The Mech Touch novel Chapter 137

Ves already possessed enough skills and experience to fabricate a flawless mech in six days. In order to compress the fabrication time to four days, he had to drop his excessive caution. He stopped double-checking and triple-checking most of his routine work and only slowed down when he reached a difficult phase.

His previous experience along with his ample preparations smoothed out his efforts to speed up his work. He already formulated standard set of responses to any problems he’d likely be facing.

"Watch carefully now." Ves instructed his attentive employee. "The fabrication of mech components is usually the most challenging portion of the fabrication process. The Mark Antony Mark II and the Caesar Augustus it’s based upon are anomalies because their assembly phases are hellishly difficult. That does not reduce the difficulty of printing the parts."

Carlos raised his hand. "I can’t help but notice that you haven’t stockpiled a lot of spare materials. Are you that confident you won’t slip up?"

"I am. As my own design, I’m perfectly aware of my limits. It’s not too challenging for me to fabricate my design without any faults. I hope you can reach this point in the future."

Actually, Ves intended to build a stockpile of commonly-used resources once he finished the current production run. While he still had millions of credits to spare, he preferred to leave his savings alone unless an emergency came up.

"Alright, I’ll be starting now. I have devote my complete attention to my work, so don’t bump into me or anything."

Working with an audience took some time for Ves to get used to. He behaved a bit more self-consciously, which led to a couple of slip-ups. Fortunately, he managed to recover quickly and limit the damage.

Every hour, Ves took a break to relax his mind. This was where Carlos finally came into being by asking a lot of questions. His employee brimmed with questions that overflowed as soon as Ves took a break.

"Why do you slow down at that part..."

"What is the purpose of..."

"Can you tell me why you..."

Answering the questions was oddly beneficial to Ves. Before, he always worked alone, so he always internalized his approach. Now that Carlos kept digging into his methods, Ves had to package them into an existing theoretical framework and explain them using logic instead of intuition.

It provided Ves with the opportunity to revise his own choices. It also allowed him to address his shortcomings when he came up short. He couldn’t simply say that he chose to apply a solution because of his gut feeling. He also declined to mention that he drew a lot of his knowledge from the skills that the System directly implanted into his brain.

Thus, when Ves answered the questions in a seriously, he gained a lot of insights into his own habits. He gained a new appreciation for teaching now that he benefited from it as much as his pupil.

The fabrication of components went without a hitch, though he took half a day extra to complete the process. He didn’t expect to devote so much time explaining his methods.

Another variable that extended his breaks was that Lucky started to nag for attention. He constant shop talk and focused work left Ves with little time to play with his gem cat. The little bugger started to feel neglected, so he often dropped by when Ves put down his work.

"That’s a really smart AI." Carlos complimented him when he noticed that Lucky never disrupted Ves when he was operating the machines. "I wish I had one. Where did you buy this model?"

"I didn’t buy him. He’s a present from my dad. I think he got it from the New Rubarth Empire, but I’m not sure. He’s fairly unique I think so don’t expect to get a pet as good as this one."

The cat cheekily yowled at Carlos before he went back to hugging Ves. It was as if the cat showed off its intelligence before it went back to claiming his owner’s lap.

Lucky also regularly patrolled the grounds. Even if SASS already did a great job in securing the premises of his workshop, the cat still sniffed around as if he owned the place.

In the meantime, work continued. Once he finished fabricating all of the parts, Ves started assembling them into a single machine. The start of it went easy. Even Carlos could put together the internal frame and the core components without a single slip-up.

The problem began when Ves reached the stage where he had to build up the internals. Even if he completely revised the architecture, the complexity of using three different weapon systems as well as large-sized components left little space for anything else. It required a delicate touch in order to squeeze some parts in the right places.

Nonetheless, Ves managed to thread the needle again and again. It helped that he already removed the most problematic needles, leaving only those with wide enough openings.

Even Carlos appeared impressed. "The way you work the controls are so smooth. You’re not only precise, but you’re fast as well. I can watch you repeat that phase a hundred times and I still won’t get bored."

"That’s the benefit to designing your own mech. You can build it up in a way that suits your skills. The goal of designing your mech should be to maximize the performance while minimizing its complexity. Often times, you have to make a decision between the two. The more capable mech designers are still able to cope with the complexity that’s necessary to elevate their designs."

"So an inexperienced mech designer like me could still design a variant like yours, right?"

"Yes, but you’ll need a really good fabricator to turn your design into a reality." Ves shook his head. "It’s best not to go beyond your means. A design that is too complex for you to fabricate will likely include a lot of design flaws that aren’t obvious at first glance."

Ves worked a little more briskly this time but failed to keep up with his schedule. He completed the assembly another half day late, which meant that it took about five days to fabricate his second gold-label mech.

"This really won’t do. I need to work faster."

Hence, Ves forced his employee to curb his curiosity and only ask a single question per break. This helped a lot by the time he started fabricating the second mech. He worked more briskly now that Carlos spent most of his time observing. Most of the pertinent questions had been answered already anyway.

Time flowed like water down the stream. Ves fell into a routine where he discarded almost all of his distractions and focused solely on completing his mechs.

Even his interactions with Carlos changed into something of a routine. He gained so much practice in splitting his mind that he could actually hold a conversation with a third of his mind. The realization didn’t sink in to Ves at the time.