The Mech Touch

"Still, not any act of mech design will do. There has to be a sense of weight with the design. Any mech design that puts people’s lives at stake is a design with weight."

The key to transforming a mech designer’s design philosophy was not so much designing as much mechs as possible. While Ves derived some satisfaction when he completed the design of a virtual mech, eventually it felt too fake for him. How could something fake ever match up to something real?

Seeing his mech perform on the virtual battle arena simply couldn’t beat the raw sensations running through his body when he saw actual battle footage of his mechs in battle.

All those mech pilots piloting his Marc Antony, Blackbeak and Crystal Lord designs right now trusted in their mechs and their designer to do them justice.

Ves had been away from his company for a long time, so he didn’t know the exact number of copies of his designs in circulation right now. The figure definitely surpassed tens of thousands of mechs, which was a mind-boggling number to Ves yet was considered peanuts by large mech manufacturers.

Still, it basically meant that Ves indirectly influenced the lives of tens of thousands of mechs in the Komodo Star Sector. The designs he developed and the mechs his company produced changed the course of history in this region of space. However small his influence might be, he had already left his mark!

A sense of pride welled up in his heart. Ves knew his designs achieved moderate commercial success. Plenty of buyers opted to purchase his mechs over the many alternatives in the market. Even if the market shares of his mech models didn’t seem impressive, at least a number of people valued them. How could he not feel satisfied?

The Enduring Protector he developed may never see the light of day in civilized space, but this design was just as impactful as his other two original designs. Even if only twelve or so copies existed at most, even if it would never be put to use outside of this planet, even if it would only be used for a month or so, its use was anything but trivial!

"Whatever happens at the Starlight Megalodon has the potential to steer history in different directions. Depending on what we can recover from the crashed battleship, perhaps even the course of the war will shift!"

This might be why Ves felt so affected by his accomplishments today. He could design a hundred virtual mechs and still not gain as much as completing this singular momentous design.

"Fostering a design philosophy requires a mech designer to turn it from something imaginary into something real. How can a mech designer drag their design philosophies into the right direction when they stick to playing with fake designs?"

Without reaching a state where Ves had developed his Intelligence and Spirituality to this extent, he may not have witnessed this transformation as it happened.

That said, all the other jobs had their own merits.

Playing with virtual mechs allowed him to accumulate practical experience as well as earn him some DP.

Fabricating mechs in person prevented him from growing out of touch of his own designs and increased his appreciation of the construction of mechs.

Repairing, tuning and modifying mechs brought him even closer to the essence of mechs as fallible machines. What might work out in the design schematic may not be such a good idea in reality as battle damage and wear and tear rapidly degraded the performance of various fancy features.

Mech designers needed to do more than lock themselves up in a lab all day and cook up various designs without ever seeing them for real.

This was also the main reason why a stint in a design studio wasn’t such an ideal job. Mech designers ought to consider the job of designing mechs day in day out to be heaven, but reality proved otherwise.

Design studios pumped out too many designs, many of which ended up collecting dust in some forgotten database. Only one in fifty or one in a hundred design variants may be licensed out to mech manufacturers and be put into production.

In any case, Ves enjoyed a very different position from the mech designers who slaved away in the employ of those slave-driving design studios. Even though he only designed three original mech designs so far, he felt as if he only needed to design a couple more mech designs with the same level of impact to precipitate his nascent design philosophy!

"More is not necessarily better."

The theory he heard so long ago about purposefully building up a proper foundation by designing many different mechs did not fit with his current understanding of the advancement process. Quantity could never match up to quality. A hundred fake designs never weighed as substantial as a single real design.

"Some mech designers take forty years to advance to Journeyman. Others only take a couple of years at most. The vast majority however never find an opportunity to advance."

Much of the latter likely never possessed the minimum level of spirituality required to form a nascent design philosophy and foster it until it became something real.

These differences illustrated the inherent unfairness of his profession.

An impulse compelled Ves to immediately seek out Ketis and lecture her of what he learned. Yet he quickly shook his head and dismissed the notion. The mech industry didn’t go into too much detail about these rules, and it was probably for a good reason.

"A lesson learned by yourself is much more pertinent than a lesson taught by someone else. Sometimes, experience is the best teacher."

Ves had already lectured her on the basics anyway, back when he didn’t entirely understand them himself. It was easy to state the rules existed. It was harder to actually start believing them without experiencing their relevance in their own lives.

In any case, Ves considered himself to have taken an enormous stride towards advancing to Journeyman now. He felt almost ready to take the biggest step and solidify his design philosophy.

At that point, he became set upon his path. His design philosophy would no longer be as malleable to outside changes as before. They only way for it to change was by evolving it to greater heights.

