The Mech Touch

After spending several weeks on testing the Tutor Project and the MSTS, the MTA research team was finally ready to wrap up their data collection duties!

Yarach Stimmons and his fellow MTA researchers had completed their assignment in the Davute System. There was no reason for them to stick around any longer and the Alacritous Stork had already received instructions to bring them back to the Paracelsus Optimus.

Many of them looked rather regretful at the end. They had become increasingly more cognizant of the innovative and groundbreaking nature of the Mental Simulation Training System.

It was built from a completely different tech base that offered a lot of new possibilities!

A few MTA researchers were even clever enough to realize that if this tech base was powerful enough to produce the MSTS, it could also be used to develop other wonderful applications!

Alas, none of them possessed the qualifications or permission to poke any further. Ves had not made any deals with regards to sharing the source code or the tech base behind his MSTS.

Even if he did, he doubted whether anyone from the MTA would be able to replicate Vulcan's spiritual work!

Ves was happy enough to see the MTA busybodies return to where they belonged. As much as they had been useful in verifying the safety of his new products, they were less than forthcoming in sharing all of their data and analysis results.

Only Stimmons spoke a bit more freely. Part of that was because he was a mech designer. Another part was because he would likely be assigned to study aspects of the MSTS in the future.

Now that they wrapped everything up, Ves and Stimmons finally had an opportunity to speak to each other on a personal basis.

Ves had long grown curious at the differences in status and responsibilities between Jovy Armalon and Yarach Stimmons.

Both of them were Journeymen who grew up and worked for the Mech Trade Association for their entire lives.

However, there were clear differences between the two. The fundamental reason why they received different treatments was because of the disparities in their design philosophies.

"Mr. Armalon is pursuing a much more profound design philosophy in comparison to many other mech designers within our Association." Stimmons frankly explained to Ves. "His ambitious choice along with the progress he has achieved so far has put him onto an elite track where he is entitled to greater care and resources. As long as he continues to make progress in a branch of mech design that none of us have explored in the past, he will continue to receive rich rewards."

"What about you, Mr. Stimmons?"

The MTA Journeyman smiled. "I have enough self-knowledge to pursue more modest and achievable goals. I am not as daring as you or Jovy nor possess the overwhelming need to make a radical difference in the mech industry. It is already enough for me to contribute where I can and facilitate the work of other mech designers such as yourself. This is what our Association is tasked with doing in the first place."

Ves did not entirely understand why mech designers entered this profession without developing an ambition to make any major changes, but everyone was different. He respected the decision made by Stimmons. Perhaps it was not bad for a mech designer who did not possess an overwhelming amount of confidence in his abilities to aim for a more modest goal.

"What can you tell me about your specialization?" Ves asked. "All I know so far is that you specialize in neural interface technology. What is it that you intend to improve with your work? I met a neural interface specialist once who wanted to make it more viable for potentates with lower grades of genetic aptitude to become effective in battle."

Yarach Stimmons wryly smiled. "That is an ambitious goal. Many mech designers have poured over this problem, and while they have achieved a limited degree of success. This is done by developing a unique neural interface and incorporating special components and programming that are specifically optimized to work with a mech pilot's individual strengths and weaknesses. However, the cost of designing and producing customized neural interfaces that can slightly improve the performance of a low aptitude pilot is exorbitant."

It was good that mech pilots with lower-than-average genetic aptitudes still had hope. They just had to be at least as rich as a first-rater in order to commission a custom neural interface!

"I see. You sound like you don't really believe in this solution."

"Neural interfaces are amazing products of technology. They can easily and conveniently accomplish a feat that did not sound possible to humanity at first. They are devices that can establish a stable and coherent connection between an organic human mind and a completely digital machine. However, only a small proportion of humanity is naturally able to withstand the high degree of data throughput that takes place during each active connection. Mech pilots with lower grades of genetic aptitudes are clear failures who are not able to keep up with the demands of intensive mechs."

In the past, mech pilots with D-grade and F-grade genetic aptitudes weren't as worthless. Mechs were a lot simpler and weaker back then. They moved slower, they didn't possess a lot of systems and mech designers weren't as crazy at the time.

However, as mechs and the technology around them became more advanced, the subsequent generations of mech pilots had to handle more data and control more and more aspects of their newer and fancier machines.

This led to the gradual marginalization of potentates who weren't lucky enough to obtain genetic aptitudes that were at least higher than C-grade.

Perhaps third-raters below this threshold could still get by in limited circumstances, but first-raters wouldn't even be able to enroll into any mech academy with their awful talent.

The cost of training any first-class mech pilot was extremely high! It was not worth it to invest so much effort only to produce an inferior soldier that wouldn't even be able to control an ordinary first-class multipurpose mech!

