The Mech Touch

What the Polymath attempted to do was to repeat human history, in part at least.

During the early days of the Age of Conquest, the Terran Empire rose up as a united human star nation that effectively mobilized every human under a single banner.

Just like what the Polymath wanted to do, the Terran Empire obeyed the rule of a single emperor who reigned with absolute power.

The reason why the humans back then supported this shift was because they were in an awful situation back then. Only by setting aside their historical regional and cultural differences would they be able to make the best out of their limited manpower, technology and resources and make real gains in the large and dangerous Milky Way Galaxy.

The Terran Empire was a success. It grew rapidly under the wise and competent leadership of the leading figures of the time. Each of them were heroes and visionaries who all made undeniable contributions in the rise of humanity!

Now, the Polymath clearly wanted to emulate this model and repeat the success of the past!

Though the Terran Empire eventually deteriorated over time to the point where the Rubarthans successfully rebelled against the increasingly more tyrannical ruling powers, it at least did the job it originally set out to accomplish.

The Rubarthans had the luxury to launch their rebellion and cause a lot of internal conflicts because the human race had grown far enough to no longer hold much fear that the aliens would be able to exploit the infighting.

For now, none of the gathered Survivalists believed that they have the luxury to worry about the long-term dangers of letting a single individual reign as the absolute empress of all of red humanity.

Anything was acceptable as long as the Polymath could lead them to victory in this war of extinction!

As the Polymath reigned in her impressive domain, few people questioned her qualifications to rule over their entire society.

She was indeed intelligent and enlightened enough to be able to make well-reasoned decisions without any apparent flaws or biases.

She also demonstrated a relatively pure and selfless attitude towards power.

She did not propose taking charge of their entire civilization because she was power hungry.

She did it because she believed that she was the most qualified to assume this heavy responsibility.

Whether all of this was actually as truthful as the Polymath portrayed, Ves did not dare to think any further.

All he knew was that the female Star Designer wanted to convince everyone that she was qualified to become the savior of red humanity!

In order to do that, she proceeded to detail a portion of the changes that she wished to make to fully maximize the potential of their society.

"I have already explained how I intend to dissolve all existing human states in order to form a single united empire. This is a necessary step that will open up our new star nation to further policy changes. For example, one of the shortcomings that will become increasingly more evident is the lack of manpower."

The Polymath called up the map of the Red Ocean Dwarf Galaxy and applied a different overlay to it. The new data markers showed the estimated population of every race.

"As you can see, humanity did not have enough time to transfer enough individuals to the new frontier to give us an abundant pool of manpower. While the average qualifications of every immigrant is considerably higher than the average standards of the Milky Way, our modeling has projected that we will suffer a progressively greater shortage within the next ten to twenty years. The plain truth is that no matter what war strategy we adopt, we will suffer more loss of human life than we can replenish through natural childbirth and lengthy education."

The projection showed a timelapse of a possible scenario. It showed that the relentless alien invasions would steadily nibble at human colonies while also causing a lot of human forces to suffer serious attrition.

All of this was very bad news. Without enough manpower, how could red humanity muster up enough soldiers and workers to keep up the fight?

This was why the Polymath proposed a radical and previously unthinkable solution to this problem.

"My proposed solution aims to address this latent danger." She spoke with apparent confidence in her plan. "We must set up new facilities across human space where we can produce a large amount of batch humans. We possess the technology and the knowledge to cultivate trillions of artificially bom and raised humans based on special human gene templates. We only need to possess the willingness to resort to this solution."

Ves and a lot of people couldn't help but feel repulsed towards this idea. The entire notion of producing humans en masse as if they were nothing but factory commodities was profoundly disturbing. Only a small number of groups engaged in the practice, and the results were always less than stellar.

The Polymath did not seem to care about the feelings of others.

"At our current technology level, we can rapidly grow a test tube human and have this newborn organism undergo accelerated growth so that he can reach his adult form in as little as five years. During this rapid organic growth process, we can rapidly prepare this batch human for service on the battlefield or in the factory floor by relying on a combination of advanced technologies, such as connecting the subject's mind to a virtual reality teaching environment, to injecting packages of standardized knowledge."

While all of this sounded like it could actually work, what would be the result?

What would happen if billions if not trillions of freshly 'graduated' batch humans started to enter human society and lived among regular humans?

There was no way that the two groups of humans would be able to get along!

However, as long as most people were willing to endure the new complications, it may lead to a lot of relief over time.

Batch humans could relieve much of the burden of keeping humanity's war machine running while attrition continued to harvest so many lives.

