The Mech Touch

Ves felt as if he was treating Marvaine as an employee rather than his son.

Setting up such a formal and rule-bound incentive structure smacked of manipulative behavior.

It was the kind of approach that a heartless results-driven boss imposed on their underlings to ensure that they remained productive and helpful to the company.

Though Ves possessed enough awareness to recognize that he was acting a bit too much like Gloriana than he was comfortable with, he couldn't help it. Marvaine had so much talent that he couldn't bear the thought that his son would grow up as less than the sum of his parts!

He distinctly recalled one of his distant Mastery experiences where he had landed in the mind of a certain drug-addled, good-for-nothing scion of the Streon Clan of the Greater Terran United Confederation.

That bastard of a hedonist had access to so much wealth, privilege and chances to make himself great, but practically wasted all of it in favor of drugging himself stupid all day!

Though the former wastrel had finally managed to clean up his act and become a bigshot among the Terrans, that was only because Ves essentially forced the idiot to change his entire life trajectory by force.

If even first-raters could turn into useless good-for-nothing leeches, then there was always a possibility that his own children could end up the same way!

This was why he did not completely object to Gloriana's demanding child rearing methods. The Hexers may be deplorable people who maintained a lot of awful customs and beliefs, but if there was one thing they were good at, it was raising children into proper, obedient and effective adults!

Right now, Ves played along with his wife because he really didn't want his son to come anywhere close to the original Axelar. If that meant he had to cross a line or two, then so be it. He vastly preferred to raise Marvaine into a clone of Gloriana than a mediocre adolescent who wasn't good enough to stand out in any particular field.

Once Ves and Gloriana explained the new Mekano incentive structure to Marvaine, the little boy became eager to prove himself and unlock access to the greater possibilities of Mekano!

"I want to unlock all of the sets!" Marvaine exclaimed.

Ves patted his son on the head. "Don't be in a hurry. The starter set may be a little boring, but a professional mech designer such as myself can easily design thousands of distinctive Mekanos with the available collection of parts. You don't have to make that many Mekanos, but you must show me that you are able to fully utilize the available parts."

"Awww..."

Hours later, the kids already ate their meals and were ready to go to bed. Ves and Gloriana visited each of their children's bedrooms and tucked them all to sleep with all of the love and care they could summon.

Once their son and daughters fell into slumber, the two parents sat on the couch in the living room.

Gloriana had already done her homework beforehand while Ves had put his enhanced cognition to good use by rapidly absorbing all of the information he needed to get up to speed.

He possessed a much better understanding of the educational options available to talented children.

First-class schools were much more complicated to enter, especially when it came to foreigners and second-raters.

On the one hand, many first-class schools didn't even want to bother with 'lesser humans'. The discrimination against those who had risen up from the ranks of space peasants was too great.

Even if these schools made an exception and opened their doors to a particularly talented second-rater, the students and even the teachers would all exhibit horrible discriminatory behavior towards a person who did not fit into their group.

Ves had read enough horror stories about these cases on the galactic net that he decided to never subject his children to such difficult ordeals.

"That is why we need to limit our consideration to the more accessible, broader and more open-minded schools." Gloriana explained. "They also have to be multicultural and deliberately targeted towards foreigners. This way, Marvaine will have the same status as much of his future classmates."

"You're right, but... I've read the entry requirements for those open schools. They are much more demanding than usual. Not only will Marvaine have to produce consistently high results in order to avoid getting kicked from attendance, we will also have to pay a lot more tuition fees. The problem only exacerbates when we want to put him into a virtual school!"

His wife sighed. "It can't be helped. Physical schools have a lower number of applicants because of geographic restrictions. Virtual schools are not subject to these limitations, so anyone with a connection to the galactic net can apply, which means the demand is enormous. Furthermore, the difficulty of teaching students in virtual reality is much greater as the students cannot access highly sophisticated school facilities, so the quality of the lessons will inevitably be inferior."

Parents who wanted to enroll their kids to a virtual school had to make many tradeoffs in order to take advantage of this single convenience.

There were downsides to the virtual school as well. There was always a sense of physical detachment. The pupils never set foot onto the physical grounds of the education institution in person. They never even met any of their classmates in real life. This meant that once they graduated, they often went their separate ways. The friendships and alumni networks of these virtual schools were simply inadequate compared to their equivalents at physical institutions.

The fact of the matter was that Ves and Gloriana could give Marvaine much better career opportunities if they enrolled him into a reputable first-class school in the Zelmar Upper Zone.

They had even looked up a few that were both open to foreigners and happy to enroll a young genius like Marvaine!

They never seriously considered this matter, though.

