The Mech Touch

Now that they uncovered a solid direction, Ves and Gloriana eagerly brainstormed and swapped ideas.

There was great potential in converting a part of the Blinkyverse into a supercomputer!

Although it required Ves to make drastic changes to his existing Imaginary Universe Method, this was fine.

He never thought that this qi cultivation method had been perfected. The fact that Ves added a version number to its name was proof that it had already changed and evolved since he devised the initial version.

The troublesome part about the Imaginary Universe Method was that his mother also had a hand in its development.

Her input enabled Blinky's cultivation method to jump from Version 2.0 to Version 3.0!

The most logical course of action that Ves could take at this time was to approach his mother yet again for help on this matter.

Ves was not eager to solicit her assistance this time. His last interaction with her had thoroughly soured his willingness to collaborate with her on this kind of issue.

Who knew whether she would betray his trust once again and tamper with his cultivation without his knowledge?

Unless his understanding of cultivation science had grown substantially enough to understand his mother's work, it was best not to resort to this option!

Ves much preferred to take control over his own cultivation and develop his own solutions to his current problem.

At least he would be able to maintain control at all times.

As Ves continued to exchange theories with his wife, he began to develop a real framework for a possible way to turn the Blinkyverse into the spiritual equivalent of a server!

"I can't convert the entire Blinkyverse into a supercomputer." He spoke after a moment of thought. "Its main purpose is to serve as an energy reservoir and a place where my companion spirit can turn the imaginary into the physical. Much of the universe needs to remain in its original and untainted form. If I try to change too much to it, the entire essence of the Blinkyverse will change, making it much less suitable for other purposes. Luckily, the internal volume is so big that there should still be plenty of room to accommodate a lot of processors."

Gloriana grew envious as she heard what Ves could do with his companion spirit. How come Blinky was so much more amazing than her Alexandria?!

She hugged her red companion spirit tighter against her chest.

"Can you add a supercomputer to my companion spirit as well?"

"Maowww..."

Ves glanced at Alexandria. The companion spirit had grown a lot since her creation. While she wasn't as versatile as Blinky, her design network was much stronger and more impressive.

His wife could make excellent use of Alexandria if she was able to lead a lot of mech designers, but ever since they moved to New Constantinople VIII, they no longer had any assistants by their side.

Ves intended to change that by recruiting Alexa Streon and numerous other Terran mech designers with high potential, but it was difficult to speed up this process.

"I do not think it is impossible." He replied. "However, I need to devise a different solution for you. Alexandria doesn't have the traits that Blinky has, which means that she can't cultivate anything that resembles the Imaginary Universe Method. I will need to come up with something different that makes more effective use of her design network."

That caused Gloriana to perk up. "Wait! Instead of trying to implant a spiritual supercomputer in my companion spirit, is it possible to upgrade the design network in a way that allows me to commandeer the minds and cranial implants of other mech designers?!"

That was a radical suggestion!

Ves initially wanted to say no to her idea, but he halted as soon as he started to think through this scenario.

The design network in its current form was based on restraint and voluntary exchange.

Ves had tried to make sure to decrease any objectionable aspects about it by giving participants a decent amount of control over what parts of themselves they wanted to block from the design network.

This caused any collaboration to proceed fairly harmoniously. Ves, Gloriana and other Larkinson mech designers trusted each other well enough to avoid prying into overly private matters.

However, the existing barriers also made it so that the design network never worked at full capacity.

What if Ves removed those barriers?

What if Ves developed a version of the design network that not only allowed Gloriana to merge her mind with that of other mech designers, but also enabled her to 'borrow' their augmented brain power in the process?

The resulting performance boost would be enormous!

The Queen Cat could finally make good on her self-aggrandizing title and become the sovereign of her own spiritual distributed computing network!

Gloriana didn't even need to acquire a customized first-class cranial implant anymore.

She could just use her upgraded design network to connect to the mind of a first-class mech designer who already possessed this expensive augmentation!

Of course, that did not make this upgrade useless. In fact, the combination between a mech design-oriented first-class cranial implant and a spiritual distributed computing network could produce massive synergies!

This was especially the case if the first-class cranial implant contained specific programming related to this new form of resource utilization!

Both Ves and Gloriana looked at each other in shock!

This was an immensely powerful idea!

So long as Alexandria's design network connected to plenty of powerful mech designers, Gloriana would be able to perfectly synchronize herself with the design capabilities of the entire collective!

She could forcefully elevate her effective design capabilities to the standards of a Master Mech Designer!

"Maow!"

