Mid 961 ARR (39 BBY)
It took weeks for Rana and Kyla to get me out of my sulk, apparently failure didn't suit me. I had shoved all the droid parts into a large box under my bed and just drifted to work and class with little enthusiasm. Kyla would drag me from place to place, the cantina, the market and use me as unpaid labour to carry her shopping. This perhaps wasn't entirely selfless of her, but the company was appreciated.
I was absentmindedly playing with one of the droid-brains while Rana sat curled up on the bed, reading some novel or other from a datapad, when I had my next moment of brilliance. Well, I think Kyla had prompted it earlier that day over lunch when she was complaining about the various medical droids she had to work with. I had wondered idly about how different droid types had developed, and how their programming differed, which led me to a realisation.
So what if I couldn't edit code line by line, or really do anything meaningful to the operating system? I could at least identify what each general block of code on each droid did, based on what types of droid it was present on. If there was something only found on medical droids, then that must be the medical programming.
This would mean that, hypothetically, I could reprogramme a droid-brain for different purposes, without adding bulky add-on packages containing these functions. This could have huge implications for efficiency and miniaturisation, how much of the code on droids was simply unnecessary, and how much smaller could a droid for a specific purpose be, if it didn't need addon parts for its extra functions.
This wasn't coding or programming by any typical definition. It was more like installing and uninstalling programmes, removing bloatware, tasks that were mundane and within the skill of most day-to-day users on Earth, but here, it could be revolutionary.
---
A few weeks later, Rana and I finished our final assessment at Theed Technical College. We both aced the final test and were accredited as Level 1 Electronic Technicians, with distinction. This meant we were qualified for any standard civilian tech repair job and, if we wanted, could progress onto a higher level of education. The only problem being that there was no higher level of education available on Naboo.
Naboo didn't have a domestic tech industry, and only a tiny ship refit industry. Theed Palace Engineering did customisations of mostly Nubian luxury yachts and starfighters, which were only really used by the Naboo government and social elite. They didn't employ enough people for Naboo's educational institutions to justify specialist courses. The top people at Theed Place Engineering, all studied at universities in the core worlds. There were further courses available for the tech relating to plasma mining, but neither of us had the slightest interest in pursuing a career in that soulless industry.
For myself, I was happy enough to continue working at Zomir's shop and playing with my own projects. Rana on the other hand, would be leaving.
I hadn't really seen it coming, caught up in my own research, but Rana had kinda already said as much. We had talked at my 'birthday' party about her desire to get away from Naboo, I just hadn't understood she meant to as soon as possible. She had been saving up all year for passage to Corellia. Equipped with a glowing letter of recommendation from the dean the technical college, was all set for further study at the famous School of Starship Engineering at Corellia University.
We promised to keep in touch, though honestly, I didn't see how, given the high cost of interstellar communications. As fond as I was of Rana, I knew this was probably the end, and it sucked.
---
We were all gathered at the Leaky Hyperdrive, after having waved goodbye to Rana at the spaceport. Well, we had shared a final passionate goodbye kiss in a quiet corner prior to the waving.
I was trying not to sulk as Kyla and Asherré nattered away about how cool it would be to travel, a topic that even managed to get Gavin enthused. Gavin had at least left the atmosphere on occasion as part of his spaceport work, but clearly, he had thoughts about traveling the stars.
"They say Alderaan has the most beautiful cities in the galaxy." Kyla sighed, while Asherré wanted to see one of the many ecumenopolis worlds, planets covered by whole cities with skyscrapers taller than mountains. As an aspiring architect, I can see why she would find that fascinating, though I couldn't help imagining it being somewhat dystopian. What would life be like on a planet of trillions?
I had thought idly about traveling myself on many occasions, it was certainly on the list for one day, but it was extremely expensive. Most sentients in the galaxy never left their homeworld, if they even left their town or village. I was personally, far too engrossed in my current project in the here and now.
---
I had been gathering ever more droid-brains and datachips in recent weeks, as I began pulling apart the code across now dozens of different droids. Grouping up the common code blocks, I really felt like I was finally making meaningful progress.
I splashed out on my next big purchase, which was a droid interpreter, taken from an old starfighter. At 400 credits, only my data terminal had cost me more. In essence, it could render droid binary communication code into text. It really made little sense to me how most droids could understand instructions in basic but couldn't speak it. Is there some genuine technological distinction here or maybe it was some historic Apple-esque proprietary nonsense?
Regardless, I was ready for my first big test. I took one of the simplest droid-brains I had from a loader droid, and deleted all the code except the operating system. After the usual performance tests to check the brain was effectively working, I added in a block of code that I was fairly sure was used by a weather monitoring droid to process the input from its sensors. I connected the temperature sensor that had come from that droid, and then input a request through my datapad for the loader droid-brain to report the temperature.
There was a long pause, in which I was sure my experiment had failed, when sudden scrolling across the interpreter screen came the words:
"Information: The current temperature is 46 units."
In years to come, I would point back to this moment as where it all really began. A deliberate reprogramming of a droid-brain for first time in thousands of years.