Ves inwardly sighed. He truly pitied the potentates who had fallen into this bucket.

He also recognized the difference between a third-class mech designer and a first-class mech designer.

The former was more sympathetic towards mech pilots with lower than average talent while the latter did not care at all for the plight of the most unfortunate group of potentates!

"You haven't exactly told me where your focus lies in your personal work." Ves reminded the MTA Journeyman. "What do you aim to achieve with your design philosophy?"

"My work is not that easy to explain to an uninitiated mech designer such as yourself. A simple description of my research direction is that I am looking to improve the degree of fidelity in substitution whenever a mech pilot interfaces with a non-humanoid mech."

"Uhh…"

"To put it in simpler terms, my work aims to make mech pilots feel less alienated and 'stuck in the wrong body' whenever they pilot a beast mech, an aquatic mech and other mech types that are less common."

"Oh! I get it now! That actually sounds interesting. Is the issue that you are working on a big problem?"

"It depends." Stimmons said. "Do you know the reason why beast mechs designed by most of our colleagues look similar to the animals that we are familiar with in nature or in various forms of media?"

"I always thought that people like us are too lazy to invent a new mech shape. Why go through all of that trouble and effort when natural evolution has already given us ready-made templates that are already proven concepts?"

The MTA Journeyman smirked. "This is only a shallow reason. The deeper reason why beast mechs look similar to classical Earth animals is because every single mech pilot has grown up with images and depictions of them. For example, a mech pilot that grew up with a cat as a pet or seen a tiger in a zoo will perform considerably better when piloting a tiger mech."

"What?! Are you serious? I've never heard about this relationship before!"

"I am being utterly serious, Mr. Larkinson. This is a real and clear relationship that has been empirically proven by many studies. This is actually one of the reasons why we subtly encourage the adoption of pets and make sure that modern media show plenty of depictions of Earth animals. Think about all of the popular cartoon dramas that children grow up with. Those shows that center about the daily lives of anthropomorphized ponies? They prep future mech pilots into piloting centaur mechs. That classic cartoon where a cat continually tries and fails to catch a mouse? The potentates who have watched this show will feel grateful for doing so when they choose to pilot tiger mechs in the future."

Ves was utterly gobsmacked. He never knew that there was such an important relation between a mech pilot's familiarity with animals and their subsequent compatibility with non-humanoid mechs that adopted the shape of those very beasts.

For the MTA to go as far as to manipulate the programming of children's cartoons showed that this relationship was quite real!

"Doesn't that mean the mech pilots of my clan are highly predisposed to piloting tiger mechs?"

Stimmons firmly nodded. "With all of the cats associated with your Larkinsons, this is practically a guarantee. Of course, it is not necessary to keep so many pets. Your clan is a bit excessive in that regard. In truth, it is already enough to expose mech pilots to images or stylized depictions of animals. The essential requirement is to familiarize a mech pilot to the shape and behavior of an animal. As long as he can visualize a cat, a bird or an octopus, he will smoothly and naturally be able to pilot a beast mech of the associated shape without needing to go through too much book learning and specialized training."

This explained so much about beast mechs. Perhaps mech designers who specialized in designing them already learned about this relationship in their classes, but Ves mostly spent his time on designing humanoid mechs.

"So this is the reason why there aren't many mechs out there that adopt weird and abnormal alien shapes, right?"

"Correct. Beast mechs with shapes that do not correspond to any familiar animals may possess objective advantages over their more conventional counterparts, but they are much less popular on the market and do not sell as much. Few mech pilots are willing to invest the considerable amount of time and effort that is necessary to understand a new beast shape and learn their distinct advantages. This in turn makes it so that beast mech designers are even less inclined to deviate from the prevailing industry standard."

The consequence was that the overwhelming majority of beast mechs in use all looked familiar to many people!

It was not without reason why tiger mechs and avian mechs were the most popular beast shapes!

"I can imagine that it isn't really necessary for mech designers to deviate from the classical beast mech shapes." Ves remarked. "Most of them already do their jobs well enough that they do not need to be replaced."

"That is correct. You can design a tiger mech with six limbs instead of four, but the costs outweigh the benefits in most cases. We mech designers do not stick to the familiar shapes solely because they are familiar to us. They can truly form the basis of powerful, cost-effective mech designs."

"I see. So where does your design philosophy play into this, Mr. Stimmons?"

"My work is aimed at reducing the familiarity problem. I am actually a bit of a contrarian on this issue and see greater promise in beast mechs that are inspired by more obscure exobeasts and astral beasts. They may look horrifying to some, but many of them are also products of natural evolution. If mech pilots do not have to overcome a major threshold in order to get started on mastering these non-standard non-humanoid mechs, then it becomes slightly easier to increase the diversity of beast mech models in the mech market."

"...And you call that a modest goal?"