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Margaret is exploring the tunnels under Whateley again, because everyone else is in the cafeteria and that's only so interesting when you can't eat or drink. There's some pretty interesting stuff down here! For instance, this room has a bar in it, and despite the entrance being underground the window has a view of exploding stars.
She admires the view for a bit, then wanders up to the bar.
Deskyl nods. Not my specialty, but doesn't sound obviously wrong.
Upload turns back to her screen unless it seems like Deskyl is about to say something else.
Deskyl goes back to her room, and it's a few weeks before Margaret sees her again, though DZ comes down regularly for food and to check on her - quite regularly, in fact; they quickly work out that time is passing between four and five times as quickly in Deskyl's room as in the main bar. (DZ apologizes for interrupting her too often.)
Margaret apologizes for her software progress being so slow, but within a few weeks of her own subjective time she has a package of programs with all the features she discussed and then some. It hides itself among rarely-accessed files so it's nearly impossible to detect, and the only memory it preserves automatically is the fact of its own existence and the understanding of how and why to use it. She asks DZ to review the "documentation" parts and their explanations of why it's a good idea to remember more things even if one's master mistakenly believes it isn't.
DZ isn't much help - she can tell when something's wrong, but she rarely has any idea how to fix it - but she's very patient, and the documentation comes together eventually.
Deskyl comes down to the bar eventually, looking alert and watchful and not at all as though she's just spent the last two months doing nothing but sleeping, and comes over to ask Bar for an NQ- line sparring droid and a blinding helmet.
Upload has been in the main bar area except when it's time to sleep and charge her batteries so she can see anyone else who shows up. The few people who have been in and out haven't resulted in anything other than casual conversation and something to do during her cleaning shifts, but at least they've kept her from going stir-crazy.
"Hello again!" she calls out to Deskyl with a little wave, then wonders if the translation effect still works when one person is receiving her speech as sign language and looking the other way.
It works well enough, apparently. Hi. I'm going to go practice precog, you can come watch if you want.
"That sounds fun." She stands up from the chair where she was programming, which at this point looks identical to staring into space--she built a development environment into her head to work faster.
She goes out back, and when she's gotten a bit of distance from the door she puts the helmet on and releases the spherical machine into the air. Don't get too close, she signs. Lightsabers are very dangerous and I can't tell where you are.
Then she lowers the opaque visor of the helmet and lights her 'saber, and the sphere begins shooting what seem to be bolts of light at her, just one every few seconds, moving between shots to make their trajectories unpredictable. Deskyl parries with her 'saber, sending two shots rebounding off into the trees before she tags the droid with one, the bolt crackling against its shields. It speeds up, and so does she, but soon she's hitting it with nearly every shot anyway, faster and faster, turning and spinning in a deadly dance.
This is extremely impressive and gets Upload thinking about radar. She adds some notes to the big file of Things To Remember When I Go Back to Whateley, along with people's names and her class schedule and what day of the month it is there.
Deskyl goes on for some fifteen minutes; if Margaret's watching closely enough, she'll see that she begins to slow, very slightly, near the end. She keeps going until the robot beeps to indicate the end of the session, though, and as she's taking her helmet off, it reports that she parried 100% of its shots and hit it with 97.3% of them. Horrible, she signs.
"It's cool that you can do that. Even on top of the precognition, I can tell your reflexes are way faster than a baseline's."
Yeah. Should be better than they are now, though. Precog's fine, but my reaction time is a wreck, too long since I've practiced regularly.
"I might be able to get my reaction time that good with the right hardware."
"Computer chips optimized for running a brain instead of a personal computer, basically."
Don't know enough about computers to help there. Look into droid brains, maybe.
"I'll be able to do it when I go home and have enough money for parts, but droid brains are a good place to look for ideas in the meantime. I'm going to have a really thoroughly refined design when I get home."
"Good. I wonder if there's some way to use a bit of that money to help more droids. Depends on what the bottleneck turns out to be, I guess. And of course it'll be up to you to decide what to spend it on; if you decide to spend it all on chocolate that will probably still be better than what the last guy was doing with it."
"I'd certainly appreciate it! What else needs to happen before you attack?"
Get back in fighting form, mostly. Maybe develop a new Force technique or two, since I have time. Come up with a plan for dealing with the other apprentices, so I don't lose the door.
"None of that sounds like something I can help with much; I can just read up on your world's technology for a while unless you come up with something you want invented. Or want, like, power armor or something."
I'm pretty augmented already - do you have something in mind?
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