Homunculus

The Homunculus is a miniature remote-controlled body that can pilot a full-sized resistance-training exoskeleton, allowing its operator to move through a larger machine without occupying it. Its most consequential use is to bring Burton Fisher back into action: the small figure sits in a transparent dome atop the exoskeleton, whose movements it mirrors. The arrangement is at once a practical workaround and a striking image of mediated embodiment, with a person acting through a tiny proxy that in turn animates a powerful body.

Design and Operation

Ash explains that the exoskeleton is not itself a peripheral, even though it has a full range of movement. It can, however, be controlled through a Homunculus, described as a miniature peripheral. The distinction matters: the exoskeleton supplies the large body and its strength, while the miniature figure provides the remote control interface. The operator does not simply wear or inhabit the exercise device; control passes through a small, separate body placed in a cockpit-like enclosure.

The Homunculus is introduced as a practical option when another suitable peripheral is unavailable. Ash offers the exoskeleton-and-Homunculus arrangement as an alternative to a different remote body, noting that it can be used until a replacement is found. This makes the system more than a curiosity: it is an adaptable interface that lets the team put a person’s agency into a machine already at hand.

The connection is described as running in the reverse of the casual assumption that the little figure is merely a passenger. Burton explains that a small figure was placed in a cockpit on the exoskeleton where its head would be, then synchronized with the machine. Flynne later recognizes the headless white machine she had seen earlier and realizes Burton had been inside the exercise device in this indirect sense. The little body turns; the exoskeleton turns with it. The relationship between the two is legible through their coordinated motion, even when the human operator remains elsewhere.

Burton’s Return to Action

After Burton is injured, the Homunculus arrangement gives him a way to resume moving and fighting. When Flynne encounters him again, the exoskeleton has a domed, transparent cylinder mounted on its shoulders. Inside it stands the tiny figure that had driven him, alongside Lev Zubov, to the house of love. The visible enclosure reveals the chain of control: an operator, a miniature remote body, and a much larger machine moving in response.

The improvised setup changes the way Burton can participate. He had been absent from the action and, on waking, did not remember everything that had happened; he recalls coming to and seeing Conner Penske in person. Now he can move again through the exoskeleton, sparring with Conner, who is operating another peripheral. Their old practice of sparring returns, with their familiar watchful shifts of weight and sudden, hard-to-follow hand movements. The altered equipment does not erase their shared history or their competitive rhythm; it gives that rhythm a new physical form.

The machine’s body is conspicuously not human. At first it is a white exercise exoskeleton with a dome where a head would be, while the Homunculus performs the corresponding movements inside. Later, Burton’s setup has eerily realistic, tanned human hands, a modification that makes the machine more expressive and more unsettling. Flynne feels the impulse to hug the exoskeleton when Burton speaks through it, then hesitates because the hands make the familiar body seem strange. The device makes reunion possible, but not seamless: recognition and bodily unease arrive together.

Improvisation and Practical Use

The system is assembled and adapted by the people around it rather than presented as a finished, standardized body. During Burton’s visit, Ossian Murphy rigs a domed transparent cylinder onto the exoskeleton’s shoulders. Elsewhere, the team discusses mounting a small cockpit where the machine’s head would be and synchronizing the miniature figure with the larger frame. The improvised construction allows the equipment to serve immediate needs, but its visible joins—the dome, the headless frame, and the changing hands—keep its technological mediation in view.

The Homunculus also helps with tasks that would otherwise impose physical labor on one person. After Wilf Netherton has slept in a Mercedes, Ash and Ossian move him; Ash operates the exoskeleton through a Homunculus so Ossian does not have to do all the heavy lifting. The machine is therefore useful beyond combat or exercise. Its value lies in making a powerful, mobile body available for work while keeping its operator at a remove.

A later encounter turns that practical capacity into an instrument of armed action. The exoskeleton enters with the Homunculus on its massive shoulders, and Burton apologizes for damaging a car and killing a driver and security detail. At Lowbeer’s signal, it raises its arms; hidden compartments open in its wrists to produce a candy-cane gun and Lowbeer’s tipstaff. Burton then uses the tipstaff to kill Sir Henry Fishbourne. The Homunculus itself is not the weapon, but it is the control link through which Burton acts at a scale and with equipment unavailable to his injured body alone.

A Layered Body and Its Consequences

The repeated image of the small figure enclosed above the exoskeleton unsettles any simple division between operator and machine. From Flynne’s perspective, the little figure turns and the large body follows; from Burton’s perspective, he is again sparring and moving. The operator’s agency is neither located only in the miniature body nor fully contained in the exoskeleton. It travels across both, with the larger frame making action possible and the smaller one serving as its controllable proxy.

That layered embodiment changes the emotional meaning of physical presence. Flynne recognizes Burton by his voice and his manner, but the body before her is a headless exercise machine with a dome and uncanny human hands. Her impulse to embrace it collides with the strangeness of its surface. Later, the figure in the dome turns as the exoskeleton turns, and the voice identifies itself as Burton’s. The scene grants him a recognizable presence while keeping the mechanical distance between his injured body and his moving form in view.

The device’s significance lies in that combination of access and mediation. It offers Burton a route back into action, assists with physically demanding movement, and gives the team a way to deploy strength without treating the exoskeleton as a conventional suit worn by its user. At the same time, its visible construction refuses the illusion of an unbroken body: human intention passes through a miniature avatar into a machine, and the result can be useful, familiar, and eerie at once.