CD looked me up and down, his digital eyes narrowing as if assessing my capacity to grasp complex concepts.
“Shouldn't we upgrade that brain first, simian?” he quipped, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “I doubt you'd remember a full dissertation on this subject.”
I shook my head, undeterred and too excited to take his bait.
“Try me, CD. I'm a fast learner when it comes to things I'm interested in. And if I seem lost, you can always just summarize the info. We can delve into deeper details later, maybe after a brain upgrade.”
“Hah! You just admitted that you need a brain upgrade! Good, good! He finally sees the light!” CD cackled, the holo avatar moving along with the sound, and then he shrugged, his holographic farmer avatar flickering slightly. “Very well. I will fill you with more knowledge than you can handle! And the first time you ask a question that makes no sense, we stop. Deal?”
I nodded eagerly and he sighed. Just about now, I would make almost any kind of deal with the semi-evil AI. Well, not quite evil, but he wasn’t far off either.
“What do you want to know?”
My mind raced with questions about anything ranging from how to go about growing a mech, as that was guarded knowledge, to how his motherboard worked. Where did I even start?
“How does synchronization work with mechs? And these cores – I know a lot of them, I think, but I obviously don’t even know nearly enough. How many variations are there? Do all of them have the same potential when crystallized in the vat? Can crystals be crossed or combined with others? You know, like how the farmers can crossbreed animals and plants? I need to understand the fundamentals to make the most of any tech we get our hands on.”
CD's avatar nodded, a satisfied grin on his face.
“Not a bad start. I was expecting you to ask if it could be fashioned into a club, or some sort of loincloth,” he mused, but seeing I didn’t rise to the occasion, sighed and continued. “Very well, let us begin. Starting with synchronization, since that seems to be the most basic of your questions.”
I eyed him eagerly, pulling out a tool bench and shoving the ratchets and wrenches aside for a place to sit. I put up a finger, fully intending to tell him to proceed when a thought struck me and I stood back up.
“Hold on! I’ve got pencils and notebooks. Let me go fetch them and write this all down.”
The farmer hologram sighed, rolling his eyes.
“Such basic brain functions. It is a wonder your people defeated mine, dummy. I am essentially a god to you, and yet even I can’t imagine how you all did it.”
I answered with a grin, running past my benches and shelves, over to a large cabinet filled with sketches: ideas that Elli and I had come up with over the years, as well as some real put-to-work sold mod-jobs that had made us some good cred and given us a little bit of a reputation as well. Grabbing two pencils, a sharpening knife, and the least used notebook I could find.
CD stared as I grabbed a scribing desk, and adjusted it to my sitting position before finally taking my seat again before him.
“Are you sure you are ready?” he chided. “Perhaps you’d like to bathe, or eat some food before we start? Maybe take a nap just in case your attention span isn’t up to the task?”
“Naw, I’m good,” I replied. “So, synchronization. I know the knights practice it as squires, but I can’t say I know anything beyond that. Start as if I don’t know anything.”
CD nodded.
“It will stretch my imagination, but I will strive to do so. Now, synchronization, Alaric, is the most basic fundamental of mech warfare, yet probably the easiest to understand. Even the semi-sapient of our home world could pilot small uncomplicated mechs like the one your mech hand was obviously going to. The organics within the mechs, their cores, and their frames, when grown, hold synaptic relays just waiting to be taken over by a clever mind.”
He paused, watching me scratch his notes verbatim. I finished a paragraph and looked up at him.
“And?”
“Don’t you have a recording device you can use? Something to keep our lesson moving more quickly?” CD asked, his flickering holographic face showing clear impatience.
“Pff. You’d need some major cred for old tech like that,” I responded cheerfully, reveling in his artificial scowl. “Please, go on.”
“Regretful,” CD said. “We will get one after the brain upgrade has been completed. Anyways, synchronization is the percentage of organic synapses you have mental control over once connected inside your mech. Our forces trained hard on attaining control, and generally averaged 5% per year, before plateauing at 40%. That is the number considered necessary to pilot and use a combat mech.”
“Doesn’t seem like a lot,” I said.
Ignoring me, CD continued.
“However, actual action in combat can bring that number even higher. The unthinking use of synapses in combat, percolated in the angry rage of adrenaline, further cements the warrior's control over his mech.”
In my head I saw the battle of the White Knights, wondering what their synchronization might be. Their movement and actions had mostly been fluid and powerful, but some of the movements had been sluggish and unnecessary. Was that what the synchronization really meant? The ability to pilot a mech as if it was your own body and not just an extension?
“What is the maximum that a person can attain? Has anyone ever gotten 100%?”
A peculiar look came over the hologram, whose eyes locked onto me and seemed to pierce into my soul.
