The Mech Touch

Chapter 6299  Tolerated Monopoly

Ves sat in the larger and more opulent seat previously reserved for the Evolution Witch as if he belonged on its much too large surface.

It may very well turn into his permanent seat if he played his cards right.

Now that he became the highest-ranking councilor in the virtual hall, Ves saw and understood so much more than before.

Previously, Ves remained ignorant of all of the power plays and backroom dealing that took place out of sight.

Now that he had begun to play the game properly, he finally understood why all of the groups and factions engaged in it. They wanted to secure victories in advance and build up enough support to push through their own proposals.

The stakes were massive. The Red Collective had the potential to become as powerful as the Red Association and the Red Fleet, so few councilors were willing to remain passive!

The previous Ves was the exception rather than the rule. He had so many different ways to implement meaningful change to society. He could have exercised his rights and authority months ago and twisted the circumstances in his favor a lot sooner.

The current Ves had made up for lost time. He had finally caught up with all of the other big boys and earned his seat at the highest table.

Though Ves had mostly spent his time on his own power play in the past few days, his personal assistant and his inside man from the Pantheon of Modern God had informed him of numerous other developments.

For example, the secularist groups that opposed the rise of religion had hastily gathered together to form their own coalition of sorts.

There was no way they would allow religion to occupy a greater place in human society after all of the efforts they spent on rooting it out from the public sphere!

There was always opposition. No group could get its way without stepping on other people's toes. It was natural for the latter to form their own club in order to defend their opposing interests.

In other words, before the Coalition of Faiths was able to introduce itself as the first faction of the Red Collective, its political adversaries had already formed a second faction behind the scenes!

More decisions and maneuvering had taken place in the background. The Evolution Witch's staff, which nominally answered to Ves, had already addressed many of them. Her office automatically passed any proposals and decisions deemed unimportant or uncontroversial and incorporated them into the increasingly more elaborate blueprint of the Red Collective.

This left Ves and the rest of the council with the more important and controversial issues.

Despite entering this virtual meeting hall in an ostentatious manner, Ves began the third major session by addressing a number of easy items on the agenda.

Questions related to the fine-tuning of the organizational structure and proportion of funding that should be allocated to the research teams of the Red Collective came and went at a brisk tempo.

While these subjects were quite important, the councilors did not really care too much about winning or losing. They would try to skew the consensus in their favor, but did not complain if they did not get their way.

Ves made use of these relatively unimportant subjects to ease himself into his new role. He moderated the debates and gently steered the talks towards acceptable compromises.

There were no instances that required him to exercise his greater authority as no one tried to make any disruptive power plays.

The experience so far helped Ves to ease his nerves and grow his confidence in himself.

None of the other councilors had bothered to test his limits or anything, which showed that they were at least willing to superficially accept his greater authority.

That might not last once the discussions became more contentious. Everyone waited for the session to progress until they addressed the first controversial item on the agenda.

That moment finally came when Ves introduced a subject that was bound to generate a lot of controversy.

The topic was also so important to him that he stood up from his large seat. "Councilors, the next topic on the agenda concerns the design, deployment and regulation of 'kinship networks'. As the inventor and most prolific user of the only iteration of kinship networks known to us, I cannot claim to be impartial on this subject. Each of you are either familiar with them already, or have read the briefing package that I have prepared in advance. This discussion will proceed with the assumption that you are knowledgeable of their workings and purpose."

Only a minority of councilors possessed a deeper background in cultivation science, but that did not stop them from learning the basic theories rooted in the developing fields of E-technology and cultivation science.

"Ever since I invented them, I have applied them to my own clan and other 'small' gatherings without suffering any significant negative consequences." Ves continued. "That may not be extensive enough proof that can definitively conclude that they are safe, but it should at least demonstrate that I stand by my invention so much that I am willing to entrust myself, my relatives and my subordinates to my own kinship networks. After making good use of them myself, I have formed numerous agreements with other major parties recently to provide them with their own kinship networks. The first of them were supposed to roll out sooner, but persistent security concerns combined with the introduction of the Red Collective has caused those endeavors to freeze."

He was still annoyed by that, but he could understand why it was no longer acceptable to proceed even if he and his partners had addressed most of the contentious issues.

At least Ves was still able to make use of the ones that had already been operating for years.

Kinship networks were completely new to human civilization and had yet to be governed by any specific regulations.

That did not mean that it existed completely outside the existing framework of human laws. The mechers and fleeters uphold plenty of more general laws that prohibited long-term direct mental conditioning, intrusive monitoring at the implant level and other violations.

