actually bothered to quit... citing an ‘immediate medical difficulty’. By that stage, I’d started to find out more about myself and what I could do.
I could happily eat most things... though too many complex fats and proteins made me sick to my stomach. Food helped recharge my batteries, as did regular ordinary sleep. Electricity just did it faster, and left me with a nicer feeling inside.
I never felt the need to use the bathroom.... which was damned handy since I obviously couldn’t. I was strong enough to pull the handle off a door I was trying to open before I realised it was locked, then break through what was left with what felt like an easy kick. I managed to lift the car outside with a little effort, getting the front wheels off the ground and near pitching it over backwards before gently lowering it down again with only a buckled bumper.
Driving it was a different matter. My feet weren’t built for fine clutch control... and I bent the gearstick just trying to get it into gear.
It was much later, a while after I boosted to Fenspace, that I actually found out what had actually happened to me. I think the initial biomod might’ve been something simple; just ‘The Knight Sabers’... but then for whatever reason, I came into contact with all that mass of handwavium in the hardsuit. It had been gorged on Knight Sabers in their hardsuits... a female face on top of an armoured body, with no hint as to what was actually inside.
Which means my pelvis is a solid lump of armour and bone-based composites. The biology inside the suit is connected up in such weird ways it’s debatable that it’s even human. I’m not like most Fenspace cybers, where it’s possible to draw a line between man and machine... where it’s obvious where and how the cybernetic parts have been integrated into the host as replacements. I’m a ground-up construction, what you’d get if you wanted to create a techno-organic humanoid spacecraft from scratch using a tank, a lab and some spark.
It was my own damned fault, really.
I’m not really a true biomod....it’s more than that. I’m probably closer to a handwaved spacecraft constructed with biological materials.
My brain includes an iPhone as a working part, providing a bridge to other components. I’ve got a software radio than can switch from FM to AM to passive and active Radar, 3G data and voice, GPS navigation, WiFi... and an Interwave hookup if I’m close to a node. I can listen to music on the thing still, or watch a video. I can run some light maths through it. If I’m bored I can play games. It handles AI databursts... provided I have Paracetamol handy. It also syncs with my radar and an onboard navigation app so I can see where I’m flying and not smear myself across the windshield of someone’s spacecraft. It can also do a few thoughtless tasks, things which I don’t need to pay attention to.
It doesn’t make me in anyway smarter or more intelligent than the average Fen... Sticking a computer in a human brain doesn’t work like that. I don’t actually think or reason any faster. I have much the same chance as anyone of coming up with a good idea, or spotting a solution to a problem, or being struck by inspiration. It takes me roughly the same amount of time to work a problem as it does your average person.
On the other hand, my eyesight and reaction times are sharp as a blade. My biological parts are reinforced and strengthened to the point that I can take G-Forces and impacts that’d cripple a human. I’m a flying machine... that’s what the handwavium built out of me... and it built a damned good one.
I seemed to have picked up Priss' voice and her face. I had Linna's blue eyes and Nené’s long scarlet-red hair. At the time, I guessed I might’ve had Sylia’s body.... I certainly had her hardsuit. Too bad I didn’t have her intelligence.
It also seemed as if the handwavium had picked up on a few of the rules I use for character creation in fanfics, and applied them to myself. Every boon had to be matched by a bust. I got some really nice powers... but at the same time, I’m a cyborg with a metal body. I could fly, but there was no way in hell I could build gunpla with my fingers any more. I can’t even use touchscreens, or drive a car with any sort of finesse. Little fiddly switches and keypads are the devil for me. There’re other things like that. Some are just annoying, others are far more personal...
So where did that put me?
While I hadn’t outright won the Superpower Lottery, I had gotten a nice little windfall. What did I do with my new abilities?
I did what 99 percent of people would do in my situation. I messed around and had fun with myself, and tried my damnedest not to dwell on the downsides until I was capable of doing so without going buggo. I taught myself how to actually fly. I taught myself how to land without taking chunks out of the scenery. I learned to read my radar properly, so I could tell the difference between a flock of birds, a freezing cloudburst and a screaming DC-10.
Next, I learned how to talk to the local ATC who finally decided to hail the mysterious UFO their scopes were reporting. That's when I finally decided on the callsign Jet Jaguar, clean off the top of my head while they were threatening to send fighter jets after me. That’s how it started.
