Post by scintor on Oct 4, 2008 15:25:50 GMT -5
I rewrote a section of the story based on feedback that Dividesthewaters gave me. I tried to use what I learned frim Jeff. Let me know what you think. The original section is at the bottom
I awoke the next morning to a buzzing noise that, after the third time, I identified as my door announcer (the voice was just too creepy.) I stumbled to the door and opened it to find an impatient Sylvia walking past me.
“It’s about time, mister. You really don’t want to be late to your first day do you?”
“Um, no, not really.”
“OK then, let’s get you ready. I’ve got your ID card right here. It has a transponder chip in it that lets all the doors know who you are. If you are supposed to go in, the door will open when you walk toward it. If not, the door will stay locked. Watch out, though, if you are walking with someone who isn’t authorized, it’ll stay locked and you’ll probably run into it and get a bloody nose.”
“OK,” Yawn, “sorry, I think I got that.”
“You’re supposed to wear something loose fitting so that you can get fitted for your suit.”
“Will these do?”
“Sweats and a T-shirt is fine, but those are your pajamas and are ragged besides. Right idea, but you need something that you will look decent in.” She walked into my bedroom and started rummaging through my drawers. “Well this will do for now, but I’ll get you some decent stuff soon. What time did you get to bed anyway?”
“Around midnight, I guess.”
“Well, you’re definitely going to get to bed earlier if you’re going to be this sleepy in the morning.”
“I wasn’t planning on getting up for an hour or so yet.”
“That wouldn’t have given you time to get dressed properly, much less time to get a decent breakfast. If you don’t want to take time to go to the Main Cafeteria every morning, then I suggest that we stop by the store after work so that you can get some breakfast stuff that you can make here. That will save you time and be cheaper besides.”
“Oh yeah, I’m not the big contest winner anymore. I’m just an employee. No more free food. Do I need to get an advance or something until I get my first check?”
“Your signing bonus should cover you easily until then unless you go crazy.”
“I got a signing bonus?”
“Didn’t you read your contract?”
“If I had tried to read all that yesterday, I’d still be reading even if I hadn’t slept.” (I actually hadn’t read any of it, but I wasn’t about to admit that to her.)
“Well, you should be fine anyway, and I’ll keep a watch on your account to make sure you don’t go overboard. Go get yourself ready and then we’ll head off for breakfast.”
We ate and then hopped on the “freeway” to head to my new job. I was glad that she was with me because I probably would have tried to wander there on foot, and it’s several miles from the Main Cafeteria to the training center. She dropped me off in front of a huge set of doors and drove off.
The doors opened as I approached them and I walked into a huge room filled with clusters of battlesuit simulators. I briefly wondered if I had accidently wandered into some sort of underwater simulator because many of the people were clad in what looked like diving suits. One of these figures turned and approached me.
“Captain Rustle Baker, but you can call me Rusty, as we don’t stand much on rank here. I’m the company’s XO (Executive Officer or second in command.) I’ll be showing you around this morning until you make your own way without tripping over anyone. Do you have a handle you go by?”
“No, just Allen.”
“You’ll get one soon enough. The company commander here is Captain Sniper. That’s not his real name. I’m not at liberty to divulge his real name because I don’t want him to deck you for using it. Sniper’s tough as nails, but there isn’t a better man to be beside in a fight. Work hard and you’ll earn his respect. I’ll give you the nickle tour and then we’ll get you outfitted and put you to work.”
He showed me to my locker (there are separate showers, but we share the locker area so I was warned about staying modest.) I then had to strip down to my underwear to be scanned for my sensor suit. The suit is skintight and goes from head to toe. There is a heavy belt around the middle where all the equipment is. The feet, hood, and gloves can come off while you aren’t in the suit or the simulator, which is why everyone calls them longjohns. I was advised to get some slippers or flip-flops to wear around the testing bay unless I wanted to go barefoot or take my shoes and socks on and off constantly.
As I put on my suit for the first time, I was more than a little self-conscious which wasn’t helped by Rusty’s next question.
“How long have you been out of the service?”
“I’m afraid that I’m a civilian, sir. I tried to enlist once, but they turned me down.”
“Well, that explains it, but we’ll get you whipped into shape in no time. Let’s head over to pod six and see what you can do.”
Any pretensions that I might have had about how good I was were beaten out of me over the next four hours. Rusty went through drill after drill along-side of me, and I wasn’t able to match his score once. I had never had such a thorough physical workout in my life. If it wasn’t for the chiller built into the longjohns, I would have collapsed within a half hour. As it was, I was instantly drenched in sweat as soon as I unplugged from the simulator and was shaking so hard that I had to sit down.
“Are you OK?”
“That was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced, and as soon as I recover from this heart attack, I want to do it again.”
He keyed in a well practiced vidlink code, “Doc, could you meet me at pod six?”
“On my way.” I sat there and worked on breathing. “What’s the situation?”
“He collapsed as soon as he unplugged.”
