We have seen a complete collapse in the whale hunting industry on all oceans. Even the last holdout, the Makah tribe of North America, has realized that it is no longer profitable to hunt the whales.
Unfortunately, this is due to both the increase in danger from Antithesis attacks and a scarcity of the whale population. Satellite observation of whale breeding grounds shows no viable pods over the last three years.
In other words, we stopped hunting the whales because the Antithesis ate all of them.
--GreenPeace action committee final report on efforts to block whaling in international waters
***
She presented me with another endless list of options. I scrolled for a while, more getting a feel for the options than anything. As I scrolled, I noticed that many of the options took on a distinct nonhuman appearance.
--Easily.
I moved into the bathroom, where a large mirror stood over the sink. I tried on several of the various organs, with each making me more and more nauseous.
That removed about two-thirds of the options. However, most of the remaining selections only handled a single sense upgrade. To cover my four goals, I would have to get several different enhancements.
--You’re right, a little body modification can’t be avoided, but it can be hidden or minimized. Most of the biological sense organs that will penetrate fog or clouds require non-human externalities or will be so imprecise that you can’t use them for weapons fire. Or worse, have both an alien look and still not allow combat beyond melee distance.
--This is one area where a cybernetic-based solution would be better. If I may make a suggestion, something that has a general improvement of visual acuity, along with the right glasses, would cover most of what you want. You seemed to like the Kyrias Eyes?
The mod would switch out my eyeballs with ones from another race. The cat’s eye pupils had an additional, smaller cross slit, which granted them a cool exotic flair, but not enough that it left me feeling the uncanny valley. However, what I understood of the actual enhancement seemed underwhelming. It increased night vision and acuity, but the claims of an expanded field of view didn’t do anything for me.
--With the right cyber glasses, their simple enhancement can be leveraged to amazing levels of impact. The Kyrias were avian hunters evolved from a niche similar to your eagles. As they uplifted, they continually modified their vision until they hit a vision balance that fit the best of most worlds.
--The Eyes provide what amounts to both an extreme telescopic sight and a massive increase in accuracy in the wider field. Those two aspects are usually in conflict with one another. And on top of that is a very close nearside focus and good night vision.
--First you have to understand how human vision works. Humans actually have a narrow field of greatest accuracy and awareness, about the width of your hand at arm’s length. Anything outside of that has a marked loss of detail that increases the farther off-axis it is. At the farthest edges, all you have is motion detection. You make up for that by constantly moving the focus so you don’t realize it. To really see something to the side, you have to move the primary focus to it.
--The primary focus area for the Kyrias Eyes covers three times the area of a human with an acuity of 36/6. That is, what other humans could resolve at six meters, the Eyes could resolve at thirty-six. And the resolution at the edges stays about equal to human standard 6/6 all the way out to the edges.
--That increased detail off the primary axis is important in two ways. It helps with situational awareness since you’ll be more aware of what’s on the edges of your sight and with input from your glasses. You can shrink the text and icons to move them out to the sides, without a decrease in their ability to grab attention when needed.
--It’s not in the description, but the Eyes also improve and expand your color vision. Not only would you discern more gradients of color, but you would also be able to see into the ultraviolet. That means that your UI will have a greater range of meaningful color differences for its indicators.
I was starting to become convinced. From my gaming, I knew how useful it could be to use colors as a general indicator. Having more colors would allow finer gradation in warning lights. I’d also run into the concept of attention grab before. It measured the ability of a meter or icon to break out of the background noise when it was needed most.
--Yes. I’d recommend using the Hertzian Skew Lenses so you don’t lose that acuity in the alternate vision modes. Rather than putting a screen in front of your eyes, the Lenses have layers that can shift existing electromagnetic wavelengths up to the visible light range, basically moving the infrared and a little of the microwave spectra into your visible field.
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--There’s also a layer that actively enhances visible light intensity, similar to night vision goggles. Combine that with a lidar/radar module, and you’ll be able to see from ultraviolet all the way down past the infrared. It also comes with an upgraded bone-conducting mic and audio suite.
That certainly caused my eyebrows to rise.
--Not all at once. The layers are selectable, and you’ll have to limit it down to sections. For example, you can disable the microwave a lot of the time and only turn that on when you need it. And the same for the intensity-adjusting layers and several cuts of the infrared.
