The Mech Touch

Before Ves was comfortable with discussing Marvaine's future trajectory, he wanted to see for himself what kind of genius he had raised under his nose.

While the test results provided by Witshaw & Seneca were filled with lots of statistics that tried to quantify Marvaine's comprehensive cognitive abilities in excruciating detail, they did not mean much to him. It was all numbers and graphs. Even the reference values that were supposed to give context by making comparisons did not give him a good understanding of what his impressive son could actually do at his tender age.

This was why he opted to test his kid in a completely different way.

He gazed down at his boy. Marvaine squinted in pleasure as Gloriana neatly combed his brown tufts of hair into a more dignified style.

"Marvaine?"

"Yes, papa?"

"I have a birthday present lying around in a nearby storage cabinet. I originally wanted to wait to give it to you until you were a little older, but your mother and I are so happy that you have done well in your studies that I decided to hand it over to you today!"

His son's eyes lit up as if he was having the best day ever!

"Really? Yay! I want my present! I want my present! I want my present! Where is it, papa?!"

"Please wait. I've already ordered a couple of bots to bring over your present. It's a bit big, but it will definitely be fun, I promise!"

Ves slyly avoided any description of the present that he had prepared for his son. Though Marvaine grew increasingly more frustrated at the lack of answers, his mood soon lifted as five different lifter bots floated into the design lab.

Each of them carried secure metal crates that were typically used to hold high-value goods and materials.

Gloriana's eyes glazed over for a moment as she thought about what was in those crates.

"Brings back memories." She whispered. "I had so much fun with them. Now, my boy is following suit. I'm so proud."

She already knew what her husband had prepared for a birthday present. The two held a discussion about it a year ago. They had bought a set back in one of the luxury toy stores located in the Trinity Mall in Davute.

They bought the present in advance because it would be a lot harder to get it shipped to their flagship once the expeditionary fleet resumed its journey again.

It was also a lot easier to specify the contents and the configuration of the set through a store that officially licensed the toy system.

The bots carefully put down the crates before making their way out. Ves waited until they left through the hatch of the design lab.

Once the hatch closed shut, he approached the nearest crate and transmitted a code that automatically disengaged its lock.

The metal structure soon unfolded, revealing a gleaming boxed package that was covered by bright colors and action-packed images!

A young boy and a young girl were holding different miniature mech limbs as they were in the middle of assembling a mech figurine.

A slightly older boy was doing the same, but instead of holding an entire mech arm, he was in the middle of slotting a foot into a leg socket.

A pair of other children who almost looked to be in their teens were working together on putting together a more complicated miniature mech. They were working with parts that were so small that they had to use tweezers and other specialized tools to slot sensor modules into the sockets of a head or energy cells inside a fixed internal structure of a miniature mech.

Aside from showing off different children having lots of fun while piecing together toy mechs from different building blocks, they also showed the toy mechs in action.

It soon became clear that the little machines weren't simple blocks of metal or composites when they were pieced together.

The cover of the packaging showed a jumble of completed miniature mechs brawling against each other in a small arena!

On one side, a swordsman mech flew into the air with the help of its 'flight system' which was actually just a miniaturized antigrav module. Its weapon was in the middle of swinging onto a floating miniature rifleman mech which was firing kinetic projectiles made out of harmless foam.

On the other side, a miniature heavy artillery mech was firing a salvo of extremely low-powered optical beams onto a classic miniature knight mech.

A miniature light skirmisher was just about to stab its blunted daggers into the back of the artillery mech, but a miniature striker mech that was hiding from behind a fake structure fired a spray of colored water that was supposed to represent flames in the fast-moving machine's direction.

Marvaine's mood and expression grew increasingly more ecstatic when he recognized the present his father had bought for him! It was a toy franchise that was regularly featured in the ads whenever he and his sisters watched those cartoon dramas!

"It's a Mekano Set!" He exclaimed with glee!

"That's not entirely correct." Ves grinned as he commanded the remaining secure crates to reveal their contents.

They all  unfolded at the same time, revealing packaged boxes that depicted different toy mechs and parts, but all featured the same trademarked logo!

"It's not just one Mekano Set, but five of them! They will provide you with plenty of parts and components to play with for the time being!"

Any child who was even remotely interested in designing their own mechs one day would definitely go wild when they first received a Mekano Set!

Marvaine was no exception! He completely forgot about his mother's embrace and jumped from her lap in order to run over to the nearest box!

He pressed his cute little hands against the smooth composite surface of the attractively packaged box.

"You can already read and understand a lot of words, right?" Ves asked.

Marvaine nodded.

"Then what does this line say?"

"It says... 'My First Mech Set' and 'Best entry into the world of Mekano'..."

"That's right, Marvaine. This set is where all Mekano players start with. It contains all of the basic, foundational toy mech parts and components that you will need to start putting together a variety of toy mechs. They won't look fancy or anything, but you should start with this set alone before branching out to more complicated constructions."