“Plug him back in and get me about a gallon of electrolytes.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Cooling relief swept over me as the chiller did its job. “What happened?”
“You over did it and now you’re paying for it. When was the last time you did four hours of continuous exercise or hard labor?”
“Um . . . never?”
“Exactly. You’re young enough that it should only take you a couple of months to catch up to the pace that they run around here, but if you don’t take it gradually, you’ll kill your silly self.”
“Here you are ma’am.”
“And just what were you thinking, Captain? He’s a Cadet on his first day. You know that you have to set a reasonable pace. Honestly, Rusty.”
“He seemed to be doing just fine and kept up with me all the way. I honestly didn’t think there was any problem until he fell over.”
“Well, watch it mister. If you keep increasing my work load like this, I just might have to work through dinner.”
“Sorry, ma’am. I will not happen again.”
“Get some of those drinks into him and get him to the med station. He is not to leave until he is cleared by one of my personnel. I have other things to do so I am leaving him in your care.”
“Understood. Let me know when you think you can walk.” I waited until my hands stopped shaking before I tried to get up. “She’s great isn’t she?”
“Huh?”
“I could’ve kissed that bugger if Sniper hadn’t nailed him. Who would have thought that a bullet through the thigh would be the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“What?”
“Nothing lad. I was just waxing romantic about the object of my affection.”
“OK.” I still had no idea what was going on, but I decided it was probably for the best.
**************
A little later in Sniper’s Office
“How’s our new cadet?”
“He pushed himself too hard during the tests and collapsed. Barbara is watching him and says he’ll be fine as soon as he learns his limits.”
“What the flip did you do Rusty?”
“Nothing. He was fine as long as he was going, but as soon as he stopped, he fell down.”
“That wasn’t what I meant anyway. How did he do in the dimming trials?”
“Oh, he passed them all with flying colors. He came close to beating me in a couple of them. I don’t get it. How does an out of shape civilian get those kinds of skills?”
“As useful as his blatant battlesuit skills could be, I want you to push him in a different frying direction.”
“Hey, don’t get me into too much trouble. I’m already on notice for pushing him too hard.”
“You are so whipped man, but I want you to see if he can lead and if anyone will follow.”
“Lead?”
“He has the best tactical and organizational scores of anyone in the Prometheus armed forces, but that means crumbs if he can’t lead. I want you to put him in a suit this afternoon.”
“But we don’t until they pass...”
“All those tests that you just said he passed this morning. I need to find out fast if he’s the fluting one we’re looking for.
***************
There is a sense of power when you are in an actual battlesuit that is completely absent in a simulator. Some people get a similar sensation when driving a sports car or using heavy equipment, but this feeling is much more intimate. You don’t drive a battlesuit; You wear it. It becomes an extension of you and its power becomes a part of you. The sensation is both intoxicating and addictive . . . and like most forms of intoxication, it is easy to end up looking like an idiot.
I was in a real battlesuit for the first time I could feel the vibrations of power from the servos and hydraulics kicking in every time I moved my arm. I could probably pick up a car with it and hardly feel . . .
“You’ve been staring at your arm for ten minutes now, does it do a trick?” I know I jumped, but at least I didn’t yelp. “Alright everyone, break up into teams of five for target practice. Anyone want the new meat?”
“I’ll take him Rusty.”
“Are you familiar how we do target practice?”
“How does it compare with the simulator target practice?”
“It’s the exact same drill, except we use live ammo here.”
“Well, I’m good in the simulator, but in real life, who knows.”
“Well then at least we’ll have a challenge this time. You lead.”
Asking me to lead on my first run might sound like a position of honor and trust, but its really the position where you are the least likely to shoot one of your teammates. I was hoping to impress someone with my marksmanship, but the leader of the group was easily tripling my score. The onboard computer not only kept track of how many targets you hit, but the time it took you hit it and gave you a bonus for a faster shot. I probably had my mouth hanging open as I watched the precision and elegance with which he destroyed the targets. It wasn’t until we got to the run and gun stage that I was able to barely surpass half his score.
“Not bad kid. I think you beat Rico’s overall score on your first time out. I’m John, but they call me Sureshot.”
“I’m Allen, but apparently they call me New Meat.”
“Don’t worry about that too much. Keep going like that and you’ll get people’s respect in no time. Speaking of which, here comes Rusty.”
“Sureshot, your team came first again, big surprise there. Allen, not bad for a first outing. You went from number fifty to number thirty-six. Listen to Sureshot here and you’ll be in the top ten in no time. Any of you guys see anything that can be improved?”
“Um . . . I don’t know if anyone has suggested this before, but can the display be stet up to display to show fire zones or zones of responsibility during team firing?”
“What would that accomplish?”
“Well, I can already see what the others are targeting because I can see the other’s sights on my screen, but we still kept targeting the same ones or even worse, two of us would see that the other was going for a target and we would both move on and no one would get it. If we could divide the field into zones, it could lessen the confusion.”