I took the time to actually bother with the little details like asking for permission before belting through controlled airspace, and maintaining proper separation. Getting snarged by an airliner doing several hundred kph would do as much a favour for me, as it did for the hundred or so people who’d suddenly find themselves hanging in mid air in the middle of an explosion of tin confetti and jet fuel.
Once I'd mastered the basics, I moved on to some more 'showy' stunts. I started videotaping my flights over, through and in one case under the city. You've probably seen those tapes on Youtube, or elsewhere. It’s an electric thrill, an adrenaline rush like nothing on Earth. I saw someone bracing themselves against the desk while they were watching it on a computer monitor once, wincing at every near disaster.
Youtube's revenue sharing was what kept me fed for the first few months. It wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. Enough to eat and sleep.
Back to the flying.... I loved it... I truly did. I was a part of the sky, not cocooned from it in a tin can. I could feel the breeze caress my body, an updraft or a thermal helping me gain altitude, before pitching hard over into a full power dive. I could look down on the world with my own two eyes and watch it unfold beneath me. I could drop down and chase trains, or annoy speed camera operators. It was... and still is... truly exhilarating. I could belt across country for a day trip in a fraction of the time it took to drive, racing low over fields and hills. I could make the continent with little trouble.
Couple a video of that with Iron Maiden’s Ace’s High.... There’s a reason ‘Aces High’ and ‘Live to Fly’ are engraved on both of my feet.
Start standing on a gantry overlooking the M1 just before the road dives into the Port Tunnel. I launched with a hard kick from my back and whoop, doing a full aileron roll as I boosted straight down the tunnel, dodging between cars.
Trucks and buses and trucks flashed past, an airhorn filling the tunnel behind me with a blast of sound that resonated off the walls. My heart was pounding on an adrenaline rush as I dove between two trucks having an elephant race in both lanes.
Nearly crashed it there, I thought, laughing madly as I roared out into the evening twilight. Grunting, I pulled hard up out of the tunnel, pitching over and getting a full view of the city with it’s lights flickering into life. I pushed hard up into the sky before rolling over onto my back, diving back down, aiming for the river.
It was dead still, like an inky void swallowing the reflections of the quays. I saw my own reflection for the briefest of second. My airspeed well over 600. My insides are thrown against the inside of my armour, forcing a grunt out of my throat and I pitch up into a level flight and scream beneath the closed Samuel Becket bridge.
Hit the water at this speed and I die.
I could look down at my reflection as I skimmed across the water. The blue and white armour. The helmet hiding my face with a cheap digital camera bolted to the side.
Sean O’Casey bridge goes by in a flash, a few moments later followed by Talbot Memorial bridge. There was a Dart train on the Loopline Bridge. My mind was on overdrive... the whole world around me seeming to have stopped. I felt like I was flying through a three dimensional photograph.
Butt Bridge, the new under-construction bridge from Hawkins street, O Connel Bridge with the buses on it. A flat boat loaded with sightseers looking up as a roar past. The Fire Brigade river rescue service gawped. Drug dealers on the Liffey Boardwalk didn’t bother to look up. The Ha’pennny bridge with the homeless begging in their blankets went by. I looked up at Forbidden Planet for an instant before ploughing on under the Millenium Bridge, Grattan Bridge... that three arched bridge after the Four Courts whose name I could never remember. Fr. Mathew Bridge with barely enough clearance under the centre span. The brewery was to my left with it’s floodlights blazing a hot orange and the sweet smell of hot hops and barley tingling in my nostrils. The newer James Joice bridge was strangely anachronistic and modern compared to others in iron and stone. I used to regularly take the bus I could see driving over it.
I never needed to take the bus again. No more driving. No more more paying to travel. I could go anywhere I wanted, whenever I wanted.
Kicking up spray under Rory O Moore then beneath Frank Sherwin beginning to head out of the city centre proper. A Luas tram was crossing Seán Heuston bridge slowly, heading towards the train station.
I pulled up hard, grimacing with the force of 20G. I could feel the muscles crunching through my body, forcing blood up towards my head. It’s a strange, electric feeling, rippling up from my legs. Muscles squeezed tight, forcing blood up towards the brain
My heart clenched tight, thumping hard as I reached the zenith of my loop, before releasing with a wave of comforting heat, chased by a shot of adrenaline and a whoop of joy. It’s a rush of pleasure, almost a release from captivity.
