Randomness and regularity

After a weekend of near-perfect conditions, it was time to go back to Alderaan, to the dorm and the droid. Ali, now much more... brave or uninhibited, had gone off to her room and left me alone. Alone with my forgotten and forsaken for the time being iron friend.

It took me almost another day of tedious work to finish all the work and reprogram the droid. Ali had gone off to her studies, having only glanced into my room, but I was in no hurry to go to the academy - I was programming. The drivers for the devices were included in the kit, but there were a couple more devices that I created personally, and that was where I had to sweat. But I coped with the work at a relatively high pace, and when the droid was completely finished, I turned it on. It was the middle of the day by then, and we returned early in the morning.

The droid turned on and panted for a few seconds, examining its carcass, and then, finally, it spoke with its new vocabulary:

- What have you done to me? - I must have spent an hour, if not more, trying to find a voice for Erdw. I ended up trying different kinds of voices, and settled on a masculine, juvenile one, with a slightly comical sound at the expense of distortion. In this way, the droid's voice became like that of a man inhaling helium and a little electronic.

- You have no idea what it is, my friend, not even an idea," I smiled, making the droid think. Or do some self-diagnostics.

And then my iron friend began to check the tool. Instead of welding he found a blaster, which he almost shot into the wall, then pulled out his own lightsaber.

- What's that for?

- How? It cuts, welds, heats, and can be used to solder with, if necessary," I shrugged.

Then the droid twirled his new arms and tested the projector in the test mode. I did not install a force field on it - it would be easier to armor it with metals from the hyperdrives, which were still gathering dust in the cargo hold of the G9, and it was gathering dust in the parking lot.

Erdva was an exceptionally interesting droid, and even after being converted into a prototype it could become fantastically functional. Such a global modification could be mass-produced, but before that it would be necessary to test it "in the field", that is, under real ship repair and maintenance conditions. The only problem was that I, for sure, had no problems with the technical inspection - I fixed all the defects myself. Well, how did I fix it - for me, fixing some malfunctioning part was like picking up a screwdriver that had fallen on the floor. It was just as natural, so I didn't notice how on the fly I used to repair the ship. So there was no practice for Erdwah - I had to make it up as I went along - forcefully disassemble some of his old parts, or rather welding and part of the reactor, and send a droid to fix the broken parts. I also chose breakages very similar to the real ones, so I had no doubts about the purity of the experiment.

The problems began immediately - the droid, not yet accustomed to its new limbs, worked as best it could, but it did not bring results. Then, watching him, I advised him:

- "Load the blueprints into the RAM and connect the computational module to simulate the future process.

- Would it help? - Erdva said in a sad voice.

- It should help.

The droid did so, and he panted for about five seconds before he started, which was a lot of time for his processing power. But it got better-at least his cuts and light arc welding were much better than his first attempt, and he was beyond praise for his electronics.

- Now go as far away as you can and try to extend the arms to their full length," I asked, and Erdva complied. The length of the arms was exactly the same as his own, that is, a meter without the cap.

After some panting, the droid managed this as well, and I continued to torture him in test mode - I forcefully levitated the object of repair - a welding machine to the other end of the room, with the words:

- Now pull it to you and repair it.

Erdva complied with this request as well - the machine flew across the room and into the gripping manipulators of the droid. Instead of the standard two, there were now three, like the droids I'd seen. And no wonder - two are needed directly in the process of work, and the third can be auxiliary and universal... universal... something clicked in my head and I, having commanded "follow me" immediately rushed in the direction of the local radio market. At the same time I made a vow to myself - to attach a socket to the speeder, as on fighters, so it would be possible to dock with the system of an astrodroid, that is to multiply the benefits of it during normal travel.

But so far I had to steer it myself, manually. Braking again at the very wall, I stepped out into the air and dove into the local equivalent of a "hunchback. I remembered the vendors who were steaming goods to me, and I immediately walked past them. The one who sold me the parts for Erdwas no match, because I had a pretty crazy idea and needed a workshop here, it was impossible to implement it in the room. I ran to the third floor, to the one I bought the ship from. An unfriendly but rather professional salesman. His shop was open and I flew inside, rousing the salesman.

- Oh, it's you," he announced immediately, "welcome, or something....

