The Mech Touch

"Humanity is a tool-using race." Master Willix spoke up again after the four Journeymen had time to process the massive revelations. "Our race and civilization progresses by making use of more and better tools. Technology is our crucial enabler and our dependence on it has grown exponentially greater as we have developed further along this trajectory. Think about what would happen if all technology from the simplest room light to our innumerable amount of starships stop working overnight. What do you think would happen to our civilization?"

The answer to that was quite simple.

"It would be doomsday for us." Ketis said. "I mean, if this battleship and every tech inside her falls apart, the vessel would violently eject out of FTL which we may or may not survive. If we are lucky enough to still be alive and not lost in some weird or random higher dimension, we would slowly freeze and suffocate as the temperature drops and the oxygen level around us drops while we continue to breathe out carbon dioxide. What's funny is that we'd be better off than most people stranded on dead starships since the Hessarian Bardine is quite big. The more packed passenger liners would probably turn into floating coffins the fastest while the tiny crews of cargo haulers might be able to last for years if their cargo holds are air-pressurized."

"Life on a planet won't be much better." Gloriana remarked. "Transportation and many services will collapse overnight. People who live in densely-populated cities will quickly go through their stock of perishable food products and will have to subsist on whatever stashes of emergency rations that they or the local government has stockpiled. The sheer amount of hungry mouths will ensure that these reserves will never last long enough for a group of urbanized and completely clueless humans to figure out how to start up enough farms to feed the desperate population."

These were some of the few issues that would plague humanity after losing access to their tech. They didn't even begin to address other issues such as hostile alien empires overrunning defenseless human territories, the breakdown of order after the powers that be lost all of their tools of coercion and so on. Only the most isolated and most self-sufficient territories in the backwaters of human space had a realistic chance of survival.

Ves could easily imagine that remote planets like Cloudy Curtain would continue to subsist even if there were no machines anymore to assist in tending to all of its farms.

In contrast, hyper advanced star systems that were stuffed with high technology such as Centerpoint would turn into an immediate catastrophe as all of those huge and heavy floating structures collapsed to the ground and how the lack of radiation shielding and other forms of protection would cook and irradiate the entire population to death long before they ran out of emergency rations!

Master Willix saw that she had made her point. "Do you see what we have become? We as a race have decided that our best way to progress is to increase our development on tools and to become more dependent on them. Now, we at the MTA do not frown upon this. Compared to many other sentient alien races, we are individually weak and have very limited potential for transformational growth. Our dependence on better and better tools allow us to grow far past our biological limitations and become the dominant species in this galaxy and the next."

Ves could hear a 'but' coming…

"Not everyone believes we are following the right path." The Master gravely said. "There are great philosophical debates on the course we are charting and whether it is still the best choice for us to follow the historical trend. This is in fact another great difference between our Association and the CFA. Can you guess what I am talking about?"

The Journeymen took a moment to think about this question. Fortunately, Ves spent a fair bit of time on thinking about these issues himself. His overactive imagination always caused him to think about fanciful subjects even if they didn't have any direct bearing on his current life.

"I would say that the CFA attempts to reform the past while the MTA attempts to chart a different future." He spoke up. "Warships have always been our strongest weapons and even now they guarantee our dominance over the galaxy. The CFA may have some thoughts about who is allowed to control all of these powerful vessels, but it still embraces them and wishes to develop them even further. As for your Association, you have already stated that you seek to shift away from this increasingly wasteful and unsustainable paradigm. You and your fellow mechers are looking to make our race and civilization stronger through different means."

The Master nodded. "You are correct. We do attempt to make a break from our past. Your answer falls short of the key point, though. Does anyone else have a more thorough answer in mind?"

Silence ensued as Ves and his fellow Larkinson mech designers failed to come up with an idea they were confident enough to present. It was as if they were back in class and wanted to avoid embarrassing themselves in front of their professor.

Fortunately, Master Willix did not keep them in suspense for long.

"Think about who we are, where we stand at this time and where we are heading to. We are continuing to depend more on technology, yet we have never truly utilized its true potential."

That sounded incredibly strange to Ves and the others. Humankind was incredibly powerful today because of its utilization of technology! Just the advancements in warship-related technologies was enough to break the old order that had previously governed the galaxy and push back the Seven Apex Races from their old territories!

There was no way that Master Willix was kidding, though. Ves tried to think deeper and grasp the point that she was trying to make.

He failed to connect the dots.

Willix let out a disappointed sigh. "We are growing weaker as a race."

..What?

