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in honor of @kiwisson‘s birthday, I humbly offer a small scrap from a thing I wrote mostly so I knew how it happened, so I could reference it later in Home-verse.
When Poe Met BB-8.
Poe was approximately the equivalent of a junior in high school, and sort of accidentally won an annual competition that the Academy runs, where the student in the Intro To Astromech course who gets the best grade is issued some tester model astromech by Industrial Automaton, the galaxy’s major astromech droid manufacturer. He didn’t mean to nerd out in the class, but he didn’t get along with the instructor, who issued him a really shitty teaching astromech, and he kind of accidentally fixed it really well, and it turned out when the IA rep came, along with a really high-ranking Navy officer to award their final grades, the Navy officer in question had served with Kes Dameron and also knew the teaching astromech from its former life, and so Poe wound up being the center of attention. And also was issued BB-8, which made up for the inconvenience.
“You don’t really have to be here for the unboxing,” the IA sales rep said. Poe was hovering a little, he knew it, but he was just– he wasn’t sure if he was excited or mortified or what, he just knew he wanted to see everything. The IA rep was in coveralls, all her smooth made-up polish from the earlier meeting wiped away; clearly, she was herself a mechanic, given the array of tools she had in various of her pockets. Starting with a prybar to open the crate.
“I want to see,” Poe said. “If I’m getting saddled with this thing– I’m in kind of a lot of suspense here, y’know?”
She laughed. “Blessings are usually mixed,” she said. “It’s supposed to be an honor, isn’t it?”
“Listen, lady,” Poe said, “I’m very carefully second or third in my class in a lot of things because guess what, being first is kind of shitty. I try to avoid being noticed like that, and I only did what I did for G4 because I honestly didn’t think anybody’d notice. So I am a little on-edge getting singled out like this. I wanna know what I’m gonna be stuck with.”
“I’m not sure if you’ll be delighted or devastated, then,” she said. “This is a new BB design and they’re… different.” But she eased the suspense, and used the prybar to yank open the box. She hauled out several large pieces, all half-spheres. “I still gotta put it together though.”
“Oh,” Poe said, “I want to see that.”
“You won’t need to disassemble it like this again,” she said.
“I disassembled G4 this far,” he said a little stubbornly. She regarded him, then gestured with the prybar.
“Fine, then,” she said. “Help me out here.”
He helped, holding things in place and eagerly absorbing where the parts went. He was a little disconcerted by the lack of visible wheels or feet. “It’s,” he said finally, as he took stock of the remaining pieces. “Just a sphere.”
“It is,” she said. “It’s very self-contained, and likely to be a lot more durable and less prone to malfunction.”
“How does it– locomote?” Poe asked.
“It rolls,” she said. “The head has mag-repulsors so it basically free-floats. It’ll always stay at the top of the sphere. This makes the droid very nimble.”
“Stairs,” Poe said.
“It’s better at those than any of the R2 units,” she said. “R2s tend to overbalance on uneven ground. This baby won’t. There are known drawbacks, especially with low-friction surfaces, but the counterweights tend to make up for it, and the overall design has tested extremely well.”
“It looks silly, though,” Poe said.
“Aesthetically, it has also tested very well,” the rep said sternly. “It’s cutting-edge.”
“So,” Poe said. “I’m gonna get my ass kicked, but I can be assured it’s trend-setting.”
The rep smiled. “The physical design isn’t all that experimental,” she said. “They haven’t made many, but there’ve been prototypes like this kicking around. No, what’s revolutionary is the learning AI. It’s meant to be much more flexible than the usual ones, and a lot more self-determining. We actually hadn’t planned on deploying this one to an Academy tester yet, but the work you did on G4 was so exactly like what we were looking for that I made a special case for you.”
“Really,” Poe said, taken aback.
“Yes,” she said. “This droid is going to be smarter than most, sharper than most, and better at self-programming than most. It takes a dedicated single user to work it properly, and the results are highly individual, and most importantly, unpredictable to others. This is why we’re so eager to use this AI in an astromech, especially in simulated fighting; sometimes the droids’ algorithms are predictable to opponents. This is designed to avoid that. This droid won’t react in an expected way, and so you won’t be killed by an enemy for being predictable.”
“Cool,” Poe said, despite himself.
