Her morning prayers had a small gap in the middle of them this day. She had made sure to offer extra prayers beforehand, so that when she arrived at the Imperial embassy she was both prompt and had paid her respects. She wore her traditional black kimono as she always did in the mornings.

Approaching, she spoke with the guard and mentioned that Miya Nishida was expecting her, hoping that the man hadn't forgotten and she would be able to enter without any issues.

The guard had indeed been expecting Sumiko, after a quick check she was led through the embassy until she was taken to the lobby.

The lobby was what one would expect from an imperial lobby, anything but modest. Decked with luxurious sofas, polished cherry wood tables, lush cushions, it looked like they wanted to show everyone the direction the Imperial family was taking.

In addition, there was a small army of servants who were always ready to serve the samurai with food, drinks or other services.

Nishida sat on one of the sofas in his modest (hand-made, designer) suit. Next to him was his personal computer and a small bot that hummed happily.



The bot was about to pour Nishida a cup of tea when he noticed Sumiko. He beckoned her to his seat, and one of the servants escorted her there, asking her if she needed anything.

Sumiko bowed to the Imperial when he noticed her, a smile on her face. She quietly asked for a cup of tea from the servant, then made her way over.

"Good morning Miya-sama. I hope you are well? Is this the bot?" she watched it pouring, or about to pour, tea with interest "it looks like it's up and running nicely this morning."

"Good Morning Sumiko-san." he replied and nodded his head in greeting. "That's definitely the bot. It has already undergone some improvements since its creation, but at its core it is still the same." Y4SUK1-Bot just handed the cup of tea to its creator and beeped. Nishida accepted the cup and lightly patted the machine's head. "Its code was pretty jumbled and confused when it was built, which was probably due to the tight time limit, I hope you can find your way around."

"It seems to be working well enough, even with jumbled code. How long did you say you've been working on it?"

Sumiko moved closer to the machine, being careful not to disturb the bot.

"Where do you want me to start?"

"That's true, but sometimes you can tell it's unoptimized code," he said, and as if on command, one of the bot's fingers twitched.

Nishida presented his personal computer and showed Sumiko the code. "Here you can get a picture of it. It would be best if we could manage to make the entire code leaner to free up memory for new functions. A big undertaking, but I'm sure we could replace some reduntant lines."

Sumiko sat down and looked at the code. A frown soon appeared.

"I feel like this program was written a while ago. Those variables are not required anymore, there's a far better way to do this now."

The next half an hour was spent rewriting large parts of the code, telling Nishida her changes as she was going and annotating them onto the code. It wouldn't take long to see how much neater the code would be.

D2 MM computer/Int roll to improve droid! +1k0 from prodigy. +1 to roll from Nishida assist in co-op. 2 raises called so TN30 total | 10k4+1 ⇒ 35 (TN: 30)
2 xp for the bot!

Nishida watched Sumiko intently and was possibly, a little closer to her than was proper, but his eyes were fixed on the code. Nishida knew when someone was clearly better at something than he was, and Sumiko showed outstanding skill.

During the half hour, Nishdia kept asking what Sumiko was doing, partly out of paranoia, partly to understand how he himself could get better, and after Sumiko finished he said:

"Brilliant, Sumiko-san. Your expertise honors you and your Lord," he said, as honestly as Nishida could.

Sumiko smiled brightly at the praise, and bowed.

"Thank you for your kind words. I've worked with computers since I was young, which may be part of why I completed my Gempukku a year early and top of every class. They just fascinate me so, you can do almost anything with a computer now."

She looked at the bot.

"Even the normal duties of a heimin now it seems. Let's see if the changes have helped, why don't you execute a few programs? It should flow between movements faster and without the slight shaking I believe."

She took that chance to pick up the tea that had been brought over for her.

"I see. You are blessed with a quick mind, so no wonder you are such a top performer."

Nishida pushed the new code to the bot and restarted it. He ran a monitoring program and gave it some commands that it had been executing, which were usually things like serving tea, opening doors, or putting clothes on samurai.

There was a noticeable performance increase, less lags, and it didn't pop up a RAM warning every few minutes.

"If progress on the bot continues to grow it may one day actually be able to replace a heimin. But until then, it still needs a lot of work."

Sumiko had one eye on the bot and one eye on the program, having had a debug run at the same time to make sure everything flowed.

