Tales from New Bethlehem: An experiment with death

"Ahhhh.. got me armor? You finally finished it? Well its about damn time!"

"Yes...yes...well the specs you wanted weren't easy to come by. The harness alone took me several months to complete. Fortunately for you, I do my best work under pressure."

The thin orange skinned man in the slick black jumpsuit and oil stained dirty white lab coat eyed the ornate shining metallic blue-black frame of the armored exoskeleton hanging vicariously in the far right corner of his secret underground laboratory. The bulbous trajectory of the two sunken emerald discs he had in place of his eyes could zoom in and focus on objects with much greater definition and magnifying efficiency. His proper name was Anstellor Drilsalk, but on the streets everywhere he was known simply as "Drisal"...or "Dr.D". A born genius with a photographic memory. Both his parents died when he was young but despite this, he found early success and wealth at the age of nineteen. Operating out of Metropolitan Hospital as the city's preemminent young neuro-surgeon. However he soon grew bored with the medical field and went on to achieve advanced degrees in bioengineering, chemistry, and robotics. Opening his own practice, he became the city's earliest practitioner of bio-enhancement surgery, but when the gangs took over and all civilized society retreated to their sky high abodes of safety and sanctuary. He found  himself unable to part with the city that he had loved since birth. He took his practice underground and in this way began operating as an illegal black market tech manufacturer and dealer. As the years passed, he built up quite the reputation with the criminal underworld as the go to for cybernetic augmentation, genetic enhancement, and tech. He had the kind of unobtrusive face that seemed to always contain an insurmountable sense of poignancy. His long slender nose and wide flapping ears were uncharacteristically exaggerated giving him an almost inhuman appearance. These were most likely caused by his own experiments with mutation. The little bob of black hair clinging to his otherwise barren scalp was tied into a shrill little knot. His stature was slight and unnerving. His mannerisms seemed to possess a restless type of urgency that were altogether vaguely uncomfortable.

The other man was in more ways than one his direct opposite. Clad in spiked dirty black and brown leather, heavy chains dangled from a skull laden huge leather belt. His ornately studded adamantine tipped black boots, blent nicely with the rest of his macabre ensemble. A shiny spiked silver necklace containing twin evil looking metal skulls hung from the voluminous tree like mass which was supposed to constitute for his neck. The man's face was strikingly severe but full of mirth in an ignorant almost filial type of way. He had a long shaggy grey bespeckled beard that hadn't seen a comb nor brush in ages. He was Large, grizzled, and overly muscular with a wide array of elaborate  well designed black tattoos emblazoned across his huge exposed arms. His skin was a dark rich supple shade of deep brown but for all its malignancy it was not enough to offset the obvious visibility of his many tattoos. A large square like head sat atop an almost invisible neck absorbed by a pair of massively prominent triceps. His dyed blood red hair was affixed into a short mohawk but aside from this aperture he was completely bald. He wore a black bandanna wrapped tightly around his scalp. He had fierce looking light brown eyes, a hard chiseled jawline, and ears riddled with metal piercings.

"Here's yer quid bunkie....took ya long enough."

The big man reached into his right hip pocket and pulled several large bronze looking coins. Each had a different symbol stamped into its frame. He placed them on the green glass crystal counter directly in front of where the other man was standing. The smaller man reached down and picked them up...carefully examining the details of each coin. His face grew terse and indignant almost immediately.  On the street and usually only within certain circles these coins or "quid" as they were called, were accepted as having monetary value equal to universal cash credits. They were illegal and very expensive to make since the metal used for the process was a highly dense form of carbonadium alloy.

The coins came stamped in six denominations; 1000cc, 5000cc, 10000cc, 20,000cc, 50,000cc, 100,000cc, and finally 500,000cc.

"Let me see here....uhhhmmm...this is only 478,000cc..I thought we settled on 550,000cc?"

"Yeah...well that was ten months ago..when I first came to you....the deal was this suit was supposed to get done by October. Since you had me wait all this time fer it...I went ahead and did me self the favor of shaving offa few quid....for me expense of course."

The smaller man looked rather perturbed at first but then his face gradually uncoiled into a wayward expression of seedy shifty acceptance. He dare not protest such a ludicrously unfair act....he knew all too well the type of man that he was dealing with. Even the slightest admonition or indignation could spell instant death. No he quickly put the coins in his pocket then proceeded to release a lever from somewhere underneath the glass countertop.

"She's all yours....."

