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sanddusted-wisteria · 3 months ago

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Earth and Sky, Ch. 7

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“It appears that everything about the mobile suit is perfectly in order. It’s exactly as I’d always conceptualized it. You continue to deliver results of consistent high quality, and for that, you have my commendation.” Now Wis couldn’t be snide at that. Despite that immovable flat expression, his words felt genuine. Even…truly appreciative. Or maybe she was just imagining that excited spark in his eye at the sight of his precious giant robot come to life.

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Builder,

When you retrieved the power core, you expressed interest in a more detailed overview of the R47-Ultra. Obviously, I was occupied with testing its capabilities and finalizing the design of the Mobile Suit, so I did not have the time to make good on your request. However, I can now provide you with a condensed version of all the notes I made on it in the short span of time that I had to investigate. My apologies for the delay.

To preface, in order to understand the significance of there being such a core, we must first understand the capabilities and specifications of its equivalent, the R57 line….

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After she released the blowtorch handle and the sparks stopped flying, Wis flipped up her welding mask, inspecting the weld, then flicked her eyes up to Qi’s letter, pinned onto the backboard of her worktable.

…Nope. Still didn’t make sense.

She flipped the mask back down and welded another joint. Flipped it up again.

Still no clearer.

Wis let out a sigh, flipping the mask back on and opting to just focus on finishing the welding on this side of the robot. Qi did as he promised; he indeed gave her more info on what the power core was. But she was hardly expecting 3 pages back to front of dense writing, all filled with head-spinning jargon and apparent breakages of laws of physics that Wis had never even learned about.

She’d been assembling the robot for the last few days, taking peeks at the letter in between part construction and during her breaks, reading sections and sentences and the whole damn letter over and over again, trying to find some angle to read it at in order to glean any more meaning aside from the pronunciation of the words (which even then, she wasn’t a hundred percent sure of). When Qi pointed out certain parts of the core—inputs and outputs, motherboards—Wis turned the core around in her hands, looking intently at the spot he was calling attention to, trying to see what was so significant about it.

But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t see what he saw. The most she could glean was a better idea of how everything was laid out, and that this thing packed a punch (it basically compressed the power of a contemporary core into one the size of the core line from 10 years prior, and 50 times less powerful).

She gave up soon after lunch. There was nothing more she could do on the robot without installing the core, and another 20 rounds of inspecting it probably wouldn’t do much good.

Wis fitted the core into its newly-made custom chamber, muttering a half-hearted apology to Qi as she did. If he was looking for someone to have an engaging conversation about this thing…maybe Vega 5 was a better shot. (Grace was apparently not an option, so said Heidi…)

Several hours of wire and pipe rigging later, Wis welded the last plate into place. Moment of truth. She loaded the power chamber up with the condensed power stones Heidi provided, climbed into the cockpit, and flipped the power switch on.

There was a rumble as the motors came to life after centuries of slumber, and the robot’s arms curled and uncurled several times, almost like it was stretching them out. At the same time, its knees bent and extended in sync with the arms. The machine’s warm-up regime, Wis recalled from the notes on the diagram. Just to make sure that the joints wouldn’t collapse after a single step.

Wis swept the joysticks around in a circle, watching as the arms followed the motion perfectly. Then just for fun, she waggled them around randomly, chuckling as the arms wiggled and flailed around.

Next test. She gently applied pressure to the accelerator pedal, feeling the right leg start to slowly creep forward. A little more pressure, and she let out a yelp as the robot lurched a full stride forwards. She slammed on the brakes before she could collide straight into her fence. It was almost a little too responsive, screeching to a halt so quickly that Wis thought she would be thrown forward out of the cockpit.

That’s enough, I suppose…it walks, alright… she thought after a few steadying breaths, flicking the power off and silencing the giant machine. She hopped out with a grunt, taking another look at her handiwork. Its face…still looked so goofy. With another chuckle, she gave its silly faceplate a pat and set off to get Heidi.

“Would ya look at that…!” Heidi exclaimed as the two walked back to the workshop, the robot’s chassis shining proudly in the afternoon sun. On her other side, one of her construction workers let out a hum, rushing on ahead to inspect the thing.

“I…I get to drive this thing?” he said with widened eyes, looking at Heidi almost pleadingly.

“Careful now…” Heidi replied with a cheeky grin. “That’s the director’s baby. If one of us breaks it, he ain’t speakin’ to anyone for at least the rest of the year…”

“It’s a little sensitive too,” added Wis. “Don’t get launched…”

The worker let out an awestruck laugh, eagerly climbing in and powering it up.

Meanwhile, Heidi turned to Wis. “It’s a lot more capable-lookin’ when you see it up close! Reckon this’ll really do the trick. Ah—careful, Nick! We don’t wanna trash Wisty’s yard!”

Nick, the worker, was shuffling about the open space of Wis’s assembly station, only able to take little three-step bursts in any direction. “I-I’m being careful, promise!”

The walk over to the bridge was an amusing one, watching Nick slowly amble about the landscape, chuckling and babbling excitedly, testing out different little steps up and hops across the uneven, rocky surfaces of the outskirts, still finding the acceleration a little jarring. Funtime was over once he rejoined the tracks with Heidi and Wis, the workers already looking over in anticipation of their robot’s arrival. A small chorus of oohs and ahhs raised as Nick proudly slowed the bot to a halt in front of the crew.