"Ohhh..."

Ves pointed at another line. "What does this say?"

"It says 'Machine Emporium - Founded by the Polymath'. Wait, is she..."

"Yes, Marvaine." Gloriana said as she steadily walked up to him. "The Polymath is the best and youngest Star Designer of our race. She initially created Mekano in order to introduce young and curious children such as you to the wonders and complexity of mech design. It can start out simple, but it can become increasingly more complex and intricate as you unlock the higher levels."

That was the most brilliant part about Mekano. The degree of complexity and customization of the toy parts that could be used to build toy mechs could vary. Every difficulty tier was divided into different levels.

Level 1 was the simplest one. It simply separated toy mechs into large and obvious parts such as arms, legs, heads and torsos.

A kid did not need to know anything to be able to slot them together into complete mechs. The slots were extremely obvious and the parts would refuse to connect with each other if they were incompatible.

Level 2 was when these larger parts could be divided into smaller chunks. Half of a mech arm could be pulled away so that a kid could put an integrated gauss cannon into the exposed elbow socket.

Level 3 was considered the limit of what small children could handle without needing to learn any math, science or engineering. They could slot in big mech parts such as different power reactors and mech engines into the torso of a toy mech.

Levels 4, 5 and 6 was where Mekano started to become less of a game and more of a training tool for budding teenagers that were hoping to attend a mech design university in the future.

This was the range where they started with progressively smaller components, so much so that they could no longer assemble their toy mechs by hand. They needed to make use of specialized assembly equipment to put all of the tiny parts in place.

They could assemble mech rifles out of individual components.

They could customize the internal architecture of a toy mech to an increasingly finer degree.

They could even start with programming custom instructions that determined the behavior of the mech in a selective fashion.

Level 6 was the maximum degree of complexity that Mekano could initially accommodate. A child with a good understanding of high school-level science and engineering should be able to piece together a reasonably functional toy mech.

The Machine Emporium even set up entire tournament circuits where teenagers and other young prodigy publically competed against each other! It was as if they were all participating in the kids version of a mech design competition!

In practice, any child that could already handle level 6 was pretty much a half-way into becoming a decent mech designer. They just needed to attend a number of advanced university-level courses before they could move on to designing actual mechs!

When the Polymath initially released Mekano, it quickly took the mech industry and the toy industry by storm!

Toy mech building systems already existed by that time. One of the most popular franchises was an old one that had been producing colorful composite building blocks long before the Age of Stars commenced!

Yet when the Polymath entered this market, she quickly conquered a lot of fans because Mekano was simply better than its immediate competitors!

The Polymath had worked hard to make Mekano as complex and intricate as the consumers wanted it to be. A typical Mekano Set started out at Level 1, but by transmitting a special command, the large mech parts automatically broke up into smaller parts as they switched to Level 2.

The owner of the Mekano Set could keep doing this until the toy parts reached the maximum level determined by the tier of the products.

Tier 3 Mekano Sets were by far the most common ones sold throughout human space. They could only reach Level 3 at most, but that made them cheap and easy to produce. Pretty much every toy store in every third-rate state sold a small range of sets at this tier!

Tier 6 Mekano Sets were more commonly seen in second-rate states. They were indistinguishable from the prior products up to Level 3. It was only when a parent transmitted a command that switched the mover to Level 4, Level 5 or Level 6 that they started to get a lot more interesting!

Originally, Mekano Sets could go no further than Tier 6. Going any further would mean that the consumer had to be a fully-fledged Novice Mech Designer in order to work with parts at such a fine level!

However, for reasons that no one could figure out, the Polymath soon came out with Tier 7, Tier 8 and even Tier 9 sets, each of which became exponentially more expensive and demanding!

When Mekano reached Level 7, then the only people who could make functional toy mechs out of the parts were those who already possessed the skills of a third-class Novice Mech Designer.

At Level 8, only people who reached the standard of a second-class Novice Mech Designer could still have fun with Mekano.

Level 9 was exclusively reserved for first-raters who had already become talented and knowledgeable enough to qualify as first-class Novice Mech Designers!

If that wasn't enough, there were even rumors that the Polymath developed Tier 10 Mekano Sets, which contained parts that were supposedly made out of nanomachines that could provide maximum control and design freedom to the few consumers who were lucky to play with these secret toys!

Ves didn't dare to dream about buying the two highest tiers of Mekano Sets. He had gone for the highest possible tiers that he could access and afford at the time.

Each of the 5 sets that he had bought for Marvaine were Tier 8 Mekano Sets, and the cheapest one was priced at 999 MTA credits!

Though the toy store where he bought the initial Mekano Sets also offered more elaborate and advanced products, their prices became increasingly more exorbitant!

It didn't matter too much for the time being. Marvaine was still too young to be able to make good use of the advanced sets. The beginner sets were more than adequate enough to keep him busy for a few years.