“Sometimes you impress me, as primitive as you are. The question is a good one. Fighting against your kind, so long ago, we found you not as easy to defeat as expected. So we attempted it, despite the average peak synchronization being around 70%. Cored brains attained greater sync, but the pilots began to change and become more bestial in behavior. The cores, when united with the mind, become sentients of their own will. Much like the monsters that my people set on yours after they were apparently defeated.”
“Yeah, we kicked your asses good. Not the monsters so much though. How smart are they anyways?”
CD leaned back into an invisible chair and crossed his legs, eyes momentarily a dazzle of rainbow gleam.
“They shouldn’t have been smart to begin with. But if they are still alive and thriving, I expect that their cores have also attained a decent grade of intelligence.”
I smiled, happy that he didn’t know. It made things feel a little more equal between us.
“They have teams, you know. If their eyes spark the same color, they work together. Or rather, they don’t attack each other and seem to function more as a pack. How far that cooperation stretches, I have no idea, but I’ve seen it myself just two days ago.”
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“That is troubling,” he growled. “The pilots, some of them became the same way. The technology that grows them was never fully understood, despite millennia of using it. Probably much like Physics with you humans. But we did try to find a way to work synchronization without coring minds. An experimental unit of veteran elites was put together, a machine surgically implanted into their brains instead of a monster core.”
My mouth fell open.
”You?!”
“Myself and a few others. It was in the middle of the war, our forces had been blunted and ground, the home empire was under its own assault, calling for us to finish and conquer, to begin producing new units for the homefront.”
CD raised a hand, and from it sprang a cinematic battle in the darkness beyond the sky. Stars blazed on a background of pitch black as strange enclosed ships battered each other soundlessly with blasts of concentrated fire. As I watched, a massive white-plated one was struck several times before erupting into an explosion brighter than the sun.
“I can guess from what I see here that my people lost,” CD said. “This was the last feed I obtained before my master and I were smashed into the ground by human forces. And when he died, I lost my only power source, buried in the dirt within the broken metal of my mech. We’d found the tech — alone I wasn’t able to synchronize at all with the mechs, but with him, we attained 100%. True synchronization. Our battles were epic, our moves legendary.”
My eyes shone.
“Is that something we can do?” I asked. “Becoming one like you did with your previous master? Just go all the way in?”
“Gross,” CD sneered as if I’d burped into his face. “Anyway, synchronization, as it is learned, requires the pilots to focus on various cores and aspects that they seek to unlock. A new core in a mech that is unfamiliar to a pilot will take time to understand and wield. However, one that has been used before already holds good sync with its pilot. A warrior who had worked with a core blade will have some sync with it whatever its type. And if it is the exact same specific type as one he has synced with before, such as a blaze blade, then he will maintain his same synchronization across all such blaze blade cores.”
“You’re right, this is easy,” I enthused. “Same with mechs, I bet. If I attuned to a Cataphract, then I’d have that same attunement to all Cataphracts because their nerves are all in the same place. But a big attunement on a Cata wouldn’t give me a big attunement on a Toxotai. Maybe better than if I’d never synced with a mech at all, but I’d have to learn where the many different synapses were and how to activate them. Right?”
“He can be taught,” CD said, throwing up his arms in celebration and applauding. “Talking apes in mechs, what a universe I have created.”
“Hah,” I said, laughing. “Alright, I get the synchronization. At least the basics here. You also said something about focusing on aspects?”
“Yes, the biological frames in a mech contain their own special attacks and abilities, but only to those who first learn to feel them. This is like a humanoid learning to control the beats of their hearts. It can be done, but takes a lot of work, concentration, and time. Warriors who focus their attention on these inactive specials will slowly begin to feel and gain control over them. The greatest will master them completely and have great power at their beck and call. That is how we fought against your numbers, with quality.”
I thought of the Toxotai, how some of them were able to leap high into the air during combat, while others were forever stuck to the ground. It seemed likely this was one of those abilities. It was a foreign concept, however, as there was nothing like it in our world, really. Leaping up high, moving faster than the eye could follow, and releasing strange elemental energies through the weapons mechs wielded was almost too hard to understand.
He paused, letting the words sink in.
“As your synchronization score improves, you unlock milestones with your mech, power that can truly turn the tide of a battle. Think of it as a reward system for your growing bond with your mech. High-level synchronization might even grant abilities you've never seen or thought possible.”
I realized I’d stopped writing, getting lost in his words. I quickly scratched down everything I could in shorthand, hoping I’d be able to decipher it later. But as I was doing so, a thought broke my concentration.
“The abilities come from the cores, though,” I said, staring at CD intently. “Not from the mechs?”
