The Mech Touch

When everyone and their mother had seen the Beast of Fear's announcement, the Carmine Revolution had begun in earnest!

While the Red Ocean had already kicked off its own Carmine Revolution, the biggest differenace with the revolution in the Milky Way was that it commenced in spite of the opposition from the Big Two!

As the dominant rulers and hegemons of human space, the MTA and CFA experienced their first true challenge to their reign since the start of the Age of Mechs.

The Big Two had been on guard against potential threats and challenges from the first-rate superstates and the surviving alien empires that had been licking their wounds on the other side of the galaxy.

They never expected that their first and potentially fatal challenge would come from a red human of all possibilities!

Perhaps a number of far-sighted thinkers may have predicted that as red humanity continues to diverge from original humanity, the two would eventually grow so far apart that they would constitute two separate species and civilizations.

In the long-term, that might cause the two branches of humanity to come into conflict with each other, but that was supposed to happen many years later, not a few years after the Great Severing!

This meant that the Carmine Revolution unfolded in two completely different ways. The Carmine Revolution of the Red Ocean was bloodless among humans as the Red Three fully supported the rollout of the Yellow Jackets.

The Carmine Revolution of the Milky Way had not yet led to large scale outbreaks, but hidden fights and conflicts had already broken out behind the scenes.

If the fighting among the warring groups and factions continued to escalate, then it was only a matter of time before the revolution turned bloody!

Shortly after the spread of the Beast of Fear's message had spread too wide for there to be any hope of suppressing it further, the MTA and the CFA moved unusually quickly and began to take more overt actions.

One of them was to order the Comm Consortium to tighten communications across the stars!

Long considered a mostly free and unrestrained communications network, the galactic net began to experience an unprecedented degree of crackdowns, blockades and service. denials!

Due to the highly centralized nature of the quantum entanglement nodes that make the galactic net possible, the Comm Consortium was able to exert widespread control over remote communications.

Many people found that it had become a lot harder to talk about the new Auto Heretics and the implications of the Carmine System!

Of course, the more tech and computer-savvy individuals could always find clever ways to circumvent the censure on this subject, but the Comm Consortium was not incompetent.

The organization became a lot more aggressive in its enforcement of the new rules. It expanded its workforce and employed more proactive Als to keep the galactic net relatively clean of any talk about the latest taboos.

It was especially forbidden to spread around any mech templates or mech designs based on the Auto Heretic line!

The sudden and overt repression from the Comm Consortium did not go unnoticed. Many people grew dissatisfied and outright angry at the organization.

For the first time in centuries, the people felt as if the galactic net had lost its purpose as a free information source.

While it was not unusual for the Comm Consortium to scrub freely available information about confidential secrets, restricted technology and other forms of paid and exclusive content, many people disagreed with the decision to treat Carmine mechs in the same way!

A lot of those individuals began to circumvent the galactic net entirely and focused on more primitive means of information transmission,

They held more in-person meetings. They traveled around across the surface of a planet. or to an entirely different star system.

The Milky Way Galactic Gate Network ironically promoted this sort of activity to a huge extent.

For the first time in recent times, people were able to travel from one end of human space to the other end without wasting decades on travel time!

In fact, the existence of lesser beyonder gates made it possible for the Auto Heretic mechs to spread from the Yeina Star Cluster to practically every other star cluster in a matter of weeks or months!

Now, the same network that was responsible for revitalizing commerce and tourism across human space now began to be used to smuggle all kinds of people, data chips and other matters related to Carmine mechs!

Even if the Gate Consortium quickly responded by banning the transportation of Auto Heretics and imposing mandatory checks on all data carrying devices, there was no way the inspection methods could stop the transmission of all forms of data and information! For example, there was nothing the Gate Consortium could do to stop people who literally memorized the mech designs or other forms of information of the Auto Heretics!

It was such a hopeless endeavor that the inspectors responsible for fulfilling this burden did not even try anymore.

For one, the delays imposed by all of the strict inspections could easily grind all of the gate transfers to a virtual standstill. That would massively reduce the Gate Consortium's revenue and make it unsustainable to fund the entire gate network and surrounding infrastructure.

Another problem was that the people who worked at the Gate Consortium did not necessarily agree with the stance taken by the Big Two.

Even though the MTA made vague promises that it needed a lot of time to thoroughly inspect the Auto Heretic design and either 'improve' it so that it became a lot more harmless, or design their own version of a Carmine mech that was supposedly safer, nobody believed in the MTA!

The Beast of Fear had already instilled a huge amount of distrust and suspicion towards the mechers. The human population was no longer willing to take them at their word. The era in which the MTA could publish practically any information and assume that the space peasants would eat it all up without complaint was gone!

As a result, a large number of ordinary workers at many different organizations actually started to resist the measures taken to stop the proliferation of Carmine mechs.

