The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3846

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Chapter 3846 Pushing Innovation

When Ves spoke to the Everchanger, he did not know whether he was dealing with an outlier or a herald of an emerging trend.

Was the Everchanger one of many living mechs that were no longer satisfied with their basic and barebones treatment?

This matter would have been a lot simpler if this was the case. Ves could give the Everchanger enough accommodations to keep it happy but limit the extent of the privileges that other living mechs received.

After all, it was better to keep those mechs undistracted and focused on the job. Ves did not want to end up in a situation where he had to account for the needs of both his clansmen and his mechs!

The first thing he did after he left the workshop was to consult with his wife.

Though she possessed a completely different specialty from his own, she had worked on plenty of living mechs by this time. She should not only understand his difficulties, but also develop her own stance on the matter.

Since Gloriana stayed behind on the Spirit of Bentheim, Ves had to take a quick trip back to normal reality in order to call his wife.

"What is it now, Ves? Shouldn't you be preparing to traipse into another dubious alien death trap at this time?"

"I was indeed doing something of that nature before a troubling matter came up. When I was in the process of modifying the Everchanger so that I can ride alongside Venerable Joshua, I asked the living mech whether it had any requests that it wanted me to fulfill."

"Big mistake."

"I don't know about that, but it appears my inquiry has opened Pandora's box. I have become aware that living mechs, specifically my third order ones, have expanded needs that I have traditionally overlooked. Let me list out some of the requests that it has made to give you a better idea."

When Ves repeated demands such as being able to talk to other living mechs and gaining the ability to access the galactic net, Gloriana became increasingly more intrigued.

"These are… interesting demands." She said in a more measured tone. "Controversial as well. I can see why you are concerned about implementing them. Mechs have always served humanity. It should never be the other way around. If you do what the Everchanger wants, then you might be the first human to truly change the status quo between human and mech. Whether this is a good development or a bad one remains to be seen."

Not even Gloriana was arrogant enough to judge whether giving in to the Everchanger's demands was a step in the right direction. ᴜᴘᴅᴀᴛᴇ ꜰʀᴏᴍ ꜰʀᴇᴇᴡᴇʙɴoᴠᴇʟ. ᴄoᴍ.

It wouldn't be a big deal if it was isolated to just a few third order living mechs. Yet both of them did not believe the scope of expanded privileges would be limited to a small quantity of machines.

Ves was moving more towards developing smarter and more responsive machines. Back in the beginning, his most basic first order mechs were only able to influence their mech pilots in a subtle fashion. Being able to impart his products with any form of X-Factor was already a big improvement to him at the time.

Now, he had developed his design philosophy to the point where second order living mechs had become the new standard. Compared to their predecessors, his second order products were a lot more self-aware and able to influence their mech pilots, though they fell short of being able to talk and behave like actual humans.

If this upwards trend continued in the future, there might come a time where every producer who gained access to his designs would be able to produce third order living mechs en masse!

Ten, fifty or a hundred years from now, more assertive and talkative mechs like the Everchanger would no longer be a rarity at that point.

Instead, millions if not billions of third order living mechs would exist concurrently across human space!

It was like welcoming the equivalent amount of human babies into the cosmos!

Once these babies in the form of mechs grew up into teenagers, they would probably throw a temper tantrum that could shake the mech industry if Ves mishandled the situation!

He needed to act carefully in order to prevent these bombs from going off. The way he treated the Everchanger would probably serve as a model of the treatment he extended to other living mechs.

Ves and Gloriana continued to exchange their thoughts on the matter. At one point, Gloriana brought up a profound question.

"Is chasing after higher order living mechs good for mech pilots?"

"Hm? What do you mean by that, Gloriana?"

His wife's projection leaned forward. "You have spent so many years trying to make mechs more alive that you haven't stopped and asked whether it is a good idea to persist. It was only after this incident with the Everchanger that you have started to think about the unintended side effects of your work. Ask yourself this. If you have the ability to provide as third order living mechs to every single customer, will you do so? Will the users of your commercial mechs benefit from your higher order living mechs?"

This was a deep question and one that Ves had to weigh carefully in order to express his actual thoughts.

"I don't want to hold back when it comes to my living mechs." He said. "I don't even want to impose artificial scarcity so that I can make my third order living mechs more exclusive. I went into mech design because I want to provide mech pilots with better and more dependable combat solutions. While I will definitely keep my strongest applications exclusive to my clan, I do not want to deprive the public of my third order or even higher order living mechs. Holding back on this front goes against my principles."

The orders of living mechs formed the foundation of all of his work. Third order living mechs were qualitatively better than the lower orders in almost every way. They provided such a different piloting experience that spreading them out would make it easier for Ves to popularize this style of mech!