The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1854

Chapter 1854 Bad Timing

Over the course of designing the Larkinson mech, Ves pushed every possible distraction from his mind. He continued to invest his heart and soul into his work, trying his best to make the modular mech platform and its four configurations viable against as many threats as possible!

Though difficult, Ves and Gloriana both rose to the challenge. They did not let a setback stop them for long. They frequently exchanged with each other and came up with ideas that neither of them were able to conceive on their own. Their synergy reached a higher level as they became more in tune with the design and their fellow partner.

The cooperation between the pair had already been built up over the course of previous projects. Ves felt as if all of those prior collaborations were practice runs for the current project.

Every possible issue had been explored and all of the problems resulting from lack of familiarity and mistaken assumptions had been dealt with! Both of them became intimately familiar with each other's strengths and weaknesses and automatically divided work to the mech designer who was best suited to tackle the specific issue.

In general, Gloriana did better with detail work and complicated technical puzzles. Her design philosophy lent herself well to spotting faults as they showed up. She also excelled in optimizing a rough implementation so that they did not cause any further issues down the line.

That did not mean that Ves was completely useless on this front. His breadth and wealth of theoretical and practical knowledge exceeded that of his girlfriend. The only downside of accumulating all of his System-granted knowledge was that his utilization couldn't keep up. For every problem, he could come up with dozens of solutions, but he wasn't able to make the most out of them in the more difficult cases.

Mech design was both an art and a science.

Ever since he embarked on his career, Ves always thought he would lean towards the latter. Science and engineering was the foundation of his craft. How could a mech designer ever design something complicated with up to millions of different parts all working in unison?

Yet it was only when Ves started working with Gloriana that he became aware of his true passion and strength.

Ves preferred to see himself as an artist.

He was an artist of mechs and spirits!

He was a sketcher of mechs and a weaver of life. A mech design served as the canvas of his creative energies, both figuratively and literally!

Technology was just a means to an end to Ves. He never developed the insane passion that other mech designers possessed with regards to technology.

Whereas most mech designers devoted their passion towards flight systems, light mechs, laser rifles, energy efficiency and so on, Ves chose a completely different direction!

There was a reason why the MTA threw his so-called 'metaphysical man-machine symbiosis' specialization in the Class IX design philosophy bucket.

His focus towards mechs was completely out of the conventional norms of his profession. Neither the MTA nor his colleagues were able to wrap their heads around his logic and his approach.

Mechs were alive? Nonsense! They were simply machines! Everyone who wasn't steeped with superstition could tell you that! There is not a single aspect about mechs that proved that they were alive!

Even though Ves increasingly proved the validity of his odd framework by developing his characteristic glows, most high-ranking mech designers simply passed it off as an unknown psionic phenomenon. Like a blind cat bumping into a mouse, they believed that Ves was just flailing around randomly and just managed to hit the jackpot by discovering a strange psionic interaction!

To make a mech designer truly believe that mechs had the potential to come alive was incredibly hard. Ves tried over and over to convince his subordinates that it was best to treat mechs as if they were alive and needed to be treated as such.

Few people actually became convinced. Even if they paid lip service to him because he was the owner of the LMC and the clan patriarch, in their hearts they were still bound to their limited view on reality.

Still, there were some people who got it. Joshua King was a fantastic example of a mech pilot who truly understood the essence of his mechs.

Yet people like Joshua were very rare, especially among the highly secularist Brighters and Larkinsons who made up the core of his enterprise.

To his frustration, the people who were actually prone to accepting his eccentric views on mechs were always those who he considered to be deficient in critical thinking.

This description was a common euphemism in the Bright Republic. It was a polite way of describing people enthralled by superstition.

In other words, religious nuts!

Gloriana believed in all of his claims without ever questioning whether he was spouting nonsense. She simply believed in him at such a whole-hearted degree that Ves felt kind of guilty for treating her as a gullible idiot.

The same went for the Ylvainans in the second design team. Ves noted that the work submitted by Oscar DiMartin, Renee Zelin, Erica Sprint and Pascal Curin all carried a sense of harmony that allowed them to mesh well with the ongoing design.

From a spiritual level, their sincere respect and worshipful attitude towards the incomplete mech design was much more beneficial than a neutral attitude!

This meant that the other assistant mech designers such as the Tovars left much bigger spiritual messes behind.

The difference was so stark and obvious that Ves felt somewhat conflicted over Gloriana and the Ylvainans.

He always seemed to do better with people of faith and belief. Whether he collaborated with them on a mech design or tried to get his mechs accepted by them, religious people always seemed to resonate with him more.

The irony of this situation was that he didn't consider his own views to be superstition at all! In his eyes, he was simply exploring an obscure and controversial field of science.

For some reason, the MTA limited its research on psionic power and kept it buried in their vaults. As for the CFA, their fetish for big guns, big ships and superior technology somehow led them to pretend that psionic power didn't exist!

"Is it really so difficult to believe in both science and something that sounds a little odd like the premise of my design philosophy?"

Having been raised as a Brighter, Ves simply solved the dilemma by keeping an open mind.

He did not keep his mind closed to unnatural phenomena like most secularists, but neither did he blindly take outlandish assumptions and claims for granted like the Ylvainans.

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