While Iris devoured every detail about the Inheritor design she was allowed to access, Ves practically sat motionless as he struggled to co up with an approach that worked.
Before the ch Corps assigned him to the Vandals, Ves never truly collaborated with another ch designer on a joint design. Sure, he modified plenty of existing chs and he briefly worked together with another ch designer during a competition, but those didn’t concern true chs.
The Inheritor design spawned hundreds of chs and ford the backbone of the Vandal spaceborn ch contingent. Due to the constant minor updates to its design, a lot of variations existed within the ch regint, but all of them roughly shared the sa commonalities.
This also happened to include their spiritual stunting. They never had the chance to develop even a hint of life from the onset their design ca into being. To soone like Ves who exhibited a basic appreciation for almost every ch, this attitude of treating them as disposable commodities irked him in a very fundantal way.
That ntality clashed squarely against his budding design philosophy.
What he faced right now was perhaps one of his greatest test in his career. Even if no one would put him to task for failing to co up with a solution, he would still feel bad for himself for letting the Inheritor chs be deployed into battle in their grossly inadequate states.
To find a viable approach to this seemingly impossible task, Ves needed to go back to the root of his theory on the X-Factor.
What did he wish to accomplish?
"I want the Flagrant Vandals to succeed with as few losses as possible."
"I want the Inheritor design to receive more appreciation to increase the odds of success."
"I want the Inheritor to be a ch that possesses just enough life to be of assistance to its ch pilot."
What ans did he possess to engender the X-Factor into a design or ch?
"I can work on a ch in person and infect it with my focused ntality."
Ves already proved this thod worked. The spiritual entity of a ch was a smorgasbord of all the emotions and thoughts of the people who worked on the ch and its design. This was why his gold label chs possessed such a strong X-Factor and why the chs the MTA materialized into being appeared clinically dead.
As much as Ves knew for certain that this thod worked, the amount of labor involved was exorbitant. There was a reason why the LMC sold less than a hundred of his coveted gold label chs despite their enviable profit margins.
It required too much personal attention from him, and he had better things to do with his ti. Forcing a ch designer to fabricate a ch in person was like forcing an architect to construct a house by hand.
"This is the dumbest solution available to . It works, but it’s not practical."
To truly affect every Inheritor at once, Ves needed to affect a change in its design, and subsequently allow it to be passed on to the ch technicians who applied his changes into the existing chs.
Ves had never done anything like this before. The challenge daunted him because we was treading completely new ground, and unlike before, he did not have access to his precious ch Designer System to cheat his way out.
Still, System or not, Ves had never relied on its help to progress his understanding of spirituality and the X-Factor. Everything he gained so far had been products of his own enginuity. Mostly.
He turned back to his original goal, to find a way to induce a comprehensive improvent of the X-Factor in each copy of the Inheritor. To do so, the design itself needed to acquire asurable amount of X-Factor.
"According to my theories, all it takes is my personal involvent."
Ves possessed a substantial amount of Spirituality, far beyond a regular human being. This enabled him to imprint his thoughts onto an existing ch with so effort. The sa should apply to working on an existing design.
To sum it up, it did not matter what kind of changes he made to his design. As long as he did it extensively enough to leave his fingerprints on the design, its X-Factor should definitely be contaminated by his thoughts. Perhaps enough to foster so kind of life in this deadbeat design.
All of this sounded as if he ca up with a solution to his problem, but in fact Ves was no better off than before. "I can’t think up a way to improve this design."
Therein lay the rub. With several Apprentices and a Journeyman working day after day on this design, its level of optimization had reached an insane level. Even if they focused on cutting costs rather than increasing its performance, so much ti had passed and so much work had been done that a newcor like Ves wouldn’t be able to spot any holes in its design.
Ves turned to Iris, who tucked her coiffed blond hair behind her ear. Perhaps she noticed his stare, because she turned her head and looked at him with a questioning expression. "What is it, Ves?"
"Ah, I’m still brainstorming so ideas. I’ve thought of several ways to improve this design, but they can’t be applied because Professor Velten won’t allow it to exceed the hard limits imposed on it. I can’t get around these limitations."
Not normally at least, but with the help of Iris he may be able to accomplish sothing. "I’d like to work together with you for sothing."
"Uh, what?"
"When you co up with so modifications, bundle so of mine in them as well. I’ll try and co up with so ways to complint your work so that they’ll sh well together. Then, let’s serve our work in front of Professor Velten and see whether she’s still willing to reject our combined solution."
"I’m not so sure about this, Ves. It sounds as if these hard limits exist for a reason. If she’s as obstinate as you say, she won’t change her mind just because of my presence here."
She had a point. His suggestion may not sink in to that old coot and her rigid insistence on keeping the Inheritor as light as small as possible.
