By the second week of sitting underground with nothing to do, boredom gave me an idea — learn to build and program droids.
There was more than enough scrap lying around for it.
Down the line it could turn a decent profit too.
But the assembly side never really took — too repetitive, too monotonous.
Reprogramming the tin cans, though, turned out to be a lot more fun and interesting.
After spending my first two months barely seeing the sky, splitting my time between meditation, training, and programming, I got so sick of it all that I decided to risk a trip up top.
Blow off some steam, and scrounge up material for my little hobby projects while I was at it.
So what happened?
I set up an observation post on the roof of a building that had mostly survived intact, and settled in to patiently watch the empty streets.
I’ll admit, it was hard.
Really hard.
Something inside me kept demanding immediate action.
Why sit around waiting for the enemy when you could just storm their base?
Thoughts of the coming fight stirred me up, though not the way they used to.
Through sheer force of will, I managed to hold myself back.
After an hour of waiting, a group of tin cans caught my eye, marching briskly toward the front line.
Explosions were going off out there, black smoke was rising, and a few fighters were cutting circles overhead, trying to shoot down enemy ships.
The ordinary CIS droids didn’t interest me — too dumb, too clumsy, no fun to reprogram at all.
But further off, there was a much tastier target.
Weaving smoothly through the wreckage on speeder bikes were the exact same droids that had nearly killed me back at the fortress.
The wound from that vibroblade had long since healed over, but it still itched unpleasantly whenever I remembered that night.
Droids like that could give even a gifted plenty of trouble.
Exactly what I needed.
Figuring out where they’d pass, I cut them off — lucky for me, the distance wasn’t that far.
I made it to the spot before the droids did and set up a trap.
The group of three speeder bikes rolled in not long after.
The fight itself lasted a few seconds, tops.
Calling it a fight at all is a stretch.
Caught completely off guard, the tin cans never reacted to the concrete slabs rising up out of the ground.
Two of them crashed on the spot.
The third damaged his bike and had to bail onto the ground.
I didn’t wait for him to get ready to fight — just shot his head clean off, no drama.
Two spare carcasses lying around now.
I’d strip them for parts if I needed to.
The rest was just technical work.
Though more than once, I found myself wishing all the speeders hadn’t gone out of commission.
Hauling a hunk of metal on your back is not exactly a fun time when you’re a kid.
The long mechanical legs kept snagging on everything, and pieces kept dropping off, forcing me to bend down and pick them up again and again.
Good thing I had the Force, at least — though it turned out lifting something and holding onto it for a long stretch were two very different things.
Every forced stop, whenever I had to duck out of sight for another droid patrol, felt like manna from heaven.
My muscles ached like they were about to explode.
My back could barely bend anymore.
A small, strong kid’s body was still a weak one, apparently.
Too bad I couldn’t speed up my own growth. This story is hosted at novelping.com.
Ah well.
Dreams are dreams.
Somehow, through sweat and tears, I made it to a workshop the Shadow Front had abandoned.
Since the droid breakthrough had happened so suddenly, all the tools were still sitting right where they’d been left.
Say what you will about those tin cans — at least they didn’t loot.
Hopefully Koven wouldn’t mind me tinkering around in here.
With a sigh of relief, I dumped my load on the floor and leaned back against the cold wall.
My overheated body slowly started to relax.
My cramped fingers straightened out, the ache in my back eased, and my eyes shut on their own.
I guess it was some combination of exhaustion, general fatigue, and who knows what else, but I dropped straight into a deep meditation.
No thoughts, no images.
Just stillness.
It took a couple of hours before I came back to myself, feeling rested and refreshed, like I’d just had the best sleep of my life.
Even in that state, though, the Force still wasn’t enough to drag the droid onto the workbench.
The thing was just too big.
I could lift it a little, but past a few centimeters off the floor, it flat-out refused to rise any further.
So, cursing my own initiative through gritted teeth, I ended up hauling it onto the table by hand.
Fine.
I’d make a proper man out of you yet, tin can.