- You'd better not try to be friendly, it doesn't suit you," I returned the favor, and made the salesman smile. - I urgently need a workshop and some parts.

- Whoa, whoa, what workshop? - He was astonished. Erdva flew in behind me and landed on the floor.

- To repair the droids. I'll pay for it, of course," I said the obvious thing, "or are you telling me you had those droids made by hand? - I nodded toward the R2s standing off to the side.

- One of the workshops made them," the salesman shrugged. - But I'm not related to them.

- How do you mean? - I was astonished looking into the eyes of the seller.

- Yes, I am. You're not an Alderaan, are you?

- Suppose..." I said cautiously.

- If you were an Alderaan, you'd know there's a lot of art here.

- I know that," I walked around the display case of model ships and stood in front of the salesman.

- And this machinery is not just a commodity," he circled his hand around his shop, "it's a work of art. Very peculiar works of art, of course, but still.

- И?.. - I asked a question, demanding to be continued. I don't understand.

- Well, there are a few craft shops in Alderra that aren't just repair shops, but craftsmanship is very specific," he went on, "and they're quite scrupulous about their creations. You know, they're very focused on their theme. I buy up what they have for sale and sell it here. Usually there's always a buyer.

- So you're not connected to the shop? - I grimaced. The seller turned out to be a reseller.

- They're all pretty shut-up companies, and every shop has its own little trick," said the salesman thoughtfully. - But you can still go to someone. I can give you the address, and then you can arrange it yourself.

- Okay," I said quietly. - Erdva! Write it down.

The droid came out from behind me, and said in human language:

- Give me the address of those vivisectors, kid.

The salesman was a little surprised - it's pretty hard to put a vocabulator in the R2 series, not considering the other modifications. It's hard to bolt something to it that's not designed for it, and mine only had a fire extinguisher from the stock modifications, the rest was converted from parts for more powerful droids or even from stationary systems, such as a projector and a computing module.

The salesman dictated the address to the droid, and it unfolded a two-meter-long, colorful, flat projection of Alderra, thereby putting the salesman in a strange state, which I could not accurately qualify.

- It's here," the droid highlighted one part on the outskirts of the city, obscuring the rest of the projection.

- Then let's fly. Thank you," I thanked the salesman and immediately headed toward the exit. But I was interrupted by the salesman:

- Hey, kid!

- Yes?" I stopped.

- If you have anything, you bring it to me, I'll give you a good price.

- Done," I smiled, and went to the address of the shop.

The local navigator led me to an industrial area, or rather a garage cooperative. It was a small private spaceport - four well pads with ships and several ground hangars, the whole area was fenced off and at the entrance, analogous to the checkpoint, there was a secretary droid. I had to talk to him:

- Excuse me, are these the workshops? - I asked politely. - I was advised to come here.

- You have not been deceived. What is the question, or who are you here to see? - He asked me a phrase clearly programmed.

- I urgently needed a workshop to modify my droid, so I came to you.

- We don't do orders to modify droids," the secretary replied.

- I don't need your engineers. I can modify it myself, but I need a workshop.

- Just a second, I'll check with the management..." The droid fell out of reality for a few seconds, but then let me inside. Inside, as I said, was a small area of one hundred by one hundred meters, on which there were four hangar-wells and three buildings for purely technical purposes. I went at once to the main building - they were signed and above the gate were the numbers one, two and three. I figured that the administration was probably located in the first building. But carelessly send a stranger to walk on their territory was not going to and halfway I was intercepted by a man, an Alderaan already in years.

- How do you do? I'm Maximilian Bindo, owner of the workshop," he bowed, and I followed suit:

- Anakin Skywalker, a student at the Alderaan Academy.

- It's nice to see that the younger generation is not satisfied with the works of factories and is interested in the technical arts," he said politely, looking at Erdwah. Bindo wasn't supposed to have any attitude toward me and wanted to send me away, but he was courteous.

- I modified my Erdw as best I could at home, but now I needed a workshop to continue the work. I would like to ask your permission to do the work," I bowed once more. This time there was interest in the old man's emotions.

- May I see what you were able to do?

- Certainly. Erdva, show Maximilian what you have got.