“How would you do that Allen?”
“Well, if you used a color overlay for your section, or better yet have the overlay for the parts that aren’t your section, everyone could tell where their responsibility was.”
“How would you determine who got what areas?”
Well I would leave that up to your group leaders. The overall leader would determine where each group’s zone was and the group leaders would determine the zones for his people. The hard part would be making it dynamic enough to work when you’re on move. I guess it would have to be based on your direction of travel.” I kind of wound down because no one was saying anything.
“Godmode, did you get any of that?”
“I have it recorded.”
“How long do you think it would take you to implement something like that?”
“I think that I could have something workable for the test range in a half hour or so. It shouldn’t be too hard.”
“See what you can do.”
“Everyone else, you have a half hour break to piddle around and then we’re going to do it all over again. Group leaders, I want to talk to you.”
I went over and cracked my helmet and got something to drink. I was just starting to relax when I got a call. “Cadet Spenser, this is Godmode. Could you put your helmet back on, I’d like to go over some things with you.”
“Sure thing, I don’t think I’ve had the chance to meet you sir.”
“No need for the formality. I’m a programmer, not military. Godmode36 is my screen-name. Are you hooked in yet?”
“Yeah, I’m up and going. My screen name is VictoryNAlienSp8ce.”
“How did you pull off getting a cool one like that.”
“I’ve had it since I was 8. It’s a play on my full name, Allen Victor Spencer. Kids used to call me Alien Spaceman instead of Allen Spencer and I turned it into a screen-name.”
“I’m downloading some stuff I’m working on into your suit, so if anything goes wonky, don’t panic, just tell me. Anyone ever try to buy your screen-name off you?”
“A few since the invasion was announced, but I’ve had it so long that I couldn’t imagine being without it. My screen just went blank, OK, it’s back. What do you need me to do?”
“I need you to see if what I am making is the kind of thing that you were thinking of. How does that look?”
“Whose view is that?”
“That would be the squad leader’s”
“The fields need to have a few degrees of overlap so that there’s no boundary gaps.”
“Like that?’
“Yes.”
“What about the spacing of the fields?”
“Well, the forward 120 degrees the most critical, so we need to set it up so that everyone has a slice of that. Lets try giving the point man the central 50 degrees, his wing men should have 30 degrees with a 5-degree overlap, and the flankers would get 20 degrees with the same overlap and their flank. I think that adds up right.”
“You have a good head for this kind of thing. Have you ever tried programming?”
“Nah, I’m a gamer. I took a few classes but I could never get my head into the codes.”
“I probably couldn’t pry you out of that suit any more than you could get me away from my computer.”
“You can have my keyboard when you pry it from my cold hands.”
“What?”
“I had a friend in high school who was a programmer. He used to say that all the time. I think I’m beginning to see what he meant.”
***************
“Sir, with all due respect, what kind of brickbats are you trying to pull on me?”
“My dear Sniper, with everything I have in the works, you’re going to have to be more specific than that.”
“Your trying to tell me that this Spencer kid is a civilian straight off the streets and he pulls something out of his elbow that improves our squad performance by flipping twenty percent on his first day?”
“Oh, what did he do?”
“He set up some sort of visual field markers for the combined fire practice and BOOM! Everyone’s score shot up.”
“Well, that is impressive.”
“You’re dim right, that’s impressive. Four teams broke the previous flickering team record on the first go through. What is the real, no bomb-door story on this guy?”
“I assure you that the file that I gave you is completely accurate and complete. I’ve left nothing relevant out.”
“So, should I promote this guy, give him a dud medal or shoot the fruitcake?”
“You will not do any of those things young man!”
“Ma’am! I’m sorry ma’am! I didn’t know you were there.”
“Don’t worry about that, but you listen to me. You are not to do anything like that at all. Treat it like it was just a typical day for your people and nothing unusual happened. If you make a big deal about it one way or the other, there is a good chance that he will either quit or withdraw and stop being a useful part of the team. If you accept him and just make him one of the boys for now, I think he will continue to amaze you.”
“Yes ma’am, but I don’t really understand why.”
“Right now, he just needs to accepted and to become part of the team. This is a big change for him. He has always been a loner, and if you single him out, he will find it really easy to go back to that way of life, which would make him useless to you. I’m putting a lot of resources into him, don’t mess it up for me.”
“Understood ma’am! Any further instructions?”
“Not for the moment. If you have any further questions, he has a full time Counselor assigned to him that you can always contact and you should keep her with any new developments.”
***************
By the end of the day, we had gone through the full targeting exercises four times, which everyone seemed to enjoy. I kept going up in the ranks for my overall accuracy until had reached number 31, and this really seemed to impress everyone. I talked to just about everyone that day and became completely confused about everyone’s names and handles. Something began nagging me in the back of my mind again, but I was too busy to worry about it.
