The Suit-Maker

By Roy Lim

In a world where Steampunk and Clockwork technologies are a part of history, Tobias Wong has just inherited one of the most powerful invention in history; a System. With it, Tobias can finally embark on his dream to be a battlesuit designer. But can an advanced weapon designer flourish in cyberpunk Singapore?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Roy Lim
• Release date: Dec 11, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463220870

Roy Lim

Born in 1976 in Singapore, Roy Lim wasn't always an avid reader of fiction. That all changed when he picked up "The Clan of the Cave Bear" by Jean M. Auel at age 13. Since that book, he has been devouring almost every fantasy and sci-fi novels out there and imagining his own worlds and stories. He first started The Dungeon Hive as an online web serial on Royal Road Legends under the pen name of 'Ghostman' and was encouraged by the following he got. He then decided to turn the story into a book and thus began his career as a wannabe author. Currently he would list his favorite authors as Isaac Asimov, Richard Roberts, and John Scalzi.

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The Suit-Maker

Ages of Technology

Volume One

Roy Lim

Published by Roy Lim Wee Meng

Copyright © 2019 by Roy Lim Wee Meng

All Rights Reserved

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author or publisher.

PROLOGUE

The supervillain took a deep breath to steady himself and then gently knocked on the door. He heard movement behind the door, and when it opened, the supervillain found his heart skipping a beat. He suspected his former girlfriend’s heart also did the same, though for a very different reason. The metallic wings on her back spread out as if she was going to take flight, and the supervillain just smiled. He knew there was nowhere for her to fly off to in the small flat, and even if there was, she wouldn’t have left her child behind. The supervillain raised his hand in peace.

I’m not here to fight. I’m not here to take the kid. I just want to see our baby.

The supervillain could see the distress on the face of his former girlfriend and, for a moment, he wondered if she would reject his request. She did not. She sighed in resignation and let him in. The supervillain nodded his head in thanks. The flat was a dump: a small one-room with thin walls, a terrible smell and bad lighting. The supervillain had expected all this and didn’t really mind the living conditions; he had lived in worse places. He only had eyes for the baby crib in the middle of the room. Unlike the rest of the flat, the crib looked expensive, and the supervillain suspected that his former moll had spent everything she stole from him on the baby. The supervillain almost wished she had stolen more. If she had, his child would not have to live in such a place.

He looked in and saw the cutest thing he had ever seen. The baby was sleeping, but the supervillain couldn’t help himself. He reached out and softly poked the baby’s awesomely adorable cheek. The feeling he felt when he touched the baby was something he had not felt in years.

Tobias. His name is Tobias … Wong.

The supervillain stopped when he heard the name. It hurt more than he thought it would, but he put a fake smile on his face.

Good choice, He could see his former girlfriend visibly relax at that. I have enemies, and having him take your last name would be safer for both of you. Take this.

He handed her a small briefcase. She looked at him in puzzlement but knew him better than to ask what was inside. She put the briefcase on the sole table in the flat and opened it. A gasp escaped her lips when she saw the money chips inside.

Three hundred thousand credits, the supervillain said. That ought to be enough for you to set yourself up with the kid. There’s also a contract inside between you and Better Flavors Food Company.

A contract? For what?

You invented a new flavour of ice cream and sold the formula to them. The contract is for the sale. This money is completely legitimate with a clear paper trail, so there’s no need to hide it. There’re also deeds to two properties in Singapore. I would suggest you live in one of them and rent out the other for some regular income.

Singapore? Why Singapore?

The city is safe and a good place to raise a kid. Also … as long as you invest in the local economy, the South East Asian League doesn’t ask too many questions about where your money comes from. I was thinking of giving you more, like a trust fund for the kid, but that would just raise suspicions and …

The supervillain stopped talking when he realised that his former girlfriend was no longer listening.

I thought you would be angry. She sounded like she was going to cry. I thought you—

I was, the supervillain cut her off. He couldn’t have her feeling sorry for him. He needed her to realise she made the right decision. I was very angry. I wanted to find you and do bad things to you. For over a year, I looked for you just to do that. Then I found you and realised the reason you ran. I got the kid’s DNA and ran some tests. I know he’s mine and you made the right choice. He is better off without me in his life. Just do me a favour.

What?

When he grows up, he will ask about me – it’s inevitable. When he does … just speak well of me. Can you promise me that?

She answered by giving the supervillain a big farewell kiss.

Eighteen months later, the supervillain was caught, but the mother of his child kept her promise.

Chapter 1

To my dear son Tobias,

I am your father. If you are reading this letter, I guess that means I am dead. I do not know how I have passed but I am not surprised. I do not know how much your mother has told you about your deadbeat dad, but know that I was a man who did more evil than good. I was what the world would call a criminal.

I do not regret the life I lived. I did what I did and mostly I would say my time was well spent. I won’t say I lived a good life, but I had an exciting one, and that was more than enough for me. While I regret little, one of the things I do regret was not being there for my children. I made a choice long ago not to be associated with any of you and while I won’t say I made the right choice, I thought it would be best for you all not to have me as a father. All of you deserved a normal life.

