5629 Activating Potential
From the mont an Apprentice ch Designer t all of the requirents and beca ready to advance to the next rank, he or she needed to commit to a singular design philosophy.
Miss Alexa, forrly of the Streon Ancient Clan, possessed a thorough understanding of what she needed to do in order to advance to the next rank. Her extensive studies had given her an exhaustive academic and anecdotal knowledge about what enabled Apprentices to surpass the extraordinary threshold and gain entry into the real world of ch design.
The most essential requirent that ch designers had to et was that they needed to possess the qualifications to ascend to a higher rank.
Ves called it spiritual potential. The MTA and the first-rate superstates used to call it psionic potential. Ancients referred to it as spiritual roots, immortal soul or another mystical na.
Whatever the case, many ambitious ch designers who had demonstrated great effort and talent tragically never received a chance to realize their design philosophies.
During the Age of chs, many people who had dedicated their entire lives to designing chs never managed to get past this hurdle.
This was not a problem for Alexa. She had managed to escape this awful fate and developed the potential required to not only beco a high-ranking ch designer, but potentially get started in other extraordinary professions as well.
Yet potential was not enough. ch designers also had to form a design philosophy that was worth pursuing.
Whether it was due to the rules set by the Kingdom of chs or the restrictions set by more universal laws, ch designers that did not exhibit any originality could not advance to the rank of Journeyman.
The requirent was very clear. It was okay for Novices and Apprentices to apply what they had learned from their teachers without too much thought about making it better.
Yet those who aspired to do better had to demonstrate at a fairly early stage that they possessed the capacity to engage in original research and make certain accomplishnts in their chosen field.
The ch industry exploded since the start of the Age of chs due to the successive accumulation of new and original technological innovations.
Every high-ranking ch designer that rose up from the ranks contributed a new collection of original and valuable technological advancents to the entire body of ch design.
Yet all of that explosive developnt also made life more difficult for many ch designers of the younger generation!
The more ti passed by, the more ch designers had managed to exhaust the research potential of many common scientific fields and subjects.
All of the low-hanging fruits had already been plucked by a huge number of predecessors. This significantly increased the burden of up-and-coming ch designers. They needed to research more exotic and difficult topics in order to break new ground and earn the right to advance to Journeyman.
This burden was too great to bear for the average person.
People could be taught how to design a ch according to existing thods and formulas, but it was harder to turn them into a researcher with the ability to engage in original research.
Not everyone was cut out to be a trailblazer, especially in a ti where countless ch designers had already done so in the past.
This was one of the reasons why ch design universities enrolled so many students every year.
Every higher up in the ch industry knew that most ch design graduates were hopeless, yet they supported widespread teaching anyway.
This was because pumping up the numbers was the only way to increase the number of people who possessed both spiritual potential and the capacity to conduct original research!
It was like playing the lottery. The chances of winning a prize by purchasing a single ticket was miniscule.
The stupidest way to increase the chances of winning was to buy lots of lottery tickets.
As long as the quantity of tickets was high enough, the purchaser was bound to win prizes!
Of course, this analogy did not entirely make sense because the yield was too low to justify the expenditure.
The calculus was different in the ch industry. Even if raising millions of ch designers could only produce Master ch Designer in the end, it was still worth it because the contributions of the latter were so valuable that it more than made up for all of the previous expenditures!
Of course, it was not as if all of the ch designers who fell short of advancing to Journeyman or Master were useless.
Novices and Apprentices did not have to lead design projects themselves in order to contribute to society.
They could assist more successful ch designers in their work.
They could supervise ch factories and solve different problems on the spot.
They could also utilize their excellent engineering skills to use in a different capacity such as developing ch parts or entering into a different tech sector entirely!
Humanity was so dependent on technology that there were always jobs for ch designers.
Yet that did not change the fact that many people who dread of becoming the next big Star Designer never managed to make it past the first major threshold.
At least that was the case during the Age of chs.
The Age of Dawn introduced a sweeping set of changes that appeared to change the equation.
The proportion of ch designers advancing to the rank of Journeyman ch Designer went up each month.
What was remarkable was that this rate continued to increase over ti! There was no sign that this pass rate was dropping anyti soon!
This had little to do with Alexa, though. She already knew that she possessed the potential to break through. She even possessed the confidence that she was smart and flexible enough to engage in any original research of her choosing.
ch designers as privileged as her no longer had any reason to worry about the failure rate.
What they were truly invested in was selecting the most valuable and useful design philosophy possible.