A snap aileron roll brought me upright into straight and level flight, heading back towards the brewery and the tallest point in the city that I could land on. Throttling back, I cruised over the kegging plant, then through the stacks of the old Guinness power station, before banking around the Gravity Bar on top of the Storehouse. Tourists waved, and I waved back, raising my visor to grin at them.
I landed on top of the grist cases of the brewhouse, standing proudly at the edge with steam boiling and rising around, overlooking the city striking a pose like a superhero. Below, the lights of the city where shimmering as the ordinary people went about their daily business. I was on a level so far above what they did...
My heart was pounding inside my chest, my body still fizzling with energy as the turbine on my back wound down. I could feel the heat bleeding from my body into the cold night air. Steam rose from two vents on my back.
According to the radio, the Garda Unit for the Bizzare and Unprecedented were already chasing up leads on my latest flight. They still thought I was some jerk in a powered suit... but there were no laws against people flying themselves. There was no limit on how high or fast you were allowed to jump.
I stepped up to the edge of the building and looked down. Deep breath, then take a dive in the sky. Feel the thrill of falling towards the ground, a remnant of millenia of evolution telling me dropping ten stories was certain death, waiting until the last possible second before twisting in the air and pulling up along the road, kicking up litter. Then roar off into the night.
It was exhilarating. I could see the world on my own terms. Take a day trip to Japan?
More and more however... as I started getting more messages inquiring how I was, or checking to see if I was still alive and ever going to finish that fanfic... my excitement started to cool and I started to face up to the fact that chances where, I was going to spend the rest of my life as this gynoid thing. I couldn't bring myself to answer my friends. They’d post enquiries, wondering if I’d died or not.... before eventually just assuming that I’d just launched into orbit in a hurry, and not had a chance to tell them.
I couldn't tell them what had happened to me. I was half-afraid and well, half I didn’t really know how to explain it at the time. I was more than a little unsettled by some people’s reactions when I did mention it. I became a part of the sky, but I became isolated from the world of man and humanity.
Yeah, it hurt for a while and still does from time to time. There were a lot of things I liked doing, that I can’t do anymore. I know how much some of that sucks, I don’t need to be reminded of it constantly by the ‘Oh how awful’ brigade who think they’re being sympathetic. I can deal with it, however. Over time, I’ve learned tricks for dealing with it.
See there’s the thing, the biomod is in the eye of the be-modded. The most common reaction I get when I explain what happened to me is the sympathetic wince, second most is a more plastic sympathy, followed in third by ‘Holy smeg is that awesome’, and in last place, the Turnerite who called me an abomination against nature then shot me dead in the chest with a shotgun.
That one learned not to shoot at a Kunstler the hard way. A Geschoss Schlag to the chest returned the favour, broke all his ribs, burst his heart and lungs, snapped his spine and came within an emergency biomod of killing him. Poetic justice gave him the basic catgirl package. I almost felt sorry for him... almost.
Back on topic. There’s a good chance that if you’re reading this, you’re probably bio-modded yourself. Most people are these days. Was it accidental, or was it deliberate? If you aren’t, then what sort of biomod would you want if you did have one?
Now, hold a nice picture of that in your mind, what you imagine the end result to be. What abilities do you gain, what drawback do you take?
Every mod has a drawback. Even Superman has the unique hell of knowing that one day he was going to embrace Lois Lane in a loving hug, only to be answered by the crunch of crushed bone and a gurgling scream. Oops..
That’s one I share with the man of steel, unfortunately.
Ask yourself now, how do you feel about your mod, hypothetical or not? I’ll bet good money that even if it was accidental, you’ve accepted that you’re going to be what you are for a good long time and moved on from it. I’ll even raise the bet and suggest that maybe you’ve found things you like about your ‘mod to counter the things you hate.
How do other people feel about your particular ‘mod? Hypothetical people if it’s a hypothetical ‘mod. Now, I guarantee you there will be someone out there who will think ‘Oh God, that must be awful’ when you describe it to them. You might like your ‘mod. You might at the very least accept it has benefits, but there will always be someone out there who thinks it’s a nightmare incarnate. A couple of other Kunstlers do that to me...especially the motorballers...along with the more extreme or unusual anthromorphs. Spider-man still haunts my nightmares, and I’m not even an arachnophobe.
