The Appliance of Science
Security Assistant Miles Brower, formerly Captain Miles 'Dyson' Brower of the 51st Fleet, frowned at the new message that popped up on the internal bulletin board. One of
those again. There was the crooked grin of the boss' green-skinned avatar, all right; she was calling for volunteers for testing... an Advanced Neural Interface? Attached was the now-standard non-disclosure agreement/waiver from HR about "...the company cannot be held responsible blah blah blah..."
The testing sessions were usually not too harsh and carried double pay, but you could almost certainly wave goodbye to your day, sometimes several days if she hadn't got all the bugs worked out. There was that time he'd assisted in the testing of the Magi implant that was only now making waves. He wasn't a biotic, but driving an IFV back round from where a slim woman had erratically tossed it to get a baseline of her power was disconcerting. Sure, he'd been wearing his Legionary, but once she said that Ms. - now Doctor - Shepard was to be the
second recipient of the Magi, he'd found himself watching the skies round the firing range for days afterwards. Everyone was familiar with the boss' kamikaze exploits in the Raid, and she had this air of barely-contained energy already, let alone being a biotic. He wouldn't put it past her to attempt to
juggle their IFVs, just to see if she could.
Miles scanned further down. Dr. Shepard was specifically asking for volunteers from the security team. Their armour would be modified to accept tactile feedback and the volunteers would be hooked up to some hardware that would "integrate the operators more completely than ever before". He scanned back up to re-read the introduction more carefully, now noting the attached medical waiver, and saw a video labelled 'First Successful Test Run'. She was playing that stupid tabletop game, only - one of the figures was leaping and running like an actual creature. Even now, humans could pick out the movement of other humans, and these were perfectly motion-captured. Then the camera swung up to show her, eyes closed, wearing a smooth band round her head that was trailing optical cable down to the fake battlefield. Opposite her was an older man wearing the same kind of band, quite possibly her father, directing an inch-high figure in a peaked cap that seemed to be cowing the simulated human troops on the other side into advancing. Contrasting their stillness with the action, the penny dropped. They'd
become action figures?
He flipped through some of the replies. A no, another no, an enthusiastic yes, lots of maybes; most of them had signed up for a quieter life than the Alliance military. The ones that did say yes would invariably be the younger ones, those who'd signed up to Paragon Industries because they got to fly around in power armour or had been discharged due to incapacity. He'd been a science nerd himself before he went down the Marine path, and the chance to be a part of the future, no matter how small, had dragged him out of retirement. That sense, of
history being made, was tickling the back of his neck once more.
He signed up.
