The Mech Touch

btain my first new certifications in a couple of weeks. ”

”Do you have any hobbies or things you do for fun? ”

”… ”

”I see. ”

”Kinners such as me are simple people.
We try to avoid extravagance.
The ideal Kinner is one who takes pleasure in the vocations they have been trained to perform. ”

This was an excellent way to keep Kinners like Nitaa motivated, but it also had a more insidious element.
By indoctrinating the Kinners to derive their main form of satisfaction from their work, they were much less likely to protest their slave-like circumstances.

Perhaps that was what always bothered Ves about Nitaa and the Kinners.
They were so dedicated to their work and other Kinner values that they hardly had anything left to spare on other priorities.

To Ves, the Kinners were the results of humans trying to program other humans from birth in a very deliberate way.

He doubted that the Kinners who grew up in overcrowded camps actually possessed any real choices.
Their lives were largely out of their own hands.
Instead, the tribe decided everything.

The lack of agency was definitely one of the reasons why the Kinners easily submitted to orders and rarely questioned authority.

This turned Nitaa into a very strange entity to Ves.
Many times, he mistook her for a bot with how little consideration she demanded out of him.
The Kinners truly trained their own people well!

He harbored some hopes of opening her up a bit and reverse some of her bot-like traits.
He knew it would be an uphill battle that might take years before achieving any results.
It was never easy to get someone to unlearn something they ’d been taught was right for their entire life.

After a quiet walk, Ves entered the small lab and workshop area of his ship.
Placed on one of the work tables was a container that held one of his purchases from Centerpoint.

Over the last couple of months, he occasionally dropped by his lab in order to study the properties of the spiritually-reactive rock.

As he moved the rock out of its container, he studied its outward, grey meteorite exterior.

Its lack of reactivity in normal circumstances along with its deceptively boring appearance made it exceptionally difficult for Ves to find any noteworthy points about the exotic.

He also failed to find out why the rock interacted with spirituality in the first place.
Its material composition was no different from that of a bog-standard metallic asteroid that consisted of regular elements such as iron and nickel.

Yet its one distinguishing feature was enough to set it apart from all the other asteroids!

”It ’s like how all humans look the same, but some of them are more remarkable because they can pilot mechs.
Of this small group, only a handful of them are expert pilots or higher. ”

The important point was that despite this disparity, it was very hard to distinguish them from each other if they didn ’t make their identities clear!

Ves faced the same problem with the material he tentatively named the P-stone.
The P stood for psionically reactive, because that was what the rock did.
It reacted to his spirituality when the vast majority of other materials might as well be intangible!

He held the rock in his hands and tentatively injected a small mote of his spiritual energy in the rock.
The mote joined a larger but still insignificant ball of spiritual energy he injected in previous times.

”Hmm.
Seems like it ’s not full yet. ”

The donation of spiritual energy discomfited Ves a bit.
His mind was already starting to churn faster in order to produce a new batch of spiritual energy to replace what it lost.

Right now, he only possessed a single sample of P-stone, so he was very reluctant to perform any damaging tests on it.
After he put it through a host of scanners, Ves had stalled in his research because of the need to keep the P-stone intact.

In that light, he decided to make use of the P-stone as a storage container for his excess spiritual energy.
He had experimented with donating and retrieving his spiritual energy several times.

So far, Ves did not experience any apparent problems with absorbing previously-donated spiritual energy.
It appeared that it wasn ’t subject to any decay or degeneration within a timespan of a few months.

It remained to be seen if his spiritual energy would still stay ’fresh ’ after spending years locked inside the P-stone.
So far, Ves had not perceived any measurable losses, but he could only judge by feeling as no instrument could measure the exact quantities of spiritual energy.

”I feel like I ’m merely scratching the surface of what it is capable of. ” He muttered as he placed the P-stone back onto the work table.

So far, using it as an impromptu storage container for his excess spiritual energy was already a boon.

When his spiritual energy level reached its maximum capacity, his mind stopped producing more of it.
This was a big waste in his eyes as it didn ’t seem it required anything but time and a bit of thought and emotion to produce new spiritual energy.

Due to his abnormally high mental attributes, Ves frequently suffered from an excess of thoughts as his creativity continued to bounce inane ideas in his mind.

Since his overactive thinking seemed to be doing more harm than good, why not put it to better use as fuel for his spiritual energy production?

Whether it actually worked or not, Ves could at least count on accumulating an emergency reserve of spiritual energy.
If he ever ended up in an emergency where he would be forced to exert his Spirituality in a very consuming fashion, he might be able to top himself up again in a matter of hours with a charged P-stone!

That wasn ’t all.
Aside from using the P-stone to store his own spiritual energy, what would happen if he stuffed someone or something else ’s spiritual energy into the mix?

The possibilities were endless, but only if he figured out a way to make them work!

”If only I had more samples! ”

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