"Then perhaps I can go at it in a different direction." He mused for a mont. "I think I have a way to stay within the limit. Instead of upgrading the design, I can sidegrade it. The ch won’t improve, and there’s a risk of introducing inefficiencies, but I think this is the right way to go."
Iris didn’t agree with his assertion. "The Inheritor is highly optimized in its current configuration. A downgrade will certainly lead to unintended consequences. Without months of testing, you can’ insure that the design will take a step backwards in performance."
"Even if you’re right, I still have to try."
They turned back to their work. Iris spent the first day reading up as much as she could before requesting to see so Inheritors in person. While she toured the Wolf Mother’s various hangars to observe the chs take so readings, Ves sat behind his terminal hard at work at overhauling one of the most important but also inconsequential parts of a ch.
The cockpit.
When Iris ca up with her quick fix, she would inevitably demand a change to the cockpit’s neural interface. This device played the main role in establishing a connection between a ch pilot and a ch.
So neural interfaces put hard bucket helts on the top of a ch pilot’s head. Others extended alloy rods on each side of the headrest of the piloting chair. Many more did not employ a visible apparatus at all. Instead, their workings had been embedded into the seat or behind a wall panel and worked to establish a fully remote connection.
Each thod ca with their own advantages and disadvantages. The Inheritor employed a wireless design due to the ch’s tendency to perform lots of rapid turns in space. While the cockpit’s inertial compensators negated most of the g-forces applied to the ch pilot, they didn’t always work as intended, especially when the cockpit sustained damage.
Therefore, light chs predominately utilized a remote interfacing thod, thereby allowing ch pilots to jostle their heads around in every direction without bumping into anything stiff.
These remote connections generally worked fine, but their reliability always ca into question when fighting in an area with heavy interference. For example, fighting sowhere close to a sun or a black hole where all kinds of strange effects occur would always interfere with the signal between the ch and ch pilots.
Better technology and higher quality designs helped mitigate this problem, but even in the galactic center, nothing could beat a physical connection.
One of the ways in which Ves thought that could work was to suggest Iris to co up with a plan to switch the remote interface to a physical buckethead interface. So ch pilots preferred the so-called buckethead interface because its reliability was without question.
Naturally, it didn’t need to be shaped like a bucket. That was just a general term that ch pilots and ch designers used. The more correct term was helt, and it could even be stripped down to a headband if needed.
No matter the size and shape, the shift from a remote interface to a buckethead interface allowed for modest weight and space savings. A remote interface ca with a lot of complexity that could only be dealt with by sufficiently powerful hardware.
In comparison, a buckethead interface worked relatively straightforward. It was an old school technique that had received countless of refinents over the centuries. Many superfluous aspects and parts had shrunk over the ti, to the point where they only took up half the space of a remote interface.
Ves opened up a design program, loaded the file of the Inheritor design, and proceeded to draw so sketches for his changes.
The first thing that had to go was the old neural interface. He would leave the job of filling the gap to iris. In the anti, Ves turned back to the design and began to sketch out further changes to the interior of the cockpit.
"Raise the height of the forward console by 2 milliters."
"Change the seat leather from an organically sourced leather to a synthetic substitute."
"Four monitor projections to the left is overkill. A ch pilot often uses two at most. I can definitely shave one off."
Ves did not focus on solving the major issues of this design. Instead he hod in on the cockpit and planted a lot of minute changes that no one except Ves would notice.
None of what he suggested so far would be able to propel the Inheritor’s performance to another level. The quality and magnitude of his work didn’t matter as much as how much ti he spent on leaving his fingerprints on the design.
The more, the better. Volu counted the most. Even if it was an inconsequential change such as shifting the chair of the pilot forward by a milliter, it did not change the fact that the design had been affected by his intentions, however brief it may be.
Over the next several days, Ves continued on his project to overhaul the entire interior of the cockpit. Iris anwhile followed his suggestion and worked on designing a buckethead interface to replace the old and familiar remote interface that the Vandals had always used for this ch model.
Both of them rushed to complete their work as fast as possible. Ves had in fact finished his laundry list of trivial modifications, but he still needed to spend several more days in simulating every possible thing that could go wrong.
Several things did in fact turn up creating new vulnerabilities, but it was a lot easier to Ves to simulate the cockpit as opposed to an entire ch. Ves rapidly plugged the holes as they ca.
Once they reached the end of the week, Ves and Iris both stepped forward into Velten’s office, ready to present their solutions. They walked close together and when they sat down on their chairs, Iris put her hand over Ves’ hand, which he readily accepted.
This was a mont of truth for the both of them. Ves smiled at Iris before he turned to face the old lady.
"Well, what have the two of you achieved? I hope you haven’t wasted the last week. Let’s hear your proposal."
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