A Visitor to the Future - 91 - Walk Before you Wrestle
Anode's omnipresent voice once again rang clearly through my head. It was crystal-clear to hear, with no sound of distortion or background noise. "Basic locomotion, check, good sense of balance, double check! Let's go for a senses test! I'm guessing your vision is good, as you're looking straight at us. Let's do audio next. Tungsten?"
Tungsten's voice sounded out a hearty hello over the field, sounding a lot more natural than Anode's - which I now realised must be being transmitted directly to me. "Can you hear that?" Anode asked.
It was at this point I realized that I couldn't talk, which was concerning.
"Oh, scatter-brained me," transmitted Anode, "Give us a thumbs-up if you heard him!"
I slowly raised the right hand and after a bit of concentration managed to arrange the four digits into a thumbs-up.
"Great! Talking is a bit more complicated, you can do it via pass-through or using a neural keyboard, like I do. For now, if you want to jump out at any point, give me a thumbs-down gesture. But I'm monitoring your vitals and you're doing well! Nod if you understand?"
I nodded, the unfamiliar weight and shape of the head almost throwing off my balance. I felt very top-heavy for some reason. The oddest thing was how I could feel sensations across the body of the Proxy - if I touched an area of the Proxy with one hand, I could feel it just like touching my own skin. But instead of the subtle give of flesh, there was only metal.
I turned around to see that Antonia had managed to sit her Proxy up, with some support from Sasha. Sasha's voice rang out from her Proxy in English, the timbre slightly different, as if it were being transmitted from speakers.
"Okay," said Sasha, "You are like children. Time to learn to walk. Thankfully is easier the second time around."
She was right. Though I did stumble a few times, within five minutes I was making significant progress. I constantly had to remind myself of the weight and height differences, though. You couldn't particularly make any quick movements as the Proxies were currently set up.
"No handstands with these models!" shouted Sarkona from the table as we moved around slowly.
"Is like armour," Sasha taught us, "You move with care. Try not to damage surroundings. Here, I show you - watch me throw punch."
Both Antonia and I watched as Sasha settled into a stable stance, miming a haymaker several times with a practiced motion. It was a little like watching a human throw a punch at three-quarters speed. But the power involved was obvious, you could hear the subtle whoosh of air being displaced.
"Punch is slow, strong - opponent has time to react. Unless we modify?" said Sasha, head looking in the direction of the table.
"Ooo, yeah, maybe!" came Anode's voice via transmission, "We could alter one of the Proxies for dexterity over staying power. That could be interesting. Bit of a glass cannon approach?"
Sasha's Proxy and own body nodded simultaneously.
It wasn't long after that that we were confidently moving around in the Proxies. Anode would sometimes chime in to ask questions about limb movements, comfort, and so on - presumably to calibrate some part of the interface. In many ways, it was like getting used to your own body after a growth spurt - alien at first, but soon familiar.
"Now," said Sasha suddenly, after having us do push-ups for control practice, "I think you are ready for demonstration."
Sasha brought us to a relatively empty section of the field, where some combination of sun and moisture had baked the area clear of grass. She dragged once claw-like foot around us in a large circle, forming a circular groove twenty metres in diameter on the ground. She pointed for each of us to stand within the centre, five metres apart.
"Good," she said, "Now we do push-out. Try and push each other out of the arena."
I looked at Antonia's Proxy with what I thought was a nervous expression - but obviously mustn't have come across that way to her without a face to display it. Instead she took it as a sign to start, moving in to grapple me with as much haste as the Proxy could manage.
Well, there was only one way to respond to that.
I dug my clawed feet into the ground for leverage, the dry dirt crumbling as I did so. The arms of Antonia's Proxy reached around me, grabbing under the arms and around the back for leverage. I angled myself sideways slightly, using the shoulder of my Proxy to try and shoulder-barge her backwards, my left arm reaching around the neck to support myself.
If I were to try and do this in my own body, my muscles might protest at the strain, being used to exert force in strange directions. It might even be painful. But in the Proxy there was no unpleasant pain, only sensation. I could feel each of the synthetic muscle fibres, and if I consciously tried to focus on it, individual components voicing their tolerances, not in numbers or words, but in a raw instinctual way that seemed almost natural.
Antonia had contacted with me first, so the initial victory was her own, and I slid backwards a metre or two. But with my weight focused into my shoulder area, I prevented her from moving forward.
We both strained against each other, my feet scrambling in the dirt to try and get leverage. Antonia did the same, and I could hear the protests of one of my Proxy's joints. A moment stretched out as we both committed to the act of simply pushing, each trying to overwhelm the other with brute strength. If I could talk, I would have probably been gritting my teeth and making very unflattering exertion noises.
Neither of us were making any progress against the other. The only thing we were succeeding in doing was scarring the dirt within the ring with our feet.
Which is when it hit me. We wouldn't make any progress either - these Proxies were equally matched, effectively carbon-copies of each other! The same strength, the same endurance - so long as we both fought in the same way, on an equal footing, neither one of us would succeed.
Thankfully, something could be done about that footing.
My right arm was sandwiched between myself and Antonia, but the long limb had enough freedom of movement to reach and grab a thigh. With the movement slightly arrested, Antonia couldn't completely match the force I was outputting. She began to move slowly backwards. I was making progress!
But, I wasn't the only one who could change tactics. As if spurred by my change in direction, Antonia suddenly began to straighten her Proxy up a little - and with her arms located under my Proxy's armpits, that gave her the leverage she needed to lift me up slightly. Suddenly, I lost traction with one foot, and slipped, losing my leverage for but a moment. I began to slip backwards.
Which was when we both tumbled to the ground in a cloud of dust, Antonia's act having thrown us both off our balance, our feet falling out from under us. I pushed my Proxy onto its back, looking up at the delicate white clouds above. I could pick out every detail with these lenses. Sasha's Proxy came into view, leaning over me.
"Good! Very good!" she said happily, her Proxy clapping its hands together with a hammer-like clanging. "Adapt, think, change! Do not be stubborn like mule - change tactics! Out-think opponent, not out-fight them!"
I slowly sat up and Antonia did the same. I gave her a thumbs-up, which she returned. I then turned to the table and gave a thumbs-down, to indicate that I needed a break.