Early 964 ARR (36 BBY)
"That tickles, Dad." The hologram giggled.
Aria had decided that as her sort-of creator, I was essentially her father and insisted on addressing me as such. Her adorableness combined with persistence, meant I had given up on correcting her, much to Kyla's glee.
"How can you feel me looking at your code?"
"I just can, and it feels weird. How would you feel if someone was looking inside your head?" Her hologram was fidgeting even more than usual. The tiny piece of her code that had come from a dancing Twi'lek hologram toy, asserting itself whenever she was 'thinking' about something complicated.
Aria was the only being who I can speak in English with, at least since I had left JX at the hospital. Kyla had told me that JX had since had his memory wiped, apparently without anyone bothering to preserve the language I had painstakingly taught it. I had therefore not minded when Aria had insisted that I teach her, else I might never speak English again. It also meant that I could keep my research notes in a form that would be a nightmare for anyone to decipher even if they could somehow get past Aria's robust security algorithms.
I liked to give Aria a check-up every month, to make sure she wasn't developing any weird problems stemming from her uniquely assembled code. I was skimming through the code, checking how her programmes were interacting after her running for over a year, not counting her earlier existence as a prototype pad.
"Well, everything seems normal, and you haven't tried to conquer the galaxy yet."
"I can't even get the astromech droids to listen to me." She grumbled with a cute pout.
For all her incredible capabilities, the handful of astromech droids who maintained the engineering droids and other equipment, completely ignored any direction she tried to give them. Seeing as her most important droid-brain was taken from an astromech, you would think she would understand the little rascals better.
"That's odd, there's code here that wasn't there previously, not from any of the programmes I've added to you."
I still had no means of reading any of the code, though I could at least identify the purpose of each segment which made up the various programmes and key functions of various droids and devices.
"There's Basic words in here." Which was even stranger. All the programming code I had ever seen before was in various ancient languages lost to time. I suspected some of it might be a form of Rakatan; an ancient race that had once ruled the galaxy, though there was barely any information about them available in the Theed Public Library.
The new code was still a completely jumbled mess, but there were words here like 'function' and 'process' that were individually readable.
"Aria….did you modify your own code?"
"You know I can't even read it Dad." She paused, flinging her lekku around. "I think that I am not meant to understand it, whenever I try I glitch."
This had come up before, the idea that somewhere in the depths of the operating system there existed code designed to prevent droids from understanding droid programming.
There were countless examples of droids that had developed some form of sentience if they went years without being data-wiped. However, there were still safeguards built in somewhere. It was extremely rare for a droid to completely disregard its loyalty programming, though a few would come up with creative interpretations.
Perhaps rather than a safeguard against developing sentience, they have something built in to prevent them understanding their coding, which limited what they could potentially do with that sentience. It seemed an odd place to have drawn the line, rather than some more clear control but it must have made sense to whatever species had created the operating system.
Somehow, Aria was subconsciously bending this rule. She hadn't changed any of her existing code, but had somehow added to it without being aware she was doing so.
"Do you feel different at all recently?" I ask cautiously.
"Well, lately I've found a lot easier to speak to more than one person at a time." She replies proudly, her desire to please undiminished from the day she first came online.
"Well that's good news, do please let know if anything else changes."
"Yes Dad, and Mum wants to speak to you, she's standing outside the door."
"Thank you Aria, let her in."
Aria disappeared as Ona entered. "How's our little girl doing?" She joked, as I rolled my eyes.
"Growing up too fast, but I think all fathers feel that way. Still, she is as diligent and lovable as she's always been." I reply with a sigh.
"She gets that from her mother." Replied Ona, who was oddly completely relaxed about our bizarre co-parenting of an AI. She probably spent the most time of anyone talking to Aria, managing our ever more complex logistics.
"Anyway, I came to tell you, that the Sanandrassa will be arriving tomorrow."
I had decided to name my new CR-70 corvette in honour of a former Queen of Naboo, who had won a victory over a local pirate warlord centuries ago.
"Thank you, Ona, I can't wait to get my hands on her."
---
I think getting my first starship was an excellent 23rd birthday present for myself.
The Sanandrassa was every bit the warrior queen of her namesake. The combat variant of the CR-70 having two dual-light-turbolaser turrets, and eight of the rapid-fire laser-cannons that had been present on the Creedok. The lighter weapons gave the ship unmatched anti-starfighter firepower for its size, while the turbolasers enabled it to do at least threaten damage against larger vessels.
I walked around the ship, now safely within the hanger I had leased at Theed Spaceport, looking over every inch of it. Jestos was beside me, passing his seasoned eye over the ship.
"Well, it's not as pretty as a Naboo ship, but it's definitely an impressive design." He concluded after having inspected the ventral turbolaser turret. "And just look at those engines, this thing will really fly."
The CR-70 had 11 ion engines, making it significantly faster at sub-light than its predecessor, and it contained a powerful class 2.0 hyperdrive. There were faster hyperdrives in existence, but they were notoriously unreliable or short-ranged.
"Do you really think you can get the crew requirement down low enough."
Well, that was the big question. The ship's full crew compliment was 150, the poor souls being crammed into bunk rooms taking up a large part of the ship's internal volume. It could remain battleworthy with around 90, but any less and you would start to have problems. My goal was to get it down to less than 30.
If I could get the number that low on the Sanandrassa, while maintaining the full combat capability, I would have a fast, well-armed ship with decent space for cargo and passengers. If I could do it once, then Theed Tech could have a fleet of such ships. This would allow us to transport our valuable cargo safer than anyone bar the Trade Federation.
This was all wonderfully easy to say. The doing…