The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1337

Having rejected the two extremes of the path of determinism and the path of life, only one more road remained in his mental vision.

The option that remained happened to be the road in the middle. It stretched straight before him as if he’d already been walking on it without even realizing it through all the fog that previously obscured his imaginary sight.

"This is the default choice. The boring choice. The most straightforward choice."

That didn’t necessarily mean it was the worst choice. Determining whether this path was best for him or not depended on what he was trying to achieve and how well this direction allowed him to accomplish his goals.

As its placing suggested, the middle path pursued a middle ground between the path of determinism and the path to life.

The extremes of the latter two paths evoked a lot of misgivings to Ves.

He didn’t believe in the deterministic ideal that everything could be controlled or designed. Even if Ves pursued this path and reached a point where seemingly everything was in control, reality simply didn’t work that way. Life and existence could never be brought under total control, and it would be a grave mistake of him to think otherwise.

He reached a point where he began to think of himself as a god who was capable of designing life, then he might just begin to miss the possibilities that didn’t fit into his paradigms!

Much like how the Skull Architect became fundamentally incapable of accommodating his own customers, Ves could easily imagine himself developing similar blindspots!

The path of life came with its own problems as well. It was just as self-centered as its opposite, only expressed in a different fashion.

An overemphasis on the value of life would detract far too much from the design aspect of his profession. Why should he leave everything to chance? Why should he surrender so many aspects to his mechs or the spiritual fragments that formed their spiritual hearts?

The path of life had more to do with the insane experiments of the Five Scrolls Compact than the sober mech design that the MTA espoused.

"I’m not a mad scientist." He affirmed. "Even if what I’m attempting to accomplish is anything but normal, at least I’m better than those deranged madmen!"

The System described his design philosophy as spiritual man-machine symbiosis. It was his specialization while still holding onto his foundational skills.

"It’s important to remind myself that I’m still a mech designer. The moment I think of myself as something more than that is the moment I’ll lose sight of what I should be working towards!"

His design philosophy was a means to an end, not an end by itself. What this meant was that Ves shouldn’t get too hung up over the methods he developed in order to advance his goals.

"Both the path of determinism and the path of life have their good points!"

They also had their pitfalls, and some of them were so deep that they were practically bottomless.

The main point was that Ves did not have an obligation to stay pure on either path. While pursuing them to the extreme might lead to exceptional accomplishments, were they really necessary?

If Ves maintained his sights on designing better mechs, then his enthusiasm for the more extreme paths diminished. Why go down the rabbit holes when there was a perfectly functional slide in the middle?

The middle ground entained a pragmatic and conscious approach to the development of his specialization. The focus would always remain on spiritual man-machine symbiosis. The description from the System already hinted to him of the importance of balancing out the living and non-living aspects of his work.

"The nature of a symbiotic relationship is that both sides benefit from their association with each other." He reminded himself. "Man and machine. Living and nonliving. Made or born. Everything is in balance. Synergy is the key!"

Why did the inventors of mechs decide to pair humans with mechs? Because they worked well with each other!

Humans by themselves were physically weak but very creative, inventive and devious.

Mechs were awesome machines of war that could unleash a great amount of devastation, but could easily be exploited if controlled by an inflexible AI.

It was a given that the original developers of mechs decided to combine the two. By pairing humans with mechs, they got the best of both while conveniently covering up for each other’s weaknesses.

It was a match made in heaven and a winning formula that persisted for over four centuries, so much so that they defined the current era of human history!

While all of this was basic knowledge that each first-year student of mech design learned at school, reiterating it during his state of introspection kept him centered. It helped him maintain perspective and prevent him from giving into temptation.

"I have to make a grounded choice! Passion alone is not enough! It has to align with what I want to accomplish!"

Choosing the middle ground made a lot of sense. By selectively incorporating elements from the path of determinism and the path of life in his design philosophy, he could thread the needle and accomplish his goals without dipping too much into the craziness of both sides.

Of course, in the perspective of the other paths, the middle ground was the craziest path.

"Instead of adhering to a single logic, I’m just mixing and matching bits and pieces whenever it suits me. There’s no overarching theory binding them together."

This would probably be his main challenge moving forward on the middle path. By refusing to get carried away by the extreme paths, his understanding of both directions would always be shallow and incomplete. He’d only be able to make use of the more shallow applications of the path of determinism and the path of life.

"There’s always a price. I can’t have it both ways. I’ll be lucky enough to reach my goals at all given how haphazardly I’ll sling from side to side when I progress down this path!"

He would have to be very careful and conscious about his subsequent dabblings in the path of determinism, the path of life and all the other paths that he might uncover along the way.

Throughout it all, he needed to find a way to resolve the inherent contradiction he identified earlier and that the purer paths attempted to solve in their own way.

"Both the path of determinism and the path of life offer a solid endpoint."