Why Can't This Be Love?

[Hannibal Oryen]

The time had finally come. Laboring under the shadow of the rest of the galaxy would no longer be necessary. With the schematics for the CZ-HKD Droid Brain now in hand, coupled with Hannibal’s own ingenuity and the resources at the disposal of Cestus Cybernetics, it was time to move forward with his goal. The J1 had been an important step in launching Cestus Cybernetics. It gave his droids the necessary edge to outcompete other models where intelligence was concerned. There were no designs like it in the galaxy. Then again, maybe there were, but they were not as well-circulated as the J1.

Helping to catapult the J1 to some level of prominence was the Santhe Corporation, which made use of it in their SC1 Security Droid. The SC1 performed very well in combat situations, but it was still lacking in comparison to other more elite droids, such as the MagnaGuards or the BX series. This was hardly an issue, as it regularly outperformed droids in a similar price category, such as the B1 or something similarly defunct.

Hannibal had meant to test the SC1 against other, more recently released models of combat droid. He had opted against it, purely because he would rather use that gimmick when the main line of Cestian combat droids came out. Hannibal had high hopes for the Talos series. As a fan and regular profiteer of war, war droids were by far his favorite. These would need to be perfect. Pinnacle. Top of the line for the lowest possible prices. That was the main objective of Cestus, really. Undersell the competition and still produce the best droids on the market.

Not exactly the easiest or most coherent of business models, but it was working pretty well so far.

It was working a lot better than the business model of Baktoid, which presently entailed getting arrested by the Omega Protectorate for having a hand in the Druckenwell Catastrophe. Some people really had to get a grip on what to get involved with and what not to get involved it. Hannibal still couldn’t believe how great a call not going into business in Confederate space had been. Instead, Cestus had skipped right over to the Protectorate, which certainly didn’t look like it was going to go rogue nation any time soon. Hannibal had also heard that Baktoid’s CEO had gotten herself involved in a plagirist scandal, but who really paid attention to that stuff, anyway? Hannibal hadn’t bothered to fact check it. It was probably just another unfounded rumor.

 

[Hannibal Oryen]

Hannibal may have been a very smart man on his own. He was much smarter than he usually let on to his peers and colleagues in the Fringe. It was his Fondorian predisposition towards being such a smart man that enabled him to design the J1 Droid Brain. It was all well and good that he was able to do so on his own, but on occasion it was good to get design and execution input from others. There were many droid engineers in the galaxy, all with different specialties. Hannibal decided that this project, his baby, was best suited to be in the hands of insects.

It wasn’t at all surprising that best engineers in the galaxy were often insects. They had a predisposition towards order and cohesion. They saw things differently. Most of them, anyway. Zothustro and most other X’Ting looked and acted independently. Just like any other humanoids. That was why the engineers he hired were primarily Verpine and Geonosian. These were both a meticulous race, rather well-known for their designs and other feats of engineering. The Geonosians had a near-unrivaled capacity to produce droids, the Verpine an uncanny ability to construct an entire city in an asteroid field. They were good at innovating, to say the least.

This wasn’t to say that Hannibal had decided that only bugs would be able to help him in this endeavor. No, outside of the team of Geonosian and Verpine technicians were more qualified individuals. A Givin by the name of Klos Rayat and a Bith called Fiin Aharo.

Both were similarly gifted races. Givin were unrivaled mathematicians, Bith held an uncanny predisposition for scientific studies. Both of these particular specimens decided to focus their innate special talents into the field of droid engineering. It was likely that at least one of them were actually more well-versed in the art than Hannibal. That should be unsurprising, considering that one of them had a lot more brain matter to work with and the other one had to make up for their total lack of sex appeal through intelligence.

Oh, that was mean. It won’t do well to think of such things while trying to work.

Hannibal entered the work room, the doors sliding shut behind him. The team was already assembled, albeit broken up into cliques. The Verpine were only talking to Verpine, the Geonosians talking to Geonosians. At least Klos and Fiin were chatting, although from the tone of their voices it was more an argument. Something about whether the Sith were evil, or something similarly often argued but still inherently obvious.

This was going to be a real fun time.

 

[Hannibal Oryen]

“Gather around, team.” Hannibal began, holding up his datapad as if it were a rallying flag. He was not aware that the majority of the Verpine team did not speak basic.

