The Mech Touch

Ves tried to figure out to what extent he could transplant the biology of a Scarlet Oak Tree into the frame of a biomech.

It was not that simple.

"All of the other organic parts I've added to the Blood Knight Project share a common human root."

They were like human organs and body parts that all happened to have mutated in different directions. Although the bioparts all possessed radically different genes, it was still possible for them to get along with each other as they used to belong to the same human body in a sense.

What Ves wanted to do at this junction was a break from this pattern.

Instead of transplanting another highly mutated human organ inside a body, he wanted to integrate parts of a tree into his biomech design!

Naturally, trees normally didn't get along with human bodies.

Although biomechs were not as sensitive in comparison, there was still a limit to how much foreign matter they could integrate!

Ves was not accustomed to dealing with this problem. Conventional mechs were normally able to integrate all kinds of weird and unusual parts.

For example, many of his ranged mechs were largely based on conventional human tech, but they were also armed with luminar crystal weapons that were based on a completely different tech base!

If he wanted to, he could equip his mechs with all kinds of alien and inhuman equipment. As long as all of the different parts could communicate with each other and such, who cared about their origin?

It was a completely different story when it came to biomechs, though. Rejection and even death was a real possibility when attempting to integrate bioparts derived from radically different organic species into a biomech frame!

"It's still possible, though."

This was not an old problem. From the moment when biotech researchers first started to develop more sophisticated bioproducts, they already attempted to mix and match bioparts from different species together.

Much of these early attempts crashed and burned, but they all paved the way for solutions that eventually worked.

Nowadays, it was relatively common for biomechs to mix and match the best traits of different alien species. The biomech industry undoubtedly developed a lot of standardized solutions that addressed the compatibility problem.

Ves accessed his library and pulled out a few books that thoroughly expounded on this common problem.

"Hm, so it's like this. That makes sense."

A large part of why modern biomechs have become more tolerant towards foreign biocomponents was because all of them were based on adapted genes that were inherently more tolerant towards differences.

Unlike typical biological organisms that violently rejected any foreign organs as if they were hostile invaders, the biomechs of today were all a lot more tolerant and welcoming towards alien biocomponents.

Not only that, but even if the differences were rather big, the biomechs prevented this from becoming an issue due to the way they were produced.

"The alternative production process of biomechs helps a lot with preventing compatibility problems."

Conventional mechs were produced by fabricating their parts before assembling them together in a single whole.

While it was possible to produce biomechs with the same approach, in practice it was never done because of how much more complicated it was to graft so many different biocomponents together.

"It's like trying to create a new human being by producing all of his organs beforehand before putting them all together. You can't just expand the human population through this manner."

This was why the industry favored the production of small biomech seeds. Once they were planted in special nutrient pools, they rapidly absorbed the materials around them to grow into their 'adult' forms.

By growing and nurturing all of their biocomponents from the ground up, it was a lot easier for the foreign biocomponents to integrate into the rest of the biomech frame.

If any possible rejection phenomena occurred, then the bioengineers who supervised the growth pools would take action in order to solve the problems while the growth process was still in an early stage, thereby preventing a lot of future ailments.

That didn't mean that Ves could stuff any foreign biocomponents in a biomech design. There were still limits to everything, and he needed to make a lot of adaptations in order to ensure that the biomech would grow smoothly without producing too many complications.

"If this is what biomech designers have to deal with all the time, then it is no wonder that organic machines have never been too popular."

The requirements were simply too great. Biomech designers not only needed to study biotechnology, which was a full discipline on its own, but also had to do a lot more work than ordinary mech designers to develop their own products.

Ves would have been able to move forward and smoothly integrated any alien technology into a mech if he was working on a normal project.

"Oh well. At least the payoff should be worth it." He consoled himself.

The potential of the Blood Pact more than compensated for all of the additional difficulties and complications!

The blood sharing system that he envisioned wouldn't be as good if he attempted to realize it in a half-hearted cyborg mech. The blood that circulated in the frame of a metallic mech simply had no purpose and would never form a close connection to the machine in question.

The Blood Knight Project was different. Blood ran throughout every part of its body, from the top of its two heads down to the bottom of its feet.

"I can't fail at this point!"

Ves had approximately 12 days left before he hit his self-imposed deadline.

Though he originally planned to dedicate half of his remaining time on optimization and refinement, he was afraid that he may need to spend all of it on the blood sharing system alone!

He no longer delayed any further and proceeded to tackle the most difficult challenge of this biomech design project.

It immediately became clear that he was entering brand new territory. He could no longer follow a simple multi-step plan to resolve a familiar problem.

Instead, he had to formulate his own plan based on his analysis of different sources.