Myself, all I can say is, when I weigh up what I’ve lost against what I’ve gained.... I’m happy. It’s better than a fair deal.
Anyway, where were we?
The fun had to stop. I'd noticed I was starting to annoy the authorities more and more. When Councillors popped up in the middle of new bulletins, huffing and blustering about the aerial menace blighting the city, I knew I was on borrowed time. They wanted me to turn myself in, to 'get help' or to get a very long prison sentence. I appeared on Crimeline...reminds me of that old Northside joke... but at the time it scared the hell out of me, especially since unlike most other people on that show... I hadn’t done anything wrong. I hadn’t harmed a soul and made damn sure I didn’t.
A Burger King cashier remembered me. So did a garage attendant. So did anyone I’d bought anything off. They gave the Garda Unit for Bizzare and Unprecented events the details from my credit card, or the address I’d ordered delivery to. The only thing that stopped me being arrested at home, was that I'd been away when the cops arrived. On my way back, I saw the chopper hovering overhead, and the cops slowly advancing on my house.
Okay, remember now, this wasn't America. The guards were generally unarmed, and weren't likely to shoot at me because I wasn't actually dangerous. I still wasn't too keen on getting in a actual fight with the law... there was a line there I just didn’t want to risk crossing. I bugged out to a bolthole somewhere in the midlands.
Now I was starting to panic.
Next, they cut my bank accounts, under the authority Criminal Assets Bureau of all things. And using the card gave an instant ping as to where I was. Paypal froze my funding, on the orders of the government since I was using it for ‘illegal activity'. I saw myself on the news, I saw them rooting through my shed...
I saw them holding my homemade railgun... an example of dangerous handwavium weapons technology. No it wasn't... I built the poxy thing before I ever had any handwavium. But you know what that meant...this went beyond handwavium offences. They were calling it an ‘illegal firearm'... and that's ten years in prison right there.
It's easier to find ways to put decent people in prison, than it is to go after the real criminals. It looks good on the statistics, doesn't it?
That was when I decided I was going to space. I was either getting off the planet, or I was going to spend the rest of my life in very secure detention. I'd lose the one thing stopping me from becoming a weeping ball of angst. I'd be going up there with nothing at all, but going up was better than getting sent down.
And so I put on my suit's helmet, turned my camera on, booted up NAVstar, and went for it. The Air Corps used these old turboprops at the time... they hadn't a hope of catching up to me. I'm the reason they bought the old Tornados off the RAF.
I went supersonic at fifteen kilometres up, and just kept on accelerating, aiming for L5. It took me ten minutes to make it to the Karman line, and I just kept going up. My own onboard life support was handling itself nicely. I made to bank over into an Earth orbit, only to find that all the aerodynamic tricks I'd learned on Earth, just didn't work anymore.
I couldn't bloody steer. I was hanging in space and could only thrust forward. Maybe if I arched my back I could pull up a little, but that was about it. Instead of being trapped in a cell, I'd marooned myself in space.
At least it was a hell of a view.
Three hundred kilometres up, I took my helmet off. I knew it wouldn't kill me. The tears on my eyes boiled and froze before flaking off. Vacuum frost bit at my tongue. I could feel the air trapped in my throat and sinuses exhaust itself, exhaling through my nose and mouth in a puff of fine glittering ice.
I took a deep breath, life support now supplying my lungs directly... and just hung there and watched the world with my own eyes.
The snowy folds of the Alps. Flurries of cloud trailing from mountaintops. Rivers and lakes glistened across the continent. Seas were made of glass speckled with white cloud and dark shadows underneath them. Deep green forests, and pale fields, the clouds of dust rising from concrete cities. Little flecks of light at the head of long streaks of cloud slashing across the sky. Over my shoulder, the sun hot like a magnesium flare burning within arms reach.
Ahead of me, the moon was rising, close enough that I could touch it. Kandor city glimmered on the surface, while the L5-stations were just bright spots in the black rising up away from the blue haze of the atmosphere.
I was drifting through nothingness. There was no breeze to tug at my skin or hair, no movement at all. Just dead stillness. Vacuum was warm, a blanket of nothing closing down onto me. There was no sound except for the oxygen being filtered through my lungs, a pump whirring away in my back, and the throb of my own heartbeat pulsing in my ear.