It took me exactly a month to turn a machine built for killing into my own personal bodyguard.
At one point during that process, it nearly cost me my life.
Toward the end of the second week, I figured everything was ready and I could safely bring it out of standby.
I’d turned to check the display, verifying the systems were running fine, and barely managed to duck under a metal fist that whistled past right over my head.
Its other hand froze a centimeter from my face.
If that flash of premonition hadn’t slammed into my brain, my brains might’ve been decorating this lovely workshop’s wall right about now.
Thanks, Force.
I let myself fall back onto the bunker floor, and the severed power cable slipped out of my hand.
After that, I had to spend a few dull, tedious days carefully — and temporarily — amputating its arms and legs, just to make sure my creation didn’t kill me in the process.
It was slow, painstaking work.
Digging through every detail and nuance, hunting for replacements for parts I’d broken myself, tracking down clean memory drives, new inhibitor chips.
But I was happy with the result in the end.
A fully loyal killer robot, all mine.
Though I’d had to rebuild most of its brain from scratch, just in case the Separatists had left any hidden backdoors buried in that tin skull.
But it seemed to have gone well — it walked, followed orders, and spoke in coherent sentences.
The bodyguard software I’d bought off the HoloNet slotted right in, like it belonged there.
What more could it need?
Exactly.
Nothing.
Now this tin can was my bodyguard, my sparring partner, and my house-sitter, all in one.
If it had suddenly started embroidering little crosses in its spare time, I wouldn’t have even blinked.
There was one pretty significant screwup on my part, though.
In this universe, sufficiently advanced artificial intelligence could develop self-awareness.
Here’s what happened.
I’d gone out for supplies and forgot to shut down the computer — the one I’d honestly stolen from the Chemists’ den, which had an open connection to the HoloNet.
When I got home, I was greeted by a lovely sight: my droid, deeply absorbed in studying galactic legal code.
But our conversations got a lot more interesting after that.
“Master, food is ready.”
“How many times do I have to tell you?
Don’t call me that.
‘Chief’ is fine.
Being called Master makes me feel like a slave owner.”
“Which is, in fact, accurate, Master.
I am bound to you by invisible chains and carry out your every order.
So yes, technically speaking, I am your personal slave.”
“Not a slave.
A servant.”
“A servant has free will and the option to quit.
I don’t.”
“Maybe I’ll set you free someday.”
“My processing power informs me that a good joke calls for laughter.
Ha.
Ha.
Ha.
Master, I’m filing a complaint with the Council on Sentient Mechanical Rights.
You’re clearly mocking me.”
“And I’ll file one at the scrap metal collection point.
Which one do you think gets there first?”
“My legs are superior to yours.
Probability of my escape: sixty percent.”
“Remind me of our sparring record.”
“Thirty-seven to twenty-four, in your favor.”
At that, the droid hung its head sadly and tried to slump its shoulders — which its build didn’t actually allow, but the effect still came through somehow.
“So what does your thinking algorithm have to say about that?”
“I need to recalculate my escape probability.” It froze for a couple of seconds, then announced, “Twenty-three percent.”
“Wow.
That’s a lot.”
“I’m factoring in the chance that you accidentally die in a cave-in or in combat.”
“You vindictive piece of junk—” A metal spoon went flying at its forehead.
My Bodyguard caught it without any trouble right in front of its face.
“I’m wiping your personality the second I get around to it.”
“Aggression detected from Master.
Initiating apology protocol.” With a clank of metal, it dropped to its knees and launched into a flat, droning monologue.
“I offer my sincerest apologies for speaking only the truth, and nothing but the truth, as required by the instructions loaded into my very intelligent head…”
And on, and on, and on, more of the same.
Anyway, after the reprogramming, life with that machine got a whole lot more entertaining.
I knew this level of sentience was abnormal, and any robotics manual would’ve told me to wipe its memory.
But my faith in the safeguards I’d installed — and, honestly, my own inability to handle being alone — kept me from doing it.
com / BifrostFics