Proving True

The next morning after breakfast I make my way back to the alcove that’s been provided for me as workspace. The Adjutant’s office was more than willing to provide me access to the personnel database once I proved who I was and that I have a need to know. I also publish a schedule so I can have a few minutes of semi private face-to-face time with all of my subordinates. Some of them are the biggest dorks in the galaxy, I’m sure that their idea of an exciting Saturday night would be a bucket of popcorn and trying to find a way to measure the length of a sunburst. Between interviews, I call my boss. “Miss DuQuois, I have an android that has been approved for working passage. May I request the Adjutant assign her to Engineering? She is quite capable. Also, I have a luncheon scheduled with Professor Jenkins to discuss some of those pet projects I mentioned to you. I’d like you to join us, if you’re available.”

“William Jenkins? No, I’ve no interest in joining you.” That’s a bit of a surprise. “As to your android, talk to whomever you want. Don’t bother me again unless the drives are on the verge of failing.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The downside is that I’ll get little to no support from my first line supervisor. The upside is, as long as I keep the drives operational, I won’t have to deal with her. I’m pretty sure I can make that work.

This isn’t a date as far as I’m concerned, so I’m not going to jump through any hygiene hoops before making my way to the Section A lounge for my lunch with Professor Jenkins. I find him at a table, with salad and soup already in place. Apparently, he got a memo that I didn’t. William is on a date. There is a candle and a vase with a single bloom in it on the table. There’s a woman standing behind him. Her attire and demeanor make me think she’s a steward rather than a scientist. But just because William is on a date, doesn’t mean I have to be. I sit down and start talking shop. “Thank you for meeting with me. I have an idea for strike armor, a reconnaissance variant. It will be lighter, but it will mask the trooper. I hope to develop a man portable system that will refract light around him or her. In a perfect situation, sound would also move around them. They would be practically holes on the battlefield, neither seen nor heard. They would be completely undetectable unless someone made physical contact with them. I’ll worry about the mechanics of the systems, where I need your department’s help and support is with putting my theory into practice. I’m in the process of building a workshop in Engineering that will act as my lab. The working name of the armor is ‘wraith.’”

“Interesting,” William says before lifting a spoonful of soup into his mouth. “I will send my assistant Mitra to assist and share our inventory with you. Not to give you carte blanche you understand, but to let you know what we have that may support your endeavors.” He sprinkles some cracked black pepper on his salad. “On a separate and more important note, is there someone special in your life?” He spears an olive with his fork. “Aboard or otherwise?”

Many married couples do not always ship out together. For a portion of those that don’t a technique of marriage survival is they suspend their fidelity. Most swear by the practice. I’ve always sworn against it. If I had a husband, the distance between us wouldn’t matter if it were millimeters or terameters. So I’m not offended by the question so much as I am as the practice to which it alludes. I do my best to keep that out of my answer. “At the moment, there is not. I’m actually on the mend from several relationships I left on my last ship. I had a special someone then. Two someones actually, one adult and one child. And combat took a very dear friend of mine. So apparently, those were not to be. I have wounds from all relationships from which I am healing, slowly, but I’m healing.” The memories bring a tear to my eye, Gwendolyn, Avi, Sherri…I dab my eyes with my napkin. It’s not the right time to think of them, “Please have Mitra stop by my lab, I’ve hung a sign on the door that says. ‘Recon Armor.’” I stand to leave.

Apparently he gets the tip that I’m not dating anyone. And that “anyone” includes him. “I fully understand, my dear,” he says as he stands. “Here is the holoCom code to my office, if there’s anything you need from me do not hesitate to let me know. I beg of you stay. Please, sit, eat.” He gestures at the soup tureen and the platter of meat and bread. I sit back down and with a sigh ladle some more of the soup into a bowl. The balance of our meal is made up of small talk and meaningless drivel, any time he tries to get personal or asks a penetrating question, I divert him to the quality of the food in the chow halls or any other trivial subject. He booked this table for an hour and a half but after thirty minutes, my plate is clear and I’m returning to Engineering, Section Z.

Two hours later, I’m in my armor workshop when I hear a knock on the door. A brunette woman with flawless skin is standing in the doorway. “Chief MacTaggert? I’m Mitra VanSuel, assistant to Professor Jenkins. He asked me to stop in and see how I can help you with some physics puzzles.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Miss VanSuel.” I hold out my hand to shake hers, she takes my hand for a second before pushing it to the side and wrapping her arms around me. I’m speechless but I put my hands on her biceps and push.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” she says as she increases the distance between us. “Professor Jenkins didn’t tell you I’m a hugger, did he? ‘Personal space’ is a novel concept I’m still working to understand.”

