The Intelligent Use of Technology

As Mr. Insane sat there, propped up against a tree, he found his breathing becoming more laboured. When he coughed the combination of blood and mucus stained his fingers. He wasn’t exactly aware of what was happening but he had an idea that it was a nanoswarm slowly disintegrating his insides. This was the true end of the technology heralded to be one of medicine’s greatest breakthroughs. The nanoswarm could be ordered to maintain the victim in a state of limbo, pecking out his guts and then regrowing them for him every morning. In another part of his mind Mr. Insane was aware that he was equally quite safe. His suit would mask both his visual emissions and most of the non-visible spectrum normally radiated from a human. Especially in his current sedentary state he would be quite invisible to almost anything. He tried to reach for an emergency injection strapped on his arm but found that his voluntary muscles were incapacitated. Whether it was the nanoswarm or a directed energy weapon was quite unclear; however he could still move his eyes voluntarily and his legs so he assumed the nanoswarm had temporarily severed some of his nerves. He felt nauseous and fell sideways vomiting pathetically; some of the vomit ran down his cheek in a warm dribble he could feel, he could hear the rest being sucked away by the respirator. He had read the literature and was aware that the torture would continue for probably another three or four hours before the regeneration process began and that itself would last probably seven or eight hours and then the cycle would start again; it would not go on indefinitely – as it was working from a human template that would differ from his actuality in specific ways, it would severe things and never repair them.
He thought about what the Corporation was trying to achieve. His current state was aimed at demoralising him. Its purpose was to put him and others like him in their place and remind them in the most vivid way of their weakness and sheer uselessness when confronted with the full force of modern technology. It was a simple and age-old message - resistance is futile.
Mr. Insane’s eyes unfocused and then refocused. He was in a really bad place. He felt he would have surrendered, if there were something to surrender to. Unlike many of his colleagues his suit was doing exactly what it was designed to do and keeping him (and the nanoswarm in his blood), from detection and external harm. Thinking about it at that point he considered that perhaps the suit only made things worse. He was quite sure the nanobots would not be programmed to synthesise food from the outside. In fact so far he had no indication that their programming extended beyond the human internal environment.
For a moment he felt panic at the thought of remaining there under the jungle canopy until he starved to death, undetected and unknown; assumed dead whilst invisible objects maintained him for as long as was possible. Another thought hit him; perhaps they would digest his muscles to keep him fed. He started kicking about with his functioning lower half. If he weren’t invisible he would have looked like a fish out of water, as he was basically invisible his actions simply created a flutter of leaves on the forest floor.
The crunching of forest leaves brought him back to reality. He looked to his right and saw a semi-transparent man approaching him. The man was fully clothed and wore an advanced suit. He looked grotesque, insect-like; his body was covered in autonomous chitineous insect brained plates that clung to their “queen.” The newcomer was looking around as though he was sure that there was something around. His movements were somewhere between cautious and confident, as though he was quite sure his prey was wounded but wasn’t completely convinced. Eventually, about fifteen meters from Mr. Insane, he became aware of the prostrate figure under the tree. His hideous disguised body turned and approached; the plates crawling around to form a stronger fore armour.
When the newcomer was about ten meters away a hand settled on the Mr. Insane’s shoulder. Mr. Insane twitched and flopped around as much as his jerky muscles would let him. The newcomer was right next to him. The other being vanished: never having been there.

The newcomer, a Special Assault unit level undefined was called Sprac. He knelt at Mr. Insane’s side. Sprac’s movements indicated that he was laughing; his body bobbed slightly whilst he unfastened Mr. Insane’s mask and removed it. The invisible head suddenly became clear, floating as though decapitated above the floor. Sprac considered for a few second whether he should cut the suit open, but decided that it would actually have quite some commercial value on the market. Thus he took his slow time removing it, piece by piece. He wanted to hurt Mr. Insane but knew that the nanoswarm would be doing that well enough.
Eventually Mr. Insane lay naked at Sprac’s feet. Sprac meanwhile minimised the suit after having specked it online. Everything collapsed into a ball, which was small enough to fit inside the helmet. The helmet was however uncollapsible and virtually indestructible.
Sprac then knelt down again and stared at the prone and twitching man. His helmet was a bizarre contraption with five large blister-like composite camera eyes on it and three binocular eyes. The bug like eyes on Sprac’s helmet reflected Mr. Insane in a thousand sordid little images. In the reflection Mr. Insane could see that his throat and chest were covered in his vomit and his blood. His veins were pushing out against his skin. He was aware of what he was looking at. The blister eyes on the helmet were composite eyes. Each little eye in the bulging monstrosity a separate camera feeding images into an updated and enhanced occipital lobe of the man Sprac. Mr. Insane was aware of such technology but had no clue how it worked. He had a feeling that the occipital lobe was enhanced with insect neural matter.
Sprac held his hand over the chest of the defeated Mr. Insane. His actions mimicked a Reiki practitioner. As Mr. Insane watched blisters formed upon his chest and then the nanoswarm began to emerge through his skin, creating a shimmering cloud somewhat like a mirage. Their exit was deliberately messy leaving Mr. Insanes chest looking like it had been shot with a shotgun and feeling like it had been rubbed with salt. The nanoswarm disappeared into thin chambers in the forearm of Sprac’s suit. Once this was done Sprac leant forward and “stared” into Mr. Insane’s eyes.
“Stop wasting your time and your people’s energy.” He said in a perfectly clear and level voice, somewhat like a coach making a suggestion to a player. With that he turned and walked away. After a few meters he paused and turned. He withdrew a ration from his pocket and threw it to Mr. Insane; it landed in a puddle of vomit. Sprac then turned and walked off. Disappearing completely from view in two paces and reappearing as three holograms at a radius of approximately fifteen meters.