The Mech Touch novel Chapter 2929

Chapter 2929: Ves the Charlatan

The plan that Ves came up sounded very dumb, especially to the Larkinsons born in the Bright Republic.

Their strong secularist upbringing caused them to develop an instinctive revulsion for anything related to religion and superstition.

Idolatry was an extension of that. Even if it did not come in an overt religious coat, the extreme worship and veneration of objects and people was a kind of behavior that Brighters had learned to be wary of at all times!

It was one thing to be a fan of people like expert pilots. These hero-like figures fought hard and overcame unimaginable hurdles in order to become larger than life.

Yet to turn your brains off and accept anything dubious or harmful just because it came from the object you admired was another thing!

Excessive worship of high-ranking mech pilots led to warped societies such as Vicious Mountain’s Garlen Empire. Strong as it may be, the tragedy of the Cross Clan taught Ves and many Larkinsons that letting expert pilots be in charge was as primitive as allowing the strongest caveman to be in charge of an ancient tribe!

It may have made some sense back in the primordial era of humanity, but modern states were much larger, more complex and more intertwined with technology and other systems.

Brighters like Ves always learned that the ideal human should discard as much superstition, bias and prejudice as possible and instead engage in critical thinking. A bit of scepticism was always reasonable, but being contrarian to the point of becoming a conspiracy theorist who only adhered to unfalsifiable theories was yet another form of bias.

It was not that easy for anyone to remain enlightened in a society where many different interest groups sought to persuade people to their viewpoints. Family, friends, the media, the local sports club, schools, the government and even the Big Two all sought to convert people to their particular pet causes, and they weren’t above playing dirty to gain support.

The Life Research Association was actually supposed to be an enlightened state. Ruled by a cabal of highly intelligent scientists who rose through the ranks by proving their worth through achieving actual research results, the state was the closest thing to a technocracy that Ves had ever encountered.

Yet for all their smarts, the biotech researchers themselves were prone to the same faults that enlightened states were supposed to suppress!

Their partiality towards biotechnology was so strong that a lot of Lifers simply couldn’t comprehend why the rest of the galaxy didn’t follow suit!

The ultralifers happened to be the most extreme among them. Though not overtly religious in nature, their overly-passionate defense of anything related to biotechnology and the LRA pretty much meant they were indistinguishable from cultists like the ones from the True Ylvaine Dynasty and Spiritus Sancti.

That gave Ves a rather bright idea.

Why not give the fanatics what they wanted?

Though the scheme cooked up by Ves sounded so stupid that anyone with a decent brain would have been able to see through it right away, he felt there was actually a decent chance of success this time.

Everything he had observed about the ultralifers suggested that they were the kind of extremists who were true believers rather than hypocritical opportunists.

In other words, they walked the walk the walk and were actually sincere about their extreme devotion towards biotechnology.

It didn’t matter if there were a handful of enlightened sceptics among their ranks. As long as they were in the minority, the peer pressure from the rest of the crowd would ensure that the naysayers followed along. If not, then the deviants would inevitably get pushed out of the group instead of having their warnings respected!

This was one of the most poisonous aspects of cults. The lack of internal dissent and the high pressure towards conformity even if the prevailing consensus was wrong resulted in a strong bubble where 2 + 2 = 5 and green was red.

This gave him an even greater confidence in his ploy.

"If these guys are as stubborn about the greatness of biotechnology as Gloriana is about the superiority of Hexers, then I can definitely hoodwink these stupid ultralifers!"

His abundant personal experience with Gloriana’s strong biases gave him ample knowledge how to approach the ultralifers.

The most important factor that Ves had to take into account was to set up the right narrative. Ves had to manipulate the circumstances in a way that played to all of his target audience’s biases without inserting any discordant elements.

For example, Ves’ identity absolutely couldn’t be associated with the statues that Ves intended to use. This was not too difficult as only the Larkinsons who recently joined the clan were aware of the Aspects of Lufa.

Ves had made sure to keep their existence a secret and ordered every Larkinson to stay quiet about them. While this was not a completely foolproof way of keeping his latest invention unknown, he doubted that the ultralifers were up to date.

"Let’s just try. Even if they know, they might get too dazzled by my work to question any further."

The main reason why Ves was able to persuade everyone to try out his plan was because no one could come up with any better. In any case, it only took a day or two to put together some new statues and see whether the ultralifers were truly gullible as he predicted.

If his guess was wrong, then the Larkinsons would just try out something else.

Just as Ves was about to convene a work crew by calling Dr. Robert Swindell along with a number of other biomech technicians, he suddenly gained a bit of inspiration.

"Why settle for an inanimate statue when I can do more with a moving sculpture?"

If he was able to create a simple bot covered with organic matter, he could use that to manipulate the ultralifers to an even greater degree!

As a mech designer, designing and creating bots was a simple matter for him. The complexity was at least an order of magnitude simpler, especially when Ves did not need to incorporate many of the features that normal bots possessed.

His demands were not great!

"I need to get access to a workshop!"

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