What's Junk? (The Mech Touch)

[Negation]

He'd assumed it was the students beings stupid and leaving things in the mech rather than them being paid to drop something 'innocent' in particular areas.

Click to shrink...

I thought those were "Booty Call" communication devices the students were paid to drop by parties interested in Bolt's seed.

 

[lurkingkraken]

Should have brought thier own self-powered explosives instead of relying the mech's power supply.

Also, this is a school. It's traditional to ask if you brought enough for everyone for a reason.
Whoever is behind this set of assassins clearly isn't actually trying very hard yet.

 

[Simonbob]

Also, this is a school. It's traditional to ask if you brought enough for everyone for a reason.

Click to shrink...

Bolt's balls won't thank you.

 

[lost star]

A few days after the guest lesson, Bolt was back at the university. This time it was for a simple designer debate. These weren't really public things. There was no real audience for it, and most non-designers found them boring. Even designers didn't really enjoy listening to them frequently. If the designers were prominent it was interesting, but outside of that it was really just a debate about technical specifications and such. The spectacle debates were on mech reveals, and those could be verbal sword fights that sometimes devolved into literal fights.

"There's no specific format for these things." The professor said as they entered the debate hall. "Really, the only thing that's important is that you refrain from insults and don't talk over one another."

Bolt nodded slowly. "Can't say I'm one fer insults."

"Oh that's more a general warning. There's nothing so bad as debates between academics. I've seen two fifty year old tenured professors get into fist fights over a single word." The man heaved a sigh that spoke of long nights, unprofessional debates, and old men acting like they were in their teens. "But enough about my issues. You've been nothing but polite so far so I'm glad you could make it."

At the podium another designer was already there. Between them was a picture of the mech Bolt had whipped up. The young man felt a bit of surprise at it.

"We believed that this would be the best topic for today." The designer at the podium said. "This isn't going to be about the design itself. We all know it was deliberately flawed and no one would consider it a demonstration..." The man trailed off as something seemed to occur to him. "Let me rephrase that. It takes skill to make something that people can learn from. So we as a whole actually appreciate it. The debate would be about the teaching tool."

"All right." Bolt stepped forward carefully and up to where he guessed he should be.

There was a small audience of fellow teachers there, with one or two high level students. Bolt had no context for if this was good or bad, but it didn't feel mocking. Really it felt more like this was a sleepy afternoon and there was some mild interest in entertainment. If he was going to be honest he didn't hate it.

"I'll go ahead and start off. My name is Jayce, I specialize in aquatic mechs and am a Journeyman." The man began calmly. "About a quarter of the mechs on this planet are mine, which sounds impressive until you realize they aren't anywhere else."

"All right. I'm Bolt, my specialty is a bit o' a mouthful, but can be best described as Recycling and Refining things." Bolt explained with an easy grin.

"That is an interesting field." Jayce muttered before shaking his head. "Hah, we'd have to talk about it in another time. Right now, the topic is the use of flawed and simple mechs as a teaching tool."

Bolt nodded in turn. "My first question is why ain't you doing it already?"

"Many reasons. One of them is we do usually stick to mech blueprints that students go over. They're mostly proprietary so you wouldn't see them." The Journeyman said with a small chuckle. "Ah, I should have added that I'm one of the teachers here. I do three advanced classes a week."

"Ah. No mech building though? That feels like an oversight." Bolt answered back.

"Budgeting concerns hinder a lot of the lessons we could teach." Jayce confirmed with a small sigh. "Even doing just one mech a year would be costly, and doing more than that would be impossible on our funds."

"That's what I assume would be Second Rate mechs though." Bolt pointed out. "You could do a stripped Third Rate mech easily."

"Yes, but would the students learn anything from that?" The other designer asked.

"They would." Bolt responded before pausing and grimacing. "Honesty has me saying that I'm not sure that they'd learn a lot really. Doing what I did took a lotta time and I ended up doing a lotta the work."

"Doing it in a single session and a large group like that was your problem." Jayce observed. "We have labs and assignments that can be spread out over a few weeks. The space concerns would be a larger issue at that point."

"Which would still run into the cost." Bolt concluded. "Not sure budget wise. I think Third Rate mechs should be in your budget."

"Again, we do live in a Second Rate economy here but we're a college, not a nation." The other designer reminded with a dry tone.