“There are different synchronizations. Synchronization occurs on the cores as well as in the mech frame. A good core sync releases great abilities there. But the best abilities are in the frames. They are also the hardest ones to unlock.”
“Like controlling the heart, you said?”
“Yes,” CD nodded. “But it’s all about the right pictures and pulses. There is a rudimentary sentience to the monsters’ flesh and cores. Part of it is also making them understand what they can do, basically teaching them, and then gaining access to the powers.”
“Heh, now that’s interesting. So we need to teach the mechs and cores that they can do things we don’t even know they can, and they will in turn allow us to, well, do those things?”
“More or less, yes.”
“I see. How many types of cores and mech bodies are there?” I asked, ready to move on in my education.
CD chuckled.
“Far more than you could ever remember. I will advise you as we see or find them, but to tell you all at once would be both frivolous and disadvantageous. They are my secret to keep, and only if I feel that you deserve it, I will share them.”
I frowned but understood the idea. It was leverage, like the bracers they put on me every time I left the city. A way to maintain power, but in his case, all he really had was knowledge. Also, I could respect his honesty and direct approach. Sure, it was annoying and he liked to belittle my whole species, but I was getting used to it.
CD's voice took on a more serious tone.
“You can also use cores to give your own body special powers and abilities. Surgically implanting yourself with smaller cores is a great way to remain combat effective even outside of the mech. However, the surgeries are highly invasive and risky, so…yes, let’s leave that for another time.”
“Already know all about that. Us humans do that. The knights and nobles. Anyone with the cred and social rank to do so,” I responded. “We use wealth to get ahead, always have, and always will.”
“Social rank?” CD asked, seeming bewildered. “Is that the same as the might that determines a warrior's place in the hierarchy?”
I thought about it, my mind balancing the powerful knights on one hand, and the fat priests and merchants on the other. “Something a lot more complicated that I’ll teach you later.”
“It’s something tribal that involves dancing and rock painting, isn’t it?” CD sneered, dismissing it with his hand. “I should have known. Waking up was the wrong thing to do. Maybe I should have slept for another thousand years.”
“And miss such a prime example of someone as hungry for information as me?”
“I could have lived perfectly fine without a caveman--anyway, there are also mechanical upgrades, like myself. Though my brothers and I are the best that were ever produced, assuming the empire has truly fallen. Other devices existed, not artificial symbionts, but rather artificial muscles, reinforced bone, enhanced synapses, and a variety of tech-powered wonders to rival those of the cores. And luckily for you, they are designs that, with the proper components and materials, we will be able to craft.”
“Like a mechanical mutagen!” I enthused. “So that’s how you’re going to upgrade my brain?” I asked.
“I’d rather you be an intelligent simian than a monsterized sapient,” CD answered. “We will upgrade you in the safest ways possible. Unless my legions arrive and save me. Then you shall burn.”
I stuck out a thumbs up.
“Can you modify the mutagen to accomplish greater improvement effects? It worked well on me, and I have stowed away some more with an acquaintance of mine.”
CD’s hologram flickered.
“I will need to examine some of this. It is an unknown element of humanity, but its existence doesn’t surprise me. The humans we fought didn’t show cores, yet they were obviously improved beyond their normal genetic capacity.”
“Yeah, it's good stuff. Just make sure you follow the instructions when you take it.”
“Yes?” CD asked, leaning in.
“Uh, never mind that. We can talk about that later.”
“Right. The mutagen sounds promising. If it doesn’t meet my standards, however, the rest of your flabby and insignificant self can be upgraded by a mix of mechanical and monster parts as they become available,” he continued. “In no time I can make you into the greatest of warlords.”
Another thought struck me, and I put up a finger to interrupt him.
“To be honest, why do I even need to bother with anything other than intelligence? I’ll be in a mech stomping everybody.”
A dazzling sparkled over CD’s body.
“That is the spirit, young ape! But one can’t stay in a mech forever. You would slowly lose yourself to the monster, going insane and becoming what you fear the most. It is the very reason why my people never stayed in a mech for more than a full day. It was hard to pull your mind free from the mech’s influence. And that of the monster.”
I leaned back, rolling the enormity of the idea across my mind, then fell off my bench sideways as the workshop door flew open with a bang. Elli stormed in, her mouth open wide, and eyes large with surprise and confusion. Her credit chip dropped from her hand, a clue that suggested she’d been about to brag about getting paid more than expected, but instead pointed straight at the holographic farmer.
“Who--or what the hell is that?” she demanded, her voice a mix of curiosity and suspicion. “And why is he flickering? And did you somehow get sexier? And taller? Why do you even have—those things are reserved for nobles, Al! You better start explaining things!”