Exosuit

I had always wondered what we would be if we hadn’t turned ourselves into something we weren’t. I never said I really wanted to know.

Be careful what you wish for. It may come to you in the form of a bone-shattering chill like something you’ve never felt before. Or a blinding light that’s so bright you feel it scorching your skin.

Or weakness. Terrible, absolute depletion that turns you into fodder.

But worst of all tells you, somehow all too clearly, that this is your true form.

It only lasted a moment, no more than a tenth of a second, but the first thing I remember is the incredible cold rush of wind. My shell cracked open to drop me out and before I came out the new air came in. All around me. It was as if my body had been waiting for it for as far back as I could remember.

All I could do was cough, choke, gasp. I knew the atmosphere was oxygen, but it still felt like I was asphyxiating. I thought it would never end, that I would suffocate. Unspeakable pain, something I’d never felt. But eventually it subsided enough for me to notice all the other new discomforts.

When I fell out, I was completely limp. I landed awkwardly, on top of my arm. I’d maneuvered awkwardly in my exosuit before, but this was much different, much more uncomfortable. And I was so weak that I couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t move. All I could do was lie there, convulsing, moving only from the awful involuntary heaving of my lungs which still shuttered unnatural.

Suddenly I realized the pain in my lungs hadn’t in fact subsided. More of that to take in now, but now accompanied by the awful sound of my voice, my real voice, heaving, wheezing, coughing, horrific discomfort, forced by my need for oxygen.

This weakness was something I’d never felt, but I had to move, at least get my arm free. Helplessness was something I’d always imagined but felt assured I’d never experience. Strength from here on out would very much be a relative term. And now, a whole new discomfort, creating new strength to do so little as move my arm from under me. Shouting, grunting instead of heaving. Small progress the only thing giving me strength.

Spirit. Another word I never had to consider. Until now.

Eventually, I was on my back, halfway to the starfish position. Here I was able to scrutinize another new aspect of my environment.

The hue of the sky. Hundreds of years ago, this must have been the first example in the children’s books of the color. It was so beautiful, so impressive and warming, that I had to say it out loud.

“Blue.”

And then came the sensation of the — green — grass, and a new actualization of the term “soft.”

Shivering in the new cool air, I was born again. It was time to stand up.

Weakness lingered in my limbs, but simple movements, although extremely shaky, could be done. Lift a hand, begin to roll over, palm on the grass.

Soon, I was pushing up with my hands, and able to turn my head and use my new eyes to make new observations about my surroundings. Wide. Meadow. Distant mountains.

And, behind me, my exosuit.

I had crawled. I didn’t remember it, but I had inched away from the shell that had until recently been a part of me. It must have been a natural, anatomical reaction, rejecting the suit. Or the suit rejecting me. If it was a constitutional procedure for the suit, it was its last.

It was time to stand. It was time to walk. It was time to go back. It didn’t matter what was out there. What mattered was that I moved on from the simulacra and back into the real world.