The Mech Touch

5641 Dangerous Neural Interface

The Transcendent series of mechs designed by Ves gained a lot of fame and puzzlement for their extraordinary ability to provide mystical targeting guidance to its mech pilots.

This was the greatest feature that allowed them to stand out from the competition!

From the Transcendent Punisher to the Transcendent Charger, both of these powerful mechs enabled the Ylvainans to occupy a solid position in the Larkinson Clan!

Yet as the Eye of Ylvaine continued to take advantage of prescient abilities of Ylvaine, the shortcomings of borrowing the design spirit's foresight became increasingly more clear.

"Reaction time." Ves said as he faced his wife. "Everything moves quickly in the thick of battle. Whenever Ylvaine makes a prediction and passes his message on to a mech pilot, that person will have to take the time to adjust his aim and pull the trigger. Do you know how much of a delay that entails? By the time the attack has reached the supposed target coordinate, the enemy that should have gotten hit might have already moved away."

"Is Ylvaine not capable of predicting the delay and taking that into account when passing on the target coordinates?" Gloriana asked with a frown.

"He is, but small changes in a short amount of time can produce huge divergences. The longer the delay, the smaller the chance of success. It becomes a lot harder for Ylvaine to manage all of the variables when they become exponentially greater. There are a lot of benefits to shrinking the delay time between informing the mech pilot and pulling the trigger. Ylvaine has to do less work, so he will not be as burdened as before. The Transcendent Punisher can attain a higher hit rate as there aren't as many scenarios where the mech will miss its shot."

Gloriana frowned as she stared at the Divine Foresight Mark I Neural Interface designed by the only lead designer who was able to independently develop these dangerous modules.

"I cannot argue against the effectiveness of reducing the lag time, but mechs are meant to serve their mech pilots. This custom neural interface arguably does the opposite. The brains of mech pilots are quite sensitive and they are prone to accelerated wear and tear as they continue to interface with mechs. The greater the intensity of data transmissions, the greater the damage. This is an important factor why older mech pilots tend to lose their effectiveness at a more advanced age. The only way they can forestall this unstoppable decline is if they manage to break through or receive expensive brain augmentations."

The negative effects of neural interfaces on the brains of mech pilots was one of the open secrets of the mech community. Every veteran soldier noticed how they slowly lost their ability to exchange as much data or maintain a high degree of sensitivity and reactivity as before.

Younger mech pilots may be lacking in experience and wisdom, but they were most often capable of accomplishing extravagant feats due to their excellent conditions!

It was therefore crucially important for these lively talents to retain their peak combat effectiveness as long as possible. The mechers imposed many restrictions on neural interfaces in order to prevent mech pilots from losing their peak conditions much faster than they should.

The newly developed Divine Foresight Mark I Neural Interface threatened to break this safety net.

"The Divine Foresight behaves no different from a normal neural interface under normal conditions." Ves told his wife. "The mech pilot is only supposed to trigger the function that puts the brain in a hyperactive state for a brief moment of time when it truly matters. This is especially relevant when the mech needs to make use of its enormous Devora Cannon to nail a critical shot with a precious transphasic hyper gauss round. These ship-killing projectiles can contain up to several hundred grams of phasewater and are intended to break through enemy defenses and sunder apart entire enemy warships!"

In other words, Ves wanted to ensure that a troupe of Transcendent Punishers assigned to launch their most crucial salvo did not throw away kilograms of phasewater in vain!

Every super-heavy gauss round that missed its target and flew off in the void of space was pure waste as far as Ves was concerned!

The negative impact of a missed shot was far too great, especially in a crucial moment where the Transcendent Punishers only had a short time to do their jobs.

In order to reduce the probability of misses, Ves insisted on adding the Divine Foresight Mark I to the Mark III. Only then would he have the confidence to allow mech pilots to launch super-expensive gauss rounds from the Devora Cannon.

Gloriana most definitely understood this rationale, but she seriously questioned whether a more sure hit was worth the tradeoff of speeding up the 'aging' of the mech pilot's brain.

"How much faster will the brains of the Ylvainan mech pilots wear down if they start to overload their own brains with the help of this custom neural interface?"

"It is not as bad as you think, honey. As I have said before, the Divine Foresight should only be run at full power in brief intervals of time. It is not as if the mech pilot must experience the entire engagement in a hyperactive state. The amount of data being exchanged through the neural interface is still massive in those few seconds, but it is unlikely to cause the mech pilot's mind to explode. As long as the affected individual is subsequently able to retire from battle and avoid any strenuous activity for at least a month, his brain will largely be able to recover much of the damage over time. However, if the pilot induces a hyperactive state multiple times in quick succession, then the damage will rapidly compound and exceed certain limits."

