Science in [REDACTED]

[Proto Man]

Truth be told, there wasn’t much that pleased Doctor Gero outside the world of science. The reports and public relations documents he had to mull over from time to time were dumped from his brain the moment they were rendered irrelevant by the next twist of Imperial public relations. What was worse than reading the missives from the propaganda department was reading through the atrocious assortment of theses and dissertations he received from graduate and doctoral students from the University of Coruscant. As Dean, President, and CEO of that institution, Gero was responsible for most of the executive decisions about what was—in Omniverse terms—a ‘venerable institution.’

On this night, the good doctor had a night to himself and his experiments. Later in the week, he had to give a keynote speech for a collection of new Masters of Robotics graduates. It would be one of his first public appearances in a few months, and needless to say, he would be happy when it was over and he could return to his laboratory. For now, Gero was left to mull over some data from recent experiments. To a lesser man, many of the results would appear to be successes, but to the venerable scientist, they were failures.

A knock on the wall pulled Gero out of his laser-like focus on the numbers and images on his screen. Swiveling in his chair, he immediately noticed the man standing in his doorway. He was a researcher who, like Gero, understood that sometimes you had to stretch the limits of acceptability to break new scientific ground. He was also a prime, which gave him a little more pull when it came to resources and funding for what he wanted to study.

“So, I heard you have something new in the works, how is it going so far?”

Genjuro’s current projects revolved around gene manipulation and synthesizing some sort of demon girls, which meant he wasn’t here to try and steal ideas from Gero. “The limits of flesh and bone continue to disgust me, Genjuro.” The head researcher swiveled back around to face his screen, which was an unspoken approval for the other man to join him. A few moments later, Genjuro was standing next to him, eyes on the screen.

“What is this?”

Part of Gero wanted to roll his eyes and tell the other man to use his intellect to figure it out himself, but that wouldn’t be the ‘cordial’ or ‘appropriate’ thing to do. “Space marines are bulky and cumbersome,” the head scientist mentioned as he scrolled through some more of the preliminary results.

“You’re trying to replicate the efficiency of the space marine suits as an endoskeleton? Is that even possible given the requisite resources needed to power the suits?”

“Anything is possible.” Gero muttered, his tone a little icier as he glanced up and pressed a button that revealed that the wall in front of him was actually a projection over a two-way mirror. Through the glass, an assortment of ghoulish, blood-stained chunks of power armor and mangled body parts were strewn about the room. “The goal is to create something with the raw, unstoppable ability of the Power Armor that can be used to infiltrate terrorist cells and pass unobserved into foreign verses. The trick is maintaining the full abilities of the armor but converting it into something that you can cover with an organic exosuit… the efforts have been insufficient.”

“But you’ve had results?”

Gero nodded. “Yes, but at half or less the capacity of the full-sized armor.”

“It’s a start,” Genjuro offered, which only generated a scowl on the face of the older scientist.

“Yes, but half a space marine isn’t the goal of the project. If I wanted to settle for half a space marine, we could just send any generic robot out there, but we need to capture the essence of the suit and the raw might it exudes.” A wave of the doctor’s hand turned the glass back into a wall. “How do your projects do, Genjuro? Demon girls, wasn’t it? Or dragons and mice?”