John, what about these?" asked Kyla pointing at some grotesque purple leggings. After a few months of arduous work, I'd mastered enough Basic that Brama felt it would be safe for Kyla to take me to the market for some clothes shopping. She had her brother Gavin, a surprisingly English sounding name, join us for the afternoon. I was immensely thankful for his presence as her ideas for men's fashion really were from another planet.
"Only if he wants to be arrested for public indecency….he was better off when they found him naked." Gavin 'helpfully' responded for me, he wasn't the most talkative but when it came to mocking his sister he always found the words. "They don't really match my eyes." I added in Basic, "…or my dignity." I muttered in English. Kyla pouted, "You only seem to want to dress in blue, green or black, like you're in some miserable cult."
My safe casual instincts from my limited Earth wardrobe were still guiding me here. Gavin had assured me that I wasn't being too unreasonable, though my rejection of the yellows and browns that seemed ubiquitous on Naboo was atypical.
What was really unusual was my aversion to robes, which were the standard in Theed for anyone while not working in a manual job. Not wanting to feel like I was cosplaying as a wizard, I set about finding decent, non-uniform, trousers. This necessitated a trip to a Corellian tailor near the spaceport. The Corellian, more than any other human I'd met so far, sounded like an American, which, despite my being a Brit, I found oddly comforting.
---
As more and more weeks passed in this galaxy, I had largely come to accept my new reality. This is where I am now and that isn't going to change anytime soon, no matter how much I missed my family. I had to come up with a plan for my future past my time in the hospital, rather than waiting to magically wake up back in London. I was so grateful that the Naboo were being so accommodating to me up to now, but I couldn't live on their generosity indefinitely.
Gavin was 21 and keen to finally move out from his parents' home, he was training to work at the spaceport in ship maintenance. This sounded far more impressive to me than it did anyone else. I hadn't quite got my head round the idea that fixing spaceships was more akin to being a car mechanic than working for NASA. We agreed that once I was discharged from the hospital, we would find an apartment together. We got along well, and it would help keep Kyla in my life, which given my lack of other friends, I wasn't prepared to lose her.
When it came to making a living, I considered that on Earth my main interest had been tech and computing, with the dream of being a programmer of some kind in the future. It made some kind of sense to look to do the same in this universe, but I was starting again from scratch in terms of technical expertise.
I'd have to study, but I was keen to be earning some credits while I was at it. Gavin suggested I look for a low skill job by day while taking evening classes at the Theed Technical College. Low skill teenage work in any galaxy usually means retail, and here is where I lucked out. Naboo was in the middle of a plasma boom, with the local economy expanding as its valuable plasma was demanded for countless applications. Many small businesses propping up to support this growing industry, in turn attracting more spacers and visitors to the planet.
I was able to line up a job as an assistant at a droid parts and repair shop, ready to start the moment Brama agreed to my discharge. After six months of taking up space in the hospital this was mostly a formality. While I clung to my 'odd beliefs' about a planet 'Earth' with esoteric technology, I was in no way a danger to myself and others and deemed capable of functioning in society.
So, after half a year as a mental health patient slash language student, I said a final farewell to Brama, Denor and JX-3PO, and left to start my life as a tech guy.
---
Gavin was a messy roommate. Not that I was that much better, but given he was older surely, he should be the responsible one. Kyla was coming round that evening as she regularly did, largely to have opportunity to mock her poor younger sibling, but also to check-in on her ongoing project to engage me in Naboo society.
Her efforts were floundering because I was down a tech rabbit hole and refusing to emerge until it bloody well made some sense! "How is it no one knows anything about the source code?!" I had asked almost pleadingly to my new boss after a few weeks working at Zomir's Droids.
Zomir Bem was a Duros (the huge red eyes had taken some getting used to on my part), one of only a handful of his kind living in Theed. He was keen for me not just to mind the shop, but learn simple maintenance and repairs for the mostly astromech, pit and loader droids that made up the bulk of his business near the spaceport.
"Because it was written millennia ago in a mixture of pre-Republic languages that can't be accurately translated." he replied for what must be the fourth time of me losing my mind at the concept.
