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Bonus Chapter
Calloway took a long sip from his coffee mug.
"Do you know how much MIT's annual research budget is?"
Ryan opened his mouth.
"Four point two billion dollars." Calloway answered his own question before Ryan could speak. "And do you know how many active research projects that budget supports?"
Ryan tried again.
"Over thirteen thousand." Again, Calloway didn't wait. "If you divide that evenly, each project averages around three hundred thousand dollars. Behind every single one of those projects are researchers grinding through their careers, fighting for tenure, depending on results to justify their funding."
He set the mug down.
"When you get more, they get less. That's the math. And those researchers aren't saints. They don't happily surrender budget share to a fourteen-year-old who showed up last month with a robot."
Ryan listened without interrupting. Calloway wasn't being hostile. He was explaining the terrain.
"The three million I allocated to your project generated significant pushback. People pointed out, correctly, that you already have external funding from Aegis Industrial. Why should MIT's internal budget subsidize a project that has its own corporate backer? You don't even have a formal enrollment status yet."
"I held the line. But that political capital has a limit. Your project hasn't produced a major public result since the armor installation. The long-term prospects of mech technology are uncertain. Nobody wants to pour money into an uncertain future when there are proven programs competing for the same pool."
He folded his hands. "So no. I can't give you more funding right now."
Ryan had expected this. He'd also prepared for it.
"What if I deliver a breakthrough?"
Calloway studied him. "Define breakthrough."
"What if Scrapper operates at full power for ten minutes or more without a tether? No power cable. No external generator. A self-contained energy system that makes Scrapper fully mobile and independent."
The words hung in the air.
Calloway didn't know about the plasma reactor. Nobody at MIT did, outside of the classified verification process. He was probably imagining a diesel engine mounted inside the frame, or some kind of battery bank. Something incremental.
"If you achieve that," Calloway said slowly, "it would qualify as a significant advancement. I could justify an additional ten million in supplementary funding."
"Then we have a deal."
Calloway nodded, visibly relieved. This particular problem had just been deferred for months, possibly years. There was no way a fourteen-year-old was going to solve the energy independence problem for a three-hundred-ton mech anytime soon.
Ryan shook his hand, stood up, and walked out.
In the hallway, he pulled out his phone and called Patricia.
Back at the workshop, Ryan walked in to find twenty-five strangers crawling over Scrapper.
They were older. Fifties, sixties, white-haired, bespectacled, moving with the careful deliberation of people who'd spent decades in laboratories and knew how to handle delicate equipment. His research assistants were hovering around them nervously, occasionally reaching out to steady an elbow or redirect a hand that was reaching somewhere it shouldn't.
Kyle appeared at Ryan's side. "The teaching team Patricia mentioned. Twenty-five professors. They're here to train us, but also to study Scrapper in person."
"They finished reviewing the documentation already?"
Ryan was genuinely surprised. He'd expected the academic team to take longer.
Kyle shrugged. "Enough to teach us, apparently."
Ryan approached the group. The professors noticed him immediately.
"So you're Ryan Mercer. Remarkable work for someone so young."
"When your documentation landed on our desks, we thought it was a hoax. The deeper we studied it, the more alarming it became."
"Alarming in a good way."
"Mostly."
They crowded around him, talking over each other, the competitive enthusiasm of academics who'd found something genuinely new. It was friendly. It was also transparent. Within five minutes, the congratulations had transitioned into questions.
"Ryan, can you explain this component here? What function does it serve?"
"This pressure-reduction subsystem in the neural link. It performs a rapid data pre-filter on feedback signals from the mech, correct? To prevent information overload on the pilot's nervous system?"
"Correct. Without it, the raw data volume would overwhelm a human brain within seconds. The pre-filter prioritizes actionable information and buffers everything else."
"The computational requirements for that filter must be extraordinary."
"About half a million dollars worth of onboard processing power. Yes."
A professor pointed toward Scrapper's head. "And this cavity at the top? It's clearly a reserved space. What goes there?"
"Sensor radar. Scrapper will eventually have a full radar array and an integrated holographic display system. Right now the cockpit is blind once the armor is sealed. The pilot relies on joint-mounted cameras, which is workable but limited."
Another professor, near the feet. "There's another reserved cavity here, at the ankle. What's planned for this space?"
"Plasma reactor housing. The reactor will replace the external power cable and give Scrapper independent energy capacity."
"Plasma reactor? That's the technology from your data submission?"
"The same."
Silence from the professors. The kind of silence that meant they were recalculating their assumptions about what this project actually was.
The Q&A went from morning until evening. Ryan answered every question, explained every system, walked them through every design decision. By the time they broke for dinner, the professors had a fundamentally different understanding of Scrapper than they'd arrived with.
Over food, a younger professor named David Marsh, the most junior member of the teaching team at forty-eight, brought up the internet debate.
"People online are arguing about whether mechs have any practical future. Military applications, civilian use, whether the whole concept is a dead end. As the inventor, what's your view?"
Ryan considered his answer. "Scrapper can't execute military missions. It's too slow, too dependent on infrastructure, too fragile for combat. That's why I've never installed weapons systems."
"So you have a different plan for it?"
"Scrapper is a first-generation prototype. Its purpose is to validate the core technologies. Once that's done, I'll design a second-generation mech built from the ground up for a specific application. That design should answer most of the questions people are asking right now."
The table leaned in. Everyone wanted details. Ryan shook his head.
"You haven't mastered the first generation yet. We're not talking about the second until you do."
Fair enough. Nobody pushed further.
But the curiosity was planted.