The Glass Suit

The Glass Suit

Suicide Note of Dr. Clark Snow

The suit was a masterpiece. A true goddamn masterpiece. Nicknamed “The Glass Suit,” this lovely number could achieve what was always assumed to be impossible: complete invisibility.

Not only could this suit become invisible with a simple button’s press, but whatever lucky bastard with the substantial funds to possess and wear it could vanish with it. Masterpiece.

The production seemed so simple on paper, yet the better part of twenty long years drained from our minds and hands into this suit. This masterpiece. The Glass Suit is, in reality, a massive, complex network of miniscule cameras and monitors linked together over a skintight wetsuit designed to cover every inch of the body. Cameras linked to monitors on opposite sides of this suit, and vice versa. The cameras would record the images before them, and the monitors would display those video feeds from the other side of the wearer’s body. The object was to create the illusion of empty space between the interacting components, which, in the eye of a nearby witness, would not appear to exist. In other words, the wearer of this suit would truly act as a “window” rather than a “door.” Hence its nickname.

This design was so much easier to draft than to design, by God. We started with components no smaller than our thumbnails that had absolutely pitiful resolutions. Those clunky, grainy cameras couldn’t fool a blind watchdog, let alone our human enemies. Most of our years developing this lovely piece of art bled into the improvement of our camera and monitor technology. If our project was to be of any use to our spies, to our country, the components had to be at least ten times smaller than what we had then. We as a team could not rejoice when yet another prototype camera lens was born, fully-functional and capable of recording the slightest, most precise movements with marvelous clarity. It needed to be smaller in size. It needed to be clearer, brighter, more realistic in picture.

The fruits of our labors? Often laughable. Men grew even more blind by the day from the strain on their eyes. Still more suffered nervous breakdown and insanity from the stress of our mission. Yet mankind was not unrewarded by our efforts. Our spies could benefit from camera technology upon which we improved, even without the availability of so-called “glass suits.” Surveillance technology, employed by spies, domestic security officials, an even our own marvelous government improved greatly from out labors.

And finally, of course, our masterpiece was born. Our first subject to test the final product gave us quite the scare, as I remember. As soon as he donned and activated that masterpiece, he vanished from our sights from every angle. What festivities we had! Twenty agonizing years of efforts had not passed by in vain! Yet our subject had not reappeared as planned. Where had he gone? What had he done? We truly could not guess, as you could imagine. That was, of course, the object of our studies, the final fruit of our toils.

Our subject did return so many days later. He and the suit were both unharmed. The stories he told his us many adventures simply amazed us. In that week, he breached the border wall to that enemy nation without alarming security officials. He had gained access to maximum security prisons and government facilities. He had witnessed horrific abuse of our men kept as political prisoners behind those walls. He had even been present in a war strategy meeting with their leader and their highest ranked officials. The details he was able to share with us saved the lives of an untold number of our soldiers.

The Glass suit had the potential for greatness is our spies’ arsenals. Yet it also had that same stellar potential in the hands of our enemies. This technology absolutely could not fall to them

Somehow, inexplicably, it did.

The counterattacks happened all at once, much too quickly to fight or even predict. Five spies were wearing Glass Suits on their assignments. They found electric interference, and their suits’ abilities met their ends. The men were all in high security areas in the enemy lands, and all were immediately found and killed within seconds of each other.

Even our own facilities did not avoid an enemy attack. Imagine our horror only yesterday when we found our vault doors forced open, our remaining suits gone, and all but one security agent swiftly murdered. The lone survivor, bleeding profusely, his life leaving with that blood, told us of unseen attackers gutting his colleagues like hunted animals. He did not live long afterwards.

It seems my greatest fear had manifested, gentlemen, and I greatly regret that. We have now unintentionally entered an age where our foes can kill at anytime, in the most crowded areas, without a single witness to identify the attacker. If only I could be confident that this technology has not yet reached the public. This is a new era of war, my friends, and nobody still breathing is safe.

This brought this on ourselves, gentlemen, with what terrible masterpiece. That terrible goddamn masterpiece.