On Earth I had been studying to be a programmer. This meant learning about programming languages like Python, Java and C. These high-level languages are a few steps removed from the microscopic silicon transistors that Earth technology is built around, but they still allow you a high degree of control and flexibility. Using them, it is possible to create a vast array of programmes utilising hundreds of different functions included in the operating systems, that are themselves designed to be versatile.
Not so with droids and other tech in this galaxy. Presumably, once thousands of years ago, it worked something like that on one planet or another. Then someday this code got mixed with another civilisation's code, and another and another until it became a complete incomprehensible jungle.
In what must have been an ancient effort to make this more accessible day to day, these complex programmes were bundled together in packages installed on pieces of physical hardware. These then can be added to droids and other data terminals as needed.
For example, if you wanted a droid to play music, you would add a physical component for that purpose, even though it already has the storage, data processing and audio output built in.
The 'droid-brains' will attempt to make sense of the various hardware attached to them, adapting their own programming in ways entirely invisible to their makers, adding in data accumulated overtime to develop unique personalities. Let them run like this for long enough without routine memory wipes and they can happen to end up sentient.
In short, the concept of what I would call computer programming is obscure academic theory mixed with archaeology, only explored in small research teams within galaxy spanning hyper-corporations or top universities. They will make tiny modifications to these ancient packages, often more to the hardware than the software, and release new editions every few years that are barely changed from what came before. This has contributed to a centuries long technological stagnation across the galaxy.
For everyone else, it means forcing pieces of hardware together like Lego, then praying that the artificial intelligences that emerge from these connected pieces find a way to make it all work. At least they didn't have obscure rituals to invoke machine spirits and other wild ideas imagined in Earth science fiction.
---
I had been stewing over this programming dystopia for weeks now when Kyla snapped me back to the moment by shoving take-out food in front of me. "Eat!" she instructs, before plopping down on the sofa next to me. "Tell me about your classes!", I grumble about talking and eating at the same time which she waves off, "Details! You've been going to those classes for a month now. How's it going?"
Three evenings a week I attended classes at the Theed Technical College. These were focused on the manufacture, maintenance and repair of consumer electronics, from the simple like door mechanisms to the relatively complex like data terminals and pads. "It's alright, though really all they tell us is what the common parts used in things are, and how to replace them. I'm not sure the teachers have any clue how these things actually work." It was true, I suspected that Zomir probably knew more about these deep mysteries of everyday items, though that wasn't saying much.
"Yes, yes, you've complained about all that before, but are you making friends, have you met anyone, any cute girls in your class? Details!" she exclaims. "Oh Kyla, you know you're the only girl for me." I reply formulaically with enough sarcasm to get a choked grunt of a laugh from Gavin across the room. Kyla runs her hand through her hair dramatically, "Oh my darling John, that's so incredibly adorable but I'm sorry but you're just far too young for me."
I mean this was kinda true, her being 26, but really this was part of a rehearsed performance we had run through several times now. Since I was no longer her patient, apparently torturing me along with Gavin was fair game. If I were honest about it, I was starting to value the big sister-esque relationship. As an only child on Earth and with no family on Naboo, it really wasn't something I could afford to take for granted. Of course I would never admit this to Kyla, and it didn't stop me checking out her figure now and then, I'm only human.
"I've chatted a bit with a couple of the guys in the class about the work, and they seem friendly enough, but with the classes in the evening everyone tends to rush off home at the end." The more honest answer is I was struggling to connect with my peers. Theed is a paradise on a beautiful tropical planet, with warm friendly people. People who aren't afraid to talk to strangers… I dread to imagine them on the London Underground. They had accepted me as one of their own with barely any suspicion or hesitation. I just wish I knew how to talk to them.
In England, you may have made friends on the playground when you were four years old, growing up with them and sharing everything. Later, you might make friends talking about shared interests; music, movies, games, drawing on pop culture, bonding over jokes about memes or some other shared experience. Being new to the planet, and struggling to really embrace the culture made this difficult for me… even despite them displaying admirable patience for my technobabble.