Otherwise, an absolute and perfect silence.
The whole world was beneath me, the whole of creation and the universe surrounded me. There was no glass between me and it, no small capsule of terra around me. I could reach out and touch the stars if I wanted. It was a transcendent experience, beyond human. I wasn't just peering through a porthole, I was out there, seeing it with my own eyes. Unfiltered by video feed, untinted by glass, just the raw naked universe with nothing between me and it.
I felt like a God over the world. Perfectly isolated and alone, but at the same time sharing the universe with everything in it. My helmet hung in space beside me where I left it, carried along by Newton's first law.
I was tearing along at several kilometres a second. I felt like I was standing still, and the Earth was orbiting me.
It was, ironically, exactly what I'd wanted from the handwavium in the first place, to be out in space like this. I could do this, any time I wanted.
I looked down on all of Europe below. That was the moment I decided that I never wanted my old body back again. All the little frustrations of being locked into a metal body were, and still are, worth it for that view, for that feeling of being a part of space. Compare driving through a park on a tour bus, with walking through it on your own two feet. The bus isolates you from it all, rendering it as nothing more than a movie beyond a pane of glass, observed at with comfort. But walking, you're out there among it all and interacting with it, you're a part of it.
The camera mounted on my helmet was still rolling, pointed out to the black. I aimed it down at the world below, before holding it out at arms length and pointing it back at myself.
The video shows me smiling, my cheeks and eyes starting to go a little pink as capillaries burst. It moves down, showing the two wings level with my chest, and the sensor vanes below them. The armour's white paint sparkles in the sun, gunmetal and blue accents highlighting the suit's figure. A flat stomach and a waistline to hip ratio that just looks impossible, thanks to the armour's exaggeration. A single plate of metal that seemed cut to remind of a pair of panties covered my hips back and front, and finally my legs, elegantly long and thin compared to my body, ending in an exaggerated high-heel with the toes pointing down vertical, standing across the terminator.
They're even longer now, since I got the boosters fitted in place of my feet.
Not actually that hard to walk with, once you get used to it. Carefully aiming the camera, I struck a pose like I was standing on top of the world, metal hands planted onto metal hips. Finally, I reached out to pan the camera back down at the world beneath as if to say 'Look what I can do now!'.
The pins-and-needles sensation on my face was beginning to evolve into more of a light burn, vacuum and bare skin not exactly being good friends. The back of my throat parched bone dry, my sinuses fizzing and chilling themselves.
I put the helmet back on, feeling it lock around my neck, before pressurising with a punch to the face and a god-awful pain in my sinuses like they were about to crush in. It brought stinging tears to my eyes.
I sighed as best I could, took another shot at space manoeuvring then finally gave up. The problem was that my thrusters were offset from my centre of mass, which was somewhere near my stomach. With no aerodynamic help, trying to fly in vacuum just sent me tumbling forwards. My boosters fixed that… a pair of waved jet engines fitted inside my lower legs, they can thrust straight through my centre of mass.
Swallowing my pride, I broadcast a distress signal.
A Winnebago swung by, on its way up from the Bahamas. The conversation I had with the Lonestar-expy Pilot went a little like this.
“What happened to your ship?” he questioned, while the airlock pressurised
“Didn't bring one,” I answered, wearing a wry grin inside my helmet.
He gave me a bewildered look through the porthole, “Then how the hell did you get up here ma'am?”
I remember wincing at that.
“I flew myself,” I told him the truth, nodding towards the wings, “Then found that I couldn't control myself up here,”
“Oh,” He eyed my body, “So it's a flying suit then?”
I took my helmet off at this point, taking my first breath of air onboard the space van. It smelled of cheesy crisps.
“No,” I shook my head, trying not to laugh.
He got one look at my ears, mixed it with the implication of my last answer, let it stew for a bit, before finally speaking.
“Oh my god, that must be awful.”
The first of many.
“Trust me, it isn't,” I demurred. Considering I was still fired up from the view I'd just been treated to, it was hard for me to say anything else.
“So, what's your name then?” he asked me.
For a moment, I was about to give him my real name... but stopped. Somehow, it didn't seem to fit. So I made a decision.
“Jet. I'm Jet Jaguar,”
“Well, nice to meet you Jet. I'm Jimmy,”
That was that. That made it official.
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--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?