The Mech Touch

Merrill O'Brian's breakthrough and rise to prominence within the Design Department certainly made a lot of assistant mech designers prouder and more hopeful.

If someone like her was able to make the transition from assistant designer to lead designer, then the members of the design teams could make the same leap!

Unfortunately, not a single mech designer among the thousand or so assistants that remained had made any breakthroughs after Merrill.

The timid Apprentices did not display any exceptional moments of brilliance nor developed any fantastic solo mech designs for the Emergent Boutique.

Though the new sub-brand of the LMC definitely proved its worth by motivating the assistants and helping both Miles Tovar and Merrill O'Brian seize their opportunities, Ves had a feeling that this measure had already reaped the low-hanging fruit.

In other words, even without the Emergent Boutique, Miles and Merrill were already close to breaking through.

Perhaps it would have taken a few years longer for them to make it to their current rank, but they were already set up to succeed.

"These other mech designers on the other hand…"

Whenever Ves entered the main design labs of the Genesis Lab, he developed the habit of sweeping his spiritual senses through the different halls.

The vast majority of mech designers under his employ were still as ordinary and mediocre as before. Even the ones that had caught his eye a long time ago such as Catherine Evenson, Moltar Ringer and Rina Orion still looked as if they had years to go until they were eligible to form their own design seeds.

"A pity."

The lackluster rate of upwards mobility emphasized the brutal reality of the mech industry.

It was rare for Apprentices to be able to break through to Journeyman. Spiritual potential was an essential requirement, but that was far from enough. They needed to be smart, ambitious, persistent, creative and brilliant all at once.

It might not be difficult for an ordinary mech designer to meet one of these criteria, but they needed to be much greater in order to be qualified to become a high-ranking mech designer!

"It's much like how only a small proportion of mech pilots are actually worthy to become expert pilots."

If Ves wanted to increase the rate of breakthrough in his own clan, then he needed to be a lot more discerning about the people he recruited.

Ideally, he would be able to hire the mech designers that ticked all of the aforementioned boxes.

What actually happened was that larger, wealthier, stronger and more prestigious groups snapped up these high potential mech designers first!

Other parties weren't stupid. Even if they weren't able to discern the spiritual potential of other mech designers, they could still study the academic accomplishments, work experiences and other parameters of the young talents.

No matter whether they could ultimately advance to Journeyman or not, it was always worth it to poach these bright and hardworking mech designers!

"Well, if we can't expand the amount of Journeymen in our clan through internal promotion, then we will just have to work harder to recruit them from the job market!"

To be honest, Ves did not really like to resort to this option. Compared to mech designers such as Miles and Merrill, foreign mech designers such as the Voiken Siblings and the Power Pair had no love or attachment to the Larkinson Clan prior to their recruitment.

Though Ves and the clan had tried their best to welcome and integrate the new Journeymen in the clan, it was not the same if they had already been indoctrinated when they were Apprentices which made them much more impressionable.

Ves especially grew more concerned if his clan hired a large number of foreign Journeymen at once.

It would become a lot harder to monitor and integrate all of the newcomers, especially when they were working with many other Journeymen that had yet to integrate into the clan.

This was why he told Gloriana to focus on quality rather than quantity in her efforts to headhunt suitable Journeymen.

"Don't worry, Ves. That is what I have already been doing from the beginning." His wife reassured him. "I have no appetite to work alongside boors and jokers. I am carefully sifting through the applications and I have tasked several headhunting companies to provide me with any tips on new and useful prospects. I will only engage the potential recruits when I am certain they will be of use to us in the Design Department."

Gloriana's insistence on holding on to her strict criteria understandably caused her progress to be slow.

It took months since the start of her search before she was finally certain enough about her choice to present the prospect that she had her eye upon to Ves!

"I almost forgot about this." Ves told her as he skimmed through the record of the Journeyman Mech Designer that Gloriana had found after a painstakingly long search. "However, from what I am able to read, you truly picked a worthwhile recruitment prospect. I never expected you to find an actual neural interface specialist. How did you manage to get a hold of this guy?"

His wife smirked. "It took a lot of effort to find him and persuade him to give our Larkinson Clan a chance. Cormaunt Hempkamp is not an average mech designer, as you can see from the information that the Black Cats have uncovered of the man. Though he has a few blemishes in his career, that does not detract from his willingness to push the boundaries and excel in his chosen specialty."

"That is certainly obvious from the intelligence gathered from him. Normally, a strong desire to innovate and experiment is seen as a boon in our profession."

As Ves gazed at Mr. Hempkamp's projected face, he had the feeling he was looking as a black-skinned version of himself.

While they both possessed the hunger to go off the beaten track and explore new technologies, the problem with Cormaunt Hempkamp was that neural interfaces were not exactly the safest technology to tinker with! A single mistake could easily cause a mech pilot to suffer permanent brain damage!

Though Mr. Hempkamp did not appear to have made any fatal errors, his eagerness to 'improvise' had landed him in hot water multiple times.

The fact that he got kicked out of three separate large professional mech companies was telling!

