The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3397

Chapter 3397: Complete Life

What was a living mech?

Many people in the Larkinson Clan had different answers to this question.

The mech pilots who piloted the Bright Warrior and many other mech models designed by Ves possessed the most intimate contact with living mechs. By interfacing with them day after day, most often with the same mech, they began to learn that living mechs were different from the other machines they piloted in their careers.

Whether it was the training mechs they piloted back when they attended a mech academy or the budget mechs that every rookie started to pilot when they joined an organization at the bottom of the hiercharchy, mechs were mostly machines to them. No matter how well they were designed or how much money it took to build them, each and every mech functioned like a tool. They did what they were supposed to and did not influence the decision of their pilots.

For four centuries, this had been the central paradigm of mechs. A machine is a machine and must always be harnessed by their human owners and controllers. Any mech that did not fit this definition was a potential threat as it could always go out of control at any time.

Although modern mechs were so complicated and packed with different functions that it needed to be supported by an army of algorithms and sub-AIs to control all of its systems, the mech industry always made sure to adhere to a hard limit to the autonomy of any given mech.

As long as the mech pilot stopped making the decisions that only humans should be making, a mech was no longer a mech in the eyes of the mech industry. It was a battle bot that was driven by cold hard logical programming instead of warm-blooded humans!

The MTA had always taken a repulsive stance towards excessive automation. Not only did it go against the Association's goal that technology must strengthen humans that used it, automation also posed a grave security threat.

It was much easier to subvert the control of AI-driven battle bots than induce mech pilots to betray their leaders!

While the CFA held a more accepting stance towards automation, mechs were different from starships. The difference in scale and complexity allowed mechs to become war weapons that were closely tied to humanity's own evolution and advancement.

Under this regime, a mech designer like Ves had to bend to the rules and play the same game as everyone else. He had always studiously abided by the fundamental principle that humans should always master their own technology instead of the other way around.

Admittedly, Ves had been pushing the limits imposed by the MTA. Starting from the X-Factor, he slowly explored and deciphered the phenomena that made certain mechs more impressive than others despite sharing the same design.

He slowly came up with the concept of a living mech and had continually refined his methods until he could design and make one in his sleep!

Not only that, but Ves took the idea of leveraging living entities to empower mechs a step further. After receiving the direction of his mother, he began to look outside the mech for additional sources of power and soon developed a side branch where he employed design spirits to provide more support to the meech pilots that entrusted their lives to his products.

Nowadays, these features had become the core selling points of his mechs. Whether it was his commercial mech models or his unique expert mechs, all of them were defined by the living elements that Ves imparted in their design.

Starting from the beginning, each and every mech he designed in succession became a little more stronger and sophisticated in these aspects. The spiritual foundations of his mech designs became stronger and more structural. He continually added new design spirits to his collection while his existing ones grew stronger on their own accord.

Yet no matter how much Ves improved in these areas, he had never broken the rule that a mech should gain so much autonomy that it was able to wrench complete control from its mech pilot.

The Devil Tiger came closest to reaching this point, and some might even argue that it had already crossed the line. However, Ves made sure that it could not fully function without a mech pilot.

Although Ves entertained notions about breaking this taboo, he had no intentions of acting on these thought experiments. There was no compelling reason for him to go this far because he actually agreed with the MTA for once.

"Humanity should never let technology dominate their lives."

Of course, as a mech designer, he held a professional interest in preventing the rise of battle bots. There would be no market for mechs anymore if consumers began to dispense with the trouble of training mech pilots and preferred to make use of more convenient war weapons.

However, Ves was not completely ignorant of the greater trend of humanity's evolution. Starting from the adoption of ever-greater warships, human civilization had indeed been following a dangerous road.

He simply could not agree with the CFA's vision of the future and would much rather help the MTA win the ideological struggle that might very well determine the course of humanity's future

This was why he felt rather mixed at this time.

With his bleeding palm pressed against Joshua's own injured hand, the drops of life that soaked the cockpit floor had acted as a catalyst that prompted the just-completed Chimera Project to undergo a profound transformation!

Although the mechanical elements of the expert hero mech remained the same as before, Ves could see that its spiritual foundation had reached a higher level!

It was not entirely unfamiliar to Ves. He had already encountered something similar in both the Quint and the Shield of Samar.

These two living mechs stood out from the rest by possessing greater and more conscious forms of life. Though they had their differences, their most exceptional aspect was that they were fully alive like any human being and could think like any other fully sentient being!

In fact, Ves also suspected that the Ouroboros that he had designed during one of his previous Mastery experiences also reached this height.

This was different from most of the living mechs he designed today. Though he called mechs such as the Ferocious Piranha and the Valkyrie Redeemer alive, in truth they were only half-conscious.

They weren't really active when the mechs were dormant and only came alive when the machines were activated. The living mechs only possessed faint control of themselves and still had to work together with the mech pilots to achieve the greatest influence.

This wasn't necessarily a bad thing to Ves. He deliberately designed his mechs to build up a symbiotic relationship with their mech pilots in order to generate positive synergy. Mechs existed to complement mech pilots, nothing more.

The Quint and the Shield of Samar had broken this original design intention. By borrowing the exceptional power of the breakthroughs of their respective pilots, they absorbed enough energies to become a higher order life that possessed greater potential but also greater danger!

Though there was a chance that either the Quint or the Shield of Samar might betray their owners one day, Ves didn't take it too seriously. The two exceptional living mechs were firmly in his grasp and they had already grown alongside the Larkinsons for so long that it was inconceivable that they would turn their coats!

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