Solipsism
Jack: Both Broken and Whole
The Doctor I used to know – the one who looked like a U-Boat Captain – had a specific verbal style, a certain je ne sais quoi when it came to language. To be blunt, while he could charm the rattles off a rattlesnake, he could if the occasion warranted it say the meanest, cruelest, nastiest things. The current Doctor, the spiky-haired guy in the grungy Converses, still talks the talk but nevertheless is a lot more subtle, to be sure. Even when he's being rude.
But U-Boat Captain Doctor's words would often cut like a knife. I frequently heard him refer to humans as "stupid apes" and he'd constantly disparage poor Mickey Smith, Rose Tyler's beleaguered ex-boyfriend, as "Mickey the Idiot." I also heard him once vehemently belittle twentieth century Earth astronauts with the astonishing phrase "canned primates" – and that phrase sums up perfectly what I feel like right now. I am a "canned primate" trapped inside a pneumatically sealed spacesuit.
Supposedly, according to The Doctor, it is a highly intelligent one-size-fits-all bleeding-edge spacesuit which adjusts automatically to perfectly fit its occupant. But I'm not so sure about that. It seems to be binding in places where I'm especially sensitive to such binding; if you get my drift. A small, tiny part of my brain can't help but wonder if the Time Lord arranged for this on purpose, somehow, just to keep me a little uncomfortable. I shrug off the suspicion as I watch him make final adjustments to his own, identical spacesuit.
He was spot on – the technology in the suits is amazing. There's no doubt about it. If we had to, we could live in them and be adequately sustained for days if not weeks. And as The Doctor claimed, all of our basic physical needs are taken care of. But even more interesting and maybe more important as well, to me at least, is they have a brilliantly advanced medical capability. They can if necessary inject anesthetics, blood plasma and sophisticated medibot tech to help keep the suit's resident alive if he or she is injured or incapacitated.
In addition – of all things – the gloves are even more stupefyingly advanced. They are neural-network-based multi-sensory gloves. Anything you touch with them feels exactly as if you were touching it without the gloves. Your somatosensory system is not at all inhibited by these wonders of technology; thermoreceptors, mechanoreceptors and chemoreceptors talk directly with the gloves' neural-net. In fact, in the true almost metaphysical sense of the phrase, they become one with the wearer. Your dexterity is if anything enhanced because while it feels like you're not wearing gloves at all, you are in fact instantaneously and totally protected from any harm if the need arises. Elegant and extremely fine-tuned, they are truly astonishing.
The helmet has a sophisticated HUD, which frankly I expected but nevertheless is beyond anything I've ever encountered in the past. I've worked extensively with head-up displays before so I don't have much of a problem adjusting to wearing one, but this one... This one has a new twist, as it has the capacity not only to display data on the inside of the visor, but it can project that same information, and more, directly onto my retinas with a low-powered laser. Now that's cool tech.
But in the end they are still spacesuits, and my scalp is already starting to itch and I can distinctly hear my breathing, and it is way louder than I'd like it to be. I sound like Darth Vader.
The Doctor was also correct about the spacesuits not having any built-in offensive weaponry. I can't explain it, but this makes me nervous, and the fact that I feel that way makes me feel guilty, and the guilt makes me paranoid… It is a never-ending downward spiral. What a mess… there are times it seems that I am both broken and whole and this is one of those times. I don't understand why I feel naked without a weapon and I find myself frantically wondering if I have time… if I can somehow…
"Jack," The Doctor interrupts my thinking. He's speaking to me through the com in my helmet and I see a small image, a little two-dimensional picture really, of his face in a corner of the HUD. "Are you ready?"
"Doctor?" I say.
"What is it Jack?"
His words dangle above me like a hangman's noose. I involuntarily gulp a ragged breath. Where in the universe are these feelings coming from I wonder. And then it hits me.
"I'm scared," I answer him.