Getting used to your new job

The two weeks after your interview went by in a blur of exhaustion. With a high degree of automation in the factory the work was merely brisk rather than back-breaking but you had nothing to compare the learning curve against. Days consisted of everything from unloading boxes of diodes through to verifying that a robot had properly soldered the diodes in place while in the evenings your new employer, Neo-Tokyo Mechatronics inc. (NTMi for short) had assigned you homework on their products and processes on top of the research you needed to do on this new world you were in. All of this together kept you in a state of fuzzy-brained exhaustion.

Most of the study of mechs turned out to be pretty dull, hours spent memorising the proper construction of seat belts and other small details like that. Still the machines were incredibly cool. NTMi's design philosophy was one of maximum modularity so that in a matter of seconds the pilot can swap out his welding arm with a laser cannon or tank tracks with rocket boots. What's more there were modules for just about every situation imaginable. This society of the future runs on custom Gundam kits!

Getting up to speed with how this world works on the other hand has been fascinating, almost exactly like reading the lore of a science fiction series. An especially horrifying one when you remembered you were living it.

Despite the war between human and alien raging for forty years nobody knows what they look like or what their motivation is. Early attacks by scouting parties were completely devastating and destroyed entire cities on the solar system's fringe. This **** the rapid development of mech suits as a form of defence. Even when humanity could fight back however it was superior numbers on our side that won the day against these scouts. How alien mech suits react to being fired upon is always strange, unpredictable. One alien scout, for example, was found to be surprisingly **** to rockets but only after killing three pilots by deflecting bullets back onto them.

The worst attacks came about five years into the war however from the aliens code named "fairy fighters". Over the course of six months Earth and every colony was visited by things that looked like robotic magical-girls. They would fly through the air taking pot-shots at civilians. Once engaged in combat the "fairy fighters" simply turned to ash and disappeared on the wind. Nobody thought much of this at first, aliens are alien after all, but ever since then four out of five male children have not lived past birth.