Ves considered his design philosophy and felt that for all of its flaws and restrictions, it fit his aspirations pretty well. He felt no regrets if the current incarnation of his design philosophy stuck with him for the rest of his life.

"Alright, I should get back to work."

As the Flagrant Swordmaidens crossed the final stretch to the fabled red zone, their progress slowed as the raging astral winds experienced turbulence a lot more frequently than from farther away. This close to the source of the anomaly, it was inevitable that the breakdown effect spiked more than a hundred times a day.

Yet even then, they persevered. Ves modified the designs of many Vandal mechs to make them last longer without requiring an extensive amount of servicing. Chief Dakkon designed the legged transports just like how Ves designed the Enduring Protector, so they needed a lot less babysitting than other machines.

While Ves supervised the fabrication of more and more parts for the Enduring Protector, the beast rider support group suddenly called him up for some reason.

Curious why his former subordinates requested his presence, Ves temporarily left the mech technicians to themselves and went over towards the infirmary.

Dr. Tillman greeted him there, which was strange as she wasn’t part of the beast rider support group.

"We’re keeping what we’ve found out a secret. If word ever gets out of what we discovered, all of our mech pilots will probably rise up in arms."

Ves frowned at her. Dr. Tillman’s presence here signified that the Vandals discovered something extremely serious related to the beast rider project.

She didn’t say much, but instead led Ves to an enclosed room. A pair of security officers stood guard, and only allowed them in after Ves temporarily relinquished most of his gadgets. The Vandals really didn’t want any recording devices to be smuggled inside the guarded room.

Once he entered, he came face-to-face with Captain Orfan, who was strapped up in some kind of medical module right now. Doctors and exobiologists poured over the readings like eager hamsters.

"What is going on?" Ves asked.

"Come here and see this, Mr. Larkinson!"

Ves walked over to the bank of consoles and viewed a specific projection pointed out by one of his former subordinates. It displayed a very simple graph.

To most mech pilots, the line in the graph looked flat without any fluctuations.

Right now, however, the line oscillated up and down, but to such a small extent that the graph had to be zoomed in to visualize the fluctuations.

Even though such a difference was very minute, the fact that the graph displayed fluctuations at all was an extremely momentous development!

"This graph shows that Captain Rosa Orfan is capable of demonstrating a minute amount of resonance. Right now, her resonance strength is extremely limited, measuring up to only 0.00001 laveres or less." One of the doctors said lightly.

Such a tiny figure seemed so tiny that most people might as well round it down to 0, yet to someone like Ves, this meant a sea of change!

"What we thought might happen has finally come to pass." He whispered with amazement. "Captain Orfan is now an expert candidate."

"It appears so, Mr. Larkinson."

"Why bring me here?"

"The transformation on Captain Orfan and Lieutenant Dise’s bodies are ongoing. From your understanding of expert pilots, we’d like to hear your judgement whether Captain Orfan will be able to advance to the rank of expert pilot in a short period of time."

Ves didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he directed his eyes towards Captain Orfan, who seemed bored as she was locked inside the medical module. Being prodded for hours at a time must have been an infuriating experience to someone so hands on as her. She looked as if she was one step away from ripping out all the sensors attached to her body!

He did not see her with his eyes, though. Instead, he directed his sixth sense in her direction.

He sensed a spark. A bright flame where none existed before. It was small, but it was substantially more real than any of the flames he sensed from other mech pilots.

"She’s only at the starting line right now." He said. "While we don’t know how expert pilots are formed, I don’t believe the transformations induced by her bond with Qilanxo can carry her over the hurdle. She won’t be able to crawl her way to becoming an expert pilot. She needs to run in order to make it through the race."

"What are your suggestions?" Dr. Tillman asked.

Ves tried to formulate his theories carefully. "From my understanding of expert pilots, those that are capable of becoming candidates have already passed the most difficult hurdle. Their bodies and minds possess the right potential to allow them to become expert pilots. That is what it means to be an expert candidate. Yet many candidates with bold dreams never advance to expert pilots in their lives. Do you know why that is so?"

"No."

"It’s because they lack the discipline, willpower and belief that comprises of an expert pilot’s demeanor." Ves answered simply. "Weak-willed expert pilots don’t exist. These are the lessons that the Larkinsons have learned after nurturing several expert pilots in each generation of our expansive family. This rare gift that Captain Orfan received from her bond with Qilanxo is precious, but I don’t think it’s powerful enough to do the work for her. She needs to do the rest of the work by herself for the road ahead."

Ves predicted that this might take a very long time, as Captain Orfan didn’t seem to fit with the qualities he mentioned earlier.

As much as Ves wished that the Vandals obtain an expert pilot raised from their own ranks, if only to counterbalance Venerable Xie, he couldn’t turn water into wine.