"What is a man to you?"

The question stumped both Ves and Gloriana because they each held different ideas on men and masculinity.

To Ves, a man was supposed to be brave, courageous, responsible and strong enough to protect his family.

These were the ideals his family and his culture instilled in him. While they sounded a bit old-fashioned to some, the state often made use of them to get men to volunteer for military service.

Complete gender equality didn't exist in the Bright Republic. While men and women both enjoyed near-equal treatment these days, for various reasons the military branches enlisted more men than women.

Some things never changed.

In contrast, Gloriana possessed a completely different outlook on men. Her beliefs literally elevated women to a supreme level compared to men!

Ves had been with Gloriana long enough to develop an understanding how a Hexer like her regarded men, or 'boys' in their parlance.

The Hexadric Hegemony was a state explicitly founded by female supremacists who developed all kinds of awful ideas about the other gender.

To Hexers, men had been in charge for too long. Almost everything that humans did wrong in the history of their civilization could all be attributed to men!

The women ignored the backgrounds, personalities, historical norms and every other context surrounding the deplorable behavior of some men and tied all of their evils to one common refrain.

Their gender.

To someone like Ves, this was a ridiculous and flawed use of logic.

In a proper scientific study, researchers needed to come up with arguments to argue that a cause-and-effect relationship existed between two variables.

"This mass murderer from one country is a man. This tyrant who led his country to disaster is also a man. Hey look there, this inventor of a horrible weapon that went on to kill a lot of people is also a man! Do you know what this means? Men are evil!"

An argument as spurious as this only suggested correlation at best. There were plenty of women who behaved just as worse, but did any Hexer even acknowledge their existence?

To a Hexer, logic and scientific rigor mattered less than confirming their own biases.

Because they were predisposed against men, their research and cultural evolution all started with assumptions that cast them in a bad light. The biases and prejudices of the Hexer researchers all ensured that any academic paper they published completely affirmed their warped beliefs.

Naturally, the Hexers completely ignored or discredited the contradictory studies from other researchers outside the Hegemony.

In their eyes, their conclusions were pure and honest while the conclusions of others were tainted by the chauvinistic values held by the ignorant foreign researchers!

Only the Hexers had managed to liberate themselves from the shackles of toxic masculinity! In their eyes, almost all of human space was still firmly in the grip of the nefarious men who kept the rest of humanity under their heel!

Even if Gloriana came to know the different outlook on men and women in the Bright Republic, she was still inescapably a Hexer.

To her, every man was actually an immature and irresponsible boy. Some just hid their naughty traits better than others.

Gloriana even expressed some disdain to powerful men such as Senator Tovar and the male leaders of the Big Two!

In the perspective of a Hexers, these men happened to be more capable pigs than the norm, but only came into power due to unfair advantages.

On an even playing field, women would always be able to triumph over men!

Women were smarter, gentler, calmer, more thoughtful and more suitable to be in charge!

As for boys, Hexers did not treat them too poorly. Rather than see them as slaves or redundant reproductive partners that should have gone extinct, Hexers tended to treat boys in the same manner as pets or immature children.

Even grown men were just boys!

It was already bad enough that female Hexers bought this mindset.

The worst thing was that the men that had been born into Hexer society also bought this mindset! While there was a large variety of how men turned out, most of them carried over a profound sense of inferiority and subservience to women!

Gloriana grew up in this strange, matriarchal culture for almost thirty years!

Only recently did she spend some years abroad at Centerpoint and Cloudy Curtain. This was not enough to shake her view on men that had solidified in her mind during her childhood!

"Tell me the truth." Ves faced Gloriana seriously. "Do you have anything good to say about masculinity?"

"Uhm.."

To her credit, Gloriana's time abroad had exposed her to the fact that not every person bought into Hexer beliefs.

Both of them were aware that they possessed vastly different opinions on men and women.

It should have been a huge problem in their love lives. It was a problem so severe that it risked shattering their relationship!

Neither Ves nor Gloriana wanted this outcome to happen, so they just ignored the contradiction and pretended it didn't exist.

As long as the two focused on their similarities rather than their differences, everything was okay. Whenever a confrontation occurred, both of them simply agreed to disagree and drop the topic.

In their beliefs, this was a solution adopted by science-minded people after applying logic and probability analysis.

Arguing about their differences would almost certainly lead to bad outcomes.

However, Ves knew that they couldn't avoid their differences forever. At some point, they had to address the elephant in the room!

If they didn't, the elephant would eventually crush everything!

However, Gloriana cared a lot about their relationship. She valued it so much that she would never think of risking it by forcing a confrontation!

She was very risk-averse in this regard!

Ordinarily, Ves was inclined to avoid detrimental outcomes, but his reckless streak happened to come into play at this moment.

