Mid 961 ARR (39 BBY)
Kyla didn't get it "So it tells the temperature….big deal?" Gavin shrugged and didn't really care, though he was hungover when I told him to be fair.
Zomir was stunned. There weren't many droid shops on Naboo, and most of those provided simple models for the plasma industry. Zomir, who was getting on in age for a Duros, was perhaps even the foremost expert on the planet. Was being the key word here, because I had just completely eclipsed anything he had even heard of. Okay, maybe it was going to my head a little, but we could barely conceive of the potential applications for my discovery.
What Zomir did realise, was just how dangerous this knowledge was. "If you let it be known you can do this, you'll end up either very rich or very dead." Living on Naboo I really had a somewhat bambi-esque understanding of the galaxy. I knew at face value the galaxy had vast hyper-corporations and vested interests, that were supposed to be extremely corrupt. I'd even heard rumours that King Veruna himself had taken bribes from the Trade Federation.
But in my day-to-day life, Theed was a safe paradise, where not much ever happened and everyone was nice to their neighbours. People would mutter about the savage Gungans who lived in the ocean, occasionally interfering with mining operations. Though as Theed itself was far from their territory, I didn't give them much thought either.
So, for the moment I decided to be careful, just carrying on my research while I worked out what I wanted to do with it. I sent a short message via holo-post to Rana with just the words "It worked! Tell no one. With love, John." This, the cheapest way to send an interstellar message, would take days to arrive, but she deserved to know given how she had supported me throughout.
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In the following days I gave a lot of thought to what kind of practical application I could apply my knowledge to. Realistically, I couldn't produce, or even repurpose droids effectively. I didn't have the cash to buy complete droids, and sending out small numbers of reprogrammed droids into the galaxy, didn't seem prudent without a larger plan.
My first idea was the thing I had been missing this whole time, gaming. In the year and a half, I had lived on Naboo, I had discovered cantinas had Dejarik sets, a sort of holochess, (I tried not to dwell on the implications of a game so similar to chess existing here) and there was the arcade with the spaceflight simulators, but as a gaming industry that was pretty limited.
Of course, making a games console of some kind would be difficult to market, as it wasn't something anyone had seen before, and producing every game from scratch myself was a daunting prospect. New games would probably necessitate creating new code which as yet, I still was not able to do.
I had looked into some of the children's toys available, but even here the preference was for more tangible things; toy spaceships, dolls, small droid pets, nothing that really could be a basis for video games.
My next big idea was to try and create a droid-brain powered smartphone…or realistically with what I had available a tablet. I figured I could create a multi-purpose platform, combining code and functions that already exist, then I could add games if I ever figured out how to create new code. Making something like this, that wouldn't just appeal to people like me and Rana, but might actually appeal to those more like Kyla and Asherré, was a much better model. There's a reason why Steve Jobs is more of a household name than Linus Torvalds.
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Actually, making the damn thing was easier said than done. Using some more parts found on the market I was able to fashion a working personal holocomm out of the two broken ones I had collected previously, which I then promptly dismantled and began rifling through its code. Its central processor was a kind of mini-droid-brain but with a different unintelligible operating system, though it was the same as those used by the datapads and my long-suffering data analysis terminal. The droid translator interesting used its own system, which I theorised might be more like that in protocol droids, though I couldn't verify this yet.
Eventually, I managed to install the holocomm code into my original R4 sourced Intellex III, and it functioned just as before, but with one significant difference. The droid-brain now happily received instructions through the holocomm's audio receiver, and would beep out binary responses as if it were in its original chassis.
It makes sense in a way, this operating system far beyond the Windows or Linux of Earth, it is designed to work with a wide range of components. That is why it works on droids with so many divergent functions. That is why it comes across as alive. So even though the holocomm control programme was meant for a different kind of processing device, the droid-brain could decipher the programme and then use it to drive the hardware as it needed. An analogy might be installing an iPhone app on a Windows PC, and Windows being able to work out what it was and figure out how to run it, as if it were meant for Windows all along.
From there came some ugly physical bodging. I combined a datapad, my music player, the holocomm, and the largest data storage device I could fit into a hardened plastic box I had crudely made at fab-shop (a kind of public 3d printer, which could make basic things out of common materials). The result wasn't exactly a smart phone, more like a tablet with bulky parts attached to it. The whole device weighed about three kilograms, but it was a prototype to be fair.
The result was a device which worked as a personal holocomm, with recording, playback and messaging functions. Which using a single built in holochip reader, could store hundreds of songs and books, and was entirely voice activated. Given the adaptive nature of the code, and the fairly high-performance droid-brain, it would probably evolve and adapt with use, making it both smarter than any iPhone yet far more limited in its basic functionality. I tried to add the droid translator software so it could talk back to me directly, but that didn't quite work. Apparently there really is something different about protocol droid programming, that I would need a lot more research to make work.
In honour of R4, I decided to name it Ari. I installed all the music I had on hand into it, and arranged to meet Kyla, Gavin and Asherré in a quiet park the next day.
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"You mean, it can just play the song without the datachip?" asked a confused Asherré, frowning at the heretical concept, her fingers playing with her long blonde curls as she tended to do when trying to concentrate. "Ari, play Coruscant Skies" I instructed, and Asherré's favourite song began to play from the speaker. She stared at Ari as if it were magic, "You didn't put a chip in it, you just asked it to play the song", the concept dawning on her face.
"And it's like, a super-datapad, I could keep all my medic study notes on it?" Kyla asked. There were expensive datapad models on the market that could retain large amounts of information, but at Kyla's price point, her own could only keep a couple of textbooks' worth. The fact this could store all the medical information she would need until qualified as a senior medic, while also being a music player, was pretty much witchcraft.
"Ari, load R4 droid schematics." I replied, before showing Kyla the screen and flicking between the pages with the arrow buttons to demonstrate. "That's… wizard." Gavin said succinctly, staring at the box. "And you plan to make it smaller, and lighter?" he asked. "Yea this is just made from junk really, something made more professionally could be closer to a regular datapad."
"Of course, I haven't shown you the best part yet. Ari, call to Zomir's Droids." After a few moments a hologram of Zomir appeared above Ari "It is working then?" he asked, "Yes boss, I'll bring it with me to work tomorrow." I wish I had installed a camera at that moment, to capture Kyla, Gavin and Asherré looks of pure amazement.
Personal holocomms cost almost as much as a second-hand speeder, and I just casually had one as part of my Ari box. Then I remembered the holo-imager was recording our side of this call, as well as Zomir's, and made sure to save the recording for posterity.
Kyla looked at me with a with a look that was an odd mix of seductive, hungry and innocent, as if pouring every persuasive emotion she had into the coming request "Johnnn…could you make me one?"
I'm not sure I'd have made it out of the park alive if I hadn't promised to make three more.