Intergalactic Authority Quarantine Suits

Aliases: none Status: Major Origin: The Intergalactic Authority, per the officer Wielder: Chino and Homeboy (during detention)

The Authority’s answer to unlicensed alien contact is a suit you cannot take off, powered by the one fuel source you will never run out of. Issued to the protagonists during their detention, the quarantine suits are close-fitting containment gear with two demonstrated functions: an AI that converts excreted bodily liquids and solids into fuel, and — in the older model — a hood that doubles as a universal translator. They are, in other words, the most efficient and the most humiliating technology in the volume.

Description

The suits fit closely, with no simple removal method the protagonists can find — once suited, you are suited until the Authority says otherwise. The waste-processing is handled by an onboard AI: what the body excretes, liquid or solid, becomes fuel, which makes the suit self-sustaining in the most literal sense available. The hood on the older model provides a universal translator, a detail worth keeping straight, since the translation function is attributed to the older model specifically, not to the suits as a universal feature. Handing these suits to primitive species is prohibited, according to the officer — a regulation Homeboy treats as a suggestion the moment he decides he wants to keep one.

Role in Volume 02

• Mr. Dealer and the Intergalactic Authority: The suits appear during the detention and licensing proceedings — quarantine equipment for suspects whose contamination status is unresolved. The protagonists wear them, fail to find a way out of them, and learn the waste-to-fuel arrangement firsthand. The officer’s prohibition on distributing them to primitive species establishes their controlled status; Homeboy’s expressed wish to keep one establishes nothing about whether he does.

Notes

• The AI converts excreted bodily waste into fuel. That is a bounded function, not a magic one: do not read it as infinite fuel.
• The universal translator is a property of the older model’s hood, not of every suit.
• No complete medical protection is demonstrated by the suits, and Homeboy’s wish to keep one does not establish permanent possession — the text leaves the suits’ final disposition unresolved.
• The prohibition on giving the suits to primitive species comes from the officer; it is Authority regulation as reported, not an independently demonstrated fact of the setting.