"You have to work on this, Ves!" Gloriana practically threw herself onto Ves! Her hands eagerly clutched her husband's uniform! "Promise me you will upgrade Alexandria's design network! I don't need a spiritual computer. I just need you to give me the capability to borrow the brainpower and processing power of other mech designers! Once I gain access to this ability, I can complete the Jupiter Project in a matter of weeks rather than months!"

Ves coughed as he gently pressed his overenthusiastic wife back. "I will work on it, but not now. There is little point in developing it when the only other mech designer in the Premier Branch is me. It is much more useful if I focus on upgrading Blinky first, since there is no requirement to work with other mech designers."

His words hardly caused Gloriana to dampen her excitement, but she understood that it was unlikely that she could gain this improvement anytime soon.

"I will be waiting for you, then." She said as she regained her composure to an extent. "I will correspond with the implant engineers to make special adaptations related to this future functionality. It will be difficult to explain the concept to them, let alone convince them that this is possible in the first place. We should just claim that you have developed a new and proprietary application of hyper technology. This new branch has already produced numerous miraculous inventions."

The galactic net frequently announced one amazing innovation after another. Humans were nothing if not curious. The more they played around with E energy and hyper materials, the greater the chance they could figure out a revolutionary new application!

Ves did not have to be afraid of exposing anything related to spiritual engineering and cultivation science due to this recent development. The Red Two appeared to have completely let go of the taboo against spreading this kind of knowledge.

He and his wife soon returned their attention to the original subject.

There were a lot of technical and practical limitations to turning a part of the Blinkyverse into an enormous server.

"Is it possible for you to purchase a computer core and insert it into the Blinkyverse?"

"Pff. No. While there is an element of the Blinkyverse that is already physical, the vast majority of it remains imaginary. It is not a giant pocket space where I can dump entire mechs or starships and pull them out whenever it is convenient. My companion spirit needs to attain a breakthrough and advance to the second mode of the Imaginary Universe Method before we can even think about this. Even then, pulling physical objects in and out of the Blinkyverse is another problem entirely."

"If that is the case, you cannot rely on any existing implants or computers to add processing power to the Blinkyverse. The only course you can take is to develop a spiritual computing system from the ground up." Gloriana concluded.

"Those are my thoughts as well, but the rules and circumstances are entirely different, honey. It is impossible for me to produce an imaginary version of a simple processor chip. Perhaps I can develop a spiritual construct that can spit one out, but I will have to design one that actually works in an entirely different setting. It is too difficult to develop a brand new spiritual computing system without any existing foundation for me to borrow from! Perhaps there are ancient cultivation heritages out there that have attempted to produce something similar, but it is unlikely that I can get my hands on this precious knowledge."

The last time he checked the Tree of Possibilities, none of the enlightenment fruits dangling from the branches granted any knowledge that could be useful in this endeavor!

This meant that Ves would likely have to pioneer this field by himself!

"Hmmm, that is indeed a difficult problem to overcome." Gloriana frowned. "Since it is not possible for you to produce any immediate results, I think you should take this step by step. Start with the basics. The simplest and most fundamental computing system is based on bits. If you can create a spiritual version of a transistor that can register two different states, then that is your most basic and important building block of a spiritual computing system. You can expand your scope into qubits and quantum computers later. Even if it is not possible for you to recreate more advanced computing systems, you can advantage of the enormous space available inside the Blinkyverse to construct a massive amount of simple transistors!"

That sounded like an incredibly stupid and inefficient approach, but it happened to be viable because the spiritual real estate inside the Blinkyverse was just that big!

The internal universe had already grown a complete Earth-like planet by this time. The surface area of a planet with a diameter of over 12,000 kilometers was so enormous that Ves could pile up a seemingly endless amount of simple and oversized spiritual semiconductor devices!

Of course, Ves did not think that such an absurd planet-sized computing system could properly work. The lag and delays in the transmission of signals across such vast distances severely decreased its overall efficiency.

What mattered was whether the overall concept was possible. So long as Ves could produce such a simple computer system, he could continue to refine it by miniaturizing the transistors and combining them into more advanced computing systems!

His eventual goal was to develop a powerful imaginary processing bank that Ves could effectively use to expand his internal processing power.

Ves hoped that his close connection to Blinky would reduce the lag and any other barriers to such an extent that he could seamlessly access the spiritual processors stored inside the Blinkyverse with his mind.

"I will need to conduct a lot of studies on how to design and build my own computing systems." He muttered.

His study burden increased yet again, but Ves felt it was more than worthwhile to engage in this research.

The benefits of developing a proper spiritual computing system were huge!

Ves could not only use it for himself, but he could also apply them in other ways!

He wasn't in a hurry to do that. All of this remained speculation for the time being.

If Ves wanted to turn all of these ambitious ideas into reality, he first needed to develop the simplest possible computing system in order to verify his current research direction!