Chapter 5773 Devil Proofing

Chapter 5773 Devil Proofing

5773 Devil Proofing

The second session proceeded in a much less astonishing fashion than the day before.

Neither side pulled off any crazy or unexpected moves. Planetary Governor Rod Mergan-Castelaus had already issued a warning to both sides to refrain from spilling any secrets, and everyone took it seriously.

Ves believed that he managed to gain an advantage during the first session, so he had no objection to adopting a more measured and risk averse approach on the second day.

He wondered whether he had made a strategic misstep.

Professor Kacuk of the Chabran Ancient Clan was a disturbingly competent speaker. As an old sociologist and philosopher, he had an abundant amount of experience in giving speeches to wildly different audiences.

He spent years honing his speaking and presentation skills in venues as diverse as academic conferences, lecture halls and public speaking squares.

More importantly than that, the Terran possessed the crucial ability to shed his first-class high-born arrogance and appear personable to the lesser space peasants whose opinions mattered a lot in this public inquiry.

Despite or because of his formidable intellect, the scholar's strategy for his series of speeches during the second session turned out to be quite simple.

He sought to alienate the public against the new but admittedly weird existence of living mechs.

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The man repeatedly amplified and exaggerated every aspect of Ves' works that did not fit with the established mold of human technology.

It was not that difficult for him to make a persuasive case for his stance. Living mechs were incredibly lacking in transparency. Any engineer who broke down a living mech could find no visible component or programming code that hinted at anything that could be responsible for giving the machine its characteristic traits.

While it was easy for Ves to explain that living mechs were based on specialized applications of E-technology, what did that actually mean?

Red humanity's introduction to E-technology was way too brief at this time. Only one-and-a-half year had passed since the start of the Age of Dawn, and most people in the mech industry still struggled to come to grips with hyper technology.

E-technology was a completely different beast that most people simply did not have the qualifications to work with. Ordinary humans completely lacked the ability to perceive E energy, let alone manipulate it in a deliberate manner.

Absent any lab machines that could finally allow humans to measure and manipulate E technology like they could already do with molecules and atoms, E-technology was destined to remain an extremely obscure and niche application of science.

It did not help that the few known instances of E-technology all resembled witchcraft and sorcery more than proper science!

That was because the few people who succeeded in developing useful applications of E-technology clearly copied the methods of ancient cultivation scriptures.

Dangerous or not, just the possibility of fulfilling the cherished dreams of many norms was enough to willingly tempt a lot of people into embracing Carmine mechs!

Alas, Ves could not afford to strain his relationship with the Red Association any further. It was instances like these where good relations showed their value. The opposition wouldn't have needed to make their case in public if the Survivalists and Transhumanists did not go out of their way to cover his back.

The last thing Ves wanted to do was act ungrateful by ruining whatever plans the Transhumanist Faction had in mind for his Carmine mechs and other useful inventions.

Vector Loban at least had enough awareness to say sorry on behalf of his faction's obstinacy.

This left Ves unable to employ a killer solution that was guaranteed to earn instant approval from all of the civilians!

Instead, Ves was unable to appeal to them due to the simple fact that most of the benefits of living mechs had nothing to do with the lives of ordinary people.

The only relevant aspects about living mechs that could directly affect civilians were negative!

As much as Ves tried to refute the exaggerated claims that living mechs might go rogue and go on killing sprees, he could not lie and say that it was impossible for this to happen.

Third order living mechs had the right to live their own lives. That meant giving them enough leeway to be able to do stuff that they actually shouldn't do. It was completely realistic to expect that they might eventually engage in controversial actions that would earn a lot of condemnation from the public.

Stuff like starting a destructive fight inside a starship or in the middle of an urban settlement were all plausible scenarios. Ves had lived through numerous violent incidents where a lot of innocent bystanders got killed due to the natural consequence of enormous mechs fighting in close proximity!

Professor Chabran was not the only speaker that Ves had difficulty with. Other speakers occasionally pushed forth similar arguments that were distinctly formulated in ways that Ves could not directly refute.

It was as if they took his moniker of Devil Tongue so seriously that they deliberately went out of their way to minimize the possibility of direct conflicts!

Their attempts to devil proof their arguments clearly yielded the desired results.

Ves did not have the chance to sound righteous and passionate if he did not have a convenient punching bag to direct his ire!

He glowered when opponents such as Lieutenant-

Commander Astrid Jameson took their turns to torch living mechs from different angles.

"Experimental new technologies fundamentally come with great risks." She explained. "Early FTL drives developed by the human race were so rudimentary that there was a 25 percent chance that no one would ever see the crews and passengers of test vessels again. Living mechs may be completely different from first generation FTL drives, but the principles remain the same."

Living mechs had nothing in common with FTL drives!

"It is standard practice in the R&D sector to thoroughly test new inventions before ever thinking about making a new technology available to the public. As far as we have been able to ascertain, Professor Larkinson has often ignored this essential step. By releasing new and untested innovations directly to the market, he is effectively turning all of his customers into his unwitting guinea pigs. Does this sound ethical to you? I think not. If you care even the slightest about the health and safety of your family, friends of colleagues who have fallen into his trap, then do what is right and demand greater oversight over the professor's unsafe products."