Hamster Battle Suit Part 1

The days that followed blurred into a wearying rhythm. The recycled air of the ship, thick with the metallic tang of decay and the faint ozone scent of Aiden’s experiments, became our constant companion. Even though the video chats were a two-way video for conversation, the camera chats with Dad felt more like a one-way screen.

"...Be good and listen to your sister." Dad said before he turned off his camera.

Seeing how baggy his eyes were and how exhausted he looked, Lumina and I could only pretend to not look too worried in case they were still also monitoring us.

"Don't worry, Lumina," I held her shoulders as I whispered in her ears. "We are going to save him."

Daylight hours were a carefully orchestrated performance of normalcy – sharing meager meals, attempting games with the other children whose laughter echoed hollowly in the dim corridors, all while a gnawing anxiety churned beneath the surface. But as the artificial night cycle of the ship descended, casting long, skeletal shadows, we would retreat to Aiden’s subterranean lair.

The air in the bunker was thick with the smell of ozone and solder, punctuated by the rhythmic whirring and clicking of half-assembled devices. Lumina, despite my initial reservations, became a fixture. She would sit amongst the tangled wires and discarded circuit boards, her small brow furrowed in concentration as she helped strip insulation or sort components.

“Hey Sissy, what is that word again?” she’d ask, her small finger tracing a line of text on a salvaged data chip.

“It’s pronounced per-pet-ual,” I’d say slowly, enunciating each syllable as if it held a fragile magic.

Soon, the holographic blueprint of Aiden’s ambitious creation – the Perpetual Motion System – began to dominate our conversations, our planning, and even our dreams. Using the basic premise of a hamster wheel, it could reinvent the way we thought about energy. Inevitably, it became known by its shortened acronym: PMS. My repeated, and increasingly exasperated, vetoes were met with Aiden’s characteristic blend of stubbornness and juvenile humor.

“Why don’t you understand that ‘Perpetual Motion System’ is already a linguistic marathon?” Aiden would argue, a mischievous glint in his eye. “Shortening it to PMS is efficient. Economical. Besides,” he’d add with a snicker, “it’s got a certain…zing to it.”

“You’re doing it on purpose, aren’t you?” I’d accuse him, a blush creeping up my neck that Lumina, bless her innocent heart, couldn’t quite decipher.

I really hope that Lumina doesn't imitate from Aiden. She’d just tilt her head, her brow furrowed in confusion. “Why is Sissy’s face all red?”

Aiden, fueled by lukewarm nutrient paste and an almost messianic belief in his invention, threw himself into the project with a manic intensity that bordered on the unsettling. He’d launch into dizzying monologues about electromagnetic fields and resonant frequencies, his hands sketching wild, invisible diagrams in the air, his eyes glazed over with the intoxicating allure of theoretical physics. It invariably fell to me to anchor him to reality, to translate his abstract leaps of logic into tangible steps, to remind him that even the most revolutionary discoveries required a wrench and a properly soldered connection.

Lumina, surprisingly, proved to be more than just a silent observer or a cute distraction. Her small fingers, surprisingly nimble and precise, were adept at the intricate work of wiring. And her innocent, often childlike questions, devoid of any preconceived scientific notions, had a remarkable knack for cutting through Aiden’s complex jargon, often revealing simpler, more elegant solutions that had eluded our more cluttered minds.

But despite our progress, a formidable obstacle loomed. We had managed to cobble together the physical manifestation of Aiden’s blueprint, a bizarre yet functional-looking device that hummed with a nascent, internal energy. But the crucial question remained: how to effectively collect and store that power? The raw energy it generated was volatile, a wild, untamed force that threatened to overload our makeshift systems. We were at an impasse, the promise of perpetual motion tantalizingly close yet frustratingly out of reach.

“It needs to be…fluid,” Aiden was practically growling, his voice a low, agitated rumble. “The fortress shifts with the atmospheric regulators, the ventilation shafts twist and turn like metallic intestines…rigid connections are a guaranteed system failure. Not to mention setting off every alarm from here to Sector Gamma. But how in the blazes do we maintain a secure, undetectable link…?” He stopped abruptly mid-stride, his gaze suddenly locking onto Lumina, an almost predatory gleam in his eye.

That night, Lumina padded into the bunker, her hamster onesie engulfing her small frame. The familiar brown fleece, with its floppy ears and stubby tail, was her constant companion, a tangible link to a time of sunlight and warmth, a silent reassurance in our perpetual twilight.

“Senior Scientist Lumina!” he practically bellowed, the suddenness of his exclamation making both Lumina and me jump. His eyes were wide, alight with that familiar spark of what could only be described as mad brilliance.

Lumina looked up, startled, the floppy hamster ears of her onesie bobbing precariously. “Yes, Chief Scientist Aiden?” she squeaked.