"Basics are basic. I'd expect you to teach kinds how to make a mech that walks first. Then you can do fancy stuff." Bolt responded with a hand wave. "Biggest thing is really the reactor. Second Rate needs different handling."

"Yes, your little trick has half our students double checking all the wires. I appreciate the attention to detail, but we had to have a specific lesson on that." Jayce said with a half grin.

Bolt gave a laugh of his own. "Don't tell me you haven't done that yourself."

"No comment." The designer replied with an amused shake of his head. "But back on topic, assuming that we surmount the numerous issues. Is it worth it teaching a mech designer by having them assemble simplified Third Rate mechs?"

For a moment Bolt wanted to say that was how he learned. It was a bad answer. Bolt knew he was different than most people. This wasn't a point of pride. It was a simple fact. Even if he wasn't smart, everyone was different and learned differently. He took a few moments to formulate an answer. Jayce let him, waiting patiently.

Eventually he had a good reason and words for it. "I think that ultimately the basics of how ta assemble a mech and do it with a minimum of automation is going to be important. All my masterworks were done by hand, and looking it up, the designers who do it consistently also do it personally. Some use more tech than others, but all of em devote their personal attention to it. If you aren't giving students a chance to be the best, then why teach them in the first place? Do you want office workers or designers that could become masters?"

"That is a good reason. Pity reality gets in the way. Students will frequently have to go into companies where taking the time to assemble a single mech that will be very flawed is a waste. We are very thorough about teaching them how to use fabricators and how to assemble mechs with standard tools. I'd argue that manual assembly is going away. Masterworks are exceptional. A hundred mechs made from automation is better." Jayce pointed out.

Bolt shrugged. "Could do both. Ain't like a factory stops because a mech designer is doing a personal project."

"Time management concerns hinder that, but I take your point." Jayce waved a hand. "Truthfully I would love teaching students more, not less. If we could have them make a baby mech I'd be first in line to approve it. We do come back to cost. Even doing Third Rate mechs would add up a lot."

Bolt nodded slowly before tapping at the podium. Fancy ones like this had a whole lot of tech they were connected to. One of them was a designer. With a few flicks he brought up some materials. Then he created a mech. Total time, about five minutes. It showed. The mech was absurdly simple.

"Just an idea." Bolt said. "These materials all recycle real well." He noted.

Jayce stared for a beat before shaking himself and staring at the design. "I'm afraid I'm missing the point."

"Basically, this is a mech made outta one hundred percent recyclable materials." Bolt explained. "Have kids make em outta all of these materials, and throw it back in the recycling. Total cost would be mostly in power. You'd lose about say five percent of the material each cycle I think?"

"Probably more like ten to fifteen depending on various factors." Jayce said after doing a few mental calculations.

There was always a loss somewhere when you recycled. Some of it was just because the material was just gone, but a lot of it was contamination and the fact that remaking could reduce some quality. It was just a fact of reality.

"Think it'd work?" Bolt asked.

Jayce considered it for a long moment before sighing and wiggling a hand. "It'd be good for an end of year project I think. We would have to specifically note that it's not good for mech design in general and be certain that it doesn't introduce bad habits. Using materials like that would require some specialized manufacturing and designing methods that wouldn't translate well."

"Ah." Bolt breathed out. "Yeah actually." He noted with a wince. "Kinda forgot that students can learn lessons ya don't want too."

"That's something that comes with time. I'd say that there's a good seed of an idea here, but it'd require some delicacy to implement."

Bolt nodded in agreement. "It'd have ta be paired with one or two other lessons, but I think its a sound idea." He added a few flaws. "Have em make this and identify the problem?"

"Do try to make flaws a non-journeyman would notice." Jayce said dryly and added one of his own.

The young designer stared at it. "I woulda figured out that one when I was ten." He observed, with only a little exaggeration.

Jayce stifled a chuckle. "You underestimate how stupid some new students can get."

Bolt chuckled, and that seemed to end the debate. He shook hands with the other man once they cleaned up and then got drawn into a few conversations about his work and other things. Most of it was pretty casual and just the designer version of light talk. Things about various simple decisions and brainstorming what could and wouldn't work.

He did get a job offer too. It seemed rather generous based off his rather poor understanding of things. Something like full tenure (Whatever that meant) and a high salary. That was nice, but not really his thing at all.