Ves spent days on consulting and cross-referencing the textbooks that specifically dealt with the compatibility problem.

He also consulted several biology and medical textbooks that specifically explained the science of blood and any related organs.

Finally, he analyzed and extrapolated the relevant information about Scarlet Oak Trees and the more metaphysical properties of blood.

He took a lot of notes and made his own conclusions based on the inferences he made.

It was difficult to believe that he was still a mech designer considering that he behaved exactly like an academic researcher at the moment.

He had set aside the biomech design interface as he no longer busied himself with working on the current biomech design.

Since he became obsessed with putting together a new theoretical framework, he needed to make extensive use of modeling and data analysis software in order to test all of his hypotheses.

Ves spent a lot of time on applying the scientific method on his problem, but he was making steady progress.

As time went on, he managed to solve one point of uncertainty after another.

His modeling and simulation work generated a continuous stream of results that either proved his theories or told him that he was off the mark.

He even began to engage in practical experiments in the later stages of his research.

Although the Workshop of Creation sounded as if it was largely centered around the design and production of mechs, it also offered a relatively full suite of powerful lab equipment.

After a brief period of familiarization, Ves made use of the lab tools to conduct his experiments.

He mainly created small chunks of biomatter that were supposed to represent the mech frame and inserted different plant cells into their midst.

Many times, the biomatter recoiled violently. Their inherent immune systems drummed out different measures in order to kill the intruders!

This was not what Ves wanted to see, so he continually tweaked the different variables to reduce the instances of rejections.

This was tedious and frustrating work as many of his initial experiments returned negative results.

Even when he started to achieve a few successes after a day, he wasn't always able to reproduce the results in repeated experiments.

Sometimes, the biomatter rejected the plant cells.

Other times, the two got along as if they were best friends.

Ves had to conduct a lot of trial and error to slowly understand and address the variables that contributed to a negative result.

He finally became happy when the immediate rejection rate of the latest iteration of his experiment had dropped to 20 percent.

While this was still an unforgivably high failure rate by his standards, Ves knew that the remaining problems would probably not be a factor anymore due to how biomechs were produced.

"This is the best I can do I suppose."

Ves took the results he obtained by combining theory with empirical data and proceeded to design the blood sharing system with confidence.

While Ves had no idea if the results of his successful experiments could be translated to the full implementation of the blood sharing system.

Without the room to conduct more experiments, he could only hope that he had got it right and accounted for all the major risk factors.

"If it comes down to it, I still have a way to solve this potential problem."

He continued to design and integrate all of the separate elements of the blood sharing system.

Surprisingly enough, developing the biocomponents responsible for filtering and processing the blood before they transferred into a different body was hardly a challenge.

The textbooks offered many existing designs and templates of a similar nature.

Ves experienced greater challenges in trying to make the Blood Knight Product produce and make use of a specific blood formula that corresponded to the biology of an individual mech pilot.

This was way more complicated than it sounded because it affected the entire biomech!

However, dealing with this matter was easier than trying to design the spiritual components that gave meaning to the blood sharing system.

The Blood Pact was not merely a way to bring the biomech and the mech pilot closer through the sharing of lifeblood.

Ves also wanted it to stand for a mechanism of mutual spiritual empowerment.

"This will probably be a one-sided affair most of the time."

Most mech pilots did not possess any spiritual potential, so their chances of developing their spiritualities on their own was miniscule.

"Yet what if these mech pilots don't have to rely on themselves anymore? What if they can borrow the spiritualities of their biomechs to do the heavy lifting?"

This was the essence of the Blood Pact and the entire reason why he was committed to the Blood Knight Project!

If Ves was able to pull this off, he could potentially develop a revolutionary new means to enable mech pilots who possessed no inherent talent for greatness to surpass the extraordinary threshold!

"Forget about spirit fruits. Forget about glow shenanigans. Only a mech can truly help a mech pilot grow!"

The concept of the Blood Pact fully aligned with his design philosophy.

If not for the fact that biomechs was not his core preoccupation, Ves might be able to advance to the rank of Senior Mech Designer as long as he could get the Blood Knight Project to work!

"Damn, I'm so close. I can't wait until I've completed this design!"

The remaining hurdles no longer hindered him as much as before. He learned so much and removed so many obstacles that he deftly managed to complete his initial implementation of the blood sharing system.

The design was functionally complete. The Blood Knight Project had finally reached a state where he could produce a complete biomech out of the design.

Although Ves could spend a few more hours or days to smooth out the most obvious wrinkles in the design, he did not want to get bogged down by this project any longer.

"While I love working on biomechs, I still need to resolve the crisis that is waiting for me back in reality."

Ves hesitated for one more instant before he submitted the design.

[Please wait...]