The Mech Touch

For the longest the longest time, Ves regarded first-raters as unattainable existences. It was a harsh reality that the citizens of first-rate states and the people working for the Big Two simply lived better lives than anyone else.

They enjoyed services that were unaffordable and unattainable to space peasants.

They could easily afford genetic treatments and augmentations that produced fewer side effects while offering superior results.

They utilized their vast wealth and power to build trade networks throughout the rest of human space, allowing them to absorb a significant portion of the valuable goods and materials produced outside their regions.

The huge disparity between first-raters and the rest of humanity effectively split human civilization into two different pieces.

The larger piece of humanity represented the masses. In truth, each of them were pretty much a part of the underclass of human society. It didn\'t matter whether they grew up in the most awful third-rate state or the most enlightened second-rate state, all of them were considered space peasants in the eyes of the true elite.

It was the comparatively smaller piece of humanity that effectively led the entire civilization. Their wealth, their heritage and most importantly their iron grip on all of the trans-galactic institutions meant that the interests of this extremely prosperous and privileged group were always served before the space peasants ever got their turn!

Much could be done to improve the lot of space peasants who lived in a completely different world than their betters. The fact that the Big Two and anyone else with sufficient power never thought to bridge the many gaps was intolerable.

The fact of the matter was that there were plenty of first-raters who basically posited that they had already evolved beyond the baser forms of humanity!

Just like how high-gravity variant humans was treated as an inferior strain of humanity that was only good for menial labor work, the stuffy elites who looked down on the galaxies from their ivory towers claimed that the space peasants should be treated as an outdated version of humanity!

The new humans who grew up under vastly superior circumstances were so far removed from the dirty rabble that they effectively constituted a different race unto themselves!

They were all genetically optimized at the very least and were completely reproductively isolated from baseline humans at the very worst!

That was considered to be a major threat to humanity to those that considered baseline humans to be the root of their race.

However, the first-raters who never grew up or even met a single baseline human in their prosperous lives were completely detached from this notion!

It was not strange for them to develop an intense disdain towards the humans who were left behind.

If not for the fact that the galactic heartland, the galactic rim and now the less prosperous zones of the Red Ocean supplied them with a large quantity of useful resources, perhaps the first-raters might have already decided to wipe out the inferior variants in order to clean up the total population of humanity!

As it was, the two pieces of humanity lived awkwardly alongside each other. The superior people continued to lord it over the masses without doing anything meaningful to heal the divide.

Ves therefore had mixed feelings about letting his son mingle with the crowd of elitists.

He didn\'t have much experience with interacting with first-raters outside of the Big Two, but if the mechers and fleeters were any indication, none of them were really pleasant people to be around!

Yet… Ves yearned to promote himself and his clan up to their ranks. There was only one way to advance status of a group in human society, and that was to become first-raters who could keep up with other people at this level.

Though there was little doubt that there was a huge divide in status among first-class citizens, that was a matter that he should consider at a later date.

He first needed to get himself and his clan through the door, and right now their best hopes of getting in as quickly as possible laid with their son.

If their wonderful and beautiful baby boy could attend first-class schools and earn the appreciation of his teachers, then Marvaine would definitely be able to build up the qualifications and connections needed to gain a foothold in a first-rate state!

It didn\'t matter if Marvaine started out as a nobody in a first-rate state. As long as he exceeded the minimum threshold, the clan could put its full support behind him to prop him up and help him get over the roughest part of his early career as a professional!

This could be an incredible win-win solution.

Marvaine would be able to become a first-class mech designer without needing to indenture himself to existing first-class institutions.

Ves and Gloriana would finally be able to fulfill one of their lifelong dreams and meet all of the requirements to begin designing and selling first-class mechs for an entirely different clientele!

Though Ves was confident that he would have been able to enter the first-class mech industry by himself sooner rather than later, it would be a lot harder and more time-consuming for him to do so due to many reasons.

Ves looked hungrily at his son. If Marvaine performed up to his potential and passed all of his courses, then it would only take around two decades for him to become a genuine first-class mech designer!

Once that happened, Ves and his wife would also be able to first-class mech designers by hitchhiking off their talented boy\'s successful foothold into an industry cluster that was notoriously discriminatory and difficult to enter for \'lesser mech designers\'!

It was best if his son was able to impress and get apprenticed by one of the prestigious Masters who taught at a first-class mech design university.

It didn\'t even have to be a particularly good and renowned university. Even the average ones built up extensive alumni networks that effectively bound many different corporations to an informal alliance!

All of these considerations made it more important than ever for his parents to plan out a trajectory for his future.

Perhaps it was callous to treat their own offspring as an easy springboard into first-class mech design, but Ves and Gloriana were so obsessed with it that they didn\'t put much thought into whether Marvaine might want to pursue a different course in life!