Everyone looked confused. Were they truly growing weaker? Then why didn't they feel that way? After months of relative calm, humanity had even begun a new round of expansion by invading the Red Ocean dwarf galaxy! How could their race and civilization possibly be weak in the face of this aggressive development?

"Let me bring up a simple example." She said. "In ancient times, humans gained sustenance and more specifically meat through hunting prey. This was physical, demanding and dangerous work. The tools that ancient humans had access to consisted of stone-tipped spears and javelins. Even if they were further developed and made use of slings or bows, that still did not take away from the fact that they must physically exert themselves. The best and most successful hunters were all strong and fit and could use that to fight against any foe, not just their prey."

Ves started to see where this story was going.

"With the passage of time and the advancement of early humanity's tech, hunting has become increasingly less demanding. Spears made way for hunting bows. Hunting bows made way for muskets. Humans rely increasingly less on hunting and more on capital-intensive factory farming to bring meat to their tables. These days, the mass cultivation of genuine meat is a near-completely automated process. Bots and advanced algorithms can easily manage the entire process of raising and butchering livestock. Only the more traditional organic farms that serve a distinguished clientele bother with older methods, but even then these farm workers cannot compare to the ancient hunters in strength."

"Youre saying that as our technology grows stronger, our fitness and self-sufficiency grows weaker." He said.

"That is my essential point." Willix finally looked pleased again. "As you can imagine, the CFA with its obsession for ever-greater warships and advanced automation does not ascribe to this viewpoint. The fleeters are strong traditionalists who continue to assume that it is irrelevant to the gradual weakening of individual humans."

"What does this have to do with masterworks?" Ketis asked with a touch of impatience.

These philosophical talks were not her cup of tea. If Master Willix wanted to lecture them about high-minded ideas that were barely relevant to the immediate issues, then Ketis would rather skip the boring lecture.

"I was getting to that, Miss Ketis. You see, our Association also supports technology, but we wish to chart a different course from our friends over at the CFA. We believe that technology must strengthen humans, not weaken us as is the case for most applications today."

This was a profound and incredibly high-level aspiration that none of the Larkinson mech designers felt that it mattered to them at first.

However, the dots finally connected to them after a short time.

"So that is why you insist on studying masterworks. You think it is a way to make people stronger." Gloriana realized.

"As I have stated earlier, masterwork mechs are special in that they can strengthen both their creators and users." Master Willix smiled. "Ves, you have created several masterworks already. How do you feel each time you succeed? Do you feel enlightened? Do you feel you have come closer to the essence of your profession?"

He nodded. "All of that has happened and more. I don't really know why I experience all of these changes, but they have all been helpful to me. I feel I can design a better mech each time I complete a successful masterwork. The threshold of making another masterwork also drops."

"That is because you have elevated yourself as a masterwork mech designer. You have grown stronger in a way that many other mech designers are never able to achieve. The mech pilots that have the privilege to pilot your masterworks are also fortunate. Their stronger and more exceptional mechs can unlock their potential and speed up their development."

Ves suddenly realized a critical detail. His first, true masterwork mech was the Devil Tiger. When his mother stole his proud creation and passed it on to his father, did she know about the usefulness of masterwork mechs. Did she deliberately passed it on to her husband so that she could be assured that he would be able to progress a lot easier as a mech pilot?

This was perhaps the best gift that he could have given to his father! While it was undeniable that the Devil Tiger had already changed into a drastically different mech from his original form, Ves had designed it to be adaptable and capable of growth from the start. Its essential character and masterwork properties should still be intact even if a second mech designer upgraded it into an expert mech.

As long as the Devil Tiger continued to upgrade, his father might even be able to break through to ace pilot one day! Unlike his brother Ark, Ryncol may actually be the first son of Benjamin Larkinson to reach a height that no other Larkinson mech pilot had ever reached in the history of their lineage!

While Ves mused about the optimistic future of his father, Master Willix continued to expand on her point.

"The CFA's ideal of a strong human is someone who relies on smarts and knowledge to manipulate advanced machines. There is a strict separation between man and machine, and it is only the latter that becomes stronger and more advanced."

"What about the MTA?"

"Our ideal is one of mutual strengthening and mutual dependence." Master Willix looked a bit more proud. "By elevating the quality of our mechs, we can create machines that are stronger but do not leave their human creators and users behind. At this time, we already know it is possible for this to happen. It is unfortunate that our circumstances raise the bar too high. In order for us to succeed in proving the CFA wrong, we must continue to work towards this goal and find a solution that will allow every mech designer or craftsman to make a masterwork. When we are able to realize this future, humanity will have truly stepped on the second rung of the ladder."