Sylvia showed up to collect me, and I couldn’t believe that I had just put in a ten hour day. I excitedly told her about everything that had happened to me several times. She put on this smile that I have since learned meant that she had no interest at all in what I was talking but was ignoring me politely anyway. When we got to my place she told me to get a shower while she picked me an outfit for dinner. I dutifully hit the showers and once again started thinking. I had to nail down what was bugging me earlier. I went over the day in my head, and couldn’t find anything that had gone wrong.
I finished my shower and put on another set of “nice” clothes that Sylvia had apparently gotten for me and we headed for the Main Cafeteria. We headed for a section that I had not been to before and we arrived before a set of doors that had the title “Suit Closet” over them. When I opened the door for Sylvia, I found a big room full of people from work as well as some I didn’t recognize. I said hi to a lot of people whose name I couldn’t remember and then I saw the food! It was a nerd’s dream come true. Pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, chips and all the sodas you could drink!
I relaxed with an overload of food and once I felt pleasantly overstuffed, I looked around to see what everyone else was doing. There were a lot of people just sitting around talking, but there were also groups playing board games (but no video games) and darts and a balloon that was being batted randomly around the room. Sylvia encouraged me to talk to people I knew, so I went over to say hi to Rusty who was sitting at a booth with Doc Sullivan. (I asked Sylvia if they were a couple and she informed me that they had been married for three years.)
Rusty introduced me to Gloria who was sitting across from him but didn’t introduce me to the large black man with the shaved head sitting next to her. He smiled at me and asked, “So how was your first day Allen?”
“It was great! It was like living a video game except nothing that shallow. No, what I mean is that it was so much fun, but it really means something. We getting ready to defend the Earth from aliens, which still sounds like a video game but, the things we do can really help save lives and make a difference, and... I’m really not making sense am I?”
“No, I know exactly what you mean. This is the real flipping world and we’re making a real gold dark difference, and the fact that we’re having a blinking blast is a bonus.”
“Yeah, that’s mostly what I meant. I can’t wait until tomorrow, although I’m probably going to be so sore that I can hardly move.”
“Have your counselor give you something for that, although I doubt that she could give you a freaking massage like Gloria here can.”
“Sweetie, be nice! You’re embarrassing the boy.”
“OK babe. Allen, go out and play some games and enjoy yourself. You’ve earned a place on the team.”
I headed out and, with Sylvia’s encouragement, talked to more people whose name I couldn’t remember. After losing a couple of games of checkers, I asked Silvia, “Who was that sitting with Rusty?”
“You didn’t know? That’s your boss.”
“Sniper?”
“I think that’s what he goes by.”
“Well, crud. I wish somebody had told me.”
“I guess everyone assumed you knew.”
“I must have sounded like an idiot.”
“You did fine. I think he’s impressed with you.”
“I didn’t get that impression.”
“Trust me. It’s my job to notice these things.”
“OK. I’ll take your word for it.”
After the get together started breaking up, Sylvia escorted me home. She gave me some aspirin and made me promise to brush my teeth and not sleep in my new clothes. As I was settling in, it finally hit me. I was part of the team. That was the feeling that had been bugging me all day. I had been with a pretty big group of people and, for the first time in my life, I wasn’t on the outside looking in. It was a new sensation and a bit scary, but I thought I could get used to it.
***************
Here is the original section
I was more excited than a kid at Christmas as I reported the next day to my new job as battlesuit test pilot, and quickly found myself a newbie civilian among a group largely composed of veteran military men and women. I was the only one here who did not have at least a year of battlesuit piloting experience under their belt. They all had at least two years in the military and frankly, they were in a lot better physical condition than I was.
Despite those differences, I quickly developed a sense of kinship with these strangers. For the first time in my life, I was not the odd man out (even if I was the lowest man on the totem pole.) We were a team of problem solvers that believed that anything could be done if we just had the right tools. We were officially the UN Special Forces First Armored Infantry Company, but military protocols like rank and such didn’t matter much here. We called each other by our first names or nicknames and your abilities got you respect from the group. It didn’t seem very military, except that we were organized. More than organized, we had teamwork going at a level that I hadn’t known was possible before. Everyone had a job, everyone knew what their job was, and everyone knew what everyone else was supposed to be doing.
At first I was completely confused. Everyone was going this way and that at a breathtaking pace. Lena took me aside and told me to watch for the rhythm, and gradual I saw the pattern emerge and was able to join it.( This didn’t mean that I wasn’t constantly in peoples way at first.) I finally knew I had become truly accepted when I was the butt of the first prank (which seemed like daily occurrences.) It was hard exhausting work, but I had never had so much fun in my life.
I settled down into a daily routine, in which Sylvia came by each morning to see that I was ‘awake, fed, properly attired, and to work on time.’ I spent the day getting the suits to do anything that we thought that they should be able to do, and it’s a lot harder process than it would seem from the outside. We were only allowed to work ten hours a day, and then Sylvia and the other Councilors came and collected their charges. I was then fed, spent some down time with the group, sent to the showers and sent off to bed.
