All soul, no body

[Thresco]

Some years had gone by since his clan had been massacred, his master killed and he himself left with nothing. Using old contacts of his fallen relatives, Thresco had gotten a part-time job at MandalMotors, a prestigious company known for various feats of craftsmanship such as the QV-3 Disruptor, an energy weapon that was still used in various starfighters of their own design. Having grown up among flora and fauna, the only thing he really knew how to work was the forge, and even in those respects he was not exactly the greatest. During the first year, he felt more like a paid intern that was gradually learning how the company did things, becoming a better engineer in time. During the second year, his skill as an engineer was worlds apart from what it had been before. In fact, he had gotten so good at it that he had started learning more about computers, networks and eventually the art of slicing. While self taught, a trained engineer did not need a whole lot of guidance when it came to self-educating oneself. After all, one either had the talent for it or one didn't, there was usually no middle ground involved.

On one fateful day, a Kom'rk class ship was brought in, full of spare droid parts that were set to be melted down into their base materials. From the heap, he took about a dozen parts home with him, primarily heads. This was not because he was some creepy psychopath head collector, but because the heads were full of processors, memory banks, data chips and a great deal of leftover coding he would get to tinker with. After booting up some of the heads, he found out that some of them had been damaged beyond repair and would never be able to function properly again. Those he just took apart for parts completely, hoping that they might serve again in the creation of something new, thus being reborn. The five droid heads that still functioned were all taken to a large workbench where Thresco could keep accurate track of them, hoping to observe more of their behavior, their purpose and maybe even catch a glimpse of their personality. All of it would help him in the creation of something new, something better than a regular droid brain in every way imaginable. As the five heads stood on the workbench, they were all hooked up to the same computer which constantly ran diagnostics, documenting everything that happened inside of the active droid's head. And so the work began.

 

[Thresco]

Day 0: Thesis

The point of an AI, at least in Thresco's opinion, was to create something that followed orders, yet retained a mind of its own. He wanted his creation to be capable of learning the same way a human being would, with certain restrictions in place to keep it from becoming too sentient to be controlled. This AI needed to act as a soul for the ship he had taken from his fallen master after his demise at the hands, or fangs, of a Mythosaur. Not being the greatest pilot as his driving skills were more or less restricted to riding a speeder bike and a large Strill, he could use someone, or rather some thing to get him from one place to the next both safe and quick. Aside from that, it would need a certain level of combat skills when they were attacked in space or in orbit of a planet, making the knowledge of turrets and targeting systems an absolute must.

It was for that same reason that he had taken a few select droid heads that all had bits and pieces of what it was that he needed, yet would not get close to the eventual goal on their own. No, they were all a means to creating something new, something that was basically his own child. Thinking more on the subject, he realized that just flying and fighting would not be enough. To be truly potent, he would need the potential to grow indefinitely, adapting to what might come and improving itself beyond its base settings. In time, it would need to surpass that which it was made up of, to transcend the "knowledge" parted unto it by mastering it and building on it until it had no equal. The restrictions placed upon it were therefore necessary, though they also had to be made so that he, as the creator, would be able to loosen them in time.

Pushing the boundaries of what the AI would be able to learn every couple of months would restrict the harmful things it might learn, allowing Thresco to take out anything that might cause the AI to become too aware of itself, potentially becoming violent against its human master, yet still allowing it to keep advancing the skills it possessed. Control, that was the key word when it came to creating a mind that could potentially become without equal in all the galaxy, and it was that which needed to maintained at all times.

 

[Thresco]

Day 1:

After being turned on, the protocol droid kept talking, trying to figure out what had happened to his body and why he was standing on top of a table with four other heads. The computer he had been hooked up to instantly ran into various language programs that allowed the droid to function with any species that might buy it. That said, he ran into a couple of malfunctions with some of the less used languages and dialects, causing the droid to mess up and shut itself down. A minor setback.

When the OOM-series battle droid was booted up, there seemed to be very little going on in terms of adapting to his surroundings. In fact, it barely did anything at all as it lacked any serious intelligence of its own. During the clone wars, they had been deployed in large numbers so that they would win by overpowering their enemies, not because of their wit and fighting skills. Despite lacking any thought of its own like the newer B1-series, they still had some decent targeting systems that he quickly copied and saved before shutting it back down.

Turning on the B2 droid provided him with greater insight into what Baktoid combat automata was thinking when they first made them. Being quite aware of the history of war and machine advancement, as progress often came hand in hand with war, Thresco knew that they had been made after the battle of Naboo, which proved that the OOM-series were not powerful enough to win fights on their own, as well as removing the need for a signal to drive them. The B2 worked well enough without a signal to drive it as it had far more improved targeting systems than the OOM droids, even though a lack of signal had the droid forget all about their enemies once they left visual range.

 

[Thresco]

Day 2:

What felt like the jackpot to him at the time were the remains of a Vulture droid, which also lead him to believe that these particular remains were quite old, possible remnants of the old CIS. Vulture droids were used as starfighters that had no fear of dying, meaning they were often used as suicide bombers. Capable of maneuvers that would kill the average pilots, they possessed potent targeting systems, had self-repair protocols and a built in fail safe that would force them to self destruct if they ever lost contact with the control ship. This told him that the ship had been decommissioned before it had seen action.

Last but not least, an old droid that had been used as a bus driver. While not much on its own, it had been integrated with knowledge of the galactic common tongue, as well as various space routes and other flight paths. The major difference between it and a protocol droid was that it did not seem to realize it was no longer on a bus, having trouble getting used to not flying on predetermined times. Struggling to figure out what it was that he could do with this particular droid that could not be taken from the protocol droid or the vulture droid, he made sure to keep it around, just in case.

