Much of the actual lesson content in the first lecture was not academically challenging. Ves did not hold this class in order to teach the nuts and bolts of mech design such as how to calculate loads or how to add as many plasma weapons to their mech as possible without causing it to explode.
The Eden Institute of Business & Technology already employed professors that could do a much better job at teaching those subjects than him. The school did not hire him based on his meager academic accomplishments, but because it wanted to enrich the vision of its students by exposing them to alternative perspectives.
This was exactly what Ves tried to do during the first lecture of his main passion. He could tell so many stories about living mechs that he could literally keep talking for an entire week!
It was a pity that the schedule and the attention span of his audience did not support such an endeavor. The more time he spent on unloading his own vision to his students, the greater the extent they became indoctrinated to regard mechs as living objects!
As it was, Ves had to keep it rather short in order to make sure he addressed all of the points of today's agenda. Introduction to Living Mech Design was not a heavy course, so he only had a limited amount of hours to make sure that his students comprehended the essence of these subjects by the time the semester came to an end.
One helpful circumstance that massively assisted his lesson plan was that Ves could openly speak about E energy radiation.
Now that the Red Two pretty much pulled the cat out of the bag in relation to psionic power, Ves had no compulsions about mentioning anything related to spirituality and spiritual energy.
He just had to remind himself to use the politically correct terminology to make sure he spoke in the same language as every other mech designer.
"Have any of you attended any classes related to E energy radiation?"
All 14 students shook their heads.
"Has the Eden Institute set up any classes related to this topic?"
"Master Laila Devos has briefly spoken about this." Alexa Striker spoke up. "The Eden Institute has become part of a joint project that is uniting all of the higher technical institutions of the Terran Alliance. The overall goal is to pool all relevant research and discoveries together in order to form a foundational course on E energy radiation and its immediate implications for mechs. This is meant to ensure that every Terran mech design student and mech designer can quickly master what they urgently need to know."
Ves nodded in understanding. "A common base of understanding can promote a lot of innovation, especially in collaboration. The sooner you people master the common rules and traits of E energy radiation, the sooner you can try to exceed your rivals. This is a race for innovation. How long will it take for those people to publish their theories?"
" It won't be made available until the start of the next semester."
What the Terrans were doing was not unique. The Rubarthan Pact and the Red Two were probably hard at work in trying to do the same.
In fact, the Red Association was being the most generous of all by freely publishing much of its findings. The mechers also put a lot of effort into setting up a public forum where other independent researchers could freely contribute their results.
While this initiative helped a lot with raising red humanity's overall understanding of E energy radiation, it did not give the Terrans a chance to gain any competitive advantage over their rivals.
In order to prevent the Red Association from becoming the sole authority on all matters concerning E energy radiation, the Terran Alliance's academic community had to band together and produce its own results!
Given that systematic knowledge on E energy radiation wouldn't be made available for roughly half a year, Ves had little choice but to take a step ahead and share his insights about it in advance.
While tedious, the advantage of doing so was that he could ensure his students adopted his own perspective on spiritual energy!
"Living mechs are intrinsically related to E energy radiation." Ves began. "Mechs cannot be alive without E energy sustaining the invisible and intangible quality that grants them additional properties and enable them to develop their own consciousness, enable them to make autonomous decisions and help them grow stronger over time."
"Wait, professor. Does that mean that living mechs are controlled by self-learning and self-evolving AIs?"
"No." Ves shook his head. He reached down to his tool belt and pulled out his Hammer of Brilliance. "Let me give you an example. Look at this hammer. Can you feel its glow through the connection of my Hyper Chamber? Can you sense how it is a little bit more special than an ordinary alloy hammer? It is able to possess all of these traits despite the fact that it is solely made out of solid metal parts. That is because it is alive in a similar fashion to how my mechs are alive."
Although the Hyper Chamber was not that good at conveying the full majesty of the Hammer of Brilliance, the high-quality connection at least allowed a fraction of it to go through.
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