Transmat World: Chapter 5, Episode 2
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Tampa; October, 2145 A.D.
Round, flexible conduits came down to just below the knees. Bound together, they attached to each leg with a bracket. He could walk in the suit, and, now, moving the legs would direct the thrust without accidentally over-steering and going into a dangerous spin or corkscrew. An unfortunate side effect was the conduit wagged back and forth like a tail when he walked, a source of great amusement for Rousseau.
It was time for testing, and Enrique was not a moron. Graduating from the University of Florida’s mechanical and aerospace college did not make him an aerospace engineer or a pilot. He would do as much virtual testing as possible before he got into that suit, turned on the Transmats, and opened up those throttle valves. He called his college buddy, Jim, an aerospace engineer and a pilot, also out of work.
“Enrique! How are you? Long time, no see. What have you been up to? How’s (sotto voce) grasshopper?”
“I heard that, Jim,” said Rousseau, “and I’m going to spit tobacco juice in your eyes the next time I see you.”
“Can he do that?” asked Jim.
“I don’t know. I wouldn’t push it,” said Enrique and went on to explain his problem in general terms without giving away exactly what he was up to.
“You need the latest version of Applesoft’s Flight Emulator. It lets you build your own aircraft from the ground up. Plug in the variables it asks for, punch a button, and fly your new plane.”
“Fantastic. I’ll try it. Thanks.”
“Let me know how it works out.”
“I certainly will.” I certainly will. You and the few hundred others I notify by email, “Talk to you later.”
I’m a moron. I should have done this first, Enrique thought as he downloaded the program, input the variables, opened the throttle all the way, and lifted off. Actually, just the backpack lifted off because it ripped right off the suit and disappeared into the sky, projected destination — the Sun. He dialed down the power until he had two two-inch-square Transmats expelling gas at only 7,000 pounds per square foot. Enrique opened the throttle all the way and flew for seconds until he crashed. The fourteenth flight saw the vehicle do a long, lazy vertical figure eight before smacking into the ground on the bottom loop. The program provided the visual of a smoking crater in the ground.
Cute, thought Enrique.
“You’re not planning on taking me with you, are you?” asked Rousseau while peering over Enrique’s shoulders.
“All good hedbots die with their owners.”
“I’ve gone over the agreement you signed with TecHed and I can’t find anything about that. I think it is more of an extended lease agreement, and there may be penalties for my demise. Besides, I want to know exactly who said I was a good hedbot?”
“I’ll never tell,” said Enrique and added, as an afterthought, “Grasshopper.”
“My vacuum warranty is only good for six months.”
“Mine will be up much sooner than that if the suit leaks.”
He fiddled with the location of the thrust nozzles until they wound up above and just behind the shoulders of the suit to each side of the backpack. Zooming around like Buck Rogers or Ironman was out of the question, but it gave a stable hovering capability. A pivot point added where it attached to the top of the backpack allowed satisfactory lateral movement. It looked familiar. A couple of minutes on the Web revealed why. It looked like the old jet packs from the late twentieth century. Now all he had to do was make it reality.
It was a lot of work. He stripped off the propulsion system, traded in the Transmat for a smaller size, changed the subscription to the correct lower pressure, and pocketed a rebate. The Transmats are put in prefabricated pressure vessels spun from buckytubes. They look like giant black fish-oil capsules. The throttle valves screwed onto the ends.
Flexible conduit was replaced with a solid welded pipe manifold attached to the throttle valves that go out and down. To the manifold he welded smaller bent pipes that arc over the shoulders and down far enough to be grasped in the front of the suit. The whole assembly was then mounted onto a trailer hitch ball on the back of the Primary Life Support Subsystem.
Oversized twist grips on the front handlebars controlled the throttle. Next to them, modified bike brake assemblies controlled a mechanism that gripped the hitching ball until Enrique squeezed the handles. Then he steered by moving the handlebars around to rotate the thrusters about the hitch ball. Once he let up on the handles, it locked in place and that was the new directional heading.
“Sort of an automatic manual pilot, huh, Rousseau?” said Enrique.
“More like tying a rudder off with frayed, rotted rope,” said Rousseau.
Everything had to be tweaked for the big, clumsy suit gloves. It was complete. He input all the finishing touches into Flight Emulator and was soon zooming around as though born flying. He flew to the edge of space. The program realistically got dark and showed stars and the Moon. The adrenaline would kick in later but, for now, Enrique enjoyed a euphoric calm. It was doable. He would fly to the Moon.
Rousseau woke him up at four o’clock in the morning on Wednesday, October the Sixth. Suiting up was no easy task. It involved moving the suit outside. He had to remove the middle post of the French doors leading to the patio. He rolled the suit out on a dolly and lowered it to the ground with a homemade crane clamped to the apartment balustrade. Separating the top part of the suit, he lifted that back up into the air, stepped into the pants part with the aid of a stool, lowered the top, and let Rousseau do the final fastening routines.
With only minor grousing, Rousseau locked up the apartment and settled into a pocket Enrique attached to one leg. Enrique did a slow shuffle to the middle of a field next to the apartments. They ran a systems check from the list written on one arm of the suit, just like the astronauts used to do. There were a few different items to check this time, including the broadband, auto-seek, laser connection to the Web with holographic, 3D capability courtesy of a government auction. Several cameras attached to the suit and thruster arms like odd barnacles. Rousseau had control of which one fed the Internet when Enrique wasn’t using an override. Enrique sent texts to his friends. Someone might get a kick out of this. He prepaid his apartment for several months because he fully expected to be incarcerated when he reached the Moon.
“Space travel without a license?” Rousseau inquired.
Hubris never entered his mind. Yes, he was confident, but he knew it was a gamble from the start. Everything could go perfect except for the surprise solar storm that fried him in situ, or the orbital debris that put a hole through his helmet or…. Enrique cracked the throttle before he talked himself out of it. Dust and debris enveloped the suit and out of the top of that inadvertent cloud he ascended like a resurrected NASA astronaut. He spent a few minutes playing with the controls, hovering. He goes forward, backward, sideways, and wonders if he should have somehow included a parachute. Oh well, thought Enrique, and headed for the clouds.