 

[Golgotha]

I can't blame them for shooting their shot there. Funnily enough it would be a great deal for any standard third rate designer who managed to go visit a second rate world.
But, ah, not so much for bolt.

 

[Luckless21]

not so much for bolt.

Click to shrink...

He's kind of attached to his boneyard of a planet that gives him (almost) all of the scrap he could want.

 

[Simonbob]

I can't blame them for shooting their shot there. Funnily enough it would be a great deal for any standard third rate designer who managed to go visit a second rate world.
But, ah, not so much for bolt.

Click to shrink...

Sure, but he has his own planet. One with all the junk he could ever recycle.


Edit: Stealth Meched.

 

[lost star]

Bolt had a problem. A very serious one. It was something he'd never encountered before. It was utterly unprecedented!

He was utterly bored. There was nothing he felt like doing and he'd run out of his non-mech related chores. Going out into some public setting felt uncomfortable to even contemplate. He'd done his daily workout. He'd done some review and studies to keep himself up to date with the latest technology. He wanted to avoid designing. What should he do?

Ah the pains of coming from a planet where the grand total of entertainment was watching paint dry. This was a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. Bolt had grown up on MTA approved general purpose entertainment. Most of it was old Earth stuff. He wasn't really interested in seeing any sort of modern day movies and the like. Most of the recent stuff was such blatant propaganda that it was unpleasant to deal with.

Eventually he decided that he could do a bit of work partially related to mech design. Mostly message answering. There was always going to be a bit of a backlog.

Highest priority was messages about his Heart System and expert mechs. Several experts had ascended using his mechs and most wanted different ones. Bolt was perfectly fine with that, but a decent amount of them wanted to keep the Hearts of their mechs as well. That was a bit more difficult to arrange. The Heart System was currently locked to his designs and not independent. No one had figured out how to make derivatives. The spiritual factor's obscurity made any sort of alternative quite impossible if you didn't know the mechanics.

Bolt ended up reading through more than a few MTA rules and then messaging Bubbles. A bit of back and forth with the woman and he put in a request with the MTA bureaucracy. It was essentially a blanket approval for expert mechs to have the system installed. It was an unusual category, but perfectly acceptable and not totally unusual. Bolt would prefer to have the Heart System fully available to anyone who wanted to license it, but the MTA was doing a significant amount of work in the background so he couldn't do that just yet. (He did see how rumors of the next generation parts came about now though.)

Speaking of that. The company was still technically in the setup phase. People had been organized and they were going through testing. A lot of testing.

The designer gave a low whistle as he looked through the results of the tests. Just the crystal testing alone had multiple pages of checking. Configuration, size, shape, materials, and so on. Hundreds into thousands of tests and checks. He was again very happy he'd handed this off. He'd severely underestimated everything that needed to be examined. There was even some First Rate stuff here. That seemed like the first thing tested really, which felt a bit strange, but was probably the best decision.

He didn't even know half of the materials used, and he tried to keep up with everything!

Some of the results were actually pretty interesting from an academic standpoint. They were all on the mechanical side mostly, but several results gave some very interesting data that required some interpretation. The composition of the heart had some strange effects sometimes, and if you used some First Rate materials, you got some very unusual results that didn't make sense on the mechanical side. Bolt was fairly sure that if you had a robust enough heart you could do some very interesting things with a mech. Something to consider for later. Right now, unusual effects aside, the tests were broadly positive.

The current trend of thought from the company was to have a few solid crystals that would work everywhere and a list of what would work for people that wanted to experiment. They very specifically wanted something First Rate, Second Rate, and Third Rate. First Rate was some sort of specialized, highly energetic crystal that could probably hold the entire galactic network if it was used for just data storage. It alone was worth than Morning Star. It would likely also become standard for First Rate mechs.

Bolt figured it was good business sense, but the price difference was more than a bit silly. If you discounted the storage size, there was no notable difference in performance between tiers. Something fancier just stored more physical data. If you used something very robust energy wise, it might increase the spiritual power, but Bolt didn't think it would be massive. That was just a guess though. The company wasn't testing for that really. First Rate stuff needed to be expensive. That was the sum total of the decision there.

Unfortunately for him, the review couldn't take up all his time. He was out of things to do again. No more work unless he wanted to get into designing.

