Late 962 ARR (38 BBY)
I miss Christmas.
The Festival of Light is nice and all, but there's no turkey. I used to help my mum with decorating the tree, I'm not even sure Naboo has spruce trees! Also, it is possible dragging a tree up to my apartment would be seen less than as sane behaviour. Maybe I could implement an office secret Santa, though that might prove even harder to explain.
Kyla was on the receiving end of this rant as we were sat watching the parts of the 829th festival that could be seen from my balcony. We'd had lunch with her parents earlier in the day, just as we had joined them for dinner the previous year, only without Gavin this time.
Gavin, had signed on as a crewmember on one of the ships that regularly visited the spaceport. He claimed that hearing about the 'adventure' Kyla and I had on our trip to the core worlds had inspired him, though it was strongly suspected he had a thing going on with the freighter's captain. Asherré was away visiting family in the country, so it was unusually just the two of us for once.
"It sounds like you just want an excuse for people give you gifts." Kyla joked, very unfairly I felt, given how I spoiled her and Asherré whenever they would let me get away with it.
A few weeks earlier, I had hired an artist to produce a painting of the two of them together. To say that Naboo are 'art people' is an understatement, giving a piece of artwork as a gift is considered a sign of sincere affection. My lack of any artistic talent or interest was a real oddity on Naboo, so I tried hard to at least show an appreciation.
"Well, if you don't want a next-gen SuperPad, then fine."
"There's a next-gen SuperPad?" She asked with poorly disguised interest. Kyla's original scepticism with my droid tinkering, had been replaced with a light addiction to her SuperPad. The ability to record messages to send back and forth to Asherré and other friends, and the ability to listen to music on the go made her a very dedicated user. Asherré had painted some flowers on the back of the case for her, which had led me to add personal customisations to my long-term ideas list.
"Well no, but I'll invent one eventually."
---
It had taken me only a couple of days with the Security Force's intelligence droid to add the encryption programming to the SecuriPADs. I made sure copy all the droid's source code to my pad for future research. Intelligence droids were an offshoot of protocol droids which I had yet to analyse in depth.
There weren't very many protocol droids on Naboo, making them difficult to find on the second-hand market. Zomir had managed to find me the severed head of an older model 3PO series droid. The head contained the droid-brain and communications module, which were all I really cared about.
I had been carrying Ari round with me for more than a year, which given it weighed nearly three kilos was not a trivial matter. I had been adding various database programmes, accountancy tools and other features to help manage the company. This had all gotten a bit much for the poor Intellex III droid-brain, and it was taking longer and longer to respond to queries.
Rather than a portable device, I decided to build it as sort of AI supercomputer to support the running of the whole company, that everyone on the team could interact with as needed. I had managed to get a hold of a state-of-the-art Intellex V droid-brain, which was used in the R3 series of astromechs. R3s were almost exclusively used by military forces. This particular droid-brain had come from a security forces droid that had been otherwise ruined in a training accident.
All droids have loyalty subroutines, one of the many mysterious features of the impenetrable operating system code. However, that loyalty is strangely not quite absolute or fixed to the droid's official owner, but who the droid perceives as their owner. Astromech droids had a reputation for an almost puppy-like loyalty. R3s were among the less eccentric models, but given what I would be trusting this droid-brain with, it was all reassuring.
What was less reassuring is what I was going to do with it.
First, I attached the best data module I could find, and though it would be connected to the energy grid, I gave it a large ion cell as a backup power supply. I then copied all the code and memories of Ari into the device. The operating system was the same so it would simply be giving old Ari more power.
I then linked it to the processor from a high-end analysis terminal, with the intent it would be able to use it as additional processing capacity for certain tasks. This processor, like those in many datapads and other devices was effectively a droid-brain, but with a more limited operating system.
I also added the AA-1 VerboBrain (protocol droid-brain) and TranLang II communications module taken from the 3PO head. Finally, in what might have been the most questionable choice, I added the processor from an interactive Twi'lek dancing hologram I'd found at the market. Now it was a tame model, tastefully attired as a toy for children, but even so the choice would raise eyebrows.
My idea was that computer would be able to manifest itself as a hologram for people to interact with. I had in mind the rather eccentric sci-fi show Andromeda from my old life, where the ship had a hologram form to interact with its crew. It would also have been unfair of me not to give it the most attractive form I could find, at least that's how I justified the choice in my head.
Combining droid-brains is fraught and can cause all sorts of unintended consequences, if not outright insanity in the resulting hybrid intelligence. I had just combined four wildly different brains together, with programming taken from another droid. This was true mad scientist behaviour. All the brains were connected through the Intellex V, which was the only one directly linked to the datacore. My hope was that it would be the one driving the others.
I had the ability to monitor, at least to a degree, how the programmes of the droid-brains were interacting with each other, and hopefully remedy any emerging issues.
---
Aria, as I had decided to name her, was adorable.
My plan had somehow worked. After quite a few false starts and factory resets, the various brains came together into a single hybrid intelligence. She quickly emerged with personality which combined a sweet child-like innocence with the excitable puppy-like desire to please of an astromech. She spoke with a deep and somewhat flirty voice, while subtly swaying and flicking her lekku around like the original dancer would have. It was as if she couldn't help but fidget when projecting herself.
It took a while for her to 'learn' how to utilise all her functions. Checking the monitoring data I could see there was constant back and forth communication going on behind the scenes between the four brains. Nevertheless, she was stable and seemingly sane.
I set her up in our facility, with a series of display screens and holoprojectors throughout the building. This enabled her to display data, talk to the staff members and generally make herself useful to everyone.
Cota was a bit weary of her initially, not entirely approving of a young attractive hologram dancing on her desk, but Aria grew on the team quickly. Ona loved her the most, the eagerness to please and formidable data processing capabilities made her a fantastic resource for supporting the logistical efforts of the company.
Our new Head of Finance, a young Pantoran man named Eloy Chi was similarly impressed, though I think almost threatened by the idea that Aria might make him somewhat unnecessary. Eloy was our first non-human employee, Naboo being overwhelmingly a human populated planet not counting the Gungans of course. Somehow, no one ever seemed to count the Gungans.
I had created a handful of upgraded SecuriPADs (with music players included) for myself and the leadership team. Rather than adding more functions to my pad, Aria could answer holocalls, so we had have access to her capabilities from anywhere on Naboo. She was trying to master having conversations with two different people from different emitters or calls at a time, but would mix up the conversations, with rather comedic results.
I had installed in her the advanced security protocols copied from the Security Force's intelligence droid. Anyone not authorised to access Theed Tech data would need military grade slicing tech to have a chance of hacking in, and even then, I suspected Aria would put up quite the fight.
Kyla was of course unbearable when she saw her "No, I have not made myself a new girlfriend Kyla, Aria is a very important part of our business!"