 

[Thresco]

Day 15:

The OOM-droid had been picked clean from any potentially useful systems, though overlapping systems from the B2 seemed to have rendered everything the OOM-droid had been outfitted with utterly obsolete. Being better in literally every way, Thresco replaced all the data from the OOM-droid with that of the B2 before adding the OOM-droid to the pile of spare parts. With all the information from the B2 transferred into the computer, the first step towards creating an AI had been made, even though it was nothing more than a battle droid capable of speaking galactic common, huttese, durese and pak pak. In the past few days, Thresco had also developed various chips of different sizes, ranging from the size of a nail to ones the size of a whole thumb. They were capable of storing an AI with ease, as even the smallest of the chips had the capacity to store the current one three and a half times. All things considered, he believed that he was making reasonable progress.

Day 17:

Two days after the OOM-droid had been scrapped from the program and the B2 outfitted with four spoken languages had become the primary system, the Vulture droid had been fully uploaded, the self-destruct protocol had been removed and the amount of maneuvers it could make were limited to those that could not kill any of the people inside of the ship it was flying. By now, an artificial intelligence had been created that could fly and fight, as well as speak in several languages, though it did not have what Thresco was looking for yet. The point was to create something that could think for itself to some extent, making it feel like he was a little less alone in the galaxy.

 

[Thresco]

Day 20:

After various failed attempts at combining the bits and pieces of intelligent design from the protocol droid and adding it to the main AI had failed to function as desired, a breakthrough had finally been made. Scrapping any previously made "Personality" from the B2, if it could be called that, the adaptation software from the protocol droid had been added so that the AI would be able to learn by watching and by doing, just like a person, just ten times faster. With various cameras set up throughout the house, as well as a microphone in his room, he would often talk to the AI in hopes of it learning Mando'a by hearing it. Giving it the name Torgost, he hoped that the language programming, the adaptation software and constant triggering from his end would do the job.

 

[Thresco]

Day 51:

Weeks had gone by since his attempt at educating Torgost, and it had been quite the fruitful endeavor. It had become capable of responding to its name, had a solid grasp on Mando'a in addition to the languages it already possessed and more. It had watched as Thresco scoured through the droid heads hooked up to Torgost's computer, through which he learned how to import files and data too small for Thresco to even notice. It had also imported all the routes and programming it deemed useful from the bus driver droid, including a bit of banter it had been programmed with for short conversations with passengers. From there, it had used the protocol droid information and the discussions Thresco made it listen to in the past thirty days in order to generate the start of an actual personality. The rate at which Torgost proved to be learning was above what Thresco had first believed possible.

 

[Thresco]

Day 60:

Torgost stopped learning, having no virtual space left for it to save any of the progress it made. In response, Thresco put Torgost inside of the largest chip he had been able to make, giving it an amount of space that could bypass the storage of the human brain several times over. Installing several breaks to keep it from learning specific things and subjects without authorization, he made sure that Torgost would not learn the kind of things that would compromise him. Additionally, a loyalty program was installed, tying the loyalties of the AI to Thresco, considering him to be what humans called family.

 

[Thresco]

Day 63:

Having watched Thresco repeatedly, he was installed into the Jiriad Kadiilir, proving to be a more skilled pilot than Thresco himself. Thanks to the size of the chip, it had plenty of storage room in which it could save and overwrite other flight data and improve himself by just doing. As part of its initial programming, which was what made it believe that the ship was its body, it rooted itself deeply into the systems of the Kom'rk class fighter, turning every portion of the ship into a limb. From that point on, the rate at which Torgost adapted turned back a bit. Almost making it look like it was tired of learning new things, which was part of how it was programmed, the only thing that steadily improved was his aim, which it practiced by firing at debris in space. Not believing the lack of progress to be all Torgost's fault, he loosened some of the restrictions on the AI while installing greater targeting systems purchased from a merchant at Duro.

Always capable of acquiring stuff that had "fallen off of the freighter", he got the good stuff from places such as Kuat Drive Yards, MandalMotors and more, all for fairly low prices. With the new hardware and software, Torgost rapidly adapted and increased his aim in the process, proving that an AI could never outgrow its equipment, which was most likely a good thing.

 

[Thresco]

Now, Torgost acts as a very potent pilot that takes Thresco from one place to the other as fast and as safe as possible. Being a better pilot than the Mandalorian believes himself to ever be capable of because it made every inch of the ship a part of itself in a way similar to how a human being experienced their legs and arms, he has a lot of faith in the AI to keep doing what it does best. Every now and again, Thresco pushes up the restrictions placed upon it, allowing it to learn more about everything it encounters. Learning how to become better at conversation, backing arguments with facts, how to tell jokes and even how to apply sarcasm, they were all things Thresco parted unto Torgost so that it would take in more of the human experience. Torgost had never been created to act solely as a fighter pilot, he had been created so that the Mandalorian would be less alone in the galaxy. With every passing day, that dream was realized more and more when the AI become more like a friend than a servant.

That said, Thresco never forgot about the restrictions and how he had to maintain control over the AI, as too much of a good thing could still turn out very bad. Torgost would grow, he would learn from Thresco as it did so, undoubtedly taking in some of his antics as a smuggler and a merchant along the way. If exploited, it might allow the artificial intelligence to trick the Mandalorian by beating him at his own game. While it seemed hard to believe that Torgost would ever reach a point where it could make an attempt at getting rid of Thresco, he knew that the day might eventually come. Until then, all he could do was instruct the AI in who his creator was and who he was meant to be loyal to every single day.