The MBU Project (part 2) (560 hits)
Category: Quotes & StoriesRating: 1.67 on 5 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by metroidkillah (View user info) at 2005-01-20 00:37:51 EST
This is the part where I explain the technology. If you don't want to read about it, turn back now. If you choose to continue, you will have no excuse to -2DIE me. I you do -2DIE me, it will only serve to expose what an asshole you are. You have been warned.
Backstory:
http://www.ubersite.com/m/56887
Intro:
http://www.ubersite.com/m/56854
Part One:
http://www.ubersite.com/m/57083
As the pilots began to file out of the room, Hal caught sight of his friend, Ensign Craig Wilcox. He waved to catch Craig's attention, and then walked over to him.
"Heard you were unconscious there for a while," said Craig with a sly look, "Is this your new scheme for getting more sleep?"
"Not exactly," replied Hal, "but the extra twelve hours sure did help. I'm feelin' pretty good right now."
"Good enough for a couple of rounds in the simulator?"
"You're on just as soon as I something to eat. I haven't eaten for almost a full day, remember."
"Do you need an escort, just in case you faint from hunger? You can never be to careful about that sort of thing."
"Har. I think I'll be just fine, thank you. Meet me at the sim-room in an hour; and you might want to bring some sort of padding for your ass, cuz' it's gonna get kicked."
"We'll just see about that," replied Craig as he left for his quarters.
Jacobs walked to the mess hall, where he found the cook, a paunchy, greasy, red-faced man known to the pilots only as Hooch, and some leftover sandwiches. Hooch gladly got Jacobs something to drink, and sat down across the table from him.
"Hear your mech got toasted, Ensign," said Hooch.
"
No, but just about," replied Jacobs as he grabbed a pastrami-on-rye and bit into it. It tasted old, but so did most of the food Hooch fixed. He took a big swig of milk and continued, "I don't know how bad the damage is, but I'm going to go find out as soon as I'm done eating. The commander said it was in the repair bay, as opposed to the salvage yard; so that's a good sign."
Jacobs finished his sandwich, thanked Hooch for his hospitality, and took off at a jog for the repair bay. The base, as large as it was, was fairly easy to navigate through; and it took only a few minutes for Jacobs to reach his destination. There were only three Mechs in the bay, making it easy for Jacobs to locate his. When he saw it, he shuddered. The damage to his mech was far more extensive than he had realized. The left arm of the robot had not simply been "almost blown off;" it had been totally shredded. The outer armor had been destroyed, leaving the "skin," the much lighter epidermal armor, exposed. The MyoPrene had been ripped out and was dangling down the arm, looking uncannily gory.
MyoPrene was an amazing plastic-like material developed only four years earlier. It was a tough, semi-flexible polymer fiber. It had the unique property of acting almost exactly like living muscle tissue. When a strand was subjected to even the slightest electric current, it would contract. The stronger the current was, the farther and stronger the MyoPrene would contract. A single strand four feet long and less than a thirty-second of an inch in diameter could contract to less than two feet and exert a force of over a hundred pounds; all the while increasing its diameter by a mere ten percent.
At first, it had been used as a substitute for muscle for amputees, with great success. The infinitesimal electric pulses carried by the human nervous system had only to be amplified a small amount to cause the MyoPrene to perform satisfactorily. The government quickly saw its potential in military use, and producers of MyoPrene were quickly taken over. Multiple tests done by the military showed that MyoPrene was not only much more efficient than any type of hydraulics; it was, when combined in large cords, equally as powerful as the hydraulics the military had been using in its robots up until then; and it was almost maintenance-free. It did not break down over time or from continual use, and it never became "fatigued" from overuse, or atrophied from disuse, as did living muscle. Indeed, the only drawback MyoPrene had was its extremely high cost and labor-intensive production process, which the government quickly categorized as "Classified Information." United with other recent scientific breakthroughs, such as the intricate mapping of the human brain and nervous system, and the creation of several ultra strong metal alloys; MyoPrene enabled the government to create a much more efficient, and altogether human-looking robot, known as a Mechanized Battle Unit (MBU), or "Mech" for short.
Jacobs climbed the scaffolding that surrounded his mech. Miraculously, the shoulder and elbow joint had been spared, and needed only minor maintenance. The rest of the robot looked badly scarred, but still repairable as far as Jacobs could tell. He looked around the bay, but did not see anyone else, which surprised him. He climbed down and began to leave the room, but stopped at the entrance. He turned and gave his mech another good look.
"Sorry, buddy; I'll do better next time. Get well soon," he said quietly, and left.
It was a common thing for a pilot to treat his mech as if it were a living thing; and even more, a good friend. This was because the MBU served as not just a mere extension of the pilot, but as a second body. The heart of the MBU rested in the technology developed as a result of the extensive research done on the human brain and nervous system. Scientists were able to isolate the individual sections of the brain and their connecting neuron paths that controlled the head and the extremities of the human body. The impulses given off by the brain were re-routed and fed into a cerebral implant that all MBU pilots had inserted into the base of their skull. The implant sent the impulses to a computer, which amplified and distributed them to the correct parts of the mech's body, enabling the pilot to control the mech by simply "willing" it to move. At the same time, small mechanical replications of the nerve endings found throughout a person's skin, which were scattered strategically throughout the mech's "skin," emitted tiny impulses when stimulated. The main computer routed these impulses to the implant, where they were translated by the brain as heat, cold, or pressure. Small but efficient super high-definition cameras located in the head of the mech gather light and sent electrical signals to the main computer, which decreased and modulated them into the proper impulses. The end result was that the cameras acted as artificial eyes for the pilot.
