The Mech Touch novel Chapter 841

The fifth variant beast rider neural interface. In his fifth design, Ves chose not to do anything crazy. Instead of pursuing an extreme, he deliberately held himself back and opted to achieve a middle point in every possible parameter he could think of. Sitting in between the first and second variant, theoretically it had the highest chance of success!

"Prepare the seventeenth dwarf captive."

Eleven out of sixteen dwarf captives already sacrificed their lives for science today.

If these experiments happened in civilized space, the MTA would have already shut it down and investigate his scientific rigor.

The main reason why so many dwarves died was because he only vaguely knew what he was doing. He understood so little in the field of neural interface technology, yet progressed immediately to live testing. Such a decision was irresponsible to the extreme.

Even if only a single human test subject died or sustained serious injuries, the MTA would have come down on him like a stack of bricks. He’d lose his mech designer qualifications and be put into prison for a very long time.

"Luckily we’re not in civilized space right now." Ves chuckled.

Ordinary high-gravity variant humans enjoyed actual human rights. No matter if their genes had been messed around in a way that diminished their intelligence, nobody dared to go too far. Therefore, as dimwitted as the dwarves in human space turned out to be, they still deserved to be treated with the dignity enjoyed by the rest of humanity.

In fact, the dwarves in human space occasionally produced mech pilots and geniuses who constantly fought for the rights of their variant race as well.

If these interest groups knew that Ves and the beast rider project treated the native dwarves like lab rats, they’d probably send assassins after him or something. Very likely though, the MTA would have already taken him into custody before they gave the orders.

The wildlings were different from their more civilized dwarf cousins though. They behaved savagely and violently, lived in the wild, wore beast hides as clothing and their most sophisticated technology was learning how to grind down godling bones into clubs and axes.

That made it easy to treat them as lessers. Although a small amount of experts among the Vandals and the beast rider project used to protest the abject treatment of the dwarves, Ves had long ago kicked them out of the team and replaced them with more like-minded people.

At this stage, they couldn’t afford to care for the rights of the wildlings.

The stinking dwarves probably wouldn’t have appreciated them anyway in their ignorance.

After a couple of minutes, the technicians strapped the seventeenth dwarf captive into the restraints. Once they finished the final checks, the commenced the seventeenth test.

"Begin!"

The connection between the fifth variant neural interface and the latest test subject engaged smoothly. From the telemetry displayed on the control panels, Ves vaguely judged it to be sufficiently stable. Enough data flowed through the connection without overstraining the test subject’s nerves.

After that, the neural interface reached out to the organic antenna hidden inside the captive wild god’s head. This end of the connection took a little more time to establish, and Ves already figured out some ways to improve it based on the prior experiments.

"The man-beast connection is forming! It’s stable so far!"

"The test subject’s heart rate is elevating!"

"A large amount of data is being exchanged through the man-beast connection. It is well within safety limits!"

All the sensors and monitors embedded into the bodies of the test subject and the wild god indicated that they hadn’t suffered any ill effects so far. While some signs looked a little concerning, it did not lead to any serious adverse effects.

"The interfacing is a success! A stable connection has formed!"

This time, the experts cheered and celebrated a little. After going through fifteen outright failures and one coincidental fluke, the seventeenth test showed that the beast rider project still managed to succeed!

Of course, just like the sixteenth test, the seventeenth test could have been a fluke as well.

After one hour of continuous operation where they instructed the test subject to convey several commands to the wild god to test out the fidelity of the connection, they ended the test and brought the dwarf away for a complete checkup.

A long time had passed as they went through a raft of testing, so the beast rider project called it a night. The downtime also allowed them to sedate the wild god and make sure its restraints still held.

The next day, they resumed the testing with the fifth variant neural interface.

The eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth test subjects all survived. Nothing too strange went on when they interfaced with the wild god for at least an hour. Still, some signs of incompatibility emerged that mildly concerned Ves. It showed that the fifth variant wasn’t all that perfect, and wouldn’t be able to hold up during an intensive battle when the exchange of data spiked.

Still, the beast rider project gathered an enormous amount of relevant data, which included both successful and unsuccessful attempts. Comparing the two and figuring out the differences enabled Ves to design a better and safer neural interface for the final project.

"Sir, nine out of twenty dwarf captives are still alive." Their resident exobiologist said. "What do you want to do with them? Should we take them away and save them for the next tests?"

Ves shook his head. "Since we already set things up here, it’s a waste if we end the session now. Let’s push the envelope and gather more data. As far as I’m concerned, the session isn’t done until all the dwarves are dead."