The pressurized locks attached to the large stabilizing braces serving to hold the exoskeleton in place released with a loud gassy exasperation. The suit was slowly lowered to the floor by way of a series of servo-motorized automated clamps. The big man licked his lips in incredulous anticipation. The way the suit sparkled gave him paroxysms of excitement.

"Cripes...ain't she a beauty! Doc....you outdid yourself this time. Ya got me blood roaring through me veins...I'm gonna have me some fun with this baby! How soon can me upload its mainframe?"

"Well....about that. You see since you wanted it to have so many...rather....unique...features. It requires a tremendous amount of energy to keep it in operation.I did my best to offset this by making the principal power source to be a pair of twin hydrogen compression generators located in the lower sternum, and an auxiliary unit in the lower back as a 250 ec power cell. The generators work fine and are self sustaining given that there is no damage to the interior transitory capacitator, however the power cell has a half life of only 28 days before it needs to be recharged..."

"So you're saying every month I got to plug it into me micro turbine to juice it back up? Fine...that ain't no big deal. Just got to remember not to go crazy with me sticks!"

"Ummm....yes but I wasn't finished explaining. Charging the power cell is fine...its a newer generation battery designed with tungsten ionic filaments therefore it conducts electricity at a much higher rate. The power cell only needs about 6 hours before its charged up fully with a basic 80 ohm micro turbine. The problem is because the suit takes so much power to operate it, it will put a much greater strain on your mainframe. In fact  there is even a risk of frying your nervous system completely....I'm talking flatline rampancy."

"What?!! Me a rampant?!!! You little..."

The large man reaches over.and grabs Drisal by the neck...hoisting him up off of his feet into the air. His titanic hands grip his throat so tightly that the little man can barely breathe let alone speak...

"I paid ya good money for this fucking thing...now yuh telling me if I wear it I can turn into a damned rampant?!!!"

While still holding Drisal up in the air, with his other arm, the large man reaches to his left side and pulls a long double-edged serrated knife from an old leather sheath. Not noticing a pair of neatly dressed golden haired androids staring at him intently from across the other end of the laboratory.

"Ima bust ya guts open all over this fucking floor...yuh little sleg pile a..."

"Wait....wait...you didn't let me finish....I..I found a way to bypass that obstacle....there's a way to avoid that completely while wearing it...."

He drops Drisal to the floor with a thud. His exasperated face flushed from near asphysxiation...he coughs and gasps for air...vomiting on his black boots.

The big man is still holding the knife standing over him...his eyes watching him menacingly..at any moment ready to deliver swift death....

"Well?...Out with it...before I change me fucking mind..its because I like ya work why ima let ya keep yer miserable little life..."

"The...the...suit puts a tremendous strain on the mainframe of the wearer...but with the use of a special chemical stimulant...this can be undone."

"Chems?....you mean drugs?...what fucking drugs ya talking about doc?"

The little man reaches into his lab coat pocket and pulls out a tiny grey plastic bottle filled to the brim with little rounded yellow pills.

"Here...these are Xarphine 9....they are a highly potent neurological stimulant...meaning that they increase the propensity of the  electrical impulses generated by synapse activity...."

"Speak fucking plain english or ima cut off ya blooming head!!!"

The big man gives Drisal a savage kick to the face, smashing into his mouth and knocking out several of his teeth. He recoils in horror and with a mouth full of blood and broken teeth...he exclaims pathetically....

"The....the pills enhance the electricity generated by your brain...enough to the point where it more closely resembles the output required to sustain the link with the mainframe. If you take them before linking up to the suit...you...you shouldn't experience any stress on your synapses and nervous system!"

The big man keeps staring menacingly for a moment....then slowly cracks a wide smile. All the anger and brutality in his face virtually disappears. He puts the knife back into its sheath and extends a warm hand to Drisal, lifting him back on to his feet.

"Heh... heh....sorry I had to rough ya up a bit there old boy. No hard feelings...eh chappie? So all me got to do is take these little pills before I put the blooming thing on and I'm good....how simple is that? Doc...yer a blooming genius yer are! Thanks for the ones and twos about it!"

He snatches the bottle out of Drisal's hands then smacks him square on the shoulder. Drisal sneaks in a glance of utter disgust...