The mostly-insectoid team gathered around their employer, ready to be enthused. Or in the case of all but one Verpine, totally and utterly confounded.

“What we’re here to do is not just make history. We will be doing that, but that isn’t our main objective here. Our main objective is to construct a droid brain of such mind-bending power and quality, that it tears at the very fabric of space and time. And what’s more, we’ll do it without going over budget.”

Nods of approval from the Givin and the Bith. One of the Verpine started translating. The Geonosian team did not seem impressed. They didn’t have to be, as long as they just did their job.

“Czerka tried to do what we do, and you want to know how well it worked for them? They’re getting run out of business by the biggest blaster company in the galaxy.” Hannibal left out the fact that it was mostly his fault that such a thing was happening. “So not only are those mooks totally in the dirt, but the brain they delivered was one of the most sub-par pieces of equipment in the galaxy. Here, take a look.”

The translating Verpine paused for a few moments, unable to find a similar word for mook. He eventually settled to tell the rest of his team “unpleasant people” in place of Hannibal’s favorite word. It didn’t bother Hannibal, seeing as all of those clicks and chitters sounded the same to him. The Fondorian wandered over to a table where a single object was covered by a tarp. Everyone already knew what was under there, seeing as they couldn’t be left unsupervised for a long time and not take a look around.

Hannibal removed the tarp, revealing a CZ-HKD droid brain. Huge shocker for everyone in the room, truly.

“Now the one thing that polygamist sleazeball Tyri Lupu or whatever got right was that he used Gabonna. The problem with his gabonna was that it’s total garbage. Take a look at this.”

Hannibal cracked open the droid, haphazardly yanking out the processor before plucking the gabonna memory chip from it. He held the green crystallized chip up for the rest of the group to see. Those familiar with it would note that it did closely resemble a Gabonna memory crystal, but it simply appeared… Off. The coloration was too light.

“Those eggheads managed to figure out how to mass-produce these things. Clone them, if you will, but they just ain’t as good as the real deal.” Hannibal illustrated this by crushing the small crystal between his two fingers, reducing it to a fine dust. “Not only that, but our crack team of scientists ran a few tests on these babies. Let a droid go too long with this trash, and it’ll go irreparably crazy. How’s that for subpar?”

 

[Hannibal Oryen]

The green dust sprinkled to the floor, but a stray gust of wind from an air vent set off a series of events that ultimately resulted in one of the Geonosians sneezing. So far Hannibal could tell he had the interest and total attention of Klos and Fiin. Largely because they were the only people present with readable facial expressions. Maybe if Zothustro were here, he could relay to Hannibal just how interested the Verpine and the Geonosians were. Fortunately, Cestus Cybernetics’ CEO was talking with bigwigs from Silk Holdings, BlasTech, and Corellian Engineering right about now. Time much better spent than telling Hannibal what his insectoid friends were thinking.

“Oh, but that still isn’t the best part, friends.” Hannibal said, reaching back into the droid brain to yank something else out. “This entire brain’s built on ancient technology. Good ancient technology, but ancient technology is still ancient technology.”

Hannibal started plucking out parts, which began to elicit guffaws from the two humanoids and high-pitched clicks from the insects. He hoped that was what insectoid creatures laughing was supposed to sound like. If not, it didn’t matter, because ultimately this was just fluff to fill up wordcount on the dev thread so it looked really impressive when the J2 finally got churned out.

“And the fact that it’s filled with all this ancient hogwash is only part of the problem. The other part of the problem, aside from its bogus Gabonna, is that it’s just loaded with other superfluous and unnecessary parts.”

Parts were now flying through the air (but not towards the observing technicians of course), as Hannibal continued.

“This stuff isn’t stuff you would put in a droid brain, but the actual droid, so I don’t even know where these schmucks got off jamming this in here. Yeah, it was for battle droids, but we’re going for bigger and better things here at Cestus. We want a brain that can be used for every droid. And this hunk of junk just doesn’t measure up in the long run.”

Hannibal eventually finished gutting the brain, leaving an empty husk with useless junk parts piled up around it on the table. He did not mourn the loss of this technological travesty. In fact, he probably got something of a guilty pleasure taking it apart. It wasn’t like he needed it any longer at this point. He already had the blueprints for the blasted thing if he needed another one.

“Now that we’ve identified the problems with our primary competitor’s model, we’re going to rectify them and then some.”