Scincerely,
Scintor@aol.com
I awoke the next morning to a buzzing noise that, after the third time, I identified as my door announcer (the voice was just too creepy.) I stumbled to the door and opened it to find an impatient Sylvia walking past me.
“It’s about time, mister. You really don’t want to be late to your first day do you?”
“Um, no, not really.”
“OK then, let’s get you ready. I’ve got your ID card right here. It has a transponder chip in it that lets all the doors know who you are. If you are supposed to go in, the door will open when you walk toward it. If not, the door will stay locked. Watch out, though, if you are walking with someone who isn’t authorized, it’ll stay locked and you’ll probably run into it and get a bloody nose.”
“OK,” Yawn, “sorry, I think I got that.”
“You’re supposed to wear something loose fitting so that you can get fitted for your suit.”
“Will these do?”
“Sweats and a T-shirt is fine, but those are your pajamas and are ragged besides. Right idea, but you need something that you will look decent in.” She walked into my bedroom and started rummaging through my drawers. “Well this will do for now, but I’ll get you some decent stuff soon. What time did you get to bed anyway?”
“Around midnight, I guess.”
“Well, you’re definitely going to get to bed earlier if you’re going to be this sleepy in the morning.”
“I wasn’t planning on getting up for an hour or so yet.”
“That wouldn’t have given you time to get dressed properly, much less time to get a decent breakfast. If you don’t want to take time to go to the Main Cafeteria every morning, then I suggest that we stop by the store after work so that you can get some breakfast stuff that you can make here. That will save you time and be cheaper besides.”
“Oh yeah, I’m not the big contest winner anymore. I’m just an employee. No more free food. Do I need to get an advance or something until I get my first check?”
“Your signing bonus should cover you easily until then unless you go crazy.”
“I got a signing bonus?”
“Didn’t you read your contract?”
“If I had tried to read all that yesterday, I’d still be reading even if I hadn’t slept.” (I actually hadn’t read any of it, but I wasn’t about to admit that to her.)
“Well, you should be fine anyway, and I’ll keep a watch on your account to make sure you don’t go overboard. Go get yourself ready and then we’ll head off for breakfast.”
We ate and then hopped on the “freeway” to head to my new job. I was glad that she was with me because I probably would have tried to wander there on foot, and it’s several miles from the Main Cafeteria to the training center. She dropped me off in front of a huge set of doors and drove off.
The doors opened as I approached them and I walked into a huge room filled with clusters of battlesuit simulators. I briefly wondered if I had accidently wandered into some sort of underwater simulator because many of the people were clad in what looked like diving suits. One of these figures turned and approached me.
“Captain Rustle Baker, but you can call me Rusty, as we don’t stand much on rank here. I’m the company’s XO (Executive Officer or second in command.) I’ll be showing you around this morning until you make your own way without tripping over anyone. Do you have a handle you go by?”
“No, just Allen.”
“You’ll get one soon enough. The company commander here is Captain Sniper. That’s not his real name. I’m not at liberty to divulge his real name because I don’t want him to deck you for using it. Sniper’s tough as nails, but there isn’t a better man to be beside in a fight. Work hard and you’ll earn his respect. I’ll give you the nickle tour and then we’ll get you outfitted and put you to work.”
He showed me to my locker (there are separate showers, but we share the locker area so I was warned about staying modest.) I then had to strip down to my underwear to be scanned for my sensor suit. The suit is skintight and goes from head to toe. There is a heavy belt around the middle where all the equipment is. The feet, hood, and gloves can come off while you aren’t in the suit or the simulator, which is why everyone calls them longjohns. I was advised to get some slippers or flip-flops to wear around the testing bay unless I wanted to go barefoot or take my shoes and socks on and off constantly.
As I put on my suit for the first time, I was more than a little self-conscious which wasn’t helped by Rusty’s next question.
“How long have you been out of the service?”
“I’m afraid that I’m a civilian, sir. I tried to enlist once, but they turned me down.”
“Well, that explains it, but we’ll get you whipped into shape in no time. Let’s head over to pod six and see what you can do.”
Any pretensions that I might have had about how good I was were beaten out of me over the next four hours. Rusty went through drill after drill along-side of me, and I wasn’t able to match his score once. I had never had such a thorough physical workout in my life. If it wasn’t for the chiller built into the longjohns, I would have collapsed within a half hour. As it was, I was instantly drenched in sweat as soon as I unplugged from the simulator and was shaking so hard that I had to sit down.
“Are you OK?”
“That was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced, and as soon as I recover from this heart attack, I want to do it again.”
He keyed in a well practiced vidlink code, “Doc, could you meet me at pod six?”
“On my way.” I sat there and worked on breathing. “What’s the situation?”
“He collapsed as soon as he unplugged.”
“Plug him back in and get me about a gallon of electrolytes.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Cooling relief swept over me as the chiller did its job. “What happened?”