Since a discussion on Marvaine\'s schooling obviously required a lot of research and decision-making, the couple decided to defer this matter to later.

For now, they wanted to make sure that their boy did not lose his pure and innocent fascination for mech design and fall behind in his early studies.

As a passionate mech designer himself, Ves understood deeply that many people in his profession were heavily leaning onto the fancies they developed in their childhoods.

Every mech designer was essentially a kid at heart. In his experience, it was much harder for mech designers to become successful in the mech industry if this powerful motivating force wasn\'t able to push them forward.

"Marvaine?"

"Yes, papa?"

"Come over here please. Your mother and I have made a few decisions."

"Okay."

The young boy scurried over to his parents and automatically jumped into the arms of his mother. Pure love flowed between the three of them as their bonds of family became strong.

"We are so proud of you, do you know that?" Gloriana said in a mothering tone. "You\'re a good boy. The smarter you become, the more we are happy with you. You\'ve performed so well today."

"Thank you, mama. I\'m tired."

"I know, my dear. You\'ve played more than enough for one day. Still, would you like to play with Mekano again tomorrow?"

Marvaine paused for a moment before nodding. "I can still make many more awesome Mekanos!"

Both Ves and Gloriana smiled. That was exactly what they wanted to hear.

"Your mother and I would love for you to get invested in Mekano." Ves spoke to him. "It\'s a fun game that your mother enjoyed for many years back when she was younger. It can be a fun game for you as well, and it can also help you learn about some of the principles and working methods of our profession in advance. In short, you get to kill two birds with one stone by learning how to do our jobs and have fun in the process!"

"I don\'t want to kill a bird." Marvaine said in his cute little voice. "Let alone two."

​ Gloriana smiled. "It is just an antiquated figure of speech, Marvaine. In any case, while your father and I want you to enjoy playing with Mekano, we don\'t want you to put together different mech parts without aim. Mekano is a game as well as an invaluable learning tool, so it would be too wasteful if you only care about the former."

"We have decided to implement an incentive scheme to reward you and encourage you for making measurable progress in your Mekano design work." Ves announced. "The more you learn and the better your results, the more you are permitted to do with Mekano. It would also make us a lot happier if we see you doing well."

Gloriana gestured towards the latest Mekano that he had just made. The little miniature mech was an impressive feat of construction from a boy of his tender age!

"While we are impressed by the fact that you managed to put together such a complicated machine, Level 4 is still too much for you. We have decided that you should stick to Level 3 Mekanos for now and learn how to design more optimal and less obviously flawed machines first."

Their son immediately grew disappointed. "Awwww."

"Don\'t complain, Marvaine." She admonished him. "You have skipped over too many lessons. In order to make sure you develop a proper foundation, I will judge every Mekanos  that you make for their quality, their viability, their realism and most importantly their flaws. It is only once the performance of your Mekanos meets the standards that I have set for you that I will unlock the next level of your Mekano Sets. Then you will have to do it all over again if you want to move even further, do you understand?"

Their little boy was smart enough to understand and follow this arrangement. "I do, mama. I have to make better Mekanos to make you happy."

"That\'s right, Marvaine!"

"Ahem." Ves coughed. "Quality shouldn\'t be the only goal you should strive towards. There are boring designs and interesting designs. If you want to become successful in the mech industry one day, you cannot stick to tried-and-true formulas. You need to walk off the beaten track and develop a design philosophy and associated mechs that are unique, original and interesting."

"What do I need to do, papa?"

Ves grinned in response. "I want you to have fun. Don\'t treat this purely as a chore. Go ahead and use your active imagination to your advantage. When you think about what sort of Mekanos you want to develop next, you should start developing the habit of exercising your creativity. Think about making a fairly normal mech that is common in human space, but try to figure out a way to put a twist on it that makes it better than normal. It doesn\'t matter if you succeed or fail as long as the concept is promising enough."

His son furrowed his brows. "How do I know a Mekanos is good enough?"

"I will help with that by providing my feedback on your work." Ves answered. "I will judge your Mekanos on the originality and creativity of your design concepts. I will also judge them on their commercial viability and how well they are able to stand out in the mech market. This means figuring out how well your work will sell if it is converted into a full-sized commercial mech model. The more interesting your Mekanos, the better."

"What will I get if I do well?"

"If you prove to me that you have made excellent use of all of the variety of options that a Mekano Set can offer to you, I will give you access to another Mekano Set. For now, we will only allow you to make use of the My First Mech Set, but if you have developed enough interesting Mekanos, I will let you unlock the Basic Ranged Mech Set or the Basic Melee Mech Set next!"

Too much choice could be overwhelming to a little kid. Ves didn\'t want Marvaine to take all of the options for granted, so he had changed his mind about the birthday present and withhold the other four Mekano Sets for the time being.