The Mech Touch

"Miaow!" Clixie proudly thrust up her collar as she stopped in front of Lucky.

Her upturned tail playfully swished from side to side as she showed off her flashy gift. The sizable golden collar resembled an elaborate necklace that was fit to be worn by an aristocrat.

"Meow…?"

Lucky blinked as he spotted the deep blue gem socketed on the front of the collar. He moved closer and sniffed at it before jumping back in surprise.

"Meow!"

Clixie arrogantly lifted her paw and licked at it. "Miaow."

"Meow meow!"

"Miaooow."

While the two cats fussed over the new collar, Ves and his pregnant wife stood a bit further away.

"Have you made a choice, Gloriana?"

The woman slowly nodded. "I've weighed all of the options that you've presented me and thoroughly plotted their pros and cons. After careful consideration, I have decided to go with the networking cat."

Ves raised his eyebrows. He hadn't expected her to pick this particular option.

"That's… quite a surprising answer."

"Why? You gave me this choice because you thought it would be useful to me. What makes you think I would have cast it aside?"

"According to my impression of you, I would have thought you would have gone all crazy over adopting a cat that brings you closer to the Superior Mother."

Gloriana shook her head. "To be honest, I did feel ecstatic about getting closer to your mother, but once I calmed down, I realized that I am not worthy to follow in her footsteps."

"Huh?"

"I think you are misunderstanding something about me, Ves. I worship the Superior Mother. I admire the Superior Mother. I look up to the Superior Mother. That does not mean I want to become the Superior Mother. Your suggestion does exactly that, and while I can't say I am unattracted to obtaining a pet that is a lesser version of your mother, I realize that I am different."

This was an important realization that anyone had to make. It was all well and fine for people to yearn to become their role models, but everyone was different. Imitation had its limits and truly successful people learned how to put their hero worship aside when it began to hinder their growth.

Gloriana bloomed with confidence as she explained her ambition to her husband.

"I want to become a Supreme one day as well, Ves. I want to become a Star Designer and wield similar powers to the Superior Mother, but aligned with my own strengths. The main identity of the Superior Mother is a nurturer of children. My overarching identity is a mech designer. I'm already treading a different path. So no, Ves, I don't want my companion god to embody a Supreme because I will one day be able to stand at the same height as your mother!"

This close, Ves could feel the burning dėsɨrė and ambition within her. He was happy for her. She had not lost her way as her mech designer in pursuit of power.

"What of the second option I presented to you?" He curiously asked.

"The craftsmanship cat? I rejected it for a similar reason." She answered. "The impact it will have on my own development is not something that I can ignore. You were correct in saying that taking shortcuts will only undercut my own development. Even if my decision will make it harder for me to climb up Senfovon's Ladder of Craftsmanship, at least I will be able to master all of the rungs I've ascended!"

Her rationale made a lot of sense to Ves. Technically speaking, he was the one who had chosen to take a shortcut. While the existence of Vulcan had helped him progress his own insights in craftsmanship by at least two decades, skipping much of the hardships and lessons in between might cause him to develop deficiencies in his later career.

However, this was not an insurmountable problem. While it was true that Ves relied on plenty of external ȧssistance in order to boost and accelerate his career, he still accomplished a lot of work by himself.

He experimented with new and unknown phenomena all the time. While he might not be able to understand their rules and mechanisms at the start, he was always able to figure them out over time.

As a mech designer who was accustomed to innovating his way out of his problems, he long understood that as long as he was clever enough, he didn't always have to pay the full price for his actions. Cheating processes and bypassing the negative consequences of his actions was his bread and buŧŧer!

Therefore, the downside that Gloriana was worried about did not concern Ves that much. If Vulcan truly hindered his progression in the future, then he had already thought up at least three possible solutions to mitigate this issue.

"Hm, the craftsmanship cat isn't necessary anyway." Ves spoke and raised his hammer. "We can always consult Vulcan if we need a little help. That's why I made him. Compared to the craftsmanship cat, the networking cat provides us with an undeniable advantage."

"That's why I went with this option. A companion god that is based around connecting people together is the best compliment to my own capabilities and ambitions. At first glance, she doesn't offer any of the exciting new abilities and boosts of the other alternatives. This choice only makes it so that I can spread my vision and perspective to other mech designers and vice versa. Yet that is exactly what I've been missing this whole time. All of those times we've worked with Blinky really opened up my eyes to how little everyone understands each other."

Ves understood exactly what she was complaining about. "Collaborations are never easy. Both of us have worked together long enough to understand the gist of our design philosophies, but that only reduces the friction. We can never remove it entirely unless we become identical to each other."