“You over did it and now you’re paying for it. When was the last time you did four hours of continuous exercise or hard labor?”
“Um . . . never?”
“Exactly. You’re young enough that it should only take you a couple of months to catch up to the pace that they run around here, but if you don’t take it gradually, you’ll kill your silly self.”
“Here you are ma’am.”
“And just what were you thinking, Captain? He’s a Cadet on his first day. You know that you have to set a reasonable pace. Honestly, Rusty.”
“He seemed to be doing just fine and kept up with me all the way. I honestly didn’t think there was any problem until he fell over.”
“Well, watch it mister. If you keep increasing my work load like this, I just might have to work through dinner.”
“Sorry, ma’am. I will not happen again.”
“Get some of those drinks into him and get him to the med station. He is not to leave until he is cleared by one of my personnel. I have other things to do so I am leaving him in your care.”
“Understood. Let me know when you think you can walk.” I waited until my hands stopped shaking before I tried to get up. “She’s great isn’t she?”
“Huh?”
“I could’ve kissed that bugger if Sniper hadn’t nailed him. Who would have thought that a bullet through the thigh would be the best thing that ever happened to me.”
“What?”
“Nothing lad. I was just waxing romantic about the object of my affection.”
“OK.” I still had no idea what was going on, but I decided it was probably for the best.
**************
A little later in Sniper’s Office
“How’s our new cadet?”
“He pushed himself too hard during the tests and collapsed. Barbara is watching him and says he’ll be fine as soon as he learns his limits.”
“What the flip did you do Rusty?”
“Nothing. He was fine as long as he was going, but as soon as he stopped, he fell down.”
“That wasn’t what I meant anyway. How did he do in the dimming trials?”
“Oh, he passed them all with flying colors. He came close to beating me in a couple of them. I don’t get it. How does an out of shape civilian get those kinds of skills?”
“As useful as his blatant battlesuit skills could be, I want you to push him in a different frying direction.”
“Hey, don’t get me into too much trouble. I’m already on notice for pushing him too hard.”
“You are so whipped man, but I want you to see if he can lead and if anyone will follow.”
“Lead?”
“He has the best tactical and organizational scores of anyone in the Prometheus armed forces, but that means crumbs if he can’t lead. I want you to put him in a suit this afternoon.”
“But we don’t until they pass...”
“All those tests that you just said he passed this morning. I need to find out fast if he’s the fluting one we’re looking for.
***************
There is a sense of power when you are in an actual battlesuit that is completely absent in a simulator. Some people get a similar sensation when driving a sports car or using heavy equipment, but this feeling is much more intimate. You don’t drive a battlesuit; You wear it. It becomes an extension of you and its power becomes a part of you. The sensation is both intoxicating and addictive . . . and like most forms of intoxication, it is easy to end up looking like an idiot.
I was in a real battlesuit for the first time I could feel the vibrations of power from the servos and hydraulics kicking in every time I moved my arm. I could probably pick up a car with it and hardly feel . . .
“You’ve been staring at your arm for ten minutes now, does it do a trick?” I know I jumped, but at least I didn’t yelp. “Alright everyone, break up into teams of five for target practice. Anyone want the new meat?”
“I’ll take him Rusty.”
“Are you familiar how we do target practice?”
“How does it compare with the simulator target practice?”
“It’s the exact same drill, except we use live ammo here.”
“Well, I’m good in the simulator, but in real life, who knows.”
“Well then at least we’ll have a challenge this time. You lead.”
Asking me to lead on my first run might sound like a position of honor and trust, but its really the position where you are the least likely to shoot one of your teammates. I was hoping to impress someone with my marksmanship, but the leader of the group was easily tripling my score. The onboard computer not only kept track of how many targets you hit, but the time it took you hit it and gave you a bonus for a faster shot. I probably had my mouth hanging open as I watched the precision and elegance with which he destroyed the targets. It wasn’t until we got to the run and gun stage that I was able to barely surpass half his score.
“Not bad kid. I think you beat Rico’s overall score on your first time out. I’m John, but they call me Sureshot.”
“I’m Allen, but apparently they call me New Meat.”
“Don’t worry about that too much. Keep going like that and you’ll get people’s respect in no time. Speaking of which, here comes Rusty.”
“Sureshot, your team came first again, big surprise there. Allen, not bad for a first outing. You went from number fifty to number thirty-six. Listen to Sureshot here and you’ll be in the top ten in no time. Any of you guys see anything that can be improved?”
“Um . . . I don’t know if anyone has suggested this before, but can the display be stet up to display to show fire zones or zones of responsibility during team firing?”
“What would that accomplish?”
“Well, I can already see what the others are targeting because I can see the other’s sights on my screen, but we still kept targeting the same ones or even worse, two of us would see that the other was going for a target and we would both move on and no one would get it. If we could divide the field into zones, it could lessen the confusion.”
“How would you do that Allen?”