I do not know if you hate me for this but if you do, I do not blame you. You have more right to the hate than many of my enemies. But, Tobias, I do want you to know that while I was never around, I always kept an eye on you. I know you go by Toby. You are now 32 years of age and the last time you cried was at your mother’s funeral. You were a poor student. Smart but without drive. You left school at 17 after your secondary-school education but then surprisingly found your calling. You got an Advanced Diploma in Mechanical Engineering via night school and worked as a mechanic for over a decade at various workshops doing mainly repair work on vehicles. You like the job and did well for yourself but what you really wanted to be was an advanced weapons designer.

And I know that you told only a few people of your dream, but monitoring the history of your net usage and your subscriptions to the ‘Battlesuits’ and ‘Weapons Loadout’ magazines, it wasn’t hard for me or my agents to figure that out. I may be a deadbeat absent dad but I shall do what I can to make your dream come true. The small building you are in is now yours. You can use it to start your dream of being a weapons designer known to the world. Do not worry, the building has already been paid for and the money used to buy it was clean. I have also bought the land around this work building in case you need it for future expansion. This is just the start of your inheritance.

If you do not know who I am, then it is better for you not to know. Just know that I was no run-of-the-mill criminal. I was, I will admit, very successful and considered very dangerous. So successful that I was given a codename by the public and widely considered to be a supervillain. At my peak, I was designated a ‘global threat’ and wanted by the United Federation of Planets. Even in our amazing world of mad science and super technology, I was special.

In fact, I was considered special from a very young age, but understand that being special so young is not always a good thing. Looking back, I believe I grew too powerful too fast. I had more power than experience and made many mistakes because of it. Oh, I do not really regret my actions but, in hindsight, there were a few things I could have done differently. For that reason, instead of giving you your full inheritance, I have devised a system to give it to you in stages. You will receive things bit by bit as you fulfil the conditions I have in mind. I do not believe in giving out free lunches, you see: you need to work for the prize. Think of it as the stages of a game you have to pass through before advancing to the next stage of your life. Instead of a game in Dive, you will be doing it in real life. Do not worry too much, the system I left behind will guide you. Before long, I am sure you will advance in your chosen career and become a designer known throughout the solar system. I have faith in you.

Love,

Your Deadbeat Father.

P.S. I’m sorry if you are angry about my snooping, but what can I say … I’m a criminal! (No emoji here; I hate them.)

I read the letter a second time before carefully folding it and putting it in my pocket. It was a little old fashioned to do that, but the letter was something I would always treasure. Looking around the small building I had inherited, I fought with my feelings. Should I be happy or sad at acquiring this building? I wasn’t really sure. I got this building at the expense of a man I had never met. But, in his own way, he did care about me. Mother told me who he was before she died, but now I would never have the chance to speak to him.

His death wasn’t the only reason for my feelings. The building was a mess. It was big, and I could see from all the dust that while it was built to be a specialised designer workshop of some kind, no one had been using it for some time. I could only console myself by saying that most of the essentials were present.

Whoever had the building previously knew what he was doing, though. The second-hand building was well lit, spacious, had a good storage area, excellent electrical service and even an office area with a full Dive setup inside. The 3D printer, metallic fabricator and holographic projector were a little dated but they were still usable. I would have to look at the rigging system more closely, but even if it was a bust, this was still a lot better than most startup weapons workshops.

Ignoring the building for the moment, I took out the second piece of my inheritance: a small scanning chip. The shady lawyer who had given me the news of my inheritance had emphasised that I should only scan the chip inside a building with security jammers. It was a strange request, but then my father was a dangerous man. Considering his career path, I wouldn’t be surprised if the chip contained some less than totally legal information. The fact that this building came equipped with white-noise filters could not be a coincidence.

Well, here goes nothing.

I activated the scan in my cybernetic right eye, and the right half of my vision turned red. Holographic images and numbers filled the red portion of my vision and the download began immediately. That was surprising. Though wireless data transfer was common, a scanning download usually required a few seconds before commencing. It seemed that my old man really was as good as everyone says he was. Then the unknown program in the chip kicked in and took over the holographic view of my eye.

[Technology System initialising. User Tobias Wong detected. Please prepare for sleep mode.]

I could only look at the message in puzzlement. What in the world was slee—

I woke up screaming. There was pain, but it was more like a feeling of pain than anything else. The unknown program I inherited had given me a big shock and I quickly looked through the program I downloaded. It was huge. I immediately realised what had happened: the program was so big it threatened to overwhelm my limited cybernetics so some sort of failsafe must have automatically been activated to protect my system. I tried to open the program but all I was rewarded with was an error.

[ERROR. Equipment missing. No Dive console deducted.]

