The Mech Touch

The Aspect of Tranquility embodied the purity of Lufa. It stripped almost all of the personal and extraneous sides of the design spirit and distilled what remained into a facet that was completely neutral.

No matter whether someone was a friend or foe, they would both be able to find peace in the Aspect of Tranquility's presence.

Compared to the other statues, the Aspect of Tranquility was the most harmless of the four. Its effect on people was less extreme and it did not set out to impose any specific changes. It just provided a sanctuary where those who sheltered in its glow would be able to purge themselves of their distracting thoughts and emotions and find peace in a reality that was always busy.

Yet for all of the Aspect of Tranquility's benefits, it was merely the plainest totem compared to the other three variations!

Ves shifted his gaze to the second organic statue.

Compared to the purity and lack of personality of the Aspect of Tranquility, the second was a font of positivity!

The reason why Ves came up with a distinctly more empathic statue was because he wanted to develop something that was even better at healing broken and traumatized people.

When he toured the recently-erected refugee camp, he personally came in touch with different forms of negativity. Through reading the expressions and minds of the Lifers trying to make sense of their lives, he encountered plenty of anger, helplessness, loss, despair and indecisiveness.

It was not good for so many people to bottle up all of these negative emotions. If these traumatized citizens kept harboring dark thoughts, then an amateurish asssination attempt would be the least of his worries!

While providing active therapy was the best way to straighten these people up, Ves doubted that the refugees were open to it. He had to come up with an alternate way to heal the traumas that scarred their minds.

The Aspect of Healing was the realization of this need.

Just as its name suggested, the organic statue exuded a tweaked version of Lufa's glow that dampened every thought and emotion.

The difference was that the Aspect of Healing was slightly more tolerant of positive thoughts and emotions!

This meant that every person that was under the effect of its glow would find their negativity melting away, but leave at least some room for positivity.

Any mental impulse that was benign, positive and harmless would continue to exist in people's minds in a weakened form.

The latter was necessary because a pure and cleansed mind could easily become warped if a single, overpowering thought and emotion settled in someone's mind!

Without any counterbalancing elements, Ves had to be careful not to create any extremes. Even positive obsessions could lead to great harm under the wrong circ.u.mstances!

Only the mentally ill and the most extreme personalities would react adversely to the Aspect of Healing's influence!

Once he placed this statue in the vicinity of the refugee camp, he predicted that its effect would quickly become popular among the distressed and purposeless Lifers.

After losing their jobs, their homes and possibly their loved ones, they had all been wrenched away from their usual prior lives and routines.

This violent disconnect caused a lot of their hearts to bleed.

Contrary to its name, the Aspect of Healing was not able to heal these wounds directly. It was not that powerful. What Ves actually aimed for was to provide the circ.u.mstances in which hurt people were given the opportunity to heal their own mental wounds.

By muting the source of their pain and giving room for their joys and other positive emotions to assert themselves, Ves hoped that the personalities of the people who needed healing slowly recovered to a healthier state.

He was unsure whether these improvements would stick. Once these people left the influence of the Aspect of Healing, their depression and other negative emotions would instantly regain their old strength.

"Only the people themselves can kill their own demons." He muttered.

In order to emphasize Lufa's willingness to provide assistance in this manner, the Aspect of Healing adopted a friendly expression. Its hands reached forward as if to beckon those that needed help to come closer.

The Aspect of Healing was definitely the most reassuring of the four, but beyond making people feel better, it didn't bring any other benefits.

When Ves was thinking about leveraging Lufa's traits in a manner that would be more helpful to himself and other people, he came up with a different combination of suppression mind activity.

Instead of making a division between positive and negative activity, he began to wonder what would happen if he separated the rational from the irrational.

This was something that Ves often thought about. Every living sentient being was characterized by both their logic and their emotions. Sometimes, they complemented each other, but many times they clashed against each other.

Each human had to make a consideration which side they should follow in their daily lives. It could be something as trivial as eating something unhealthy to something as serious as sacrificing a hundred people in order to save the lives of thousands!

Ves knew that he had a problem of letting his emotions and obsessions get the better of himself sometimes. In fact, he encountered plenty of people who suffered from the same kind of affliction.

Too many people made stupid and illogical decisions because their warped personalities compelled them to. If they were a bit more sober in mind, they would have never acted so stupid!