- Aye, aye, Captain! - replied the droid, and to the growing interest Erdva "ponied up" - demonstrated all his modifications - starting with repulsors and ending with a light arc. It was on the last one that Bindo couldn't take it:

- What in heaven's name is that? - He pointed to a blue beam that emerged from the droid's arm with a distinctive sound.

- It's analogous to the lightsaber the Jedi use. It cuts, welds, heats, solders. You can change the width, length, and power of the arc.

- But how? - The old man wondered. - The lightsaber cannot be made by nonJedi. Half a hundred years ago, a subordinate of mine tried something like this, but he came to the conclusion that it was technically impossible. And it becomes much more difficult when you make it smaller!

- It does. I'm no Jedi, but I know some of their tricks," I shrugged. - What do you think of the idea of making a sword a universal tool?

- Brilliant! - The man was immediately fired up, and his emotions were dominated by excitement and contentment. I understand him - sometimes life is so drab that you want something radically new in your thoughts, emotions, actions...

- That's not all. Inside you'll find a thirty-two petaflops computing module.

- How much? - judging by the emotion, the man was in my "pocket".

- Thirty-two petaflops. That's from a large droid of the G5 series, at twenty-six petaflops, plus overclocked thanks to the cryonics system to thirty-two.

- And the reactor? Is it powerful enough for such a monster? And the R2 series doesn't have any sockets for such monsters," he hesitated. I commanded the droid:

- Erdva, open the hull, - the droid obediently opened and right on the concrete pad of the spaceport I demonstrated the results of the work - the cryonics, computing module and one megawatt reactor. So there is enough power for future modifications.

A standard small apartment, like my room, with all the electrical appliances consumed ten times less power. I really overestimated the power of the droid's reactor. The standard R2 consumed about five kilowatts of power for its operation - a lot was eaten by the electronics, which, as you understand, are much more complex than those on earth and consume their power accordingly. Thirty petaflops is normal power for a terrestrial supercomputer which occupies several rooms and eats up power on an industrial scale. Miniaturization does not mean that the number of processes, and hence power consumption is reduced, and certainly the cooling system eats so much that it is horrible. The computer module and its cooling account for ninety-seven percent of the power consumption, but there was plenty of spare power. So I poured the softest and lightest fuel into the Erdva, which gave maximum life to the reactor and power systems. Three liters of fuel would last a droid twenty years of continuous operation, or fifty years of operation in minimum mode, or five years of operation with frequent use of VMs. So that's the arithmetic.

At first glance it may seem that the reactor is weak - the speederbike has a similar size, but it produces much more power, but there's already a specific technology - the repulsors require more power, and not for normal, but for high-speed flight. Here, everything is tied to gravitational fields - technologies focused on the use of fields, gravitational, magnetic, or force fields, eat up a huge amount of energy. For example, hyperdrives, repulsors, deflectors, belong to such technologies. In this case, there is a residual principle - the main energy is not used to perform the target action, power or electromagnetic perturbations occurring during the passage of current through certain metals in a certain sequence are used. That is, repulsor or hyperdrive efficiency is always at the level of one or two percent, and the main energy is spent on overcoming resistance of conductors - in the described cases these are circuits and main block of hyperdrive, windings and projectors of repulsors, or emitters of deflector shields.

I realized this back when I was flying with Julian and exploring hyperdrive. And also the reactors of bikes and speeders constantly required refueling and were not designed for constant, "non-stop" operation, had a much shorter life span... in short, for the sake of power the designers sacrificed many parameters that are high in the droids' reactors.

Closing the droid, I was silent as Bindo pondered. But later still came away from what he had seen:

- But how can you change the circuitry at home? There are several hundred new elements in there, not counting the socket for the VM.

- I did my best. Besides, I told you that even though I'm not a Jedi, I know some tricks.

Bindo was satisfied with his answer, and the workshop doors opened wide for me. The droid workshop was in the second hangar, and it was, in my opinion, beautiful. Here I saw expensive tools, a couple of technician droids cowering around their brethren, and one guy in his twenties, maybe a little more, who was looking at me, accompanied by Bindo, with interest. The old man spoke:

- Lin, there's a newcomer coming to sit with you, okay?

- What? Oh, yeah, yeah, chief, come on over here," the named one looked at me. - Come on, don't be shy, kid.

Lin had some sort of device on his head, apparently a visor.