“No, he did not. Uh, now that the bubble of personal space has been demolished, may I call you Mitra? If it’s just you and me, when we’re alone I’m Sonia, not Chief MacTaggert.” She nods assent, so I continue. “What I need from you is the science to make my vision—no pun intended—a reality. Specifically I want to bend light. Observe this suit of armor. I want to send light around it so that it is rendered effectively invisible. I can accept there being a shimmer, or a wrinkle, in the air. But that should only be visible when the brightest of lights is directed towards it, by which I mean on the order of high noon in any desert or on a glacier. The goal is to keep a sneaky trooper from being detected. Naturally, the unit would be deployed in low light and the trooper would use typical stealth measures to avoid detection. This isn’t license to be stupidly bold and walk into the lion’s den. Of course, if he were moving through a mist or smoke, eddies and whorls would be left behind him if he—or she—moves too quickly. And if the technology could be reproduced at a greater scale, perhaps to cloak a ship, would be ideal.”

“Phase two of the project would be the armor not registering on typical sensors, either. I originally thought that might be more difficult, but then I realized that visible light and non-visible light all exist on the electromagnetic spectrum. So, what do you think, can you help me?”

She taps her finger against her pursed lips. “Hmmm, tricky.” I recognize the thousand-meter stare and know that she’s not listening to me anymore. I pull my perCom out of its holster and tap a familiar name. He answers on the third ring.

“Hey, Squats, what’s up?”

“Freds, I need you to come by my workshop—Area Z, Level Four, Compartment Bravo six—and look over a suit of armor for me.”

“The SoniArmor project? Forward me any documentation that needs reviewing, I’ll sign off on it. I know you, I’ve worn it, and I don’t need to see whatever you want approved.” We’ve come a long way.

“I appreciate your confidence, but this one’s different. Remember me asking you about the recon suit on the flights to Atlas and Goliath? Sneaking around in shadows and what not? I want to talk about what’s going where so I don’t have as much rework.”

“Oh, that one. I’m tied up in inventory this evening and tomorrow morning. I’ll call you in about 24 hours.”

“That’ll work, I’ll talk to you then.” Our conversation ends with a click. Mitra is looking at me.

“I think I understand what you want, your requirements and available assets. Is it your intent to deflect anything aside from the ordinary or is making the wearer hard to see the primary goal? I’m going to start some experiments to prove the concepts in lab 051. I’ll send you a link to the project notes document, will that be sufficient?”

“It will indeed,” I tell her. “I’ll share the link to my progress log with you, as well.”

“Rather than maintain two separate documents, why don’t we both keep notes in the same document?” Mitra offers.

“That is a much better idea. As to further improvements, ultimately, I want the armor to avoid any form of radiated energy. Initially, we’ll limit that to visible light, but if I remember my high school physics correctly, that should defeat a targeting laser as well. The Mark II version should be invisible in the ultraviolet and infrared spectra as well. Pulse radar might be a tougher nut to crack, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. That’s the long answer. The short is ‘hard to see in visible light.’ Again, let me say thank you for your help, thank you very much.”

“It’s what I do,” Mitra says with a smile. “I presume you’ll make the appropriate remarks to Professor Jenkins for my annual evaluation?”

“Of course,” I assure her. She smiles. She moves to hug me again but I wave her off. She nods and leaves.

When I get back to the stateroom, Athena is there. They must have decided against a full shift in the medical section. “I’ve spoken to the Adjutant’s office about having you reassigned from medical to Engineering. I’d like you to become familiar with the Transit drives of Star Chaser and the functions associated with maintaining them,” I tell her. “With your chassis and composition, you can handle some jobs that would kill a human. But your brain can learn more than just that. I also want you to learn gourmet cooking and that’s something you can’t learn by reading manuals. You’ll be challenged to manipulate some pretty intricate equations in multiple variables. Have you any arguments or counter proposals?”

“None at all, Sonia,” she says. “I will get to work in those areas. If you will allow me, I would also like to apprentice myself in the computer architecture lab with the goal of making some improvements to my operational systems.”

“Improvements?” I ask. “You’re basically Ultima Humana, the ultimate human. What improvements could you possibly want or need?”

“Contractions,” she answers. “And slang. I am familiar with some idioms, but contractions will assist me in blending among humans.” She makes an excellent point, one thing that I always noticed when talking to both her and Aria was that neither ever used contractions.

“It’s okay with me, if it will make you happy…sorry, if it completes you, if it is beneficial to you, then I’m in favor of it. One other thing, I’m interested in one of those martial arts that is heavily into mental discipline. Can you find out if there’s anything like that available on this tub?”

“Accessing.” Her eyes blink as she “reads” the listing from the ship’s central computer. “There is a class of Shra Kuhn taught every other day at 1500 by Master Kreq. The art consists of throws, strikes, joint manipulation, pressure points, healing as well as energy projection and manipulation. Shall I enroll you? As an item of potential interest: the physicist with whom you have been working, Mitra VanSuel, is enrolled currently.”

“Definitely food for thought. I may ask you to enroll me in the future.”

“I will be more than happy to do so.”