Mech Pilot who is not so sure about how important it is to pilot the left foot of the combination mech.
"Of course it's exciting work," Citrine says unethusiastically, sliding her glass back and forth between her hands in its puddle of condensation on the bar. "I'm just— I'm not sure I'm contributing much. Enough to be here."
"Combiner Logs are the most exciting thing in mechs since cybernetics became a formally studied discipline," Sal says. "You've been thrilled about working on this stuff for as long as I've known you. Remember the first time you ever had tequila? And you kept me awake until 3AM talking about the need for experimental combat joinery for combiner couplings?"
"Well," Citrine says, in a subdued way. "I think that's a solved problem."
Sync is taxing on the pilot. One person can only move so much wood; but, the age-old wishful thinking goes, what if you could break down the body plan of a mech into components, put one person in each, pilot them individually, and synchronise the action of the whole?
It's that last bit that's hard.
Oh, sure, there are historical oddities: the two-pilot Colossus of Khelm, with its upper and lower halves; the inconclusive military-industrial money pit of the decade-long Experimental Multi-Pilot Vehicle Project; the Varo Longspear, its multicopter chassis still causing arguments among engineering esoterica buffs about the exact definition of a Mobile Log. But the dream of the classic tightly-integrated humanoid frame, writ larger, has remained elusive.
Citrine's group have been working on cutting-edge Sync synergy and systems integration. Their testbed platform is extremely promising.
It's just that, in the shape of their success — in the historical lessons of EMPVP and the Longspear — Citrine can see the shape of how they'll ultimately be passed over, too. Their funding isn't free of strings; their tech is supposed to be addressing actual or perceived mid-term military needs. The requests come down that shape where their attention has to go; and the requests are from people who hear "multipilot" and can't imagine anything more than "Mobile Log, but taller".
Frankly, yes, they could supply that now. A Mobile Log, but twice as tall, and correspondingly eight times the mass. Multipilot, to cut it down to size for mere mortals to be able to Sync it and shift it around. And what does that get you? A firing platform with greater support needs, that can see a bit further.
The funders understand enough to be excited about the tech, but not enough to conceive of anything to do with it. So they'll get their Tallspruce, be disappointed it's exactly what they demanded, and cancel everything.
"Someone cognitively normal can barely Sync even a centauroid Log," Citrine mutters sadly over the rim of her drink. "Do you know the body plans we could be experimenting with? This should be redefining what vehicle means! Instead I've been out there piloting as part of a team of, you know, what a seventy-year-old desk jockey can conceive of — multiple pilots? Build it like usual and give 'em a limb each. You take the left foot, nerd, we'll give some macho test pilot type the head, because heads are important and get windows, stands to reason."
"So you're feeling downtrodden," Sal says, with a perfectly straight face.
