Chapter 3845 Mech Needs
What was it like for an artist to have his own painting complain about its flaws?
What was it like for a musician to have one of his own songs describe the discordant elements in the notes?
What was it like for a shipwright to have his own ship come to life and threaten to crash into a city unless her vibration problem was fixed?
Ves felt as if he had been put into the shoes of those fellows as the Everchanger seemed to pour out all of its grievances, pet peeves and other miscellaneous complaints!
There were so many points the Everchanger was dissatisfied with that Ves couldn't keep up with all of the issues. He had to use his implant to record all of the different issues that his creation had brought up in order to keep track of it all. The mech apparently did not forget its problems easily because it kept going!
Though the sheer amount of complaints was overwhelming, Ves tried his best to keep his cool and evaluate each point the Everchanger brought up on its merits.
The majority of complaints were fairly minor or trivial issues that hardly affected its performance in battle. Examples included changing the shades of the floodlights to painting its name on the side of its leg.
A few of the requests sounded like good ideas that Ves should have thought about before. Many of them were more difficult and time-consuming to implement at this time, but he was able to implement a handful of requests during a single workshop session.
An interesting but relatively basic modification was to give the Everchanger the ability to speak to humans without relying on its powerful spiritual foundation.
Although the Everchanger could theoretically express its feelings and convey its desires through the same means it was using to communicate with Ves, not a lot of people were actually capable of receiving their spiritual signals.
Only powerful people such as high-ranking mech designers and high-ranking mech pilots were able to communicate with third order living mechs through this rare and difficult communication method.
The only other way for humans to 'talk' to living mechs was to pilot them directly. The man-machine connection directly allowed them to get in touch with each other. This was how the Quint was able to instruct any mech pilot that sat in its cockpit.
Ves never really thought about expanding the range of people his living mechs could talk with. Why would they need to? They were war machines designed and built for the purpose of working together with their mech pilots to fight and fulfill other related duties. These were relatively clear-cut responsibilities that they were already equipped to perform based on their current capabilities.
He never imagined that his living mechs would actually want to do more.
Since when did mechs want to watch a drama series? ꜰʀᴇᴇᴡᴇʙɴoᴠᴇʟ.coᴍ
Since when did mechs develop the desire to play virtual board games with each other?
Since when did mechs want to enter virtual reality in disguise so that they could socialize with other 'fellow' humans?
Ves wanted to scratch his head over and over again when the Everchanger listed a bunch of demands that made it seem as if he was dealing with a spoiled brat instead of one of the most powerful combat mechs in the Larkinson Clan!
THREE-HUNDRED-AND-FIFTY-SEVENTH, I NEED AN AUTOMATIC SURFACE CLEANING SYSTEM SO THAT I CAN CLEAN MY EXTERIOR WHENEVER I WISH INSTEAD OF WAITING FOR THE MAINTENANCE CREWS TO COME AROUND. IN FACT, JUST GIVE ME CONTROL OVER THE WORKSHOP BOTS SO I CAN DIRECT THEIR CLEANING OPERATIONS MYSELF…
"Okay, okay, stop for a moment, will you? Give me a moment to take stock of your requests."
At one point, Ves couldn't take it any longer! He needed to get to the bottom of this strange development! No other mech had voiced these weird requests up until now. Was the Everchanger an oddball due to its unique personality and exposure to an atypical expert pilot, or did every living mech develop these desires?
The answer to this question was crucially important to how Ves viewed and treated his living mechs in the future!
After he took a few deep breaths, he looked up at his tall and powerful expert mech and tried to imagine it as a more rounded individual instead of a pure combat machine.
"Everchanger, since when did you develop these odd desires?" He asked. "I'm not referring to the tweaks related to your combat performance this time. Since when did you develop all of these leisure and social urges?"
…I AM ALIVE, AM I NOT?
"Yes…"
DO YOU THINK THAT LIVING MECHS LIKE MYSELF ONLY LIVE FOR BATTLE?
"That's what you are designed for, Everchanger…"
JOSHUA IS A SOLDIER AS WELL, BUT YOU DO NOT SEE HIM SPENDING 24 HOURS A DAY ON TRAINING OR PREPARING FOR BATTLE.
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