Since the pilot became virtually paralyzed while piloting the mech, it was found to be much more convenient to put the pilot's body into a comatose state, while leaving the mind active. The technology of the MBU basically transferred the pilot's consciousness, as it were, into the mech's body, while the pilot's real body and its functions were carefully regulated by the main computer. The computer systems involving regulation of the pilot's body were made to be absolutely failsafe, and thus far there had been no deaths related to system failure, and only one case of a pilot becoming permanently paralyzed.
Jacobs made his way to his quarters where he relaxed and listened to some of his favorite music. When he had killed enough time, he went to the sim-room, where Wilcox was waiting for him.
User Reviews
Submitted by beer-turtle (user info) at 2005-01-20 15:59:00 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
well let's got with this explanation
myomer is actually a contraction of Myoelectric polymer
You just gave it a brand name while still ripping off and not properly crediting the originators.
You may not appreciate my comments but they are still valid, next time do some research before claiming something as unique and all your own.
I googled it and came up with these: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=myomer
http://www.kerensky.tierranet.com/btech/starleague/slmyo.html
is the first link from google with this little tidbit
The new myomer bundle, dubbed "The Schwarzenegger Bicep," was a collection of myomer strings interwoven with a new, electrically soluble nerve circuitry. The team hoped this would solve a problem that had plagued them for the past ten months: the uncoordinated contraction of individual myomer fibers, resulting in uncontrollable and useless twitching.
http://www.kerensky.tierranet.com/btech/mechlab/other.html
Also explains additionally about you "under armor" beneath the external Hard armor layer
Endo Steel II Internal Structure
Using Endo Steel II internal structure and standard armor is always better than using just Ferro- Fibrous armor. It is impractical, however, on 'Mechs weighing 90 tons or more or those that carry many small weapons. Endo Steel II should be used on any 'Mech that has enough critical spaces.
here is another definition of Myomer from this link : http://guides.ign.com/guides/479931/page_4.html
Myomer - This alloy is what makes Battlemechs possible; myomer contracts like human muscle tissue when an electric current is passed through it. Bundled in silvery metallic bunches, myomer is what allows Battlemechs their uniquely human mobility. Without myomer bundles, Battlemechs would not exhibit the level of motion that allows them to be so adaptable to battle field conditions.
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Face it dude, while you may be under the impression that your idea of MyoPrene and it's explanation is original, it is not as you put it 100% yours. All you did was give it a brand name and claim it as your own. You ripped off the very definition of it and then gave it a similar sounding name.
The WRITING is good, but your claims of unique creations are not. It is OK to use things for reference but don't claim they are your work as well. If you had anywhere written, These writing were inspired by the Battletech/Robotech universes, I would not be giving you any shit at all, and the fact that you had to CROSS POST your disapproval of my comments on this one show that you are very young and don't know how to handle criticism. Thicken your skin, Jeremy aka Razor did it for me, and helped my writing go from mediocre to above average.
I'm no John Galt, but I write a good story and credit my sources, you should learn to do the same.
-B
Submitted by metroidkillah (user info) at 2005-01-20 03:15:51 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Unfortunately for you, I have never heard of Battletech until you spoke of it. I am not an "old school gaming geek." MyoPrene is of my own making. But you did get me on that matrix correlation. I just figured that a pilot trying to control a huge robot with levers and pedals and buttons would be overly complicated and... stupid. But then, there's nothing new under the sun, now is there? Especially when it involves giant battle robots...
Submitted by beer-turtle (user info) at 2005-01-20 01:59:04 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
The writing was good...
The plagairism from Battletech was not.
Yes I am an old school gaming geek, WAY old school, I played battletech on paper and with minatures and designed mechs to kill time and to compete with the other geeks in randomized dice and imaginary mecha warfare.
MyoPrene had a direct correlation to myomers listed in the battletech rule book.
You explanation of what it is, was just paraphrased from the tech specs.
The piloting system with the neural interface has also been explained quite throughly in the book "Day of the Cheetah" by Dale Brown. While not exactly a "The Matrix" like connection the concept was still the same.
Spend less time on explaining the technology and how it works
Example: The MyoPrene artifical muscle fibers hung limply where the lower half of the mechs arm was blasted off. Residual plasma scars reminded him of how narrowly he was able to evade Particle Plasma Cannons charged burst. He fingered his own arm feeling the phantom pain as his mech felt as if it was and extension of himself when he was jacked into it's neural interface.
This will allow you to continue to move your story along with numbing us with excessive detail.
4
-B
Submitted by Impassive-Digressive (user info) at 2005-01-20 00:48:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Interesting stuff. Keep it coming.
Submitted by Sassmasterr (user info) at 2005-01-20 00:41:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
my blow up doll is made of MyoPrene. expensive but well worth it