The chief left, and I made my way to the workshop. It smelled like spilled reactor fuel, oil, and burnt iron, and there were parts and tools everywhere I looked. Lin pulled his visor back over his head and, after wiping his hands with a rag, held out his hand to me. A handshake is customary on Alderaan, but not as an element of protocol-it's too informal.

- I am Lin Riekan, local technician. You come through, what's your name? What's that, R2? - Lin quipped. I even thought for a second that he was on some kind of amphetamines, but I noticed a cup of coffee in the corner of his desk. Yes, it wasn't the coffee that grew on Earth, but caffeine as a biochemical element was present in other, very similar in taste and color plants on some worlds in the galaxy, so I named half a hundred different drinks similar to Earth's with that word.

- Anakin Skywalker. Nice to meet you," I said, shaking a firm hand. So, very conventionally, but there was a kinship between us-my mother's husband, my stepfather, a bastard of the Riekan clan.

- Come on, make yourself comfortable, not many people come here, I'm usually the only one who hangs out.

- Interesting," he gave me a tour of his fiefdom while I looked around the workshop. Towards the end of the tour, I found what I needed - test chambers for repulsors and a universal reactor. I also needed some of the lab tools that were here. Everything was perfect!

Lin, having finally talked his way out of his mug, sipped some more of his elixir of vivacity and started asking me about life.

- Are you one of us? You mean Alderaan?

- No, not at all. I'm just here studying at the academy. I passed my sophomore exam, so I'm relatively free," I smiled. - You know, I have a yacht, and it needs droids, so I'm making a prototype of a future droid. From my R2. Erdva is my iron friend. He has a personality that's... unusual. I built my first droid five years ago, C3PO, to help my mom.

- Cool! - Lin smiled surprisingly sincerely. - There's a lot to remember. I built my first one when I was fourteen. I tried that one before, but it didn't work.

- It happens," I shrugged and asked myself:

- Are you related to a noble house, Riekan?

- Well, sort of. My grandfather doesn't like me, though. And I don't like all that intrigue and scandal and politics in general. This is my home," he circled his hand, showing the first-class workshop around.

- So technology is closer? - I smirked.

- That's right. I even ran away from home at fifteen when they tried to match me for political reasons. All right, boy, I won't burden you with my problems.

- Why not? It's very interesting, but I think we'll talk about it some other time.

- Yeah, yeah, right, I've got work to do," he went back to the mangled droid and went on with his business. Now we're talking.

Was our meeting an accident? I'm not sure, but it's the will of the force. Deciding not to be surprised by coincidence, I went with Erdva to the booths and workbenches.

My idea was as simple as chintz underwear and as complex as the invention of hyperdrive.

Erdva, when making repairs, was guided by plans and diagrams of parts, as well as information from video sensors. In the dorm, I suggested that he not do the job as laid down, but first to use his enormous computing power to simulate the process of the tool acting on the part, and work out the most rational way of action, that is, repair, based on the simulation. That is to simulate the process of various kinds of action and choose from them the most rational, to conduct a virtual experiment, together with predictions of the results of these or those actions. The result of my thoughts - the case can be taken to a completely different level! A completely different level, if Erdva could not only read the drawings and do everything according to the instructions, but also virtually simulate the situation himself and see what exactly and how it will be as a result of his work. For example, when repairing an interrupted electrical circuit, an ordinary droid would strictly follow the instructions - solder the place of the breakage and insulate the bare wire section. This is, say, an ordinary reactor-transformer-circuit breaker-consumer electrical circuit. In case Erdva is able to conduct modeling, i.e. in his electronic brains calculate the circuit, current, resistance of conductors, action of various circuit elements, then he, the droid, will be able to independently, without any hints, drawings and software instructions, by means of logic understand how the circuit should work, how it works, and what exactly should be changed.

Now there is no such thing - the droid is loaded with information on breakdowns, and they repair by drawing detailed instructions on how to use their tools from special databases. These databases contain all the information on the nodes and units of the ships and are constantly updated in connection with the updating of the model range.