This was not a unique problem to them. Every mech designer and every working professional who had to work in teams or groups encountered a lot of friction, misunderstandings and misalignment. Managers existed for a reason but even they couldn't put out all of the fires.

"During our previous collaborations, there were too many times when you or our ȧssistants got in my way because you didn't understand my approach." Gloriana frankly said. "With a design network that can potentially last for days instead of hours, we can cooperate and collaborate much more effectively with each other. While there is a risk that we might become too dependent on what we share with each other, we can limit the side effects as long as we limit it to critical design or fabrication sessions."

They had already been making less use of Blinky's design network. If they wanted to, they could borrow the companion spirit's amazing ability for at least a handful of hours every day. Yet a mech designer didn't actually need to know that much about what their other colleagues were doing.

Both Ves and Gloriana had to make a tradeoff whether they wanted to maximize the quality of their output or whether they wanted to prioritize the development of the mech designers taking part in a project.

Some projects were so important that they had to be maximized at all costs.

Other projects were less critical and could serve as a useful learning opportunity to the mech designers involved.

The Bulwark Project and the Chimera Project happened to fall in the first category.

"I don't want to hold anything back when we perform our upcoming upgrade job." She told him. "The Shield of Samar is a huge mech and upgrading it to an expert mech is far more challenging on a technical level than fabricating a new one from the ground up. I can't do all of the work by myself, but I just know that people like you will drop the ball too many times to count. With my new companion god, I can constantly keep an eye on your work while you can draw from my expertise to make sure your work doesn't interfere with mine."

Of course, Gloriana would also be able to borrow a greater portion of Ves' unique advantages. Although she was already able to do that to an extent with the help of her ring and the spiritual fragment in her mind, once they linked up to a design network, the bandwidth and the depth of knowledge passing through the temporary connections increased substantially.

Ves even theorized that it was possible to create a design network that was so strong and deep that two different mech designers could actually fuse into a single super designer!

It sounded similar to what rational mech designers were trying to accomplish by themselves. They comprehended the design philosophies of others in order to be able to leverage all of them at the same time.

Though it sounded like a great idea, Ves wasn't overly impressed at the results so far. Emulation always had its limitations. Not even Master Willix was able to express someone else's design philosophy at 100 percent effectiveness.

As far as Ves was concerned, two heads were always better than one! The biggest hindrance was that there was too much separation in between the heads. If a powerful design network was capable of lowering or removing these boundaries, then the outcome should be drastically better!

"Let's do it now." She said.

"Are you sure?"

"I've already made up my mind, Ves! I don't need any further time to consider my decision. I know what I want. With the help of a networking cat, I can finally become more relevant again!"

Her eyes shone at the thought of how her position within the Design Department would change. The power that Ves had promised to her would not only grant her an advantage that almost no other mech designer possessed, but would also turned her into an indispensable ȧsset in the Larkinson Clan!

Sure, Blinky was able to generate his own design network, but it only lasted for two hours before he needed to rest. This interval was far too short and it always posed a significant hindrance to the flow of any critical fabrication run.

Ves brought his wife out of the design lab and led her down to his personal workshop. He took time to gather his ingredients and inspect his wife's condition to make sure that nothing was wrong.

"I need you to stay as calm and composed as possible. Don't spike your emotions or think too much. The calmer you are, the less complications I have to deal with. Do you understand?"

She nodded. "I understand. It's just like fabricating a mech. You need a stable and controlled workplace in order to perform at your best."

"Good."

Ves had already created numerous companion spirits before. He was confident enough that he could pull it off without negatively affecting his wife or their unborn daughter.

"Blinky, come out. I need your help again."

Mrow.

As Blinky got ready to perform spiritual surgery on Gloriana, Ves turned around and lifted a P-stone. He gazed at it with a complex look.

So far, he hadn't done much with the design seed that he had managed to salvage from Lady Aisling Curver's mind. Its condition was not as good as before because Ves had already chipped a few fragments from the core.

Though Ves could have continued to fragment the design seed many more times, he didn't want to hold back this time.

"Do it, Blinky."

With numerous empowered spiritual strikes, Blinky struck the damaged design seed! The hard seed already exhibited vulnerabilities so the spiritual cat simply targeted them in order to create a bigger opening.

The attacks continued until the design seed finally split in half!

Blinky quickly took one of the halves while Ves deposited the other half back into its P-stone.

It was a bit exaggerated to use up a whole design seed as the main ingredient of a new companion spirit, but Ves predicted that half of it should be tolerable for his wife!