For 30 advance/early chapters : p atreon.com/AutumnXd
Watching the experiment conclude in complete success, Ryan applauded from the sidelines.
"This mech is already a real success." He walked toward Marsh, full of praise.
Marsh wiped the sweat from his forehead and looked happily at the firefighting mech, still standing where it had stopped. The test field still held the artificial rainbows cast by the water spray from moments ago, a scene almost dreamlike.
"Getting it to this level surprised even me."
"Though the foundation Scrapper laid deserves most of the credit," he added with feeling.
If Scrapper hadn't blazed the trail, they could never have built this mech.
Marsh looked back at Ryan and teased him with a smile. "That said, this mech still has plenty of places that need refinement and adjustment. Any interest in lending a small hand, oh great one?"
This was, after all, a mech meant for deployment into real fire zones, not a validation machine like Scrapper, where being able to run and jump without falling apart already met the requirements.
One successful test did not mean it was ready for the market. It had to guarantee reliable, superior performance, or it would be an act of negligence toward the lives of the firefighters using it. That demanded a huge volume of testing and validation, which demanded a huge amount of time. There was no finishing it within the next year or two.
Hearing Marsh's request, Ryan shook his head hard. "I'm swamped these days. Where would I find time to help you with that?"
"Ha, I forgot. You're the Chief Designer now. Dizzy with work every day."
Marsh didn't mind at all, just kept up the teasing.
"So how is it? Carrying a project that big on your shoulders can't feel great, can it?"
"So busy."
The mech began to depart, and the two of them chatted as they walked down the small earthen hill.
Kyle came over then, the filming drone still in his hands.
"Professor Marsh, the footage is all recorded."
He handed over a memory card.
Marsh took it and said to Ryan, "With results like these, we can finally give that old fellow at your school a proper answer."
Old fellow?
Ryan blinked, then caught on. "You mean President Calloway?"
"Of course it's him. Who else?"
"The way he put it, he diverted the road-repair budget to fund us. If we couldn't produce results, he was going to take this old skeleton of mine apart." Marsh laughed.
Ryan laughed too. "You could also tell him to start charging admission at the school gate and send the ticket revenue over as funding."
Beside them, Kyle burst out laughing as well.
One old man and two young men returned to the mech bay amid the laughter.
Marsh went off to report the good news to President Calloway, while Ryan talked with Kyle about the project transfer.
Kyle had said before that he wanted to move to the Crimson Typhoon project, and he'd already gotten Marsh's approval. As soon as Crimson Typhoon formally began, he could join the team.
Actually, Kyle could join right now. After all, Reeves's drift lab researched the liquid neural connection technology, and that work was entering its final phase. There was nothing left for Kyle to do on his current project, so there was no point wasting his time there.
Ryan mentioned it casually, and when Kyle heard he didn't have to wait, that he could join the team immediately, he was so happy he nearly jumped into the air.
"You should prepare yourself mentally, though."
"Prepare for what?"
"Crimson Typhoon's neural connection technology has already been cracked. Going in now, you'll purely be there to learn."
"That fast?" Kyle deflated a little at the news, but he rallied quickly. Even without participating in the development, getting in to learn was already excellent.
Ryan also wasn't worried about Kyle entering the drift lab and coming into contact with the secrets of human neural synchronization. The people assigned to him in the earliest days were absolutely trustworthy and absolutely intelligent. Otherwise they would never have had the chance to come into contact with the plasma battery. The plasma battery project's classification level was far higher than the human-sync project's.
Meanwhile, Marsh had submitted the results and the video up the chain, and President Calloway received the news soon after.
Watching the mech conduct its test in the video, the old president broke into a gratified smile.
With results like these, he could justifiably apply for additional funding, without having to trade on his old face anymore.
Back when Ryan was still at the school, Calloway honestly hadn't gotten any advantage from it. The party actually responsible for the project funding had been the newly founded Aegis Industrial. MIT had merely been a hotel where Ryan temporarily stayed.
Except this lodger named Ryan, "staying" with them, not only didn't pay rent. They were the ones who'd had to squeeze money out of their limited research funds to provide a symbolic sponsorship.
And they hadn't been qualified to use their lodger's project to apply for funding from above, because strictly speaking, it had been Aegis Industrial's project.
But this time was different. This project genuinely belonged to MIT now.
The days settled down, and Ryan returned to his earlier rhythm of daily meetings, occasionally carving out a little time to check the artificial intelligence's self-learning progress.
But the legend of him online never stopped growing.
Especially after MIT released its new school promotional film, which documented in detail many of the research projects that could be made public.
And the project given the climactic final slot in the film was none other than the firefighting mech.
The segments edited into the film were exactly the firefighting mech's slope climb and fire suppression.
Even from the aerial bird's-eye view, the firefighting mech's frame was anything but small. The slope-climbing ability it showed at the start was already enough to startle some viewers.
When the water cannons opened fire later, water scattered down from the sky in sheets, extinguishing the flames on the ground, and rainbows traced themselves along the arcs of the streams. Plenty of viewers shouted that it was thrilling, that it was incredible.
Countless people lost themselves in this new mech.
"A firefighting mech? Allow me to tag a certain large southern-hemisphere country."
"I thought Crimson Typhoon would be the second mech. Turns out the second mech was already built."
"First I assumed I was on layer two, that there wouldn't be another big mech breakthrough for a while. Then the man casually drops the Crimson Typhoon project and slaps me in the face. Then I assumed I was on layer three, and now you people drive a mech out to extinguish fires."
"All this happening without a sound, the finished product already done, and only then do you announce the project. Are you trying to scare me to death? If so, please do it a few more times. I have a strong constitution for shocks."
"Is it just me, or is the mech family growing way too fast? The first one, Scrapper, could only stroll down a road. The second can fight fires. The third, Crimson Typhoon, can dive into the deep sea. Isn't this product line a little too versatile?"
"Am I the only one who noticed? The chief designer of this project isn't Chief Designer Mercer."
"Right? This project's chief designer post wasn't even held by Chief Designer Mercer. Looks like this country has talent to spare."
Ever since the Crimson Typhoon project's announcement, Ryan had acquired the second nickname of his life on account of his title.
Chief Designer Mercer. Or just the Chief Designer.
Ryan didn't know about it yet, though. He was busy with something else.
The new base was complete.