The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4030

Chapter 4030 Popularity Contest

Was it a coincidence that multiple old and well-connected people always brought up concerns about changing times?

How come they all predicted that humanity would soon go through a period of considerable turmoil?

Ves increasingly suspected that all of these powerful leaders and dignitaries were connected to a high-level network where they gained access to exclusive news and rumors that were completely inaccessible to average space peasants.

This old boy's network did not even have to be an official gathering or institution. It could just be an invisible, unregistered club that spontaneously connected different power players together through social interactions.

The wealthy sought out the wealthy. The old sought out the old. The powerful sought out the powerful.

These were natural patterns that many humans and other sentient alien races exhibited. Part of it was due to the need to befriend those that best understood their own conditions. Another part of it was the assumption that only those at the same level or higher were able to satisfy their interests.

Ves had always known that a society as immense as human civilization was fractured and divided into many different groups, factions, states, locations, classes and other social divisions.

Due to his rapid rise and his lack of intimate connections to those who stood at the upper layers, Ves did not receive the insider news that someone as old and established as Master Barnard Voiken took for granted.

Right now, Ves saw an even greater reason for him to develop a relationship with Master Barnard Voiken.

Perhaps the man was not that exceptional of a mech designer as he had remained stuck as a Master for over three centuries. Nonetheless, someone who had been a fixture in the industry for a long time had to possess his own advantages.

Ves currently thought about the possibility that humanity would soon welcome a return of warships to the wider human society.

Ever since the Age of Conquest came to an end, the Big Two strictly monopolized the use of powerful and destructive warships. No one else was allowed to field them because the fear of the people in charge of them going crazy and ordering indiscriminate orbital bombardment on a highly populated planet was too great.

Those fears may have faded a bit after four centuries of relative calm, but the fear and rejection of warships was still rooted in the psyche of many ordinary people.

Ves could not predict how society would react if warships became more ubiquitous again. Even if this new development only applied in a wilder and less developed region like the Red Ocean, it still represented a clear break from a taboo that everyone had inscribed in their hearts!

He turned to the projection of the slightly emotional-looking Master Mech Designer.

The aged and dignified figure had not spoken his previous words lightly. Ves did not think that someone as reputable as Barnard Voiken would joke around about these matters.

That said, someone like him always had a purpose in mind. The topics he brought up and the 'rumors' he shared just a moment earlier were part of a subtle but concerted strategy to manipulate Ves' views.

Ves did not mind this little game. As long as he was aware that he was being manipulated and as long as there wasn't any deception involved, he would welcome any source of critical and relevant information no matter whether it came in a biased form.

Few information sources were free from distortion to begin with. It took skill and awareness to detect how they were distorted and what people gained from framing an issue in a specific light.

Right now, Ves was applying the lessons he learned from Minister Shederin and Director Calabast on Master Barnard Voiken.

The old mech designer was known as a prominent ideological ally of the Preserving Order Faction. He was a child of the early period of the Age of Mechs and valued peace to a greater degree than the following generations of people.

Someone who had grown up in an environment where many people were still not done with picking up the pieces of the ravages of the Age of Conquest should abhor the thought of reintroducing warships to the masses!

Just the thought of letting petty states and spoiled brats gain control of massive vessels armed with mech-sized cannons probably sent shudders through Master Barnard's body!

Now that Ves recalled the background and ideology of Master Barnard, it became fairly easy for him to deduce the Master Mech Designer's motivation.

For some reason or another, Master Barnard thought that Ves could be a potential agent of order!

To put it in a different way, Barnard held an expectation that Ves might be able to produce works one day that could prevent warships from becoming too destructive towards society!

This was the social responsibility that Barnard hoped that Ves would be able to fulfill in the future.

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