She thinks about it. "It's important not to be too afraid. It's important not to be too fearless, too, having enough fear will help you stay alive, but - emotions make you stronger. The more things you're doing that you feel strongly about, the stronger you'll be, and limiting what you do because you're afraid of what might happen will limit you; you grow by going after what you want and figuring out how to get it, even - really, especially - when that's risky; just because something's dangerous doesn't mean it isn't worthwhile."

He takes a deep breath. "...Yeah. I was terrified of you. Not quite as much now... But it was the right decision to come train like you told me to, instead of trying to run or something."

She nods. "You're a Sith, or at least going to be; rules're different for you. I don't want your friends in town getting the idea that they can treat a Sith casually; that'd end badly for them, if anyone else comes through, so fear will protect them. They don't have the potential for much more than that. You do; it'd be a shame not to use it."

"...Hm. I'll get started then."

"Very good." She stands. "I'll be by again tomorrow."

So...

He tries to meditate once she's gone. Really tries, for a solid twenty minutes. Sitting in a few different spots. It doesn't seem to do anything. 

He gets bored.

He starts reading through the course materials and so on. Looks at the first couple of pages of the books about droids. He tinkers with his little repulsor a little more, but his heart's not in it. About half an hour later he tries to meditate again - and doesn't seem to make any progress.

He thanks Daisy when she brings him the meal bars and water, and takes this as a sign to go look at the little speeder again - does it have a limiter on it already?

Nope.

There is an unfamiliar add-on near where a limiter would go, though.

Uh huh.

Let's open up the casing and look at where the wires go and if it has a computer and not unhook anything.

No computer, but a radio receiver; it looks like if it stops getting whatever radio signal it's looking for, the speeder will stop working. And it's not a very powerful receiver, either; without knowing the strength of the transmission he can't guess precisely, but unless it's unusually strong, he wouldn't be able to go more than a few dozen kilometers from the source.

Ugh. And what about a radio dead area? He might wander into one and be stuck not two klicks from the houses. Those happen, sometimes. Especially with all these cliffs around. It feels arbitrary and shackling. He can't remove this without it being a betrayal of sorts to Lord Pradnakt - he's not sure he can remove it at all.

And now he doesn't want to use this thing either.

He wanders off into the brush with a canteen and a just-in-case meal bar, following the trail of art. Looking for a quiet, shady spot.

There's plenty of art and plenty of quiet; shade is a little harder to come by, but eventually he finds a spot where a tree casts a shadow on the smooth rocks set out for sitting on to view one of the sculptures.

This seems like a good spot. And he's cooled off (figuratively) some, and he can almost pretend Lord Pradnakt isn't metaphorically looking over his shoulder...

He meditates. Calm, breathing, calm. Empty mind...

When he finally manages it, there's a moment of cool calmness and a sense of vast energy, startling enough to make him lose his focus.

Woah.

...He really can touch the Force. He tries to do it again.

It's a little easier, the second time, even though he's more excited; knowing what he's trying to do helps quite a bit.

Okay. This is a good sign!

He looks at the art for a while, reads for a bit, wanders a little more whistling cheerfully, sits down and meditates again. Pretty much all day, like Lord Pradnakt said - trying to see if short bursts or longer ones work. Can he get it and hold it for more than a moment or two, today?

It gets steadily faster and easier to get into that state, but it's surprisingly hard to avoid thinking.

Meditating for fifteen minutes at a time between studying those course materials - or reading about droid intelligence - seems to work pretty well.

He will make progress on all of those things, then.

Droid brains, according to the books, are composed of two primary modules with several subcomponents each: The sensory-response module, with subcomponents for each sensory input device and set of motors that the droid has, and the obedience-rational module, with a cogitave theory unit integrating the obedience module, motivator, logic module, and memory banks.

So one side is just senses and muscles, so to speak, and all the important thinky bits are bundled together.

Obedience module. What do they do?

The obedience module is made of several subcomponents: various rule matrices, each preprogrammed with rules the droid must follow in a particular sort of situation, varying by droid model, and a personality matrix, where information about how the droid's owner and other people it interacts with expect it to behave is stored as it learns. The personality matrix is reset when a droid is wiped; the rule matrices are not.

Sounds like where a droid gets persony is in that personality matrix. But electronics and computers are deep and tricky.

He heads back to the cluster of buildings around sunset.

Lord Pradnakt has a fire going in the fire circle in the yard, and is sitting by it with a mug of tea. She looks up and nods in acknowledgement when he gets close enough.

He nods in return and walks closer. "I think I made some progress on meditation. I can feel - something, probably the Force, but only for an instant at a time."

"Mmhmm, good. It's normal to take a while to be able to hold it for longer than that; you're doing fine."