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Emotional Reality
Emotional Reality
On one level, Bray hated the tho-cap headband. It wasn't how it felt, physically, to wear; if anything these new-generation civilian units were lighter than what she'd trained on. And she could sleep in a real bed and shower in a real shower and have a change of clothes right after a tho-cap session, unlike combat deployments. It wasn't the neurology, either – basically it was the same tech that the military used, though the sensitivities were tuned differently, prying a little deeper into some parts of her. She'd thought that would bother her, but it didn't feel any different while she was actually hooked up.
She thrust forward with both yokes, throwing her shoulders against the harness and sending the Erato into a crunching forward roll under a spray of phosphorescents. The cockpit rang with the grind of metal on concrete. Bray kicked her stirruped feet and the mech's heels caught, the rubber hooves barely enough grip to pop her back upright. Couldn't use military-grade traction hooks that might tear up the concrete, continuity hated those things.
As the Erato came to its feet, rotating around Bray, she swung her left arm, the bright green trak-paint along the mech's sword a viscose arc through the holographic markers. She reached the end of the twirl, right arm heavy with the antiquated triple rotary gun, her right yoke vibrating in sympathy as the belts of blanks churned through the machine. Six hundred rounds in barely two seconds sang through the Erato's hull despite the damping, almost enough to make even Bray flinch.
Ridiculous weapon. Hard to believe it had ever been used in war, but there was a particular kind of dweeb out there who loved that preunification shit, and they paid better for sims than any other demographic. That was what really made Bray hate the tho-cap, the people who it connected her to, however indirectly. People who wouldn't last thirty seconds in a live-fire situation, paying not just to experience this hyperbolic fantasy of combat, but to experience being the kind of person who was used to it.
The real irony, of course, was that Bray was too used to it. It happened to all pilots eventually; desensitization became enough of a drag on reflexes and awareness to damp the neural link past the effective threshold for combat ops. Some pilots went into the officer corps or became trainers, but the money was bad and the hours were long. This was the best civilian option, selling her dissociation and deep training on the entertainment market. At least it paid the therapy bills.