The Mech Touch

Of course, Gloriana had also brought their baby along. Aurelia babbled senses as she tried to reach out at the friendly light blue-coated mech. Compared to everything else she had seen in her brief life, the Enlightened Warrior looked a lot different due to its color scheme!

"Meow."

"Miaow."

The two cats had followed after Gloriana and the baby as well. Right now, the two of them had jumped on top of a work table and pressed down their bottoms in anticipation of a good show.

Gloriana turned and glowered at Ves. "Look at what you've done. Are you proud of yourself? Your solo project nearly got us all in trouble! If I was involved in this project, you would have never made so many mistakes!"

"Hey, my project is sound! I did the best I could and I took every reasonable precaution! Accidents happen, okay?! With a mech design as experimental as the Enlightened Warrior, it performed quite well up until the last moment. I admit that I should have implemented more precautions to prevent the situation from developing up to this point, but everything eventually turned out okay! I pulled the plug before anything truly awful happened."

"And what if you did it too late? What if you misjudged the timing? What if the runaway reaction already did its damage before you realized that something was wrong? Did you ever think about those possible scenarios or were you so confident that your brilliant but risky scheme would somehow work exactly like the way you envisioned? Did you stop implementing more safeguards because you wanted to rush your variant design to completion just in time for our clan to sell copies of the mech to the local mech market? WELL YOU SHOULD HAVE INVOLVED ME AS WELL! WITH TWO MECH DESIGNERS WORKING ON THIS PROJECT AT ONCE, WE COULD GET DOUBLE OF THE WORK DONE! IF I WAS IN CHARGE HERE, I WOULD HAVE NEVER LET YOU COMPLETE YOUR DESIGN IN SUCH A ROUGH STATE!"

"HEY, DON'T BLOW THIS SITUATION OUT OF PROPORTION! MY EXPERIMENT WENT AWRY, BUT THAT TENDS TO HAPPEN WHEN ANYONE TESTS OUT NEW STUFF! YOU'RE HAMMERING ME WAY TOO MUCH, GLORIANA! PLEASE STOP COMPLAINING AFTER THE FACT BECAUSE I AM HEARING NOTHING FROM YOU THAT WILL ACTUALLY FIX THE PROBLEM!"

Gloriana snarled at Ves. "Don't yell at me! Has your mother not taught you how to behave around our kids? Think of our daughter! Aurelia will cry if you keep being aggressive. Just look!"

She presented Aurelia forward, much to the baby's surprise.

"Whua!? Hihihihi! Wuuu… babaaabaaaa…"

"Uhm, honey, Aurelia looks pretty happy right now. Look! She's giggling! She's so cute!"

His wife quickly pulled back the baby and pretended that nothing had happened.

"Ahem, in any case, let us stop arguing about the causes of this incident and look towards fixing it. Do you have any ideas, Ves?"

He directed an impatient look at her. "Despite what happened, the Enlightened Warrior is still a mech of my own design. I need to fix my problems in order to learn from this incident and do better next time. Now, will you get out of the way and stop distracting me from performing a proper examination of my mech?"

Gloriana made a disgusting sound before she turned her head towards Aurelia. "Did you hear that, Aurelia? Your daddy thinks he knows better even though he got himself in this mess in the first place. The nerve of him! The patients are running the madhouse!"

Ves quickly brushed past his complaining wife and approached the Enlightened Warrior to study its current state.

He first performed a basic technical examination. He paid special attention to the operating system, the data processors and most importantly the neural interface.

None of them showed any signs of tampering and all of the logs indicated that they were working as intended. Any mutation that occurred during the testing session did not originate from the hardware of the mech.

"Well, that rules out a lot of unlikely possibilities."

Even though he didn't think there was anything wrong with the physical state of the mech, he had to confirm it for himself before he narrowed his sights to the more probable causes.

Seeing that the nature of the problem likely involved the spiritual side of the Enlightened Warrior, he carefully touched the surface of the mech and closed his eyes in order to pour his full concentration in the mech.

He first tried to get a deep impression of the character of the mech.

Contrary to his initial thoughts, the Enlightened Warrior did not feel as if it had been tampered or warped by the Quint. The mech was still relatively close to its initial state. It was for all intents and purposes an innocent mech who didn't know what it had done wrong.

"Hey, it's okay. I'm just checking with you. Can you tell me what happened back then?"

The mech was still new and very underdeveloped. Even if it was a second-order mech, its extremely short existence and lack of interaction with its mech pilot meant that it was still lacking in too many areas.

Ves wasn't able to get any clear or coherent answers out of the living mech. He only knew that the Enlightened Warrior pretty much let the Quint run the show and that it had activated its transcendence glow at the maximum possible setting, which Ves had set at 50 percent of the glow of the Aspect of Transcendence.

This should have been a risky but still rather safe setting. According to his theories, the transcendence glow at half strength should have only made Jessica Quentin stressed or agitated at most. It was not supposed to give her a highly realistic simulation of what it was like to stand a few steps away from that living statue!

"I'm missing something here." Ves frowned. "Quint! Tell me what you did!"

I MERELY DID WHAT YOU INTENDED TO, CREATOR. I GAVE PILOT JESSICA QUENTIN WHAT SHE WANTED AND NEEDED. SHE ASKED FOR GUIDANCE. I GAVE IT TO HER. SHE ASKED FOR POWER. I INTRODUCED HER TO IT. SHE WAS WILLING TO DIE FOR HER FREEDOM. I PROVIDED HER WITH A CHANCE. WHETHER SHE LIVED OR DIED IS UP TO HER. IF SHE WANTED IT BAD ENOUGH, THEN SHE WOULD HAVE PASSED THE TEST.