The workers of the Gate Consortium only made a token effort to scan for any

'contraband'

The employees of the Comm Consortium did not work too hard to check whether people were secretly transmitting forbidden data across the galactic net.

There were even people within the Mech Trade Association itself that openly or secretly opposed the measures taken against Carmine mechs!

"We are making the wrong decisions! We should embrace mech innovation, not stifle it! The arguments you have made against the potential dangers of Carmine mechs are valid, but I am not hearing any solutions from you! The best way to deal with an innovative but flawed mech such as the Auto Heretic is to go all-out to design a superior version of it! No matter what, the norms of our galaxy should not be denied. They have a right to pilot

Mechs!"

"And we have a right to protect them from their own shortsightedness and lack of discipline. Do you understand how quickly these highly inexperienced pilots will enter into conflict? Without the necessary training, how can you expect them to show any discipline?! We are part of the Mech Trade Association. One of its mandates is to protect our civilization from the threats and abuses posed by mechs. This is why we set standards and enforce them to the strictest degree. As soon as we begin to slip even once, all hell will break loose!"

Debates continued to rage within the halls of the MTA as many different factions and individuals became divided from each other.

Naturally, the old guard was generally a lot more hesitant towards allowing the Auto

Heretics to proliferate.

The new guard comprising the younger generations were a lot more open-minded about

It, though they still had their fair share of contrarians.

As the supporters of the so-called Carmine Revolution became more ardent in their stance, so did their detractors!

The Big Two and especially the MTA might have lost a lot of respect all of a sudden, but there were still a lot of people who continued to hold it in high esteem!

The proponents of the MTA's stance towards Carmine mechs truly believed that letting

More humans gain access to mechs was a recipe for disaster, especially if it happened at

A fast pace.

They began to organize themselves and generate more effective opposition. They had even begun to call themselves the Guardians of Peace, as their mission was to protect

The current stable order.

One of the consequences of keeping states in a permanently modest state of militarization was that wars never escalated beyond a point.

This was the brilliance of the Big Two's policies towards mechs and warfare. The

Proliferation of the Auto Heretic and possibly other Carmine mech models threatened to

Completely upend this order!

This was not just because states could become a lot more militarized, but also because the people's diminishing respect towards the MTA and its overly restrictive rules threatened to turn human space into a more lawless society!

The Guardians of Peace actually began to gain a lot of support. The active support from

The Big Two played a large role in this, but there were genuinely a lot of people who

Preferred to remain in a society where dangerous mechs that could kill hundreds of minute could be found everywhere!

People within Not everyone adored mechs.

The more proactive among the Guardians of Peace had even begun to infiltrate the inner

Circles of the so-called Carmine Revolutionaries for the purpose of feeding information

Back to the MTA. The crackdowns intensified, and so did the animosity between the two sides!

As the Carmine Revolution continued to burn across human space, the Auto Heretics

Quickly became available to a lot of people!

While nobody dared to sell them in places where the Big Two, the Guardians of Peace

And their many lackeys held sway, there were still a lot of places where they could not

Exert effective control!

Rural planets, underground tunnel complexes, barren moons, asteroid belts and so on all offered suitable places for the Carmine Revolutionaries to come together and share

Their enthusiasm towards the Auto Heretic mechs!

"We have just received a batch of 16 Auto Heretic mechs of the Ice Hunter Version 1.2

Variant! Come pick them up while our stock still lasts. The Ice Hunters are optimized for

Ranged warfare and feature a more effective heat management system that pairs well with energy weapons."

"Our design studio seeks three Journeyman Mech Designers to assist us in designing a new variant of the Auto Heretic. We are looking to take on mech designers with Class II design philosophies with a special focus on armor systems, preferably of the heavier

Variety." "Our new arena tournament starts tomorrow! The deadline to sign up ends in 4 hours. Be aware that the fights will be brutal. If you want to earn our extravagant price pool, then you will need to overcome 7 successive Carmine mechs. Each fight will not end unless one Carmine mech has become combat ineffective. If you fail to surrender before your Blood Pact breaks, then is over for you, so make sure you have what it takes

Before you participate!"

A huge amount of norms suddenly entered a parallel mech community and immediately became flooded by experiences that were previously reserved for true mech pilots.

It was too much for many of them, but there were still plenty of Carmine Revolutionaries that embraced all of the fun and excitement!

Yet the joy occasionally did not last long as the Guardians of Peace came to break up the new communities!

"ALERT! HOSTILE FLEET INCOMING! 60 first-class multipurpose mechs have deployed from their respective carriers! It's the slaves of the Big Two!"

"It is too late to run away! Once the Guardians of Peace gain control of our base, they will

Destroy each and every Auto Heretic, thereby ruining our only chance of piloting a mech. Rather than let them take away one of our fundamental rights, we should make

Our stand and fight to the end!" "LET US FIGHT TO THE END!"

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