The Mech Touch

Ves did not want to end this call while leaving this issue unresolved.

It hadn't been a problem when Ves remained unaware of what was eating the Impresario Prince, but now that it came to his attention, it was his duty to do his best to find a resolution to this problem!

Ves grew frustrated by the limitations of a remote call. His options were much more limited when he wasn't in the same room as his conversation partner.

Short of employing tricks that did not translate well over a remote connection, Ves could only rely on his words to shake Prince Casevir out of his unhealthy fixation.

"You know what I think?" He said. "Your old man may be a great emperor. He has certainly done much to reverse the pattern of his predecessor and steered the New Rubarth Empire onto a better path. However, that does not mean he is best at everything. At the very least, I think he is a terrible father." The Impresario Prince looked scandalized!

Although it was not unheard of for the Star Emperor to get criticized, no one cared about the complaints of ordinary people.

It was a different story when Ves dared to criticize the current sovereign in the presence of a Rubarthan prince!

If a recording of this meeting leaked to the public, the entirety of the Rubarthan Pact would probably rise up in outrage!

Ves didn't care, however.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Ves frowned. "Have you forgotten where we are these days? We are in the Red Ocean! Our civilization has transitioned into the Age of Dawn! A new time has come. Red humanity has cut loose from all of the ancient and impregnable institutions of the Milky Way. This includes the current Star Emperor and most of the Rubarthan Imperial Household."

"Be that as it may, the Rubarthan Pact is still a colonial state of the New Rubarth Empire! Until one of us has successfully ascended to a throne of our own, we are still subjects of our great father!"

Ves snorted at that. "That is stupid. Your awful father can't do anything. There is no reason why you should continue to show any deference to him, especially when it is not deserved! I don't care how many Rubarthans respect him. As a father and the head of an expansive household, the current Star Emperor has done a terrible job at raising an actual family. If your childhood conforms to the pattern that he has set for the thousands of other children, then he really shouldn't earn any respect for his callousness. He doesn't love you and your fellow siblings at all. He only regards you as tools to extend his tentacles across Rubarthan society!"

There was no way that Prince Casevir hadn't already figured that out, but it was incredibly difficult for him to admit it out loud.

No honored and respected prince wanted to admit that his worth only extended as far as securing the Star Emperor's control over a sector!

"Why are you insulting my great father? Do you not realize how much jeopardy you are putting yourself in? The Star Emperor is the father of the Rubarthan Pact! He is the sole unifying symbol that brings us all together. He may not be perfect, but his excellence inspires us all to work harder and do our best to live up to our potential!"

Ves hated this argument. There was nothing wrong with expecting people to make good use of the opportunities presented to them, but this extreme obsession with success likely caused a huge amount of mental anguish within Rubarthan society!

"Screw your father." Ves spat. "I am being serious. The Star Emperor earns no respect from me. Family is one of the most important institutions of the human race. His excessive propensity to produce offspring is already a perversion of the natural order, but I can accept it as long as all of his children receive the love and attention that they intrinsically deserve. Yet your old man is such an abysmal parent that he can't even be bothered to hold his own babies in his arms! How much affection is left in his heart? If he cannot bring himself to love any of his children without any utilitarian purpose in mind, then he is not qualified to earn my respect, let alone yours! Let's face it, Casevir. Your dad is a heartless scumbag. ADMIT IT! You know it's the truth!"

"No! You are wrong, professor! My great father has managed to defeat all of his competing brothers and sisters to win the throne after the Disaster Star has ended his reign! The New Rubarth Empire has yet to overthrow the regime of the Big Two, but it has recovered to a much greater state under his stewardship."

Ves crossed his arms. "That may be true, but so what? How does your father's record as a ruler have any bearing on you, a son that has only received neglect? You don't even have any desire to compete for the new throne according to your words! Why are you still afraid yet also obsessed with earning the approval of an unworthy parent who is stuck in a galaxy that is 50 million light-years away? The distance between you and your scumbag dad is so astronomically great that it doesn't make any sense for you to think about him anymore!"

The prince could not accept this argument. He had spent his entire life chasing after the current Star Emperor that he was too afraid of getting rid of an important anchor that defined his identity!

That was exactly the problem with this stubborn fool.

"Your identity as a Rubarthan prince and your identity as an artist are not in complete harmony with each other." Ves observed. "One is interfering with the other. Do you know why your mother has managed to become a well-known maker of masterworks while you are only able to produce mediocre works? It is because your deadbeat of a father is personally holding you back!"

The Impresario Prince was not a sheltered man. As an artist and a patron of the arts, he had interacted with a diverse set of personalities.

Every good artist possessed a different set of eccentricities. They were the reason why geniuses managed to stand out from the crowd. They also happened to make it rather headache-inducing to follow their bizarre trains of thought.

Out of all of the eccentrics that the Impresario Prince had talked with over the course of his life, none of them were as extreme and outrageous as Professor Larkinson!

Prince Casevir started to comprehend first-hand why this infamous mech designer became known as the Devil Tongue!

The Larkinson Patriarch truly had no taboos!

