From Surgipelago, the Beach Surgery encyclopedia
exoskeletons
This article concerns the exoskeleton technology in Beach Surgery. For related bodily technologies, see The pacemaker, Autonomous diesel data-harvesters.
Exoskeletons are articulated mechanical frames—the McRaes' "Mighty Mechas"—that appear in Chapter 1 as Katita wheels the unconscious Leif across the parallel wires into their apartment atop the Bolton Street car park. The exoskeletons are rendered in high cartoon: oversized metal hands, stuttering hydraulics, a comic boom-boom-crash as the elderly couple stumbles through their home in them.
Yet the dread is structural. Like Leif's external pacemaker—the heart-rhythm governed by a machine on his chest—the exoskeletons are extensions of sovereign control over the body. The McRaes are not augmented; they are worn by their own augmentation. When Katita and Leif escape down the stairwell and the exoskeletons fall away, the couple become vulnerable again—briefly human, briefly undone.
Across adaptations, the exoskeletons recur in different forms: the anime renders them as translucent, almost ghostly frames; the Brazilian theatre piece uses them as a chorus of mechanical witnesses; the stage play has them hum at frequencies below human hearing. They are always comic, always slightly wrong, always **on the edge of tenderness**.