 

[Hannibal Oryen]

For several hours, the team worked on producing a prototype. There were very few parts and tools that Hannibal hadn’t made available in the workshop. The first hurdle to tackle was that of improving on the complex microsynapse system the J1 already utilized. Most folks didn’t know what microsyanpse did or how it functioned, but that was okay. It meant less people were going to use it. Bonus points for Cestus.

As far as Hannibal utilized it, it was an internal system that allowed his droid brains to process information. Microsynapse on its own was all well and good, but structuring it the right way within the droid brain was another thing entirely. The first time around, Hannibal had fiddled with it on his own and managed to produce a working structure that was more efficient than those found in other droids.

Coming up with a microsynapse structure took time, largely because it required special tools and a lot of fine, adroit movements. A single mistake or an itch would probably break something and throw the whole thing into turmoil. Microsynapse were rather fragile things. Very easily dissolved if exposed to acid, too.

But that was another thing.

When designing the J1, Hannibal had spent the better part of several days and nights sitting at this workstation, grimacing as he attempted to work his magic. Now the whole ordeal was a lot less painful, considering he had a Givin standing close by, running calculations in his head that even Hannibal couldn’t quite grasp. The ego of many a Fondorian had been slain by encounters with Givin. The two of them drew from the design of the microsynapse system in the J1, shifting them around and improving efficiency along the way. Redundant strains were removed, strains that needed to be thickened were thickened.

While Hannibal and Klos handled this endeavor, most of the Verpine and the Geonosians picked over J1s and some other components. The Bith, Fiin, took a few Verpine and a duo of Geonosians over to work on the vanilla programming of the J2. They, too, would have the programming of the original J1s to draw from and a myriad of other droid brains at their disposal.

There were only so many things that could be made from scratch. It never hurt to draw inspiration from other products and improve upon them. As long as the J2 wasn’t an exact replica with a different color scheme, Hannibal figured he could avoid the prying eyes of lawyers. He didn’t intend to fall into the same hole as Subach-Innes, a company whose crimes now included patent infringement in addition to providing for rogue nations and financing genocide.

He could not, for the life of him, understand what would drive a company to do such things. It hardly seemed profitable.

 

[Hannibal Oryen]

Fiin’s job was to handle the programming aspect of the droid brain. This was a lot easier said than done, as it looked like the original programmer for the J1 wasn’t as good at it as he let on. There were problems, issues. Some gaps and bugs. Thankfully they had little impact on the overall performance of the J1, owing to the processing speed of its part and the fact that the vanilla programming was only there to make the J1 easily re-purposed for other needs. Such as combat, gardening, accounting, or whatever depending on what droid it was being crammed into.

So the Bith set about cleaning house. Some of these bugs were rather garish. Frankly, if he were Hannibal, he ought to be embarrassed. But how could he be if his droids were selling so well? A very decent cluster of Mandalorian systems were his most avid customers right now. Cestus’ intended expansion into the Protectorate was only going to improve things, especially with this J2 about to hit the market along with its associated products.

The few Verpine and Geonosians that had come along to help him out were doing the same thing. Fiin only had a rudimentary understanding of their language, but it seemed they were occasionally laughing at what they found. This Oryen character must have been a real do-it-himself type of person prior to this. Evidently Czerka’s droid brain had made him angry enough that he felt the need to call in him, Klos, and a swarm of bugs to help him this time around. Nothing quite like the threat of competition to kick things into gear.

Would this really be any better than Czerka’s droid brain, though? That had been made with the full weight of the Techno Union flung behind it. And it still wasn’t even that good, as Hannibal had wasted time to demonstrate. He supposed Czerka’s motivation for using old parts as to keep the price down, but from what Fiin understood that wasn’t a problem for a company that did all of its manufacturing on Ord Cestus. High-end technology was regularly manufactured here and shipped off world. It came cheaper here than it did on most other Confederate planets.

That was probably Hannibal’s plan for keeping these J2s cheap enough to mass produce. Although most of the parts he brought in for people to “draw” from came from around the galaxy, the parts he had set up the rest of the Verpine and Geonosians with were all either manufactured on Ord Cestus or within Mandalorian space. Fiin briefly wondered if it was, in fact, Hannibal who had concocted this and not the CEO of the company. The idea itself seemed above his pay grade.

