To me this was an intriguing but somewhat confusing story in that not much was explained fully. I wish that there were more details on the suit and what it was originally capable of, where the man is and why he went to that planet, other technology that they had on the orbital, how life was like before the war, and why they even got into the war. I understand that it is a short story for a reason, but I like having more questions answered than left in the air after reading a story. The idea of a smart suit seems like a great invention for company and help, but I wonder why there aren’t built in communication, warning, and emergency systems to automatically alert the orbital or others at war that something has gone wrong if they have something as advanced as a suit that is alive.
I really enjoy the interaction between the protagonist and the suit in the short story. In the thirty-four days expedition, the protagonist goes through a process of suspecting, working with, and accepting the suit. Their relationship transform from a functional collaboration to an interactive companionship. It cracks me up when the suit retaliates by playing loud music when the protagonist sings in a “flat note”. However, the suit and the protagonist are still different. The protagonist portraits the suit as something “little closer to perfection than ourselves”. Comparing to human body made of flesh, the suit is stronger, more rational, and independent of the limitation of a physical body. The protagonist’s fear of being ditched, I suspect, emerges from recognition of defect and weakness of human being. While human’s organic body is a chaotic system which displays weakness, isn’t it a component of the identity of human being? Or “maybe it is the only way to progress”, when human becomes something more perfect like the suit, which is created as an imitation of ourselves but a little more perfect in the first place?
The story was also confusing to me at the beginning, and it was difficult for me to imagine or picture what the suit looks like and how the protagonist lives in the suit. I did find the story quite interesting and I think I was expecting some kinds of plot twists throughout the story. I especially liked how the story starts with the human saying “I hurt”, and ends with the suit saying “I hurt”. The suit was originally designed to protect the human and improve the human abilities, so it was ironic that the suit ‘lived’ longer than the human and it acquired emotions that electronic parts should not have.