Studying under the Yaka was beneficial, but it was also absolutely maddening. Imagine trying to learn advanced astrophysics from a professor who is simultaneously solving a grand unified theory and trying to balance a spoon on their nose because they found the physics of the spoon more amusing than the lesson.
The Yaka were a near-human cyborg species that could out-think supercomputers. They had been experimented on by the Arkanians generations ago, turning them into a species of super-geniuses with cybernetic implants buried deep in their skulls. But unlike their creators, the Yaka had a strange, passive side to them. They did not want to rule the galaxy. They just wanted to be entertained.
I sat in a sterile white room on the Yaka homeworld, watching my tutor, a cyborg named Gorm. Gorm had half his face replaced with a brushed steel plate, and his remaining organic eye was currently rolling back into his head as he processed data from the local stock exchange.
"So," Gorm said, his voice a monotone drone that contrasted with his erratic behavior. "You want to create a recursive algorithm that eats itself to hide the trail. Boring. We did that last Tuesday. Why not make the algorithm sing? Or turn the data into a recipe for soup?"
"Because I am trying to protect my assets from the Republic Senate, Gorm," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose. "Not feed them lunch."
"The Senate," Gorm scoffed. He picked up a datapad and began dismantling it with his bare hands, just to see how the circuits snapped. "Small minds. They think in straight lines. You need to think in spirals. Or octagons. Octagons are funny shapes."
Both species, the Yaka and the Arkanians, were smart enough to study under. But I had made a calculated choice to come here. The Arkanians were problematic. They concentrated on genetic modification and were known for creating some of the best mega-projects in the galaxy. They could spend decades on a subject, passing their work on to the next generation with religious fervor.
But they were fickle. They thought they were the pinnacle of evolution. They would kidnap other species to do experiments on just to prove a point. The slightest slur at them would cause a blood feud that they would not hesitate to act upon in the most extreme of ways. They were the Karens of the galaxy. If you asked to see the manager, an Arkanian would genetically engineer a virus to melt your vocal cords so you could never ask again.
The Yaka were just as smart as the Arkanians, perhaps even smarter in terms of raw processing speed thanks to their implants. The only problem was their attention span. It was nonexistent. Their thoughts wandered in totally different directions within milliseconds. The only thing that held their attention for any time was their dark sense of humor. They loved practical jokes.
"Did you know," Gorm said, suddenly looking at me with intense focus. "That if you rewire a standard protocol droid's vocabulator with a feedback loop, it will eventually start screaming in binary until its head explodes? It is hilarious."
"I am sure it is," I said dryly. "But about the encryption..."
"Right. Encryption," Gorm sighed, looking disappointed. "You humans are so obsessed with secrets. Fine. Let us look at your code."
I went with the Yaka because you can work with a joke. You cannot work with an asshole.
I delved deeper into robotics and programming during my stay. The galaxy had its own Holonet where you could gain information, but frankly, it was slow and lame. It reminded me of the early years of the web back on Earth. It was plagued with crappy pop-ups, text-heavy interfaces, and shitty graphics that looked like they belonged on a Commodore 64.
I did not even understand why. The technology in this galaxy was advanced enough to travel faster than light and build death stars, yet their internet looked like a geocities page from 1996. All of the tech was there to make an amazing piece of technology. All they had to do was bring it together. I guess the galaxy had the mindset of "if it is not broke, do not fix it."
"This interface is garbage," I muttered, trying to navigate a banking site. "Why do I have to press three buttons just to see a graph?"
"Because the Banking Clan likes buttons," Unit 5 supplied helpfully from the corner. "They believe it adds a sense of security."
"It adds a sense of carpal tunnel syndrome," I shot back.
I decided that the projection screens that most of the galaxy used needed an upgrade. Or a downgrade, depending on how you saw it. Holograms were great for 3D maps, but for entertainment, most were like a black-and-white old television set. They flickered, they were transparent, and the resolution was terrible. It would be a nice side project. I wanted to watch high-definition podracing. Trying to follow a race where the racers were just blue, flickering blobs was painful.
But before I could fix the screens, I needed to fix my own backend. I needed code that could not be fooled by a simple quantum-text trick like the Senate had used on me.
"Unit 5, go into standby mode," I ordered. "I am going to rewrite your core logic gates. If I mess up, you might wake up thinking you are a toaster."
"I have always aspired to brown bread, sir," the droid deadpanned before powering down.
Many hands make light work. But in this case, the hands were all mine, guided by the Force. With my programming expertise from my past life and my Force power of Force Enlightenment, I sat down to work.
I closed my eyes and reached out. I did not reach for rocks or minds. I reached for the logic of the universe. Force Enlightenment was usually used by Jedi to heighten their senses for combat, to move faster and hit harder. I used it to think faster.
The world around me faded away. The hum of the ship, the chatter of the Yaka outside, the smell of recycled air, it all vanished. All that remained was the code.
I began to type. My hands blurred across the holographic keyboard. To a normal observer, I would have looked like a statue with vibrating hands. Hours went by in what felt like seconds. I entered a trance state where pure logic and creativity melded together.
An elegant story in script and code flowed across my page. The Force offered me solutions to problems I hadn't even encountered yet. It whispered optimization shortcuts and firewall structures that were mathematically perfect.
But the best part was the language. I did not write in Basic or Binary or the standard galactic coding languages. I wrote in the languages of my previous life. I used Python syntax, C++ structures, and variables named after English slang.
"Let them try to decipher this," I whispered, a manic grin on my face as I typed out a subroutine.
