I knew I had to try to talk to you that day, my first day of high school. My dad had dropped me off and I was just standing there not knowing where I was being taken, but I could not take my eyes off you. My heart was pumping way too fast. I was terrified. The first day of High School, I thought I was going to die. I was tired and scared and I was not going to know anyone.
I was standing in the school car park. I was not going to move. I was so scared. I was waiting for dad. Then I saw a boy.A man was lost.
He had drifted away on a ocean of gravity. He had become so used to the obscure feelings and nautical cold of zero g, that even the merest suggestion of weight had him convinced that he was falling.
The man was a suit.
It had armor, weapons, a computer core, a communications system…. All manner of things that a man would need to survive in a metal shell. But the man, the human machine, was trapped inside. The outside of the unit was a wall of glass. Sometimes, there was a mirror of sorts that fell in and reflected him back. But mostly, all he saw was stars and space. He was alone.
And one day, his thoughts had changed.
He had started to think about something else. Not about the suit, of course. It was hopelessly complex and beyond anything resembling a human understanding. It would take centuries, if not lifetimes, to master its functions.
No. None of that.
The man in the suit started to think about something else. He wondered why he existed in such a uniformity.
Perhaps it was a uniform honor. A tribute. A way of showing others that they were chosen. There were other suits out there, of course. Some had been built long ago, and some were modern. Some had the technology to build other things. They all looked the same. They all glided through space on the hope of someone else being chosen.
But he had been. Why?
A long time since he had heard from his masters. No communication. Not even a possible way to contact them. They taught him how to handle the suit and never left him. They had never abandoned him.
But they had left.
They had taken some agency from him. Something they considered to be of greater value.
His mind glanced back to a memory. Many years ago, during one of his recruitment missions, The entity (he realized that he had found out it would be better if he referred to them as The Entity, instead of master) had shown him a vision of what he would do once freed.
It was a vision of space, a vision of hundreds of planets. The dreamed of new frontiers and terraforming.
He, the suit, had been in this dream, and he had watched as everyone gasped in awe at the prospect, at the danger. But to him, it was all meaningless. He could not make a difference.
What he witnessed was simply a dream.
