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After Calloway left, Ryan turned to the team.
"Everyone, gather up."
The assistants were still buzzing from the test, trading observations with the technicians while they inspected Scrapper's post-run condition. They dropped what they were doing and assembled.
"You've been on this project for nearly three months. Scrapper's first generation is complete. There's nothing left to improve on it that justifies the time. So we're moving forward."
Fifteen pairs of eyes locked on to him. They already knew what was coming.
"We're starting work on the next mech."
Applause. Genuine, eager, the kind that came from people who'd been waiting for exactly this announcement. The professors along the wall nodded with quiet approval.
Ryan raised a hand. The applause stopped.
"However. I have other priorities that require my personal attention. The design and development of the second-generation mech will be led by you."
The room went silent.
"Us?" Kyle looked like he'd been asked to perform surgery.
"We can barely understand the first-generation technology," someone else said. "How are we supposed to design a new mech?"
Ryan knew they couldn't. Not alone. That wasn't the point.
"The new mech will be based on Scrapper's existing architecture. You won't be inventing from scratch. You'll be adapting, modifying, optimizing. And you won't be doing it alone."
He looked at the twenty-five professors.
They understood immediately. Ryan's real target wasn't the junior researchers. It was them. The "let the assistants design it" framing was a polite fiction. What he actually wanted was the combined expertise of twenty-five senior academics applied to a practical engineering challenge, with the assistants learning by doing alongside them.
David Marsh spoke for the group. "We'd be happy to take this on. Designing a mech from established principles is a challenge none of us have attempted before. It should be instructive."
Ryan smiled. "Good. Now let me tell you what kind of mech we're building."
He paused to let the room settle.
"Scrapper has no practical application. I know it. You know it. The internet knows it. Professor Osman was right about that much. Scrapper can't fight. It can't produce anything. It can't operate in any existing industrial workflow. It's a technology demonstrator. A very impressive, very expensive, very useless technology demonstrator."
Nobody argued. It was true.
"Any technology that can't demonstrate real-world utility will eventually be dismantled for parts. The neural link will get absorbed into medical devices. The energy systems will go to automotive or aerospace. The engineering principles will scatter across a dozen industries. And 'mech' will become a footnote. A cool thing that happened once."
"Unless we give it a purpose."
The room was very quiet now.
"A mech provides one thing that no other platform offers: extreme operator protection in extreme environments. Against military ordnance, that protection is inadequate. A missile doesn't care how thick your armor is. But against environmental hazards, fire, toxic atmospheres, structural collapse, the protection is more than adequate."
He could see the connections forming behind people's eyes.
"You're talking about emergency response," Marsh said.
"I'm talking about firefighting." Ryan let the word land. "Specifically, wildfire suppression and hazardous-environment fire response."
The room shifted. Some faces showed interest. Others showed skepticism. Kyle was the first to voice it.
"Scrapper is forty feet tall and weighs three hundred tons. You can't drive that down a city street."
"I'm not talking about Scrapper. I'm talking about the next mech. Different scale. Different design. Optimized for a different mission profile."
"Even so," another researcher said. "Wildfires happen in forests. Dense trees. Uneven terrain. A bipedal machine would have trouble navigating that environment."
Ryan shook his head. "You're thinking like someone who's only seen one mech. Design it smaller and it fits between the trees. Design it larger and it goes through them. A mech pushing through forest canopy creates temporary damage. A wildfire creates permanent destruction. The comparison isn't close."
He started laying out the operational case.
"The world's largest firefighting helicopter carries five tons of water. Flight time under load: thirty minutes. Cost: roughly a hundred million dollars per aircraft. A mech based on Scrapper's architecture, with a lightweight redesign, could carry thirty tons of fire suppressant. Operational time on the plasma reactor: two hours. It can enter the fire zone directly, something a helicopter can never do. It can perform rescue operations inside the blaze. And the pilot is protected by the same neural-linked, armor-sealed cockpit that keeps them safe during a three-hundred-ton ball-mode roll at forty miles per hour."
"Cost target?"
"Fifteen million per unit. Scrapper's total build cost was about twenty-two million, and most of that was prototype-grade fabrication. Series production with optimized design brings the price down dramatically. At fifteen million, you're competitive with existing heavy firefighting equipment and you're offering capabilities that nothing else on the market can match."
The room was processing. The professors were running mental calculations. The assistants were imagining a mech walking into a forest fire and walking back out.
"And the neural link and reactor costs?" Marsh asked.
"Will come down with scale. The reactor is currently a million per unit because it's being produced one at a time. At volume, the cost drops by an order of magnitude. Same for the neural link hardware. These are industrial production curves, not research budgets."
Silence while everyone thought.
"We'll need wildfire specialists," Marsh said finally. "None of us have operational firefighting experience. The design has to be informed by people who've actually been in the field."
"I'll coordinate that through Calloway's office. He owes me a favor."
Ryan looked around the room. Some faces were uncertain. Some were excited. All of them were thinking harder than they had in weeks.
"This is the assignment," he said. "Design a firefighting mech. Based on Scrapper's technology. Under fifteen million per unit. Capable of operating in wildfire conditions for extended periods. You have the professors, the documentation, and the workshop. The first concept review is in one month."
He stood up.
"Make it something that justifies this project's existence."