Comic 1154 - Check on Michelle and Fuse
Posted on 26th Dec 2018, 9:04 PM
in Like a Bullet from Behind
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Author Notes:
You have Liz fix the doors so you can walk out of Bunker E, and out into Ilworth. It takes a little while to search for them, but eventually, you find Michelle and Fuse in town.
As you approach, Michelle is practicing with the giant fist you grew. You can barely see it, most of the wiring and such buried under the skin, but it does appear that some sort of infrastructure has been sewn into the inside of the hand. Michelle, presumably pulling triggers or the like from inside it, has some amount of control over the fingers--or, at least, what you managed to make as far as fingers go.
"Getting any better?," Fuse asks.
"I'm gettin' better at handlin' the weight," Michelle says. "The weight still sucks, though. Blondie can lift it with her blood stuff, we're gonna have to... I dunno, get some shoulders an' stuff to go with it. Some kinda frame that can haul the weight. A couple hours with one fist, and I'm feelin' it--an' I'm a tube cop. Two big ol' hands and a few more hours, I'd be done."
"Probably gonna have to look into hydraulics and shit," Fuse remarks. "Just slap a bunch of meat on half an actual mecha, by the end of it."
"If that's what it takes," Michelle chuckles, throwing a few punches at the air. "If everything goes to hell again, I can't just leave Blondie to handle it herself. We ain't here to be th'cheer squad, we need to be able to help her if she needs it."
Fuse gives a few shallow nods. "Yeah. Well, if Liz can do something with that program, we might be on our way. Me and Dr. Finch both shocked the crap out of ourselves wiring that thing up, though--we're not robot dudes. We can't rush this."
Maybe hollow bones that the wires can go into? Or would that be too fragile.
Our design for a mech suit involves similar ideas to that arm. We already portaled our optic nerve, so this design involves hooking up an exoskeleton of nerves wired to the red that tracks the position of your body, and mimics that on the other end. This would require the user to have complete freedom of movement, so we can suspend them in a bone cage harness, open or closed top. On the other side of the nerves, we envision an human-sized biomech, both to make it easier for the pilots, and to fit through doorways. We don't have a solution
for processing the visual signal from the mech-golems, but we're working on it.
Similar harness concept: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KtT7OeDZxyA/maxresdefault.jpg
Edit: upon rereading this it was not clear I was talking about making remote-piloted mechs, or shells, or surrogates or whatever we end up calling them, but that's the idea.
We know several robot people, the proto-Juries. I think they'd agree to help out if we moved our testing to bunker B, and they're probably not doing anything else right now.
Once we can control efficiently the hand, proceed to the rest of the mech!
Even if we pulled off a fully-functional red-built mech, it'd probably be rough on our stamina even on the best of days and represent a huge drop in the versatility of our powers (during any given day of course).
It's probably better to revert to tried and true methods when we can access them like a bit of standard robotics. No need to re-invent the wheel.
My thoughts on a half-and-half meat and mechanical construct boils down to: if we had the money and expertise to build a traditional metal mech, we'd build a traditional metal mech. If we can't us the resources we have on hand; bone for structure, muscle for movement, etc; then there's not much point in slapping meat onto a robot frame when we can just add metal plates, guns and sensors onto the frame instead. That being said, supplementing a meat mech with wires, guns and such for easy control seems a fair bit more viable.
Another thing to consider is the control system are we looking at a direct neural uplink, external brain-scan VR headset, touch and pressure sensitive hairs and pads, or a standard control panel like a souped-up piece of construction equipment? There's pros and cons to each, and it also makes a big difference weather the pilot is inside the suit or controlling it remotely. Heck, it makes a big differenc how much the biomech can handle on it's own; how much of a brain do we give the biomech to handle subsystems and input processing? Can it speak?
Armaments are another big consideration. Big fists and lotsa muscle is all well and good, but the whole point of Project Blood Gundam is that our enemies are beyond just punching. Are we content with a huge bone/metal sword? Do we hijack the next Carpenter bot's miniguns? Do we work on more advance blood powered ballistic bone cannons or trade up assault rifles with the Tradesmen? Can we have the suits weaponize lightning without our attention? Can we look into weaponized ritual magic? Nerve toxin paralysis flesh whips?
There's also risks we need to consider. Can we really finish a combat ready mech before facing Carpenter? What happens if somebody gets crushed inside the prototype? We can't get hung up on the bad "what if" scenarios, but we can't afford to dismiss them entirely either.
Bottom line to all this though, is that there is a lot to look into, and a lot of work going into even one mech, for Mine and the rest of the crew. We're diving into new, experimental technology once again and there's a substantial amount to gain, but a large chance for things to go wrong. The biggest thing we need though, is conscious. We all need to agree on the direction we're going in or our design will fail. We do not have the time to work on two different control methods at once beyond the initial proof of concept phase before facing Carpenter and Nil.
Specifically for a meeting to today in comic, most of the rest of the crew should hash out the details of the design, work on blueprints and delegating elements to work on. Mine herself can easily make proof of concept bits from the Red now; any real work on major components will have to wait until after a nap/coffee/meditation. I believe we have until about the day after tomorrow before we're gambling on Carpenter getting antsy and making a move, so we should aim for a good solid prototype by tomorrow afternoon, with perhaps a field test in Bunker X if we're feeling confident.
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