<center>https://img.esteem.ws/w2lrhplopy.jpg</center><center><sub><i> For the motherland - Pixabay [CCO](https://pixabay.com/en/diving-underwater-water-974385)</i></sub></center><hr/>
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The hum of the heavy proton engines of the starship was audible over the voice barking through the public address system, jarring Ike from sleep. He sat up and looked around, a tired but disgusted look on his face. Three hours could not have passed that long. “Rise and shine, rookie,” someone said playfully behind him. Ike turned to see Lori, seated cross-legged on the floor of his cabin and watching him, amusement pasted all over her lively features. He groaned.
“What’s going on, Lori?” He asked. “We can’t have arrived at Titan yet.”
“Look out of the window,” she replied, still looking tickled. Ike turned to the transparent nanoglass in surprise, an expression which quickly turned to irritation. “We’re still at Mars,” he exhaled. “Why did the Colonel order an assembly?”
The expression on the smiling woman faded a little, though her happy expression didn’t manage to totally disappear. “Dunno, really,” she shrugged, “but from me to you, I think it’s a bit serious. Get into your exo-suit and let’s go.”
“Whatever,” Ike replied, rolling off his bunk and rising to his feet. Walking to a cabinet among identical cabinets lined along the wall of the room, he stopped before one designated 049. His number, identical to the form-fitting jumpsuit he had on. Ike had always felt his serial number was lucky, being a square of a prime number, no less. And for some reason he couldn’t place, he liked prime numbers. Maybe because, like him, they were more difficult to analyse than other numbers in simple arithmetic.
In any case, he wasn’t sure he could be bothered about any overly rational reason for liking his serial. Placing the fingers of his left hand on the door of the cabinet, he felt a slight tingle, as the door seemed to flake away, revealing a black box with a sheen that looked something like a cross between oily and metallic. His exo-suit.
“I’ll just be here till you finish admiring yourself in the mirror, handsome,” Lori quipped from behind him. “Stop being annoying,” he replied, placing his hands on the box. The electronic codes in the circuits built into his fingers were identified by the nanocircuit processors of the quantum computers in the exo-suit. Like a viscous liquid, the box distorted, as its substance spread out over his body, beginning from his fingers which lay on the box.
As the substance covered him, he could feel the parts of his body which were coated by the exo-suit go numb, as it sought to integrate with his nervous system. The exo-suit’s material covered his face, and for a second there was no sensation; no sight, sound, smell, taste or feel. Then he felt a jolt in his spine, and his senses came rushing back. It was always an alien feel when that happened. To him, it was odiously lovable. He hated the unnaturalness of the bonding of the suit with him, and yet felt excited when he put it on.
Shoving aside mild feelings of panic from the suspicion that the exo-suit might be pumping foreign chemicals into his body to ensure that the bonding experience was pleasurable, Ike turned to the waiting Lori.
“Let’s roll.”
_**To be continued...**_
_**Thanks for coming!**_
_**That little boy,**_
_**@pearlumie**_
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