"That means that permanent brain damage becomes a certainty if a mech pilot utilizes this function multiple times in the same battle." Gloriana frowned in disapproval. "Why hasn't the Red Association stepped in to prohibit this dangerous neural interface of yours?"

Ves smirked. "I'm a tier 3 galactic citizen certified by the very same Red Association. I'm practically a mecher already. I'll be fine as long as I don't do anything that besmirches the reputation of the Association."

The truth was actually a lot more nuanced than that. Ves was well aware of the dark side of the mechers.

They craved novel data the most.

Anything that could give them new and interesting pieces of data enriched their overall knowledge base and made it easier for them to come up with useful new inventions.

Crossing the line was not a sin to the Red Association. What truly concerned the powerful organization was if a violation became too damaging to human society and the standing of the mechers.

As long as the Larkinsons kept the more controversial aspects about the Divine Foresight Mark I to themselves, the mechers would probably continue to maintain a blind eye towards its problematic nature.

Gloriana may not be aware of all of these considerations, but if the mechers hadn't stepped in at this point, they probably wouldn't take action in the future.

"For the sake of those mech pilots, I hope they will be able to show enough restraint."

"They might not be able to hold themselves back." Ves shook his head. "When a battle has taken a turn for the worse, the Ylvainan mech pilots may decide to employ this function multiple times over the course of a single battle. I know these kinds of people pretty well. They're fanatics. They are fighting for a greater cause than themselves. Their health and the condition of their brains are not as important as the lives of thousands of Larkinsons or the survival of the expeditionary fleet itself. When it comes down to it, the Eye of Ylvaine should definitely be willing to sacrifice the careers of its mech pilots in exchange for a better result."

Gloriana could think of plenty of scenarios where this could ultimately produce more gains than losses. From that perspective, it was better to make the option available in case a mech pilot needed to exceed his usual level of performance in order to attain a much more favorable result.

However, she couldn't help but feel that the Divine Foresight Mark I set a dangerous precedent for the Larkinson Clan. How long would it take before another Larkinson mech design contained a similar neural interface?

Piloting mechs was an inherently dangerous profession. It was the job of mech designers to accommodate pilots as much as possible. It was doubtful whether the addition of this self-destructive feature would ultimately benefit the pilots who became even more exposed to harm than before.

Despite her misgivings, Gloriana did not push back any further. Ves had obviously considered this matter extensively. He would be the one to bear the fault if anything related to the Divine Foresight went terribly wrong in the future.

"Alright." She eventually said. "I have a much better understanding of your heavy artillery mech than before. I am confident that I can help you with upgrading Commander Melin's old mech to the Mark III. The changes between the two versions are all-encompassing, but as long as we do this in an orderly fashion, we should still be able to preserve the original character of the Zeal."

This was not the first time they did this kind of job. The only difference was that the mech they were working on was much bigger and heavier than usual. The quantity of components they needed to replace was also much higher.

However, neither Ves nor Gloriana were rookies. Once they completed their preparations and went to work, they completely fell in sync with each other.

"Mrow!"

Blinky came out and utilized the Living Workshop ability to flood all of the parts, materials and production equipment with copious amounts of life energy.

"Maaow."

Meanwhile, Alexandria worked together with Gloriana to form a considerably more optimized design network.

The minds of husband and wife came together, allowing them to swap a lot of information as well as emotions to each other.

Their teamwork, which was already good under normal circumstances, immediately reached a much higher level with the help of Alexandria's design network!

From outward appearances, the two worked as if they had become two sides of the same coin.

Both of them had recently become a lot more capable than before. Ves completed his second sublimation fairly recently while Gloriana just came home with a brand-new first-class implant set.

By connecting their minds to each other, the two mech designers benefited a lot more from the answers and second opinions supplied by their partners!

The two also worked much faster than before. There was no way to speed up the first-class production machines themselves, but they were already fairly fast and productive when working on relatively simpler second-class and quasi-first-class components.

Ves and Gloriana utilized their copious processing power to apply on-the-

spot adaptations faster and prevent too many mistakes from occurring. Neither of the two had many complaints about their output for the time being.

As Ves began to disassemble large parts of the Zeal and begin the process of replacing its core components one by one, he acted with both passion and precision as he treated this entire upgrade process similar to a full-body organ replacement operation.

Gloriana meanwhile basked in the Living Workshop as she injected a lot more love and care into her most delicate and demanding work processes. She was able to soften her perfectionist tendencies with a greater tolerance for individual quirks and differences.

It was times like these that reminded Ves and Gloriana that they were made for each other.

Both of them smiled as they steadily rebuilt the Zeal until he became increasingly more powerful and imposing as a heavy artillery mech.

After just three days of extremely intensive work, the upgraded machine was almost done!

The two mech designers just had to apply the finishing touches to make the third order living mech as good as new!

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