Since these laws and regulations were not perfectly attuned to the properties of kinship networks, it was a nightmare to apply them all. A lot of exceptions had to be carved out in order to legally permit the rollout of kinship networks. Even that was not a good or permanent solution.

The Red Collective was supposed to take over this responsibility. Since Ves had classified his kinship networks as an application of E-technology, then the RC possessed a clear mandate to decide how humans should interact with this far-reaching invention.

This was the moment that could decide how extensively red humanity made use of his kinship networks.

The Red Collective could either become its biggest promoter, or turn into its greatest restraint.

"The Terran Alliance and the Rubarthan Pact have both applied for their own kinship networks. I have cooperated with their own experts for months in order to create customized frameworks for them that preserves most of the benefits of a baseline kinship network while also introducing a large amount of monitoring, restrictions and failsafes in order to increase their reliability and decrease their risk factors."

Ves also generated a projection that showed the basic plans and schematics for these kinship networks. He had simplified them down a lot in order to clearly show how many controls had been added to prevent any potential abuses.

"The Red Two has also expressed clear interest in implementing a kinship network to unite all New Elites together. There are many reasons why this should be done. A kinship network can increase their cohesion and allow many different soldiers from many different states and groups to trust each other without requiring a long familiarization process. A kinship network can also monitor their thoughts for any instances of treason, dereliction of duty and mental breakdowns. The Red Association has conducted extensive modeling, and even its more conservative scenarios promise a net 4 percent increase in overall combat effectiveness solely due to the relatively shallow benefits that I have mentioned."

A difference of 4 percent might not sound big to normal people, but it was absolutely massive if it was applied across all of the frontlines!

A margin of 4 percent was already enough to transform a few dozen close defeats into close victories.

That mattered a lot as those victories slightly slowed down the alien advance and bought more time for red humanity to mount a proper defense and counterattack!

Though Ves strongly believed that a single kinship network can produce a much greater positive impact than 4 percent, too many councilors would doubt his credibility, thereby weakening his argument. It was better to stick to more certain numbers even if they undersold the actual package.

Ves continued to speak more about kinship networks.

It was a bit of a helpless choice for him to be the one to advocate so strongly for them. As the moderator of this council session, he was supposed to maintain a facade of impartiality on the surface. That was simply not possible this time as no one else but him could speak in favor of his own weird invention.

Once he finished his speech, a short pause ensued before another councilor rose up to ask a question.

"Professor Larkinson, given the great strategic importance and sensitivity of kinship networks, will you share the methods of creating them to others so that you are no longer the only supplier and point of failure for them? One of humanity's general policies is to never rely too much on a technological innovation that cannot be independently reproduced. As useful as your kinship network sounds, they are not replicable by others other than yourself as far as we know."

Ves inwardly grimaced. He was afraid that a skeptic might attack his kinship networks from this angle. His answer was bound to increase opposition to their rollout, but he had no other choice but to defend his own rights.

"The Kinship network is currently a proprietary invention of mine. I am not obliged to share its working principles, its method of production and so on. While it is highly related to my design philosophy, I will likely not teach anyone how to make them when I realize my design philosophy as it is not related to my mech design work. The only reasons for me to surrender this information to others is if another party is willing to exchange a benefit of equal value to it, or if the rules and directives of the Red Collective leaves me with no other option."

It went without saying that Ves would vehemently object to that outcome!

A small discussion ensued among the councilors on whether it was permissible to allow Ves to remain as the sole creator and master of kinship networks.

Under normal circumstances, letting Ves keep his monopoly on his own invention would never fly! It gave him far too much power and would also cause red humanity to suffer an unrecoverable loss if he got killed all of a sudden.

The best course of action was to draft a directive that forced Ves to drop his monopoly on kinship networks and actively share the creation methods to others.

That did not happen.

Ves quietly grew reassured as none of the councilors was willing to make the suggestion that clearly benefited their civilization best.

They were either afraid or unwilling to oppose Ves on this matter!

Whether it was because they wanted to stay on the good side of the Evolution Witch's errand boy, or because they did not want to turn themselves into a target by the rapidly growing Coalition of Faiths, it was clear that the councilors were too intimidated by Ves to make an issue out of a matter that was not of critical importance!

In fact, one of the reasons why the councilors did not push hard on this issue was because they were confident that one of their experts would succeed in reverse-engineering and replicating kinship networks in time.

The councilors would rather save their political capital for a more important dispute.

Because of this, the current discussion skipped past the possibility of forcing Ves to share his trade secrets and moved on to deciding how extensively red humanity should make use of kinship networks.