Second Genesis

Grey didn’t seem to notice the shifting cold in the air. His eyes moved back and forth between the symbols, getting a feel for what he was working with.

His talent for these things had always been high, but ever since he reached Phase II with the Prometheus Spirit, his feel and intuition for things had grown sharper. It was almost like the world was whispering sweet nothings to him.

’Too bad mother earth isn’t coming out to fuck me anytime soon.’

The meandering thought didn’t stall his progress in the slightest. It was like he could be a sarcastic horny teenager on autopilot, he didn’t even need to waste any RAM on it.

Grey had already seen all of these glyphs and symbols in one way or another. During the second stage of crafting a mech, the Loading stage, these were the symbols that the software of the mech was downloaded with.

The symbols that made up this "dev mode" were all the simplest forms of those. They weren’t actually all that complicated at all, which made sense. They were supposed to be the building blocks, not the actual complex software itself.

He was meant to use them to build out the formulas that formed the blueprint and inevitably the mech. This was probably a mode designed for those who didn’t have spatial awareness as good as his own.

Grey actually felt he could draw a perfect blueprint from memory alone. But if he understood correctly, people probably usually had trouble with that. So they used the glyphs to set parameters.

The best analogy was building a house.

Anyone could draw out a house, but would they know the studs had to be 16 inches on center? Would they know the structural engineering that went into an open concept kitchen? How about something far more fundamental like how far a gas line tapped to the outside had to be from an electrical outlet box?

Grey could recall all of these things from memory and draw the blueprint of the house while making sure he was in line with all of these rules.

But other people found it easier to set these rules first, and then the blueprint that naturally resulted from it would be the mech they were looking for.

Where the analogy fell apart was that all houses had the same standard of rules to meet, but every mech was different and had its own set of rules. There were some overlapping principles, but the devil was in the details most often.

When Grey understood all of this, he knew what to do, but not exactly how to proceed.

If he was on the simpler settings, he would just draw the Geometric Face version of the Helm Frame, ignoring the Curved Face version.

However, because he was in dev mode, the rules he knew that framed the Helm Frame would give them access to both the Geometric Face and the Curved Face versions.

If he wanted to change things, he would have to adjust the entire software itself into something almost completely new.

If Grey didn’t know better, he would have thought that Elowen had done it on purpose as though expecting that he wanted to hold back on her.

Well, maybe he didn’t know better. He had only known her for a few minutes, after all.

Grey chuckled, and then grinned ear to ear.

This was fun. He had his answer already.

He understood the Helm Frame like the back of his hand. This was more difficult than normal, but it wasn’t enough to completely stump him.

Suddenly, he moved, his hands flicked outward.

The carefully constructed knobs of glyphs spun out of control, fanning out into what almost looked like a star chart of gold.

Elowen’s eyes widened. "Wait—!"

She caught herself before she said more, not wanting to distract Grey from what he was doing, but feeling too skeptical for it to not show on her face.

Zara was caught off guard as well, but she clearly didn’t have the same misgivings. She began to laugh, so much so that her guard became confused. Was he still supposed to be attacking now? Or was he going to wait? Maybe it was better to wait until Grey lost the bet, then Elowen wouldn’t be able to complain either.

As quickly as the laughter began, and Elowen’s skepticism grew, though, it all froze.

Grey’s hands swiped and his wrists twisted. Like a kid at a toy store, he moved around the holographic symbols with ever-increasing speed until he had completely reformed the knobs and control dials. It was like he hadn’t liked the previous settings at all and was setting his own rules and parameters on them before he set the ones that dictated his blueprint.

Everyone knew the most annoying part of building things was getting your tools in order. Switching bits, swapping to new wrenches, having to get up and go to the store when you realized you didn’t have the right sizing.

Grey blew past all of that, arranged them the way he wanted, and then began to build the structure.

The result appeared in less than half a minute.

A half-complete blueprint hovered upon the glowing white background. It almost looked like the mechanical blueprint of a home, ironically enough, outlining where the plumbing lines went, where the electrical wiring was done, the exact distance between the studs, where the gas lines ran...

Grey slapped a palm down and all the glyphs began to twist around one another into a sphere until they suddenly snapped together.

All of the complexity seemed to vanish, leaving behind a hovering helm that looked so very familiar.

It sank down into the glowing white background and the table shook.

There was a pop and a blue paper with some heft and thickness to it was printed out, with glowing lines of white and gold on it.

Elowen’s eyes widened. "100? Impossible... You..."

Grey grinned. "You’re welcome."

An attack suddenly came for his head.