“The payoff is that you can’t be heavy-handed in the learning,” the rep said, and her whole demeanor was changed with how fired-up she was, talking about this droid. Clearly, it was her pet project. “You can’t just go in all ham-fisted and delete things and try to hard-code stuff in that you want. You have to be willing to teach it the way you would a person, or a child, or a pet. We weren’t going to offer this one to a student at all but your results with old G4 were so precisely based on this kind of thinking that I talked my boss into it.”
“Hm,” Poe said, and shit, she’d sold him. He kicked himself, inwardly, but it was too late now. She was fitting the sensor array into position on the upper half-sphere part.
“So it may make erroneous conclusions,” she said, “but if you’re patient and let it work the kinks out, it’ll be a whole lot smarter than your average droid. It may wind up pretty keyed to you individually, so if it needs to work with other people, you might have to come up with your own kind of– instruction manual. But it should be really, really good; we’ve got really high hopes for this particular AI.”
“I mean,” Poe said. “I’ll do my best.”
She looked over at him. “Promise?” she asked, with a sparkle of mischief, and oh. She was hitting on him. Maybe. No, wait. Probably not. He was, after all, sixteen. And grown adults liked him, but usually not quite like that.
“Promise,” he said solemnly.
“Here goes,” she said, and flicked the droid’s power control on for the first time.
It booted up with a whirr and a series of clicks, and then shuddered violently, and all the lights went on in sequence, then off again. “Calibrating,” it beeped in Binary, and there was a long pause with more whirring. And then–
“Unit BB-8 Initialization Complete,” it said, and spun the half-sphere top completely around, then all the way back. “Visual data input online. Scanning, please wait.” It spun the lower sphere in place, then spun the top around like it was scanning the room. It visibly blinked, flashing a tiny internal light in the optical sensor, as it registered first the rep, and then Poe. “Environmental recognition complete. Awaiting input.”
And it fell silent, blinking a tiny red light near the photo sensor.
“Unit BB-8,” the rep said, “this is your first boot-up. Are all systems functional?”
It whirred. “Systems analysis complete,” it said, “all systems functional.”
“Excellent,” the rep said, and it whirred. “Are all your libraries integrated?”
“Libraries,” BB-8 said, sounding a little lost. But then there was a click. “Yes! Libraries integrated!”
“Good,” the rep said. “This is your new master,” and she gestured to Poe. “Poe Dameron, Cadet, New Republican Fleet Academy. He will be working with you. You know what this means.”
“I know what this means,” BB-8 repeated, a little woodenly. It swiveled and rolled slightly forward, for all the world like it was peering inquisitively at Poe. He couldn’t help but smile at it. It was– it was really cute, and he was going to get his ass kicked over this.
“Hi,” Poe said. “It’s nice to meet you, BB-8.”
The small light inside BB-8’s optical sensor blinked dimly, and it stared up at him motionless for a moment, before jerking slightly and responding, “It’s nice to meet you, Poe Dameron, Cadet.”
“You can just call me Poe,” Poe said.
“You can just call me Poe,” BB-8 repeated, blinking faster. “I can just call you Poe.”
Poe glanced over at the rep, uncertain. She nodded encouragingly. “Most of the other units have a bit more rote stuff built in straight out of the box,” she said. “This one has less, um, stuff by rote? It has to learn before it can do.”
“I will just call you Poe,” BB-8 said, more decided.
“That’d be great,” Poe said. He crouched down to be more on the droid’s level. “So for a little bit, I’m gonna have to be extra patient and show you a lot of stuff, huh?”
“Yes, exactly,” the rep said.
Poe nodded. “You’re gonna have to be extra patient and show me a lot of stuff,” BB-8 said, and it was kind of funny to hear how he translated Poe’s inflections into Binary. “What does that mean?”
“It means there’s a lot you don’t know yet,” Poe said. “And I’m gonna teach you!”
BB-8 rolled backward slightly, seemingly overwhelmed by this. “You’re going to teach me,” it said. “Is this my purpose? To learn?”
“You have a lot of purposes,” Poe said. “I don’t know what they all are, yet. I’m only a little way ahead of you, in learning. So I guess we gotta figure it out together, huh?”
“Figure it out together,” BB-8 said, and spun around in place with a meaningless but happy-sounding little trill.