“Well, if you used a color overlay for your section, or better yet have the overlay for the parts that aren’t your section, everyone could tell where their responsibility was.”
“How would you determine who got what areas?”
Well I would leave that up to your group leaders. The overall leader would determine where each group’s zone was and the group leaders would determine the zones for his people. The hard part would be making it dynamic enough to work when you’re on move. I guess it would have to be based on your direction of travel.” I kind of wound down because no one was saying anything.
“Godmode, did you get any of that?”
“I have it recorded.”
“How long do you think it would take you to implement something like that?”
“I think that I could have something workable for the test range in a half hour or so. It shouldn’t be too hard.”
“See what you can do.”
“Everyone else, you have a half hour break to piddle around and then we’re going to do it all over again. Group leaders, I want to talk to you.”
I went over and cracked my helmet and got something to drink. I was just starting to relax when I got a call. “Cadet Spenser, this is Godmode. Could you put your helmet back on, I’d like to go over some things with you.”
“Sure thing, I don’t think I’ve had the chance to meet you sir.”
“No need for the formality. I’m a programmer, not military. Godmode36 is my screen-name. Are you hooked in yet?”
“Yeah, I’m up and going. My screen name is VictoryNAlienSp8ce.”
“How did you pull off getting a cool one like that.”
“I’ve had it since I was 8. It’s a play on my full name, Allen Victor Spencer. Kids used to call me Alien Spaceman instead of Allen Spencer and I turned it into a screen-name.”
“I’m downloading some stuff I’m working on into your suit, so if anything goes wonky, don’t panic, just tell me. Anyone ever try to buy your screen-name off you?”
“A few since the invasion was announced, but I’ve had it so long that I couldn’t imagine being without it. My screen just went blank, OK, it’s back. What do you need me to do?”
“I need you to see if what I am making is the kind of thing that you were thinking of. How does that look?”
“Whose view is that?”
“That would be the squad leader’s”
“The fields need to have a few degrees of overlap so that there’s no boundary gaps.”
“Like that?’
“Yes.”
“What about the spacing of the fields?”
“Well, the forward 120 degrees the most critical, so we need to set it up so that everyone has a slice of that. Lets try giving the point man the central 50 degrees, his wing men should have 30 degrees with a 5-degree overlap, and the flankers would get 20 degrees with the same overlap and their flank. I think that adds up right.”
“You have a good head for this kind of thing. Have you ever tried programming?”
“Nah, I’m a gamer. I took a few classes but I could never get my head into the codes.”
“I probably couldn’t pry you out of that suit any more than you could get me away from my computer.”
“You can have my keyboard when you pry it from my cold hands.”
“What?”
“I had a friend in high school who was a programmer. He used to say that all the time. I think I’m beginning to see what he meant.”
***************
“Sir, with all due respect, what kind of brickbats are you trying to pull on me?”
“My dear Sniper, with everything I have in the works, you’re going to have to be more specific than that.”
“Your trying to tell me that this Spencer kid is a civilian straight off the streets and he pulls something out of his elbow that improves our squad performance by flipping twenty percent on his first day?”
“Oh, what did he do?”
“He set up some sort of visual field markers for the combined fire practice and BOOM! Everyone’s score shot up.”
“Well, that is impressive.”
“You’re dim right, that’s impressive. Four teams broke the previous flickering team record on the first go through. What is the real, no bomb-door story on this guy?”
“I assure you that the file that I gave you is completely accurate and complete. I’ve left nothing relevant out.”
“So, should I promote this guy, give him a dud medal or shoot the fruitcake?”
“You will not do any of those things young man!”
“Ma’am! I’m sorry ma’am! I didn’t know you were there.”
“Don’t worry about that, but you listen to me. You are not to do anything like that at all. Treat it like it was just a typical day for your people and nothing unusual happened. If you make a big deal about it one way or the other, there is a good chance that he will either quit or withdraw and stop being a useful part of the team. If you accept him and just make him one of the boys for now, I think he will continue to amaze you.”
“Yes ma’am, but I don’t really understand why.”
“Right now, he just needs to accepted and to become part of the team. This is a big change for him. He has always been a loner, and if you single him out, he will find it really easy to go back to that way of life, which would make him useless to you. I’m putting a lot of resources into him, don’t mess it up for me.”
“Understood ma’am! Any further instructions?”
“Not for the moment. If you have any further questions, he has a full time Counselor assigned to him that you can always contact and you should keep her with any new developments.”
***************
By the end of the day, we had gone through the full targeting exercises four times, which everyone seemed to enjoy. I kept going up in the ranks for my overall accuracy until had reached number 31, and this really seemed to impress everyone. I talked to just about everyone that day and became completely confused about everyone’s names and handles. Something began nagging me in the back of my mind again, but I was too busy to worry about it.
