The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1427

As his mech took shape, Ves wondered on how he should address the later stages of the design process.

Ordinarily, it would have been irresponsible of him to finalize his design and begin with fabricating a copy intended for consumers.

However, his Devil Tiger project was not like any of its other design projects. Its exorbitant cost, illicit nature and various radical design aspects meant it was a bad idea for Ves to produce and test a physical prototype!

Besides, Ves was confident that the Devil Tiger’s theoretical performance wouldn’t diverge from its actual performance.

Why should he adhere to a traditional design process anyway? Even if his mech came with a major flaw or two, Ves wouldn’t incur any penalties.

The target audience for his Devil Tiger consisted of Nyxian pirates! Ves cared nothing for their wellbeing! In fact, Ves considered them as potential test subjects ready to be subjected to various experiments such as his Devil Tiger!

\"Even if there’s a couple flaws, my mech is inherently self-correcting! I’ll intervene in person if necessary!\"

As a mech meant to serve as an experiment, Ves wanted to access the data his Devil Tiger accumulated. He knew that it would be very hard if nigh impossible for the mech to transmit its data back to him, especially if the machine failed to piggy back a connection to the galactic net.

Ves tried his best to program some hidden routines inside the core programming of the mech. Once it connected to a local network with access to the galactic net, the Devil Tiger would immediately compress and encrypt its log data before uploading them to a random, publically-accessible storage site.

As long as this happened, Ves would always be able to retrieve the log data through anonymous means. This way, he could keep track of the Devil Tiger usage and whether it performed as intended.

\"This is a two-way street.\" Ves smiled. \"As long as my mech can access the galactic net, then it isn’t limited to uploading data. It can also receive new instructions!\"

Ves programmed in various obscure addresses it had to keep an eye on whenever it accessed the galactic net. Once it encountered an encrypted file on one of those addresses, the mech would download and decrypt it in order to process the new instructions he provided.

This way, he could continue to tweak, update and modify the Devil Tiger’s design from remote! The malleable, smart metal nature of his mech meant that the mech required no human intervention in order to adjust its own design!

\"It’s brilliant!\" He grinned.

Of course, these measures also came with various downsides. The exchange of data took place within the most open and insecure communications network in the galaxy! Ves could not have picked a less secure network than the galactic net!

Though Ves incorporated heavy encryption onto the data packages, he was under no illusion that it would hold against determined decryption attempts.

Ves couldn’t do much about attempts to crack the encryption of the log data. There shouldn’t be too much harm in it as long as nothing in the logs contained any clues that led back to his identity.

What he worried about more was if some joker mech designer figured out a way to imitate the process that Ves used in updating the instructions of the Devil Tiger. If this third party utilized the same encryption method and uploaded a new set of instructions onto a specific address, then they would easily be able to hijack Devil Tiger!

\"I need an extra layer of security!\"

After a bit of thinking, he came up with a novel way to reduce the chances of third party interference.

Even if a hacker managed to upload some instructions onto the data banks of his Devil Tiger, the mech would not accept them unless its design spirit inputted a code that unlocked the final pass!

\"No matter how good a hacker is in intruding in electronic systems, they can’t do anything to influence a design spirit!\"

Manipulating them was unique to Ves, thereby granting him sole control over the most core aspects of the workings of his mech.

Of course, Zeigra’s spirituality shouldn’t be the one who decided which instructions to accept. Instead, Ves configured the arrangement in a way that it would only be able to unlock the final pass if Ves intervened directly!

\"The Pride of Dusk can help!\"

His new overcoat housed an active spiritual fragment of Zeigra. Ves noted that it shared its consciousness with the main spirituality that was locked in his P-stone.

\"This essentially means I can observe and manipulate Zeigra’s spirituality from remote!\"

This was a very novel arrangement and Ves felt very enthused about implementing it for the first time. If everything went well, then Ves might apply this arrangement to his other works.

\"Keeping pieces of my design spirits close to my person is a good way to rein in my more unruly design spirits.\"

The approach swung the pendulum away from the path of life and closer to the path of determinism, thereby injecting a crucial measure of control over his Devil Tiger!

Ves would not allow anyone, not even Zeigra’s spirituality itself, to ruin his experiment!

Programming all of these additional features into his mech entailed a lot of extra work. Ves recognized he had to do a thorough job in order to close as many loopholes and exploits as possible. As long as he left out a single opening, some clever hacker or mech designer would surely jump in to take advantage of his Devil Tiger!

He especially encountered a lot of difficulties in envisioning the interaction between his design spirit and the systems of his mech. Ves had to revisit some of his existing mechs, study the extent to which their design spirits influenced the operation of his mechs, and extrapolate from there.

Trying to get both spirituality and technology to work together felt like trying to make magic work with technology. Ves had to wear two hats at once in order to figure out the means for one to influence the other.