>>5189249>>5189254>>5189256>>5189257>>5189337<span class="mu-s">P</span>ersonal <span class="mu-s">U</span>nderwater <span class="mu-s">E</span>xploration e<span class="mu-s">XO</span>suit.
This is a story you know well, as any pilot worth their salt would. It’s the first thing one learns upon being accepted into Babylonia’s extremely rigorous and competitive PUEXO program. Helps put things into perspective, and it helps that the story comes hard-coded in every unit as part of an index.
A hundred or so years before the Cataclysm, American tech entrepreneur Adan Raymond Ladera believed that before mankind explored the stars, they had to first conquer their oceans. To this end, his company Accelerasoft Industries pushed for the development of a deep-sea exosuit. A piece of equipment that a man or woman could climb into and operate unhindered hundreds of meters below sea level.
Critics at the time derided him for trying to reinvent the submarine and the diving suit. What did the ocean have to offer that the stars did not? There was little left beyond what deep-sea explorers such as Cook, Ekman, Cousteau, Piccard, and Cameron had already discovered. Colonizing the ocean? Preposterous, when there was already an ongoing effort to colonize Mars.
To them, Ladera had turned a deaf ear, as well to some of his more uncertain shareholders. Beyond the PUEXO, Accelerasoft was one of the leading cybernetic companies of the time. The profits from those drove the development of Ladera’s pet project.
Progress was…slow. After several failures, what emerged was almost outlandish in sight. The Mark 0 Prototype was a bathysphere-like suit with arms, legs, a single viewport, and a propulsion unit welded onto its back. Power was fed through an umbilical cable, with an array of lithium-ion batteries serving as eight hours of emergency backup. Accelerasoft cybernetics linked the pilot’s brain to the PUEXO, to both determine upright balance and ensure fine manipulation of its hydraulic limbs and fingers.
On its maiden voyage, Ladera himself served as the test pilot, and descended 1,483 meters in the <span class="mu-i">Polyphemus</span> during an exploration of the Bermuda Triangle. <span class="mu-i">“Putting the supernatural to bed once and for all,”</span> he had said. When he came back up, the first thing he did was complain that he didn’t find the wreck of Amelia Earhart’s plane. When his ACOMMS pointed out that Earhart had vanished over the Pacific and not the Atlantic, an utterly bewildered Ladera said <span class="mu-i">“then who the [redacted] did I speak to”</span> before promptly passing out on the deck of his ship.
While proof of concept had been established, and Ladera became something of a rockstar, the PUEXO was dismissed as a mere novelty. But there were plenty of oceanographers and private enthusiasts who clamored for their own machine. Accelerasoft produced a limited number of <span class="mu-i">Polyphemus</span>-class PUEXOs, and used the profit margins (along with a strong crowdfunding campaign) to begin the development of the Mark 1 Test-Type generation.
(cont.)
