11 Happy 3rd Birthday

"Happy, Happy, Birthday!" Yelled my Mom and Dad as they stormed in to my room followed by a droid with a holo recorder.

"So how does it feel to be three?" asked my dad in Galactic standard

I answered in bocce "The same as when I was two"

"Then how did it feel to be two" My Mom asked using Corellisi

I attempted to answer in Olys "I did not fell I is."

"I did not feel I was". My Mom replied in Olys then she switched to basic "That was pretty good. You just had your last verb conjugated to the present tense and you need more emphasis on the first vowel in Feel. Other than that perfect. I know it may seem that we are pushing you but we want you to learn as much as possible as fast as possible. The reason being was when your grandmother was on her death bed, she told your father and I to train you in as much as we could, as fast as we could, and as throughly as we could for our first born would be in a battle for his life once he reached majority. Now to you this may seem like the rambling of a woman who was about to die. But in our family each person gives a prophecy on their death bed that turns out to be 100% accurate. Each time they focus on the family. They have saved the family each time."

"Son I know this is a lot to take in but in time I hope you will understand. Oh and your not getting a sibling until you turn 5. Other than that make a wish, while we sing the song, when were done blow out your candles, hold that wish next to your heart, and strive to make it true." Finished Dad.

And then they sung the song. It was a happy birthday rendition that went trough 8 languages, with one of them being sung by all the droids throughout the ship at the same time. That last part was very eerie the ship vibrated with the sound of happy Birthday. Once they were thru I held my wish to see Bastille on my 4th birthday and blew out the candles on the cake held by C4-D0. It did not go boom.

After that we ate cake for breakfast and had bacon for desert. OK it was somthing else but it taste like Bacon, it smells like Bacon, it looks like Bacon, its Bacon. They might call it fried Nerf belly I call it Bacon.

Once washed up dad picked me up and placed me in a back pack contraption and we went all over the ship. Mostly it was supervisory work. But we got to fix a couple of power lines that were emitting Electro Magnetic radiation causing the droids to do weird things. One of the BB units we had left was whistling Daisy while rubbing against the wall, whilst trying to fix the problem. But each time it lined up the wrong service bay, it would then open the one it needed and run in to a 404 error as its optic censors would not pick up its tools in the right spot. At least the R2 series had better EM shielding around its CPU. (AN: using your favorite search engine look up 'first song sang by a computer')

We only had 4 issues that we fixed to keep the Mega-Minner running at peak performance. Most of these issues would have been fixed by a droid but dad says the best way to learn how to do something is the teach someone else or fix it your self. Now that second option can cost you more in the long run but you get a father son bonding experience out of it.

Besides when you consider our on site manufacturing capacity we can make almost any thing we need, with the exclusion of hyper drives and specific components of the internal compensators. The hyper drive you only need 2, a primary and a back up. The internal compensators components we buy by the crate, which has enough to re-do the whole ship twice. The rate those components go out is negligible, about once a year a single panel might go out. In which case the surrounding ones easily pick up the slack.

Yeah...

Dad and I had a lot of fun he even got Mom to turn off the gravity for a while so he could demonstrate the difficulties of working in a null-gravity environment. All I could think was "At least we are not doing this in space suites." I also got some training on some of the safety equipment you always carry while in space. One of the items was a spool of monofilament and a foam covered electro magnet.

You attach the magnet to the wire and swing it at a wall. Once it hits it sticks. Then you real yourself in. Once at the wall you can activate your M/Grave boots to now stick to the floor and walk around. Though it feels like you are walking on fly paper. It was a lot of fun.

After about 4 hours Dad left me with Mom and we would have lunch. She would ask me about my day and I would talk about all the things Dad and I did. It was a lot of fun. Mom would also show me how to prepare simple snacks and then we would put them in to storage before heading to the main control room.

Here I got to see Mom in her natural environment. She directed the droids on what to harvest next, bossed Dad to do different tasks that were quicker to do by hand than by droid.

This lead me to the differences in the work force. Humans had great problem solving and are able to interrupt there current task to do another task of higher importance. Droids on the other hand can be specialized. Once they do a task that they are set up for they can work up to 5 times faster and longer than a human, but if it leaves its specialized task well... it sucks.

Today I got to see it happen.

One of the traders that comes to the station to purchase and trade for ore/processed materials was using a Frankenstein's protocol droid as a cargo handler. Now if it was light cargo that was to be carried (like a brief case/data pad/personal luggage /you get the picture) it would work fine. This guy got the bright idea to retrofit a protocol droid on to a cargo lifter that had a malfunctioning motivator unit. (once stopped it would not move until you hit it with significant force that sensors say it was moving) well protocol droids have a narrow field of vision and this droid was not hooked in to all of the sensors. The protocol droid was mounted where the old CPU was located. Over all it looked like SI-FI scorpion. Where the tail should be you had the waist up of a protocol droid that looks like it came from 4 different models. The main section was a stubby box. The legs were replaced by repulsers and the front claws were for cargo handling. This particular contraption was 13 feet long with out cargo and 9 feet wide and 9 feet tall. It had the ability to move a 20' standard cargo container. This particular order was for 1g pellets of aluminum. Unfortunately the droid was not hooked on the the sensors located on the cargo bot so it ran over the BB unit. The safeties built in to the bot activated...

Lets say it was loud, that bot was totaled again and the BB unit was OK. Don't ask, I don't know why. These things are nearly indestructible. You had 80000 pound of cargo and droid that attempted to come to a complete stop and increase its height as to not crush a person. (oogle: exercise ball backflip) just replace the ball with BB unit and the human with an 80000 pound Bot, and remember repulsers push away in one direction. It landed on its head. That was a mess. Dad heard it in the tail section when he was checking on the maneuvering pistons and sensors. Lets just say he was not happy, and covered in grease.

Once the mess was cleaned up we sent the trader on his way with his now defunct cargo bot.

6 Months later