The Rail Is Paved With...

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

No, she is at the right track, but turned at the wrong time.

"What if we don't link them together into a single centralized unit." Rash cut in, ignoring the cursing. Didn't matter much to him, he was old enough that he probably knew more expletives than was healthy or respectable, but he knew how the passion hit when you were getting to an idea. "What if turn it into a simple sub-routine that passes the abnormalities up in the hierarchy?"

He flicked his finger and the design of the vault was gone and in its stead a blank slate.

Some focus and basic routines began to be drawn in the air. Hierarchical systems. They weren't in working order, of course. The Echani was good at what he did, but he couldn't actually draw up a working prototype on the fly without some preparations.

"They can check, but not act on it, besides reporting the troubles?"

Sure, they'd have to weed out a way to minimize false positives, but it was definitely cheaper than cloaking the internal systems of every single droid with nullification resin.

 

[Kaili Talith]

[member="Tai Fa"]

Wait, he actually continued with the AI idea. Kaili perked her brow and looked on from afar as the man scribbled it down.

“We could do that,” Kaili nodded. “The problem I had with the unit I worked on was that a single slicer was able to pervert a whole legion of protocol droids because of the way I had set them up.” She waved her hand before her. “Rookie mistake, to be sure, but a learning experience nonetheless.”

“Luckily enough the slicer and the man who had hired them both ended up getting a taste of what they had set in motion.” The girl grimaced as she stroke the nail of her thumb across her throat. It hadn’t been pretty and the droids that had malfunctioned had all been equipped with improvised weaponry at the time. Needless to say it was a job that had taken some considerable time just to bite them in the rear.

“And, well, at the risk of sounding cold… I didn’t mind their fates all that much.” She glanced at the man’s drawing again. “What I do mind, however, is the fact that it showed me a weakness in the code I had written.”

“To leave them unable to act is a good idea.” She agreed. “And if you want to get even more into multi-purpose droid functions, well…”

“There is nothign stopping us from installing sensors and cameras in the droids to check for trespassers either.”

“... It’d help keep the tracks free of trash. Both physical and metaphorical.”

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

"I like the way you think." Rash complimented, while making a few more adjustments to the concept and adding some notes here and there, so they wouldn't forget about it at a later junction.

"But yes, I think if we restrict the inheritance capabilities of the models, we will be relatively safe. If one droid doesn't just take over the state of the other, the risk of 'one droid corrupts all' will be avoided." It would have been quite an interesting tactic, of course, if they managed to make it safe. Update one droid and every single droid on the neural network would be updated as well. Hell, they could probably increase the computation power of the droids as more of them were added to the network.

While pondering about it, his finger was tracing the thoughts and turning them into separate concepts on the blueprint.

Then Rash blinked and saw he had changed the entire scheme according to the idea he had.

"Oh... uh, my bad. I got carried away there for a second." Toothy grin and a shrug. "You aren't the only one who gets over-excited and into it, when we get in the grit of it."

 

[Kaili Talith]

[member="Tai Fa"]

“I’ve experimented with neural networks before with rather successful results.” Kaili nodded. “Mostly ways to delegate work between units to ensure that whatever work was thrown at that particular set of droids would be taken care of as swiftly as possible.”

It didn’t pass the girl by that in the end she was already working on the droid that she would be providing Fa Holdings without having actually signed any sort of contract yet, but at this point she wasn’t really all that worried about it. Once they got to the design of it, and how to actually fit it within as small of a unit as possible, that was when she would get worried. Until then there was nothing wrong with just riding the wave of ingenuity.

“Droid gets task, droid does task, droid checks for further tasks and goes to recharge and enters standby if there is nothing else to do.”

“It’s all in the way we handle their communication, I guess.”

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

"Very true." Rash agreed with amusement apparent. "Well, this was a fun thought exercise, miss Talith. I don't get to do it often, as you might expect."

"But I think we shouldn't let you do all the work prior to actually establishing the contract."

He pondered about it for a while. There were disadvantages and advantages towards signing up this lady to work for them for this particular contract, of course. The positive was that she knew what she was doing and would do it very well, especially with the technopathy angle going strong.

The negatives were of a different sort.