“Hm.” And one out of place voice just off to the side. “Seems to be according to specifications, on a cursory glance…”

Wis whipped around to find Director Qi standing apart from the construction group, one hand pushing in his glasses. His voice sounded fairly nonchalant, but his gaze was anything but. Piercing brown eyes swept up and down, looking for flaws, blemishes, even a single rivet out of place.

“Huh, Director Qi!” Heidi said, eyes widened at the sound of his voice. “Was gonna come get you later, but…”

Qi didn’t even look over from his inspection. He was crouched down, examining the legs now. “Based on the builder’s history of commission completion time, I calculated that the Mobile Suit would be done within this general temporal range. Half an hour late, but I suppose that could be because of the small pool of data on my part.”

Wis let out a snort, opting to gloss over the comment about her supposed lateness. “How’s it looking?”

Qi hummed, before shooting back up to standing at a bit of a concerning speed. He looked upward with a slight furrow in his brow. “This pilot. Is he qualified?” Nick’s hand, still at the controls, twitched a little bit under the director’s hairy look.

“Well…he got it all the way from Wisty’s yard to here without a lotta trouble. There’s no standard for qualifications or licensure for giant robots, last I checked!”

“What?” Qi shot Heidi a puzzled look. “Of course there is. There’s plenty of documentation on basic standardized testing for piloting competency. So much so, in fact, that there’s two entirely distinct sets of regulations for wartime and peacetime…”

Seven blank stares were the only replies. The director’s eyes swept around the group, trying to find even the remotest flicker of understanding, before he hastily cleared his throat.

“Well, I suppose…Heidi does have a point. This is the first of its kind, and it was built in a situation of relative prescience…so I suppose forgoing proper procedure of trained operation is…somewhat warranted.”

“It’s okay, Director,” Heidi snorted, breaking the silence. “We’ll let you have your turn eventually. Just…maybe not when we gotta get this bridge up.”

“E-er…” Qi flinched a little at that, hiding it behind his hand as he pushed his glasses in. “I…made no suggestion of the sort, but…if you’re making the offer…”

Heidi barked out a laugh and turned to her workers. “C’mon, y’all, let’s see what this baby can do! Director Qi’s takin’ notes!”

An excited babble rose up from the construction team, and Nick eagerly stretched the robot’s arms. Mi-an and another worker took their places at the end of the bridge base as Qi, Wis, and the others moved back and out of the way.

The robot crouched down next to the pile of wooden beams, easily picking one of the massive things up and marching over to the end of the bridge. The onlooking group hummed with approval as the beam was held in place with no effort at all, and Mi-an and the other worker swiftly hammered it into place.

“Lookit that!” Heidi said. “We can bang out planks twice as fast with this thing now!”

“These beams are well below the carrying capacity of the mobile suit,” the director chimed in. “Tasks like this are trivial to perform for such an advanced piece of machinery.”

Wis curbed the temptation to roll her eyes. He was right, but she still felt that shell of self-congratulatory…ness on him. She was just about to ask Heidi when the new ETA on the base was so she could prepare for putting the trusses up, until Qi looked her way.

Now Wis couldn’t be snide at that. Despite that immovable flat expression, his words felt genuine. Even…truly appreciative. Or maybe she was just imagining that excited spark in his eye at the sight of his precious giant robot come to life. She nodded. “Yeah. Thanks. Never worked on all these kinds of crazy things before in Highwind, but it’s good that they’re all coming out like they’re supposed to.”

Qi hummed. “Indeed. Your career prospects are bright, from your performance so far. Even some of the largest cities in the Alliance would be clamoring for builders with records as reputable as yours and your cohort’s.”

Wis’s mouth twisted into a forced half-smile. No, they’re not… she thought grimly. Not all of them, anyway…

“O-oh, right!” she blurted after a moment, eager to change the subject. She shuffled around in her bag for a moment before taking out the diagram of the mobile suit. “Your diagram. You needed this back, right?”

Qi’s eyes widened. “Ah, yes!” He carefully took it from Wis and unfolded it, inspecting it for any unfortunate wrinkles or stray pencil marks. Upon finding none, he nodded. “I should be able to create a copy for you in the next one or two days for your records.”

Wis let out a chuckle. “Do I need that? When’s the next time we’re gonna build one of these things?”

“The next time you encounter an R47-Ultra or higher core, of course,” Qi said with a raised eyebrow, as if it was obvious. “There’s always improvements to be made to mobile suits. If anything, this is but a prototype for the true potential of robotics.”

“You say that like I’m just gonna trip over another power core one day.”

“Never a non-zero chance.”

A snort escaped Wis. “We’ll see, I guess…”

She turned back out to watch the workers again. The mobile suit was still humming away, laying planks down and holding support beams in place from the top. Heidi was instructing the other half of the team, who were loading planks up to be hauled across the canyon in the cable car to start on the other side. Only Wis and the director were left, standing idly by as their handiwork unfolded before them.

And then a thought struck her. One unbidden and unwarranted. One that she tried to swat away. It was too soon to say that, not after Qi kept sending her to do his errands time and time again with only obligatory thanks.

But a tiny corner of her mind saw the robot happily toddling along, drawn by Qi’s hand and made by hers. Just like the machines in her yard. Just like the crane lift. Just like the Hydrogel.

We don’t make a half-bad team, do we? it hummed.

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