The Mech Touch

5631 Project S2

Ves finally understood what Alexa was truly trying to make.

Procreation was just the starting point. It formed the basis that enabled the rise of potentially huge social structures among her living mechs.

As long as the first-generation copies of the Project S1 model came to life, they would naturally be able to grow and interact with each other.

Once they created their offspring, the second-generation living mechs would be able to learn how to fight as swordsman mechs or rifleman mechs.

In turn, the second-generation living mechs would be able to pass on their inheritance to third-generation living mechs.

As long as this cycle repeated enough times, the collective inheritance of future mech dynasties would become so great that every child mech should easily be able to defeat an ordinary mech that just rolled off a conventional production line!

Alexa's far-reaching vision showed that she held enormous ambitions. She did not let existing taboos stop her from attempting to revolutionize the mech community by enabling living mechs to form their families and civilizations!

Ves had the feeling that if his latest student was allowed to realize this ambitious vision, she would unleash a storm that would either turn living mechs into the greatest partners or the greatest enemies of red humanity!

He liked it. Alexa had learned from his example and did not hold back from aiming high. Her design philosophy added another major dimension to living mechs that Ves never thought about in the past.

To be honest, Ves felt a bit outclassed by her work and her design philosophy. He felt as if he was already being replaced by a more superior living mech specialist.

However, this thought only lingered briefly in his mind.

The reality was much more nuanced. While Alexa did indeed present a more elaborate framework of living mechs, there was no guarantee that she could realize her bold design philosophy.

Even if she succeeded, she did not take anything away from Ves. Both of them specialized in living mechs, so they could easily share and make use of each other's research results!

Whenever Ves developed a more powerful implementation of living mechs, his student could make use of the new template to improve her own mech designs.

Whenever Alexa improved the inheritance and procreation mechanisms of her living mechs further, Ves could easily borrow her best design solutions and apply them into his own mech designs!

This was the advantage of multiple mech designers working in the same field of specialization!

As Alexa completed her explanation of her Project S1 design, she awaited her mentor's judgment.

Ves smiled at her. "I cannot say whether your expansive dream can come true. Only you can make that happen. From what I can deduce, your starting point is viable. At the very least, I can see this inheritance mechanism working for at least one reproduction cycle. I cannot say how well it will hold up in subsequent reproduction cycles, let alone decades or centuries down the line. A lot can happen in the meantime. Perhaps the mech model cannot be updated anymore. Perhaps the Project S1 has lost a lot of popularity. Perhaps starfighters have risen up to replace mechs entirely. Whatever the case, it is not certain whether your oldest mech models will be able to keep up with the times and remain relevant a couple of centuries in the future."

"I have already taken these possibilities into consideration." Alexa responded. "This is why it is not enough to create a single family unit. The larger the social structure, the greater the diversity and learning ability. Living mechs do not have to abide by their original designs. The mech designer or maybe even the mechs themselves should have the power to adapt their templates in order to retain their relevance as warfare continues to evolve."

The part of how living mechs should have the power to improve their own designs sounded really scary.

That was a step too far for Ves. Mech designers should be in control. They were much better at this job than anyone else, no matter whether they were human or mech.

Philosophically, humans always needed to retain ultimate control over their living mechs. The latter was made to serve the former, not the other way around.

At most, Ves wished for humans and living mechs to maintain an equal relationship with each other. As long as both of them treated each other with respect, both of their interests would remain aligned.

It didn't matter if Alexa made a mistake. She had just begun to form her design philosophy. Plans could always change. There was plenty of time for her to learn and refine her more far-fetched notions.

"You are truly committed to taking living mechs to the next level." Ves observed.

Alexa raised her head in determination. "I am. I mean no disrespect to you or your work. You are the inventor of living mechs. Few if any mech designers would have developed the notion of making mechs alive. Even fewer have the ability to make mechs alive from nothing. Your design philosophy is entirely centered around the concepts of growth and creation. These are the fundamental pillars that make your living mechs possible. I have no intention to become your substitute. In my search to open up additional dimensions to living mechs, I have chosen to specialize in the concepts of inheritance and procreation."

Growth and creation.

Inheritance and procreation.

Both sets of concepts sounded very similar to each other, but they actually held substantially different meanings and expressions.

Ves designed his mechs that enabled them to come to life in the strongest possible form that they could attain from the start.

Once they were being put to use, they relied on continuous growth to come into their power and evolve to greater heights.

Yet once these older and more experienced mechs fell in battle, all of their growth and accumulation became irrevocably lost.

Ves had not implemented any measures that could preserve the power of all of these elder mechs.

This was where Alexa came in. While she had learned enough from Ves to design living mechs by herself, she had yet to master this process as extensively as her teacher.

For example, Ves easily managed to discern that Project S1 and Project S2 could lead to the initial production of first order living mechs.

Perhaps later generations of living mechs might collectively grow strong enough to produce offspring in the form of second order living mechs upon birth, but that was anything but certain.