--The lidar and millimeter wave radar will paint wireframe shapes on the inside of the lens, the same way data, text, and icons display, so they can be imposed over the other layers or turned off. The lenses are bulletproof and mirrored from the outside as a side effect of the wavelength skewing. But there is a clear setting if you want people to see your eyes.
--That’s the downside of the combo. The Kyrias Eyes react poorly to oxygen-rich environments, and the inner layers of the Lenses are delicate. The best solution would be to implant them, so they seal off your eyes entirely.
--Too much miniaturization. To get the UI resolution to the same level would take a Class II catalog, and to squeeze the Skew lenses down that much would take Class III.
--Yes, within limits. The color of the mirroring will change based on what layers you have active. And for the radar, there has to be a section of opaque frame. But the shape and size of the lens, or lenses, are only limited by your body shape and the size of the technical parts.
In the bathroom mirror, a series of continuously morphing glasses covered my eyes. She covered a broad range, from full riot visors down to dots the size of 60’s rocker wire frames. She must have been reading my reaction since the variety of shapes settled away from the ones that didn’t fit my style. In the end I settled on one of the wider visors, similar to some sunglasses popular with athletes.
--Yes, but since we’re looking at a single sense, it will be easier to find something that isn’t so obvious. There’s a bunch of follicle-type receptors that can be hidden in your hair, for example.
That sounded interesting, and after a few minutes of filtering, I selected the Raegan Auric Symbiont. This life form used hairs to both sense air and sound, giving a sense of motion and space in all directions, though only out to around fifteen meters.
Tentatively we shaped it like a mohawk, leaving the final shape until we knew what the armor would look like. Or maybe I would leave it standing out. With a smile I remembered the Samurai persona I’d created as a child had a mohawk as a signature look, no doubt aided by bath time shampoo fun. I’d never had the courage to grow one after becoming an adult.
--For the logistics, there is one item I’d recommend, other than the training materials.
I glanced at the clock as I returned to the dinette, then yawned. The hour grew late, but we were close to done, both with the gear selection and the gun cleaning.
--They are called Gecko Peds. It’s an addon for the armor to cover the hands and feet. They greatly improve gripping power, making it harder for you to trip or be disarmed. I’m recommending the addon because it will expand the armor faster, reaching full coverage months sooner. The fact that it will let you scale walls without a rope is a bonus.
I finished reassembling the AK-47 and dry-fired it to check the action. Satisfied with the cleaning, I stored it in the safe and returned to the table.
--There’s two forms of skill training that would fit you. They are a full infodump or a training module. The infodump drops all the skill or info in one big lump. That can feel weird since it appears without any context.
--On the other hand, the training module runs you through a series of exercises over time. As you do each exercise, the skill or info is learned or remembered. It turns you into a perfect student that can learn something on the first try. It also can trigger when you use the skill in normal activities too.
--Not to any significant degree. Those using a full infodump say that the information feels unnatural for a while. But that goes away with use.
I’d finished the human-made weapons, leaving only the two rifles I’d bought for Kaitlyn and Ginny, the laser pistols, and the Roomsweeper.
--Most Vanguard will outgrow and throw away their weapons long before a cleaning is needed. In the cyber link data is a maintenance manual, but with how little these have been fired, a wipe down of the exterior should be enough.
With a shrug, I put the rest of the gear in the safe and collapsed onto the couch.
I quickly chose an aggressive martial art form that combined open hand, short swords, and pistols. It emphasized practical attacks to eliminate the enemy with a cold efficiency that had none of the flourishes or philosophical limitations common with earth’s martial arts. And we selected a general cyberwarfare module to go along with it.
I considered adding some maneuverability training—an applied parkour course caught my eye—but decided instead to put that on the list for the future. I wanted to see the results of the body enhancements before deciding if it was necessary.
Finally, we looked at the aesthetics of the gear. I fiddled with the sliders for a while, more or less at random, finding some looks I liked and others that were definitely wrong, but none that seemed right. In the end I turned it over to Corie.
--Sure, I can tell you don’t like spikes, but how about ridges?
--And what is your favorite color?
Corie started showing a series of images in my glasses, showing both with the armor active and with it deactivated. Sprinkled in were various shapes of glasses. I then used a simple accept/reject swipe sort to rate the options, and she soon narrowed it down to a look that was good, but not inspiringly great.
By that time I could hardly keep my eyes open. “Send the last few options on to the team, please. See if they have any suggestions. I can’t stay awake.”
--Sure. Sleep well.
I stumbled into bed, only staying awake long enough to undress and fall over on the pillow.