((@ Sean: nice logos.
Hmm, lets fill up this lack of paranoia, shall we'?))
No one looked up the Alstrom Effect after I told them about it so here it is: As the amount of synthflesh in a single organism increases, strange effects become more apparent. The laws governing the size and physical viability of the creature start to break down and creatures that shouldn't be able to stand or move, or even live without collapsing under their own weight can live normally. Further more, the damage done to them by external sources lessens. This is part of the reason why avatars and Titans are so damn difficult to hurt, even without their armor. Giant synthflesh creatures seem to produce a sort of natural field somewhat similar to an automated Manipulator that weakens or even stops any threat to them.
The exact mechanisms of this effect are unknown, but the utility of it has not escaped the scientists of the UWM. However, nothing larger then a titan has ever been made of synthflesh. Why? Because of the other effects that emerge at higher concentrations.
((Ooh, this fits nicely into a little theory I have, being that synthflesh has
emergent properties.
Basically, synthflesh has capabilities that only manifest itself once it has a certain amount of it is present in one body. Whatever neural structure it has gets smarter/more potent once there's more of it. That's why an Avatar has one of those entities hiding inside it, while standard sythflesh bodies don't: standard bodies aren't big enough for it.
This might be one of the 'other effects' they are afraid of: if they build them too big, they might become self-aware (or at least too smart for our own good). And from what we've seen by now, those things are rather violent and feral (though this could be a side effect from not having enough neural matter, thereby only gaining wild-animal levels of intelligence. Or maybe it really is malicious, who knows).
I told him the batteries don't carry an electric charge. Well, maybe some latent synaptic activity, but nothing worth considering. And I might be able to help him if he could be restrained, but I doubt he will be.
((I had a thought: you know how we usually think that manips were there first, and that amps were then adapted to somehow use the brain as a power source? What if it's the other way around: amps were here first, and their space magic requires a (human) brain to function. Manips were then derived from them, and whatever it is in the brain that they need to work is provided by those batteries manips use.
((And now for the grand paranoid cru: what if the above two things are related? PW said large synthflesh creatures have some sort of automanip thing allowing them to remain upright and protects them. Maybe this stems from the fact that the more 'brainpower' they have, the more they can use the space magic that makes amps work. Maybe amps and manips are some sort of catalyst, instead of the thing that makes the space magic work in the first place.
This goes against the whole 'human have no inherent magical capabilities', but eh, maybe it's misdirection. Or a case of
literal genie.