While I was panicking over having to drive a bus, my powered exoskeleton suit arrived. It was exactly what I needed to take my mind off of my worries and I raced over to meet with Howie at his warehouse. Howie actually had several warehouses, each under a different company name and each buried under an avalanche of shell companies so deep that you’d never know that Howie owned them all. Howie was a little bit paranoid and given the sorts of things that he procured for his clients, I didn’t blame him one bit. Especially since I was one of those clients and life would be much harder without the toys that he supplied me with.
“You’ll notice that this suit didn’t come in a box. That’s because it’s one of the company’s five prototypes and they didn’t need it anymore. It doesn’t have the snazzy bells and whistles that the final version has, but it’ll get the job done. Plus, you got it at a discount.” Howie smiled in pride at this last bit. He loved getting a good deal.
“What kind of bells and whistles could I have had?”
“Never mind them. I checked them out and you they’re not worth tripling the price. What you needed was long battery life, mobility, low unit weight, and the capacity to carry up to 250 pounds. This is the closest thing you’re going to find to those requirements. Most suits can only handle a few of those specifications. Most long battery life units are bulky and restrict mobility too much. The lightweight suits are much more mobile, but they can’t handle the carrying capacity that you need. Almost none of the other units can carry such a heavy weight, much less climb stairs while carrying it.”
“So, this can do all of it?”, I asked.
“No, but you won’t find anything better out there. This suit weights thirty-two pounds, with the battery. Twenty-five without. A true light-weight suit would normally be around fifteen pounds, but that’s for an unpowered suit with no battery. The battery on this suite can last up to eight hours, depending on the load that you put on it. I got you an extra battery, just in case, and there’s a charging cable if you have the time.”
Howie went on, “Now, you can see that the unit isn’t bulky at all. I’m told that it’s so flexible that you can even do yoga in it. I don’t do yoga, so I can’t tell you if that’s true or not, but it doesn’t look like you’ll have trouble moving in it.”
I couldn’t argue with Howie on that. The suit, currently strapped onto a mannequin, didn’t look like it would impede most of my Kung Fu moves. Without any armor, the exosuit was just a bunch of straps, metal joints and motors. You put it on like a harness and it provided support to key areas of the body; namely along your lower back, across your shoulders and surrounding your knees.
“The one drawback to this powered suit is the carrying capacity isn’t quite what you wanted. The electric motors and hydraulics will reduce up to sixty percent of the weight that you’ll be carrying, but only up to two hundred pounds. Over two hundred pounds, you’ll feel every pound. That means that a two-hundred-pound weight will feel like eighty pounds, but if you go fifty pounds over that, you’ll feel the eighty pounds plus the entire fifty pounds on top of that.”
Howie looked almost apologetic about this, but I was thrilled. Two hundred and fifty was the extreme end of what I thought I’d need to carry. Given what I’d seen of the prisoners, I wouldn’t need to carry more than two hundred pounds. All the prisoners had lost weight since entering jail and their clothes hung on them like they were wearing their much larger brother’s hand-me-downs.
“This is perfect, Howie. I’ll rarely need to go to two-fifty and even when I do, I can handle a hundred and thirty pounds for short distances.”
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
After that, it was all about the practice. Howie had planned ahead and prepared several duffel bags for me, each pre-stuffed with items weighing between fifty and two hundred and fifty pounds. I put the suit on, adjusted the straps and got the feel for it. When I felt comfortable, I lifted the fifty-pound duffel and held it across my body, as if it were a person, and started walking around with it. The duffel was easy to carry and I didn’t get tired at all as I walked up and down a set of stairs.
Soon I graduated to the hundred-pound bag and then the hundred and fifty pounder. Now it felt like I was carrying a sixty-pound load. It wasn’t as easy anymore, but it wasn’t hard either. Walking for three hundred feet and up a set of stairs wasn’t causing too much strain. However, at two hundred pounds, or effectively eighty pounds, it was getting much tougher. I could still do though. I had carried Mark down the stairs of his house and around the house after all, but that was a life and death situation, and I was exhausted for hours afterwards from the overstrain.
I took a short break before trying the last bag. It felt like a hundred and thirty pounds and it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. However, it was doable. The motors in the legs helped a lot with the lifting and my lower back was saved from destruction by the way the load was spread across the harness and driven into the ground by the leg supports. I wish I’d had this for when I had to carry Mark.
I left Howie with my thanks and several bundles of cash. I took my new exosuit home, where I planned to practice with it everyday until Saturday. This had been one of the last undone items on my list. All that was left was talking to Eva and getting her to agree to be my alibi. That was going to suck.
__________
“Hi Eva!”, I said cheerily as she answered her phone.
“Are you calling to set up and appointment for some personal training?” No hi, no how are you. This wasn’t good. She hadn’t forgotten our last conversation. I sighed.
“I’m good, thank you for asking. And you?”
“Hmmph! Don’t try to sweet talk me. You called me a dirty sock last time we spoke and then you didn’t call for five days. Now you’re calling and being all nice. You want something. What is it?”
“Can’t a girl just call her best friend in the whole world and just talk to her because she wants to?”
“Nope. I know you. You need something from me. It’s in your voice. It gets slightly higher pitched when you’re about to ask for something.” I heard the laughter in her voice and I knew that I was safe. She might still make me work out until I dropped, but at least she wasn’t mad at me.
“I’m changing your name to Sherlock Holmes. How’d you even notice that?”
“It’s a gift. Now spill it.”
“I need an alibi from Saturday afternoon to Sunday night.”
“What’s if for?”, she asked.
“You’re not supposed to ask. You’re just supposed to say, “I got your back, girl. Whatever you need, I’m there for you.”
“Uh huh. Pretend I said all that, again. Now where are you really going?”
“Do you ever get the sense that we’ve had this conversation before?”
“Didn’t you just ask that? Seriously, what’s it for this time? Also, what was it for last time? You never did tell me.” Last time was to free the people from Serpentine Logistics and I wasn’t going to tell her that.
“Fine! I give up. I’m meeting up with a boy that I like and we’re going to spend the night together at his place in the mountains. I think he might be ‘The One’ and I might go all the way with him.” I said it in the most deadpan and monotone voice that I could make.
Eva giggled. “That didn’t work last time, but I’m impressed that you remembered your own excuse. You’re very consistent. I know you’re lying though because Bobby doesn’t have a place in the mountains. Hey! You know who does have a place in the mountains? Mark. That’s who. Are you going to shack up with Mark at this grandad’s place?” Eva tone was way too excited at the prospect of a juicy gossip.
“No! First of all, Mark and I are just friends. Second, I thought you were Team Bobby.”
“I am, I am. But you know what a sucker I am for drama and a sizzling romance.”
“So, can we do the fake dinner and a movie thing with James and then a pretend day trip somewhere this weekend?”
“Don’t we have a shift at the hospital this Sunday?”
“Oh shit! I forgot about that. I’ll need to call Pierce right after you say yes. Can I book us both for a shift for the week after?”
Eva huffed out a long-suffering breath. “Yeah. I guess so. If it’s important enough for you to blow off the hospital, then all I can say is I got your back, girl. Whatever you need, I’m there for you.”
“Thank you, Eva. You’re the world’s best best friend. I’ll call you later. I need to call Pierce right away. Bye!”