The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

5773 Devil Proofing

The second session proceeded in a much less astonishing fashion than the day before.

Neither side pulled off any crazy or unexpected moves. Planetary Governor Rod Mergan-Castelaus had already issued a warning to both sides to refrain from spilling any secrets, and everyone took it seriously.

Ves believed that he managed to gain an advantage during the first session, so he had no objection to adopting a more measured and risk averse approach on the second day.

He wondered whether he had made a strategic misstep.

Professor Kacuk of the Chabran Ancient Clan was a disturbingly competent speaker. As an old sociologist and philosopher, he had an abundant amount of experience in giving speeches to wildly different audiences.

He spent years honing his speaking and presentation skills in venues as diverse as academic conferences, lecture halls and public speaking squares.

More importantly than that, the Terran possessed the crucial ability to shed his first-class high-born arrogance and appear personable to the lesser space peasants whose opinions mattered a lot in this public inquiry.

Despite or because of his formidable intellect, the scholar's strategy for his series of speeches during the second session turned out to be quite simple.

He sought to alienate the public against the new but admittedly weird existence of living mechs.

12:09

The man repeatedly amplified and exaggerated every aspect of Ves' works that did not fit with the established mold of human technology.

It was not that difficult for him to make a persuasive case for his stance. Living mechs were incredibly lacking in transparency. Any engineer who broke down a living mech could find no visible component or programming code that hinted at anything that could be responsible for giving the machine its characteristic traits.

While it was easy for Ves to explain that living mechs were based on specialized applications of E-technology, what did that actually mean?

Red humanity's introduction to E-technology was way too brief at this time. Only one-and-a-half year had passed since the start of the Age of Dawn, and most people in the mech industry still struggled to come to grips with hyper technology.

E-technology was a completely different beast that most people simply did not have the qualifications to work with. Ordinary humans completely lacked the ability to perceive E energy, let alone manipulate it in a deliberate manner.

Absent any lab machines that could finally allow humans to measure and manipulate E technology like they could already do with molecules and atoms, E-technology was destined to remain an extremely obscure and niche application of science.

It did not help that the few known instances of E-technology all resembled witchcraft and sorcery more than proper science!

That was because the few people who succeeded in developing useful applications of E-technology clearly copied the methods of ancient cultivation scriptures.

The ultimate result of all of this was that Professor Kacuk did not actually have to work too hard to build up a convincing case that living mechs should not be trusted.

"The technologies 'invented' by Professor Larkinson are not strictly defined as alien in origin, but they may as well be. These mysterious 'cultivators' of the past who treated ordinary humans as cattle are so alien in their behavior and their atypical methods that they were essentially aliens in human skins. As the parties who were ultimately responsible for driving humanity to the brink of extinction during the doomsday years of the Age of Conquest, any legacies they have left behind is suspicious at best, and a trap at worst! Given this context, how is it acceptable for us to allow derivative products such as living mechs free reign in the mech market when they can hide all manner of time bombs?"

The man could not stop talking about the dangers of relying on 'unknown technology'.

"The mere fact that no one in the entire scientific community has yet to understand any of the essential mechanisms of how living mechs work is proof that they are filled with unknowns. How much of them does their creator actually comprehend? What if he has made a mistake that will lead to catastrophe down the line? The best case scenario is that accidents resulting from his negligence will produce minor glitches. The worst case scenario is that his works will go rogue, which is very much possible as they already possess far too much leeway for machines gifted with extensive autonomy."

Faced with this attack, Ves spent much of his time trying to undo the damage wrought by the opposing speaker.

His warhorse analogy was a clever and intuitive means to get people to warm up to the idea of relying on a living object as opposed to a lifeless tool.

"Living mechs can think and feel for themselves, so it is true that they bring additional demands to their users." Ves frankly admitted. "Yet I consider this to be a boon, not a demerit. There are many mech pilots who invest years of their service into piloting a single machine. They train with their assigned mechs for thousands of hours and try to master every single nuance to give them an additional advantage when they finally have to put their lives on the line. However, the cost-benefit ratio of this investment clearly plateaus after a certain point. Spending additional hours on training will not yield any measurable improvement anymore. They have already exhausted the potential of their static machines. Subsequently, their own growth drastically slows down as they are not engaging in effective exercises anymore."

His message was particularly tailored towards mech pilots who harbored ambitions to become greater. This was his most friendly audience and one that he needed to win over the most.

"Unlike static mechs, living mechs are not strictly subject to these limitations. While their material parts and components cannot magically grow stronger to a drastic degree, nothing is impossible in the Age of Dawn. Modern hyper mechs have made my products a lot more relevant due to the fact that hyper technology and E-technology are closely related to each other. All pilots who utilize living mechs can expect their new battle partner to grow and adapt to their thinking processes, their piloting styles, their combat preferences, their combined experiences on the battlefield and more. There are so many different factors that can fuel the growth of living mechs that they gain new possibilities every day. As long as mech pilots have the discipline and the motivation to grow stronger, they will find that they can always gain the support they need from their living machines."