He guessed that as long as they avoided reconciling their views on men, the Adonis Colossus would never be a success!

The central theme of this mech was masculinity!

Vincent Ricklin cared so much about masculinity that his custom mech had to affirming his male qualifications!

Naturally, as the designers who accepted this commission, Ves and Gloriana had to implement a version of masculinity that aligned with Vincent's belief in their work!

While Ves considered the ideal man in his own way based on his father, he was confident that his own views overlapped considerably with Vincent's views.

The problem here was Gloriana. A Hexer was probably the worst mech designer to be put in charge of the Adonis Colossus project!

Seeing that Gloriana wanted to avoid the topic, Ves kept pressing her regardless of the consequences.

"Am I a man or a boy to you?"

"Erm.. both?" She sheepishly answered.

"What do you think about Vincent?"

"He's a boy, obviously."

"What makes him different?"

"His self-esteem relies entirely on his perception of himself as a 'man'. Take that away, and you have nothing. You're different, Ves. Regardless of whether you are a man or a woman, you are still a fantastic mech designer. I would have fallen in love with you regardless!"

Ves briefly imagined himself as a woman and shuddered.

The reason he shuddered was not because he disliked living as a woman.

Now that Ves thought about it, it would have been better if he was born as Veronica or something.

It made no difference to his mech design career. His upbringing would have been the same as well as the Larkinsons never treated boys and girls differently.

His father's influence on his childhood would have been the same as well. Even if some divergence took place due to growing up as a female, he doubted that Veronica Larkinson would have ended up with a different personality and outlook on life.

If everything that happened to Ves happened to Veronica, then his female alter-ego would have been a much better partner for Gloriana.

Ves was very well aware that Hexers fully accepted pairings between females. With all the advanced reproduction technology available to humanity, some states readily became single-gender societies for various reasons.

Technology that facilitated gender transitions also existed. From growing complete new bodies to transforming an existing body into another gender, all kinds of options existed to turn men into women or something in between!

Naturally, Ves never contemplated the option of turning into Veronica Larkinson. He was content with being born a man and could never imagine himself as a woman!

Falling into a relationship with a Hexer did not change his resolve. Some Hexers believed that men transitioning into women were still boys at heart.

"So you admit you still think of me as a boy, right?"

Gloriana sighed and patted his hand. "It doesn't matter if you're a boy, Ves. There are good boys and bad boys. Vincent is a bad boy. You're a good boy. I like you a lot more for that reason!"

What kind of argument was that? Her words momentarily stumped him! Was that a compliment?

"Tell me honestly, then. What will it take for you to call me a man?"

"I don't know why you keep harping on this. Your worth as a person isn't defined by your gender. Admittedly, most of my fellow Hexers don't agree with me, but I don't care. I love you, Ves."

Now it was his turn to sigh. Ves had a feeling that she was as much of a Hexer as before.

The only thing that changed was that she patched her mindset with a few new details in order to fit him in with her largely dismissive attitude towards boys.

In her eyes, Ves was a boy! He was merely a special boy, a good boy! One that happened to be very compatible with her! All the other boys were bad and deserved to be treated as such!

He repressed the impulse to blow up in her face. While he felt quite resentful at Gloriana's inflexibility, it was not really her fault.

He stretched out his hand and placed it on her shoulder.

"Look. Let's forget about achieving Conceptual Perception and just try and make the Adonis Colossus work."

"How can we do that?"

"I think… it doesn't matter if we have differences in belief. Do you know how resonance is achieved?"

She nodded. "Resonance takes place when the amplitude in a system is magnified when the frequency of vibration is the same or nearly similar to its natural frequency."

"I've worked with resonance in various applications already, Gloriana. One of the lessons I've learned is that 'the same or nearly similar' is the key here. We don't have to hold the exact same opinions to resonate with each other. As long as there is enough common ground, the differences we hold might even result in a richer degree of resonance than if we simply copy each other's views entirely!"

Her eyes lit up as she realized his point. "You're right! I was so hung up about matching domains that I overlooked this point!"

"Let's just try it and see whether it will work out on the Adonis Colossus. If the results are less than ideal, then it's no big deal. We will still be able to deliver a technically-sound product to our client. Trial and error is often a necessity to achieve something difficult."

His solution might not be the one he hoped for, but it was one that successfully brought them together. The contradiction still remained, but they began to see it as an asset if employed correctly.

Gloriana immediately ran with his idea and extrapolated it further. "Maybe we don't have to adopt a single view on masculinity. Maybe it's better to hold different views on it but try to bring them together in a way that fits. As long as we achieve the right fit, the result will be greater than if we stuck to a single view! The key is achieving resonance!"