Fanfare for the Common Mech (1/26)

I think everyone should watch PatLabor: The Movie because it's one of my favorite films of all time. I was nervous writing this and setting it in a more cyberpunk setting because I was scared it would seem too "busy". But if Shadowrun can have cyberpunk and magic, I think I'm allowed to throw some mecha in there if I want to. Such is my right.

The character featured here is in some earlier entries in my Journal, before I started posting them here.

        In theory, an Upright Combat Lattice is designed to be piloted by any person of any size. Arms manufacturers struggle to make money hand over fist when there are caveats to their wares. So all the brochures, all the trade shows, all the talking points given in board rooms in corporate arcologies will espouse that point. There is always a gulf between a megacorp’s sales pitch and the practical realities. No gulf is as wide, nor as widely acknowledged, as the jockeys.

The cockpit is a bit too snug, certain breakers cannot be flipped with as much ease, legs may cramp without ample space to stretch. Taller pilots consistently had issues that their shorter counterparts did not.It sounds simple enough to make the machine larger, to add an extra inch of legroom here, give a smidge more breathing room in the cockpit there. But simplicity and bipedal machinery rarely go hand in hand. It’s fine enough to do that for municipal Uprights. A few extra feet is no issue to the great lumbering iron goliaths on a construction site. But in a combat situation, the detriment to making a larger upright is twofold:

For one, the engineering considerations of keeping an armored weapons platform on two legs are difficult enough to manage as is. Every additional inch of height, every extra pound of steel, requires a ground-up recalibration of every piston and gyroscope. A change in just a few inches could result in another 8 months of trial and error to make sure an Upright remains true to its name. Some juice just simply isn’t worth the squeeze.

The second detriment is purely economical. A UCL is an extremely expensive piece of hardware. The bigger you make it, the more likely it is to get hit, and the more likely it is to be destroyed. Something as spendy an investment as an Upright yields much better returns when it isn’t riddled with bullet holes.

The standard UCL cockpit is designed to fit as much machinery and electronics in as small a space as possible. As small a space a two story mechanical weapon of war can be, of course. The de facto recommended height to operate a military Upright ranges anywhere from five foot even, to as willowy as five foot eight. It’s for this marriage of economics and engineering that the operators of Uprights are not called pilots. They’re called jockeys.

Practically, a jockey improved combat efficiency of the machinery; the pilot was optimized to operate the machine, even if the manufacturers swore there was no “ideal” height. Many joke, and there’s no lack of truth to it, that the improved combat effectiveness has little to do with the hardware. The big difference, it’s said, is that any Napoleon Complex is itching at the chance to swing a stick bigger than any designed in modern warfare. Quadruple someone’s height and some inadequacies are going to be worked through, rather explosively.

Ben didn’t have a Napoleon Complex. He didn’t jockey an upright because he had anything to work through regarding his height. He was the kind of man that played the hand he was dealt. He jockeyed because he didn’t care for people, and 6 inches steel and circuitry seemed an easy way to get some distance. Whether it was a military or municipal Upright, he was always most comfortable insulated from humanity. And here in the Rust City, solitude like that was a rare thing indeed.

His current gig was jockeying a MunU refuse collector down the main thoroughfares, residential blocks soaring some 60 stories above his head. It’s rare for one to get dwarfed in an Upright, but the residential arcologies gave Ben a sense of vertigo seeing them through the cameras on the Upright’s head. Great brown-grey pylons, covered in graffiti and rust, soaring above the smog and smoke that clung to the streets. Each produced anywhere from 5-8 tons of refuse every single day, and it was the responsibility of the beleaguered MunU operators to keep those trash chutes from backing up.

Ben eased his Upright backwards, a massive container and hopper strapped to its back. He felt the magnet clamps lock-in as the container hit the wall. Moments later, a massive chute opened, dumping a day's worth of human experience into the container on his back. The digitigrade knees of the Upright bent, pistons straining to account for the extra weight of the trash. Ben adjusted his stance slightly, compensating for the continued deluge of garbage, monitoring the readouts.

The oldies station on the audiofeed queued up another tune by CASIOPEA. Ben tapped his foot along as his container neared capacity. He flipped a switch, sealing the trash chute above. The hopper closed with a grind, hydraulic presses condensing the trash into manageable cubes. The magnetic field released, and Ben eased the machine forward, tentative steps back up the gradual concrete ramp to the street itself. A gargantuan Mobile Incinerator trundled down the street, two lanes wide. Along the side were alcoves to slot in the full containers, where the trash could be further processed and incinerated in superheated plasma arcs. The smoke that billowed from the massive vents at the back was completely safe, so said the North American Conglomerates health department. There is no need for concern, so said the bullhorns in a carousel of languages.

It didn’t matter what was so said.It didn’t stop rusters from masking up when they saw one coming down the street. Nor did it stop people from asking why mobile incinerators were banned from use within the Corporate Zone.

Ben enjoyed the work as much as he could. He’d jockeyed an Upright during the Mariner Valley Police Action, and while this rust bucket wasn’t nearly as lush as the Huron-class he’d had on the Martian Steppe, it was a comfort to be surrounded by six walls of solid steel. Below him, the crowds milled around the massive legs like koi in a pond, heedless of the klaxons and amber emergency lights that flashed over them. He was glad to be above the crush, the press of bodies and the stink of sweat and chems. He was happy that the only sweat he smelled was his. He inhaled, crinkling his nose.

Amendment; he was not happy about it, but at least he could shower and be free of it. He’d saved up enough water credits to splurge on a longer shower tonight.