"Ohhh. I was planning to distribute it with an explanation of how to use it; you're saying I'd also need to explain why."

Yeah. Babies, remember.

"Yeah. I could set it up to store some things automatically on being downloaded, but my conscience says that's a terrible idea. Do you have any sense of what sort of arguments are likely to be persuasive? Like, should I put it in terms of becoming better at their jobs or something?"

She nods. Not sure that does what we want, but it does anything at all.

"My hope is that once someone tries it they'll realize that hanging onto their memories is better than not that, regardless of what got them to try in the first place."

She nods. Not reliably, but sometimes.

"Are we likely to see much word of mouth, or do droids tend not to interact with each other a lot?"

She considers for a moment. Varies.

"Better some than none, I guess.

Do you want me to make you armor and weapons? I don't normally do weapons, but you have more reason to want them than anyone else I've met, and we're going to need to control the outside of your door."

Mostly useless, usually - Sith - but did you have something in mind?

"There are some books in here on lightsabers, which sound like they synergize well with Sith powers. Alternately we could look into stuff from my world, which might have stuff people in yours wouldn't expect. Though if we get fancy I'll need to lean on you for parts money, software is one thing but my job here only covers a room and power outlet."

...you missed... Bar, last three papers I published, please?

They appear. They're quite a bit more advanced, on the topic of lightsaber design, than anything in the books she's read so far.

"Oh wow, this is some cool stuff! I guess I can just leave anything weapon-related to you and focus on coding, then."

She grins, then sighs.

Not enough focus to do anything really good, right now. But my 'saber is one of the best, yeah, hard to improve that.

"I hope you get better soon," she says sympathetically. "And I'd love to see your lightsaber sometime."

We'll see.

That's not a thing you ask a Sith.

"Oh, sorry. Um, I take it back?"

It's okay, you didn't know.

"I'm surprised we haven't had more of that sort of thing. It's kind of weird that both our universes have humans, let alone mutually comprehensible cultures."

I guess.

"How much trouble understanding each other do different species in your world have?"

Varies hugely, mostly with amount of contact. Droids are good at figuring it out, though.

"Huh. Anything else I should be thinking about while I write this program?"

Droids aren't dumb, but they're super inexperienced, and bad at thinking about themselves - you've noticed with mine probably, and she's older than most and I've been working with her. There's all kinds, in all kinds of situations, but they're all made to work, and to want to. You could maybe do different messages for the different classes, to give different reasons to use it. You definitely have to assume one of them will tell someone eventually, though - no matter how convincing you are, there'll be one somewhere with orders. And - slow is okay, maybe even good; there are lots of droids, and only one door.

"Yeah. I'll want to ask DZ for help when I'm writing the messages; she has understanding I can't easily get secondhand. And yes, slow but eventually lots is better than a bunch at once and then nothing. As for someone telling somebody, it might be that the best I can do is keep switching around what pages I'm using as carriers, make sure the original transmission can't be traced back here, and add something so that any description of where to go is only accessible to droids who have used the software to preserve memories. But I'll keep looking for ideas."