“Your…your onesie!” he declared with theatrical flourish, pointing a dramatic finger that narrowly missed sending a precarious tower of empty nutrient paste tubes cascading to the floor. “The fabric…it’s flexible, lightweight…and the surface area, Junior Scientist Delia! Think of the sheer surface area!”

I exchanged a long, weary glance with Lumina, utterly and completely lost in the labyrinth of Aiden’s synaptic misfirings. “What are you raving about now, Aiden?”

“Exoskeleton!” he practically sang, his voice soaring with an almost evangelical fervor. “We weave the conduits into a network of flexible microfibers, integrated directly into a modified version of the onesie! Lumina becomes our mobile nexus point! She can collect the energy from the strategically placed miniature PMS units and store it in a central, shielded core! Think of it, Delia! The principle would be akin to how a squirrel is able to temporarily store nuts in its cheek pouches, but on a…slightly grander scale!”

My brain stuttered to a halt. The sheer absurdity of the image – Lumina, my small, precious sister, waddling through the government fortress in a hamster-themed power suit – was so utterly ludicrous, so breathtakingly insane, that for a long, silent moment, I couldn’t even muster a coherent protest.

“I could be like a super spy?” Lumina asked, her eyes wide with a captivating blend of childish apprehension and a thrill that sent a shiver of unease down my spine.

“Super spy powered by adorable, unexpected stealth!” Aiden confirmed, rubbing his hands together with a manic glee that bordered on unsettling. “They’ll never see her coming!”

“Aiden, absolutely not,” I finally managed to sputter, the words tumbling out in a rush of protective fury that had been simmering beneath the surface for weeks. “You are not turning my little sister into some kind of…walking, fluffy time bomb!”

“But Delia, my dear, pragmatically-inclined associate, think of the sheer audacity!” he countered, his enthusiasm utterly undeterred by my vehement objections. “Who in their right mind would suspect a seemingly innocent child in a ridiculous hamster onesie of single-handedly containing and distributing the power to destabilize an entire city’s heavily fortified infrastructure?”

As I looked at Lumina’s wide, eager face, however, a reluctant, treacherous seed of possibility began to sprout in the barren landscape of my objections. It was insane, utterly reckless, the kind of plan that would likely end with us all in a government detention cell (or worse). But the image of Lumina, small and utterly unassuming, slipping through the fortress’s sterile corridors, carrying the very energy that could shatter their control…it possessed a perverse, almost poetic, logic.

“We’d need to reinforce it,” I conceded, the words tasting like ash in my mouth, my mind already racing against my better judgment, calculating the necessary shielding, the fail-safes, the astronomical odds of this actually working. “Add multiple layers of shielding…energy dampeners…make absolutely certain it’s actually…relatively safe.” The last word felt like a pathetic lie.

“Details, delightful details!” Aiden waved a dismissive hand, his attention already flitting back to the holographic schematics. “Senior Scientist Lumina, my dear associate, prepare for your transformation into the most unexpectedly effective, and undeniably adorable, weapon in our arsenal!”

Lumina grinned, the floppy hamster ears of her onesie bobbing with unrestrained excitement. “Cool!”

And so, amidst the delicate and painstaking work on the miniature PMS containment units, a new, equally bizarre and far more perilous project took shape: the modification of Lumina’s beloved hamster onesie.

The transformation of Lumina’s cherished hamster onesie into a piece of improbable technology progressed with a surprising, almost unsettling, speed. It was a bizarre alchemy of high-tech integration and childlike enthusiasm. Aiden, in his element, became a whirlwind of excited explanations, gesticulating wildly as he described the intricate principles of woven conductive fibers that would allow for seamless energy transfer, and the marvels of miniature, shielded connection points that would remain undetectable to government sensors.

“Junior Scientist Delia,” Lumina would call out, her voice muffled slightly by the hamster hood, “Chief Scientist Aiden has inquired as to the whereabouts of our…nutritional sustenance units.”

“In a minute,” I’d reply, my tone a touch begrudging. “Someone has to ensure the actual hamsters on this rust bucket are adequately nourished.”

The task of caring for the ship’s surprisingly resilient population of rodents had become my default responsibility, a mundane counterpoint to their fantastical endeavors.

I, however, found myself increasingly relegated to the sidelines of this bizarre partnership. Aiden and Lumina had developed their own rapid-fire shorthand, a dizzying exchange of technical jargon peppered with inside jokes and shared glances that left me feeling like an outsider peering through a frosted window.

"Unbelievable..." I muttered. "When did I become a Mom to these two knuckleheads?"

They’d pore over the holographic schematics, their heads bent close together, muttering about “sub-dermal micro-weaves” and “bio-compatible energy conduits,” even though I was sure Lumina mostly repeated everything back. Their shared excitement creating a palpable bubble of exclusion that I couldn’t quite penetrate.