A young, ambitious droid engineer sat at her desk with her head in her hands propped up with her elbows. She had been pouring over her designs for the new model of astromech droids. The droids needed to be well into production by the end of the following year and the prototypes were due to be presented in three months. Creating astromech droids was challenging because of all the intricacies of their duties that required a balance of fine-tuned mechanics and flexible programming that made the droids valuable assets to their masters. They had to be strong enough to withstand space travel, smart enough to have a vast database of skills, and also have the finesse to fix any broken object. Madyna had the goal to take the astromech droid to a whole new level and create one that could adapt on its own and think so well that it could solve problems without any previous programming. She wanted a droid that would be able to compute beyond it's designated tasks and adapt to the situation. In a way she wanted it to be able to think quickly, in case of any emergency that required it to be aware of its surroundings and be able to assist their masters with very few commands. Also, there was no way any droid was going to be manufactured with her name on it that wasn't inventive and better than any droid that had ever been produced.
Madyna had been raised in Gardrog, a planet on the outer rim that had been destroyed by civil war and her parents were forced to flee to start a new life. They settled in Naboo, it was the most beautiful place her mother had ever seen with its lush greenery and rolling hills. Even the tiny shack her father had built with his own hands looked beautiful because of the majesty of the planet. Her family became vegetable farmers and finally had the quiet, simple life they had always wanted. Madyna had no formal education but was extremely passionate about droids, she had won first place in the yearly planet-wide droid fair four times in a row starting from when she was nine. That's how she was discovered and hired on by Industrial Automaton, the leading droid manufacturer in the Republic. She was incredibly talented, she never knew how she could do what she did. To her it was always like an energy would take over her mind and allow her to see new possibilities.
Industrial Automation was proud to be based in Naboo, the deadline to have the new model of the astromech droids coincided with the royal seat of Naboo being up for re-election in two years. When the elections were over the new models of droids would be revealed, with the best droid being named the royal fleet and presented to the new King or Queen elected. They were powerful droids and awards were always given to the best functioning droid that made production. Whoever was able to design the royal fleet would become the new intergalactic representative and face of the company, a huge honor and an amazing promotion that would allow her to travel the galaxy and spend time at all the top tier universities brainstorming and lecturing with the best minds in the galaxy.
Astromech droids were Madyna's first assignment and she fell in love with them. Her unique ability was in writing new software. To Madyna it was like speaking a secret language with the metal. Astromech droids were the perfect combination for her brilliant mind. They were like designing a master pocketknife, one that could mend a blaster shot to the haul of your spacecraft and then translate any bit of information that it was given. Her goal was to have her droid generating its own algorithms to solve the challenges no one could predict that it would face. Designing astromech droids was not only mechanically challenging but also because of having to write the software that the astromech droids were famous for, this was the part that was exhilarating to Madyna. These droids had to be able to think, and to Madyna creating a new issue required programming that had not been invented yet. She could not let herself just pull from various programs and re-write old scripts to make a quicker droid. She had challenged herself to write an entirely new code to make the droid be able to not rely only on existing sequences or pre-programming. She wanted to create an astromech droid that would be completely free-thinking.
At this point in the project she was ready to drop her goal of programming stardom and just make an updated issue of the existing droid. She felt defeated after having hacked away for the past 7 months only to make models that would glitch, turn violent on itself, or just implode during simulation. She sat staring at her latest hologram model. She had decided on the silhouette and mechanical functionality of the droid, there were several new add-ons that she was quite proud of herself for managing to re-design to fit inside the shell. Most spaceships, like X-wing fighters, had regulated droid cockpits and there were specific measurements that the droids had to meet. There was also a long list of detailed specifications based solely on the tasks that a standard astromech droid was expected to be able to perform, the task list and size left little room for the brain of the droid. Creating the physical expression of the droid was interesting to Madyna because it was always fun to tinker with tiny machines, but it was also the reason she was so passionate about the programming. What the droid was made of or what it had in it didn't really matter at all if what the droid knew wasn't deep enough to function under high stress.
She let out an exasperated sigh, shut off her hologram model then she leaned back in her chair and slowly spun in circles looking up at the ceiling. What was she missing? She felt like she almost had it, so many of her tests had worked for a moment, she saw the consciousness crossing over into the movement of the droid, and then it would implode. Her code would work on small-scale droids, there were several two-function test models that had a similar brain size to function ratio as an astromech's that she had been able to get manipulating the coding on their own. The astromech's were just insanely intricate and had what seemed like an endless amount of functions.
She stopped spinning and her stomach growled, she looked at the time and sighed again, once more she had worked through almost half the night without stopping. She stood up, gathered her things and finally left her office. When she got home her mother Daiya said "the food is waiting my strong girl" and sure enough the table had a huge spread all warmed up. She crashed at the table and to her mother's pleasure ate every bite of what was laid out. Her father Guy walked over gave her a warm kiss on the head and said, " You will succeed baby girl because you're my daughter". She wasn't sure how being his daughter would magically make the code appear in her head, but she was so grateful to come home to such loving support. Since she was little and all her dreams seemed impossible, it was her parents who kept telling her she could do and be anything she wanted, and they stayed by her side through it all.
She lazily got up, said goodnight and went to bed.
Tomorrow could wait until she slept.