This was also the reason why Mr. Hempkamp was still available in the job market despite the huge demand for neural interface specialists.

Although there was nothing wrong with using the stock neural interface designs that the MTA freely made available, the best mechs nonetheless had to find advantages in as many aspects as possible. Optimizing the neural interface could often make a small but crucial difference in the operation of a well-designed mech.

Neural interface specialists also played a special role in the design of high-ranking mechs.

Standardized neural interfaces were no longer sufficient to allow expert pilots to properly interface with their expert mechs. They needed to employ more high-end models that allowed for much greater data throughput while also bringing in a lot of additional functions that enabled expert pilots to activate functions that were too complicated for standard mechs.

In the previous design projects that the Larkinsons worked on, they always contracted the design work on a custom neural interface to an external consultant.

While that certainly got the job done, the problem was that the external specialist could only do so much when working remotely.

Ves had long desired to bring a neural interface specialist under his wing. This way, he could specify more detailed requirements and obtain more specialized neural interface designs that worked far better with specific living mech models.

This was why he decided to interview Mr. Hempkamp in spite of his problematic past.

Both Ves and Gloriana had already taken their seats when their guest arrived.

"Meow." Lucky called as he scrutinized the newcomer for a time before dismissing the fellow as a threat.

"Patriarch Larkinson. Madame Wodin-Larkinson. Thank you for seeing me. I have looked forward to this meeting ever since I arrived in Davute."

Gloriana managed to find Cormaunt Hempkamp when he was still residing in another star system and zone. It took quite a bit of time and effort to transport him all the way to Davute.

The journey didn't seem to have tired out the prospective recruit. In fact, he was brimming with eagerness as he finally managed to attend this important meeting!

Ves gestured to the nearby chair. "Please take a seat. Let us start with your past… employment history. I think it is best if we clear the air straight away. What got you fired from three different large and professional mech companies in a row? Don't tell me that they were all awful companies run by bad leaders."

Despite putting Mr. Hempkamp on the spot, the mech designer wearing a formal suit did not look stressed at all. He already expected to be grilled given his colorful record.

"I enjoyed working for my past employers." The neural interface specialist honestly replied. "I still wish I wasn't let go by them. In every case, I worked alongside friendly colleagues who possessed similar interests in mech design. It's just…"

"Did you feel as if your bosses underutilized your abilities?" Ves asked in a knowing tone.

"That is right! That is exactly right! In each and every company that I worked for, I applied to spend additional time and resources to develop a new and original idea that could substantially increase the performance of the neural interfaces of the design projects that I worked on. While I couldn't guarantee whether my solutions would produce measurable results, I think it was still worthwhile enough to make the attempts."

When Mr. Hempkamp spoke, Ves could feel the passion and conviction from the other mech designer's voice and feelings.

It was due to their resemblance that Ves was able to empathize with Mr. Hempkamp so much.

"I take it that your superiors are much more conservative and less willing to experiment than you, is that correct?"

"That is correct, sir. I was not ignorant of that, but it frustrated me a lot to see good opportunities to improve a mech design go by because the lead designers were unwilling to deviate from their set formulas! They were unwilling to entertain my ideas and instinctively rejected most of my suggestions because of their unreasonable fear and ignorance towards neural interfaces. Contrary to their impressions, altering the design of neural interfaces does not instantly turn a mech radioactive. There are many methods to safely test mechs with altered neural interfaces without producing fatalities!"

To be honest, Ves began to feel a bit afraid at Hempkamp's open enthusiasm towards playing around with neural interfaces.

According to all of the lessons that he had learned about neural interfaces, these crucial bridges put mech pilots into a vulnerable position.

When machines suffered glitches and errors, then that wasn't necessarily a big deal. The malfunctioning devices could easily be debugged and repaired in order to turn them as good as new again.

The same was not necessarily the case with humans! When mech pilots suffered the consequences of any faults relating to neural interfaces, they could suffer 'glitches' that directly damaged their vulnerable brains and nerves!

As much as humanity progressed its medical technology, the brain still remained the most delicate and mysterious organ of the human body!

There were many kinds of damage that modern medical technology was unable to address.

Every instance where people experimented frequently with neural interfaces eventually produced accidents that generated a lot of preventable suffering!

Over time, the MTA strongly implemented a lot more rules and regulations concerning neural interfaces. No longer were neural interface specialists free to experiment recklessly with this key component.

The MTA correctly identified the need for mech pilots to maintain trust in their own mechs!

If mech pilots no longer entrusted mechs with their lives, then the future of the mech community would eventually be in danger.

Ves also had to face this risk. If he brought in someone as eager to experiment as Mr. Hempkamp into the Design Department, would the mech pilots of the Larkinson Army still remain eager to pilot his living mechs?

This was a tough call.

The safest option was to wave Mr. Hempkamp away, but that might cause the Larkinson Clan to miss out on its only opportunity to hire a decent neural interface specialist in the short or medium term!

This was why Ves was contemplating whether he should extend Mr. Hempkamp the benefit of the doubt.