“You’re such a dork,” Poe said, completely unable to hide his delight.
in honor of @kiwisson‘s birthday, I humbly offer a small scrap from a thing I wrote mostly so I knew how it happened, so I could reference it later in Home-verse.
When Poe Met BB-8.
Poe was approximately the equivalent of a junior in high school, and sort of accidentally won an annual competition that the Academy runs, where the student in the Intro To Astromech course who gets the best grade is issued some tester model astromech by Industrial Automaton, the galaxy’s major astromech droid manufacturer. He didn’t mean to nerd out in the class, but he didn’t get along with the instructor, who issued him a really shitty teaching astromech, and he kind of accidentally fixed it really well, and it turned out when the IA rep came, along with a really high-ranking Navy officer to award their final grades, the Navy officer in question had served with Kes Dameron and also knew the teaching astromech from its former life, and so Poe wound up being the center of attention. And also was issued BB-8, which made up for the inconvenience.
“You don’t really have to be here for the unboxing,” the IA sales rep said. Poe was hovering a little, he knew it, but he was just– he wasn’t sure if he was excited or mortified or what, he just knew he wanted to see everything. The IA rep was in coveralls, all her smooth made-up polish from the earlier meeting wiped away; clearly, she was herself a mechanic, given the array of tools she had in various of her pockets. Starting with a prybar to open the crate.
“I want to see,” Poe said. “If I’m getting saddled with this thing– I’m in kind of a lot of suspense here, y’know?”
She laughed. “Blessings are usually mixed,” she said. “It’s supposed to be an honor, isn’t it?”
“Listen, lady,” Poe said, “I’m very carefully second or third in my class in a lot of things because guess what, being first is kind of shitty. I try to avoid being noticed like that, and I only did what I did for G4 because I honestly didn’t think anybody’d notice. So I am a little on-edge getting singled out like this. I wanna know what I’m gonna be stuck with.”
“I’m not sure if you’ll be delighted or devastated, then,” she said. “This is a new BB design and they’re… different.” But she eased the suspense, and used the prybar to yank open the box. She hauled out several large pieces, all half-spheres. “I still gotta put it together though.”
“Oh,” Poe said, “I want to see that.”
“You won’t need to disassemble it like this again,” she said.
“I disassembled G4 this far,” he said a little stubbornly. She regarded him, then gestured with the prybar.
“Fine, then,” she said. “Help me out here.”
He helped, holding things in place and eagerly absorbing where the parts went. He was a little disconcerted by the lack of visible wheels or feet. “It’s,” he said finally, as he took stock of the remaining pieces. “Just a sphere.”
“It is,” she said. “It’s very self-contained, and likely to be a lot more durable and less prone to malfunction.”
“How does it– locomote?” Poe asked.
“It rolls,” she said. “The head has mag-repulsors so it basically free-floats. It’ll always stay at the top of the sphere. This makes the droid very nimble.”
“Stairs,” Poe said.
“It’s better at those than any of the R2 units,” she said. “R2s tend to overbalance on uneven ground. This baby won’t. There are known drawbacks, especially with low-friction surfaces, but the counterweights tend to make up for it, and the overall design has tested extremely well.”
“It looks silly, though,” Poe said.
“Aesthetically, it has also tested very well,” the rep said sternly. “It’s cutting-edge.”
“So,” Poe said. “I’m gonna get my ass kicked, but I can be assured it’s trend-setting.”
The rep smiled. “The physical design isn’t all that experimental,” she said. “They haven’t made many, but there’ve been prototypes like this kicking around. No, what’s revolutionary is the learning AI. It’s meant to be much more flexible than the usual ones, and a lot more self-determining. We actually hadn’t planned on deploying this one to an Academy tester yet, but the work you did on G4 was so exactly like what we were looking for that I made a special case for you.”
“Really,” Poe said, taken aback.
“Yes,” she said. “This droid is going to be smarter than most, sharper than most, and better at self-programming than most. It takes a dedicated single user to work it properly, and the results are highly individual, and most importantly, unpredictable to others. This is why we’re so eager to use this AI in an astromech, especially in simulated fighting; sometimes the droids’ algorithms are predictable to opponents. This is designed to avoid that. This droid won’t react in an expected way, and so you won’t be killed by an enemy for being predictable.”
“Cool,” Poe said, despite himself.