Ves also wasn't sure whether Alexa was able to impart additional qualities to her living mechs. This could include, design spirits, mech-specific cultivation methods and Ascension Runes.

However, she added dimensions to living mechs that fleshed out their system and made them more 'complete'.

The concept of procreation explicitly centered around enabling mechs to reproduce offspring, either with the help of humans or on a completely independent basis.

Project S1 was clearly designed with the ability to reproduce without the need for human assistance. This was the advantage of mechs that were entirely made out of first-class smart metal. They were able to substitute the function of solid metallic components so well that they could spontaneously recreate entire power reactors and other complicated systems in the field!

In any case, as long as the nanomachines possessed the ability to independently produce copies of themselves, they could theoretically reproduce without any limit!

Of course, this also posed an extreme risk to red humanity. Ves did not think it was wise for Alexa to produce copies of her first true living mech design project because there were so many ways for the Project S1's to go out of control!

The mech design still served its purpose as a proof of concept. Alexa had definitely made a lot of gains in the process of designing this groundmaking mech.

To be honest, Alexa would have already turned into an excellent Journeyman Mech Designer if she specialized in procreation alone. Her fixation on create a functional and robust chains of inheritance for her living mechs added a whole new layer of complexity to her design philosophy.

Was she biting more than she could chew?

"I can tell that the concept of inheritance is quite important to you." Ves mentioned. "Is there any particular reason why you are fixated on this subject?"

"Inheritance is the basis of a civilization. I may have renounced my ties to the Greater Terran United Confederation, but that does not change the fact that I grew up in one of the oldest and most continuous human states and cultures to exist. Terran society is steeped in millenia's worth of tradition and practices. The Terran Confederation itself is the direct successor of the Terran Empire, which in turn is the collective child of all of the old human nation states that existed before and during the Age of Stars. The Terran civilization that I was born into had reached an unprecedented degree of enlightenment and sophistication due to all of the inheritances that the older generation of Terrans have built in the past."

Though Alexa possessed a remarkably open mind for a Terran, there were times when she couldn't help herself.

The Terrans were inordinately proud of their old heritage and their age-old traditions. The older the clan, the greater their heritage and therefore the more excellent its descendants!

This was why the oldest and most respected family lineages earned the designation of ancient clan. They needed their own category in order to emphasize their 'superiority' over their younger counterparts.

In Terran society, old equated to power. Alexa had grown up long enough as a Terran to inherit much of her society's values and biases.

Ves no longer wondered why Alexa found it so important to add inheritance as a core component to her design philosophy.

She essentially wanted to reproduce the phenomenon of ancient clans in the world of living mechs.

"Alright." He said. "I think I understand. Let's move on. I am pretty clear about Project S1. What about your second living mech design? Why did you feel the need to make it when your first one already does the job?"

Alexa reined herself in a bit and amplified the size of the second projection.

"Project S1 encapsulates all of my initial ideas for my design philosophy, but it is purely my work. It is only valid for smart metal mechs. This is not my intention as smart metal remains unaffordable to the vast majority of customers no matter their class. In order to prevent my work from being relegated to niche products, I needed to apply my design philosophy on more conventional and affordable mechs. My rule here was to apply the concept of procreation on a normal mech without resorting to nanomachines."

That was a difficult challenge, but Project S2 clearly showed that Alexa managed to complete this objective!

"So how does it work?"

"It is a normal first-class rifleman mech with the noticeable exception that there is a male and female variant. Just as with the Project S1, the Project S2 is meant to experience a period of growth in the field until it is ready to reproduce. A male and female unit is meant to come together and engage in an exchange of the mech equivalent of seed material."

Ves looked down at a very specific section of the male mech.

"Why doesn't it have a codpiece?"

Alexa awkwardly coughed. "Mechs do not have to conform to the secondary sex characteristics as humans. I find it more efficient for the male unit to pass on its seed material to the female unit by opening a hidden port and handing it over with its hand. The female unit is meant to integrate the seed material into a reproduction chamber that is attached to the mech as a detachable backpack module."

Ves had definitely noticed the obvious bulge on the lower back of the female variant of the Project S2 design.

"Why put it in the rear? Why not put it in front so that it can look more similar to a pregnant human female?"

"I tried, but I found that I had to make too many changes for it to be worthwhile at my current level. It is too inefficient to integrate this module in the belly of the female unit. The so-called reproduction chamber is not a technological marvel. It is basically an adapted self-repair and self-

replication system that is typically mounted on support-oriented mechs. Instead of fabricating mech parts in the field, it is dedicated to producing a child mech in the form of a scaled-down version of a mature machine. If all goes well, it should not take too long to form the offspring, but that depends on how quickly the donated E energies of the two mechs are able to fuse together. I do not have a clear estimation of how much time must pass to complete this essential process."

"You have yet to fabricate either of these two living mechs?"

"I wanted to gather your feedback before I made the attempts." Alexa responded. "What is your opinion? Do you approve of either of my works?"

"Well…"

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