Sylvia showed up to collect me, and I couldn’t believe that I had just put in a ten hour day. I excitedly told her about everything that had happened to me several times. She put on this smile that I have since learned meant that she had no interest at all in what I was talking but was ignoring me politely anyway. When we got to my place she told me to get a shower while she picked me an outfit for dinner. I dutifully hit the showers and once again started thinking. I had to nail down what was bugging me earlier. I went over the day in my head, and couldn’t find anything that had gone wrong.
I finished my shower and put on another set of “nice” clothes that Sylvia had apparently gotten for me and we headed for the Main Cafeteria. We headed for a section that I had not been to before and we arrived before a set of doors that had the title “Suit Closet” over them. When I opened the door for Sylvia, I found a big room full of people from work as well as some I didn’t recognize. I said hi to a lot of people whose name I couldn’t remember and then I saw the food! It was a nerd’s dream come true. Pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers, chips and all the sodas you could drink!
I relaxed with an overload of food and once I felt pleasantly overstuffed, I looked around to see what everyone else was doing. There were a lot of people just sitting around talking, but there were also groups playing board games (but no video games) and darts and a balloon that was being batted randomly around the room. Sylvia encouraged me to talk to people I knew, so I went over to say hi to Rusty who was sitting at a booth with Doc Sullivan. (I asked Sylvia if they were a couple and she informed me that they had been married for three years.)
Rusty introduced me to Gloria who was sitting across from him but didn’t introduce me to the large black man with the shaved head sitting next to her. He smiled at me and asked, “So how was your first day Allen?”
“It was great! It was like living a video game except nothing that shallow. No, what I mean is that it was so much fun, but it really means something. We getting ready to defend the Earth from aliens, which still sounds like a video game but, the things we do can really help save lives and make a difference, and... I’m really not making sense am I?”
“No, I know exactly what you mean. This is the real flipping world and we’re making a real gold dark difference, and the fact that we’re having a blinking blast is a bonus.”
“Yeah, that’s mostly what I meant. I can’t wait until tomorrow, although I’m probably going to be so sore that I can hardly move.”
“Have your counselor give you something for that, although I doubt that she could give you a freaking massage like Gloria here can.”
“Sweetie, be nice! You’re embarrassing the boy.”
“OK babe. Allen, go out and play some games and enjoy yourself. You’ve earned a place on the team.”
I headed out and, with Sylvia’s encouragement, talked to more people whose name I couldn’t remember. After losing a couple of games of checkers, I asked Silvia, “Who was that sitting with Rusty?”
“You didn’t know? That’s your boss.”
“Sniper?”
“I think that’s what he goes by.”
“Well, crud. I wish somebody had told me.”
“I guess everyone assumed you knew.”
“I must have sounded like an idiot.”
“You did fine. I think he’s impressed with you.”
“I didn’t get that impression.”
“Trust me. It’s my job to notice these things.”
“OK. I’ll take your word for it.”
After the get together started breaking up, Sylvia escorted me home. She gave me some aspirin and made me promise to brush my teeth and not sleep in my new clothes. As I was settling in, it finally hit me. I was part of the team. That was the feeling that had been bugging me all day. I had been with a pretty big group of people and, for the first time in my life, I wasn’t on the outside looking in. It was a new sensation and a bit scary, but I thought I could get used to it.
***************
Here is the original section
I was more excited than a kid at Christmas as I reported the next day to my new job as battlesuit test pilot, and quickly found myself a newbie civilian among a group largely composed of veteran military men and women. I was the only one here who did not have at least a year of battlesuit piloting experience under their belt. They all had at least two years in the military and frankly, they were in a lot better physical condition than I was.
Despite those differences, I quickly developed a sense of kinship with these strangers. For the first time in my life, I was not the odd man out (even if I was the lowest man on the totem pole.) We were a team of problem solvers that believed that anything could be done if we just had the right tools. We were officially the UN Special Forces First Armored Infantry Company, but military protocols like rank and such didn’t matter much here. We called each other by our first names or nicknames and your abilities got you respect from the group. It didn’t seem very military, except that we were organized. More than organized, we had teamwork going at a level that I hadn’t known was possible before. Everyone had a job, everyone knew what their job was, and everyone knew what everyone else was supposed to be doing.
At first I was completely confused. Everyone was going this way and that at a breathtaking pace. Lena took me aside and told me to watch for the rhythm, and gradual I saw the pattern emerge and was able to join it.( This didn’t mean that I wasn’t constantly in peoples way at first.) I finally knew I had become truly accepted when I was the butt of the first prank (which seemed like daily occurrences.) It was hard exhausting work, but I had never had so much fun in my life.
I settled down into a daily routine, in which Sylvia came by each morning to see that I was ‘awake, fed, properly attired, and to work on time.’ I spent the day getting the suits to do anything that we thought that they should be able to do, and it’s a lot harder process than it would seem from the outside. We were only allowed to work ten hours a day, and then Sylvia and the other Councilors came and collected their charges. I was then fed, spent some down time with the group, sent to the showers and sent off to bed.
Scincerely,
Scintor@aol.com