“The payoff is that you can’t be heavy-handed in the learning,” the rep said, and her whole demeanor was changed with how fired-up she was, talking about this droid. Clearly, it was her pet project. “You can’t just go in all ham-fisted and delete things and try to hard-code stuff in that you want. You have to be willing to teach it the way you would a person, or a child, or a pet. We weren’t going to offer this one to a student at all but your results with old G4 were so precisely based on this kind of thinking that I talked my boss into it.”
“Hm,” Poe said, and shit, she’d sold him. He kicked himself, inwardly, but it was too late now. She was fitting the sensor array into position on the upper half-sphere part.
“So it may make erroneous conclusions,” she said, “but if you’re patient and let it work the kinks out, it’ll be a whole lot smarter than your average droid. It may wind up pretty keyed to you individually, so if it needs to work with other people, you might have to come up with your own kind of– instruction manual. But it should be really, really good; we’ve got really high hopes for this particular AI.”
“I mean,” Poe said. “I’ll do my best.”
She looked over at him. “Promise?” she asked, with a sparkle of mischief, and oh. She was hitting on him. Maybe. No, wait. Probably not. He was, after all, sixteen. And grown adults liked him, but usually not quite like that.
“Promise,” he said solemnly.
“Here goes,” she said, and flicked the droid’s power control on for the first time.
It booted up with a whirr and a series of clicks, and then shuddered violently, and all the lights went on in sequence, then off again. “Calibrating,” it beeped in Binary, and there was a long pause with more whirring. And then–
“Unit BB-8 Initialization Complete,” it said, and spun the half-sphere top completely around, then all the way back. “Visual data input online. Scanning, please wait.” It spun the lower sphere in place, then spun the top around like it was scanning the room. It visibly blinked, flashing a tiny internal light in the optical sensor, as it registered first the rep, and then Poe. “Environmental recognition complete. Awaiting input.”
And it fell silent, blinking a tiny red light near the photo sensor.
“Unit BB-8,” the rep said, “this is your first boot-up. Are all systems functional?”
It whirred. “Systems analysis complete,” it said, “all systems functional.”
“Excellent,” the rep said, and it whirred. “Are all your libraries integrated?”
“Libraries,” BB-8 said, sounding a little lost. But then there was a click. “Yes! Libraries integrated!”
“Good,” the rep said. “This is your new master,” and she gestured to Poe. “Poe Dameron, Cadet, New Republican Fleet Academy. He will be working with you. You know what this means.”
“I know what this means,” BB-8 repeated, a little woodenly. It swiveled and rolled slightly forward, for all the world like it was peering inquisitively at Poe. He couldn’t help but smile at it. It was– it was really cute, and he was going to get his ass kicked over this.
“Hi,” Poe said. “It’s nice to meet you, BB-8.”
The small light inside BB-8’s optical sensor blinked dimly, and it stared up at him motionless for a moment, before jerking slightly and responding, “It’s nice to meet you, Poe Dameron, Cadet.”
“You can just call me Poe,” Poe said.
“You can just call me Poe,” BB-8 repeated, blinking faster. “I can just call you Poe.”
Poe glanced over at the rep, uncertain. She nodded encouragingly. “Most of the other units have a bit more rote stuff built in straight out of the box,” she said. “This one has less, um, stuff by rote? It has to learn before it can do.”
“I will just call you Poe,” BB-8 said, more decided.
“That’d be great,” Poe said. He crouched down to be more on the droid’s level. “So for a little bit, I’m gonna have to be extra patient and show you a lot of stuff, huh?”
“Yes, exactly,” the rep said.
Poe nodded. “You’re gonna have to be extra patient and show me a lot of stuff,” BB-8 said, and it was kind of funny to hear how he translated Poe’s inflections into Binary. “What does that mean?”
“It means there’s a lot you don’t know yet,” Poe said. “And I’m gonna teach you!”
BB-8 rolled backward slightly, seemingly overwhelmed by this. “You’re going to teach me,” it said. “Is this my purpose? To learn?”
“You have a lot of purposes,” Poe said. “I don’t know what they all are, yet. I’m only a little way ahead of you, in learning. So I guess we gotta figure it out together, huh?”
“Figure it out together,” BB-8 said, and spun around in place with a meaningless but happy-sounding little trill.
“You’re such a dork,” Poe said, completely unable to hide his delight.