If Ves was able to create a totem that could suppress all of the irrational sides of people and only left some space for rationality, then the people under its influence would be able to make much more optimal decisions!

Of course, whether these decisions made with pure logic were actually better or not was another matter. Ves believed that this effect would be a boon more than a bane for many people, especially the refugees who were highly emotional and very prone to making stupid decisions!

Such a totem might also be useful to mech designers like Ves and Gloriana. While they were both passionate mech designers, it might be helpful to adopt a different perspective over the course of their work.

This was why the third statue was one of the most intriguing for mech designers like Ves.

"The Aspect of Rationality."

While the third statue strayed a bit beyond Lufa's original purpose, it did not exhibit any form of rejection or lack of fit. During its shaping, Ves had actively altered the design spirit's very identity to embrace this new aspect!

Just as its name suggested, the organic statue portrayed the angel with a contemplative expression. The statue's finger even pressed against the chin to mirror his own habit of rubbing his smooth-shaven cheeks!

Compared to the other statues, Aspect of Rationality was the coldest and most calculative of the four. It was all brain and no heart. This was why Ves was quite hesitant about exposing it to everyone.

He believed it was a particularly bad idea to subject the Aspect of Rationality to children. The harm it could do to their growth was incalculable!

Children should not be allowed to lose their innocence and wonder of reality around them as far as he was concerned. Only the cruelest and most heartless parents would want their kids to turn into emotionless drones.

If Ves wanted to go through with his plan to make it available to refugees, then he had to set up a security cordon in order to control who was allowed to approach this special statue.

While he was interested in using the locals as test subjects to examine the precise effects of his creations on different personalities, he did not want to make a bad impression on these people!

This was why he held a lot of misgivings about the fourth and last statue.

Unlike the first three aspects, the fourth one was a lot more active. Its glow shook with excitement and sparks seemed to jump across its unusual form.

From the first statue to the fourth one, the depictions of Lufa progressively grew more active. The final statue was even more radical than the third one, and that was quite an accomplishment.

Its glow still performed many of the same effects as the previous ones. It dampened and suppressed many different thoughts and emotions that cluttered people's minds.

The fourth statue also differentiated the mental activity within people in its area of effect. The unique benefit about this final variation was that it only exempted a single emotion, thought, principle or obsession from dampening!

As long as it was positive or neutral, the highly-specific glow not only allowed it to exist, but also did its best to amplify this singular quality!

For example, someone interested in becoming a more skilled professional like Dr. Swindell would become unprecedentedly motivated and driven when subjected to the fourth statue's glow!

Yet this was not its true purpose. When Ves initially conceived of the final statue, he wanted to create a statue that might be able to help individuals break past their existing shackles.

The idea behind this final creation was the most ambitious by far! Ves wanted nothing less than to create a new aspect of Lufa that purified people's minds and stimulated their greatest obsession in order to spark a powerful mental outburst!

This was also why he bestowed a much more ambitious and impressive name to this dangerous but highly ambitious statue!

"The Aspect of Transcendence."

Just whispering those words caused Ves to become immersed with dreams of the future. He could already imagine allowing expert candidates to approach this aspect with their chosen mechs.

If they had already polished their skills, acc.u.mulated enough experience and discovered their reason to fight, then subjecting them to the Aspect of Transcendence's glow might give them the push they needed to undergo apotheosis!

"This totem can revolutionize our clan!"

If this organic statue truly worked as promised, then it could serve as a powerful alternative to breaking through in actual combat!

In order to symbolize the Aspect of Transcendence's potential effect, Ves chose to have it shaped so that its expression was filled with hope and expectation. Its head looked upwards and it raised its arms in the sky as if to call down a blessing!

How magnificent!

It took a lot of effort for Ves to rein in his excitement at this last creation. Though its glow sounded ground-breaking in theory, messing with spirituality was always inherently dangerous. Any strong or extreme changes to someone's mind could easily produce a lot of harm!

Ves knew that he could never allow most people to approach the Aspect of Transcendence. He didn't even want his own clansmen to experience its unique glow unless he was more certain about its effect on other people!

He didn't intend to create such a radical new aspect at first. He didn't really know what he was thinking when he got caught up in his passion earlier. The Aspect of Transcendence did not address his original purpose at all. Instead, it had a good chance of backfiring on him if he let the refugees experience its glow with no preparation!

"I'll have to lock it up, I guess."

It was a pity, but the current crisis was not a good time to get lost in another innovation!