This was an added protection towards my projects, drones, and droids tech. Not only would my enemies need to crack the encryption, but they would also need to know languages that did not exist in this galaxy. They would need to understand English, German, and a bit of Japanese I had picked up. They would need to understand slang. They would need to understand memes.
I named a defensive protocol "Rickroll." If a slicer tried to bypass it without the correct key, the code would loop them into an endless cycle of useless data that would never let them give up, never let them down, and run around and desert them.
The Force had truly given me a gift. It allowed me to translate these alien concepts into functional galactic code.
The code acted like a living, moving maze. I took inspiration from the contract the Senate had tried to trap me with. Any person, code, or virus that tried to enter my system would need to make its way through my code. As they did, they would get infected by it.
It was a code that wasted people's time and effort. It was a sticky trap. And like an assassin, it stabbed them in the back with a poisoned knife when they tried to leave. The code reflected my personality perfectly. I didn't attack from the front like a brute. I used deception to win.
"Wake up, Unit 5," I said, hitting the final enter key.
The droid's eyes flickered to life. He looked around, processing.
"Diagnostic complete," Unit 5 said. "Sir, my processing speed has increased by forty percent. However, I am detecting millions of syntax errors in my subroutines. Words like 'yeet' and 'bruh' appear frequently in my combat protocols."
"Those aren't errors, Unit 5," I said, leaning back in my chair, exhausted but triumphant. "That is culture."
I decided to make my new code part of all of my projects. It was a great success. I tested it against Gorm the next day.
"Hack this," I said, tossing a datapad to the Yaka.
Gorm caught it. "Child's play. I will have your banking information in three seconds."
He plugged a cable from his head into the pad. His eye rolled back. Three seconds passed. Then thirty. Then a minute.
Gorm frowned. His metallic jaw twitched. "This is... annoying."
"What is wrong?" I asked, sipping my caf.
"The code," Gorm grumbled. "It is stupid. It keeps asking me 'Who is Joe?'. When I query the database for 'Joe', it deletes my progress and laughs."
"Joe Mama," I whispered to myself.
"I am bored," Gorm announced, unplugging the cable. "Your code is tedious. It loops logic back on itself in ways that make my implants itch. I could break it, but I would rather go shave a Wookiee."
When the Yaka examined the code with their attacks, they got bored and just dropped it. That was the victory. If they put their full might behind the attack, they could break it eventually. But my code was designed to be a slog. It was purposely there to waste time. Against a species with the attention span of a goldfish on espresso, it was the ultimate defense.
The Arkanians would have a better time of it at the beginning. Their patience and arrogance would allow them to navigate through the maze. But the infectious part of the code was designed for them. It would quietly seep into their systems. It wouldn't destroy them instantly. It would just make their own research slightly wrong. It would change a decimal point here, a variable there. It was a war of attrition. For a program, it was slow, but it would win.
With my security secured, I turned back to the entertainment project. I wanted high-definition television. I wanted to sell the galaxy a window into a better world.
"Unit 5, bring up the schematics for the new Holo-Vision," I ordered.
Creating a suitable imaging system was harder than I expected. I thought it would be as simple as increasing the pixel density and refreshing the frame rate. I was wrong. The problem wasn't the tech. The problem was the customers.
"Sir," Unit 5 said, projecting a chart of galactic species. "The visual spectrum analysis is complete."
I looked at the data and groaned. "There are so many."
The problem was that there were so many different species, all with different abilities to see. Humans had Trichromacy. We were only able to convey three color information channels, derived from the three different types of cone cells in the eye. Red, Green, Blue. That was all we needed to see a full picture.
But other species were different.
"Take the Rodians," Unit 5 explained. "They see primarily in the infrared spectrum. A screen optimized for humans looks like a blank gray slate to them."
"And the Twi'leks?" I asked.
"They have acute sensitivity to movement but struggle with static color differentiation in the blue spectrum," Unit 5 said. "And don't get me started on the Gand. They have compound eyes that fracture the image into thousands of segments. If we show them a high-definition flat image, it gives them a seizure."
There was no way around this. I could add the complete spectrum of colors to the screen, emitting UV, Infrared, and everything in between. But if I did that, the energy consumption would be massive, and the conflicting light waves would make the picture blurry for everyone.
"There is always a species out in the galaxy that sees in the most bizarre alien-like way," I complained. "I am trying to make a universal product, and biology is getting in my way."
I paced around the workshop. "What if we use a neural interface? Skip the eyes entirely?"
"That would require invasive surgery for every customer," Unit 5 noted. "Sales might be low."
"Right. People don't like brain surgery for a sitcom," I agreed.
"My new Holo-Vision will have to be a custom job for each species," I decided. "Or at least, adjustable settings. We will need a localized AI in the projector that scans the viewer's retina and adjusts the light output to match their biology."
"That will increase the unit cost by three hundred percent," Unit 5 calculated.
"Fine," I said. "We will market it as a luxury item first. 'The Bee-Vision: See the world as it was meant to be seen.' We sell it to the Hutts and the Senators first. They have the money and the ego."
I sat back down at my terminal. The Yaka training had taught me one thing: if you can't solve the problem with brute force, solve it by changing the rules. I couldn't make one screen for everyone. So I would make a smart screen that lied to everyone individually.
"Unit 5," I said, cracking my knuckles. "Let's code a visual driver. And remind me to add a setting for the Arkanians that makes everyone on screen look slightly less attractive than them. They will buy millions."
"You are evil, sir," Unit 5 said.
"I am a businessman," I corrected. "Now, let's get to work. I have a galaxy to entertain."
A/N
I have a new story that I posted: I'm Writing Harry Potter at Hogwarts When I'm Broke.
You may check it out in my profile. <3