With the help of the two android servants the suit is loaded up on to the flat bed of the big mans large pick up vehicle.and secured via a series of interlocking clamps and thick heavy leverage coils. A dirty old brown wool blanket is thrown over it in order to keep it safe from the prying eyes of the noisome public. Once everything is settled to the big mans satisfaction he bids farewell to Drisal and drives off into the evening night. All the familiar sights, sounds, and scents of the raw naked night time city do little to dissuade the tumultuous storm of emotions nesting in Drisals consciousness. He spat more blood onto the sidewalk which emptied into a trash laden ravine directly adjacent from the entrance to his crude back alley hideaway. As he watched the dark blue pick up vehicle  noisily speed away into the distance, he couldn't help but twitch with a pang of hatred. If he could he would've killed that bastard for even touching him in the first place. The fortsner pulse pistol itched at his side underneath his lab coat. He could have pulled it at anytime blasting the big bastard to a steamy crisp. However his better senses had gotten the best of him knowing full well that he held an advantage over his brutish customer. Firstly, he hadn't revealed all the details of the suit, he purposely neglected to tell him that he had installed and embedded a  transistor recompensator in the suits hardware wiring. This device linked back directly to Drisal own laboratory mainframe and ai system. Thus whenever the suit was in operation he had a full schematic of where it was, what is was doing, and just exactly how much power it was using. If need be Drisal could even manipulate this device to incapacitate the suit or scramble its mainframe connection with the wearer. Albeit to do both of these actions would require a great deal of difficulty and time with the algorithms. The second thing he failed to mention was that the drug he prescribed Xarphine 9, was a banned substance. Even on the streets you could barely find it anywhere. It was highly addictive and it caused the development over time of a terrible kind of psychosis..usually resulting in uncontrollable homicidal rages. For someone who was already a hardened killer like that big brute...the results would be devastating. Drisal wondered about the possible ramifications of what he had just unleashed upon the city. New Bethlehem was already filled to the brim with just about every type of criminal, cutthroat killer, and monster imaginable.....what difference would it make to have one more thrown into the mix?

He turned and walked towards the back alley entrance of his hideaway. It was nestled behind two large abandoned buildings...often occupied by dregs and homeless drifters.There were several large metal bins of trash overflowing in the alley. He walked up to one and touched a secret sensor just below the symbol of the municipal waste management agency METRA. With a pressurized humming a rectangular door like entranceway revealed itself in the side of one of the buildings and he walked in. This was actually an elevator which descended down into his secret laboratory.

He was greeted by his two artificially intelligent android servants....Kleng and Metka. Whom resembled tall, blond haired, blue eyed, athletically built caucasian man and woman. Both were clad in identical green and yellow striped jumpsuits with matching lace‐less white boots. Only Kleng had the ability to speak however, Drisal did not bother to design Metka with any speech vocalizing technology. Partly because he ran out of materials during her construction but also because he hated the sound of most women's voices. Drisal was a staunch misogynist...and quite possibly a homosexual.

"Sir would you like for us to prepare some breakfast for you now? Are you hungry?

We didn't like the looks of that black gentleman. Usually you do not allow clients to pick up their orders in the laboratory. Usually they have to wait outside...why did you make an exception for him? He could've killed you."

Drisal was busy washing his mouth with warm sterilized water, he was standing in his bathroom in front of a large mirror trying to assess the severity of the damage done to his pallette. It still hurt to high blazes to even talk, but fortunately the only thing broken were a few teeth. He could easily synthesize some replacements in a matter of days.

"I wanted to gauge the character of the man one final time...I needed to be sufficiently sure he was the proper type of candidate for my little experiment. It seems Kleng my boy...that he has surpassed all of my wildest expectations...."

"Indeed....we were about to incinerate him sir..but we both recognized the command you gave us to stand down. Even with that, I still had to keep persuading Metka not to retaliate when we were loading the suit onto his vehicle."

"If she had done that I would have shut her damn operating system down for an entire month! This experiment is vital to me...I must know the full on capability of that armor and the syhchronistic effects of that drug on the human psyche!  He is my Guinea pig...the first sacrificial lamb in my quest to create the perfect agent....an army of warriors who answer to no one but me...powerful enough to bring true order to this godforsaken city! The only way I can do that is by allowing the bastard to feel in control...all powerful....it was a play on his beastial nature...he must never suspect a thing! Now...about breakfast..I am quite famished....but my jaw aches....I dont believe I can eat anything solid for at least a day or to. Make me a bowl of oats with a glass of orange juice and put on a pot of coffee. Its 8:32 now and I have a client scheduled for augmentation surgery at 11 sharp. Please clean and sterilize all of my instruments and prepare the operating chair. After a shower, I think I'll eat and have a little nap...do wake me when my other client gets here....."

"Yes sir....as you wish......"