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Fantasy of the Month 6 (Clothing)
She peered through the port, buffed some breath-fog from the inside with the heel of her palm, tried again. It was still hard to see anything; there was an encrustation of green muck almost two centimetres thick on the outside. Still, from what she could see, conditions outside hadn't changed significantly since yesterday. Full gear, then. Ah well. She got pieces of the suit from the hamper, other items of clothing from drawers, laid them out on the bed. First, the undersuit, charcoal-grey. The centimetre-thick material was unusually elastic; she stretched the neck-hole wide, stepping though it, forcing her toes down the leg-spaces, dragging it up around her hips, around her arms and over her shoulders where it snapped into place comfortably. She wriggled, arms held over her head, and the suit writhed, the leggings snaking down past her knees and turning slightly until they sat along her contours as intended by the designers. She touched a contact on the neck-hem and the suit rippled, a band of constriction moving from her shoulders down to her ankles, smoothing out any wrinkles along the way. Turning to face the monitor, she examined her reflection, noting with a smile how the undersuit tightened around her waist, making her hips look flared, pushing her breasts up and apart. She ran her hand from just under her throat, down her stomach to her crotch, up again to rest between her breasts. She stepped into the underboots next, made of similar material to the suit; they lay open like gutted fish until her toes entered them; then they snuggled up to her, sealing along the front, clasping her calves. A kind of abbreviated tabard went on next, made of flexible blue plastic; the neck was studded with data ports and latch-holes for the helmet. The narrowed front half of this pushed her breasts further apart, almost uncomfortably so; it had sculpted, flared edges that accommodated their intrusive curves. Still, she wasn't comfortable with the way her nipples were now pointing almost at right angles. She'd have to speak to the designers. A midriff-piece, misshapen bumps and flanges designed to hold power packs, sensors, safety-line hooks and the like went around her waist. It was made of similar material to the tabard, and like the rest of the clothing, had a modicum of intelligence built in. Once she'd closed the clasp at her left hip, it linked up with the tabard and also started exchanging data with the undersuit. While sundry items of clothing were busy chatting, she slipped on the gloves, thin black felt-like material, ridges of reinforcing wire net along the backs of the hands. Next came the overboots, thick padding inside, hard smooth black plastic on the outside, hinges at the toes, ankles and knees. She experimented, lifting one leg and pivoting the toe in a circle. They were deceptively heavy. Next came the exo-frame. It was an involved affair of pencil-thick rods and pads, the former which slotted into gaps between the midriff-piece and the overboots, the latter of which sat against her thighs and behind. Pressing a contact above her left kidney activated the frame, which kicked convulsively, almost pushing her over backwards. She staggered against the data-post and waited until the frame had settled down; then she initiated the self-test which supposedly metered her muscle responses against the frame. No matter how many times she'd run it, it always felt as if the suit were groping her, the behind-pads squeezing her buttocks together, the undersuit working in collusion with the frame to rub against her nipples and work itself up uncomfortably into the crack of her ass. She tried to tug it loose as she looked for the helmet, hopping around awkwardly on one leg with one foot in the air. The helmet was in the closet, underneath the spare bed-covers. This was the part she truly disliked; masking her distaste, she sat the fishbowl affair on the tabard-piece, turned it a few degrees to the left so that the slots matched up, then thumped it home with the flat of her right hand. Inside the helmet, clear plastic pads filled with a viscous fluid, expanding until they pressed against her head on all sides. The front pads left her eyes and nostrils clear, with a shallow gap so that the oxygen/nitrogen mix from the tabard-piece could reach her. The rest of her face was uncomfortably restrained. She'd heard that with time, some operatives actually got to the point of enjoying this sensation; not her. Not yet. She strode to the airlock, entered the security sequence; the doors grunted, opened reluctantly and allowed her into the airlock. Once secure inside, the air was replaced with the muggy, damp carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere; a sequence of yellow lights indicated when the hatch would open. She prepared herself. The outer hatch opened with a disconcertingly flatulent noise, and without stopping to admire the scenery, she ran down the ramp, her boots crushing finger-fat stalks of grass, across the court-yard and up the ramp of the supply ship. She hit the outer hatch button, as large as a dinner plate, and it jerked open by degrees, trailing strings of green-flecked yellow slime, the mechanism failing when the gap was only about a metre wide. She edged in and helped it shut, her palms skidding along the mucky inside surface. She waited the four minutes while the pumps emptied the foul vapour from the lock; wiped the worst of it off with a disinfectant-soaked rag, then opened the inner hatch. The reception room was deserted. She hit the release contact on her suit, worked the helmet off, and called out; "Honey, I'm home ..." |
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