"You…"

Ves looked both shocked and disappointed in the spiritual conversation he held with his own mech.

"How can you be so callous?"

TO SURPASS ONE'S MORTALITY, ONE MUST BE WILLING TO BALANCE ON THE EDGE OF LIFE AND DEATH. JOSHUA AND CASELLA BOTH SHOWED THIS WILLINGNESS. JESSICA QUENTIN HAS YET TO PUSH HERSELF TO THIS KNIFE'S EDGE, SO I PUSHED HER ONTO IT. AS FAR AS I AM CONCERNED, IT WORKED.

"Jessica's life signs were going wild! Her head almost went poof! Did you know how much trouble you could have gotten us all in?! There was a real chance the MTA would have stepped in immediately and put me into permanent MTA custody! How the hell am I supposed to help the Larkinson Clan any further? The MTA might even find out that you're the ultimate party responsible for killing one of its own mech pilots and perform the first execution on a living mech!"

The Quint may be intelligent enough to think and talk for itself, but it was still too ignorant of the bigger picture! The masterwork mech still had plenty of shortcomings!

IT WORKED, DID IT NOT? THOUGH YOU HAVE CUT THE MECH PILOT OFF, SHE HAS ALREADY FOUND HER WAY. SHE CAN CLIMB THE LAST HURDLE HERSELF, WITH OR WITHOUT THE ENLIGHTENED WARRIOR. YOU SHOULD BE GRATEFUL TO US THAT WE HAVE DECISIVELY PROVEN YOUR EXPERIMENT IS VIABLE.

Ves banged the forward console with his fist! "You goddamn mulehead! Didn't you listen to anything I said!? I get why you are so eager to prove your effectiveness, but you pushed it way too far! Humans aren't as durable as mechs! Jessica Quentin isn't as ready as Joshua or Casella! Despite all of her implants and fancy training, her spirituality was still undeveloped. You can't just pump it full of air like a balloon and expect it to remain intact! Have you seen her state!? It was all cracked and only a short distance away from bursting!"

THAT WAS A NECESSARY PROCESS. HER SPIRIT WAS LIKE A FIXED CONTAINER. ITS SOLIDITY HAMPERED ITS GROWTH. BREAKING IT DOWN MADE IT EASIER FOR IT TO EXPAND. THE ENLIGHTENED WARRIOR AND I HAVE HAVE UNLOCKED HER POTENTIAL. I ADVISE YOU TO ENCOURAGE HER TO FINISH WHAT SHE STARTED AND DO HER BEST TO IMPROVE WHILE SHE IS STILL IN A MALLEABLE STATE. HER AMBITION TO BECOME AN EXPERT CANDIDATE IS CLOSE AT HAND.

"And how the hell do you know that, Quint?! Are you some kind of guru on breakthroughs? What makes you qualified to know better than me? You're toying with forces you don't understand!

I AM THE FORCE.

Ves became speechless.

The arrogance of this mech! He realized more and more that letting his living mechs grow without any structured supervision or education was a big mistake! He should institute some kind of academy for living mechs and force all of them to take classes until they knew what they should or should not do. If all of his living mechs turned into delinquents like the Quint, then his clan that relied so heavily on them would be doomed!

YOU CREATED ME TO SERVE THE CLAN AND DO WHAT IT TAKES TO MAKE IT GREAT.

"Did I?" Ves frowned. "I don't recall having such grandiose thoughts."

YOU INSTILLED ME WITH A MISSION THAT I HAVE BEEN EXECUTING TO THIS DAY. THE CLAN NEEDS STRONGER MECH PILOTS, SO THAT IS WHAT I AM CONSTANTLY TRYING TO PROVIDE. WHAT I DID WAS RIGHT, IF NOT ENTIRELY SAFE. I PERFORMED AN EXPERIMENT I KNEW THAT WOULD WORK. THE RESULT IS CLEAR TO SEE.

"Are you admitting to me that you were experimenting!? You're not a scientist! You don't have a degree! Do you know anything about the scientific method!? There is a process for this! At the very least, you need to start off small and verify your conjectures one by one instead of all at once!"

I AM A MECH. I CANNOT ATTEND A UNIVERSITY AND EARN A DEGREE. BESIDES, NOBODY CAN TEACH ME WHAT I MUST DO. I KNOW BETTER THAN ANYONE, EVEN YOU, CREATOR.

Ves grew numb at this point. He was done being angry. All he knew was that the Quint had been a naughty boy and needed to get spanked.

"At least tell me what possessed you to crank up Lufa's transcendence glow beyond the safety limit that I have hardwired into the Enlightened Warrior."

I DID NOT.

"What?"

YOU CAN SEE IT YOURSELF. THE ENLIGHTENED WARRIOR IS STILL THE SAME.

The Quint was right. Ves had already inspected his own work and it had not broken past its own limitations.

"Then how…?"

I GAVE JESSICA QUENTIN AS MUCH AS I COULD AND NO MORE.

Ves tried to figure it out. He made a direct comparison between the Aspect of Transcendence and the Enlightened Warrior.

The Aspect of Transcendence affected people in the vicinity with its dangerous glow.

The Enlightened Warrior was able to do the same to a lesser degree, but Ves had confined its glow inside the mech so that it only affected its pilot and no one else.

His eyes widened in belated realization.

"Oh no…"

When mech pilots interfaced with living mechs, they removed all barriers between themselves and their machines.

This meant that a glow that was only 50 percent effective on people standing right outside may be 100 percent or even 150 percent as effective to the mech pilots whose minds directly connected with their machines!

He made a grievous oversight. He planned and executed an experiment based on a faulty assumption.

"Oops."