The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4163

The reason why Cormaunt Hempkamp built up a problematic track record was not only due to his unusual design philosophy, but also the fervor in which he pursued it. His ideas on neural interfaces and how they related to mechs could potentially provide a lot of value, but needed to be utilized in real situations in order to supply him with the data he needed to iterate on his work!

It was this requirement that Mr. Hempkamp fell in trouble so many times. His neural interface designs were considerably less standard than usual and that produced a lot of uncertainty.

The problem with new neural interfaces was that there was no good way to test them without connecting them to a real mech pilot or potentate.

While there were many ways to minimize the risk of harm, the neural interfacing field suffered from a fundamental problem.

There was no substitute for human mech pilots.

This was rather strange as convergent evolution caused a lot of alien races to resemble each other. They evolved similar organs and perform in similar ways when exposed to the same environment because their home planets possessed highly similar attributes.

Yet even if mech designers attempted to trial their new and supposedly improved neural interface designs on these alien races, the results were vastly different!

No matter what, an intelligent alien specimen whose species evolved on a different planet developed a substantially different brain and nervous system.

Since neural interfaces were highly specific towards a specific subset of humans, they simply did not work at all when connected to any alien minds!

After undertaking a lot of trial and error, neural interface specialists eventually concluded that their distinctive works could only be tested on humans or individuals whose genetic makeup was still close to humans.

That latter seemed to give a way out for the mech designers in question. There had been cases in the past where they bred half-alien hybrids that were relatively weird and unusual aside from their brain and nervous system.

As long as the organs that directly connected to the neural interface systems were human enough, then it was still possible to forge a man-machine connection!

While a few of these experiments produced successful results, the MTA shut these experiments down with extreme prejudice once it found out about the macabre research!

It did not take much imagination for Ves to figure out why the MTA and plenty of other people became extremely concerned about these experiments!

After the MTA tightened the rules and implemented a strict regime on neural interface development, it became a lot harder for specialists in this field to trial their new designs.

They needed to take a lot of additional steps, from writing extremely detailed logs to submitting any of their designs to the MTA in order to receive preliminary approval to trial their work on real mech pilots.

Though the Mech Trade Association had a vested interest in speeding up the universal development of mechs as fast as possible, it also had a responsibility to protect the public from unsafe machines.

Since many innovations tended to be dangerous to the user, the MTA ended up in the unenviable position to find a balance between two contradictory goals.

On the whole, the MTA's regime was fairly liberal to general technology. As long as the inventions of mech designers weren't too weird, didn't violate any taboos or happened to be directly derived from alien technology, the mechers generally adopted a tolerant attitude towards new technology.

After all, if the mech industry and tech industry did not possess an atmosphere that actively encouraged engineers and other inventors to realize their promising ideas, there was no way that mechs could catch up to starships in terms of power and practicality!

The huge amount of mech designers that spent their entire lives on improving mechs played a large role in accelerating the progress of this field!

Yet wary of any tech or development that could make the public acquire a sense of distrust towards mechs, it was important to temper this progress with sufficient control and prudence.

It was obvious that neural interfacing technology suffered more than any other technological branch due to how much harm it could inflict on friendly mech pilots!

Since the preservation and development of mech pilots were key priorities to the MTA, the mechers accepted the need to slow down the improvement of neural interfacing in order to keep the pilot class happy.

Cormaunt Hempkamp felt this was a counterproduce development.

"Out of all of the core tech that makes up a mech, neural interfaces have experienced the least amount of improvement from generation to generation." He complained. "This is not a coincidence. The strict rules and the abundant suppression of our work has scared away a lot of promising mech designers who could have done a lot of good in my field. The MTA's overreactions have also stifled innovation because people like myself get subjected to newer prohibitions because one of my colleagues happened to botch an implementation."

No one was allowed to take them lightly! Even the stupidest and most incompetent mech designer knew better than to alter the design of neural interfaces!

"The third category is to connect the minds of humans with the minds of beasts. These produced interesting results to say the least. This is perhaps the research that is most directly related to the neural interfaces that you are familiar with. This was because neural interface engineers successfully adapted these devices so that they could connect humans to machines."

Ves grew impatient. "Why is this relevant?"

"Can't you see, sir? While neural interfaces were only paired with mechs for less than five centuries, thousands of years had gone by while they were used to conduct all kinds of biotechnical applications! Ever since mechs entered the mainstream, neural interface development has split in half. One branch has grown increasingly more specific to mechs, so much so that it has become the dominant version of neural interface technology. Another branch had faded into the background as it continued to be employed in the biotech industry."

It was at this point that Ves started to connect the dots.

"Wait a minute… are you trying to transpose the neural interfaces used in the biotech industry to the mech industry?!"

Mr. Hempkamp grinned. "You can say that. Mechs and exobeasts have a lot more in common than people think, you see. This is also why I have grown eager to work with you. Out of all of the mechs in existence, the living mechs that you are known for possess additional parallels to exobeasts! They share so many similarities that it has become a lot more viable to borrow tech that is developed exclusively to enable data exchange between two living subjects!"

"That… that's crazy!" Ves gasped. "It's a brilliant idea, I admit, but it can easily go wrong if your assumptions are wrong!"

Gloriana smirked. "Do you see, Ves? I knew that Mr. Hempkamp would be of interest to you. His design philosophy potentially synergizes a lot more with your work than others!"

When it came to their work, Gloriana was always serious. She knowingly extended an invitation to Cormaunt Hempkamp even though his conduct and his attitude offended her sensibilities.

As long as Hempkamp's work and contributions ultimately pushed the Larkinson Clan's living mechs to the next level, then that more than compensated for his eccentricities!

In any case, Gloriana was already accustomed to dealing with Ves' antics. The inclusion of another lunatic hardly sounded like a big deal.

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