The Greatest Mecha-Chapter 36: Failure

Alto returned to his room shortly after departing from Marie and Kendall. He came back with a small bit of provisions and with a new insight of where he was heading with his mech design.

He hurriedly booted up the game and waited for it to initiate. He pondered on his experience with the two young mech pilots. He wanted to build a mech that would carry its pilot as best as it could. While this ideology did not seem unique at all, he felt it right to build a mech with the thought of its pilot in mind. Thinking like this stressed Alto’s thinking capacity a bit, but he managed to push through.

The game had finished initiating, and he could now see the mech design hovering in the virtual workshop. It still looked rather unfinished. Alto addressed the matter of the weapons immediately. He wanted to build a light mech that was swift and capable as an assassin. He thought about what a pilot would want from the mech for a bit.

"Light mechs run fast, but as an assassin it might need an extra kick to its boost." Alto went into the designer’s shop to purchase two low-level thrusters, which he would attach to the back of the mech’s legs, right under where the knee was. The weight it added to the mech was not much, which still let it retain its initial speed. The thrusters could only function twice before they would burn out. This meant it had two chances at surprising its enemy with two bursts of speed.

Alto browsed through an array of weapons, wondering which one he could use. After a couple of hours, he chose to equip a laser pistol like Marie had said, and there were a lot of laser pistols on display. Ranging from small to big, their magazine sizes and range of fire, Alto chose to work within a certain budget.

He chose to equip two small laser pistols which cost him 5000 credits each. Alto did not want to dive into the world of weapons now. The best he could do was take it easy and then learn in detail about them later. After he was done, he looked at the list of melee weapons, and there were also a wide variety to choose from.

Alto did not fully understand why a mech should have melee weapons. He felt that this was rather a way of paying tribute to the far ancient times when humans were still barbaric and ill-mannered. Alto knew he had a lot to learn when it came to mechs.

He decided that his melee weapon of choice would be a pair of curved daggers. He created small slots like pockets on the sides of the mech where he would store the weapons. Alto did not change the design of the original head; he did not think there was anything to be done about it.

Now Alto was done with the design, what remained was the fabrication process. When it came to fabricating a mech, there were certain processes. First, the mech plates would have to be broken down in a splicing machine to a paste-like form and then transferred to the machine referred to as the 3D printer. The 3D printer was a machine that would rebuild the broken-down mech plate into the form they would be used for.

Alto was yet to know how much work this would take. He hopped into the process excited with what he presumed as adequate knowledge on his part. He started with the splicing machine by putting each mech plate he had acquired one at a time. At first, when operating the virtual splicing machine in the virtual machine, he inserted the first mech plate into it and started the machine. It started up fine, and the mech plate came out the other end in a form existing between solid matters and semi-solid form. It looked powdery despite being paste.

Happily, Alto went to the 3D printer to begin fabricating the chest piece of the mech. At first, Alto was confident in his skill, but that all changed when he saw the display of multiple parameters on the screen. It looked like a network of threads he would have to weave into what he wanted it to. Alto panicked and ended up ruining his first batch of work. The paste hardened and lost its luster. It had taken a form that was unfit for using. Alto groaned at 5000 credits lost down the drain in an instant.

His next few tries went the same way. As he worked more, he started to become more agitated and moved the thread nodes at their junction. His movement was anything but deliberate. They forced the piece of metal into shapes that he did not want for his work. Alto ended up expending all of his resources, causing him to buy another batch. The result was closely the same as the first batch.

Alto had not realized it yet, but becoming proficient in the use of a 3D printer would be his biggest hurdle yet. With each failure, Alto became more and more frustrated, but he persisted. Each loss tasted more bitter than the last. After losing one million credits’ worth of metal plates, Alto became furious.

He pulled his hair and bit his lips and nails repeatedly. He did not understand how just one device became a chaotic process every time he touched it. He felt the urge to abandon the project and take a nice long nap. Out of frustration, Alto did abandon the project. It was still his third day, and he was heavily sleep-deprived. He did not think he could conquer the problem of the 3D printer any time soon.

Alto curled himself into a ball and fell asleep, his heavy brain letting go of all the load it had been carrying for days. For someone who was known for failing at almost everything he did, this was the most frustrated he had ever felt. Alto did not know, but he had already come farther than his peers to some extent. He had achieved a balance between the theoretical and the practical, which they seemed to lack. Yet while he slept, trouble brewed in the training room.