From deception comes invention

[Dr.Steel]

Dr. Steel glares pure acid at the retreating wheelchair and it's pilot.
His rubber gloves singing 'reee-errr, reee-errr' as his fists clench and unclench.

Composing himself as the door closes, his grimace relaxes and he turns with a sardonic smile to Dr. Foetsch.

"My very good Doctor.
You mentioned XiaoBei and his failed experiments with exoskeletal frames... something about the number of limbs the human brain is prepared to manage, if I'm not mistaken.
Totally reasonable.
The organic human brain cannot, or will not, control something from which it recieves no neural feedback stimuli.
This is one of the key reasons we control robotics with not by hand, but with computers and processors, yes?"

He holds his gloved hand out and Nurse Hatchett places an armored suit gauntlet into it.
He turns it in his hand, tracing his fingers down the metal palm.

"But what if - now bear with me if you will - what if, we could lay nerve fibers into the suit itself, allowing the user to 'feel' the exoskeletal limbs?
Now, human nerves are far too delicate to work with in such a mechanical medium.
...but Nomad neural physiology...
Biologically simple, and if I'm not wholly off the mark, resilient enough and large enough to work with - for our purposes.
"The question is, can we make Nomad nerve tissue 'talk to' human nerve tissue?
And the answer, I hope, is Potassium!"

Dr. Steel high-fives the steel gauntlet, and handing it back to his Nurse, begins to pace.

"Sodium - blocked by the neural membrane at resting potential - won't work.
Chloride ions? Same - they won't pass through the negatively charged membrane."
But Potassium - potassium moves freely through the neuron's membrane, and in fact is one of the ways the neuron 'speaks' to the nerve axon."

"Initially, we may need to, erm, irreversibly modify a number of differing subjects to be sure it works for different individuals.
Eventually the procedure can become far less intrusive, until the suit user requires only minor surgeries - I'm thinking that in the end we can use a catheter system to eventually marry suit nerves to the user's nerves, via potassium pumps.
But for now we will need to be more barbaric in our initial experiments."

He walks over, hands clasped behind his back, to the test subject, Franz, and points to him with his nose.

"We'll need to open this one up first, and attempt to physically and chemically marry its nervous system to Nomad nerve axons.
It's likely to be massively painful - which will aid our experiments vastly by providing instant, recognizeable feedback..."

Franz gulps, but aside from a minor tremble, maintains his composure, mostly.
His eyes flick to Dr. Foetch, hope of disagreement in his eyes.

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Building a Utopian Playground - One Smile at a Time