Jon stopped concentrating, and immediately fell to the ground. He tottered on his high heels for a moment, but managed to grab the wall again and stay upright.
"Excellent! That's really all there is to it! You'll need to practice, of course, but you've got the basics down!"
They repeated the calibration process for the inertial dampener. Jon learned that the implants had been programmed to automatically remove the inertia of anything that would hit him hard enough to cause an injury. Dr. Takeda demonstrated that by throwing a fastball at him, and it just bounced off. It stung a little, but not enough to really hurt.
"I'm a little surprised that you didn't pull a gun on me," Jon said, thinking of scenes like that in the comics he had read.
"I'm not stupid! Who would fire a live gun on a test subject during a calibration run?"
"Mr. Smith?"
Dr. Takeda nodded sympathetically. "Well, I'm not like him!"
Then Dr. Takeda produced a piece of metal pipe about two feet long.
"Try bending that."
Jon strained at the bar, but it didn't move. He tried activating the inertial dampener, and though it made the bar very easy to move, it still wouldn't bend.
"Okay, good thought activating the inertial control unit. But since your arm and the bar have the same relative mass, it doesn't change the equation. What you need to do is increase the inertia of your arm so it's enough to bend the bar. Does that make sense?"
"I think so." Jon tried willing his arm to become heavier, and found that he couldn't move it at all -- it was as though it was stuck in concrete. He stopped concentrating and found that he could move freely again.
"Okay, so you've discovered one of the issues with this system. Your muscles aren't actually any stronger. It just seems like they are because you can lower the inertia of whatever you're holding. But if you increase your own effective mass, you can't control your arm anymore. What you need to do is start a motion, then activate the device to increase your inertia just long enough to impact the target. Got it?"
Jon nodded, then held the bar out in front of him. He started swinging his hand toward it, then activated the device. His arm suddenly felt unstoppable, and he smacked into the bar and bent it over easily. He panicked for a split second as it kept moving, feeling totally out of control, before he remembered to stop concentrating on increasing his own inertia, and instantly he was able to stop.
"That's going to take some getting used to!"