It was trusting that this lady could be trusted and that was taking a risk. One that Rash thought was worthwhile, but who knew the mind of Lord Fa?

Well, except Vnut himself.

A datapad was pushed over the table towards her.

"The terms as they stand right now. Review them at your leisure, please."

 

[Kaili Talith]

[member="Tai Fa"]

Contracts were, in the end, matters that had a tendency to hide the occasional tidbits that would later come back to bite you. There were people that wanted to work for Kaili that held bureaucracy close to their hearts, and the few of them that she didn’t turn away were now sitting in her Coruscant office filing taxes and handling legal complaints around the clock. She had respect for them, but red tape was one of those things that had her more likely to go crazy than anything else.

Nothing quite like colored adhesives to put a hamper in your plans.

The girl eyed the terms of the contract with the occasional glance thrown at both Vnut and Rash. It was far more secretive than most other contracts ever were, down to the part where she had to monitor each and every single individual involved for a period lasting up to ten years.

Well, good thing for her the project was all in her hands with no other prying eyes.

Her tongue wetted her lips to stave off the dryness. She grabbed the stylus and wrote her signature on the dotted lines.

“Looks like Fa Holdings will be in possession of a new set of cleaners by next week then.” The girl smilled. “I will be taking care of this project on my own.”

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

Rash took a look at the signature, before nodding in satisfaction.

"Would you like to meet Lord Fa, before you leave? I am sure he'd be fascinated to have a short conversation." The Echani responded while standing up. He exchanged another look with Vnut, who just nodded in acknowledgement. The ursine was already being called the metaphorical bridge to Fa.

The final access point, before you actually got to meet him.

Such was the way with nobility and space peacocks.

"It wouldn't be a very long meeting, he's quite a busy... individual."

 

[Kaili Talith]

[member="Tai Fa"]

The offer had her thinking for a second. This was the first contract she had signed through middle men. Most who had approached her were the people who were looking to expand their arsenal of droids or more often than not owned the company in question. Here she was now speaking to a Lord’s head of engineering rather than the man himself. She would have been wise to accept the answer, but Kaili was in no state of mind in which she wanted to meet new people.

Besides that her hands were empty. The meeting would simply have to wait until she had something more concrete to bring him other than empty promises and a handshake.

“Oh. No, that’s quite alright. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me already.” She bowed her head slowly to display her gratitude nonetheless. “My work is intensive and I’d much rather the meeting held meaning than to be just a mere social call.”

“No offense intended, of course.” She started to pocket her pad. “Maybe when I’ve got the prototype in hand, but not before then.”

 

[Jairus Starvald]

[member="Kaili Talith"]

"Of course, I understand completely." The Eshan responded with a nod, before offering to a shake a hand. "Vnut will escort you back to your ship, I have much work ahead of me and it cannot wait."

Hands shaken, goodbyes extended and Rash returned to his work.

In his stead Vnut waited patiently for Kaili to finish gathering up her stuff and leave the room with him. It was quite a silent track through the corridors, before the ursine finally decided to say something.

"You impressed him, miss Talith. I have known Rash for quite some time now and that is not a thing that happens easily." They left the building and walked down the pad towards her ship. "You should be quite pleased with today's events." After that he resumed his silence and would presumably wait for Kaili to board her ship and leave.

For the time of her stay her safety was his responsibility after all.

 

[Kaili Talith]

[member="Tai Fa"]

Of course the young girl smiled a little extra at the knowledge she had impressed Rash. The stroll towards the ship felt far more shorter than when she had entered the building. The hallways seemed to shift and change with them until eventually she remained standing with both feet on the landing platform throwing a final glance over at Vnut as he turned around to report back to the others that she was ‘safe.’ Part of her had to wonder if all meetings with technomancers would be like this, or if Rash was an exception. She hoped that he wasn’t. Allyson was great, but the more the merrier, so to speak.

With a strut to her hip she entered her ship and prepared for take off and went back home.

Much like expected, a copy of her blueprints along with a smaller model version of her work found its place to the peacock’s front door. This process would never change. It was who she was. Kaili had worked as intently on this model as she ever did, and once the stressful week was over, well…

She slept. There was a lot of energy to regain and a schedule to catch up on.