NARRATOR: Medical Wing, Quarantine 2...
TAGON: Tailor, we need to stay buttoned up for a while. How long will this armor of yours keep us alive?
TAILOR: Inertiics are the biggest drain. Stay out of combat and you could die of old age in there.
TAGON: That sounds lovely, but what happens when we get hungry? Until I've cleared the quarantine I can't let anything into or out of this suit.
TAILOR: As long as you've got power, you've got food, water, and air, sir.
TAGON: Walk me through it, Tailor.
TAILOR: Certainly, sir.
TAILOR: For the purposes of this discussion, your body is just a chemical furnace with stringent input requirements.
You obtain energy by breaking high-yield chemical bonds and forming low-yield bonds. Oxidation-reduction is the best example, as you turn hydrocarbons and oxygen into water and carbon dioxide.
Your armor's power plant drives recyclers which will turn water and carbon dioxide back into oxygen and hydrocarbons.
Grossly oversimplifying, this same process will return urine and fecal matter to a sta--
TAGON: *interrupting* Okay, stop.
TAGON: I didn't want a chemistry lesson. I want to know how to make it work.
TAILOR: Oh. Did you hook up both catheters?
TAGON: I usually make a point of going before I suit up.
TAILOR: I've got good news. We used smart catheters so you can run the hookup routine without opening the armor. Provided you're not wearing armored underpants, of course.
TAGON: That is the very worst good news I've heard all day.