Ves continued to make his heretical case. "The concerns and obligations set by your father and all of the Rubarthan institutions around him should have no bearing on your life, especially now that the Great Severing has made a clean break between your past and your present. Recent events have already cut your father out of your life. The only step you need to take is to acknowledge your new reality. You are free, Casevir! You are no longer a Rubathan prince, but a man who is free to pursue his own ambitions for his own reasons rather than the expectations of an irrelevant bastard."

"Professor Larkinson... I..."

"You know my words are true. Don't deny it, prince. Aren't Rubarthans supposed to be faithful adherents to meritocratic ideals? One of the essential components of a functioning meritocracy is to accurately identify and acknowledge faults. Do not tell me that your dad is a model of a good parent. He is the exact opposite! Since the father is such an awful human being, why should the son still look up to him? This is such a silly situation that I do not know what you have been doing all of these years!"

The prince lowered his head. He felt the urge to end this connection right away, but Ves' words sounded so compelling that he couldn't help but see this through the end.

Casevir's pathetic display signaled to Ves that he had gone far enough. It was time for him to introduce a bit of sweetness to the poor prince.

Ves started to sigh and relax his posture. "Let's get back to the original topic. I think I have managed to diagnose the fundamental reasons why you have gone nowhere as an artist. It is because you have been deprived of love throughout your life. It is clear that your father has done worse than nothing in your upbringing. What about your mother?"

"My mother has raised me to become a prince that is skilled enough in my craft to earn my father's attention." Casevir flatly responded. "I... love my mother, but I am ashamed that I have not been able to master all of her teachings. My continued setbacks and failures have caused her to lose the dignity of a consort. I am the reason why she has been unable to maintain her position in court. She has never managed to capture my father's attention again, and she has expressed her frustrations to me many times."

11 n ...

Even his mother turned out to be a piece of work.

The entire Rubarthan Imperial Household was so stupidly dysfunctional that Ves wondered how the New Rubarth Empire managed to do so well all of these years!

"Forget about your parents." Ves strongly advised. "You are over a century old. You should already be a grandpa if your lifespan is equivalent to that of a baseline human. You are well past the time where you should still care about fulfilling the expectations of your parents. If you ask me, you should start to build your own family. According to your record, you have never married, is that correct?"

The Impresario Prince nodded. "I will not father my own children if I am still a disgrace. I do not want my children to inherit my stigma."

"That is one of the stupidest mistakes that you have made." Ves retorted. "Marrying the love of your life and having children who you can cherish from birth are invaluable experiences to a deprived prince such as yourself. As I have stated before, your great failing as an artist is that you have lived your entire life without receiving the affection that you deserve. That has stunted your growth as a human as well as an artist. How can you be passionate about your work when your capacity to love is so poor? Take a look around your own atelier. Which of these sculptures or paintings are imbued with an abundance of love or passion?"

The prince could not pick one out. Though the complete and incomplete artworks in this chamber did not reflect his full body of work, he knew that his published and exhibited pieces were not much better in this regard.

"An artist cannot succeed if he does not love his own craft." Ves emphatically stated. "The reason why you are stuck for so long is because you have treated your art as a means to an end. You are treating it as a tool to fuel your ambitions as a prince. That may be enough to sustain you for a time, but there comes a point where pure utilitarianism falls short."

The Impresario Prince let out a frustrated grunt. "You have made your point, professor. What must I do to remedy this deficiency? I do think I am capable of starting my own family. I... have aged past the point where I can muster any desire to seek out a spouse."

This was certainly a thorny issue. As Ves tried to come up with suggestions, he suddenly came up with an insane and radical solution!

Even though it was incredibly stupid, Ves had already crossed a lot of lines during this crazy call. It hardly mattered anymore if he decided to break another limit!

"Goldie! Come out and show this prince what true family should like!"

"Nyaaaaaa!"

The Golden Cat manifested next to Ves!

From the moment she appeared, her warm and reassuring glow began to dominate his office.

A part of that gentle and comforting glow radiated through the remote connection and radiated across Casevir's atelier.

Even though the Impresario Prince was unable to experience Goldie's full presence, his reaction was still noticeable!

He closed his eyes and spontaneously relaxed the tension in his body. The love and warmth radiated by the spiritual cat somehow made him feel more content than anything else in his life!

"Nyaa nyaa nyaa." Goldie encouragingly sounded as she kept trying to channel her unconditional love and affection through the active communication link.

Ves gently stroked Goldie's translucent back as he observed the results.

He smiled when he saw that not even a high and mighty Rubarthan prince could resist the Golden Cat's charm!

"Do you want to know what I think that you should do? Give up on your princely title. Resign from the Imperial Rubarthan Household. Sever all of the remaining ties to your deadbeat father and start living a life that you can actually enjoy. If you want to take it a step further, then you can always join my clan. I do not dare to make a lot of promises to you, but if there is one resource we have in abundance, it is love and family! You will definitely be able to gain the affection that you need to reinvent yourself as a passionate artist!"

Crazy!

This was crazy!

Not even Ves believed he had actually extended an invitation to a real Rubarthan prince!