Original Fiction: The Anarchist's Almanac, Episode 10

Since they were taking two vehicles in the same direction, it was decided to wait until sundown to start. When they got about a half-mile from the Settling, John and Eugene would wait at a farm house with Vernon, while Joshua and Adam talked to the tribe.

No one, including Vernon, wanted to take any chances, so he accepted a blindfold and a pillow case slipped over his head to make sure he didn’t recognize the road.

It took three hours for everyone to express their concerns and get their questions answered.

If you need to read the last episode, find it here, for the rest of the story, find it on my blog

Tribe policy was that no member be accepted until everyone could agree and this was done by secret ballot, choosing white stones for yes and black for no, until all one color remained in the boot at the count.

Several legitimate concerns were addressed, with accompanying policies, such as keeping Vernon from any and all arms and communications.

He was assigned two buddies in shifts; two young men, George and Tito volunteered. He wouldn’t go anywhere without them, and all of his actions would be recorded at the end of each shift until he had proven himself.

The tribe was more concerned with Vernon’s family than with accepting him, but they recognized that not doing this work could lead to them being in the same situation, even if Vernon’s intentions were good.

Finally, Joshua was able to radio the farmhouse to bring Vernon in, and everyone made it to bed around one in the morning.

After things had settled down, Dax and Joshua made their way to the barn where the armor had been taken for examination and testing. They'd left it overnight at the farmhouse, and watched to be sureSeeker troops weren’t swarming to it the next morning.

The suit was reassembled and stood in the center of the barn, with the chest open and a short step ladder nearby. It was hanging by the pulley system that had most recently held the training dummy.

Dax scrambled up the ladder and before Joshua could say anything, his son was running the suit around in a circle, tethered to a bank of ancient car batteries for power.

He stopped in the center of the space, then jumped.

The suit left the ground by a good six feet, and Joshua heard Dax say, “Whoa,” as his head nearly brushed the barn’s rafters some fourteen feet overhead. As a final demonstration, Dax had Joshua bring a four-foot section of two by six lumber over and lay it between two sawhorses.

He drew back the suit’s fist and smashed the board in two, laughing.

“Pretty cool, right?” Dax climbed out of the suit.

Joshua stood; arms folded, looking at it. “Huh? Oh, yeah, I was just thinking about your brother.”

“He would have loved it!” Dax said.

“Right. Exactly,” Joshua agreed, not really sure why. He had never told his son what had happened that day. It was a burden he was determined to bear himself.

The next morning, Dax found his father in the same position, studying the suit. Except for the change of clothes and a steaming cup of coffee in his hand, the boy would have thought his father had been there all night.

Eugene, John and Vernon joined them. Vernon went over the control protocols that the team had already figured out and showed them a few things they had missed. He described the weapon’s system interface and agreed that the life-support system had been integrated with the wiring harness he had been attached to.
John approached Joshua, who hadn’t moved through their whole conversation.

“So, we’re thinking the only way to learn any more than we know now, is to rewire that helmet.”

Joshua took a sip of his coffee, “That’s fine, but you are not putting my son inside that thing to test your theory about it being okay.”

“I’ve already agreed to show Darian the ropes,” Vernon said. “At least until we get this chip out of my head, I don’t think it’s a good idea for me to get inside it either. The last thing I want is this thing phoning in an air strike on your tribe, Joshua.”

“Good. But let’s haul it out in the pasture somewhere and be prepared to pull the plug, just in case,” Joshua said.

Eugene sighed, “That’s going to make it a bit more challenging, but it sounds like a solid plan. We won’t hook up the charging circuit until we’re sure everything is okay.”

By the time Darian backed the truck into the barn and they had lowered the suit into the bed using the pulleys, John had the wiring harness connectors detached and the harness rebuilt and ready to plug in.

They rolled the truck out and down a hill, about a hundred yards from the house. The Dwellers who weren’t needed for the test, gathered in chairs on the porch to watch.

*****Since the only entertainment they had was live music from a few guitar players and the occasional movie in two of their Settling towns, this was going to be a show.*****

Vernon talked Darian through the process, and he climbed up into the suit and accepted the helmet. The test would be limited to a ten-foot radius, since that was all the wire they had running from the battery bank. John had done some work on the chest and with a coat of dark-red paint, the damage would be all but unnoticeable.

The suit was ready.

“Ready, Darian?” Eugene stood poised to attach the last jumper cable clip to the leads on the battery bank.

Darian nodded to Joshua from inside the suit and Joshua gave Eugene a thumbs up. The battery was connected, and the Reaper came to life. Darian stood the suit up and walked in a circle. He lifted and tossed three tires they had set up for the purpose. They ran the suit through a series of maneuvers from pushups to lifting the back end of the truck.

Darian pulled off the helmet and handed it to John, who was standing on the ladder. "It's too hot in here without climate control, and I have limited oxygen. There doesn’t seem to be any kind of problems, Joshua. I think we’re good to hook up charging.”

The suit was designed to be powered from solar skin along the top of the helmet, the shoulders and the tops of the arms. Joshua looked at Adam, who shrugged. It was now or never.

“Alright, let’s give it a shot.”

John reached inside the suit and unplugged the lead from the battery bank, replacing it with the suit’s integrated charging circuit.

Fans immediately began to cool the suit’s interior and Darian sighed. The helmet was replaced and Darian took off at a loping run, leaping ten feet into the air to clear a small fence. He rolled and came back up running.

After a few more maneuvers, he made his way back to the testing area where Vernon was standing in the back of the truck, sat down on the tailgate and removed the helmet and handed it to Vernon.
Almost immediately, both men cried out. Vernon sank to his knees, dropping the helmet and cradled the back of his head.

Darian clawed at the suit, “Get me out. It's burning me!”

Joshua jumped to the bed of the truck and in one move, had the large knife he carried in a sheath out and had cut through the power harness. He unbuckled the chest plate, and Darian scrambled out of the suit, small, circular welts appearing on his bare fore arms.

As he removed his shirt, they appeared in a grid pattern across his chest and back.

“They’re on my legs too,” he winced.

Adam had moved to help Vernon and was applying a cool, damp cloth to the back of his neck where a similar circular area had been glowing red.

Eugene poked his head inside the suit and felt around. “There are heated discs throughout this suit. It must be some sort of defense meant to make sure Vernon’s the only one to wear it. I bet we reset everything when we cut the wiring and his touching the helmet caused it to remember the programming.”

Joshua kicked the helmet, and it rolled up against the cab of the truck.

“This is exactly the sort of thing I was worried about. Every time we try to use Consensus technology it seems to bite us.”

John walked up and removed a small hatch on the back of the suit, “I think we found the reset for this system earlier, but didn’t know what it was. I’ll volunteer for the next test, but I think we can fix it.”

“Man, I do not feel good about that at all. Look at these burns, Darian, you okay?” Joshua said, applying water to the welts on Darian’s arm.

“Better,” he said, breathing deeply to calm himself.

Eugene turned to Joshua, “With all due respect, Joshua. It's not just your decision! I get that you have issues about Reapers you don’t want to talk about, but that’s not this. We all agreed this thing could be a very valuable weapon for us. We need to keep trying.”

Will the Dwellers be able to master the Reaper suit to use it as a spy tool on the consensus, or will it be deemed to dangerous? Stay tuned to find out!

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