So the program needed a Dive console to access. Luckily for me, my new dig came equipped with one. Another coincidence? I chuckled at that as I got up from the ground. I practically ran to the office. Ignoring the rest of the room, I headed straight to the Dive console. On closer look, the console was a mid-range model and was in excellent condition. It had three screens, a keyboard and soft leather cushions on a seat that allowed the user to lie down at a forty-five-degree angle. Not state of the art but more than enough for what I needed. It was also expensive. The cheapest console on the SEAL market would cost at least six thousand credits. This console had to cost at least four times as much.

I sat down and fired it up. The three screens lit up but the program didn’t access the console; instead, it stayed within my cybernetics and a holographic image visible only to me appeared.

Welcome, User Tobias. Records shows this is your first time accessing the Technology System. Please select your first mission.

The message ended there, leaving nothing for me to do but to look at a big red flashing ‘Mission’ tab. The tab was under the word ‘SYSTEM’ and I realised the new program I inherited must have created a new folder in my cybernetics. A little fear crept up inside me. The ease which the System managed to bypass my security safeguards was a little worrying, but I quickly dismissed them. If men like my father wanted a small-fry like me dead, there’s really not much I could do about it. Better to just see what he left me. Using my mind, I mentally selected the ‘Mission’ tab and a holographic image appeared.

[Mission: Create a Dive Creator account and select a subject.

DIVE - Digital Interface for Visionary Enhancement.]

The most exclusive simulator in the world, Dive was first created by Bill Muller, better known as the inventor ‘Brainflash’, as a digital platform for scientists and inventors to create and test out their inventions. As real-life testing cost money, resources and sometimes lives, Dive was created to be a safe environment for any and all scientific testing. Currently run by the Digital Flash Corporation, Dive was now the testing platform of choice for everything technological due to its robust programming that made the digital environment of Dive as realistic as possible. Everyone from wannabe inventors to giant corporations tested their products first on Dive before going on to real-life testing. A healthy and growing gaming population also inhabited Dive and the money made through e-sports was one of main revenue sources of the Digital Flash Corporation.

The System was understating it. Dive wasn’t just the testing platform of choice for the people of the world; it was the testing platform of choice for everyone in the solar system.

The Digital Flash Corporation proudly marketed their testing platform as being ninety per cent accurate, meaning that if the product worked in Dive, there was a ninety per cent chance of it working just as well in real life. Rumour had it that only the lawyers prevented Digital Flash Corporation from marketing Dive as being a hundred-per-cent accurate. As such, almost everyone tested out their technology in Dive first before going on to real-life testing.

Dive wasn’t just a testing platform, every company and mega-corporations also used it as a place to showcase their products. Although it was never intended to be a marketplace, it grew into one. It made sense when you thought about it. Dive was the place for cutting-edge scientific research and development, so if a company wanted to introduce a new product, Dive was the logical place to do it. It also made sense from the buyers’ point of view. Using Dive, buyers could easily compare products and even run tests using the Dive testing arena to see which product most suited their needs.

The screens of the console came to life as I used the keyboard to access Dive. Like almost every person in the solar system, I had access to the Dive platform before and had an account. After the login, my relatively empty account popped up. I only had a general account, which I used mainly to view video holograms and access the solar newsfeed. But today would be different. Today I would be a real user of Dive and not just some tourist.

I reached for the ‘Creator Account’ and activated it. The screen changed, and I faced his first question. Which subject should I choose? Science and technology was a wide and all-encompassing field. Everything from medical research to electronics to space exploration was under it and even a platform as robust as Dive can’t allow you to do everything at once. So the platform divided technology into ‘subjects’.

The term came from Bill Muller, who decided to divide Dive into different Subjects when he first created the platform. No one really knew why it should be ‘Fields of Science’ and not ‘Subjects of Science’, but the latter was the way Muller did it and no one at Digital Flash Corporation had ever bothered to change the programming. No one knew how many Subjects were in the first version of Dive but the list now was almost limitless. I used the filter to select the ones I was interested in and the whole list of Subjects under ‘Weapons Design’ popped up. Now I had a decision to make.

Like most businesses, the Digital Flash Corporation was there to make money. To prevent people from flooding the platform with bad and nonsensical designs, and to further gouge on wannabe designers, the Digital Flash Corporation imposed an activation fee for each of their ‘Designer Subjects’. They were not a charity, and everything on Dive required Dive Points. Called DP for short, this was the digital currency of Dive; you needed to pay real-life credits to buy it.

This meant that if you paid the activation fee for ‘Aircraft Design’, you needed to first use real-life credit to buy the DP needed to activate the subject. After paying the DP, Dive would then allow you to design your own aircraft and put it on sale on Dive.

However, you would not be allowed to create designs in any other Subjects without paying the activation fee of that subject. Not only that, you would also need to pay DP to use the parts found on the platform. Due to how realistic Dive was, almost all the parts found on the platform could be made in real life and there were more than a few small companies existing solely due to the Dive designer platform. Using the robust design platform of Dive, small-time designers created new exotic parts for other designers. These small-time parts makers were on the bottom heap of Dive, scraping through week by week usually by doing cheap modified copies of more successful models. I do not