"Well, that part of the program looks perfect to me. I don't know if you can do more with this, but streamlining the code at least provides more space here if you want to add to it. You can likely add a section here" she motioned to the serving part "where you can specify based on visuals if what is in front of the bot is human or object, so then it has the ability to put things away as well as serve them. That would be a whole new section to write though, so not a morning only job I'd say."

She looked back to the Imperial with a smile.

"Thank you also for the chance to work on this. It's really interesting, even if the base code written here seems very out of date."

"Out of date? the bot was created only a few months ago! Or are you going to accuse me of being old?" Nishida feigned being offended.

He held the farce for a bit before smiling. "Should I upgrade the chassis I would like to add a real-voice module. The standard module was annoying me and I disabled it for a normal beep, which is also not a condition." He sighed, the bot was an endless project, yet Nishida was attached to it. "My expertise is low, but maybe someday I'll be able to increase the heuristic density to the point where it acts like it's capable of making real decisions. If you like, I'd be happy to invite you back." he visioned.

"But for now I am indebted to you! If you wish, I would like to invite you to a wonderful dinner as a thank you!"

Sumiko shook her head.

"Not the bot Miya-sama. Think of it like....hm, imagine how mercantile was a long while ago. Arranging deals, but we don't have the electronic devices of now for easier transfer of koku. The process still works the same, but you would need to wait for the funds to arrive from your lord. As time went on we upgraded processes to be faster and more streamlined. The same was in this code, it had the basis of code from around a decade ago. When it was handing a cup for example, it had a pause and check at around the halfway point to ensure it still had a cup, so it would jitter slightly to check that. If there was an error it would revert back and just drop the cup. Now" she motioned to the screen "the checks are done during movement without the stop parts, so it's all one swift handing over."

She looked over at Nishida.

"I hope this makes sense? I think you could trim a lot of the code during moving to a new chassis as well, which should remove a lot of the jittering that happens. I'd be happy to help when you get around to the upgrading."

She smiled at the offer of dinner, and nodded. "Dinner would be wonderful Miya-sama, I'd really enjoy that."

"Ahh, now I see what you mean" he said and maybe even meant it sincerely. He made a mental note to inform himself about new coding conventions and languages, in order to be able to have a better say in the future, on the one hand, and to be able to write the code better, on the other hand.

He now turned the topic back to the dinner. "What do you think of the Benikage?" he asked, adjusting his glasses, "admittedly, it's very dark there, but the food is heavenly, a true experience in itself."

His gaze occasionally drifted to Sumiko's jade tattoo, something he had seen more than enough, not least on his mother. It was a beautiful work of art, but especially in the area of the hand, where there was little muscle and fatty tissue, the pain was great.

"The Benikage? I've heard of it but never been, so it would be a very unique experience. Miya-sama has been before? I would be happy to go and try it, the experience sounds so interesting."

Sumiko smiled at the man, then noticing his gaze drifting added "is everything ok?"

"I've been there before, which is why I can definitely attest to the quality there."

Like a child caught in the act, he focused fully on Sumiko's face again. "Yes, I have only,... admired the artistry of your tattoo."

"Oh" Sumiko chuckled "is that all?"

She pulled the sleeve of her kimono up slightly so show the tattoo better:

Two rings round her left wrist, with small Spiders linking them all round her arm. Jade, tattooed into her arm.

"I came up with the design myself, and one of my kin performed the tattooing. I got the inspiration from looking at little spiders making a web outside my parents home. It reminded me that even when people are untrusted, or unwanted, they can still find union and kinship among friends."

"It is very beautifully made. I also like the meaning behind it, it seems you have put a lot of thought into it. My mother has a similar one, but hers is around her neck," Nishida mentioned while studying the tattoo. "May I?" he asked, pointing to her hand.

"I wanted it to have more meaning to it than just the usual opinion" Sumiko nodded "and of course."

She pulled her sleeve back to her elbow, showing the tattoo and her slender arm more and moved her arm closer to the man so he could get a clearer look (or feel) of the piece.

He took, gently, Sumiko's hand and turned it slightly in the light. He ran a finger lightly over the tattoo and felt the tattoo scars that occur during such a process. On the one hand, it was a twist. Jade was still a sacred mineral and still had a high value, on the other hand it was a real work of art.

Satisfied, he released Sumiko's hand. "Your dedication to displaying your purity is admirable," he commented.