"Increasing our manpower is only one component to my comprehensive reform plan." The Polymath stated. "We must also alter people's relationship with technology. At this moment, we are withholding too much technology from the general public, mainly out of fear that they will abuse it to the detriment of our society. We can no longer afford to let this hinder us from resisting the aliens as effectively as possible. The Warship Quota Program is too conservative. We must permit the use of warships to every vetted and trustworthy force. If they continue to rely solely on mechs to fight against alien forces, then they will continue to suffer excessive losses due to an inability to deploy the most optimal force composition in their battles."

Ves happened to agree with the Star Designer on this point. The prohibition against warships was outdated as far as he was concerned. The Golden Skull Alliance and many other pioneering forces would have been able to stave off losses and win their battles a lot more easily if they had warships at their disposal.

Nonetheless, a lot Survivalists still looked uncomfortable with this proposed change. The fear that stupid people would inevitably abuse their power and use the might of warships to indiscriminately killl a lot of fellow humans remained ingrained in their minds!

This was why the Polymath found it so important to take charge of red humanity. Only she could disregard all of the misplaced sentiments of the past and ram through the necessary changes!

"The same applies to weapons of mass destruction." She continued as if she was not done with breaking taboos. "We should be ready to extend limited permission to any forces that are assigned to defend humanity against the native aliens. For now, neither side has resorted to them too much for fear of escalating this war to apocalyptic proportions, but we must be ready to escalate if we stand to gain more from it than our adversaries."

The Polymath proceeded to announce additional tech-related reforms. From taking over the entire supply of phasewater so that so many people would stop wasting this strategic resource to granting greater permission to use dangerous alien technology as long as it was powerful, the Star Designer wanted to strengthen the fighting power of humans to the utmost!

Of course, in order to realize this goal, there was no way she could avoid the latest variable that had entered the game.

The powerful woman finally addressed the topic that Ves and a few other knowledgeable people were waiting for. The Polymath could not possibly leave this powerful component out of her pitch.

"As I have mentioned earlier, the last prong to my plan is to bring back the secrets of our hidden past. I cannot disclose too much information outside of a closed briefing session, but I can tell you that ancient humans were far more powerful than you assume. They have already studied and taken advantage of the phenomenon known as E energy radiation many millennia ago. The reason why this is not apparent is because it was buried for good reasons. Now that our circumstances have changed, we cannot afford to deprive the public from the legacies that we have kept secret."

The Polymath did not actually describe what these legacies were supposed to be, but anyone familiar with cultivation or the Five Scrolls Compact showed a mix of reactions.

Some looked eager. Others looked concerned. Most actually looked resigned.

This was because the secrets of cultivation were already in the hands of far too many people.

" Compared to the hostile alien races, we possess many advantages in this area. We must not squander our head start by letting our fears stifle our innovation. One of the principal reasons why we have announced the Age of Dawn is because we recognize the endless potential of E energy radiation to comprehensively transform our entire society. We must create a new discipline that is specialized in the study and exploitation of E energy radiation and the changes it exerts on our reality."

Although this suggestion did not evoke as much of a reaction from the crowd because it wasn't as drastic, Ves still found it to be a radical shift from current policies!

For the Red Association to go from suppressing any mention of cultivation to making much of it available to the public was an enormous reversal from the past!

"Just as humans have founded mech universities and mech academies in order to better educate people in the design and use of mechs, we must do the same for E energy radiation." The Polymath declared. "We must not keep our ancient legacies hidden, but put them into libraries and teach their contents to a large number of students. We must promote the sharing of knowledge and encourage any research that enables us to combine our existing technologies with the possibilities presented by E energy radiation."

This was actually a good idea, though Ves was not quite sure how wise it was to expose so many people to a dangerous source of power that could easily be abused by individual cultivators.

This decision may lead to a lot of social instability over time, but the Polymath probably considered this to be an acceptable sacrifice.

The Star Designer eventually wrapped up her explosive pitch.

"There is more that I wish to divulge, but cannot do so due to confidentiality reasons. No matter what, we must do everything in our power to unite our scattered race and increase our efficiency in every facet of our society. As long as we are able to repair and improve our foundation, we can properly confront every challenger that seeks to extinguish our people. Red humanity must rise, and it can do so by relying on the latent power that is buried within ourselves. Make the right choice. Instead of letting hundreds of mixed and irrational leaders pull our divided civilization in every direction, it is better to appoint a single sovereign that can direct us as a united entity."