"Marvaine is family. Our family." Ves emphasized. "What is the point of having a son and becoming a parent when I don't even get to experience the joys and difficulties of fatherhood? This is an essential part to any person's life and I will not give it up in the name of expediency."

Gloriana nodded her head as she leaned against her husband's shoulder. "I agree. There is another reason why we should be wary of these schools. They are not altruistic institutions, Ves. Even the non-profit ones are much more profit-driven than you realize. They merely count wealth in how many alumni they have managed to turn into their unwitting servants rather than cold hard cash. The greater their networks, the greater their influence and power. It just isn't as obvious on the surface."

"The boarding schools are especially the worst." Ves contemptuously added. "Once you send a child to a far-off boarding school, you are essentially allowing complete strangers with agendas of their own to indoctrinate their young and impressionable pupils with any nonsense they like. I don't want Marvaine to go away for four or so years only to come back as a loyal Rubarthan citizen who admires the Star Emperor more than his own father and mother!"

While boarding schools definitely had their uses, none of them applied to their current situation, so the couple readily dismissed all of these possibilities.

This meant that virtual schools became their only viable choice.

Fortunately, there were plenty of acceptable primary and tertiary educational institutions available that offered virtual schooling.

Most of them were extensions or branches of renowned and successful physical schools with long and storied heritages. This granted them a lot of trust and legitimacy. They were also highly entrenched and possessed lots of connections to many friendly and supportive states and companies.

The problem was that most of these virtual schooling options disappeared when it came to tertiary educational institutions.

Ves frowned when he thought about this notable shortcoming. "There are too few universities that offer virtual schooling, and the few that do are insanely expensive while producing vastly inferior results."

"That is because this is where adolescents are being molded into professionals." Gloriana explained to him. "Primary schools and secondary schools do not care too much because their students will still be students when they graduate at the end. It is different for universities because they are responsible for the most important stages of helping their attendees grow up into productive and useful members of society."

While Ves had seen sources where virtual schooling at the university level could still produce respectable results, it simply wasn't a good option for Marvaine. Teachers who taught in those classes largely went through the motions and rarely exhibited any initiative.

Networking became more important than ever at this stage. The inability to form strong friendships and relations with talented students and influential professors would hamper Marvaine's chances of entering the first-class mech industry.

As much as they disliked it, the couple had no choice but to compromise on their original goal of keeping their precious son close.

"We'll have to send our son off to a physical first-class mech design university." Ves concluded. "Doing anything else would be a disservice to his excellent talent and growing capabilities. I suppose we can raise him ourselves, but Marvaine would be missing out on too many benefits."

Both Ves and Gloriana already had experience with teaching mech design students in-house.

They largely turned out well. Maikel, Zanthar, Maisie Ann and Rennie Larkinson had all become Apprentice Mech Designers that were distinctly more successful than their peers.

If they continued to practice their skills and conduct helpful research, they might advance to the rank of Journeyman Mech Designer in the next few decades.

While that sounded fairly good, they did not come close to matching the impressive capabilities of any graduate of a first-class mech design university!

It was much better to send Marvaine off by the time he graduated from a secondary virtual school.

Though Gloriana didn't like it, she didn't object to it either.

"My mother Constance did the same to me and my older siblings. The Scimitar System which the Wodin Dynasty ruled back then did not host any renowned universities, so my mother had little choice but to send us off to better universities that are located in different star systems. This is to ensure we would get taken seriously once we have completed our studies."

By the time Marvaine was ready to complete this crucial step in his journey, he should have already reached his late teens. That was more than enough time for Ves and Gloriana to have their fill of raising their cute boy into a handsome adolescent.

While it may be incredibly premature to think about the mech design university that Marvaine should apply for, there was no way for his parents to ignore this consideration.

Ves rubbed his hairless chin. "Most primary and secondary virtual schools are attached or outright part of different mech universities. The former can be treated as in-house talent pipelines that deliver qualified, desirable and partially indoctrinated graduates to the latter."

There were many mechanisms that encouraged students to stay within the same pipeline.

Graduates of a primary school had a much easier time getting accepted into a related secondary school. They could skip a number of requirements, pay lower tuition fees and make do with lower requirements.

The same applied to graduates of a secondary school. They could get into a related university a lot easier than normal. The most high-performing ones could even enter any educational program they wanted without needing to pass any entrance exams!

The latter benefit was a crucial variable to Ves and Gloriana because the entrance exams of any reputable first-class mech design university was insanely difficult!

"Although I trust our son to be intelligent enough to pass any entrance exam, he can't do much against the informal barriers to entry." Gloriana said in a measured tone. "If we want to ease his difficulties as much as possible, then we should select an entire pipeline instead of a single primary virtual school."

There were a lot of choices. Many of them came with massive implications, so it was not easy for Ves and Gloriana to make up their mind!