Elite first-class ch designers tended to be a lot more luxurious in this regard, both because they were much better versed in a diverse range of high technologies, but also because they disdained the more plebeian specializations typically adopted by second-raters and third-raters!
The descendants of the Terran ancient clans had always been raised with the expectations that they would put themselves at the forefront of their respective fields.
The young scions who had been raised to beco ch designers enjoyed the best conditions, so they had a lot more to prove than others!
Strictly speaking, Alexa Streon-Larkinson no longer had to bear this heavy expectation. She had formally severed her ties with the Streon Ancient Clan. There was no obligation for her to pay back all of the money and resources invested in her upbringing.
Yet Alexa did not feel relieved at all. Her pressure had actually beco even greater than before!
The main reason why Ves brought her into the clan was because she possessed the potential to inherit the mantle of living chs and develop it in another direction!
How could she relax when the specter of disappointnt constantly lood over her shoulders with each passing day she spent as a low-ranking ch designer?
Alexa respected her new ntor enormously. She did not want to let him down and prove that he had misjudged his decision to take her on as his disciple.
Ves hadn't actually taught Alexa all that much. Aside from teaching her the essential of living ch design and letting her work by his side for a ti, she had to cover a lot of ground herself.
This was not a sign of neglect. Ves knew Alexa's circumstances well enough that she only needed direction at the beginning. She was more than smart and productive enough to complete the rest of her journey by herself.
It was also the reason why Alexa had taken her ti to formulate her design philosophy. She needed to go through many twists and turns and discover the various pros and cons of different choices by herself.
Only she could make the choice that would determine the future of her ch design career.
After an exhaustive period where she had spent much of her free ti on thinking about how he could bring her ntor's work to the next level, she had eventually settled her mind on extending the range of capabilities of living chs in a special manner.
As Ves tried to process the explosive implications of Alexa's shocking announcent, the woman in question passionately explained her rationale.
"Your living chs are fantastic. They are new and unprecedented. They elevate chs beyond the ans of existing ch designers. For the first ti that I can think of, chs have acquired so of the traits of actual living beings. Their developing sapience ans that every machine of your design has the potential to grow alongside their ch pilots and beco as powerful as the Ouroboros one day. Yet…"
The female ch designer grew a little more subdued when she thought about her grandfather's ch.
"I have grown up under the shadow of my grandfather and his unique ch for many years. I am all too familiar with their pains and struggles. Not only has it taken most of a baseline human's lifeti for the Ouroboros to beco the famous ace ch that it is known for today, but it has been impossible for anyone to replicate this miracle of chanical creation. I… don't want other ch pilots and owners to experience the sa trials and tribulations."
Ves' expression turned serious as well. He could feel the earnest pain and emotion in her voice.
Alexa did not settle on her design philosophy on a random whim. She chose this direction due to a burning need to resolve a problem that no other ch designer at the ti had been able to solve.
If the problems related to the Ouroboros could have been solved a lot sooner, then there was clearly no need for Alexa to go down this route!
Yet it was exactly because her grandfather's subsequent advancent had long been constrained by the inadequacies of his Ouroboros that drove Alexa into developing the ultimate solutions for these problems.
As far as she was concerned, not even Ves was fully capable of solving the problems that had long plagued his grandfather and the other mbers of her forr ancient clan!
"One of the defining characteristics of your works is that they are all born with fantastic potential. No other chs have shown such an amazing capacity for growth and evolution as yours." Alexa said in an appreciative tone. "Yet you invest so much ti and attention into potential alone that you are not paying enough attention to the actual process of growth. It takes so much ti for living chs to realize enough of their potential that there are too many factors that can go wrong in the anti. What I seek is to make this journey shorter, smoother and less prone to error."
"By making it so that living chs can co together and produce children?" Ves asked in a slightly baffled tone. "I can understand your logic, but there are many problems associated with your goal of enabling chs to procreate. Have you even designed a ch that can independently conduct this process without active human intervention?"
"In fact, I did. I designed two different first-class living chs that can conceivably procreate on a completely independent basis."
Alexa activated two different projections that showed off the chs that she had designed during her free ti in the past few months.
One of them was clearly a smart tal ch.
This was probably the easiest way to design a ch that could independently reproduce.
As long as it had access to enough nanites or raw materials, it could produce the physical shell of the 'offspring' ch with low logistical requirents!
The second one was a lot more complicated. It was a true classical tallic ch.
In order to grant the power of sexual reproduction to this chanical product, Alexa split this work into a male and female variant.
When Ves saw this mind-boggling living ch design, his mind went blank.
He had never contemplated such a pair of chs before!
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