This discovery made a revolution in the creation of the electronic engineer, because he became his own engineer, repairer, and he could make decisions based on computer modeling, on this or that action. On the outside, it might appear to be making decisions by itself - on the inside, it should look like scanning a node, determining current processes, modeling normal operation and comparing it to what it sees with scanners. In this way, the droid can be taught to independently detect a defect in a part that it may never have seen before, and has no information about it in the databases. It can choose its own repair method, and optimize all stages of the process on its own - simply by simulation rather than by reference to databases. The repair process for assemblies and units, is prescribed accurately enough only for the most common parts and their failures - some complex defect or rare damage can drive the droid into a stupor, as it will not be able to independently determine what exactly needs to be changed to make it work. At best, it will consult databases for more general instructions, or it will fix the parts that are of the highest order of importance.

But to make my idea work I would need all the metal management skills I am capable of, and I'm not sure I could do the scanner right.

The essence of the idea is this: a scanner based on multiple fields, which interact with each other and with matter, pass through matter and send a response to the receiver. This effect has been known since the days of the first hyperdrives - the disturbances it creates are much larger than its ship and the fields produced by the hyperdrive give a response to some sensors. But first, I would need to do a lot of experiments on creating fields and recording responses to them.

I decided to start with theoretical calculations, and after opening the CAD in Erdv's office, I immediately got Lin's attention:

- A new projector?

- Yep. Two meter image.

- That's awesome. Where did you get it?

- Local market. You know, the one on the north side of town.

- They have R2 projectors there?

- They only have stock ones. This one's from the communications droid. But it works awesome.

This was the end of the conversation, and I began to calculate the coefficients of the field emitter. According to even approximate calculations, I needed a projector like a flashlight, which would create fields around itself. For this purpose a cylindrical shape was chosen. The amount of winding depended on the intensity of the field. More than just the standard set of hyperdrive metals had to be incorporated into the winding metal. During my work as a flight mechanic I managed to get a good practical knowledge of metals and the fields they create, so I just made up a set that created a field of a certain energy, which passed well through most structural materials. Except for the neuranium, which it could not. Evening came outside the workshop gate, and then night fell, but I didn't stop and sat in front of Erdva, adding more and more elements to the designed construction. It was my intuition in designing that was most valuable - some seemingly correct solutions made my intuition howl and were shelved. Others, on the contrary, something told me it was a good solution. Lin finished his work for the day and turned to me:

- Will you stay here? It's midnight already.

- How much? - I wondered.

- Midnight, I tell you. Don't stay up too late.

- Yes, yes, I'll be back tomorrow to continue my work," I said, and then, after folding up the results of my work, I left the workshop. Lin and I flew off in our speeders in different directions. I went to my dorm.

I got to work directly on the wunderwaffle scanner in the middle of the next day.

My intuition and my ability to sculpt metal as I please, allowed me to do in a day what others would have taken weeks of work - just to create the right wire or plate, with the right metal structure, usually you have to resort to the factory work, melting, forging, and other pleasures of life. What's in it for me - pop, pop, there's the part ready.

I had brought the whole G9 transport, because it contained about ten tons of various valuable metals, and I had nothing else to transport them in. Bindo looked through his fingers at the new ship next to the hangar and didn't pay much attention to it when he greeted me.

After telekining the metals into the workshop, I sat down in the corner and, with Erdva's support, began to smelt the necessary parts. Erdva showed me the blueprints for the parts, and I made them right away - about three hundred meters of wire, about a hundred micrometers across, that is, as thick as a human hair. Also about twenty layers of ultra-chromium-carbonite alloy foil. Two layers of insulation - neuranium wire wrapped around the ultrachrome foil, also with flecks of neuranium - tops the design. This insulation would reflect the radiation and direct it not in all directions from the emitter, but in a narrow stream toward the object being scanned. I had the idea to make a movable part of the screens so that the droid could change the thickness of the scanning field itself, but in order to save time and effort, I decided not to rush and make a permanent scanner with rigidly defined field parameters.

After six hours of work, the scanner was ready. It looked like a... well, like a steel dildo. Don't laugh, it did look like a sex shop product, but it had a different purpose.