 

[Hannibal Oryen]

The Geonosians and the Verpine busied themselves by debating the overall build of the brain. As one would expect from putting two different species of insectoids that came from very closely knit, isolated societies, it quickly broke down into what the Geonosians thought was a good idea and what the Verpine thought was a good idea. They were both unanimous in giving the brain a Gabonna Crystal-based central processing unit- a Cestian design. Everything here was Cestian designed. It was fairly annoying to both groups, but they were more focused on their differences at this point.

Verpine, generally peaceful group that they were, wanted to optimize the build and parts of the droid brain to be more suited for labor droids and the like. Industrious and servile things that generally disincluded tasks that involved beating people up and laying waste to everything in sight. The galaxy had enough violence as it was. If there were more droids on the market that helped organics rather than destroy them, maybe the galaxy would be a better place.

Now, the Geonosians didn’t like this one bit. They were a more martial, more warlike folk. They wanted to optimize the build for war droids. They wanted absolutely no part in this stupid hippie “let’s make droids that hug people” nonsense. The people of the galaxy wanted war droids because the people of the galaxy were constantly killing one another. They usually weren’t very good at it, though, so they were going to need robots that did the killing for them. That’s life for you. That’s business.

 

[Hannibal Oryen]

The Verpine pointed out that if Cestus really wanted to make combat droids, they would have more combat droids. As it stood, they only had work and general labor droids.

The Geonosians pointed out that the Zenithar-series was but one series, and that if Cestus really had no interest in combat droids, they wouldn’t have partnered with Santhe to make the SC1.

The Verpine pointed out that the Stendarr-series was made up of aid and field medic droids rather than combat models, so clearly Cestus was more focused on non-combat droids than war droids.

The Geonosians pointed out that if combat droids were such a bad business decision, then why did the Verpine make one?

The Verpine pointed out that was just that one time, and they had changed since then. Besides, they were just trying to distract from the issue at hand.

The Geonosians pointed out that if Cestus wasn’t interested in eventually producing combat droids, they wouldn’t have been agitated by the CZ-HKD, which was only for use in combat droids.

Hannibal looked over his shoulder and pointed out that if they didn’t stop arguing and keep the droid brain optimized for use in both combat and non-combat droids, he wouldn’t pay them.

The Verpine and Geonosians both agreed this was a good point, and put aside their differences to do so.

 

[Hannibal Oryen]

Weeks of intensive laboring over the J2 prototype came and went until, finally, a working model was completed. It was tested rigorously, both in combat and non-combat droids and in terms of a stand-alone processing unit.

“Overall, I would like to report a 203% increase in overall efficiency from the J1.” Klos deduced after flipping through several sheets of flimsiplast attached to a clipboard. “Which effectively renders the CZ-HKD droid brain obsolete wherever it can be found.”

Zothustro Quill was in the workshop now, alongside Hannibal and the Givin. Fiin had taken his paycheck and left along with the Verpine and Geonosians. If they had not already left the planet, they were going somewhere to get drunk in celebration. Or maybe the Verpine and Geonosians were going to have a gang war. Zothustro could never tell with those two groups.

Hannibal was positively beaming. If it weren’t for the readily apparent sleep deprivation, Zothustro would say this was the happiest the Fondorian had ever looked. The only other time he could recall seeing humans so happy was generally after the birth of a child. Zothustro could almost understand, but there weren’t any children to be found here. Just a hunk of plasteel and circuitry and other parts that made up droid brains.

“<< Thank you for your services, Mr. Rayat. You may leave. >>”

The Givin nodded, exiting the room for the final time. Perhaps a bit too happy to be rid of this uncomfortable desert world.

 

[Hannibal Oryen]

Zothustro meandered closer to the table the prototype was on. He leaned in and inspected it. As far as Zothustro could tell, yes, it was indeed a droid brain. It was visually indistinguishable from the J1. Around the same size as well. If Zothustro didn’t know any better, he would say that this actually was a J1.

“Ain’t it a beaut? This is my magnum opus, right here.”

“For the sake of this company’s future, I hope that isn’t the case.” Zothustro said. “We will have to wait some time before we can engage in full production. You will need to get to work designing the Surgeon Droid we discussed.”

Zothustro turned from the droid brain to look at Hannibal in all his disheveled, post-project glory.

“<< After you rest, obviously. >>”

“Hey, don’t act like you have to tell me. I’m falling into a coma as soon as I get home.”