With a grumble Bolt looked through possible actions. Movie, no. Beach, no. No mech designer events on the planet at all. There was an arena, but that was absolutely boring to him. Watching some fake fights was not his idea of a good time, especially after seeing Lilly fight. Maybe he could offer to help repair a few mechs? No, that was both desperate and a bit pitiful.

Out of mild desperation he poked into Iron Spirit. The game was still chugging alone as normal, though the local scene was rather depressed. The Sand War had really done a number on the people willing to play a game and more than a few matches had a tint of desperate desire to avoid reality. The game itself had actually added a small mini-game of sorts where you could fight sandmen. It wasn't really advertised, but it was quietly there and available for those that wanted to practice against the aliens.

Bolt's latest designs weren't in there. He wasn't sure if he even could do that. Some of his mechs didn't function right in simulations, and he felt a tiny bit bad about adding the newest ones in anyway. Most of the designers in the system were lower than Journeyman. Him throwing his mechs in was akin to Lilly fighting normal people.

Fortunately some fiddling with the settings and getting his official status updated in the game let him fix some of that. The people managing the system had a few ways of weighting mechs to make it so that Journeyman could still play without disrupting everything. Bolt figured that was perfectly acceptable. The game couldn't handle Seniors and up though, which was a bit of a pity, but also perfectly understandable. With that settled he began to get his new mechs uploaded. The free advertisement helped, and it was mildly amusing to think of them being used in games.

The Curse Crow was a royal pain to implement though. He had to take outside values, upload them, and then wait for approval. It occupied some time at least, and was more tedious than anything else. He rather looked forward to people's reaction there.

Bolt was quite happy with all of that. He was also bored again. He had several days before Lilly woke up. He really shouldn't be having this sort of issue!

Ultimately Bolt had to conclude that he'd let work consume too much of his life. If he took out designing from his work day, he had absolutely nothing left. That was bad precisely. He had gotten this far by focusing. He just needed some non-designing hobbies. What would be good there?

There wasn't anything really good that fit what he liked aside from one thing. That was his habit of making figures of his mechs. That had been mostly for more work, but Bolt figured it wouldn't hurt to turn it into an actual hobby. It'd at least be mildly entertaining, and it wasn't like it the hobby didn't exist. Even making them out of the proper metals and such wasn't that out there.

If anything Bolt was planning on being restrained there. Some enthusiasts made exact replicas, down to almost functional weapons. That was outright insanity. Bolt was just going to machine them out of the same metals the armor was. He also would have to paint them too.

No it wasn't social. Bolt didn't care one whit. It kept him occupied and forced him to look into other mechs. It was just enough work to satisfy the itch he had to keep working.

 

[Luckless21]

The problem of suddenly no longer having anything you absolutely have to focus on, is that it leaves you with a lot of free time and often not a lot constructive to do with it.

 

[Simonbob]

Ah, yes.

Vacation boredom. Happens to me all the time. A week of relaxation, then I'm just bored.

 

[Pyro Hawk]

Ah the pains of coming from a planet where the grand total of entertainment was watching paint dry. This was a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much. Bolt had grown up on MTA approved general purpose entertainment. Most of it was old Earth stuff. He wasn't really interested in seeing any sort of modern day movies and the like. Most of the recent stuff was such blatant propaganda that it was unpleasant to deal with.

Click to shrink...

You know, now I'm wondering if the nature of Bloody Karma (or whatever Bolt's homeworld ends up gaining as it's true name) or at least Olympus might actually revitalise this area a bit as it grows into a 'true' world. Purely due to the fact that it has to be multicultural in acceptance, if with it's own unique culture, due to the nature of it's position and part of that's going to mean that a lot of their cultural development is rooted in that MTA approved general purpose 'usually Old Earth origin' entertainment. Meaning that they'll want more of it, or at least versions of it that aren't morbidly over-propagandised to the point of not even being laughable and so make it because they can't get it elsewhere.

And due to the nature of that stuff, it would also be acceptable, if not necessarily the 'preferred', stuff for everyone around them.

 

[Negation]

I thought he would pick up bonsai for novelty sake due to home not being very eco-friendly. Doing minis is just work on a smaller scale.

 

[EternitynChaos]

I thought he would pick up bonsai for novelty sake due to home not being very eco-friendly. Doing minis is just work on a smaller scale.

Click to shrink...

Pick something you love and you'll never work a day in your life lol