Though Ves was not able to refute every concern mentioned by Professor Kacuk Chabran, he believed he did a good job of strengthening the trust and faith that mech pilots held towards living mechs.

Ancient cavalry soldiers did not need to understand how the biology of warhorses worked in order to make effective use of these majestic steeds.

In the same vein, mech pilots had no need to comprehend all of the different science behind living mechs to fight with them on the battlefield.

Mech pilots never really had the patience to listen to a long and relatively abstract university lecture to begin with. They were people who preferred action over talking. Though second-class and first-class mech pilots still had to study a lot of science in order to pilot more advanced mechs, their ability to understand basic scientific theories rarely equated into passion.

The ultimate result of this extensive verbal sparring session was that Ves and Professor Chabran won over two distinctly different audiences.

While Ves could count on the backing of mech pilots and especially those who already had experience with living mechs, the Terran sociologist had skillfully swayed large populations of norms who never had any personal experience with any kind of mech.

It was a clever approach. Perhaps the opposition already recognized that Ves possessed too strong of an advantage among soldiers and warriors. This was why Professor Chabran deliberately engaged in scaremongering in order to frighten people who didn't know any better!

An important factor why a lot of civilians became more easily swayed by the Terran academics was because they enjoyed none of the benefits, but many of the possible downsides.

Ves chafed at the restriction that prevented him from announcing the existence of his experimental Carmine System.

As immature as this tech may be, much of the testing so far had already proved that it was safe for the time being!

Though Ves previously felt it would be too hasty to release any Carmine mechs in the short term due to lack of knowledge on how these machines affected their pilots in the long term, he frankly did not care about this anymore.

Dangerous or not, just the possibility of fulfilling the cherished dreams of many norms was enough to willingly tempt a lot of people into embracing Carmine mechs!

Alas, Ves could not afford to strain his relationship with the Red Association any further. It was instances like these where good relations showed their value. The opposition wouldn't have needed to make their case in public if the Survivalists and Transhumanists did not go out of their way to cover his back.

The last thing Ves wanted to do was act ungrateful by ruining whatever plans the Transhumanist Faction had in mind for his Carmine mechs and other useful inventions.

Vector Loban at least had enough awareness to say sorry on behalf of his faction's obstinacy.

This left Ves unable to employ a killer solution that was guaranteed to earn instant approval from all of the civilians!

Instead, Ves was unable to appeal to them due to the simple fact that most of the benefits of living mechs had nothing to do with the lives of ordinary people.

The only relevant aspects about living mechs that could directly affect civilians were negative!

As much as Ves tried to refute the exaggerated claims that living mechs might go rogue and go on killing sprees, he could not lie and say that it was impossible for this to happen.

Third order living mechs had the right to live their own lives. That meant giving them enough leeway to be able to do stuff that they actually shouldn't do. It was completely realistic to expect that they might eventually engage in controversial actions that would earn a lot of condemnation from the public.

Stuff like starting a destructive fight inside a starship or in the middle of an urban settlement were all plausible scenarios. Ves had lived through numerous violent incidents where a lot of innocent bystanders got killed due to the natural consequence of enormous mechs fighting in close proximity!

Professor Chabran was not the only speaker that Ves had difficulty with. Other speakers occasionally pushed forth similar arguments that were distinctly formulated in ways that Ves could not directly refute.

It was as if they took his moniker of Devil Tongue so seriously that they deliberately went out of their way to minimize the possibility of direct conflicts!

Their attempts to devil proof their arguments clearly yielded the desired results.

Ves did not have the chance to sound righteous and passionate if he did not have a convenient punching bag to direct his ire!

He glowered when opponents such as Lieutenant-

Commander Astrid Jameson took their turns to torch living mechs from different angles.

"Experimental new technologies fundamentally come with great risks." She explained. "Early FTL drives developed by the human race were so rudimentary that there was a 25 percent chance that no one would ever see the crews and passengers of test vessels again. Living mechs may be completely different from first generation FTL drives, but the principles remain the same."

Living mechs had nothing in common with FTL drives!

"It is standard practice in the R&D sector to thoroughly test new inventions before ever thinking about making a new technology available to the public. As far as we have been able to ascertain, Professor Larkinson has often ignored this essential step. By releasing new and untested innovations directly to the market, he is effectively turning all of his customers into his unwitting guinea pigs. Does this sound ethical to you? I think not. If you care even the slightest about the health and safety of your family, friends of colleagues who have fallen into his trap, then do what is right and demand greater oversight over the professor's unsafe products."