After screwing the scanner wires to the scanner, I finally took care of the main part of the piece: the receiver. The receiver, in fact, was similar to the digital matrix from a video sensor, only instead of photocells, it had to have elements that change their parameters on the basis of the reflection of the force-field radiation hitting them. Such metal was very fragile, but in the meantime used in alloys, carvanium. Usually it was considered absolutely useless in its pure form and was used only as a sensor of force fields, because it resonated with some of them. Parameters of the emitter, created by me, most accurately correspond to the parameters for resonance with the carvanium matrix. One difference - photocells created electrons themselves, when light hit them, but here it was necessary to bring the contact to each element, but in the end it was the same as the reaction of the photocell.

It's not like you can't build it. That was my reasoning, and I disassembled the video sensor of an old droid that I had found in the junkyard of the workshop. The video sensor was a fairly old model, but for my purposes its resolution was more than enough.

It took me another hour to replace all the matrix photocells with microscopic plates. Carvanium, if it was hit by a force field of a certain frequency, changed its resistance parameters. In this case, the video-sensor scheme was more than suitable for me - on one side we feed some very small but constant electric current to each microplate, and on the other side of the plate there is a second contact, an output contact. The field is reflected from any element on which it falls, depending on its intensity, will be able to overcome both the top layer and the thick overlaps and housings of individual units. And then, the reflected signal, by the type of light. Hits, but not on the lens of the video sensor, but on the focusing rings. Yes, it is the rings, which emit a simple electromagnetic field under voltage and other fields, after passing through the focusing rings, change the scale of the pattern, but do not change in their structure. The system from an ordinary video sensor, after refinement, fit perfectly.

The sensor was created and shielded from radiation from the wrong side, and then inserted in the place allotted to it.

The tweaking, such as installing and testing the electronic parts, took another couple of hours. In the end I just connected the tool to one of the terminals via the universal interface and ran a program, analogous to webcam software, took some test shots. The pictures turned out... let's say, quite crooked, but I could see through them. I could see!

The joy of making something that you designed and created yourself work is probably the only thing that keeps designers alive - it's a really great feeling. Of course, I had to fix the defect in the focusers one more time, but still, in the end I got a technique scanner that can give an image with an accuracy of one micrometer and can be used to analyze any technique. The first test subject was a found droid, inoperable. Layer by layer, the scanner took an image from it, then combined the resulting slices into a single image. The result was a first-rate three-dimensional diagram of the droid, right down to the smallest details. There were smaller ones, but the astrodroids didn't repair them.

It was time to give this wunderwaffle to my iron friend. Plugging the scanner into a free tool slot, I launched the droid. There was still a great deal of work to be done before he could truly learn to analyze machinery. Not for me, though, but for him.

When Erdva got a new toy in his manipulators, he immediately went to use it. I only directed his activity in the right direction:

- Erdva, start by scanning something with the new scanner and create a projection drawing.

- What for?

- I want to see what happens.

- Okay. What are we scanning?

I directed him to the repulsor test machine. Erdva drove up to it and began to run the scanner along the parts. After a few minutes he was finished and a projection of the machine appeared above his dome-quite accurate.

- Now turn off the link to the repair databases and start the analysis.

- What analysis? - The droid asked.

- What analysis? The analysis of the design you scanned. Download programs from the network, maybe even paid programs. Take the money from this card..." I held out my credit card to the droid. Erdva was silent, but like a little ATM, accepted the credit card in the appropriate slot. Five minutes later the credit card was returned to me, and the droid reported:

- I downloaded a program to simulate physical processes and five other programs for different kinds of analysis of system operation.

- Here you go and get to work. You can tell where which elements are which by downloading diagrams of the machine from the network, so just make a virtual diagram.

- You got it, captain! - bravo answered the droid and hummed the cooling system of the VM.

The work was done and I left my contact information for Lin and went out of the workshop, back to the dormitory. And there my studies were waiting for me. The third-year program was already in the droid, so I decided not to put it off, and while Erdva was learning how to analyze circuits, I went to study. Not right away, though, I stopped by Ali's place one more time to start. But without intimacy - at our age the need for it is not so high. It would be a while before the heat would kick in, but I wouldn't have any problems by then.

After talking to Ali, I was once again convinced that my girlfriend is a miracle, because it would be almost impossible to find a girl who is so naturally kind and not naive at the same time. And miraluks manage to combine these two qualities without any problems for themselves.

I began a new period of hyper-learning, during which I simply dropped out of my life and did not notice how the days, weeks, and months flew by...